Three White Lions: Book Two
Chapter 2, "Fight for the Great Society" by Gloria Christie. Magic Realism. Preview.
The Prey Seeker squeezed shut his eyes against the powerful blast of hot air that surrounded the intruder. The senator knew that he should recognize the arrogant apparition. But there was something wrong with his own exquisitely cunning brain. The old man felt as if his whole world was shifting beneath him.
Prey Seeker must have been drugged. And his knee screamed in pain, pulling away his attention from the immediate problem. The sharp light behind the unknown persona blinded the so-called Turkey to all features and distinctions that normally allowed people to recognize others. But then the large male presence spoke in his seductive voice.
‘So Turkey, how do you like your accommodations?’
Mold filled the senator's sinuses, and the hard edge of the bed bit into his aged shoulder blades. And Prey Seeker was incensed:
‘You bastard! Release me right now or…’
‘Or what, Turkey? You gonna beat me up?’
The old man was distressed at how weak his own voice had sounded to his ears. But he had to try.
‘Dud, you know we're both on the same side and…’
The former Stargazer Party leader sneered.
‘That's Mr. President to you, you sniveling excuse for a man. I am my own party. And you are my prisoner.’
The truly unhinged con artist who amazingly grew an inch during his presidency belched out a laugh uncomfortable to the ears. Then he stepped aside revealing a cruel wrath of a man behind his dissipated frame.
‘You remember my enforcer, don't you, Turkey? He will be seeing you to your cage.’
The Dud swept away in a practiced grand exit revealing his Black Mamba, a snake we all recognized. It advanced on the old man. Even The Mamba's voice slithered.
You are all mine now, Turkey. ‘
The Prey Seeker recoiled in terror. Because he knew the Mamba's capacity for endless torture. For the senator had turned a callous eye when Mamba had played his evil games on children whose parents’ only crime was to seek asylum.
Gloria remained in the art deco tower safe house as the nation's capitol shook violently around her. The Washington Monument swayed with each of the earth's spasms threatening to topple beneath the angry skies.
But Gloria had to puzzle out the wayward systems at work to kill democracy before she could even begin to untanglethe mess. The evil ones had plotted ever since President Lyndon Johnson implemented his “Great Society” in 1964.
The Stargazer Party screeched when President Johnson expanded civil rights, public broadcasting, healthcare, education, the arts, urban and rural opportunities, and other services for the common man.
But the wicked Stargazer minds managed to drag down President Johnson over the Viet Nam War miasma. The President went to the TV and and Film Convention in Chicago in 1969 where all the media was enjoying the free drinks and advance movie previews. Tall stunning models moved about all the while media layered their cables thicker than a man's thigh across the famous hotel's great auditorium.
A crowd of near-1000 convention attendee's gathered in buzzing nervousness anticipating they knew not what. When President Johnson and his men moved onto the floor. “He resigned!” words carried on the air waves up and up through the throng.
That was the beginning of the Stargazer's revenge strategy that continued until this very day.
Gloria had diagramed each of the systems that the Stargazers had resisted. Each on one of the huge boards that descended from recesses within the paneled walls upon voice command and often before her voice command. There was a puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle.
The ugly gnashing of the earth caused the Mariana Gorge to regurgitate one of the most vicious dictators ever to be imprisoned in the web of caves nearly 36,000 feet beneath the Atlantic ‘s surface near the U.S.’s eastern coast. He was The Montray Eel.
His room had been devoid of any stimulus at all. The walls had no color. They were of a tasteless giant mushroom that still managed to sup the prisoner within, provide insulation, and emit a low-level light.
But the rumblings in Washington extended to the great split from another era. And one of the mushrooms tumbled free from its cave as the earth's great shrugs disgorged it to the surface. The mushroom took the beating while Moray escaped with minor bruises.
Moray swam to the guard boat where Earl kept watch. The vile creature was eager to devour the brilliant octopus where he stood. And the eel, who was nearly pure muscle, flipped across the bow. But as the bald headed monster gazed about eager for the kill Earl had disappeared.