A November Carol
The midterm elections were not going well for Dunny Tromp. By mid-afternoon it was clear his party’s losses would be overwhelming. That had to mean retribution against him was already brewing. This was going to scuttle the seven hundred million in bitcoin deals in the works with the dictators of Myanmar, Chad, and Kazakstan! It wasn’t fair!
That’s what triggered Tromp’s coronary.
Within minutes he was receiving the best medical treatment available at Walter Reed: AED, PCI, nitroglycerin… the cardiologists pulled all the stops. But years of poor diet and little exercise had taken their toll. He flatlined.
Throughout their frantic ministrations, Tromp’s body lay lifeless, glassy eyes open but unseeing, limbs jerking in the spasms of the dying.
Meanwhile, his spirit had not yet exited the scene. Tethered to his mortal remains, he hovered near the ceiling of the operating room, watching glumly as the doctors cursed and shouted at the nurses.
“Those stupid doctors have no idea what they’re doing,” he muttered.
“Good old Dunny,” a voice next to him said. “You still think you know more than the experts!”
“Jeffrey?” Dunny turned to gawk. “But you died ten years ago!”
“Heh. Math never was your strong point, Dunny old pal,” Jeffrey said. “I hung myself seven years ago.”
“Ah, Jeffrey, Jeffrey. Why the hell did you have to say all those nasty things about me? People just won’t shut up about about you. Two wars, I started. And they still won’t shut up. ‘Oh, Dunny was such good friends with Jeffrey.’ Like I’m the only one who was your friend. Hell, half of New York was your friend!”
“True, Dunny. But, to be fair, there was a time when you and I really were best friends.” Jeffrey smiled. That old sly smile. That smirk that meant a big party with lots of rich and important men. And underage girls with unshaven pussies! It was a smile that never failed to send Dunny’s heart racing, back in the day.
“Aw, Jeffrey. I could never stay mad at you,” Dunny said. “C’mere. Give me a hug.”
Dunny threw his arms around Jeffrey, but when his hands sunk into gore, he froze in horror.
“Yeesh! What happened to you?”
Jeffrey turned around to show his friend that the entire back half of his body had been stripped of all skin, and was now a festering wound covered in maggots and flies.
“It’s my punishment,” Jeffrey said. “Because of the underage girls. Not to mention the confidence games.”
“They pulled off your skin?” Dunny said. “That’s — that’s barbaric!”
“Pulling off the skin was nothing. What kills me is the pouring of salt into my open flesh every night.”
“What kind of devils have been doing this to you?”
“Ah, well,” Jeffrey shrugged his shoulders. “This is actually why I’m here.”
“You think I can help you?”
“Hah, hah!” Jeffrey said. “There’s nothing you can do for me now. They say this is what I deserve because of my life. I understand that now. But it’s nothing compared to what they have in store for you, Dunny! All I did was have sex with a few young prostitutes, and rob a few rich guys who deserved it. But you! You make me look like a saint.”
“You promised to never talk about the Gambino hit,” Dunny said. “That never happened.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “Oh, boy. When will you learn? The only people naive enough to buy that line are MAGA. Nobody in the Hereafter falls for it. We have access to every moment of your life. We can all see for ourselves.”
“Well then, you know that those damn whores had it coming. They wouldn’t shut up.”
“The Gambino hit was nothing,” Jeffrey interrupted. “It’s what you’ve done lately that has cooked your goose. Do you have any idea how many babies are going to die in Africa over the next year, because of what you and Elon did? It’s in the hundreds of thousands!”
“Africa has an overpopulation problem,” Dunny said.
“How about how many Iranians you’ve killed?”
“Not enough, if any of them are still fighting back.”
“Dunny, Dunny.” Jeffrey shook his head. “Listen, pal. I know you still hold a grudge against me for stealing your maids, and trying to outbid you on that house. But you have to listen to me. I’m telling you this for your own good. The tortures they’re cooking up for you make my punishments seem like a walk in Central Park. You need to change your evil ways.”
“Change my ways? How am I supposed to do that? Can’t you see? I’m dead! Just like you.”
“Maybe you are. Or maybe you have a little more time,” Jeffrey said. He was starting to grow fainter. “Darn! I have to get back to the island. It’s time for another salt bath.” With that, he vanished.
#
Tromp waddled over to where his erstwhile friend had been, crying “Jeffrey! “Jeffrey!” But his friend was gone. The room began to waver and grow blurry. Tromp looked around, horror-struck as the lights dimmed.
Engulfed in darkness, he tried to cry out but he could not. Hundreds of little spiders began to crawl all over his body, their fangs stabbing him with an orgy of venomous pinpricks. He tried to run, but his limbs had frozen in fear. All he could do was let out a low moan.
“Dunny, knock it off. Wake up.”
A hand pulled the covers off him. The spiders were gone. Now he was a young man — a teenager again! He found himself in a room bathed in dim light. His boyhood bedroom, in the house in Queens. His older brother’s face peered down into his eyes.
“Freddy? Is it really you?”
“Of course it’s me, you nitwit. Who else cares when you’re having a nightmare?”
“But — but I’m not a kid any more. I’m a grown man. And you’re dead, Freddy. You’ve been dead for sixty years.”
“Tch. It’s only been forty-five years, you dumb fuck.”
“Ha-ha. Oh, Freddy, it’s so good to hear your voice again, after all these years. Of course, nobody was better at snappy insults than me. Me and Dad, we always got the best of you, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, you were a real Don Rickles.” Freddy grabbed Dunny’s hand and yanked him to his feet. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty, let’s go. I’ve got a lot to show you, and I don’t have much time.”
“Show me what?” Tromp held back, fairly sure he didn’t want anything to do with this.
“Come on, you big chicken. What, are your ‘bone spurs’ acting up again? Let’s go!”
But Dunny clung to his bedpost. Even the ghostly figure of his athletic brother wasn’t able to move him.
“Oh, fer — ” Freddy sighed. “You don’t think you can get out of it that easily, do you? Come on, bro. This ain’t the Republican Congress. This is a Higher Power.” He gave his brother one last tug, but when Dunny still resisted, Freddy let go of his hand and snapped his fingers instead. The bed disappeared, and the room around them changed from gilded filigree and faux antiques to the dreary utilitarianism of a New York Housing Commission hearing room.
“Hey! It’s Dad!” Tromp cried out, half in terror and half in joy.
“Yes, he’s here. In all his glory. He’s even talking. Listen.”
“…baseless lies and slander. I’m countersuing you shiftless bureaucrats.”
“Very funny, Sir,” the chief of the Housing Commission answered, “but your own employees have testified that you told all black applicants that the rent was double what you charged the white applicants. That’s a clear case of racism.”
“You think you’ve got me on that, don’t you? You socialists, sucking on the public teat, never had to earn an honest dollar.”
“Actually, Sir, my position here is unpaid. My income comes from my law firm. Not that this hearing is about me — ”
“Hah! The only thing worse for the economy than a bureaucrat is a lawyer! At least a bureaucrat only steals your money. But a lawyer will stop people from making money in the first place! I bet none of you going to be satisfied until we’re all living in tenements and hovels once again.”
“Not exactly. We won’t be satisfied until we stop your blatant and illegal discrimination…”
But Tromp wasn’t listening. He turned to Freddy with a big grin. “Boy howdy, nobody could take on a commission like Dad. Right?”
Freddy rolled his eyes. “I told them this was all going to be lost on you! That’s not the lesson you’re supposed to be learning, Dunny. You don’t get it. But you’re in trouble. You are one heartbeat away from the end of the rope. And when the fat lady sings, you are not going to the Happy Place, lemme tell you. Why didn’t you listen to your friend Jeffrey?”
“Jeffrey’s a liar. That’s all he does — did. Everyone knows the only way he made his millions was by stealing from billionaires.”
“No wonder you two hit it off so well.”
“Very funny, Freddy. But what do you know? You were long dead before I ever met Jeffrey.”
Freddy put his hands on Dunny’s shoulders and sighed. “Listen, brother. This isn’t about me, and it’s not about Jeffrey. It’s too late for both of us. You’re the only one who can still be helped. Do you know what this is, that you’re in?”
“Of course I do. I’m not an idiot. In fact many say I’m the smartest man that ever lived.”
“Nobody says that, Dunny.”
“The MAGA do.”
Another sigh. “Nobody with any brains says that, Dunny. So, tell me, Einstein, what are you in right now?”
“I’m in a public housing commission hearing. The one from 1965, when Dad bilked them out of one point three million for the amusement park, which he later sold back to them for even more profit.”
“No, you little shit. I mean the bigger picture. Come on, think! The year is 2026, and you’re eighty years old. You just had a heart-attack. They’re trying to resuscitate you. So what are you in?”
“A hospital?”
Freddy grabbed him by his big flappy jowls. “You’re in a Near Death Experience, you moron. Haven’t you ever heard of an NDE?”
“Isn’t that, like, where you go to a ballet and so boring you wish you could die?”
“Christ!” Freddy slapped his own face. “You’re such a boob! How the hell did you ever think they should name the Kennedy Center after you? No, an NDE is when your body is technically dead, but your spirit hasn’t left for the Next World, yet.”
“Oh.”
“So here’s the deal. If you do shlepp off to the next world now, without any changes to your life, then you’re going to be eaten down to the bones by flesh-eating bacteria. And when they’re done it will start all over again. Every day until God only knows when. Do you understand? You’ve been chosen for the worst possible punishment anyone has ever known.”
“I’ve heard it all before, Freddy boy. I’m not worried. After all, Putin is on my side.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If he doesn’t like what these guys are doing, he’ll invade them. Or better yet, he’ll put plutonium in their tea.”
Freddy shook his head. “Dunny, Dunny, Dunny. You don’t seem to realize what you’re up against here.” He snapped his fingers and the hearing room dissolved. Now he and Dunny stood in a dimly lit hallway.
“Let’s try one more scene from the past. Maybe this one will help you understand.”
The lobby of a campus building took form around them.
“Hey! This is my old college. Wharton!”
“Yes. Now shut up and listen, will you?”
Just then a professor appeared in the hallway, an elegant older man in a three-piece suit, bald with a neat goatee. He was being pursued by a young Tromp, still in his golf whites and lugging a bag of clubs.
“Professor Schmidt! You can’t flunk me.”
“Hey, that’s me!” Dunny said, tugging on Freddy’s sleeve.
“Shut up, you fool. Listen.”
Professor Schmidt turned to young Tromp. “Listen, young man. You think you can just cheat on an exam and get away with it? You’re lucky we don’t expel you like Fordham did. But I guess that’s the benefit of being the son of Daddy Warbucks. The dean won’t let me expel you. So yeah, you’re flunking my class.” He shook his head. “if you’d spend half as much time studying as you do chasing skirts, you wouldn’t be in this fix.”
“Studying is for schmucks,” young Tromp sneered, shaking the bag of clubs at him. “I’m already the smartest man in the world.”
Old Dunny turned to his brother and jabbed him in the ribs. “Ooh, I got him good! Didn’t I get him good, Freddy?”
Meanwhile, the bag Young Tromp was shaking at the professor came unzipped and a dozen golf balls fell out, bouncing across the hallway. A pile of golf tees spilled out as well. Young Tromp stopped to pick up the mess, and the professor strode on, muttering under his breath about the inverse relationship between a subject’s stupidity and his belief in his own intelligence.
Somehow, Dunny’s spirit missed all that. He stuck out his tongue at the disappearing form of Professor Schmidt. “Loser! How many buildings is your name on?”
“This really isn’t working, is it?” Freddy rolled his eyes. “I told them it was a fool’s errand. Hell, I give up.”
The room faded to black. Something felt strange in Tromp’s abdomen, and when he reached down to feel his stomach, he was horrified to discover that he was holding his own intestines. His skin and muscle had all been eaten away by the bacteria.
“Hell-ellp me!” he rasped.
Someone laid a hand on his shoulder, and the room grew bright again. He turned to look at a stout African woman in a floor-length, colorfully patterned dress and matching hat.
“Don’t touch me,” Tromp said, backing away from the woman.
“Aw! You are still a racist bugger, are you?” the woman asked with the lilt of some African nation that Tromp couldn’t name if his life depended on it. Which it did. “You do not know where we are, do you, old man?”
“No,” Tromp admitted.
“But to you, they are all just shithole countries, are they?”
“I never said that, you know,” he answered solemnly.
The woman clapped her hands, and all around them, ten different scenes of Tromp talking about shithole countries appeared in the air around them.
“You are really a terrible person,” he said, shaking his head. “Aren’t you ashamed — ”
“I do not have time for this nonsense, old man. You do not know where we are. And you probably do not have any idea why we are here, either.”
“Oh, hell, this is probably about USAID, isn’t it?”
“Bingo!” She seemed genuinely impressed. “Not as dumb as you act, are you? But then, nobody could be.”
He shrugged and smiled a big dopey smile.
“Yes, you are here because of the six hundred thousand men, women and children who died when you cut the funding to USAID. We had to draw straws to see who’d get to take you. And let me tell you, man, there were plenty who wanted this job. And not just USAID victims. Dead men in Venezuela. Dead children in Iran. Even your fifty-thousand victims in the United States of America!”
She lifted up the hem of her dress to show him that surrounding her were starving masses, groaning piteously. There were parents on prayer rugs, beating their breasts and wailing silently. There were enormous crowds of mourners all around the US.
“You shut up, piggy. I don’t need some Aunt Jemimah to — ”
Her left hook caught him in the flab of his jowls and broke five of his teeth. He crashed to the ground, cradling his broken, bloody jaw in disbelief.
“I want weweeve you wid wat!” he yelled, though the effort was clearly causing him a lot of pain.
“I cannot believe it either.” The woman inspected her fist coolly and said, “When I was dying of AIDS, I dreamed about this constantly. I finally got the chance!” She raised her eyes heavenward. “Thank you, Lord!”
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Tromp crawled to her to clutch at the hem of her skirt, only to drop it in horror when he saw the furious Iranian parents underneath surge out with murder in their eyes. He smoothed and patted the hem of the dress back in place, even as hands grasped for him from underneath.
“Hewp! Wake wem wop!” he sobbed.
“Make them stop? You shitting me? Every last one of them died begging for someone to make you stop.” The woman glared down at him in disdain. “Wow. In the end, you are just a pathetic, cowardly little man,” she sniffed. “I should never have let you take up so much room in my head.”
“Wots of weeple wove we,” he sobbed.
“A lot of people still love you,” she agreed. “Even after all the evil you’ve done in the past two years. Terrible people. Ignorant people. People who have lost their humanity and cannot look beyond their own disease.”
“I wid wots of good awso,” he continued, pleading more to himself than to her.
“Good? No, you did not do much good,” she said. “But I will say this for you. The entire world is celebrating their asses off right now. Do you know how many of them are praying you do not survive?”
With another clap of her hands, visions of public outpourings of joy and celebration filled the air around them: from New York to London to Dubai to Rio to Cairo to Beijing to San Francisco. “You have made more people happy with your heart attack than anything the world has ever seen before,” she conceded.
“Wey weally wove me,” he stopped sobbing and stared into the scenes of global jubilation.
“What? No, you fool. They aren’t celebrating you. They’re celebrating your death. They’re glad to be rid of you!”
But Tromp didn’t hear her. Tears of joy now trickled down his face as he watched, mesmerized by the spectacle of world-wide adoration of him, of the Chosen One, the Favorite Son.
“Oh! For the love of Allah!” she cried out. “You are denser than a rhinocerous. I give up.” With a third clap of her hands, she disappeared.
After a moment, Tromp got to his feet and put his hands to his mouth.
“All better,” he said, jerking his jaw left and right again. He ran his finger along his toothline. “All the teeth are back, too.”
He watched as the room grew dimmer. He put out his arms like a crucified Christ. “This is what you do to your favorites, isn’t it, God? Well, that’s okay. I’m tough. I can take it. Hell, I bet I can take it better than anyone else ever. I’ll show you. I’m even better than Jesus.”
At that, the familiar stinging of the spiders started up again.
“No problem. Here we go again.”
But then the room grew brighter. He now found himself in a mansion. His buddy Elon sat on a couch watching the election returns of some future year. With, Tromp surmised, three of Elon’s baby mamas. Meanwhile their various feral offspring were brawling around the TV. Several robotic nannies were trying unsuccessfully to stop the children from taking off their clothes or pooping on the floor.
“Oh, hell, not Nerd-Boy,” Tromp groaned. But no one noticed him.
“Hello? Nerd-Boy!” he tried, louder. “Can’t you see me here in your home?” Neither Elon nor the three women reacted to Tromp.
“Hey, Big X,” Elon shouted at one of the kids. “Get out of the way! We’re trying to watch.”
A large child, prematurely balding or perhaps with an abnormally large forehead, flipped Elon the bird. Cackling maniacally, he mooned them.
“Elon, Elon,” Tromp muttered. “You’re not in control here. Even I can see that.”
But Elon and the three women on the couch weren’t watching the child. They were intent on the broadcaster’s message:
“From PBS News in Washington, this is A.I. Shmi Singh. Tonight, we’re dissecting the election results. And here to break down the from our bot farm in Iowa is A.I. Inskeep. Inskeep, are you there?”
Tromp was incensed. “What the hell, Nerd-Boy? Why are you watching PBS? You did everything you could to make me shut them down!” He reached for the remote, and punched the Fox News channel.
“We return now to Redneck Roundup. In this episode, Pastor Dave has to Indian mud-wrestle with three naked Amazons intent on giving him a blow job. If he can survive with his chastity intact for two minutes, then he progresses to the next level: pedophilia!”
Elon snatched the remote off the table. “Who did that? I disabled that channel.”
“It wasn’t me, sweetikins,” the woman to his right said; a buxom blonde with a South African accent.
“It shore as hell wasn’t me, baby,” the one on his left said, a redhead with a southern belle twang.
“Probably Tiny X, up to her old tricks.” This from the brunette on his lap, with her Valley Girl lilt. She turned to the scrum of children squabbling behind them. “Hey, you little brats. Leave the remote alone.”
“Those kids are a menace,” Tromp said with a nod, forgetting that he was the one who’d changed the channel.
Elon switched back to PBS. “This just in,” the PBS announcer A.I. Shmi Singh was saying. “The chairman of the Republican Party has just announced that it is being dissolved. The party that began with Lincoln has now officially ended with Tromp.”
“Ah, yes,” Inskeep added, smiling robotically into the camera. “No surprise there; this is the third election in a row in which Republicans have not won a single seat in any election. Our Omaha bureau called this result two weeks ago, once the polling was clear.”
“Indeed, Inskeep. That leaves the Woke Party and the Anti-Woke Party as the only two major political forces left in American politics. For more on how they fared tonight, we turn to A.I. Roberts here with us in Washington.”
This was interruped when the children swarmed in front of the TV.
“Hey, Grok 10,” Elon called out. “Turn it off.” The screen went black.
“Baby! Don’t you want to see how we did?” the redhead asked.
“I just downloaded the results,” he answered, tapping something metal on his forehead. “The implant, remember? We have all the midwestern states, and the Wokes have all four coasts. That gives them a supermajority, and so they take everything. President Scar is going to execute all nine Supreme Court Justices next week and install nine from the Woke Party. She’s already declared war on Morocco and Bhutan, and tomorrow she’s beginning the loyalty oaths for Congress. We lost big.”
“How could people be so foolish, darling?” the blonde murmured, rubbing his forehead.
“It’s all the fault of those Maggots,” Elon said. “Clinging to Tromp when everyone could see he wouldn’t last the term.”
All three women burst into derisive laughter.
“So stupid!” the brunette said.
“Talk about clinging to a dead dream!” the redhead added. She reached for a pack of syringes on the table in front of them, took one and passed the rest around. They each squirted something up their nostrils, and fell silent.
“What happened to loyalty, Nerd-Boy?” Tromp demanded. No one heard. Instead, they rose woozily to their feet and filed out of the TV room. The children and the nanny bots remained behind, a constant buzz of chaos.
Tromp punched the power button on the remote, and the TV came back to life.
“From Amazon News in Seattle, I’m Bezo-bot Ten Point Oh. Tonight, we’re looking at the renaming of the Kennedy Center for the performing arts. For more on this, we are joined by Bezo-bot Nine Point Eight in DC. Nine Point Eight, go ahead please.”
“Thanks, Ten Point Oh. The Tromp-Kennedy Center is no more. As of noon today, the complex has officially been renamed the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This marks the last of the federal installations which Tromp had renamed after himself. This means his name has now been stripped off of all of those buildings.”
“Nine Point Eight, what about the Tromp Federal Facility in Queens?”
“Aha, Ten Point Oh. Good question. But the Tromp Federal Correctional Facility for Pedophiles was not named during his presidency. The Woke Party gave it that name under President Ocasional-Cortez.”
Tromp scowled. “What a cunt,” he muttered.
One of the feral children, the smallest in the room, stopped smearing her feces on the wall and turned to him.
“Hi, Uncle Dunny. It’s me, Tiny X. Remember me? You came to my baptism.”
The kid was naked and, like her half-brother, had an abnormally large forehead. It made her look like a middle-aged midget. Tromp backed away from her nervously. “Hey, what is that on your hands, shit? Get away from me.”
“Don’t worry, Uncle Dunny. You’re just a spirit. You can’t touch anything here.”
“What do you know, you little liar? I just changed the channel on the remote.”
“No you didn’t, Uncle Dunny. I did that. Telepathically. When I saw you trying to do it.”
To prove her wrong, Tromp reached for the remote and tried to turn off the TV. But his finger passed through the device as though it were not there.
“In other news,” an announcer was saying, “The Gulf of the United States has officially been changed back to The Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones continues its precipitous decline, as trillions in foreign investments flee the United States. President Ocasional-Cortez blames the previous administration — ”
Tiny X snapped her poopy fingers and the TV turned off.
“Thanks, kid. That was getting depressing to listen to.”
“I know. You’re sad, aren’t you, Uncle Dunny? I can see your aura is dark.”
“Well, c’mon, kid, what’d you expect? I worked my ass off for eight years to build all those monuments, and the only one left is a federal pen.”
Tiny X smiled and clapped her hands. “That’s the lesson you’re supposed to be learning here! Good for you, Uncle Dunny!”
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said suddenly, turning toward Tiny X. “What about my family? At least they’re carrying on my legacy, aren’t they?
“They have lots of money now, if that’s what you mean. At least, that’s what Dad always says.”
Tromp nodded. “Yeah, I should go see them. Why’d I get stuck here with you guys?”
“I think you were sent here because I can communicate with you. You see, I’ve had these powers ever since — ”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Look, it’s been nice chatting with you, kid. I’ll let myself out.”
“That won’t work, Uncle Dunny. You don’t know where to go. And I don’t think you know how a spirit gets around. That’s why I’m supposed to take you.”
“Yeah? Well, listen, kid. You can’t go anywhere. You’re naked and you’re covered in shit.”
“Not in the Spirit World, I’m not!” She closed her eyes, and a moment later she was replaced by a cartoon character, Dora the Explorer, dressed in boots, jeans, and a field jacket. She offered to take his hand, but he recoiled.
“No thanks, kid. Your hands are still brown.”
“My hands are brown because my whole body is brown, Uncle Dunny. And I can’t take you to your family unless we’re holding hands.”
“Okayyy. But do you promise you don’t have poop on your hands now?”
Tiny X nodded. She took his hand, and in the next moment they were at the front door of his Manhattan penthouse suite.
“Home! Thank goodness.” Tromp turned to Tiny X. “Hey! Where’s my wife?”
“She’s here,” Tiny X said and flashed a brilliant animated smile. “Let’s go in. It’s unlocked.”
Tromp pushed open the door to his penthouse, and there he saw most of his family scraping gold off of the window frames and chandeliers.
“Hurry up!” his eldest son called. “The creditors will be here in an hour. We have one hour to scrape as much gold off of this crap as we can and get the hell out.”
“Oh, Daddy, how could you do this to us?” Tromp’s middle-aged daughter sobbed. She didn’t actually look middle-aged, thanks to the many plastic surgeries she’d had. Instead, she looked like a skeleton dipped in liquid plastic.
“Gee, sis. It’s not like he did it on purpose,” his middle son said — the one who worshipped Tromp the most, much to his chagrin because the kid was, somehow, not vvery smart. Must have been his mother’s fault.
“You guys!” hissed his son-in-law, appearing at a bedroom door with a large sack stuffed full of tchotchkes. “Leave the gold-leaf! It’s too light. Grab the art! Pictures and statues. Check this out! A signed statue by Renoir. It’s worth millions!”
Tromp’s sons and daughters dropped their steak knives and oyster prongs, abandoned the scraping of the gold-plated window frames, and ran around the various rooms grabbing statuary.
“What about this? It looks like Daddy but it’s a little cherub,” his younger daughter said.
“Yes! Grab it. Grab anything that looks gold. Remember, the Saudis always have him solid gold.”
“Forty minute,” Tromp’s wife called from the kitchen.
“Hey, speaking of which, where are the Rolexes?” the youngest son called from the bedroom.
Tromp paused in front of each daughter and son (well, except the dimwitted one) and tried to talk to them, but none of them could hear him. They were in a frenzy, anyway. This dragged on and on.
Finally, Tiny X came and took him by the hand one more time. “I’m sorry your family will not talk to you, Uncle Dunny,” she said. Her Dora face made a little frown.
“Well, That’s okay, Tiny. Clearly they have to protect our empire from our enemies. It’s a good thing we’ve still got billions in TrompCoin, isn’t it?”
Tiny X turned to point at the giant TV screen in the living room. “TrompCoin plunges in value,” the banner headline said. “For the first time in history, it is now possible for a bank account to assume a negative value.”
Tromp looked at that headline with her, and shrugged. “I’m not worried,” he said. “There are fifty million people in this country who’d slit their grandmother’s throat if they thought it would help me.”
Tiny X nodded solemnly. “But not any longer, because you’re — ”
“Well, this has been fun,” Tromp interrupted. “But it’s time you go back to daddy. And I’ve got a country to run. So, uh, thanks for taking me here.”
She shrugged. The gilded penthouse melted away, and they were engulfed in darkness.
“Where are you supposed to drop me off, Tiny?” Tromp asked. No one answered. He groped for her hand, but he was alone.
“Tiny? Tiny X? Where are you?”
He thrashed about. The room got light again, and he found himself in an emergency room, surrounded by doctors, nurses, and resuscitation machinery.
“He’s back! We brought him back!”
It’s a testament to their professionalism that, although all seven nurses and assistants, as well as three of the five attending physicians, had been hoping with all their hearts that Tromp wouldn’t recover, they’d nonetheless performed their duties flawlessly. A few doctors even cheered.
“Whoa! Look at his hands,” one of the nurses exclaimed. Everyone stared at his hands, which were now smeared in shit.
“God damn it,” Tromp gasped. “Tiny lied to me.”
The medical staff assumed that comment was just part of his cognitive decline, and didn’t pay it any mind. He was moved to the Presidential recovery unit.
The next day, they wheeled him out on Wheelchair One to his limo. As the driver pulled away from the curb, Tromp rolled down the window and called out to a young hoodlum trying to hotwire a car, “Hey, boy. Boy! Can you tell me what day it is?”
“Yo, muthafucka,” the hoodlum said. “It’s Election Day.”
“Excellent. Excellent,” Tromp exclaimed. “I’ve been given a second chance, somehow.” He rolled up the window and picked up the limo phone. “Get me JD,” he said. “Right away! No time to waste!”
A minute later, JD picked up. “Yes, sir?”
“JD! I’m back from the dead. Nobody has ever come back from the dead as miraculously as me. It’s another sign that God has chosen me.”
“Uh… yes, sir.” JD sounded disappointed, but Tromp paid no mind.
“JD, the election is not going our way. Our little house of cards is going to collapse. I’ve seen it all. But I know what to do now, thanks to the spirits. Are you ready?”
“Yes, of course, sir.”
“Great. JD. First, I’m going to transfer one trillion dollars from the US Treasury to my banks accounts in the Cayman Islands. Second, I’m going to resign and you’re going to become the President of the United States of America. And third, you are going to grant me a full, complete, and absolute pardon. Any questions?”
“No, I’m good.”
