A few months ago I was asked to write a story for a zombie anthology. I don’t write about zombies and I’ve never actually ‘gotten it’. I don’t know what the attraction is. But, still, I found a short-short story I did connect to, a political one. The zombie anthology collapsed upon itself a short while later, which left me with this story. Since it’s a political story about the current elections in the US, I figured I should just publish it here for free now, rather than wait a few months till it’s published in a magazine. By then it won’t be relevant anymore. So here it is, the true story of how Obama lost the 2012 presidency.
HOW OBAMA LOST THE PRESIDENCY
By Guy Hasson
The most hush-hush, hidden, underground secret in the United States today is not a military secret or any kind of security concern. Not enemy movements, not terrorist chatter, not spies lost behind enemy lines. No, no, no; don’t be silly. The number one secret in the U.S. today is how Julian Fischer, chief political advisor to the G.O.P., got Stanley Washington elected president. Two months before the Republican primaries ended, Julian Fischer decided to back the one man who had zero chance of winning. Fischer staked his own reputation on the outcome of these elections and moved mountains in his party to win. And, to the surprise of any poll-followers out there, Washington beat the most popular president since Clinton by a landslide.
Oh, did I forget to mention the one fact everyone knows but no longer find it politically-correct to say? Stanley Washington is a zombie. ‘Naturally born’ in the U.S. he certainly was. The Constitution just failed to take into account the ‘unnaturally reborn’.
So. Nobody knows why Julian Fischer gambled it all on zombie. Nobody knows why he turned out to be right. Nobody in politics, at least.
Did I say “nobody knows”? I meant “nobody knew”. I got the secret off him just after three a.m. today.
Little ol’ me, with my tall-ass legs, luscious lips, and abundant cleavage. Little ol’ me, a girl he’s never seen with a Louisiana accent, just hired by the NY Times, not yet known enough to be recognized by any politicos.
I sat there at the bar stretching my gorgeous gams at one of merrier of inauguration bashes, on the one day his ego would be so inflated it would blind his judgment. Us Southern girls, we know how to stoke a man’s ego to the point where he’s just dying to tell you how great he is. A little immature ejaculation. Of the verbal kind.
So there I was, all by my Louisiana lonesome. And he came. And he bought me a drink, and I made sure he drank five to my one. A little bat of the eyelashes here, a little stroke to the arm there, a little marveling at everything he said about who he was and all he had done. And the next thing he knew, his dream was coming true, because I suggested we go up to my room in the hotel.
A little less clothes, a little more touching, and I started homing in on my target. Didn’t care that I didn’t warn him I’m a journalist. Didn’t care I was crossing a line by dangling hush-your-mouth in front of him and touching him more than a journalist should. Tomorrow the headline would be mine. If the quote was good enough, and I now know that it was, no one would care how I got it. Only the story would be remembered. Boy, would it be remembered.
“Tell me,” I whispered in his ear. “You’re so smart. How’d you do it? How’d you know?”
“He’s a great candidate,” he said between kisses to my neck. “Articulate. He knows how to be in front of an audience. Never loses his cool.”
“Yeah,” I purred. “But he’s a zombie!”
He was getting hot and bothered. I scratched him softly behind the neck: a mind-blinding hormone torpedo.
“He’s not dangerous. And he’s the best man for the job. He’s got qualifications up the wazoo. Former Secretary of State back when he was alive, one of the greatest lawyers our country has ever seen, ambassador to—”
“Yeah, but he’s a zombie! How’d you know? How could you be that smart?”
And I saw it in his eyes. There it was. It was coming.
“You have to be really good,” he said, my hand digging into his chest.
“Yeah?”
“You have to know how to read the American people, know which button does what, and where the fault lines are.”
“Yeah?”
“With a small push of one button, you rock a fault line and move millions.”
“What did you do? What did you see?” He was going to tell me. I knew it. In my head, I was already indignantly throwing him out of the room a second after he gave it to me.
“I was smart enough to see the truth no one else was willing to admit.”
“Yeah?”
And then he whispered tomorrow’s headline ever so slowly.
“I realized the American public…”
“…Yeah?…”
“…Was more afraid…”
“…Yeah?…”
“…Of a black man than a zombie.”
Read all about it in today’s paper.
–THE END
Guy Hasson's Imagination 