A gypsy, a dotard, and a zombie walk into a bar....

It had been an interesting week for the Reiki Triplets.  Cal, Maggie, and Sassy (Calcium, Magnesium, and Sassafras) had learnt that they had been submitted for a high-level background check in order to render reiki services to VIPs.  They had learned this when Melania Trump had arrived for a one p.m. appointment mid-week (which had been phoned in for "Gypsy").  The Secret Service had cleared out their entire Capitol Hill house, including Sassy's super annoyed musician husband (roused from a sound sleep) and Justice Department attorney Atticus Hawk (who was hustled out before he could pay for his just completed reiki session).  Melania told the Reiki Triplets that her husband was too jealous to allow her to get any type of touch massage, but she had read many interesting Yelp reviews for them ("transcendental!" "divine!" "surreal vision of Siamese triplet ghosts dancing above me!"), so she wanted to give it a try.  Melania relaxed quickly under the influence of their aura, the jasmine aromatherapy, and the smooth pebbles placed in each of her palms.  She told them how unhappy she was tramping around the White House vegetable garden in sneakers and a plaid ("plaid, like a lumberjack!") shirt for the photo op her publicist had talked her into with those "street urchins" (how she described African-American children).  "Why am I picking vegetables like a slave from long ago?"

"Oh, honey," Maggie replied, "it's good to put your hands on growing, green leaves!"

"Thank them for how they will nourish you," added Sassy.

"Smell the soil and inhale the freshly made oxygen," said Cal.

"But those sweaty street urchins are so stinky!  I only like to smell sweat in bed."  (She was talking about her two lovers, not her husband.)

"Um, okay,' said Maggie, "but next time just put some really strong-smelling hairspray on, and that's what you'll smell."

"Oh, no," interjected Cal, "don't be recommending chemicals!"

"Well, if it helps Melania spend time in the garden--"

"I am First Lady!  You cannot call me by name!"

"Honey, it is dehumanizing to refer to you like an artificial construct!" said Sassy.  "Your name is personal and empowering!  We send you self-affirming energy just by saying it!"

"Oh, well, alright.  When I meet Prince Harry at Invictus, should I call him Harry?"

"Only if you mean it," said Cal.

Then on Friday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had shown up.  (This appointment had been phoned in as "John Wayne".)  "I don't like people to touch me," said Tillerson.  "But a little bird had suggested to me I try this reiki thing."  (The "little bird" had been Ghost Dennis, the Reiki Triplets' deceased father, who lived at the White House.)

"We won't touch you at all," said Sassy, joining hands with her identical sisters around the table.

"Nothing's working," said Tillerson.

"Deep breaths," said Maggie.

"He didn't listen to us!" exclaimed Tillerson.  "We told him not to make personal attacks on Un, but he did anyway!'

"He is full of negative energy," said Cal.

"He's a dotard!" replied Tillerson.  "That damned Rocket Man got it right!  A dotard and a barking dog!"

"With our energy, you can go back to see the President and give him some of this healing power."

"Then he went off on Venezuela," continued Tillerson, "and he thought what he said was so clever that people would clap for it!  He just stood there for twenty seconds of silence, looking around for the applause that never came!"

"He craves adulation," replied Sassy, "but you can--"

"Well, he didn't get it!" interrupted Tillerson.  "So he heads to Alabama for another white supremacist rally to get the damned applause!  I think it's because he's never had a wife that loved him."

"Hmm," all three said in unison.

"Women are capable of great love," said Cal, "but they need nurturing to grow and flower."

"Nurturing?!" laughed Tillerson.  "He's just nurturing his bank account!  I mean, I get it, I love money, but I also ran Exxon because I believe that God gave us petroleum to use it!"

"God also gave us brains to use," said Maggie, motioning her sisters to hover their hands above Tillerson's head.  "Are you using yours?"

Tillerson felt insulted and was about to jump up in protest when he saw what appeared to be three men fused together, doing aerial somersaults near the ceiling.  "What the?"

"That's it," said Sassy, who knew he was seeing the Siamese triplet ghosts now.  "Free your mind."

Today, Congressman Paul Ryan was the one under Secret Service protection, speeding over to see the Reiki Triplets.  Ever since becoming a zombie, the Speaker of the House had been getting more and more resistance from his regular Thai masseuse--who somehow always seemed too busy to schedule him in.  Even when he had grown suspicious and had his scheduler phone him in as "Peter Rand", "Clyde Hyde", or "Bob Weisenheimer", somehow when he showed up, the receptionist would suddenly say, "Oh, she just went home sick!  Migraine!  Nobody else available!"  So--desperate for something, anything--he had relented to trying out this reiki thing suggested by his scheduler.  (He did like to try to stay hip with what the millennials were into.)  His neck felt like every #taketheknee guy in the NFL was kneeling on Ryan's shoulders.  His spine felt like Hurricane Maria had pulverized him, not Puerto Rico.  His adrenal glands felt like those bitches Senator Collins and Senator Murkowsky were stabbing him in the back instead of repealing Obamacare.  And the tax cut push felt like--

The SUV door opened, and Congressman Ryan stepped out.  He walked past the front yard fountain, bird bath, and Saint Francis statute, then into the entrance for the reiki studio.  The Reiki Triplets were standing there to greet their third (still unknown) VIP client of the week, but wrinkled up their noses at the stench of his zombie brain as soon as he entered the room.

"No, no, no, no!" they all started muttering in unison.

"What's the problem!?" barked a Secret Service officer.

"What, you don't know?" asked Cal.

"They don't know," said Sassy.

"Know what?!" he demanded.

"Well," began Maggie, looking around.

"We can't help him," said Sassy.

"What?!" exclaimed the Speaker of the House and his guards.

"Well, he's a zombie," said Sassy.

"Damned Antifa niggers!" yelled Ryan.  "No offense, Stanley," he added, smiling at the one whose name was actually Stephen.

"Damned zombie!" exclaimed Stephen, punching Congressman Ryan in the stomach.

The other officer drew his gun on Stephen, ordered him down on the ground, then hauled Ryan out safely to the SUV.

"It's alright, son," said Cal.  "You can get up now."

"I really blew it this time," said Stephen, standing up.

"You come in and get on the table," said Maggie.  "You'll feel better soon."

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COMING UP:        
Supreme Court Justice (not!) defending freedom!

Less Than Human

Ricky Chesterfield, a car mechanic and KKK member from South Carolina, had been living with Nazi Barbara Hellmeister for weeks, since meeting her in Charlottesville.  She had explained to him all the scientific evidence for the white supremacy he had always believed in his heart.  She had assured him through DNA lab testing that, though not a pure Aryan, he had quite a respectable amount of Aryan DNA in his system.  And he totally believed in her supremacy and worshiped everything about her. They spent a lot of time holed up in her secret lair atop the 14th Street Bridge, fishing, talking, soaking in the [demon Ardua] river vibe, and having animalistic sex like nothing he had ever known before.  Sometimes he accompanied her to her rented lab space in Arlington, where Barbara had stashed all the equipment she had acquired while working in the now shuttered White House science office.  He loved "playing doctor" with her while she wore her white lab coat and talked German to him.  Then he would have some beers and fall asleep while she kept humming and running experiments.  Every now and then she would send him on a TaskRabbit run to fix a car or truck for cash.  She also gave him synthetic drugs to sell.

From Barbara Hellmeister's point of view, Ricky Chesterfield had barely enough Germanic DNA to be considered respectably Aryan, but he would suffice for now.  And his non-Aryan blood made him sufficiently stupid to believe her that the baby she was pregnant with--already showing--was his.  She now had a neo-Nazi lover, helpmate, provider, and protector for the Hitler-infused Trump DNA clone she had growing inside her.  And it was pretty easy to make him happy:  he liked her cooking, he adored the euphoria drug she was secretly giving him, and his favorite game was for her to hook up a catheter for him to watch his own pee collect, then take it out and do "occupational therapy" on his genitals.  She, herself, had been rather happy for weeks, but couldn't help now feeling the one-year anniversary of the death of her first baby (a genetic freak, mutated because of the influence of Ardua, and accidentally killed by Barbara's plastic surgeries).  They had wandered uncertainly the day before between the Trump Mother of All Rallies (MOAR), the Juggalo rally, and the Antifa rally (for, respectively, either reveling in camaraderie, showing contempt for freaks, or picking fights with commies), but none of them had really elevated her mood.  Then, this morning, that violent meme of Trump's driving a golf ball to knock down Hillary Clinton reminded Barbara of giving birth in the Trump National Golf Club bunker, and later burying her infant there.  Now, without telling her about the death anniversary, she told him she was in the mood for doing something crazy, and he readily agreed.

Meanwhile, over on Capitol hill, the Zombie Caucus was debating the newest bill to replace Obamacare.

"This is getting boring.  Why do we have to keep talking about this?"

"It's just an exercise to exhaust and distract Democrats so tax cuts can be passed."

"Wait, I think I'm a Democrat?"

"Are we in favor of tax cuts?"

"No, too many zombies are not paying taxes.  We need humans to pay taxes!"

"You are a Democrat!"

"What about the Obamacare bill?"

"We always vote to repeal:  unhealthy people are easier to attack!"

"I think we should revisit this issue:  healthier people have tastier brains!"

"Well, it's a trade-off."

Just then, Congressman Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, walked in.  "I really need you all to vote for the Obamacare repeal, okay?  We're already in Continuing Resolution territory, and we're losing our base!"

"That doesn't matter:  Kris Kobach and voter suppression will keep us all in power."

"How do you know?  Is he a zombie?"

A couple hours later, Barbara Hellmeister was back in Arlington, just finishing up a special batch of synthetic drugs.  "I want you to distribute this in Southeast," she told Ricky.

"You mean Capitol Hill?  Or over by Nationals Park?"

"No, I mean Anacostia."

"It's too dangerous!  It's full of--"

"We are the superior race!  You can dominate them!"

Ricky stared at the drug.  It was one thing to listen to her stories about the Final Solution and all that, because it was a long time ago, but it made him a little nauseous wondering what kind of drug he wanted her to sell in an African-American neighborhood today.

She saw his hesitation and kissed him hard.  "I need this!"  She then watched him leave, hoping he would slaughter hundreds of people she thought genetically deserved to die more than her own first child...and DNA freak.

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COMING UP:       
The Reiki Triplets get some new clients!

The diary of White House security guard Randy "Bubba" Blaylock.

Dear Diary,

What a week!  And that's saying a lot when you work in the White House!  Guarding Sebastian Gorka was definitely more boring than guarding Steve Bannon, and then when he was gone and I got transferred to Stephen Miller , I really thought it would just get duller and duller.  Southern Californian Nazi who attended Duke University?  Sounds like a loser who never had a girlfriend in his life and secretly watches gay porn.

But then something weird happened this week!

So it started with President Sinking Ship (I'm sorry, I was rooting for the guy, but HELL!) getting back from his do-over in Texas, then deciding to fly to North Dakota to beg for tax cuts for millionaires.  First of all, NOBODY goes to North Dakota if they don't have to!  Second of all, how many millionaire campaign donors live in that God-forsaken state?  WHAT is the point?  All they do is grow wheat and drill oil, and they can't even do the last one right because the tribes and enviros are getting on their backs!  Third, I'm not that great at math, but I'm pretty sure you can't do tax cuts when you gotta provide billions of dollars to FEMA to clean up two hurricanes!

Anyway, since Ivanka thinks people in DC are super mean, she says, "Daddy, can I fly with you to North Dakota?"  Yeah, she's got kids of her own but still calls him DADDY!  She leaves her own kids BEHIND to fly with DADDY!  Not because she's a special adviser but because she likes standing on a stage and having people clap for her, just like the old man.  And her own kids are asking Jared, "Daddy, why is mommy gone again?"  And he's like, "she needs to help your grandfather sell tax cuts for millionaires."  PSYCH!  No, he's like, "shut up and practice your Mandarin nursery rhymes, we have some more bribes to do with the Chinese ambassador's buddies."

But I'm excited, right?!  Because Trump's flying off with his daughter-wife, neglecting Melania again, and it's gotta be my big chance, right?  Stephen Miller is on a conference call with Steve Bannon about what Bannon is gonna tell Charlie Rose ("Own it, man!  You ARE a street fighter!"), so I mosey over to the East Wing to see what Mrs. Voluptuous is doing while Barron's at school, and that shit fashion designer is there again, Gunther Zimmer!  Man, I checked high and low when I found that Navy Seal parachute thread in his sewing kit in July, but I could never figure out what his deal is!  So the Secret Service are kind of hanging back in the upstairs hallway, like they're a little embarrassed, and I see that Melania's got the master bedroom door open, and she's modeling a gown for Zimmer, and as SOON as Zimmer sees me, he invites me to come in and shut the door behind me!

Then they both start giggling, and he tells her, "See, I told you he would come by!"

"Did you know zere are ghosts in zee White House, Bubba?" she asks me, and they both giggle again!

I'm like, "Hell, I thought I was the only one hearing them!  There's one that's always scolding Miller, and he's always yelling back, 'I can be a Nazi if I want to!  It's a free country!'  I mean, I understand where the Confederates are coming from, but being a Nazi is too much!  Even Bannon wasn't a Nazi!  I'm not sure about Sebastian, but he was always talking in some foreign language on the phone."

Well, Zimmer was nodding, but Melania looked confused, so I changed the subject, telling her what a pretty dress she had on.  And she's like, "Vell, I'm ready to take it off!"  And they both start giggling again.

And then Zimmer tells me, "I TOLD her you would be into it!"  And just like that, she's taking off her dress and coming onto me!  Honestly, I don't think I can write much more about this because I heard there's a thing called Freedom of Information Act requests, and my diary might be shown to a reporter someday, but let's just say, the three of us had a fun couple of hours before Barron came home from school that day!  

Well, that night after I drop Miller off at his sissy metro-sexual CONDO and head home to Virginia, I find spooks waiting for me at the house!  At first I think, SHIT, the Secret Service ratted me out to Trump!  But, no, it's the freakin' CIA!  They say they've got a tape of me in the Presidential bedroom with Melania, and I need to cooperate!  At first I was pretty pissed off to think Melania was a CIA agent, but they explained NO, she was REALLY into me, and it was Zimmer that set up the hidden camera, so I felt better.  They also explained that she's an illegal alien, so it's OK for them to spy on her.  But I asked, "she's not so bad, is she?"  And they said no, but she might have dirt on Trump and the Russia thing, and I said, "well, that's just a lie from CNN!"  But they said, no, it isn't, and they showed me some proof but said they needed more, and they appealed to me to be a patriot because they were worried about what Trump was gonna let Russia do to the good ole USA!  And then I thought about my daughter and how proud she would be if I told her I helped the CIA fight the Russkies, so I said OK!  I'll do it!  I mean, I didn't have much choice anyway!  I don't really care if some sex tape of me gets out on the Internet, but Trump seems like the kinda guy that would beat a wife black and blue for that, you know?  So all around it seemed like the right thing to do.

I am a little bummed the CIA confiscated my Rolex!  Said Zimmer had recognized it as stolen property, but I only stole it from that monster that had my daughter locked up in his basement!  And how does the CIA know about that, anyway?  I will say that skin rash has finally cleared up, though, and I stopped having those nightmares where the Rolex was TALKIN' to me and tellin' me to KILL people.

So now I'm in cahoots with Gunther Zimmer!  No wonder he turned her on!  I thought he was just a gay fashion dude, but he's got those CIA skills to seduce and be a super spy!  I could learn a bunch from him.  

And sure enough, the CIA was right!  Friday the goddam RUSSIAN ambassador is suddenly at the White House!  They never told the press or set up a fancy press conference or anything!  SECRET SPY SHIT!  Well, Miller doesn't know shit because he just deals with immigration, stuff like that, but Melania tells me all about the Russian ambassador before she heads off to Camp David.  Shit gettin' real!  And then I report it to the CIA!  Me, Bubba Blaylock of Winchester, Virginia!

Whoops, Secret Service bringing them back, I need to sign off and drive Miller home to City Center so he can get in his Sunday night spin class, whatever the hell that is.  Tomorrow's a new week!

Outside, several of the Shackled floated above the White House, watching Trump's dwindling inner circle of loyal advisers trickle out of the black SUVs, shell-shocked from his praise of the U.S. Coast Guard's "branding" and the need to speed up tax cuts for millionaires in response to Hurricane Irma.  Was there any way to steal the man's soul back from Satan?

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COMING UP:       Barbara Hellmeister commemorates the
death anniversary of her first (demonically deformed) child.

Condoleezza Rice and the Antifa?

The Fairmont Hotel doorman offered to hail a taxi for Condoleezza Rice, but she decided to walk to the Heurich Society meeting in the Dupont Circle Brewmaster's Castle.  With sunglasses and combat boots on, she could walk almost anywhere without getting recognized--even DC, where she was once a National Security Adviser, then Secretary of State.  The weather was fine, and she liked the sound of her boots clomping on the sidewalk.  It had only taken a few months of the Trump Administration for her to go back to being just another black woman out on the streets.  At her Stanford University job she was still respected and admired, but out on the streets was a different matter.  She had experimented with different types of clothing, makeup, shoes, and bags, but they made no difference.:  nobody recognized her except as a black woman.  There were now Stanford shops she no longer went into because the clerks followed her too closely.  There were cafes she no longer entered because they were haunts of the neo-Nazis who stared at her in an ugly way she had not known since leaving Alabama all those years ago.  And she had been forced to use Lyft drivers when hailing taxis became unreliable.

Rice had phoned Trump after his Charlottesville remarks to urge him to make a forceful condemnation of Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and all white nationalists, but he had angrily told her that he already did.  She urged him not to pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio, that it would signal to unprincipled police officers everywhere that they could willfully target and do violence to people of color with no consequences, but he had retorted that Arpaio had only been doing what needed to be done to keep bad hombres out of Arizona.  Rice had then pleaded with Trump to appoint more diplomats to negotiate with North Korea, telling him that his escalating threats of retaliation were putting American troops, South Koreans, and Japanese citizens in grave danger, but he had angrily replied to her about how many more votes he had won than Bush, and that the globalist wing of the Republican Party was dead.

But none of that had unnerved her as much as the staged photo of him awkwardly lifting up and kissing a black girl.  The look on his face was the look of a boy forced to eat broccoli, and he looked eager to get it over with and drop her down again.  Then there was the gleeful smile of Melania, pretending she had married him because he did things like this.  And also what appeared to be the face of an apprehensive aide or local official holding his breath, waiting to see what Trump would do next:  like that episode of "The Simpsons" when political candidate "Mr. Burns" was being urged to eat the three-eyed fish because there was nothing wrong with eating fish from the lake next to his nuclear power plant, and Mr. Burns slowly lifted the forkful of vile flesh towards his mouth while a campaign adviser could be seen encouraging him to bite it, and in the end Mr. Burns did...then violently spit it out.

The ghost of Condoleezza Rice's late pet, Pippin, had already discovered her presence back in DC, and was frantically meowing and rubbing up against her, but Rice was oblivious to the spectral feline, absorbed in thoughts about Cville2DC and the end of DACA.  The United States had never hemorrhaged Soft Power so rapidly:  there was literally nothing the U.S. could now lecture other countries about, let alone inspire them on.

Now The Gopper Ghost and his spectral canine pack had discovered Rice was in town, and were crowding all around her as she made her way down M Street.  The hissing Ghost Pippin leaped up to sit on Rice's head as the Samoyed (Ghost Anatoly) started bark-whispering at Rice about the work he was doing with Ghost Henry to counter Russia's cyber war.  Odd thoughts started popping into Rice's head, and the grimace on her face caused a passerby to move over to the far edge of sidewalk.  I know that look, thought Rice:  I need to get away from that angry/crazy black woman.  Ghost Anatoly continued whispering to Rice about the Ghost CIA operations, their sporadic incursions into the Russian Embassy and chancery buildings, and their success in persuading Rex Tillerson to order several Russian consulates closed in retaliation for the expulsion of scores of American diplomats from Moscow.  Ghost Anatoly told her that Ghost Henry wanted to tap her KGB expertise to plan their next operation.

No, thought Rice, shaking her head, trying to clear out the odd thoughts bombarding her brain.  Focus on existential threat.  She had already been recruited to donate money to a secret Federal Reserve Board SuperPAC, and to sit on the board of a nonprofit trying to rescue Qatar from the Saudi-led blockade and boycott.  Career diplomats bailing out of the malfunctioning State Department had called her to complain about the tone-deafness of Rex Tillerson, while the increasingly Walter E. Kurtzian Assistant Deputy Administrator for Carnage had called her to ask how to crack the whip and get more work out of the remaining worker bees.

Ghost Anatoly nipped at her ankles, and she stumbled a bit, looking around in confusion.  Russia! Ghost Anatoly shouted at her.

"I know about Russia!" exclaimed Rice, and now more people were moving to the far side of the sidewalk as she passed them by.  She realized she was talking out loud and reined herself in.  Focus, discipline, existential threat, relatives in Alabama emailing her to say their voter registrations were cancelled and their churches vandalized with swastikas.

Finally, she was at the Brewmaster's Castle and walked up the stairs to the third floor conference where the Heurich Society members were chatting about the pennant race and waiting for her to dial in by video conferencing.

"Secretary Rice!" exclaimed Captain Tyler Glockmann.  "What a wonderful surprise!  We've had some promising developments this week at the Defense Intelligence Agency."

"That's nice," Rice said, sitting down without acknowledging the dropped jaws of most of the members--who had not seen her in person for quite a long time.  "I want you to stay on mission, Captain Glockmann, but I need to redirect some of our other resources to a new project, which I am calling Project Tuxedo."

"Is this about the Kennedy Center Honors?" asked the international investment banker.  "Trump isn't even going, so I'd rather not make my wife boycott them:  she loves Gloria Estefan."

Rice cast him a withering look.  "No, tuxedo, as in black and white, as in white alone is not a good look in this great country of ours."

"Uh-huh," nodded the banker, not liking where this was going.

"Couldn't agree more!" said the international arms merchant, who was also not comfortable with where this was going.

Rice looked over at a former FBI agent.  "I need you to hire some Antifa militia members in various states."

"Antifa?!" exclaimed the former FBI agent.  "They've just been labeled domestic terrorists!"  (Ghost Pippin jumped up to scratch his neck, and he reached back in surprise.)

"Which is why we need to professionalize their ranks, sharpen their focus, concentrate their efforts, keep law enforcement off of them, and make sure they have the right weapons to do what needs to be done in this country."

Now the jaws were dropping again, since many of the Heurich Society members knew how ruthless she had been during the invasion of Iraq and subsequent months of extracting (faulty) intelligence from tortured prisoners.  "What are you saying?" asked a former member of the CIA.

"I'm saying my greatest enemy is within.  If you don't agree with that, then you can vote in a new Chair for the Heurich Society.  I believe Dick Cheney is still available, and he certainly doesn't share my concerns."

Several members rushed to reassure her that she still had their confidence, and nobody wanted Cheney back.  "But are you sure about this?" asked the treasurer.  "It might just escalate the violence on many sides."

"Many sides?!" yelled Rice, jumping to her feet.

"That's not what I meant!" replied the treasurer.  "In many places!"

"I will do what needs to be done, with or without you!" Rice answered.  She used to be proud of rising to the top of organizations populated by white men, but it suddenly felt like a millstone around her neck.

"Absolutely!" said the former FBI agent.  "Hey, I hate those skinheads!  When I was a kid, they attacked my Jewish dentist.  Who the Hell attacks dentists?"

"Sure," said Rice, sarcastically, "do this for the Jewish people."

"And your people," he replied, more quietly.

"So, uh, I'm still working on Russia and intelligence gathering against Trump's crime network, and stuff like that, right?" interrupted Captain Glockmann (who was impersonating his deceased twin brother because Rice had personally appealed to him to be a patriot).

"Yes," Rice answered (causing Ghost Anatoly to exhale in relief), "you have enough difficulties with maintaining your cover at DIA.  Others can handle Project Tuxedo.  And anybody who's uncomfortable approaching the Antifa are welcome to go undercover in the Klan for intelligence-gathering.  Who's volunteering?"

Outside the window, a catbird flew off to report this unexpected development to Ardua of the Potomac, imitating the sound of a police siren as she flew through the air.

**************************************************************** 
COMING UP:       The diary of White House
security guard Randy "Bubba" Blaylock.