Washington Horror Blog

SEMI-FICTIONAL CHRONICLE of the EVIL THAT INFECTS WASHINGTON, D.C. To read Prologue and Character Guide, please see www.washingtonhorrorblog.com, updated 6/6//2017.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Spectral Pee

"He needs you to do another mission for him," said temporal lobe epileptic "John Doe" (who was still telling everybody he was an autistic shaman, though he was really an amnesiac conduit).

"I know that!" replied Angela de la Paz.  "He didn't need to send you to tell me."  (Angela could now hear directly from the ghost of Henry Samuelson when she was in the Dreamtime.)

"I like your boat," said John.

"It's not mine," said Angela, looking at him on the dock without inviting him aboard the Singapore Surprise houseboat she shared with Dulles Samuelson.

"Ghost Henry doesn't think you should be living with his son."

"Does he want us to get married?" asked Angela, sarcastically.

"He wants you to do another mission," replied John.  "Do you have any crabcakes?"

"No," sighed Angela, suddenly thinking of all the kindnesses Lynnette Wong had showed her when she was young and very troubled.  "I just made pupusas, if you want one of those."

"What's that?" he asked.

"It's Salvadoran," she said, turning to reenter the houseboat.  "But I'm not doing any more missions for Ghost Henry.  He needs to return to Purgatory and clean up his soul."

"Wow, that's heavy!" said John, following her down into the kitchen.  "He said he has too much left to do on Earth.  Did you know he's teaming up with the ghost of Anatoly Malenkov to counter Trump's attempts to give cyber intelligence to Vladimir Putin?"

"Who's that?" Angela asked, handing him a plate.

"A murdered Russian diplomat!  He's inhabiting a Samoyed, but the dog also died, so it's like a ghost inside a ghost."

Angela shook her head, wishing Dulles would get home.  "I only do missions when I have a vision."

"You do missions for that Chinese spy," John retorted.

"Only when I want the money and it's not an evil mission."

"Ghost Henry is not evil!  He's a patriot!"

"Yeah, people are throwing that word around a lot lately," Angela said.  (It seemed a thousand years ago when Henry Samuelson plucked her out of Columbia Heights and sent her to Kansas for training and plastic surgery to become a super spy, 500 years ago she was an active combatant in the Middle East--where violence and refugee flight still showed no end in sight.)

"But he is!" insisted John.  "The Ghost CIA succeeded in getting Steven Bannon off the National Security Council and out of the White House!  Then they got Sebastian Gorka out."

"Dulles says Gorka had to leave after making Tiffany Trump uncomfortable."

"Well, the Russian ambassador is gone because of them!  Trump won't listen to the real CIA, but the Ghost CIA moved out of Langley and took up residence in Trump International Hotel where they are whispering in everybody's ears!  It's not just lobbyists in there, you know."

"Yes, I know," sighed Angela, who had liberated three Bulgarian and seven Moldovan trafficking victims from the Russian suite there in the past three months.

"Ghost Henry said you would agree with him on this mission:  all he's asking is for you to--"

"I know what he's asking," interrupted Angela.  "I also know Trump is not my mission.  He sold his soul a long time ago, and is just a shell now."

"What?!"

"Someone else has to remove him from power.  Lynnette told me the most prominent psychiatrists in the country have written to Congress about how unstable Trump is, how he's inflaming racial unrest, how he shouldn't have the nuclear football.  This is a test of democracy:  that's what Dulles says.  I was given a gift, but not for that."

John was so upset at the idea of Trump's having sold his soul to Satan that he fell into a TLE seizure.  Angela took John's hand, looked for him in the Dreamtime, spoke gently to him there, and then he came back.

"I like this food," John said, forgetting why he was here.

"I'll get you another one," said Angela, who had also seen, and ignored, Ghost Henry there.

Meanwhile, over at Trump International Hotel, the Ghost CIA had managed to get several of the vicious Trump-cover issues of Der Spiegel and Stern distributed, persuaded three lobbyists their wives would leave them if they did not renounce all ties to the Trump Administration, tripped Eric Trump twice, and played Pied Piper with a whole battalion of cockroaches.

It's not enough, moaned the ghost of Anatoly Malenkov (the Samoyed), lifting his leg to urinate spectral pee into Stephen Miller's beer glass.  It's never enough.

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COMING UP:      
Condoleezza Rice has a private race riot!

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Pretty Stupid

"Jared, they stole your luggage!  They stole your watch!  They stole your shoes!  Your children are already DEAD!"

Jared Kushner screamed "Nana!" and woke up, nearly giving himself a hernia when the seat belt restrained him from jumping up from his airplane seat.

"Was it the--"

"Gaaaa!" hollered Jared, startled by the sight of his bleach-blond wife.  (Dream Nana hated Ivanka Trump.)

"Honey!" said Ivanka, stroking his wrist.  "Did you have that dream again?"  (She never said "Holocaust survivor" out loud.)

He shook his head.  "This one was different," Jared whispered.  He could still see Sebastian Gorka lighting the oven, and Steve Bannon laughing as his grandmother was pushed towards it by Stephen Miller.

"Everything alright sir?" asked a looming Secret Service agent, taking advantage of the opportunity to look down Ivanka's shirt and examine her cleavage.  "Your children heard screaming."

Jared and Ivanka glanced over to the cluster of seats where their nanny was trying to distract the Kushner children with "Make America Great Again!" coloring books (made in China).

"Daddy had a dream about the recalcitrance of Qatar in not accepting the wisdom of Saudi hegemony in the Middle East as the only possible road to lasting peace," Ivanka called out to her children, with the same fake smile she employed for people like Angela Merkel and that black gardener who always smelled sweaty when he delivered her daily bouquet of White House roses.

The nanny was accustomed to her employers' insistence on talking to their toddlers as adults, but she was not accustomed to hearing a reply like the one Arabella issued, a Chinese folk saying she uttered in Mandarin:  "A bear chasing skunks will have no honey in the winter cave."

"We'll be home soon!" Ivanka said, blowing kisses to her children.

Back in DC, the Jordanian embassy was already buzzing about Jared Kushner's return visit to the Middle East--which had already been planned as a quiet working trip, but which was completely overlooked by a media consumed with the tragedy in Charlottesville and its epic fallout.  King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein had tried to do with Kushner what had completely failed in two prior meetings with Donald Trump:  explain that it was a very small minority of takfiri jihadists (approximately two percent of Sunni Muslims) who were driving the violent extremism, while most Muslims believe in peaceful respect for the two earlier Biblical faiths:  Judaism and Christianity.

"I have spoken at length with the king," said the Jordanian ambassador, drumming his fingers on the conference table around which sat his top deputies.  "Mr. Kushner judges the countries in the region by two things:  their historic response to American investors and their posture towards the Trump Administration."

"By 'American investors' you mean?"

"This is interpreted primarily as where have Kushner and Trump family members been allowed to do deals," replied the ambassador.

"Were they blocked in Qatar?"

"Not precisely, but they are sorely compromised by a juggernaut of Saudi cronyism.  Israel is now turning a blind eye to Saudi human rights violations and the continued degradation of women to have an ally against Iran."

"So is Israel guiding the Trump Administration now?  Because Kushner is Jewish?"

"Jewish?!" laughed the Jordanian ambassador.  "Kosher, maybe, but I have never known a Jew like him.  His grandparents survived a Nazi concentration camp, and he has no problem with Nazis marching in American cities!  In any case, it is clearly Saudi Arabia who is guiding the Trump Administration in the Middle East now."

"So what is Kushner's plan for the Middle East?"

The ambassador shook his head.  "The total capitulation of Qatar."

"The Saudis want their massive oil reserve:  even a child can see this!"

"That child cannot see it!" cried the ambassador, his voice rising.  "There are American troops in Qatar, and also in Turkey--which is flying food into Qatar.  It is all madness!  It is conceivable that Iran and Jordan will actually be the only legitimately functioning Middle East democracies within a year.  The 'war on terror'--as defined by the Saudis, the Israelis, and Trump--will lead to increased bloodshed, more curtailing of journalists and dissidents, isolated zones of heavily guarded wealth interspersing vast swaths of turbulent slums and deserts."

"And Syria?"

"A de-populated country already, mostly bombed into ruins, propped up by Russian aid."

"What is Kushner's plan for Syria?  Kushner was sent to the Middle East to--"

"There is no plan to change anything.  Soon the Trump Administration will declare Isis defeated, but the jihad has already expanded outside of the original Isis territory."

"And Jordan?"

The ambassador looked at the ceiling for a moment.  "Jordan will pray."

Prayers (silent) were also underway a few miles south, at the Camelot Society meeting in the library of the Federal Reserve Board.

"Nobody's seen a successful Nazi economy since 1940!" said Obi Wan woman.

"Don't you dare say it!" cried Italian economist Luciano Talaverdi Yellen (whose marriage to Helen Yellen had only caused confusion for him at work, not career advancement).

"We have to be prepared for this!" declared Janet Yellen's deputy.  "The Trump Administration has signaled its support for white supremacist fascists, the debt ceiling is about to be breached, emergency measures--"

"NO!" declared Luciano, jumping to his feet.  "If we become a fascist state, it will only invite invasion!"

"That's what you're going with?" asked Obi Wan woman.

"It's not a joke!" insisted Luciano.  "It doesn't matter if the trains run on time and industrial production increases if we are only going to have a coalition of allies invade us through Mexico to close the Mexican and Muslim concentration camps!  It will not be a sustainable economy, whatever Carl Icahn says!"

"Wow," said Janet Yellen's deputy.  "Nobody's going to invade the U.S.:  let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"No, we do need to get ahead of ourselves!" retorted Obi Wan woman.  "Where are the grown-ups right now?  The charities are pulling their galas out of Mar-a-Lago, the business leaders are pulling out of Trump's advisory councils, Steve Bannon has gone from the National Security Council to working again for Breitbart--whose biggest story this week--THIS WEEK!!--was about arresting Floridians for public sex on the beach--"

"Could we get back on point?" interrupted Janet Yellen's deputy.

"I am on point!" insisted Obi Wan woman.  "Opinion polls show historic levels of distrust and disdain for every branch of government AND the media.  We need to step up as the responsible party to shape the economic path forward."

"That is not the way the Fed works!" replied Luciano, slumping back down in his chair.

"Well, who else?" asked Obi Wan woman.

"But people don't trust banks, either," said Janet Yellen's deputy.  "That's why we avoid fanfare about our quarterly meetings--the less the average American knows about the Federal Reserve Board's involvement in their lives, the better."

"I think we should do what everybody else does to anonymously advance their socioeconomic agenda," said Obi Wan woman.  "I think we should set up a SuperPAC!"

Over at the White House, private bodyguard Randy (Bubba) Blaylock had turned down an offer to follow Steve Bannon to Los Angeles and was now assigned to adviser Sebastian Gorka--a Nazi whose death threats had increased 5,000 percent since Charlottesville.  Now Bubba's grandfather had fought Nazis in World War II, but that was a long time ago, and he was pretty sure Gorka had just gotten a bad rep.  That's why Bubba was surprised at what Gorka said when he stopped by to welcome new Georgetown Law student Tiffany Trump to the East Wing:  "What a beautiful white specimen you are!  We must find you an excellent husband, and I hope you have at least ten children!"  Tiffany laughed nervously, and looked at the Secret Service woman stationed nearby, who abruptly stepped in front of Tiffany and suggested Gorka probably had something more important to be doing.  Bubba burst out laughing, Gorka glared at him, and the two headed back to the West Wing.

She is pretty, said Ghost Regina.

Pretty stupid! retorted her twin brother, Ghost Ferguson.

"Reggie, Fergie!" cried the gardener, Bridge.  "Don't you mess with her!"

But the spectral pre-schoolers had not found Barron very amusing, so they were very interested in this one.

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COMING UP:     
What's happening with the Ghost CIA!?

Sunday, August 13, 2017

American Girl

Barbara Hellmeister was back from her weekend visit to Charlottesville, disappointed she had failed to find a new Nazi lover and partner to help her raise her unborn Hitler-DNA-infused Donald Trump clone.  Her pregnancy would start showing soon, and then it would be too late.  She crawled into her perch in the bridgeman's quarters of the 14th Street Bridge--which always had a calming, comforting effect on her, despite the semi-squalor.  (She didn't know that this feeling came from the demon Ardua lurking in the Potomac below her.)  She counted the cash she had made selling chemical weapons to white supremacists, and examined a couple Nazi artifacts she had picked up.  (Her personal collection, inherited from her Nazi grandfather, had mostly perished in the blaze she had set several years earlier.)  Since the closing of the White House science office, she had not held a lucrative position.  She was still on the FBI's most-wanted list, and it would be far too risky to return to the CIA.  She pressed her hand to her stomach, wondering at her own decision not to follow one of the neo-Nazi groups back to Georgia or Alabama.  It was true that most of them were stupid, couldn't even spell Charlottesville properly on Twitter, had more Celtic blood than Aryan, and had only managed to kill one person--a white woman!--but somehow none of those things really mattered in comparison to the inexplicable draw she felt pulling her back here.  Her phone buzzed, and she was surprised to see a text message from Ricky Chesterfield, a KKK car mechanic from South Carolina who had decided to look her up in DC before heading home.  She smiled at his message asking if she wanted to "have some fun" at the Holocaust Museum.  Do I ever!

Over at the Justice Department, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions had happily put in motion a civil rights investigation into the white supremacist murder in Charlottesville (since the victim was white and no civil rights violation would be found).  Now, with that public relations coup behind him, he was eager to get back to prosecuting government leaks and deporting oncology nurses for the crime of being born in Mexico.  "Hawk!"

"Yes, sir, General Sessions, sir!" cried DOJ attorney Atticus Hawk, jumping to his feet and saluting.

"At ease!" replied Sessions, shutting the office door behind him before sitting down next to Hawk's desk.  "How's the leak investigation going?"

"Well, sir," began Hawk, sitting back down and shoving his taco salad away from his papers, "we've narrowed it down to about fifty suspects in the CIA, a hundred in the White House, two-hundred at the Pentagon--"

"TWO-HUNDRED!?"

"Well, statistically speaking, that's actually a pretty small number considering how many people work at the Pentagon."

"TWO-HUNDRED!?  It's the trans-sexers, isn't it?!"

"The trans?  Um, we're not examining that, uh, factor."

"We have enemies on all sides, son!"

"Don't I know it?!" declared Hawk, who was regretting his lunch choice and desperately wanting to use the bathroom.  "We did identify one DOJ cleaning woman deported a couple weeks ago who told some Mueller grand jury stories to an Associated Press reporter in Guadalajara."  (This was a complete lie:  Hawk was responsible for most of the leaks about Robert Mueller.)

"Guadalajara!" exclaimed Sessions, instinctively recoiling in disgust from the Spanish name.

"Well, the reporter has a British passport, and I assume you don't want us to bring the woman back for questioning?  She claims she was deported in a case of mistaken identity."

"What happened when you questioned those pesky reporters from the Post and the Times and the Buzzkill?"

"Buzzfeed?  Well, sir, General, their lawyers all sent protest letters citing the First Amendment."

"And you let that stop you!?" cried Sessions, getting red in the face.  "The God-damned First Amendment doesn't protect traitors!"

"Well, sir, there's no proof of treason--"

"I told you to get me the proof!"

"It's a chicken and an egg thing," replied Hawk.

"What?!  You a country boy all of the sudden, telling me about poultry?!"

"Um--"

"They publish government secrets, they need to tell us who leaked 'em!" hollered Sessions.

"We did trace some of the leaks to Barron," whispered Hawk, "but you don't want us to haul him in here, do you?"

"Bannon?!  YES, haul him in here!"

"Barron, sir, the kid."  (Sessions shook his head in confusion.)  "Melania's son, Barron."

"Get me those reporters, damn it!" declared the Attorney General, before storming out of Hawk's office.

I didn't get to tell him our suspects for the "Game of Thrones" leak, Hawk thought to himself.

Not far away, FBI agent Dulles Samuelson was, in fact, delivering a sealed envelope of material from Atticus Hawk to a member of the Special Prosecutor's team.  The woman nodded silently and was quickly on her way.  Samuelson walked quickly into a different corridor before slowing down his pace and exhaling deeply.  It was absolutely astonishing to him that Donald Trump was still in office, that there was still no law enforcement against him, that the bullying Trump had personally aborted the years-long planning for construction of a new FBI building to show his displeasure with the investigation, that the President of the United States had thanked Putin for expelling U.S. diplomats...then gave a wink and a nod to a white supremacist rally responsible for murder.  Samuelson heard whispers of things here and there--how important it was to build a slam-dunk case and not make anything public before all possible criminal conspirators were nailed--but serving as an officer investigating and arresting small-fry criminals every week seemed more and more surreal to him.  He walked into his office to finish up a drug ring report, thinking about Angela de la Paz--who had stopped talking about the supernatural world and thrown herself into espionage for Charles Wu again.  Hawk had still only seen her kill a couple of demons, but he knew it was always on her mind.  She might be talking about North Korea or the undercover agent in the Russian suite of Trump International Hotel, but he could always see in her eyes that intense glow indicating how tuned in she was to what was happening just across the natural/supernatural divide.  When he had first learned of this, he had considered Angela's unique abilities to fight evil a gift; now he understood what a weight it was on her, the massive presence of evil in this town.  The whole town was full of "fire and fury" now, and there seemed no way it could end well.

Over at George Washington University Hospital, Dr. Khalid Mohammad cried in relief as his laboring wife Yasmin gave birth to their first child.  He shook his head when offered the scalpel to cut the umbilical cord, not interested in taking his eyes off Yasmin cradling the baby girl.  "I want to name her Charlotte," whispered Yasmin, "or Heather".

Khalid laughed at the idea of giving their daughter a non-Muslim name, but nodded.  "Charlotte Heather Mohammad," he said.  "An American girl."

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COMING UP:     Jared fixes the Middle East!

Sunday, August 06, 2017

Pravda!

"Finally, some sun coming out!" exclaimed Texas Congressman Zeke "Slick" Hicks, pulling his captain's hat lower over his eyes.  "Just as we were heading back to D.C.!"  He idled the motor of the newly acquired Molotov Cocktail (a gift from Exxon) and headed back to the cooler to grab another beer.  "Man, I wish I was deep-sea fishing in the Gulf instead of chugging up the Chesapeake!"

"Why did you stop the boat?" whined Congressman Devin Nunes.  "I don't wanna miss my flight to California!"

"Aw, don't get your shrimp nets in a tangle!" replied the Chairman of the secret Russia Caucus.  "I just wanna look at the blue sky for a minute!"

"Blue sky," muttered Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan under his breath, rolling down his shirt sleeves.  (The Speaker of the House had to avoid direct sun since becoming a zombie earlier in the year.)

"Can we go over the talking points again?" asked Rep. Nunes.  "I still don't understand how I'm supposed to explain to my constituents why we increased sanctions on Russia even though Russiagate is a big fat nothing burger."

"We're just doing what the intelligence community recommended," said the Speaker of the House.  "But none of it is connected to Trump ...or to us, for that matter."

"Well, what if my constituents see it differently?" continued Nunes.  "Mueller's got the second grand jury now, somebody leaked that phone call where Trump complained to the Australian prime minister that Putin was more pleasant to talk to, somebody leaked that Trump was involved in Junior's bogus statement on the Russian adoptions meeting, Trump complained about having to sign the Russia sanctions bill--"

"We've gone over this!" said Rep. Hicks (who was perfectly capable of denying to his dying breath being in over his head).  "Plausible deniability!  Limited liability corporations!  We've done everything very carefully, and there's no way that Manafort will squeal because, well, you know."

"He'd be whacked by the Russian mob!" laughed the Speaker of the House, a little more light-headed than usual with the sunlight affecting the maggots in his brain.

"It's not funny!" protested the sunbathing Representative from Florida (who was in denial about skin cancer, sea-level rise, and her re-election odds if voter suppression efforts failed in her District).  "You can't just laugh it off, Paul!  We need to stay in agreement on these talking points!  I don't want some guy named Vitaly showing up at my door when push comes to shove."  (Actually, she did have some fantasies about a young, handsome "Vitaly" getting physical with her, but that's in a different blog....)

"The Russia bot Twitter trolls are cranking out more #MAGA Tweets than anybody else," said Rep. Hicks.  "They're also in the top ten for Tweeting "fakenews" and "SethRich"--they've got our backs, and we've got theirs, and Exxon hasn't given up hope of reversing those sanctions later and drilling in Russia.  The way I see it, Mueller's gonna nab a couple little low-lifes from the campaign, the New York A.G. is gonna nab a couple of Russian money-launderers, and the Republican voters will come roaring back to vindicate Trump, like a tornado zipping across Interstate 10!"

"Damned straight!" exclaimed the Speaker of the House.

"Well, at least we still have Obamacare," sighed Devin Nunes.  "I won't have to take questions about repeal and replace anymore."

The smile faded from Rep. Ryan's face, and he started fantasizing about ripping the Californian's head off and chowing down on his brains right now.

Back in D.C., Captain Tyler Glockmann rolled his wheelchair into the upper floor meeting room of the Brewmaster's Castle.  Today he was the first one in for the Heurich Society Meeting, though he had already spoken to Condoleezza Rice every morning and every night this week.  He grabbed a muffin from the tray that butler Han Li had left out, dreading the bad news he would have to deliver today:  the Joint Chief of Staff would go to the mat against Trump on transgender service members, but nothing else...at least, not yet.  He stared up at the ceiling, thinking about his brother--the real, deceased Captain Tyler Glockmann.  Did you serve your country?  Am I serving my country?  The god-damned President of the United States had just launched his own propaganda news channel, which would declare any indictment against the entire criminal enterprise a lie, but I am lying every day I'm at the Defense Intelligence Agency.  Means justify the end.  What is the end?  He took a swallow of lemonade.  It was clear to everybody at the Defense Intelligence Agency that the old KGB agent had played a very, very long game, and it was far, far from over.

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't, am I right?" asked the treasurer, walking into the conference room.

"Sir?"

"Take the shot," he replied with false cheerfulness.  "Of course, there's no need for that--he could just be smothered in his sleep.  But then what?  The barbarians would be at the gate with their home-made AK47s squaring off against the Pentagon.  The brass have to stand down, sit back in the name of democracy while it rots from the inside.  Is this chocolate chip or raisin?"  Glockmann shook his head.  "Next year we're either gonna look like Venezuela or Russia, and Russia would be better, don't you think?"

"Venezuela, actually," said the international arms merchant, who had just sat down.  "I'm making a ton of money selling weapons down there!"

"Would you sell them here if there's a civil war?" asked Glockmann.

"There already is, Captain!  And the Heurich Society never loses in any war!"

Not far away, junior partner Bridezilla was hosting her largest ever Russia practice reception at Prince and Prowling, up on the roof deck, with a harpist sitting under a tent ready to begin the sunset serenade music.  Her boyfriend ("Esperantu Edward") had helped her pick up a few Russian words over the last few months, and she was fairly certain people were whispering about Mueller's grand juries and the New York RICO investigation, but she was uncertain what exactly they were saying.  She smiled with false serenity as she moved among the guests, pleased that she had brought millions in dollars of business to the law firm but fully aware that the government practice division was raking in ten times that amount doing unlisted support work for the Justice Department's Trump-related litigation defense teams.  She still suspected Edward might be a spy of some sort, but everything about DC had become so surreal that it scarcely mattered anymore.

"When are you two going to get married?" asked an importer, taking Bridezilla by the arm and pointing to Esperantu Edward.

Bridezilla looked down in surprise at her ring finger, which was empty.  How long has this been empty?  When did I meet Edward?  What will happen to us?

"Well?" laughed the importer.  "He would do anything for you!"

In fact, Edward was now deeply enmeshed in the Russian resistance to Vladimir Putin, and the more clients he brought to her at Prince and Prowling, the more dangerous it was becoming for her.

"Would he?" she smiled.

Down in Southwest, the secret Russia Caucus--willfully ignorant their new boat was loaded with hidden state-of-the-art Soviet listening devices--was pulling the Molotov Cocktail into its new pier slip--right next to the Singapore Surprise.  Ten feet below, Ardua of the Potomac knew nothing about geopolitics, but the demon did know evil hubris when she saw it.

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 COMING UP:     Out, damned leak!