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sanguinifexPresident Trombone squinted at the antiquated Samsung phone in his stubby hands, tapping the on-screen keyboard almost hard enough to break the screen. “Poor people—very bad! Only productive Americans deserve to live, if they obey police and government and reject (((fake news)))! Make America Grate Again!” Now how to get this masterpiece of condensed hatred into 140 characters? Trombone peered at the screen. He really needed reading glasses, but those would look unpresidential. Besides, he was the most healthy septuagenarian president ever, with great stamina and eyesight. No one could possibly suggest otherwise.
A great bang resounded, and the Elliptical Office filled with a cloud of smoke. Despite his unquestionable health, the president almost suffered a cardiac event. Unfortunately for nearly 8 billion people, he avoided this fate. Trombone called for his Secret Service, but no one answered.
The smoke cleared, and a figure was revealed within it, dressed in the bright colors of his nation’s flag. Stripes, stars, and an odd hat…and holding an enormous bunch of firecrackers. Explosives! How did those get into the Cream Domicile? Trombone attempted to shrink away from the bundle of death, but instead tipped over his desk chair. His current tweet was erased, and a new one produced via autocorrect as he and his phone tumbled to the floor, ending in an unintelligible seven-letter word starting with “C.”
The intruder strode over to the supine, flailing ex-businessman, as if nothing had happened. He prodded the man’s ill-fitting suit with the toe of his shoe, huffing with distaste.
“Really, you should have thought of the dignity of this office before you ran for it,” the stranger said. “You’re a billionaire, behind the on-paper losses, and you can’t even get your suits tailored. No wonder you had to turn to Russia to get elected, despite running on the oil well of hatred that permeates this country like a cancer. But that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here because you have used up America’s entire allowance of hateful public statements from a sitting president—for the next hundred years.”
“Huh?” said President Trombone from the floor, still struggling to sit up, like an overturned pillbug.
“Nations aren’t just geopolitical areas. They are concepts. Believe in a concept enough, and it produces a physical manifestation—such as myself. I am Uncle Sam. Any country has enough people in it to produce that kind of manifestation. America is well enough known that I have a fully functioning physical body, and powers beyond those of mortals. But the actions of a country’s leader affect the actions of its manifestation. It is a geas. Therefore there is a quota on the amount of evil you may publicly express, so that I do not end up wreaking havoc on the psychic plane. But you have exceeded that quota for the entire century, in less than six months! Fearing for the world, I petitioned the Fae UN to lighten the geas upon me. They relented, since Russia had illegally interfered to elect you in the first place—but as a price, I must ensure that you spew hatred no more. All the havoc that you have caused will be visited upon you, instead of your nation and the world. They will not show mercy a second time.”
President Trombone whimpered on the floor.
“What are you going to do to me?” he asked. “You’re not going to kill me, are you? I have money. I’ll give you one of my businesses. I’ll give you Trombone Airlines—no, wait, that went bankrupt; how about Trombone Steaks?”
“I am a being of the eldritch plane. I want none of your money. I want to restore myself and this country, and truly make America great, for the first time, beyond even what its founders hoped it might be—something you could never do in a thousand terms, with your mind so full of greed and hate.”
“B-b-but tax cuts! A great America is great for business!”
“Business? The exploitation of the working class for the gains of a select few? An America where a dozen people have more wealth than half the country? An America where two people working full-time at minimum wage will be homeless because not only is that wage depressed, but landlord cabals and deregulated startups have priced housing out of any reasonable expense, especially when half the potential tenants are thousands in debt just for daring to try to get an education? An America where children starve and are raised illiterate because money is put above lives? An America where patent abuse and corrupt corporations turn sick people into cash cows? An America where slavery is effectively legal because the definition of ‘crime’ is so arbitrary?”
“It’s the illegals’ fault! Kick them all out, and those problems will go away.”
“No, because it is not the fault of people running away from situations so intolerable that the hellscape which is America now is preferable to staying where they were born. The problems of America are the fault of men like you, and getting worse because of you, yourself, and the people you have put into power.”
“It’s not fair!”
“Oh, it is fair. Look”—Uncle Sam brandished his bunch of firecrackers, shoving them at the trembling president’s face. “Each of these is an evil you have perpetrated, against America, Americans, and the world. Against me. There are far more of them than you can see in this bundle. I am returning them whence they came. After I leave, I will do the same to your co-conspirators.”
Uncle Sam picked up the president with unnatural strength, and flipped him face-down over his desk, scattering papers everywhere.
“You have become a resounding instrument of evil, President Trombone. I now return the echoes of your malice whence they came. But not by the route from which they exited. I will return them to the true bell of this instrument.”
And with that, he grabbed the waistband of the poorly-tailored polyester pants of the crying man before him, and tore them off with a shriek of ripping, overpriced fabric.
“Excrement would be considered sacred compared to what you say and do. To the orifice of excrement it will return.”
Uncle Sam selected a firecracker and shoved it into President Trombone’s dry asshole.”
The pain was unbearable, like that experienced by water protestors shot with rubber-coated bullets, or like the anguish of a mother finding out that her town’s tap water has irreversibly poisoned her children with lead. President Trombone shrieked loud enough to wake Ayn Rand’s ghost, and pissed all over the carpet underneath the desk. The only real surprise here was that he had not done so earlier.
The first firecracker had gone in, and Uncle Sam selected another stick of metaphysical dynamite. This time, the passage was aided by blood. Trombone struggled to free himself before another foreign object could enter his intestines, like an illegal immigrant entering the US, he thought, but a supernaturally strong hand held him down on the desk. He panted, dazed from his uncharacteristic exertions, drooling onto some important document.
A third firecracker joined the others, and this time Uncle Sam accidentally nudged his prostate. President Trombone felt a small surge of pleasure, though the presidential hotdog remained limp—he had left his Viagra in his other mistailored blazer, and anyway the intern he liked to sexually harass had her day off, today. Trombone was filled with horror. Liking having things up your ass was a gay thing! Vice-President Nickel would stop being friends with him! He might have to issue a statement supporting Pride Month next year! People would read secret meanings into his disgust at the idea of women bleeding! He struggled, as if that would remove the sensation, but it only had the opposite effect.
Uncle Sam inserted another firecracker, and another, and another. Really, how did they all fit? But the president was too overwhelmed with the strange sensations to care. His ass hurt, and his groin felt strangely aroused (yet his prick was still limp), and his mind was filled with the shame of being so unmanned and demeaned. Surely the Secret Service could not have ignored what was going on. This was some sort of treachery they had planned in collaboration with his old enemies, that bitch Jovial and the fake news media and the socialists. Firecracker after firecracker, all on one fuse string, and President Trombone finally submitted to his fate.
At last, Uncle Sam inserted the last firecracker—there were so many that the size of the president’s stomach now lifted his feet off the floor—and stepped back, dusting off his hands.
“One could hardly believe so much hate could be contained in one person,” he said. “Perhaps that is why you constantly spill it everywhere—you are such a potent source of it that it must spew forth from you or kill you with the buildup. But you still have not experienced the full effect of the harm you have unleashed upon the world. It does not just stay as words. It…explodes…into whole movements of violence and death. You wanted this responsibility, remember. Now take it.”
Uncle Sam snapped his fingers. All the metaphysical dynamite inside President Trombone detonated.
Ordinary dynamite would have turned the man into so much red smear on the contents of the Elliptical Office. Metaphysical dynamite causes the equivalent amount of suffering, but leaves the flesh mostly intact. Mostly. President Trombone screamed and involuntarily ejaculated on the piss-soaked floor, limp penis swinging wildly, and then expelled dozens of feet of ectoplasmic burnt fuses, a lot of blood, and the odiferous remains of several overcooked Trombone-brand steaks.
Uncle Sam smiled. “Consider this justice done. Please try to contain your hate in the future.” He checked his watch. “Ah, good. It looks like I can still catch Vice-President Nickel before he leaves for dinner.”
He disappeared in a puff of firecracker smoke.
At this juncture, the Secret Service suddenly heard the screaming, which had been mysteriously inaudible before. They rushed in, and found their pantsless president lying across his desk, surrounded by a quite literally execrable mess, with no indication of what had caused it. The ectoplasmic fuse remnants had already evaporated, and the smell of ethereal explosives was overpowered by the smell of presidential shit.
Not knowing what else to do, the Secret Service bundled him into the presidential limo and drove him to the hospital, where he was admitted with the diagnoses of an acute psychotic episode, and hemorrhoids.
The press secretary, on hearing the news, swallowed an entire, wrapped three-pack of cinnamon gum and hastily reached for another 54 sticks of Trident, but quickly rallied and convinced the news to focus on the president’s last, nonsensical tweet and the arrest of a deranged “Trombone impersonator,” whom Civet News dubbed “the tuba.”
For, indeed, President Trombone’s “bell” had been enlarged so much that it now far better resembled the deepest brass instrument. From time to time, sequestered pockets of metaphysical dynamite gas further made known that resemblance. These were now the only presidential utterances, because he was heavily sedated after ripping out an IV and calling his proctologist an “illegal immigrant homosexual.”
Washington descended into chaos as the Vice President, the Cabinet, and the Speaker of the House all became unable to be reached for comment. A few weeks later, Trombone became the second president of the United States to resign, citing health concerns. Everyone in the line of succession declined the office, until that line reached the first moderate in the cabinet. The tuba-assed Trombone retired to one of his hotels’ penthouses, never to be seen again.
A far-left Democrat was elected the next election cycle, and gradually the country became a slightly more compassionate America. Uncle Sam returned to his usual schedule of waking up only for holiday parades and elections. The Fae UN and the real one were both pleased.