--Red Button--

there's a darkness in the room. it's deafening.

it presses in from every side, waiting. it leans forward, crowding the little pool of light cast from the desk lamp.

i've been staring at the wood grain in the desk for 5 minutes straight now--not really seeing. i blink a couple times. it's shaped like barbara walters, but less wrinkly.

what the fuck am i going to do for breakfast?

i stare some more at barbara, tracing the darker brown patterns in the desk with my eyes. she stares back with that fake smile of hers. i rub my eyes and groan, leaning back in my chair, breaking the silence for the first time.

the room reacts.

the darkness stirs like smoke, rearranging itself throughout the study. my head, it hurts, and i can't stop rubbing my eyes. the voices begin to whisper on invisible threads and they won't go away. barbara begins chanting something sinister in a language i can't understand. i stare back at the mottled wood pattern, the darkness playing tricks, the soft sensual venom of barbara's lips moving. i'm more annoyed than anything else-

"can you shut the hell up, i'm trying to think for christ's sake!" i tell her.

the darkness is shifting, swirling, stirring to life all around me. something big is about to happen. the voices chatter, the tempo is rising, the lamp's pale light flickers. something big is about to happen. the room is awash in secret sounds and things just out of sight are moving, shifting, reaching because they know--something big is about to happen.

i try and drown it out, but it's growing to a crescendo-- "something big is about to happen..."

"like fuck it is," i say, and i slam my fist down on the red button.

like carbonated soda the room hisses and filters back into calm, vaunted darkness. barbara walters is just a few swirls of wood grain and the curtains are still. a sheen of stillness.

i rub my eyes again and groan. i sit with my eyes closed for a couple minutes in the blissful silence.

"now...what the fuck am i going to do for breakfast," i wonder out loud this time. it's 4 am but i don't have anything else to look forward to until then.

maybe i'll have ostrich. i've never had ostrich.

a small red dot is blinking soft red on a monitor in the corner of the room, affirmative of the launch. tens of thousands will be dead in the next few hours, consumed alive in a fiery ungodly holocaust of flame. entire cities torched alive, burning into the desert night like living effigies--screaming, a crack and a pop, then a constant smoldering stillness.

i leave the office, close the door behind me, lock it, and nod to Jenkins and Robbins. i walk towards the East Wing, the entire White House still asleep in predawn quiet.

the inside voices shuffle and push their way to the front a little with bubbling mirth and vicious laughter. but i tell them to relax. it's Tuesday guys, i got work and shit to do i reason, shaking my head a little. maybe i need some of the pills.

and maybe i'll have pheasant.

it's such a pain in the ass sometimes to be president of the United States.