“La Guillotine Will Claim Her Bloody Prize….” – By Jason Zachary Pott
I.
7/14/2017. 9:16 am.
He is bored. He is always bored. And now he has to do this which is even more boring. How much longer does he have to endure this? He hates the White House with every fiber of his being—not obtaining the level of gilded opulence he craves—but he would rather be there than here.
“Mister President?”
It is the pathetic sycophant he has for and aide, poking his narrow face—accentuated with Buddy Holly-like glasses—into his personal space. God how he hated the little bloodsucker! Ever since the campaign, the little fucker had been bugging him to give his fat frump for a wife a job somewhere in his administration. Maybe he will after makes the little shit watch his pudgy wife suck the President’s cock. Maybe he’ll fuck her ass in front of him. He hasn’t decided yet, but it’ll be one for the memories. He knows the tiny butt-licker will let him do it too. As a candidate, his private investigators revealed the little leech married the bitch for her family’s fortune. He’s a predator, like him, but small change. He knows how to manipulate people like him.
And he does, using unbridled chaos.
“What is it?” the President asks, annoyed.
“The President of France would like you to join him at the podium.”
The President of the United States looks out across the large gulf between him and the French President as he stands on the side of the massive stage, waiting for an introduction to the multitudes gathered for the event.
“Oh, would he?” smirks the Commander-n-chief.
He doesn’t answer to anyone—no matter the circumstances or the decorum—home or abroad. He didn’t even want to come to this fucking event in the first place! What did it have to do with him? What the fuck is Bastille Day anyway?
His advisors had briefed him on the French holiday, about its history, meaning, that Canada also celebrated it and a bunch of other bullshit he couldn’t give two shakes of a rats ass about. But they had told him he was to be a very special—important—guest; an honor he could not ignore with a round of golf. At the very thought of golf, he immediately begins to long for the fairway to the ninth—that pesky ninth hole ruining his game—gripping the shaft of his club as he walks to where his ball has landed. The loving crowd is following him as he strolls to the green, doting and heaping adoration upon his person….
“Mister President?”
What? Right. The French President is waiting at the podium.
Crossing the huge white floor of the stage, the President makes a half-hearted attempt at an appearance of gratitude, leaking false humility as he weakly waves to the crowd who are cheering, but not as much as he likes. The roar doesn’t seem as sincere as the ones he heard on the campaign trail. He’ll have to talk to the French President about this—this wasn’t part of the deal. Something must be done or there will have to be consequences.
Baiting his host into a handshake as he reaches the podium, the Leader of the Free World locks the French President into one of his infamous hand grips that borderlines on assault. After practically wrenching the French leader’s arm out of its socket, the POTUS grips both sides of the podium as he strikes the pose of a confident authoritarian. It is an optic he had perfected during the campaign. He focuses his reptilian slits for eyes on the people, setting his toad face into a self-congratulatory smirk of arrogance. He projects it forward into the cameras and sea of faces. To him, he looks glorious. How could they not see it? The wonder, the majesty, he is. He truly is a person to be honored not only in the United States, but across the globe. His is what the world has been waiting for. And he views the French citizens in the same manner as he does his own constituents—with contempt!
He hates them just as much as he hates his own.
“Oh, look at all you people!” he says like a disturbed man-child, playing a game of deception. “Look at you!” He points a finger at the crowd, accentuating his exclamation. “You! Yes, you people! Coming here on this day of days! How proud you must be! What a crowd! What a turn out!”
Smatterings of cheers erupt here and there.
“And you should be proud!” he blathers on. “I mean, look at who you have for a leader!” He gestures with a tiny hand to the French President—more cheers pop up. The French President beams at the compliment while the POTUS is thinking the European leader should be on his knees licking his balls in supplication before his fellow countrymen. Why? Because there has not been enough adulation piled upon him as he would like. His aides would disagree, but never to his face.
The French President takes a step back after acknowledging the President’s appraisal, gesturing to the fascist American bastard at the podium to continue. Fuck you, froggie! thinks the President.
“I look upon you all and see the future of Europe. A future where we will all live in peace—hand-in-hand—as we walk the path, together, into that future!”
Who the fuck wrote this?
“Y’know,” he starts, making his advisors off-stage squirm as they realize he is about to go off-script. “I haven’t seen a crowd this size since my acceptance speech for the nomination for the highest office—in the world!”
There are pockets of claps, going off like subdued fireworks. The boast didn’t land well with the frog leg eating crowd. That’s what they’re known for, right—frog legs? he thinks.
The President of the United States shifts uncomfortably behind the podium, slightly off-balance, but he proceeds.
“I want to thank your gracious President for choosing me as the guest of honor on this momentous day in your country’s history. It shows he has good judgement and knows who his strongest ally is—am I right or what?”
He holds his hands out in an all-encompassing embrace to no one in particular, turning this way and that as he oscillates before the crowd in a show of grandiose posturing. To the trained eye, he resembles a con man trying to sell your mother a car resting on cinderblocks in toothless Dwayne’s front yard. To his fellow countrymen and party members back home it’s a national embarrassment, watching their President turn another country’s—a geopolitical ally’s—national holiday into a celebration of himself. In reality, it is par for the course. Still, it’s astounding to witness. Outrageous! his critics will scream in the headlines, while his party’s most powerful will collude to discuss the potential political fallout. Chaos! It’s his strongest tool. It is a metaphorical sledgehammer to reap havoc with, even upon those who support him back home.
This is beautiful! he thinks to himself. Look at them! All here to see me!
He grips the podium again—tighter—retaking his fascist pose of a man who has no understanding of the office he holds.
“Yes, yes. And here we are. Here we are. Together. Together—you and me! And they won’t get us! No, sir! Not on my watch! You can take it from me, believe me! They will not win!”
He gives a thumbs-up and a weird, surgical incision-like slit for a smile reveals itself on his toad-face in the folds of sagging, fake tanned leather he has for skin. It’s visibly unnerving to those who understand politics as well as the meaning of Bastille Day—those who celebrate it. They watch as this man parades in front of them in the guise of the Leader of the Free World and feel ill as he spits on the office of his Presidency with each phrase he utters from his podium. Back home there is talk of impeachment. He is becoming a threat to the very fabric of his government and society. And while his party has the majority and moral authority to do something, they remain silent—perplexing the world—watching as the horror grows like a cancerous tumor. Today is no different, adding more gasoline to the pyre. They watch, knowing the American people have elected a madman.
The President of the United States looks out over the undulating crowd and sweeps his gaze to those standing on the side of the stage watching him address the French citizens. He sees his advisors who traveled with him leaning over to each other, whispering into each other’s eager ears. He knows they are talking about his performance and he hates them for it. There’s one of them who says yes to every fucking thing he says to the point he can actually feel the guy’s tongue up his ass. Mealy mouthed little shit! I’ll fuck him over someday—somehow—maybe sooner than later. I haven’t decided yet.
And there’s another one! He gave me millions for my campaign and they tell me I had to give him a position in my cabinet! Who the fuck do they think they are? Talking that way to me—fuck them!
And then there’s—
Even in front of the hundreds of thousands, as he looks at his rogue gallery of advisors on the sidelines of the stage, the President pauses—stiffening—as his eyes behold for a few fleeting seconds a face he doesn’t recognize.
And it unnerves him.
Snapping his eyes away from the unholy sight, the President returns to what little attention he has left back to the thousands blanketed before him, somewhere in France in an unknown town. A town whose name he can’t remember—never having bothered to take the index card from his chief advisor who had written it in big black sharpie letters a six-year-old could read. All he had to do was put it in his inside pocket. Instead, he just left it sitting there on the conference table, disembarking Air Force One while thinking about golf.
He is trying to focus and the French President, sensing something might be wrong, takes a step towards the podium, getting ready to intervene if he has to.
Who was that? thinks the President. I don’t remember him traveling with us….
His eyes physically stutter in their sockets—flicking back and forth—making his vision wobble as he processes that face. The crowds before him are coming back into focus. He suddenly feels the podium in his grip as reality floods through his blood, allowing his brain to rationalize where he is and what he is supposed to be doing—addressing the French people.
“Fuck!” he says and as it echoes over the heads of the people, the President realizes he said it out loud into the microphones before him.
Quickly he clears his throat, smiles and: “Bastille Day is an important day for France!”
He pauses and then adds awkwardly: “You should be proud!” He then sees a word out of the corner of his eye on the teleprompter he had screamed at his speechwriter he would never use and reads it out loud: “Jubilant!”
That’s a good word—a big word—isn’t it?
He hopes it is.
“And again, I thank you. The American people thank you and the French President—“
Cheers explode at the mention of their leader and the American President uses this to his advantage. It provides him cover to duck out of having anything more to say about some foreign holiday he obviously doesn’t give a fuck about. The French President knows he doesn’t. The French people know it too. And so do a majority of the American people. He has proven in a very, very short period of time exactly the person he is and how he views democracy as a governing ideology. He doesn’t.
The crowd amps up their cheering and clapping—the President not realizing they don’t care to hear anything else he has to say. The French President can sense their displeasure, stepping up to the podium to lightly touch his counterpart’s elbow in an almost patronizing pat. The POTUS flinches at the touch, looks into the French President’s subtly pleading eyes and, like a child caught in a lie surrenders the pulpit to the better politician.
The French President thanks his bewildered colleague as the President of the United States shuffles back in forth in place, searching for an exit—finding none. It’s pathetic and the cameras capture it all for history—especially for the coming months.
He finds the exit—stage left—and his aides greet him the last few steps, practically supporting him in a manner which looks like they are afraid he might collapse. The first gaggle of lackeys to meet the old man asks if he is feeling well and his boss mumbles something about a face.
“A face, Mr. President?” inquires the aide. “A face you saw in the crowd? Someone you recognize from your past, sir?”
The question jars the President, awakening the petulant child within his saggy flesh bag of an old man’s body.
“What the fuck makes you think I would be asking about a face if I recognized it?” he fumes at the poor man. “I’m asking: who the fuck is he?”
The berated aide looks perplexed and frantic as he stumbles over his words to rectify himself with his keeper. “I don’t know, sir! I don’t know who you are talking about! What face?”
The President’s eyes turn into white hot novae as he melts the man’s self-esteem—what’s left of it—into a puddle of molten slag around his expensive shoes. He shoves the lackey out of his path and plows forward amongst the aides, politicians and journalists swarming the backstage, searching for the face. Where is it? The secret service chases after him, scrambling and talking into their sleeves to people elsewhere with guns and laptops. Keep with him! is being screamed in their earpieces. They frantically obey.
He rotates, scanning the room with his paranoia for those strange facial features, making him forget where he is. Satellites of secret service toadies orbit him like confused fruit flies mistaking shit for a rotting peach. Pressing fingertips into ears, they listen to orders from their superiors while they reply to the invisible authoritarians through wrist microphones:
What the fuck is he doing? We don’t know! Well, get his attention! We’re trying but he seems to be lost! Lost? What the fuck does that mean?
“Do you see him?” the President grabs and shouts into a secret service agents’ face.
“See who, sir? Who are you talking about? Do you see a possible threat, Mr. President?”
The President suddenly doesn’t like what he is hearing. Who is this woman and why the fuck is she questioning him? He shoves the confused secret service agent who suddenly re-evaluates her career. She will be thinking twice before jumping into the path of a bullet. The President sneers at her.
“Threat? I’ll show you a fucking threat! Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about! I’ll fuck you and your whole fuckin’ family! I’m the goddam President of the United States—you work for me! Understand? Now did you see him? Fucking answer me you cocksucker or I’ll send you to Afghanistan!”
Resisting the urge to crush the President’s jaw with a solid right, the secret service agent takes a deep calming breath and attempts to understand the obviously mentally unbalanced leader. She’s been here before but it was never this bad—this severe. She’s seen what narcissism can do—up close and personal. It is a nightmare.
“Give me a description, sir! I can’t help you unless I have a description of the suspect!”
The President’s eyes swim even more in their sockets—he’s incredulous over what he is hearing from the agent. A description? How could you not know what it looked like? That diseased face! That sick, wet flesh…. Pallid… Weeping boils… Open running sores… Wicked and gaunt… Those eyes… Judging.
He whipped his head around again—scanning, again. The secret service just stood around him and watched—impotent.
After for what seemed like an eternity, French authorities finally address the alertness of their American counterparts, approaching them to find out what the trouble is. Both factions begin to converse, talking about the situation while the President stands amongst them searching for something that isn’t there.
But it was there. And the President knows it. It was real. His eyes did not lie to him.
GO TO… PAGE TWO
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