Images Will Be Disturbing

Beady, red eyes zeroed in on his head, razor-sharp claws reached and clenched towards his eyes, and as serrated teeth threatened to bite his throat, Joe woke up, crying out, his eyes boinking open like a cartoon. He sat up, gasping, shaking, squinting from white fluorescent light, its electric hum buzzing in his ears. He tasted blood, shivered from the cold air, smelled its stale nothingness.

What the—then Joe remembered: a van of creatures, his escape to an airfield, a long flight on a private jet, but nothing else after celebrating with vodka and caviar. Hated those damn fish eggs, he thought, but wait, the stewardess. Joe vaguely remembered a tall, beefy gal, odd looking, who wore lots of red.  Stood on legs from here to there, he thought and grinned, oh yeah. Why does my butthole hurt? by Did I have a lap dance? Or? “No way man!” And then remembering the gang’s mission, he laughed. “Libtards, gone for good!” He laughed again, hard, but stopped from a double ache, head and stomach. He struggled to focus, looked around. This was not the situation he had been promised. And why was he shivering? He was supposed to be on a beach with babes. Lots of big breasted babes.

Instead, he found himself in what looked like an operating room with white tiled walls—one with a large, mirrored window—and a floor that sloped to a drain in the center. He sat on a gurney; loose straps wound about him like leather snakes. A hose was coiled in a corner. Stainless steel cabinets and medical lamps encircled him. All was bright and white and shiny and sterile.

On a metal table sat bloody towels, a tray with a razor, a clipper, a steel bowl with clumps of dirty hair. His hair. He felt a peculiar draft on his face, his head. He stood up, felt hungover, nauseated. He staggered and stumbled, crawled to the sink, hoisted himself up. In a mirror, his bloodshot eyes stared at his scalp, face and neck, all baring scabbing cuts and scrapes. “Jesus Christ—” He thought of the ditty shave and a haircut, two bits. He snorted, then grinned, exposing grody teeth, because he still wore his favorite t-shirt, stained and ripped, over his kind of six pack: a PBR beer gut hanging over hospital pants. What happened to my Wranglers? he wondered. “And my underwear …” He was starving and thirsty, turned on the faucet, cupped his hands, gulped, coughed, choked.

A scratching noise made Joe jerk his head towards the windowless door. The scratching stopped. He limped to the door, cautiously opened it, peered into a hallway of steel and concrete. Incandescent tubes seared the ceiling like lane markers on a highway. 

“Hello!” A soft echo. “Anybody here?” No answer.

His feet were freezing. He looked behind him for shoes and socks, but didn’t see any. Bare pads slapping the cement, he started down the hallway, so cold he exhaled puffs of vapor.

Joe came upon another hallway, then another and another, some with doors, all locked. Some dead-ended; he’d pivot and retrace steps. All corridors had cameras high in their corners. He wondered who or what there was for the eyeballs to ogle; the place seemed abandoned. “Where the hell is everybody?” His voice and the quiet were unnerving.

At the end of one hall, a spotlight pinpointed a silvery dish. He slowly approached it, knelt down, sniffed, and so famished, he devoured the clump of hard, yellow cheese. Joe wretched, but kept it down.

He limped and turned left, right, round different corners so many times the dull, flat walls began to blur, all the rectangles becoming hallucinatory. The monotony broke when he came upon an open door. He entered a warehouse filled with large cages. Hundreds. Doors eerily open. All empty. Of what, Joe knew. “So, this is where—” But he quieted himself quickly. Somewhere among the cages, he heard a scurrying noise and the click of claws on concrete. Joe stumbled backwards, ran as best he could, heard faint sounds, hobbled towards them. He opened another door.

A blast of loud, incoherent babble roared in Joe’s ears. Above a console of switches, knobs, and sliders, a bank of television screens lined one wall. Some were labeled with weird alphabets or foreign words, some in English with logos of recognizable networks. Monitors displayed sitcoms, chick shows, cop shows, cooking and sports contests from all over the world. Some screens were black, reflecting the room’s glare, or flickered with strips of interference, or displayed the multi-colored rectangles of a no-signal screen. His favorite channel, Faux Noise, was the only screen that displayed static like a billion gnats.

A woman entered. Joe jumped. They stared at each other. She flipped a switch, and the din died away.

“Velcome home, Comrade Joe,” said the woman in a deep voice. She wore a short, white medical smock. She was tall with teased red hair, heavy charcoal eyeliner, thick flesh-colored makeup. Her lips were smeared with red lipstick; her fingers ended in sharp red nails, her feet in red stilettos. She liked red. Her hands and feet were big. Really big. 

Joe followed her long legs that went from here to way, way up there. He thought she looked familiar, grunted, and grinned. This might not be so bad after all, he thought. Pain changed his mind. He grabbed his stomach, doubled over, sat down hard in a chair. What was in that cheese I ate, he wondered. 

In pain Joe panicked. “Am I in a hospital? 

“Vhere ve take good care uf you.”

“Oh, God!”

“God ees not here,” said the woman. “I am. I had to shafe your face and hair. Vere you sinking of joining zat band, how you say, ze ZZ Top? Zees vay, Joe, no more lice babies.”

“You know my name. Who the hell are you?”

“I,” said the woman, stressing the pronoun and locking onto Joe’s eyes, “am Dr. Deek. Dr. Deeva Deek. I vill take care uf you. Ve never leaf our comrades behind enemy lines.”

“Enemy lines? I’m supposed to be on a hot beach with hot babes!” shouted Joe. “Not in a hospital with some, some—”

“Some vhat?”

“Let’s just say, you’re not the ride I was promised.”

“You didn’t complain on ze plane.”

“Is that why my—no, no, no!”

“Relax, vhat can I say,” said the doctor. “Change uf plans. Be wery glad you are not in Chernobyl. Zat’s vhere ve get our—my English not so good—varmints so furry vith ze sharp teeth. Da? Ees correct? Besides,” said the doctor, her eyes crinkling and her voluptuous red lips smiling, “you got your vish. Ees not zat glorious?”

“What veesh?” Joe asked mockingly.

“You forget already? I show you.”

The doctor flipped a switch and the volume came screaming back, Joe frowning and covering his ears. She fiddled with knobs and switches on the console to lower the volume and until all the screens except a libtard network Joe hated blacked out. Its video was striped and jumbled, the audio hissy and garbled. The doctor mumbled something that sounded like curses. “Reception wery bad up here. Zees snow, eet neffer stops,” she said. “So much guddamn snow.” She smacked the console. Joe sat down hard on an office chair. The screen and audio cleared up. “Sometimes you heff to boss ze technology.” 

A talking head spoke in mid-sentence. “—brutal attack on the White House leaves many questions unanswered.” The announcer stopped, his hand pressing his earpiece, then hung his head before resuming. “This just confirmed. President Ronald Dump has died. Vice President Spike Dunce, Senate Majority Leader Snitch McKuntul, Speaker of the House Saul Pyon and Secretary of Education Mitzi Depuss, are also dead. Attending the celebration, the president’s favorite pundits Nan Poulter, Dora Graham, and Chucker Charleston have not survived the slaughter. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the families. Many other cabinet secretaries and members of the president’s staff and fans have not been identified as bodies are too disfigured. The following video of yesterday’s massacre, retrieved from security cameras, provides a horrific testimony. No audio accompanies the video. Images will be disturbing. Parental guidance is advised.”

The screen cuts to the broad perspective of a camera high in a corner. In the meeting room voiceless conversations appear animated, attendees smile. Silent laughter follows the president’s moving mouth. People stop laughing, their attention drawn to some commotion off screen. A door flies open, whams the wall, and a horde of deformed creatures rushes into the room, leaps onto the attendees, chomping their faces and necks. Mouths open in mute screams, bodies scramble over furniture, over each other. The president climbs on someone, grabs and hides behind someone else, but is overwhelmed by the beasts kissing his mouth with razor teeth, gouging jagged claws into his neck, locking strong jaws onto his small hands. He tries to escape through another door, but there is no escape. For anyone. The creatures leap onto backs or heads, blood squirts on white walls, gaping eyes are soon blinded, detached limbs get tossed in the air. Secret Service arrives and shoots only to be attacked themselves, succumbing to the horrific talons and gnashing fangs of giant beasts with repulsive lesions, beady red eyes, spiked long tails.

The video feed ended, and the talking head returned. “As disturbing as these images have been, the American public needs to know the truth. Escaping the bizarre ambush is HUD Secretary Ken Larson. He had been napping in his office during the devastating bloodbath. He is under Secret Service protection, and according to constitutional law, may soon be sworn in as our nation’s next president. No word yet as to what happened at Faux Noise affiliates around the nation. Simultaneously to the attack on the White House, all Faux Noise stations went dark.” A commercial with cartoon bears and toilet paper followed.

Joe uttered retching sounds, bent over, vomited. “The president—dead? No.” He wiped spittle from his mouth. “No. That’s not what was supposed to happen.”

 “I tell you before,” said the doctor, “change uf plans.”

“They told me—supposed to kill fuckin’ libtards!” 

“Dey lied,” said the doctor. “Ve rescued you.”

“I ain’t been rescued.”

“Suit up yourself.”

Joe roared and leaped at the doctor, his chair rolling out from under him. She stepped aside; he fell to the floor, delirious, squealing, weeping. Lifting Joe like he was light as a babe, the doctor put him back into the chair. “Now be quiet,” she said, “I vant to hear.”

The newscaster returned. “—gruesome carnage began when an unknown man drove a van near the White House and opened its back door, releasing the horror of attacking animals. They wore a collar with a flashing light as though following some radio beacon. Our zoology experts describe the beasts as mutated rodents most likely from genetic manipulation and/or radiation. The whereabouts of the driver are unknown. He is considered armed and dangerous. When found, his name will be added to the deplorable list that includes John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, American traitors, American assassins.” A picture of Joe flashed on the screen. He wore a mullet, long scraggly beard, his favorite t-shirt. 

“No, no, no, I’m a patriot,” screamed Joe, “the best fuckin’ patriot ever!” Joe started to snivel. “No one’s better than me.”

Another picture appeared, of him grinning and drinking shots with a short, foreign autocrat, muscular and bare-chested.

“What the—I never, never—that, that, that’s a fake! You can’t—”

“But ve did,” said the doctor. “Looks real to me.”

“No, this can’t be happening.” Joe knew he had to get out, escape, set the record right. He rose, limped as fast as he could from the lying TV monitor, the lying doctor. “You stay away!”

“Vhere you going? You big hero,” said Dr. Deek, “and ve haff your money.”

Again, Joe ran down more cold hallways, pivoted more dead-ends, tried more locked doors teasing him of escape. Again, he heard high-pitched squeaks, scurrying clicks. At the end of a hall he saw a stainless steel entry and above it, a sign in white letters lit on a green background. An exit sign, he hoped, in strange letters. In a frenzy, he rushed towards it, leaned on the slick door, slid to the handle, and heard faint footfalls.

The doctor’s sing-songy voice echoed faintly. “Comrade Joe, come out, come out, vereffer you are.”

Joe turned the handle. It gave, but the door was blocked. He used his aching shoulder to push hard. The door opened a crack. Icy wind and the whirr of a blizzard whooshed in. He pushed harder with all the strength he had left—“C’mon, goddammit!”—until finally the door gave way, and he plunged into a massive mound of—snow. Biting flakes blasted his face, clogged his nose, froze his breath and toes. He climbed to the top of the white heap, and through the stinging needles, he could barely see a horizon flat as a line without tree, rock, coast, river, hill. Nothing but endless white, wind, and bitter cold.

Joe backed inside, collapsed, then crawled and scrambled deliriously through the labyrinth until he wound up back in the room where he began. He knelt on the floor, hanging his head, and except for his panting, silence enveloped him. The clip-clop of high-heels broke the quiet. His eyes saw red stilettos and followed a pair of legs that went from here to there.

The doctor looked down on Joe. “I brought your hat.” She placed on his head a red baseball cap with Make America Great Again emblazoned on its crown.

“What—” Joe rasped, “—what are you?”

“Vat you sink, eh?” 

“I—I don’t know.”

“Your fairy godmother,” said the doctor with glee. “Da, I granted your vish.”

“What have you done to my country!”

“Vat do you care?” the doctor replied. “You got your vish.”

“What vish,” Joe asked. “I never vished to be—”

“Da,” said the doctor, spitting her response. “But you deed.”

Joe shook his head, frowned in confusion.

“You’re vearing eet.” Dr. Deek was losing her patience, her red varnished claws clicking on the countertop like castenets. “Your t-shirt so feelthy. I keep tellink you. Your vish, your vish.”

Joe did not have to look down. It was his favorite, in big letters: I’d Rather Be Russian Than Democrat.

“Velcome home, Comrade Joe,” said the doctor.

Joe lurched. “You bitch!” He missed, fell again. 

“No, Comrade Joe,” she corrected. “Dr. Deek to you. Dr. Deeva Deek.”

Joe heard a scratching noise getting louder, closer. He rolled over and hoisted himself up, then whined tiny sobs. He frantically crab-crawled backwards into a corner as beady red eyes and sharp fangs and crescent claws rushed towards him, leaped upon him, ripped out his throat, his flung voice box trailing his last scream, “MAGAAAAAAaaaa!” as it faded into the frozen void.

This poem originally appears in OFM’s Suspect Press Takeover. Photo courtesy of Deposit Photos