Herman sat upright in bed, his
body trembling uncontrollably and drenched in sweat.
“Go back to sleep,” his wife Lita said groggily.
“It was just another dream.”
“It wasn’t,” Herman insisted. “It was real. I saw it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “The dinosaur ghost.”
“It wasn’t real.” Lita assured him.
“You know there’s no such thing as dinosaurs.”
“But what about all those bones in
the museums?” Sweat continued to rain down his brow.
“That’s just liberal propaganda.”
Herman nodded. “And ghosts?”
“Well, of course ghosts are real,” Lita said,
“but dinosaurs are purely speculative.”
Herman began taking in and
releasing deep breaths. Slowly, his heart rate returned to normal. “You’re right,” he said. “It was just a
dream.”
“Just a dream,” Lita repeated. Her
voice transformed into snore.
“But it seemed so real.” Herman
whispered.
The rest of the morning proved
uneventful. Herman went about his normal routine. He showered, dressed, gobbled
down the microwaveable hotcakes and bacon Lita had lovingly placed on a stick,
and then took one last swallow of coffee. Lita met him at the door with his
briefcase. He kissed her once on the lips and planted another on her protruding
belly button.
“Have a good day little boy,” he
said to her stomach, adding, “little Bruce Willis.”
As he strolled down the driveway,
his nightmare long forgotten, he felt safe and comfortable, and he was about to
feel even more so. He climbed up the steps and into his own private
fortress, The Leviathan, the biggest
SUV ever manufactured outside of a military facility. It got only two thirds of
a mile to the gallon, but it more than made up for poor fuel efficiency with
its ability to intimidate other drivers.
“Hello, Beautiful,” He said, stroking
the padded leather dashboard. He settled
into plush seats made from the skin of a small herd of Italian cattle. He
leaned forward and kissed the steering wheel. He loved this car: the powerful
engine, the luxurious interior, and the capacity to literally crush any other
vehicle on the road. He kissed the steering wheel again and then fingered the
gear shift. As his tongue flickered against leather, he suddenly remembered he
was driving.
The moment coincided with a sudden
jolt that rocked him out of his seat. He
frantically steered his vehicle back onto the road, while checking both
directions to make sure there were no witnesses.
“No problem,” he said, calming
himself once more. He patting the dashboard again. “Nothing
can hurt my little girl.”
The neighbor's mailbox, on the
other hand, was completely destroyed. He
would have to remember to blame renegade teenagers at the next neighborhood barbeque.
A flashing red light on the
console snapped Herman back to the present. “Well, Dixie Cups,” he mumbled. “I
just filled up last night. And here I am late for work.”
Herman could feel his blood
pressure rising. The last thing he
needed was to run out of gas. Life as a conservative
journalist was becoming increasingly stressful.
Back in the old days, all you had to do was take the daily talking
points memo and then transcribe it into your own words. These days, you had other syndicated print
journalists, half a dozen radio broadcasters, a million jerks on the internet, and
FOX NEWS to compete with. With everyone reporting
the same talking points, it became increasingly necessary to find new ways to
zazz up the news. In fact, that was the
slogan of his own personal website: "Looking for New Ways to Zazz up the
News."
Work was stressful alright. Luckily, he had an ace in the hole.
He’d recently entered into a new
business venture selling modified truck engines. Herman’s crew could reconfigure a standard internal combustion engine to produce nearly three times
as much carbon dioxide as it would have normally, thus allowing his clients to totally
stick it to the liberals. He already had a half dozen orders, and just as soon as he uploaded that YouTube
video of various patriotic Americans spewing
black smoke from their trucks’ exhaust pipes into the windshields of a bunch of
Prius-driving communists, sales would explode through the roof.
Herman turned on the radio and
smiled. He had decided to ignore the
blinking light on the console, and nothing calmed his nerves like the mindless
jabbering of radio shock jocks. To his disappointment, every button he pressed produced nothing but static. “Dominoes Pizza,” he said. (Herman always substituted the names of
conservative-owned businesses in place of curse words as a way of simultaneously
promoting conservatism and avoiding the Lord’s wrath.)
There was something odd about the
white noise, though, he noticed. He heard a low rumble, almost like a roar, emanating from the background. He
recognized that roar from somewhere, but where?
Ahead of him on the freeway, a
chain or break lights illuminated. “Hobby Lobby,” Herman exclaimed. Now he was really
going to be stuck in traffic. He began to feel that old familiar anxiety that
comes with a flashing fuel light. Of course, he could always manually override
the “Socialist Repellent,” as he called his modified exhaust system, thereby
saving much needed gasoline, but if he did that, how would he dump a black
cloud on the Chevy Volt riding up behind him?
“It’s totally worth it,” he said as he adjusted the rear-view mirror.
It was then that he noticed
something strange glaring back at him from the back seat: a large pair of greenish
yellow eyes. Instant recognition accompanied a blood-curdling scream. As stalled traffic barelled toward him, he tried to brake, but something went wrong. He couldn't move his
foot.
“What the Chick-fil-A?”
He looked down and saw the
translucent image of a three-toed claw superimposed against his J.C. Penny
loafer, holding the pedal pinned to the floorboard. He gasped as he looked up
and saw the approaching rear end of a tractor trailer.
A moment later it was all over in
a giant ball of fire.
At his funeral, one of his friends
solemnly remarked on the massive number of toxins released into the atmosphere following
the crash. Everyone agreed that Herman
would have pleased.
chapter 5
chapter 5
