Thread by @goodoldcatchy

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
1 – STEVE GETS A NEW LIVER

The lab table was icy like the stare of a snowman’s furious girlfriend. Steve shifted uncomfortably, right side swollen and hands numb in the cold.
‘You couldn’t warm this thing up first, ya jamook?’

‘Sorry, Steve,’ said the doctor, ‘No one knows we’re here. Gotta do this on the fly.’
‘How long was I out?’
‘Long enough…’ said the doc, ‘…Got a good look in you.’

A lipless smile shot between the doc’s ears faster than a crack through glass. Gleeful eyes burned in the bloodless mask of his face as he snapped on one, and then two, semi-transparent white surgery gloves.
‘As I suspected then,’ said Steve, ‘It’s fucked, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, Stephen…Your liver is more than fucked. It’s completely destroyed. I’m sending it to a high school to scare kids off the booze.’
‘Was it the whiskey?’ said Steve, sparkling sad frog eyes like garbage tinsel.
‘Actually…no…It wasn’t.’

‘Then it was the coke,’ said Steve, ‘I knew that last thousand rails didn’t do me no good.’
‘It wasn’t the cocaine, Stephen,’ said the doc.
‘The meth. It was my DARN morning meth, wasn’t it?’

‘Your liver shows scant sign of meth abuse,’ said the doctor, ‘And before you ask, it wasn’t smack, ecstasy, PCP, Xanax, or krokodil either, although I found significantly more than trace amounts of each.’

Steve stared up from the cold table, body numb and mind racing. Now that some feeling had returned to his hand, he was able to touch his side and cup the flesh there like a pregnant lizard’s belly.

‘Tell me, doctor,’ said Steve, the first thunder of a storm grousing on the meadow outside, ‘What did this to me?’
‘It was hate, Mr. Bannon. Pure dark hatred destroyed your liver.’

Steve smiled, for now he knew he was not at fault for his condition. He had been done in by the one thing for which he was not to blame: the vile traits of other people. Out in the lab garden lightening split a tree like a pair of cheap disposable chopsticks.

‘What’s the fix, doc?’
‘Behold!’ cried the doctor, whipping a black towel up in the air. Below was a tank, and in the tank a kind of big metal slug. Captivated by its throbbing mass, Steve forced himself up to a sitting posture, a tear tracing burst veins in his cheek.

‘It’s…beautiful,’ he said, ‘Is it my new…’
‘This,’ said the doctor, ‘Is a liver that RUNS on hate. Every toxin, every undesirable substance that finds its way into your bloodstream, Mr. Bannon, will be converted to loathing and rage...

...This thing, Mr. Bannon, this beautiful creation of mine, runs on the very venom that fuels you…and uses it to create more.’
‘So now donuts will make me angry?’
‘YES!’
‘And cup ramen?’
‘YES, Mr. Bannon!’

‘And whiskey?’
‘That’ll be the same, but you get the point. You’ll be invincible…angrier, more hateful, clear-headed, and impossible to kill.’
A slow laugh building in his gut, Steve lowered his head onto the table. The sound built to a chuckle, then a low roar, and finally a...

...cackle. And then he was silent as the doc gassed him to unconsciousness. He fell into the black cotton embrace of his favorite dream, the one where his Jewish neighbors move out.

Early morning sun bit his eyes open. His mind sped but his body was sack-like and numb.

‘Steve, you have to get up. It’s time to go…’

- END OF PART ONE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
2 – A MILLER ON THE LOOSE

The long, fresh scar on his belly bled from one end like a worm with its head crushed. Steve couldn’t tell what was happening, but he could hear a pounding out in the lobby. Tossed by the doctor, a pile of clothes landed...

...on his chest: socks, jeans, underpants, and two plaid shirts.
‘We can’t be here!’ cried the doc.

It hurt to stand, but Steve forced himself to. As quickly as possible, he got dressed. No sooner had he done so than the doc bustled him to a back corridor with a line of doors down each side. Woeful infant-like whimpers echoed on the metal walls, weak as live food on a plate.

‘What…is this place?’
‘There’s no time,’ said the doc, ‘Don’t you SEE? They’re coming for me. We have to get out.’
‘Who's coming?’ said Steve, ‘Is it the deep state?’
‘What? The deep…Nah, I’m wanted for organ trafficking.’

A bullet whizzed through the doctor’s head, spraying the side of Steve’s face with gore and slapping off the wall with a stiff steel hiccup. Steve’s jaw dropped like he was at the dentist as he watched the doc’s body dragged back into the laboratory by unseen hands.

His weight against the wall, Steve limped towards the thin glow of a window at the end of the corridor. To his relief, it was set into an exit. Panting with fear, he pushed, but it wouldn’t open. The sound of boots grew louder. Back behind him, the lab was filling with cops.

‘Shit.’
His heart almost stopped there and then. On the wall by the exit was a keypad. Desperately, hopelessly, he jabbed four digits. Nothing. The sound of boots grew louder. He could hear voices:
‘Someone clear the back corridor!’

Steve jabbed the pad again, to no avail. The air pulsed softly with the dismal cries of a dozen trapped souls. He wondered what happened behind those metal doors.
‘4…8…2…’

A voice was coming from the meal slot of the nearest one, behind him. Long pallid fingers held up the flap, thin between joints and bulging at their tips. Two eyes gazed out, alien, empty, framed in cadaverous sockets. Nothing remained there but a faint echo from the other...

...side of madness.
‘What’s the last number?’ Steve demanded, fury rising.
‘…1’, rasped the voice.

Steve entered the code and shoved with all his might. Outside, the world was sunlight and rain. Stepping backwards onto the grass, he saw the meal slot was closed and the stranger gone. The handle clicked as he pulled the exit shut. Through its window he saw the corridor fill...

...with cops.
Shirt soaking through with blood, Steve slid round the side of the building. Leaning against brick, his breath fast and shallow, he went through his pockets: whiskey, bag of meth, strip club matchbooks, escort’s business...

...card, M&Ms, two animal teeth, a scrap of paper and a phone. There was a message on the paper:

TAXI 555-783-8257
MEET BACK AT MINE – S. Miller.

Steve hobbled...

...to the road, stones digging the soles of his feet. Stumbling down a steep embankment, he bumped to a halt against a concrete balustrade separating the footpath from traffic. His body against a pole, he dialed the taxi firm.

‘Where are you?’
‘I’m…’
Steve looked up. He was leaning on a bus stop sign.
‘Sir…where are you?’
‘Bus stop…Greenville 16B’.

Stephen Miller stood in the door of his apartment wiping jam from his mouth with a woman’s handkerchief. His head, which resembled a busted light...

...bulb in a jacket or an octopus dipped in human sweat, split slowly in a drugged, droop-eyed grin.
‘Baaaaanon,’ he said, putting an arm around his friend, ‘I see they…fixed you up good.’
‘What happened?’ Steve asked, as Miller helped him inside.

‘One minute you were fine,’ said Miller, ‘And the next…You blaaaacked out. An unconscious man is no good to Mr. Miller…And you did look most poorly, old man…So I called my guuuy.’
‘I blacked out?’

‘Yesss,’ said Miller, ‘You were into your second bottle of scotch. I was trying to pull your head out of a pile of coke so we could smoke more crack, and that was that.’
‘I blacked out off drugs?’
‘No. You heard some Spanish through the window.’

- END OF PART TWO -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
3 – WACKY RACISTS

Miller peeled back Steve’s clothing to check the scar.
‘You never told me, Baaanon…why you wear two shirts.’
‘To hide recording equipment,’ said Steve, ‘You never know when someone will say something…useful.’

‘It’s oozing baaad,’ said Miller, ‘We should patch you up.’
Steve shoved him back, a bilious rage broiling inside. How he hated to be dependent upon others, to be touched and nourished and tended to. Much better to stew in exquisite shadows and dark rumination.

Standing abruptly, he marched to the closest drawer.
‘DON’T LOOK IN THERE!’ Miller cried.
‘Simmer down, ya dumb shadooley. And tell me where you keep the paper towels.’
‘I’m on it, Bannon,’ said Miller, ‘Now WILL you sit? You’re adding to the blood stains on my caaarpet.’

Steve crashed on the sofa like a mannequin full of bowling balls. Swinging up shoeless feet, he dumped his head on the armrest. Miller returned from the kitchen with towels and one more thing.
‘Catch!’
A bottle of water bounced off Steve’s belly into his rough, ruddy paw.

‘What the FUCK is this?’
‘It’s a scotch and water without the scotch.’
‘Niiice,’ said Steve, taking a sip, ‘Doesn’t taste of much.
‘Sorry I sent you out so far,’ said Miller, sitting opposite, ‘Couldn’t take any chaaances.’
There was a roll of tape on the coffee table. Steve...

...used it to stick a fistful of towels to his gut. As he did so, he noticed a soft mass pressed into his buttock. Digging in his jeans back pocket, he found a gram of coke, dumped it on the table, and chopped up twin fat lines. After the friends packed their noses, Miller...

...remembered something.
‘Shit. I have to write a speech for the boss man.’
‘Let me help you out. We can bounce some ideas around. Throw in a bunch of fuckin’ lies. It’ll be like Breitbart.’
Miller ignored him. Slowly, wordlessly, and without explanation, he...

...unfolded to his modest full stature. It was almost night, and bling-bright milk spots of moonlight blinked on every glass object at the flutter of the curtains. The window was ajar, and the breeze that leaked in cold...like dancing cheek to cheek with a corpse.

From behind an armchair, Miller brought out a sketchpad, a pair of scissors, and a stick of glue. Leaning over the coke-dusted coffee table, he began snipping the hair from his head and gluing it on the paper.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Steve demanded to know.

‘This is how I write the Donald’s speeches,’ Miller explained, ‘He never reads them, so I glue my hair to a couple of pages and he makes believe with that.’
‘So that egghead ain’t natural. I thought you was too young to be shiny bald.’

Just then, the robo-liver in Steve’s body pulsed, thirst rearing dragon-like within. Poking round the sofa cushions, he found a scotch bottle stashed the time before. Twisting the cap, he smashed the first half in seconds. Anger, ugly, red and raw, barreled through his blood...

...from the bursting blister of a mean black heart.
In a flash, he was at the refrigerator. He needed more. More scotch. More beer. Some ham or something.
‘DON’T LOOK IN THERE!!’ cried Miller, pulling him away from behind.

Steve turned and swung, knocking down the younger man. The wind blew and the curtains bulged. Somewhere a cello wept, a vase crashed, a man shouted. Then silence. Steve kneeled on the carpet to look upon the supine figure before him. Pulling lacy underwear from his blazer...

...pocket, Miller smiled slow as a broken prop head and dabbed his temple with it.
‘That doctor,’ Steve began, ‘Lord knows what he put in me, but I feel so money. Like an armored car full of cash.’

‘Good. Because Jeff has a job for us. Tomorrow…we meet with Mr. Sessions.’

Drinking, laughing and writing more speeches with hair, the two friends partied the night away. The sun rose over the city, burning all detail from it with bright rays. Up and about before his...

...friend, Steve watched the blue of the sky grow deep. In the dazzle of morning, the city was naught but black unevenly stacked blocks. A lone coruscating balcony pool broke a brief instant when a girl slipped in. She was gone like a bullet, then her arms slashed...

...the surface of the water.
Steve looked at the dresser, spying something he had never seen before. It was a mysterious object, a box made of material like he had never encountered. When he touched it, it was warm and cool. When he lifted it up, it was at once heavy...

...and light as a feather. Its color shifting in waves, the box hummed as he lifted the lid.
‘DON’T LOOK IN THERE!!’ cried Miller.
But Steve already had. And it was more women’s knickers.

- END OF PART THREE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
4 – MOS JEFF

Steve slammed his foot on the gas like it fucked his favorite sister. All four tires of the ’89 Chevy Caprice screeched off the driveway, smoke flittering from the rubber.
‘This your car, Miller?!’ he screamed, slinging an empty bottle...

...onto the tarmac.
‘No…Is it yours?’
‘I don’t have a car,’ said Steve, ‘Keep getting pulled over for wreckless driving.’
Miller fished under the passenger seat for clues, but all he found was a couple of coins and a cassette tape. The glove compartment was similarly bare.

‘Want some Xaaanax?’ said Miller.
‘I AM driving too fast, I suppose', said Steve, ‘Just give me three so we can get under the speed limit.’
‘There’s a track a couple of miles ahead,’ Miller explained, ‘No one knows it’s there until they need to. That’s the way to Jeff’s house.’

The muggy noon air was a hurricane on the hood of the car. Banking hard into the open driver’s window, it knocked ash from Steve’s cigarette onto the upholstery. Miller popped the cap off an orange pill bottle and guzzled everything inside like a dull-eyed pelican. Then...

...he tossed it in the road, where it bounced in the rearview mirror.
The radio was broken and, when they turned it on, the speakers pumped out a ghoulish vortex of sound, a grating, rough, semi-human racket of voices lost in sand. When Miller tried to shut it down, the dial...

...came off between his smooth fingertips, so he resorted to kicking the whole unit out of the dashboard with the heel of an expensive shoe.
‘Will you fuckin’ keep it down?’ Steve bellowed, his hearing ten seconds behind real life.

‘I can’t hear you!’ Miller cried, road rushing in slow motion between the pill-guarded toll gates of his mind, ‘Wind up the windoooow. Steve!!’
Miller made a frantic winding arm gesture, and was ignored. The windshield was opaque with a smeared mash of unsolicited sensory...

...information but, when he squinted through it into the bright orange world beyond, the track opened up in a hurry on the left. Grabbing the wheel, he spun the Chevy into a skid and they peeled out into the countryside to a disorganized melody of angry car horns.

The track was bumpy and covered in stones. On one side ran a stream like a weak silver snake. On the other was an untended field. Tin cans and plastic bags sunbathed in the weeds. It was so sulky hot not even birdsong could fly. Up ahead were mountains, the sky, and nothing more.

Just as Steve thought they were headed nowhere, the landscape shivered, swam and stirred into a manic portal. Gripping his thighs in excitement, Miller leaned forward wheezing. Nothing was visible on the other side of the vortex.
Where does it lead to?’ asked Steve.
‘The 1950s’.

On its approach, the car was lifted into the air by the power of the portal. The hood warped, before their eyes, into a long red disappearing streak. When Steve looked at his own hands, the fingers telescoped away from him like stretched rubber glove digits.

‘Oh shiiittt!’ he wailed, and then the car was floating in a matterless void, stream and fields all gone. There was no horizon up ahead, only pure black oblivion.
‘Aaaalmost there,’ said Miller.

‘Well…If this is Sessions’ house, it’s definitely blacker than I thought it was gonna be.’
‘This is the Netherzone,’ said Miller, ‘Think of it as an elevator between decades.’
‘And Sessions has a house in the 1950s?!’

‘Yeah,’ said Miller, ‘Well, to be preciiise he lives in a house made of cereal boxes in the 1950s, but anything from back then is worth a lot more now.’
‘I don’t know how he does it. I hate commuting to work.’

- END OF PART FOUR -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
5 – MOS JEFF 2 (THE MISSION BEGINS)

The death-dark void about the Chevy glowed. Trees, clouds, houses and drinking fountains resolved into view, painted there by a quick and hidden hand. A road unrolled before them as per some night runway lit one end to...

...the other, a plastic ball bouncing across it. Two horse-drawn carts full of barrels emerged from a side street, slashes of blue sky joining together like paint blown from a straw. Music drifted out of windows, lyrics indistinguishable under chanting from a kids’ game. On...

...first appearances there was something innocent, affluent and calm about this small town, something that made Steve seriously doubt he’d be able to purchase meth.
‘Turn right here,’ said Miller.

They went up a mild slope that led out of town. There, at the top of it, was Jeff Sessions house: a two story, cardboard construction busy with cereal box characters. Tape gleamed at the meeting of walls, craft glue winking out of the base of every window box.

Steve slammed into the garden without slowing down. Shoeless and smoking, he tumbled from the driver’s seat into a flowerbed. Twenty types of pills dug in deep, Miller remained bolted in the car. He stared through the windshield at a cavalcade of psychedelic dancing...

... colors, mesmerized by the drone of the engine.
‘Well, I do declare…’ said someone, ‘If it isn’t young Mr. Miller. I do not recall extending an invite.’
‘Jeff?! Where are you?’ said Miller.
‘Down here.’

Leaning out the window, Miller gazed down. Sessions reached up to pinch his cheek, then shook his head, took off his little white hat, and dabbed at his face. Clearly, the younger man was high on future drugs.
‘You tooold us to be here,’ said Miller.

‘Well…I do not recall,’ replied Sessions, ‘But I will invite you inside nonetheless. Mary has a little lamb, and some lemonade.’

Sessions’ study was snug, homely, and filled with law books he did not recall reading. Lit by one lamp at a work desk, the room appeared smaller...

...than it was. Miller fidgeted in a creaking chair, hands damp with sweat and the perspiration of a tall glass of lemonade. Steve was blacked out cold on the floor with his semi-bare ass in the air like a pair of pimpled dumplings in an alleyway.

‘Well, here we are at your serrrvice, Mr. Sessions,’ said Miller, ‘What can we do?’
‘I do not recall asking you here, but if I had – drink your lemonade, son – it would have been to request a small favor,’ Sessions began.
‘Anything you need, sir,’ said Miller, sipping his drink.

The sweat on his bulging octopus head caught the lamplight, glimmered orange-yellow, and dashed from his bare temples to the stubble at his jaw. Miller’s forehead seemed to dominate the intimate glow of the old lawyer’s study, perched atop his thin body like the exotic...

...moon of some imagined gas giant.
Sessions hopped down from his chair. Eyes twinkling and furtive, he scampered over the thick shag carpet to the window. He pulled at it, and a small square came up, revealing desiccated balsa-like floorboards. The old lawyer tugged at one of...

...these, and a section of it came away. Hidden underneath was a tiny secret hiding place, within which was a white box.
‘Let me tell you…’ nasalized the old man, ‘…what exactly is in this here box. I recall that it holds magic crystals containing the value system of the 1950s.

What I need from you and your unconscious friend is simple…’
A smile dawdled slow as a rash across the slack flesh of Miller’s face. Sensing he was to be tasked with delicious evil, unable to deny the joy he felt bubble about his very organs, Miller allowed himself to...

...ejaculate twice in rapid succession, swimming as he did so in Sessions’ impish eyes.
‘The 1950s…’ gasped Miller, ‘You…have their essence…This changes everything.’

‘Well, ah prefer an earlier vintage, but this is what we have to work with. Ah need you to get these back to the present…one to the White House…smash the other one open in the Supreme Court.’
Sessions placed the box on his work desk and took a key from out of the drawer.

Lifting the lid, he held up white translucent crystals, two of them. These crystals, to Miller, were the most beautiful objects he had ever known, the hushful treble of their edges slicing air the stoic love cry of an aching angel.

‘I need to hooold them,’ Miller panted, his underwear sodden, horrible, heavy.
‘Ughhhhh,’ groaned Steve, on the floor.
‘Mr. Sessions…’ said Miller.
‘Yes, son?’
‘Why can’t you just taaake these back yourself?’

‘Ah can’t take them,’ said Sessions, ‘And yoo can’t take them neither. Only one man can bring these to 2018, and that man’s name is Donald Trump.’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ said Miller.

‘He won’t come to the 1950s for love nor money, and that’s saying a lot,’ the old lawyer explained, ‘Too many germs in these times. Besides…he pretty much hates yours truly. Now you must excuse me, as I recuse myself to go...

...to the bathroom. You can put the crystals back inside the box, and we’ll have us all a nice lamb diner.’
‘MEEETHHHHH!!!’ cried Steve, facedown on the carpet.

- END OF PART FIVE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
6 – SNAKE NEWS

Shoulders against the big man, Miller pushed his partner into the car. Froth escaping purple lips, Steve snored with his head back and mouth open. A few packets of stimulant powder were spread round under the driver’s seat. Miller emptied...

...these down Steve’s throat.
‘Gaaaaah! Good morning.’
‘Rise and shine,’ said Miller, ‘We need to trick the boss into time travelling so he can take magic crystals to the Supreme Court.’
‘Yeah.’

Sessions and his wife Mary waving in the window of their cereal box home, Steve churned up soil until the Chevy lurched into the road, spun a U-turn in traffic, and shot back to town.
‘The way home’s different,’ said Miller, ‘Go straight in from the side and come out by the...

...smoke stacks.’
Four or five stacks coughed waffle iron marshmallow at the mountains. Steve aimed for this handful of evil fingers stabbing the sky, boosting across town until he and Miller came out the other side. One back tire blew out on a nail and the Chevy swung around...

...at the back, barreled hard right, and slid sideways into a shallow ditch. Up in the distance the barely open portal to 2018 clammed shut.
‘Walk into town then, ya dumb gavone,’ said Steve, ‘Bring someone back who can help us.’

Thirty minutes passed and Miller returned with...

...some 50s guy in a truck carrying a tire repair kit. Glugging from a hip flask, Steve spilled out of the car and climbed to the road. His red-skinned face, all ruptured blood vessels, swelled like a singing toad’s throat with the effort of clambering up.

‘How much for a patch and pump?’ said Steve.
‘Steeeve, we don’t have olden days moneyyy,’ said Miller.
‘Give this jamoke your watch, then.’
A tall, slender man in his early forties, the stranger took the wristwatch Miller handed to him. Confused how one would wind...

...it, he nonetheless enjoyed the design and thrust it in his pocket.
‘How far you need to get?’ the man asked.
‘Over there,’ said Steve, ‘About four hundred yards up the road.’
‘I don’t understand what’s happening, but I’ll drag your car out of the ditch and patch her up.’

____
The Chevy up on the road, 50s guy set about fixing the puncture. It was then that Miller felt one of his episodes begin. Eye glazed like donuts before baking, he wet his lips and crouched. Peeling off his jacket and shirt, he raked neat nails over his chest, face and...

...neck. The itching was like red ants dangling from every nerve end.
Next off were the pants, underwear, shoes and socks. The man patching up the tire looked up from his work, astonished. There stood Miller, naked, bald and bulbous of head, a white worm dangling off a...

...fleshy fanged balloon. Steve climbed back in the Caprice.
First Miller’s back lightened as skin came away from the layer underneath. Dislocating his jaw and screeching at the daytime moon, he tipped back his head, hide splitting from the base of his spine to his...

...neck. Sheets of skin curled off his body, inner surface an oily pink vellum. The last of his outer self dropping on the warm road surface, Miller was revealed reborn, new, and dazzling lily white. A cloud of butterflies, not yet extinct, passed by, scrupulously...

...avoiding him.
‘Your car…It’s good to go, sir.’
‘Then you may leave, peasant,’ Miller dismissed the stranger with a wave at the wind, ‘…I feel so powerful now. Complete.’
Miller’s jaw crackled on return to its sockets.

Dressed now, Miller shoved his partner into the...

...passenger seat. Firing up the engine, he gunned fast as he could for the mountains. The future vortex yawned open, spinning faster and faster at the edges, a manic whirlpool of bright country colors. Seconds later, they were drifting through soundless bleak oblivion.

‘This the fuckin’ nether regions again?’ said Steve.
And they were home, back in 2018. On the way to Miller’s condo, there was a billboard neither had previously noticed.
HUMAN SNAKE THEME PARK
‘That’s me!’ cried Miller, slamming on the brakes.

The friends climbed out on the side of the freeway. All over the sign above was a blown up old photo of Miller, artificially colored, and with his skin hanging off.
‘Some nerd snapped you from the bushes,’ said Steve, snickering with folded arms.

‘Look! It’s the theme park asshole!’ two kids shouted, dashing down from the turnoff.
‘That’s not me,’ Miller protested, ‘That’s SNAKE NEWS.’

- END OF PART SIX -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
7 – BLACK TO THE SUTURE

Steve collapsed like a scrotum packed with shitty potatoes into Miller’s weirdly orange bathtub. Face a lunatic race driver’s skull of rage and tiger adrenaline, he tore his shirt to shreds. Sure enough, the area round his liver...

...scar was turning black.
Grinning madly, he poked at the darkened flesh surrounding the still-fresh scalpel slice. Beneath the skin and fat he could feel the tough titanium mass of the artificial organ.
‘Well daddy fuck my nose,’ he sighed, ‘Seems like time travel...

...ain’t so good for finespun fragile gentlemen such as myself.’
Steve pulled out his phone. He couldn’t tell Miller this time…couldn’t tell that sweaty egghead what was going down…get bundled off to another backstreet chop shop and shot up. He scrolled through his contacts.

‘Here we go…
MICHAEL COHEN: nah…no one pregnant, so…
KELLYANNE: she won’t help after all that grabbing at the office party…
HUCKABEE SANDERS: nope…just…why would I…
SESSIONS: can’t tell him I’m turning black…
Shit…’
Miller banged on the bathroom door.

‘Are you ready?’ he said, ‘Baaanon…What are you doing in there? It’s almost time to go.’
Wrapping a towel around his belly, Steve stepped out into the living room. He took a spare couple of shirts from his suitcase and threw them on.

At some point he would have to visit his own place. He was sick of hanging around Miller’s sleepy horror dough head.
‘What the FUCK are you staring at, Miller?’ he barked. The dearth of booze in his bloodstream was making him nutso. He opened the fridge.

‘DON’T LOOK IN THERE!’ cried Miller.
Steve swiped a bottle of white wine, sneering at the label.
‘I guess that collection of frozen puppies was here when you moved in,’ he smirked. The sound of the cork popping was like a robot blowing a kiss.

‘They were making too much noise…at the pet shop…You know, we have a near impossible mission today. No one gets past Huckabee Sanders into the White House. She’s the gatekeeper. Outside of the sunglasses squad, she’s the only one who knows where POTUS is at. Also…

...she tends to lie.’
‘I thought you had an office there,’ said Steve.
‘No…’ said Miller, ‘They lock me in what used to be the gender-neutral bathroom. I got a desk but…it’s not a nice one.’

As the wine infused his fierce metal liver, Steve felt a surge of fire and fury. The booze was like lightening striking a power plant. He drained the bottle and smashed it on the coffee table, sending shards of glass up in the air like pretty sunny shrapnel.

____
Lafayette Park was jammed, and the two Stephens slipped through the crowd unrecognized, Miller in a hat and dark glasses, Bannon holding him up inside the giant trench coat they shared.

‘It’s fucking horrible in here,’ groaned Steve.
‘Shhhhh,’ said Miller, squeezing his partner’s neck between his thighs, ‘You’ll give the game away.’
‘Fuckin’ magic crystals,’ Steve hissed, ‘That’s the sort of bullshit some really lazy writer would come out with.’

‘Shhhhh! We’re almost at the West Wing. The boss man won’t be there yet. No one knows where he goes during Executive Crayon Fun Time.’
Steve tried to think back to his own days at the White House, but all he recalled was waking up each day, drinking, and then waking up again...

...back in his bed. He felt another squeeze from the legs around his neck, so he lurched forward, beads of sweat running down his face and inside his shirts. From within the trench coat he could hear Miller presenting his pass to security. They were in.

‘Hey,’ Steve hissed upwards, ‘Hey, we in yet? Miller, you dumb spostata…Which way to your piss office?’
‘Take a left here…easy…not so fast or we’ll topple over…OK…now hang a right…Good morning, Susan…Slowly, slowly…And we’re here.’
Steve heard a handle being twisted...

...and the noisy hinge of a door as it was shoved open. He took a step forward. The smell of old piss was strong, straight up from the floor into the interior of the trench coat. Once in the bathroom, the pair gratefully dumped the heavy garment and splashed water on their...

...faces. The place was pungent and rank with neglect. In the center was a small desk with a chair, and on one wall a badly installed intercom, wires dangling from it.
Miller picked up the receiver and stood tapping his foot, waiting for someone at the other end to...

...answer. Steve stumbled into the first stall, ricocheted off the partition, and bumped down hard on the toilet. Unbuttoning his shirts, he gazed again at the flesh adjacent to the site of his liver transplant. It was darker now, putrid and grimy and moribund-looking.

‘I just checked iiin,’ said Miller down the intercom, ‘You can bring my work over and lock the door now.’

- END OF PART SEVEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
8 – UTTERLY HUCKABEE

To Miller, this dirty unloved bathroom had come to represent his life. Flopping into the chair, he put his ample forehead on the little scratched desk they’d yanked out of storage and dumped there with a crash that sounded like failure.

As he scanned the wreckage of the place, the unscrubbed walls, hanging cubicle doors and tacky spackled tiles on the floor, a tear welled up in his eye. All he had ever wanted was to make his liberal parents proud. Sadly, slowly, Miller tilted his White House security pass...

...into the unkind glare of the strip lighting. There it was, right in the middle of his ID photo: the Sharpie cock a member of Secret Service had drawn there on his first day.
Steve burst out across the bathroom with a scotch bottle in each hand. Draining both, he smashed...

...them on the floor next to an open empty garbage can. Great fragments of glass flew up in the air like dead spinning dragonflies.
‘Are you crying?!’ said Steve, ‘What a fucking CUCK.’
The bathroom door opened and in flew a sketchpad. Then the door slammed shut and was...

...locked from the outside. A sharp voice echoed in the corridor.
‘Speeches, Miller!’
‘So THIS is what you do all day?’ said Steve, ‘Glue pieces of your hair to a sketchpad in a stinkin' piss office until it’s time to go home? How the fuck are we gonna get anywhere near POTUS...

...if we’re locked up in this dump?’
Miller ambled to the intercom, took up the receiver and punched in a single digit. ‘I have a plaaan,’ he mouthed, but Steve didn’t notice because he was up to the nuts in West Wing White House substance party time, and could barely see the...

...other man through thickening clouds of crack smoke.
‘Hello? Yah…yah…I know it’s not time for jam sandwiches yet…I have an emergency…I need Sarah Sanders to pop in to my office…My office…Yah…My office! Oh, for fuck’s – the old gender-neutral bathroom.’

Miller cupped the mic with his hand, ‘Honestly, Baaanon, these people know nothing about the modern world...’ he took away his palm and continued to address whoever was on the other end, ‘The gender-neutral bathroom! It’s that place Pence was calling the trannyshitter…Just...

...send her down, OK? Please…this is important.’
‘She comin’?’ said Steve.
‘She’s on her way,’ said Miller, ‘You better hide in the stall.’
Steve dove back in the cubicle and crouched on the toilet bowl so as not to be seen. The flesh around his robotic liver prickled and...

...stung as it ceased to live. He felt great, though.
Opening the desk drawers, Miller threw scissors and rolls of tape onto his work surface. He yanked the chair back so it would be easy to throw Sanders down and tie her to it. Moments later, the inimitable furious stomp of...

...Huckabee Sanders’ presser shoes pounded the hallway outside. Miller waited just inside the bathroom door, body shaking like a shitting dog. Steve’s jaw trembled in fear as he crouched, still hiding, in the rundown dismal space of the cubicle. A key turned in the lock.

____
There she was: Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Gradually, so as not to startle, Miller circled behind her and checked the bathroom door was closed. Then, with every active follicle of strength he could muster, he planted both hands between her shoulder blades and shoved.

‘Steve, help! She won’t budge!’
In a roiling cloud of crack smoke, Steve staggered from the cubicle. Snatching a bunch of keys from Sanders’ belt, he locked the bathroom door. Next thing, he planted a sneaker on the wall, grabbed a handful of pearl necklace, and started...

...hauling the stubborn press secretary in the direction of Miller’s shabby office chair.
‘OOOGRAHHHHHH!!’ screamed Sanders.
‘Quiet, you!’ said Steve, shaking his fist, ‘Or bang, zoom, straight to the moon!’
Miller gave a good hard push and she tumbled forward, causing Steve’s...

...foot to slip on the wall. Kicking the hand drier clean from its fixtures, he keeled back, knocked his head on the pissy tiles, and was out snowy cold.
‘Baaanon! Don’t be unconscious again!’
‘OOOGRAAAAHHHHH!’
With herculean effort, Miller walked Huckabee Sanders over to...

...the chair, pushed her down on it and picked up a roll of tape. Pouting, she stared contemptuously, like she had the full pathetic measure of his impotence. Miller waved the scissors vaguely threateningly, picked out the end of the tape, and began to wind it about her torso...

...by running an orbit of the chair. The soles of his shoes bleated on the slick dirty bathroom floor as he did so, and it was hard work on the hill of random meds he’d taken, but soon enough Sanders was fastened firmly in place.

‘Good work, Miller!’ said Steve, climbing off the floor, ‘Didn’t think you had it in ya. Sure she can’t get free?’
‘She won’t be going aaanywhere,’ Miller replied, ‘Believe me. I know all about taaape.’
‘Ask her where POTUS is at,’ Steve bellowed, shaking his red fist.

‘OOOGRAAAAHHHHH!’
‘Sarah,’ Miller whispered in her ear, ‘Where’s Mr. Trump? It’s of viiiiital importance we receive a few moments of his time.’
‘Yeah!’ said Steve, ‘I may be drunk and on crack, but I’m telling you it’s key to the goals of this administration that POTUS time...

...travel to the past for magic crystals.’
‘I’ll do the talking, Steve.’
‘OOOGRAAAHHHHHH!’
‘Listen, Sarah,’ said Miller, ‘Tell us where the president is.’
Huckabee Sanders’ face changed from angry and confused to thoughtful and cooperative. The two friends looked into her...

...eyes, waiting, hoping, breathing in unison. For a glorious and exciting instant, they felt sure she was about to tell the truth.
‘OOOGRAAAHHHHHH!’
‘Well, that was a lie,’ said Miller, ‘Textbook. Same line she uses on TV. Maybe we should try a different tack.’

‘I got some truth serum somewhere,’ said Steve, rummaging within the voluminous recesses of his many shirts, ‘We can shoot her up with that and she’ll sing like a hot canoolie.’

A tiny syringe emerged from Steve’s pocket. He rolled up Sanders’ sleeve and stuck her with it. In mere moments her face was slack yet crazy-eyed, and she stared to the front in a deep and joyous haze.
‘Where’s POTUS?’ demanded Steve, shaking both fists in a frenzy.

‘OOOGRAAAHHHHHH!’
‘We got it!’ said Miller, ‘She says he’s in the Romper Room.’

- END OF PART EIGHT -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
9 – DON OF THE LIVING DEAD

Miller’s lumpy crotch on the back of his neck, Steve sweltered inside the trench coat like a mall Santa’s salty nutsack. When he looked down, he saw his own filthy sneakers on red White House carpet. Huckabee Sanders’ keys...

...dangled from his belt.
‘Here we are,’ Miller quietly reported, ‘We’re outside the Romper Room.’
‘What about security?’
‘There’s no real security in place,’ said Miller, ‘I just didn’t know where he was.’
Miller’s sweaty palm on the door handle sounded like chamois leather...

...on steel. He pushed open the door, then Steve took a couple of steps forward and they were inside the Romper Room. The stench of hairspray, McDonald’s and chocolate cake was overpowering.
Dropping the trench coat, the two friends stood apart. Steve ogled every detail of...

...this odd chamber, unable to remember if he had seen it before. The blue carpet, stained with storm clouds of dark chocolate icing, was plush, soft and bright, pleasant to the tread and the eye.
Craft paper rainbows adorned an art wall covered from end to end with the...

...president’s proudest works. The alphabet, lacking several letters, abutted the gold-bordered ceiling, and every pointed piece of furniture sported rubber babyproof corner guards. On one wall, next to the main window, there hung a white square sign:
NO GIRLS ALLOWED

Miller approached the childproofed desk that had been shifted to one end of the long room to create more play space. And there he was, crouched just out of view behind it: the Donald himself, skin the color of that bizarre yogurt Miller had on vacation once and had never been...

...able to get hold of again.
‘Sir,’ said Miller, ‘Mr. President…I’m sorry to interrupt your important duties, but there’s something we just simply neeed to consult with you about.’
‘Mueller? They told me I was safe here. I’m safe until my attorney gets here. You can’t ask...

...me. It’s privileged, and all collusion is secret and didn’t happen. Believe me. It’s a witch hunt. The top people say so. All the top people. At the failing FBI.’
‘No…sir…I’m Miller, Stephen MILLER. Mueller is a different guy.’
Trump put his trucks aside and looked up...

...from the carpet at the younger man. Standing, he adjusted his two-meter tie and extended a hand.
‘You’re the kid that writes the speeches,’ said Trump, ‘You’re the best people. The paper stinks, by the way. But very good. I hire the best. Help me tweet that.'

After a handshake near violent enough to split the atom, Trump lowered his monster epic buttocks onto a stool. He started to rifle through a small mountain of McDonald’s bags on the floor. Seeing each was empty, he grunted and tossed it aside. Birdsong from the White House...

...gardens burbled among the sound of footfall out in the corridor, causing a dreamlike juxtaposition of the breezy innocence of nature with the be-suited striding action mode at the highest levels of power. Trump got out his phone to look at Twitter.

‘These fuckin’ feminists,’ he said, something on the app catching his eye, ‘Can’t stand them. Self-absorbed. Self-absorbed is what they are. Only half their tweets are about me.’
‘Sir,’ said Steve, ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I worked here for several months...

...last year. We’re here today because we have a mission of vital importance, and only YOU can help.’
‘Only…I…can do it?’ said Trump, eyes flashing like Christmas lights, ‘Only…I can fix it!...Where am I?’

‘You need to come with us,’ Steve continued, ‘And get in a car, and go to a big KFC staffed only by large-breasted bikini models, where a huge crowd will be waiting for you and chanting that they hate Obama. You’ll sign everyone’s tits and hats, hand them a copy of your...

...business book, and it’ll be in the paper how you saved their jobs. I know it’s a lot to ask, but we knew ONLY YOU would hear all that and still come.’
‘We could make that KFC great again!’ said Trump, ‘I’m in. The ratings for this thing will be tremendous.’

The three men exited the room into the corridor, where Secret Service was milling about. A tall, thick-set man with sunglasses and an earpiece approached, hands clasped in front of him. He looked Steve up and down like he was seeing the world’s longest turd in a record book.

‘This guy doesn’t work here,’ said Trump, pointing at Steve, ‘Take him to a black site. The other one goes back in the toilet.’
Two additional agents appeared, lifted Steve by the underarms, and sprinted from the building through one of the service entrances. They threw him...

...in the back of a black van, where a small, bird-like man was waiting. Steve felt his wrists cable tied and a bag go over his head. Despite the maniac King Kong fury that flea-jumped out of the metal hate machine inside his gut, he was unable to move. The only noises were...

...the van engine and his own rapid breathing, which drained all oxygen from the bag so he began to pass out. As his head touched the bench he was sat on, he noticed one more, heart-freezing and deeply direful sound: the birdman’s gentle tuneless incantation...

...of a popular children’s song.

- END OF PART NINE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
10 – ENTER THE JARED

Time passed, perhaps about a day. The van trip felt like a few hours, although Steve spent most of it out cold. He awoke to the modest din of a minor air base, likely single-runway. He was marched, head pounding as he...

...sobered up, into a small plane, which took off within thirty seconds.
When it touched down, and he was pulled down the steps, his surroundings were hotter and more humid. His wrists stung and cicada calls rang in the air. Briskly, he was walked to an air-conditioned car and...

...tossed over the back seat.
Following a short and bumpy drive, monkeys chattering nearby, Steve was hauled again to his feet, lugged along a short path, and pushed into a building. At the end of a narrow passageway, the bag came off and someone behind removed the cable tie...

...from his wrists. Right before him was a heavy iron door freckled with rivets. It opened, hinges groaning like they heard a bad joke.
‘I’ll pretend you have a choice...’ an East European voice droned, ‘...and request you wait in there.’
Beyond the iron door was a concrete...

...vault, a dungeon, square and cramped and warm. The walls and floor were rough, uniformly gray concrete. Down one side of the room was a stone plinth on which to sit and sleep. As there were no windows, the only light was from a bare near-dead bulb hanging off the...

...ceiling, weak and stubborn as suffering hope.
‘Where am I?’ asked Steve.
‘A shithole country.’

There was no way of knowing how much time had passed. Steve lay on the plinth and unbuttoned his shirt. Examining his operation scar, he saw that the area of necrotic tissue...

...had widened. The dark black epicenter was fully dead now, and around that was a sick khaki zone he didn’t dare touch. Whiskey and crack tanks empty, Steve realized the extent of the discomfort. The door opened. It was the birdman, carrying a bowl of soup and humming the...

...same tender lullaby.
‘This is for you…’ he stated, pursing his lips, ‘…to eat. Unfortunately, this is a zero star hotel, so the cuisine falls a little short on the best of days.’
Steve sat, shirt hanging open, and leaned over the bowl. Gristly hunks of meat floated...

...in a kind of stained water one would not accuse of qualifying as soup.
‘I guarantee I won’t enjoy my stay with you,’ said Bannon.
'Aaand...water,’ said the birdman, placing a plastic bottle next to the bowl.
‘No chance of some alcohol and drugs to help me properly...

...appreciate that?’
‘No, but we have other treats,’ said the birdman, ‘That’s a nasty black boo-boo you have, by the way.’
The birdman pulled a phone from his pocket so he could take a picture of the atramentous oval of dying flesh dominating most of the top right...

...of Steve’s diaphragm. Having taken a photo, he waved at the bowl and left.

The iron door opened, and there he stood. Steve would know anywhere that willowy frame, that tremulous baby voice, the infirm goggle of those eyes.
‘Jared,’ he said, ‘We meet again.’

Bending over with his back to room, Kushner dragged in a heavy case from the passageway. When he reached the center of the dungeon, he flicked the catches and the lid sprang up. Inside was a torture kit so dastardly Steve made himself look away. Screwing up his...

...eyes, he swallowed down his rage and fear. Perhaps he could bludgeon his way through milky robot Jared, past the burly Euroguards, and out through Monkey Forest to freedom.
‘Steve. It’s not been long enough since I saw you,’ said Jared, every word, as usual, sounding...

...like a nervous plea for his own nuts to drop.
‘Listen…Jared…I’m sorry I called you a Jew.’
‘I AM Jewish, Bannon!’ Jared screeched, kicking the torture trunk in a tantrum, ‘Every single word out of your drunken mouth, you dig yourself deeper. You are one of those...

...people, Stephen, who will not be helped in this lifetime. Seven months…SEVEN MONTHS I kept my mouth shut and nodded in the corner while you…YOU…belittled me, degraded me, subjected me to humiliation in front of the generals, in front of my wife, in front of all the...

...coffee boys!! Jared has no pubes, you said. Cockless Kushner, you called me! Somebody, put Jared's balls on the side of a milk carton!…Remember that?!’
‘Classic,’ said Steve, chuckling, ‘I’d forgotten some of those.’

‘Well, now it’s my turn!’ Jared cried, ‘I’ll make you regret every miserable moment we worked together.’

- END OF PART TEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
11 – KUSH IT TO THE LIMIT

Kushner shoved shut the iron door. Features dead-alive in the weak electric light, he pulled an item from the torture box. Jared had an eerie, unreal way of moving, like a stop-motion film reflected in glass. A glazed clay...

...face, in the moments he was still, gave the strong impression of a box fresh surgeon’s training dummy. The most unsettling thing of all, though, were those sparkling stock-still eyes like a ghost was dying in the corpse of another man.

‘No!’ screamed Steve, shock and terror dissolving his mind, ‘Anything but THAT!’
‘Yes,’ said Jared, ‘The games begin!’
Cutting the Trump Steak into pieces, Jared began to whistle a song. When he was done, there were eight or nine chunky mouthfuls. Spearing the first...

...with a fork, he sat next to his victim.
‘Please,’ begged Steve, ‘I’ll do anything you ask! Just break my fingers instead. Anything.’
Jared pushed the meat under Steve’s nose, causing the latter to gag and twist away.
‘Why were you trying to kidnap...

...POTUS?!’ he demanded, ‘Who are you working for?’
The room fell dark a breath or two before the bulb fizzed back on. Steve writhed away from the steak, but Jared followed him up the bench to the corner, where he was trapped.
‘We were going to take him...

...to the 1950s for magic crystals to cast a spell on the Supreme Court,’ said Steve, the dripping morsel of meat slipping in his mouth on the final word.
‘Preposterous story!’ Jared exclaimed, falling weirdly still a very brief instant, ‘You don’t want to lie to me, Bannon.

I have a whole trunk of Trump-branded products right here.’
‘Soooo…greasy….and….BLLAANNNND!’ wept Steve, writhing on the concrete with his hands on his throat.
‘Perhaps you’d like a nice DRINK to wash that down!’ crowed Jared, a bottle of Trump Vodka in his hand.
‘NOOOOOOO!’

Jared filled a shot glass and threw himself on Steve’s defenseless body. Shins across the older man’s chest, he pinched his mouth open. As he dumped the clear liquid, Steve wailed in distress.
‘How do you like THAT?’ said Jared, ‘I’d make you drink...

...the cologne too, but it’s the same.’
‘Stop! I’m telling the truth!’
‘How can…you…possibly…be………….’
Like a man too tired to swim, Jared stopped moving and sank to his knees. When he froze it was not abrupt, although the effect was one of total finality. Steve, on all...

...fours, waved a hand in front of those fraught marble eyes. The iron door opened. It was the European guard.
‘So Mr. Kushner’s batteries have expired again,’ he observed, fishing more from his cargo shorts. He flipped open a hatch in the back of Jared’s neck, took out the...

...old cells, and replaced them.
‘….telling the truth?!’ Jared went on, the guard on his way out, ‘Time travel?! Magic crystals?! The Supreme Court?! None of those things even exist! Give me your phone.'

Steve tossed his cell phone to the younger man, who began to scroll through the contacts list. Disappointed to see no one but mutual acquaintances, Jared threw it straight back.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’ve been calling Miller a lot,’ Jared whimpered, his...

...voice girlish and breaking, ‘You NEVER used to call me. What on earth do you want with that toilet ELF?’
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ swore Steve.
‘I’m bringing out the big guns,’ hissed Jared, ‘And this is because you made it personal. All those rumors you spread to the...

...press about us…All the lies you told the other White House staff…’
‘The big guns?’ Steve shuddered.
‘Yes,’ said Jared, ‘I’m going to read you the entirety of Crippled America, and make you play Trump: The Game for an hour.’

‘Don’t…I’ll do anything, Jared…I’m sorry…I’m sorry I spread gossip to everyone,’ Steve blubbered, some of the blur of his West Wing days snapping into regrettable focus, ‘I’m sorry I told them all you were the ghost of a Victorian male prostitute that needed to be touched...

...to get back home. I’m sorry I said Ivanka peed on her father during executive time in the sordid, incestuous game I so gleefully referred to as ‘daughterboarding’. I’m sorry, Jared…I’m…’

Jared had stopped moving. Perhaps the guard had replaced his batteries with duds. Moving within an inch of the younger man’s face, Steve could hear breathing fainter than wind effects from a neighbor’s TV. As quick as he could, Steve snatched another Trump Steak from...

...the trunk and got next to the iron door. When the guard came in, he used it like a chloroform rag to fell the big man, winced as his mechanical liver shifted and crushed some other organs, and dashed into the long, narrow, dark, wet passageway. To his left was a short run...

...to the outside world.
Steve grinned, his joy twofold. Number one, there was the unbounded, ecstatic animal pleasure of escaping to freedom. And then there was the fact that he’d managed, for the first time, to spent more...

...than five minutes in Jared’s presence without having to lend him money.

- END OF PART ELEVEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
12 – UNWELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

Steve pounded concrete, a hot rectangle of sunlight ahead. Blood pumping, ears thumping, head like a box of rats, he popped off the steps into the jungle’s humid embrace. Both left and right, the coast was clear, yet he...

...stalked ahead between the trees to avoid guards patrolling the building. Glancing back, Steve saw he’d been held in a squat cloud-colored ziggurat, a sinister structure seeming to repel the natural vitality of everything around it. The soil close to it was bare of even the...

...tiniest green shoot, not a scrap of the ubiquitous jungle moss on its roof and walls. In the middle of teeming life, here was a dead zone.
It was cooler in between the trees, which bunched thicker the further he went. Monkeys and birds called out but...

...stayed hidden. Slow as bubbles in honey, giant snails rode up kapok bark as water beads spilled in the opposite direction. Steve noticed he was hungry and began to eye all the fruit and little creatures around him, none of them familiar at all.

‘Ugh,’ he said to himself, ‘It’s all fuckin’ foreign food.’
Pulling his shirttails up into a bindle, he grabbed whatever looked edible and dumped it in. Soon enough he had roughly a kilo of weird jungle shit to munch on, some of which didn’t look nasty. He looked for somewhere...

...to eat. It was tiring to stand, and eating on his back gave him indigestion. His liver pulsed, the flesh around it prickling hot. He felt like something inside had come loose while he ran.
There was nowhere to sit, neither a rock nor a stump.

There was nothing to rig anything together from, either. Looking hungrily at the little red fruits, he wished he had a partner with the requisite carpentry skills to create a surface from which to dine. What he needed was….......a berries’ table genius.

Still standing, he ravenously began to eat: berries, nuts, mushrooms, all of it. Then he staggered sweating towards a stream, but was unable to see straight through the million-colored neon jungle freakout caused by the copious amount of psychotropic fungus he had just ingested.

His thoughts in overdrive, he sat cross-legged by a stream until he attained the state of zen he savored so in times of stress. His mind was relaxed to a clear and astral serenity from picturing paradise, a land without immigrants.
As he meditated, she appeared, his hero, his...

...mentor, his muse: Leni Riefenstahl.
‘Steeeve,’ said, floating white above tropical water, ‘Du must look ahead, Steve.’
Choking on the brutal sugar of unrequited love, he reached out for the hem of his dead hero, but she hung an inch away from his fingers.

‘Leni…what does that mean?’ said Steve.
‘Look ahead of you Steve, and do what needs to be done.’
‘Leni, I’m pretty fucking high so can you be specific?’
‘Ze guard…from ze plaaace…ist svimming across ze river with a big knife,’ said Leni. Her form scattered in the...

...cloudless jungle sky.
Steve was sitting at a machine gun emplacement. Brushing the moss from some hidden apparatus in front of him, he saw it was a turret. Coming across the river, fast and straight for him, was the Euroguard from the ziggurat, a machete clamped in his...

...white teeth.
Leaping onto the bank, he pulled a pistol from under his hat.
‘The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a really bad guy with a jungle machine gun,’ Steve growled, depressing the turret trigger.

Nothing happened because it was old and broken, and the guard smashed into him full force, tackling him to the ground. The sky pumping like a speaker in the background, the burly European swung the machete through a pool of pulsing fractals. In that one...

...instant, that one crucial moment, Steve knew he wanted to live, and that desire to endure became a raging roiling fury. With every ounce of strength in his possession, he rolled his weight to the side, causing both men to fall in opposite directions onto a layer of...

...dead leaves, which in both locations collapsed to reveal a deep, freshly dug pit.
A sharp pain flew up Steve’s femur like a bullet in his bone marrow. When he touched his belly, it was sticky with blood. In the light from the oval blue patch of sky above, he could see the...

...worm-ridden walls of the trap he had fallen into. Roots poked out here and there. Under him was smooth earth. He was sure his leg was broken. He could barely move.
‘Help!’ cried the guard in the other pit, ‘I’m impaled on spikes!’

‘Mine doesn’t have any spikes!’ Steve shouted back.
There followed a moment of silence.
‘None?! That’s not fair!’
‘No! None!’
‘Why,’ cried the guard, his voice tearing itself up, ‘Why would they put spikes in one but not the other?!’

‘I’d speculate that this one is still under construction, or that perhaps the two traps were dug by different tribes!’
‘This close together?!’ shouted the guard.
‘You’d have to ask them!’
Another silence. And then the guard spoke...

...again, this time his voice imploring, ingratiating, frail. Steve groped the soil, searching for a rope ladder, rock or other weapon. There was desperation in the guard’s voice, and now came sounds like something strong and wounded thrashing free.

‘I’ll…kill you…’ said the guard, ‘If you don’t…come get me out of here.’
A grenade. There was an old grenade embedded in the earth. Steve prised it free, remembering his service in the military, during the course of which he had watched many movies that showed people...

...throwing grenades. He waited and, when the other man moved again, made a judgment of the distance.
He pulled the pin, waited, and tossed the grenade into the azure above. It bounced once, twice, fell into the other man’s pit and exploded with a dull bang and a splatter...

...as flesh, blood and assorted viscera stained red the wood spikes, lacquered the earth, and whirled into the air like wet ribbons from a rabid bitch dog’s hair.
Steve breathed a sigh and fell into a deep sleep, during which he pissed and shit himself. When...

...he awoke, a friendly brown face was peering down at him over the edge of the pit.
‘Welcome to Nambia!’

- END OF PART TWELVE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
13 – SWEATSHOP BARBIE

Steve was hauled from the pit by five men with a rope, leg in pain.
‘Where you from?’ asked the head Nambian.
‘America,’ said Steve, ‘I need to get back.’
‘Then you earn ticket. Come. We take you to Ms. Ivanka’s workshop.’

As they trekked, the Nambians sang in their native tongue. They moved slowly in order to accommodate Steve’s limp.
‘You said Ivanka…’ his voice trailed off.
‘She American too,’ said the head Nambian, ‘Why you putting mud on your face?’
‘I have acquaintances here, and I feel...

...like…minding my own business.’
Steve was led to a building with corrugated iron sheets fixed to the outside. There was a smaller adjoining construction from which dark blue water was pumped onto the sodden ground. Inside it was hot and humming with machines. Women sat...

...on backless benches sewing sections of clothing together.
Just then a blonde woman entered, trailed by a Secret Service agent dragging a massive piece of rolling luggage. Industry reflected in the black ice of her baby eyes, she moved with the vanilla plastic glide of a...

...truly hollow businesswoman. A mosquito lit upon her forearm and began to suck her blood. Its IQ dropped, it forgot how to fly and it fell off, eyes crossed.
Out came the foreman, all bully eyes and maw wide as a well.

‘So,’ said Ivanka, ‘This is where they make the coats. I hope you’re paying them in bitcoin like I asked.’
‘Don’t worry, Ms. Ivanka,’ said the foreman, ‘It’s all as you specified.’
She put out a hand and the agent uncapped a water for her. Taking a sip from the bottle, she...

...exhaled, poured its remaining contents on the workshop floor, and tossed it out the front. Once more extending her hand, she received another bottle, took one gulp and did the same thing.
‘Yah, let’s take a look at the place,’ said Ivanka, ‘Like, what’s happening now?’

‘It’s lunchtime in 3…2…1,’ said the forearm, whereupon two black-clad men jostled out of a back room. Quick as squirrels, they scampered between the rows of women, injecting each with a solution.
‘How efficient!’ cried Ivanka, clapping her...

...hands, ‘Lunch is an injection! No wonder everyone here is so slim. Water!’
The agent gave her a bottle, she sipped, she threw. Steve was watching from behind a bank of lockers off to the side, the five Nambians behind him, half his face visible in the steam from a water...

...bucket.
‘This is what it’s all about…er, foreign person. Giving women opportunities…’ Ivanka continued, gazing at an elderly lady fallen from her perch and lying still on the floor. Ivanka gestured to the new empty space on the bench, ‘See! An opportunity created. That’s...

...a job opening right there.’
Head bright and empty as a bubble in firelight, Ivanka watched the black-clad men carry the unconscious worker away and replace her with another from outside. One or two of the women looked up from their work at the beaming, blonde, blank-eyed lady.

She was as a chemically stunned lab hamster with a blood-red mouth like a smashed strawberry. Her phone rang, and she tapped the screen.
‘Yah! This is she,’ Ivanka covered the mic with her hand and made a face at the foreman…
‘Who is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s some journalist. How do they keep finding me?’ she said, then, removing her hand: ‘Yah, what? Where did you hear that? We have the best labor practices in the world. Tremendous. On any given day, 75% of our employees go home alive, 55% paid, and 15% weeping...

...from neither relief nor trauma. The Associated Press said we’ve done more than any other employer in the region to raise awareness of the importance of worker rights through our e…egreeee…I can’t remember the word…our ‘egregious’ example, I think it was. Quite...

...something, huh?! Yah, put it all in the article. Bye.’
She hung up and tossed the phone out the door. When she stuck out her hand, the agent handed her another one.
As she looked at her watch, the Nambians who’d brought Steve with them pushed him out from behind the...

...lockers. He stood a few feet from Ivanka, turning his head to avoid being recognized.
‘Who are you?’
‘New worker,’ said Steve.
‘OK, well, we’ll get you a stool and a wet rag to drink from,’ Ivanka smiled sweetly, ‘I don’t think you’ll quite get on the benches. Ewww, you’re...

...bleeding.’
‘I need to clean up. I shit my-’ Steve began, but was poked to a low seat, where he sat leaking blood before a table of unattached jacket sections. Sucking pathetically from his rag to stay hydrated, he began copying the assembly method of the young woman to...

...his right. Ivanka’s phone rang.
‘Yah…Who’s this? Daddy!’ she squealed, ‘Yah, I’m flying back tonight on the private jet. Everything is great here at the workshop…yah…Fantastic shoes coming off the line…just simply fan-taaastic, really egregious! I’m gonna dump my...

...bags here, visit four other operations, and pop back home with Jared. Yah, he was torturing someone again, silly boy. Mwah. Bye bye. Ciao!’
A crunchy slap as the phone hit concrete. The agent gave her another, and they disappeared into the white light of the day. The...

...foreman dragged Ivanka’s gigantic roller suitcase into the back room, and the five Nambians Steve had arrived with tiptoed out from behind the lockers.
‘Bye guys,’ said Steve, sadly, ‘Teach me the words to that song some day.’

Hours passed in the dank oppressive heat of...

...the workshop. It was like being in a sick dude’s armpit in the desert. Jabbing himself over and over with a needle, Steve swore under his breath. Blood was dripping down his leg now, a constant crimson rivulet that spread about his feet. It got dark and the two black-clad...

...men went home, but the sweatshop didn’t close. When the foreman took a whizz in the bushes by the front door, Steve limped out too and smashed the back of his head with a rock, sending him down like a shot ape. Screaming, the workers poured out in the opposite direction...

...as he dragged the guy’s body back to the sweatshop floor.
‘Poor dumb goober,’ said Steve, depositing him behind the lockers. Next he rolled Ivanka’s wheelie trunk from the back room and climbed in. It was full of dozens of phone cases that dug in his ass and legs, but was...

...well ventilated and would do for the trip home. Steve rubbed his leg, which wasn’t broken after all, just badly bruised. Ivanka and the agent returned.
‘Where is everyone?’ she said, ‘This air has been breathed too much. Stop breathing.’

The agent held his breath, grabbed the roller suitcase and gave it a tug.
‘This case seems - ’
‘I said NO breathing,’ Ivanka cut him off, ‘Hold it until we get back to the plane.’

The case tottered heavy on bumpy ground, slammed up unseen steps, levitated in the grip of two or three straining Secret Service, and hit the luggage hold of the plane with a thud. Clenching his teeth in the deafening roar of engines close enough to make his nipples...

...hard, Steve waited until they were in the air. Then he climbed from the luggage and stretched out between piles of ivory and stuffed tiger heads.
Rubbing his bare shins, he noticed soreness, a new pain. Pieces of shattered plastic from Ivanka’s phone cases...

...were embedded in his flesh. A whistling cold wind of pure high altitude sky rushing in through a gap in the plane’s fuselage seem to make it hurt more, so he rolled away where it was warmer. Due to a bad case of phone spurs, he had had to dodge the draft.

Back in the...

...US, Steve waited until the plane was unloaded, then rolled out on the runway. It was night, and luckily no one saw him. Running in a crouch, he headed for the nearest bush, from which watched the pilot lock the hold. Miraculously, his phone was still in his pocket and...

...charged. He called Miller.
‘Miller! Where are you?’
‘I’m at hooome, Baaanon,’ he said, ‘I got fired after you were thrown out.’
‘How we gonna get to Trump now?’ asked Steve, ‘What about the crystals? I don’t know who to…’

There followed a brief silence, then the two friends spoke in unison.
‘ROGER STONE!’

- END OF PART THIRTEEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
14 – BROMANCING THE STONE

Stone’s condo door opened, and there was Roger in a white powder puff like a talc-blasted tailor shop rat. Ambient techno music throbbing into the hallway, he grabbed Miller and Steve by the collars.

‘Evening, squirrels. I hope you came to get nuts.’
‘Actually, Roooger,’ said Miller, ‘We have businesss.’
‘How charmingly dull of you,’ Stone yawned, yanking them inside, ‘And QUITE what I expected.’
Washed quiet vibrant with lava lamp and glow stick light, Stone’s condo was...

...somewhere between a cocaine factory and the back room of an expensive nightclub. Framed Nixon and porn posters hung on the walls. Shimmying a bent lane through a layer of unconscious youngsters, Stone led them to his den for martinis and a private chinwag. Once seated, he...

...tossed his shirt and mimed at the friends to make themselves at home.
‘That’s a ton of coke,’ said Steve, indicating a pile on the walnut table in the middle of the rug.
‘I call it Mt. Scarface,’ said Stone, jamming his beak in so hard the thing puffed smoke, ‘No man...

...has scaled her yet!’
Steve whipped a bottle of whiskey from a drinks bar off to the side, opened it with his teeth, and flopped beside Miller, who was chomping Pacman-quick through random pills.
‘We need in the White House,’ said Miller.

‘Tie me up and ask me nice. Roger likes his games,’ said Stone.
‘Sorry?’ Steve did a double take, bleeding through his booze-soaked shirts.
‘Never answer questions unless you’re tied to a chair,’ Stone explained, the diagonal slug of a kinky smile on his...

...chops, ‘Plausible deniability, darlings.’
Steve slammed the bottle on the carpet and Miller drained his cocktail. With belts from the closet, they fastened Stone’s wrists to the armrests and his torso to the back of the spinning chair. He looked like a topless Easter...

...Island statue at an office-themed bondage party.
‘So…how do we get in?’ Steve asked.
When he replied, Stone sounded very different.
‘The answer is close by you, slapdick,’ said this new voice, rasping, ghostly, strained and hollow. Stone slumped towards them like he had...

...passed out, spinning a half-circle in his seat. It was the Nixon tattoo on his back speaking.
‘This is like Total Recall,’ said Miller, ‘What dooo you meeean, Mr. Nixon?’
‘I mean that Bannon over there should check his belt. They never took back Huckabee Sanders’ keys when...

...when they threw him out the White House.’
‘Nixon’s right!’ said Steve, feeling round his waist, ‘But how do we get past Secret Service?’
Stone raised his head, roused from a seemingly hypnotized state by this query. The Nixon tattoo was obscured from sight.

‘Slap Uncle Roger a couple times…’ said Stone, ‘…and he might tell you about a secret passage.’
Bannon stepped up, raising a balled fist like a chewed pastrami lump. Anger flooding him from the gut out, he brought it down hard.

‘Nice shot, champ,’ said Stone, face red on one side, ‘If you’re going to do it like that I think I’ll come with.’
‘Count me in too,’ the voice of the tattoo rasped, ‘Nixon loves a good break-in!’

It was the long-rotten dead of night. Something...

...had perished in the river, and it stank. Miller, Steve and Stone kneeled at some railing, balaclavas rolled up round the eyebrows. Miller’s balaclava was the hood portion of a car cover with a hole in it. Steve drained a whiskey bottle, Stone beaked a line...

...of gak off his gym card, and Miller hurled back one big sweaty fistful of dank RX fun pellets from a Craiglist quack. The three covered their faces.
‘Tunnel’s this way,’ said Stone.

- END OF PART FOURTEEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
15 – KELLYANNE JOINS THE GANG

Roger Stone had a carjack in his backpack. Eyes wild from cocaine, he pried up a manhole cover. Not far off, drunken songs spilled from a bar with nowhere to go. A taxi rolled by spraying puddle water, back seat empty...

...and lights down low. A boat cut through the stars on the surface of the river, shattering a neighborhood of the galaxy.
The three men dropped into the sewer and began wading through piss, shit, vomit and tampons, a detail entirely unnecessary to their story. There...

...were also some small animal carcasses, flushed condoms and bloody rags.
‘This is where I come to relax after visiting your house,’ Stone told Steve.
Having schlepped twenty minutes, they were under the North Portico, then the West Wing, of the White House.

Stone mounted a wall ladder and pushed at the bricks in the sewer ceiling. At first, one or two fell away, then half the floor of the bathroom above, including an entire toilet, which plunged to the piss river with a crash. The group froze, waiting nervously for someone...

...to show up and arrest them.
Climbing clear of the ruthless funk of the sewer, the three buzzed amigos pushed belly up onto the floor outside the JFK Conference Room. Dangling off Steve's belt, Huckabee Sanders’ keys dripped on the carpet.

Stone wriggled ahead, followed by Steve, then Miller. The hallway, with its scant illumination, seemed neither real nor imaginary, the faces of several portraits neutral in semi-darkness. This hidden place, peculiar limbo, buried world of many doors echoed with the...

...squelch of crawling knees and elbows.
‘Guys,’ gasped Stone, ‘I can’t…go on.’
‘Me either,’ said Steve, ‘I’m fuckin’ rinsed from crawling like this.’
‘I’m going to naaap now,’ said Miller, ‘No one told me we would be crawling around on the floooor.’

‘You realize what’s happening?’ said Steve, ‘All our drugs have worn off at the same time. Miller! Put more pills down your mouth hole! Then…you might be strong enough to get me my crack pipe.’
Head to foot in the dim hush of the basement, the three men...

...groaned, pulling up their balaclavas.
‘I’ll try…’ said Miller, teasing a damp baggie from his pocket…then…slowly…dumping…the drugs on…the wet carpet…and…like a sideways broke-legged llama chewing shit up off the floor…. ‘Nomp.’

‘Miller! Now get me my pipe…It’s in my shorts,’ said Steve, his voice fading, ‘Hurry! I’m nearly sober.’
Miller crawled up a way. Able to function again, he extracted Steve’s loaded pipe and butane lighter. The former he slipped between Steve’s colorless cardboard-thin...

...lips. When the flame hit the rock, Steve puffed feeble as fish in a tree.
‘So…weak…Can hardly…smoke.’
‘Hurry!’ said Stone, ‘There’s coke in my wallet.’
‘I’m coming!’ said Steve, a newfound vigor in his hairy rose-hued nips, ‘Hang in there, Roger! We’ll leave no man behind.’

An unwieldy army crawl took Steve to Stone’s side, where he dug out the GOP hatchet man’s wet wallet, slid out a pack of blow and helped him do a couple of bumps.
The three soldiers, recovered, continued their quest.

‘What’s this fucking room?’ said Steve, ‘Why’s the door a different color than the rest?’
‘Don’t fuck around,’ said Miller, ‘We’re here for POTUS.’
‘Nixon wants to take a look!’ chimed in Stone’s tattoo, ‘Could be something rad in there.’

‘Three to one,’ said Stone, ‘Toss the keys, fat boy.’
Stone opened the door, which swung in with a creak like grandma when you pretend to unplug her life support. Red light flooded weakly the glass doors of jar-filled cabinets. When Stone and Steve pressed their faces up...

...close, they saw preserved brains, hands and hearts. There lay, on a metal operating table six feet from the door, a gray haggard monstrosity, a neglected and forgotten wreck of a being, a poor, trapped hybrid creature from some somber alcove of the collective human nightmare.

‘On myyy,’ said Miller, ‘The Area 51 alien. It’s exquisite.’
Entranced, Miller approached the table. The back of his hand on the alien’s smooth face, he smiled with genuine softhearted emotion. At long last, thought he, I have encountered a creature with a forehead...

...more expansive than my own.
‘What? What’s going on here? Who ARE you?’ the alien demanded, sitting bolt upright and shining the camera light on its phone about.
‘Kellyanne?’ said Steve, ‘Is that you?’

‘Please tell me that’s not Grabby Bannon,’ said Kellyanne, ‘You’ve ruined my beauty sleep. I’m calling security.’
‘Wait!’ said Nixon, from under Stone’s shirt, ‘How would you feel about joining us on a magical trip back in time? We’re off to the fifties, baby, where we’ll...

...be young and sexy once more. No beauty sleep necessary, Mrs.’
‘The fifties?’ she repeated, ‘I’m in! It’s gonna be sweet to be middle-aged again!’

- END OF PART FIFTEEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
16 – FIST OF THE WHITE POTUS

A strategy huddle round the corner from the President’s Bedroom. Four parties whispering. Stone jabbering fast. Miller nodding more than talking. Steve trying to smell Kellyane’s hair. Kellyanne nudging him away.

The four friends needed a plan. They needed something smart. Savvy. Ingenious. Foolproof.
‘So,’ said Steve, ‘It’s settled. We kick the shit out of the Secret Service guy, tell Trump he’s dreaming, and take him to the fifties.’

Miller peeked around the wall. A single Secret Service agent guarded the bedroom door, hands clasped over his belt buckle. Three more heads appeared above Miller’s.
‘There’s only one,’ whispered Stone, ‘We can take him.’
The group dashed into plain sight and charged the...

...the agent, who drew his firearm and shot Stone in the head. The remaining three tackled the big man, piling on his prone form. Miller licked his face and he died.
‘How did you…?’ said Steve.
‘Oh, I’m poisonous,’ said Miller.

Stone stood, rubbing the hole in his temple. Pissing blood in a trail behind him, he staggered, shaking a hurled handful of stars from his vision, to where the others crouched over the dead agent.
‘How did you…?’ said Steve.
‘I’m fine,’ said Stone, ‘I have no prefrontal cortex.’

Steve took back the keys and searched among them. He tried one labeled SLEEPYLAND, and the presidential bedroom door swung open. They all tiptoed to the bed, whereupon Trump awoke and punched Steve in the face.
‘Sharks!’

‘Yeah, sharks,’ said Kellyanne, ‘Listen, Donald…This is a dream and you’ll be eaten by sea monsters if you don’t do as we say.’
‘You’re fake news.’
‘It’s true,’ said Stone, ‘Listen to your old friend Roger.’
‘What do I have to do?’ Trump asked, wringing his little hands.

‘Car. Fifties. Crystals. Supreme Court,’ said Miller, ‘But for now…just come with usss.’
Now they were five (plus Nixon). They led Trump to the basement. At first he had to be coaxed into the sewer, but they explained that dream germs don’t make you ill. Shoving a balaclava...

...on the puppet president’s head, they hailed a cab and zipped through the sparkling city night to Miller’s condo and the stolen Caprice.
It was a squash to fit in the car. Then they were off up the freeway towards the portal site.
‘Am I still dreaming?’ Trump enquired...

...through Steve’s crack smoke.
‘There has been a continuity of events that suggests you are,’ said Stone.
‘Lean forward, Roger. I can’t breathe,’ mumbled the Nixon tattoo.

Miller cracked the brake, threw a druggy right hook into the steering wheel, and slipped the Chevy between dark fields. Trump’s face morphed in a look of dread, then resolved to defiance, chin thrust out below a down-curved bombastic toad grin.

‘Buckle up!’ cried Miller, slamming the vehicle into the glittering whirlpool of warping star-spackled sky that was the portal at night, ‘It’s time to make America great again!’
‘Wish I’d lost the election,’ said Trump, punching Steve.

- END OF PART SIXTEEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
17 – JEFF SESSIONS LOSES HIS CEREAL BOX HOUSE IN A BOXING BET AND CAN’T RECALL WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MAGIC CRYSTALS

‘Wow!’ said Trump, ‘The 1950s haven’t changed a bit!’

Miller cruised the Chevy to the city center, his ample forehead sweating from the onerous physical strain of time travel.
Second floor window music flowed into the voices of laughing children, a burbling hot mosaic of June sound that transported Trump’s ‘mind’ back...

...to a youth spent lying to everyone. Like a great bedazzled orange, he gazed out as they passed a butcher kneeling at a hydrant, feeding an old mutt meat. Girls crossed the street in long skirts with keen shy boys. Empty glass cola bottles baked in a grocery shop window.

‘Hey!’ cried Kellyanne, catching herself in the rearview, ‘I’m still old as fuck.’
‘That’s not how time travel works,’ Nixon chortled, ‘How’s it feel getting lied to, bitch?’
Miller guided the Chevy up the lane to Sessions’ house, jammed it on the attorney’s well-tended...

...lawn, and fell from the driver’s seat onto his face. Stone leapt out, coke-meter still on high max, and ripped the younger man to his feet with a sharp pull.
Steve, Kellyanne and Trump climbed out into the retro fifties heat, which wasn’t so hot at all, the third of these...

...characters pinching himself over and over between the buttons of his pajama shirt.
When Steve tapped the front door of Sessions’ cereal box house, though, a stubbled stranger appeared. Toothpick hanging from a face like a child’s sketch on a beaten asscheek, he gave Steve...

...the once-over, one scumbag to another.
‘What do you want?’ he demanded, ‘Who’s the fuckin’ orange guy and why you stopped on the grass there?’

‘We came to see Mr. Sessions,’ said Stone, oozing into the conversation from behind Steve, ‘He’s the crusty cornflake we’re after, cereal box man. You seen him?’
‘Yeah,’ the scumbag mumbled round his ’pick, ‘This used to be his place. I won it from him in a bet.’

‘A bet?’ Stone repeated.
‘Yeah, the old knucklehead was at the fights two days ago. Doubled down eight times in a row on white boxers versus everyone else. Doubles down win or lose,’ said the toothpick scumbag, ‘And he lost the last two as well.’

‘Doubling down means you win,’ said Trump, transfixed by a butterfly feasting near the lawn.
‘You know where Sessions is now?’ Steve asked, grabbing his side in a flash of distress. Looking at his shirts, he saw dark, black-crimson blood seeping through the fabric.

‘Skid row,’ said the scumbag, ‘Sleeping in a smaller cardboard box now.’
The door clicked shut, leaving the five-strong crew out on the lawn. Flowers churned up by the wheels of the Chevy lay round their feet like starving fainted tropical birds.

‘Let’s bust in!’ said Stone’s Nixon tattoo, ‘Fuck this noise for a game of soldiers.’
A cop car sailed by. The gang looked at each other for a few moments. Blood was running down Steve’s leg, and from Stone’s head. Miller was horizontal on the turf, slow-action pills...

...switching the lights off in successive rooms of his brain.
‘Are you sure this is a dream?’ said Trump, ‘I don’t like it. I feel like I’m not the center of it. And it’s my dream. This isn’t YOUR dream, is it Roger?’

‘I say we bust in, guys!’ Nixon jowled, louder this time, ‘Kill ’em all. Anything that flies on anything that moves.’
Steve went over like a sack, joining Miller face-down in blades of grass. Stone and Kellyanne surveyed the scene, nodded at the car and began loading...

...the pair of them up, still comatose.
‘We better make ourselves scarce here,’ said Stone, pointing at the house, ‘That witless fuck is probably in there calling the cops or loading up his shotgun. We’ve attracted enough attention already.’

A thick strand of saliva ran from Miller’s mouth onto the dashboard of the car and Steve bled all over the back. When everyone was seated and ready to go, Stone fired up the engine. But the moment he dug his Italian heel on the pedal, toothpick man returned.

Firing with a weak pistol into the side of the car, he clipped the gas tank and one back tire. The punctured wheel going flat as they hobbled towards town, Kellyanne peered over the headrest through the rear window at the cereal box house receding...

...in the distance.

- END OF PART SEVENTEEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
18 – BOX & FRIENDS

‘Kiss my nuts like you loved them since high school,’ bellowed Roger Stone, swerving off the main grid and plowing the car through bushes.
‘Pull over before we all die!’ Kellyanne screamed, ‘I’m a good driver.’

‘You’re a WOMAN,’ said Stone, ‘Miller, wake up and tell us where the little law pixie Sessions – ‘
‘The bridge,’ Miller slurred, adding one more thing then blacking out: ‘That’s where he goes to think.’

The rubber flapped and slipped off, sparks flying where...

...metal hit the concrete of the underpass. The Chevy veered left and splashed into the river, gas tank empty. All five passengers bounced left, cursing.
Kellyanne, Stone and Trump climbed out of the dry side of the car while Miller and Steve, barely conscious, paddled...

...to the riverbank from the other. Dripping, they wandered up and under the bridge like bog monsters.
‘Roger, you dumb gabone. You drowned our ride! Still, I guess it washed off the piss from the sewer,’ said Steve.
‘Piss,’ said Trump.

Blood fresh out of crack molecules and rage rising, Steve slugged Stone across the jaw. Eager to participate, Trump cracked Miller in the side of the head and, within moments, all five were rolling around in cool mud. A voice echoed under the bridge.

‘I do declare,’ said Sessions, ‘This is quite the ruckus he-ya. And just look at you all too, comporting yourselves like veritable swamp monsters.’
Just Sessions’ head was visible through the flaps at the front of the box where he now lived but, pulling himself up to his full...

...height, which was the same as his height before such efforts, he materialized from inside the cardboard abode. The underside of the bridge cried cool tears that pimpled the glassy surface of the waterway.
‘I’m wearing my PJs,’ stated Trump, ‘Obama had worse PJs than me. Sad!’

‘Those aren’t PJs,’ said Kellyanne, ‘That’s a plush tuxedo from the finest tailor.’
‘Yeah,’ said Trump, ‘It’s a tuxedo. I didn’t say it wasn’t.’
Suddenly they all looked up, attention drawn by a doleful, desolate whimper. Quivering on the bridge’s brick...

...underside, it threw timid echoes, stricken like a lost city bear cub but muffled by cold moss. It was Sessions, shoulders and ears drooping in the damp tenebrous air, crying. The sound was sorry enough to move anyone with a heart.

‘What a cuck!’ scoffed Steve, ‘Crying like a fucking leftist elite!’
‘I…lost everything,’ said Sessions, ‘My house. My wife. She’s gone.
‘The house!’ said Miller, ‘Did you at leeeast get the crystals out before that lower class janitor type moved in?’

‘I do not recall,’ said Sessions, shoulders shaking as he wept.
‘Sue that hater,’ said Trump, ‘Tell him he never won the bet. Strong arm into vacating. Kellyanne.’
‘I’ll tell him, sure,’ said Kellyanne, ‘We could even tell him he’s not actually him, and he lives somewhere else.’

‘Tell him he sold us the house,’ said Trump, ‘And we’ll pay him later. Promise so it looks real.’
‘Nixon votes to break in,’ said Stone’s tattoo, ‘No one ever rumbles a break-in.’
‘I say we ask what he wants then beat him to death,’ said Stone.

‘The art of the deal!’ said Trump, ‘Tremendous. Servants, box up the elf and throw it in the trunk. Why wait?’
‘Nah, the car’s fucked worse than last week’s sushi,’ said Stone, ‘Gotta walk this one, I'm afraid. Which way is it, court pixie?’

Sessions stood with hands on hips bristling then, in a ticklish fugue state of some gleeful ilk, smiled and leaned toward the group. They were all ears.
‘I do not recall,’ he said.
‘Fuck this,’ said Steve, ‘Kellyanne, which way do we go?’

‘Errr…That way?’ Kellyanne replied, pointing up the river, but Steve began a march in the opposite direction.
‘Come on guys,’ he said, ‘It’s definitely THIS way. Let’s go.’
The gang, six now, wandered along the riverbank, Miller drooling and zombie-dosed, Stone and...

...Steve dizzy and bleeding, Sessions running to keep up, and Trump in a truly miserable burgerless sulk. Pouting, Kellyanne tugged Steve back by the shoulder.
‘I said the other way,’ she whined, ‘Why didn’t you listen?’

‘First rule of Conway,’ Steve replied, ‘I knew whatever you said would be total bullshit.’

- END OF PART EIGHTEEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
19 – JUST DOUGH IT

Back in town, the sweating MAGA six sat and straw-sipped some soda. Secretly raging in the sun, Steve slipped a hand in his shirts, pulled open a button ruck, and regarded, with vexatious and heavy torment upon his soul, the...

...spreading expanse of black flesh encompassing his operation scar.
‘Health in a pickle?’ said Sessions, leaning across the bench, ‘Why Steve, you seem to be turning dark.’
‘Don’t worry, Jeff,’ Steve replied, ‘Everything will be white again soon.'

Around the corner came two horses dragging a load of beer barrels. More emerged into view, feet clopping on tarmac. The great beasts multiplied, carts behind, in a river of sound and sweat. Kellyanne wrinkled her nose at the smell and covered her ears, irritated by this...

...castanet parade of hooves. Pulling out a make-up mirror, she sighed in greeting to her own reflection, masochistically riveted by its wrinkles and crow’s feet.

To comfort herself, she looked at Steve, all bloody fabric, six o’ clock shadow and chins. He seemed to be made entirely of vengeful dead skin, like some kind of dandruff Voltron modeling the entire contents of a charity shop. Kellyanne began to retouch her foundation, but was...

...blasted in the face by water from a hydrant.
‘Haha!’ Stone guffawed, ‘Even the city wants you to look bad.’
‘OK now,’ said Sessions, ‘If you folks have finished your soda beverages, we ought to make our way to my house. There’s a bookie we need to scare.’

____
‘WHAT?!’ roared the bookie scumbag, toothpick on his lower lip, ‘Get lost means stay lost.’
‘We need the hooouse back,’ said Miller.
‘Well you ain’t gettin’ it, you grody little drughead,’ snarled the bookie.

‘Listen,’ said Stone, ‘One more bet. You choose the game. If we win, we get the house. If you win, we’ll give you fifty thousand bucks and an East European woman.’
‘At last someone’s on the stick,’ the bookie smiled, ‘Pie eating contest. Tonight. Your best versus my boy Lunk.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Trump, ‘My doctor said no more desserts. But this is a dream. So it doesn’t matter. He also said I’m in excellent health. The best.’
‘Shut up, Donald!’ said everyone.

Couples milled under strings of lights linking the trees.

Hoops flung on pegs and flimsy toy instruments wheezed and hummed in cheap plastic cantillation. Miller and Steve smoked the last of Steve’s crack and hurled the pipe against a merry-go-round.
‘What gets you high at the fair?’ said Miller.

‘Let’s burn some things and see what the smoke does,’ said Steve, ‘How about this?’
He set fire to a stuffed bear with his butane lighter, and the substance buddies inhaled the fumes.
‘Nice chemical kick on it, but no naaaarcotic effect,’ said Miller.

‘I give it a D minus,’ proclaimed Steve, ‘Let’s eat the soap in the toilets.’
Over the other side of the fair, tables were being set up and fat guys lined up for the eating contest. Trump stood with them, pajamas flapping in the electric light. Stone, Kellyanne and Sessions...

...were waiting nearby. The bookie showed up with his son.
‘This is Lunk,’ said the bookie, his hand on the elbow of a cross-eyed free-range moron who was clearly insane. The man mountain smiled, teeth spread out like road signs.
‘Hi! I’m Lunk,’ said Lunk.

‘Well, fuck me til I hate you,’ said Stone, ‘Soon as we get back to twenty eighteen I’m looking this kid up to see who he kills.’
The long row of tables set up and pies steaming ready, twenty fat guys sat down, tucking napkins into their collars. Trump ended up next to Lunk.

A whistle blew and each contestant started shoving blueberry pie down from the plate. It was a twenty-minute deal, but half the players vomited a quarter of the way in.
At the halfway point there were eight guys left, including Trump and Lunk. Seemingly enjoying the freedom of...

...no health-related consequences, The Donald filled his throat and belly with heaping fistfuls of crust and hot fruit. It spilled down his PJs and onto the thin grass at his feet. Lunk went through his own pies at the same pace, most of his head purple with crumbs and filling.

As they entered the final two minutes, there were three greedy gobblers still going: Trump, Lunk and some guy who didn’t speak English and was only copying the locals. Then that guy dropped out and Lunk was half a pie ahead of The Donald as they hit the last thirty seconds.

In a desperate spurt, and vaguely aware somehow that it mattered, Trump crammed five or six livid fistfuls of hot berry between his lips to take the lead. As the whistle blew, though, it was even once more. The contest would come down to a sudden death single-pie pig-off.

The two men stared each other down. Lunk stared at Trump. Trump stared back at Lunk. The whistle met the referee’s lips, but just then Miller came staggering out of the bushes with his clothes aflame. Steve bombed after him straight into the tables, discharging...

...a fire extinguisher with each hand. Empty pie tins flocked in the air like UFOs.
‘Stay still!’ Steve shrieked, covering Miller with foam.
‘Steve!’ said Miller, ‘Your hair! It’s on fire.’
And it was. Miller grabbed one of the red steel cans and blasted the other man square...

...in his flaming nest.
‘Well teach my tits to type, Miller! These fire extinguishers get you high!’ Steve exclaimed.
‘I’m pretty high right now,’ agreed Miller, one of the burly pie eaters smashing him in the face. People were running in all directions and pointing as...

the cops showed up.
During the pandemonium Trump and Lunk finished their pies and no one saw who won.

- END OF PART NINETEEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
20 – GIULIANI: RUDY FOR ACTION

Back in 2018.
Rudy’s eyes flipped open like they were searchlights powered by the massive solar panel of his bald head. Gnawing a pinky ring, the nutty old coot looked sidelong at the lady in his bed.

‘Which cousin are you?’ he said.
‘I’m Dorothy,’ she answered, ‘Would you like breakfast?’
‘Egg and toast, toots. And don’t forget I like my coffee like I like my women…Made by a family member!’

As cousin Dorothy made breakfast, Rudy shuffled to the bathroom in his robe. Regarding his hairless pate and manic eyes, he grinned. Still got it there, Rudy, he thought, even after all these years!

‘Now,’ he sprayed the mirror, ‘I just gotta go get on TV and do a slow leak of a bunch of crimes before they come out anyway so we can preemptively dull everyone’s outrage…’

Rudy arrived at the White House carrying Trumpy Times, the tailored presidential newspaper...

...he pasted together from positive coverage of his boss. A mad jumble of deliberately chosen short words in different sizes, colors and fonts, it made for a simple read but Trump enjoyed it.
When he reached the President’s Bedroom, Rudy was greeted by commotion. Paramedics...

...carried a body bag out past FBI agents and a dozen Secret Service guys.
‘What’s up here?’ asked Rudy, ‘Where’s the president?’
‘He’s gone,’ said a man with a blue jacket and a thick face, ‘Vanished. Poof! All we got is a trail of pills and some wet carpet.’

‘You want this copy of Trumpy Times?’ said Rudy.
‘No. Mr. Giuliani, there’s someone downstairs I’d like you to speak to.’

Long, red and wet, it slithered over the surface of the Resolute desk. Saliva dried and disappeared in its wake. The sensual religious cotton of a soft...

...groan filled the Oval Office to its every corner, packing the hapless minds of the assembled interns with a trauma they’d strive to forget. Mike Pence put his tongue away and stretched his legs, savoring the station that had become his.

Chin quivering with gray joy, he squeezed his wife’s hand. In came Rudy, briefcase swinging, spectacles near bouncing off his nose in the mad vibe of the rest of his head.
‘Mother,’ said Pence, ‘Would you mind going to the corner so the men can speak?’

‘Yes, Father Mike, of course,’ Karen replied, and was gone.
‘Rudy…’ said Pence, ‘Did he say anything to you? Trump…Did he say he was going anywhere or, more importantly, whether he was coming back?’
‘No,’ Rudy sprayed half the place, ‘I’m as surprised as anyone. Look! I even...

...brought his Trumpy Times.’
‘These people were serious,’ Pence continued, ‘Masterminds. Real pros. There was a dead agent. One of our best. Rudy, I’m being sworn in today. We have to reassure the nation that things will continue to be just as awful as they were before.’

‘Mike,’ Rudy leaned in, bulging cue ball eyes a-frenzy, ‘You gotta get the kids out so we can have a real conversation. We need the room here.’
‘Everyone out!’ cried Pence, heady sense of new power tingling inside, ‘I’ll call you back when I…uuuhhh…golly this feels...

...first-class…when I need you again. Uhhhhhh.’
From his botched army Lego man hair to the soles of his plain shoes, the new president trembled. Immobilized in fervid relish of the vastly expanded scope of his authority, Pence chewed his tongue and exhaled.

He was experiencing that slight uninvited twinge, the leak and love tingle he and Mother called his ‘junior orgasm’.
The room was empty now, but for Rudy and Pence. Rudy’s voice was urgent, focused and clear.
‘Get the big man on the line,’ he said.

Pence slid a burner on the desk and tapped in a memorized number. The phone rang eight times, then someone answered, voice cold and distant as concrete in space.
‘Da?’
‘Vlad,’ Pence said, ‘Kentucky’s in the Bargain Bucket. We need instructions.’

‘Mike, Mike,’ said Putin, tone near-chiding, ‘You know what to do. The president is gone, yes? In such cases, the vice president is sworn in and we continue. Why you risk this call?’

‘Mr. Putin, if I may…’ Rudy interjected, ‘The political landscape has changed profoundly. For the next few days, the press, the people, all of them will be distracted. This is our chance to slide lots of greasy shit under the radar.’
‘I’ll call you back. Tomorrow. Do svidaniya.’

The line went dead.
‘How’s the family?’ said Pence.
‘Not bad,’ replied Rudy, ‘I’m about halfway through them.’

- END OF PART TWENTY -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
21 – GIULIANI: ALWAYS RUDY FOR ACTION

Alone in his condo, Rudy flipped through cousin-finding websites. The first was cuzzfeed dot com, which Rudy liked because it found available cousins in neat lists of seventeen.

Sales pitch:

‘Single? Lonely? Need someone you can RELATE to? Cuzzfeed is here 24/7 to meet your casual incest needs! Sign up today for $10/month & start searching! And remember:
It COUSIN’T matter what other people think!!’

This site threw up a few good candidates, but just to be sure Rudy logged into Cuzfinder too. Finally he looked at Cuznet, where he had loyalty points called Cuzzbucks built up. His head blue-bleached and glowing in the light of his laptop, Rudy let his mouth hang.

He simply could not believe what he was seeing. According to Cuznet, Betsy DeVos was his second cousin. Bolting off the couch, Rudy plucked the phone receiver from its cradle. The thing bobbled in his hand like a live fish, plastic housing clacking on his pinky ring.

‘Calm down, Rudy,’ he admonished himself, ‘This is a hot, dumb woman and we don’t want to blow it. You got this, Rudy. You’re the Mayor of James Bond Town.’
He hit the speed dial and waited. Someone picked up and said nothing.

‘Betsy? Is that Betsy? This is Rudy here. I got some news.’
‘BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH.’
‘Betsy? What’s that noise?’ said Rudy, ‘Can you hear me?’
‘BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH.’
‘Betsy,’ he shouted, ‘Just say hello or something without hitting any of tha keys.’

‘Hello,’ said DeVos, ‘Sorry, Rudy. Betsy was pressing the talk button. Can Rudy hear me?’
‘Phones don’t have a talk button,’ said Rudy, ‘What does it say on this button?’
‘4,’ said DeVos, ‘4 for talking.’

Rudy rolled his eyes. Man, she was a great woman. He only wished they were both younger. She was a thick-minded gal, thick as cake-fed booty. Someone that wallpaper-dumb could pound out five or more reliable Republican voters. It’d be a service to America!

‘Betsy, I found out we’re second cousins,’ Rudy explained, ‘I wanna take you out. To a restaurant.’
‘I don’t like French food,’ said DeVos.
‘It doesn’t have to be French food,’ Rudy replied, ‘We could go anywhere.’

‘Restaurant is a French word,’ said DeVos, ‘Betsy learned that in the teach place.’
‘Look, just come to my apartment,’ said Rudy, ‘I’ll make pasta.’
‘Betsy likes pasta. Tell me your road name and I’ll jump in the yacht.’
‘Betsy,’ groaned Rudy, ‘Come by car. I live on a street.’

‘A car has three wheels.’
‘For the love of – just get in a cab, OK?’
‘BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH.’
With that, Rudy hung up. Some things were way too much work. Back on the couch, he cracked open a bag of pretzels.

Shadows leaned hard away from the window like flattened black tombstones behind pics of Rudy and his wives. He’d pulled them all out again when the last one left, partly out of nostalgia…partly to kick himself while he was down. Trailing pretzel crumbs, he shuffled...

...to the bathroom mirror. The face he saw wasn’t the one that looked back in the mornings. It was old, weary, swamped in darkness like it loved to hide. Rudy went back for his laptop. Another crumb trail followed him to the bedroom. He looked at the empty pillow where so many...

...cousins had slept.
Setting aside the computer, he crouched under the desk to check there was milk in the dish. The bird was sleeping, broken wing on the upside like always. Bunching up a little straw beneath its head, Rudy checked the bird’s chest was moving. His fingers...

...were huge on its feathers.
‘I…’ he began but, instead of talking, gave a brief gentle grin that passed like weak lamplight over an abandoned pool.
On the bed, he scrolled his bookmarks for interesting history sites. Rudy loved to scan through old newspapers, recalling...

...different eras, presidents, music, his hair. It was then he got the second shock of the evening: a 64-year-old newpaper page bearing a black and white photograph of Donald Trump smothered in blueberry. When he zoomed in on the background, there lay Stephen...

...Miller in a mess of foam, smoke obscuring the sky above him. Further back two cops were frozen running a foot off the ground. On the far, far right was Steve Bannon, hair on fire. The webpage title for this story of pandemonium?

THE GREAT PIE RIOT OF ’54

‘Wish we could change places, Birdie. Nothing THIS confusing about no broken wing.’

- END OF PART TWENTY-ONE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
22 – JAIL TO THE CHIEF

Miller and Steve woke up feeling rough as the cactus-tongued kiss of a rabid street dog. Kellyanne, Stone, Trump and Sessions perched along a wall bench with fingers laced, staring at the floor. At the end of the long seat was a..

...grinning muscular psycho banged up for slaying a cattle herd with a pickax.
‘Bannon, you crown jackass,’ spat Stone, flexing his biceps, ‘You lost us the fucking house. No way are we getting a do-over off that micro-dick bookie. Plus we’re in jail and about to get fined.’

‘Not so loooud,’ moaned Miller into a speech bubble of dribble and vomit on the concrete.
‘You powder-ass baby,’ raged Stone, ‘Bannon, you too. The pair of you get up and help us figure out what to do. In case you forgot, we’re totally fucking brassic...

...here. Court Elf…you must have a couple of bucks.’
‘I do not recall…’ said Sessions, ‘…how much legal tender was inside my wallet.’
‘FUCK!’ cried Stone, along with his Nixon tattoo.

At this point, Stone’s manic violent yells echoed square on the cow-killer’s blasting cap. Dark whirling eyes like murderously stirred coffee, he sprung from the bench and put his hands to Steve, who was lying belly up with his shirts open. In one...

...gruesome motion, he interposed a paw between the sides of Steve’s healing operation scar, tearing out the stitches. He shoehorned the robot liver from the horizontal political operation’s diaphragm, and held it aloft in the murky-fine dust-static of the cell’s sad sunlight.

‘Shit!’ screamed Kellyanne, Sessions fainting onto her feet.
Chloroforming the cow-killer from behind, Miller steered him to the floor. Then he climbed on Steve and drooled in the gaping hole in his gut. Regaining consciousness, Steve sat upright.

‘What did you do?’ he said, ‘How did you…?’
‘It’s not a thing I uuuse often,’ Miller drawled, ‘Let’s just say that now…you’re one of me.’
‘My heart isn’t beating,’ said Steve.

‘Good. It worked,’ said Miller, face arctic and vacant, ‘Help me suicide this maaan here before the jailer comes back.’
‘Miller…’ Steve began, ‘Are you a serial murderer?’
‘Yes,’ said Miller, voice deeper than always, ‘I myself am, but not the other one…of…me.’

‘I wish Rudy was here,’ Trump sadly opined, ‘He’s the best. Really. He’d know what to do.’

Back in 2018!!
Pretzel bags a foil-bright sea around him, Rudy lounged the couch sleepy-eyed in front of the TV.

No cousins to spoon with, he felt alone, desolate, futile. But suddenly that changed. Some kind of shockwave struck him in the egg-smooth dome of the head, a laser distress call vibrating through the decades. Somehow he knew…The Donald was in a jam.

‘I’m coming!’ cried Rudy, tumbling onto the discarded pretzel bags hiding the carpet.
Throwing on the first clothes from the closet, he dashed to the elevator, jabbed the button and was in. Once outside, he rammed himself in the car and gunned it to the end of the street.

Turning right, he headed, on pure instinct, in the direction of the freeway. Fifteen minutes later, lost and waiting for a sign, he saw the theme park billboard of Miller as the snake man, blew left on a wild hunch and smashed the pedal. Fields blurring on either side of the...

...vehicle, he gawped ahead at a wide rotating ring of indistinct scenery clinging around a black starry mass at its core. The car lifted off the road, stretched ahead into the darkness like hot cheese, and was gone into the deep silent blackness of the Netherzone.

Moments passed and he was in the 1950s.
Rudy hit town and ground the brakes. A young man was passing his car so he leaned out the window. Remembering the pie riot, he spoke.
‘Which way to the jail, son?’

‘That way, sir,’ said the young man.
‘Thanks, kid,’ said Rudy, pinky ring winking as he purred into the gloaming.

Rudy stopped the car and climbed out. The place seemed solid. Looking round to make sure he wasn’t being...

...watched, he snuck up to the back window and pushed his face in the bars. His head looked like an egg stuck in gym equipment.
‘Rudy!’ Trump cried, ‘You here to lawyer us out?’

‘Nah, Donnie,’ Rudy replied, ‘I’m gonna break you out of this sorry dive. You gonna have to sit tight, though.’
‘Rudy, why?’
‘Trust me, Donnie. I’ll be back. There are some things a man cannot do dressed as a man.’

- END OF PART TWENTY-TWO -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
23 – RUDOLPH JAILIANI

Miller dragged the cow-killer’s body around behind the rest of the gang. Standing in a line a way back from the bars, they grinned at the jailor. A widening pool of blood on the concrete threatened to give the game away.

‘Oh, Mr. Jailor!’ called a lady’s voice, ‘Mr. Jailor! May I have a word?’
It was Rudy, golden wig cascading to the shoulders of his ball dress. So subtly and skillfully painted was he, that no one would peg him as the 74-year-old beach pebble-bald raving former mayor of New...

...York City.
‘Well hi there,’ said the jailor, a twitching, pensive man with hyperactive eyes, ‘You here to post bail?’
‘Well let’s talk about that when we’ve cooled off a little,’ Rudy crooned, brushing a white-gloved finger on the jailor’s jawbone, ‘Rush out and get...

...us both a drink, would you?’
Seemingly unable to believe his luck, the young jailor tore from the building. In his enthusiasm, he left behind his pistol and the keys to the cell. Rudy jabbed these into the lock and swung the bars.

‘Fifties cash,’ said Trump, holding up a roll, ‘Tucked in my PJs.’
‘You had fifties cash all along?’ gasped Kellyanne, eyes filled with a game she was playing on her phone.

‘Let’s scramble before the dong gets back,’ said Stone, ‘Put the fuckin’ phone away, Kellyanne. Rudy, where’s the ride at?’
‘This way,’ said Rudy, leading the other six through the door. The car was parked out the back, a modern vehicle that had, fortunately, evaded attention.

Or so it seemed…

All seven stuffed in Rudy’s car, the gang boomed into town on the way to Session’s cereal box home. Fire hydrants spit rainbow colors through the hot air, water skidding off traffic metal with a noise like big crowd recordings on fast-forward.

There it was, at the top of the hill: Sessions’ bright card-constructed little house, festooned with cheery kids’ characters, garden trooped out with sunstruck blooms. It was a quaint and lovely plot, famous in the area for brightening the outskirts of town.

Rudy blasted the front fender of the car into the flowerbed, barely fixed from before, then ground the front wheels into the lawn with a vicious turn. The seven MAGA foolios spilled out onto the earth, drug-sick Miller slow as leaking breast milk.

Shoulder-first, Roger Stone crashed through the front door.
‘What’s going on?’ hollered the bookie in the corridor, shotgun raised. He pointed it at Stone, who rolled forward in a practiced tackle and took him to the carpet. The remaining six MAGA chabreenis piled in.

‘Tie him up!’ barked Miller, ‘Mr. Sessions, would you mind fetching the magic crystals that I should unnaturally restate at this point in the story contain the value system of the 1950s, and which we are on a mission...

...to bring back to 2018 so that we can smash them in the Supreme Court and make America great again?’
‘It would be my sincerest joy,’ grinned Sessions, from down near the floor, where his face usually was.

They dragged the bookie into the kitchen, where they bound him tightly with refrigerator cord. When this process was complete, the jailor, having followed them, burst into in the doorway with a pistol and shot Steve in the arm.

‘Stay where you all are!’ the jailor commanded, then, addressing the bookie: ‘Wayne, I’m sorry it took so long. You were right about these guys. That car the fake lady is driving. That’s some future shit, Wayne.’
The jailor untied Wayne the bookie, and left his gun trained...

...on the group while Wayne went in the study and dragged Sessions back. Kellyanne looked up from her phone.
‘Now we’re down for fun and games,’ said the jailor, ‘This is my town, and I’d bet no one who knows you knows you’re in it.’

Shotgun rested on his knee, Wayne the bookie threw a boot on a kitchen chair and smiled, teeth yellow. Slowly, languidly, the jailor put on the kettle. Looking for a spoon, he opened a drawer, eyes lingering on a sheaf of steel knives.

‘Lunk checks in every couple hours,’ said the bookie, ‘Should be here in fifteen.’
‘Games,’ said the jailor, narrow twitching face animated by impulses darker than his words could betray, ‘We all love a game until the rules...

...change, right. Now, who wants to go first?’

- END OF PART TWENTY-THREE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
24 – ERIC AND DON JR. BREAST TATTOOS

Two short weeks earlier…

Outside the arena, the sidewalk bustled with red hats. Middle-aged men and women, bikers, and a few kids here and there snacked with one hand and gripped flags with the other, waiting to go in.

Many wore T-shirts with the word fuck on them somewhere, a fact that had no effect on their access to affordable healthcare, and didn’t boost the economy. Chants and chatter filled the night in an electric brew of tribal anger, vindication, and smug triumphalism.

Sitting awkwardly on perfectly good chairs, Eric and Don Jr. waited for the rally to start, savoring the throb and rumble of a nascent ‘BUILD THE WALL!’ chant.
‘Father’s rallies are so exciting,’ said Eric, head like the last greasy corn chip at the bottom corner of the pack.

‘Aren’t they though?’ said Junior.
‘Aren’t they?’
‘Aren’t they though?’
‘Yes, aren’t they just,’ said Eric, ‘My nipples are like bullets.’
‘Mine too,’ said Junior, hair slick as a trailer for a bad expensive movie, ‘I feel good like I just made something extinct.’

‘Gosh, Don, I do love Father so,’ said Eric, ‘One day…do you think he’ll…TALK to me?’
‘I’m sure he will, Eric,’ said Junior, ‘I’m sure he will.’
‘Oh gosh,’ Eric squealed, his hands flailing in excitement, ‘I do so hope he will, Don. I’ve been practicing what I’m going to say...

...to him.’
‘What will you say to Father, Eric?’
‘The one thing that will make him love me,’ continued the younger brother, ‘…Hello father, it’s me…Ivanka.’
‘That’s…brilliant!’ said Junior, ‘Look! Here comes Father to the podium now!

He’s magnificent, isn’t he? Up there on the stage just…forcing his musings on the country. It’s really inspiring. I feel like my nipples can’t get hard enough.’
As Trump addressed the crowd, press and TV cameras, the VIP Room door clicked and opened.

In strolled a woman, hair dark and long, shoes red and high-heeled, cleavage bouncing in the uplit glow of this expensive luxury space. Stuffing a hundred in his blazer, the bouncer winked and re-closed the entrance.

‘I’m Ray-Ray,’ said the brunette, planting her skirt betwixt the brothers, ‘I’m a rally girl.’
‘A rally girl!’ snorted Eric, ‘Like one of the ladies Father’s East European friend says she hates so.’
‘Enchanté,’ said Junior, kissing her at join of wrist and hand.

It was then the eyes of the Trump bros. met upon the young lady’s breasts. They had been aware, as she entered the room, that she was in possession of a heavily inked cleavage, but now they realized the nature of the design.

On one side there gurned a likeness, in tattoo form, of the face of Eric Trump. This was partnered by an image of Junior upon the adjacent bulging canvass.
‘Hey! You got the Trump boys on your melons there,’ said Eric, eyes tearing up, ‘This is most the moving day of my...

...life. Don, is this…love?’
‘I believe it is, brother,’ said Junior, ‘I believe it is. Ray-Ray, myself and Eric here are deeply moved by your gesture. Is there anything, anything at all, we can use our influence in a shady manner to get for you?’

‘I’m sure you know what this rally girl wants,’ said Ray-Ray, phone number on a paper strip slipping from slim fingers. On exiting, she nodded to the bouncer...and was gone.
‘I think,’ said both Trump boys together, ‘…I love her!!’

There was an awkward silence, during which Eric turned his attention to the rally. Quickly, with his camera phone, Junior snapped a pic of the rally girl’s digits. Eric turned again to his older brother, face red as a raw chafed jogger’s cock.

‘I’m so embarrassed,’ corn-chip head began, ‘You like her too, hey bro?’
‘It’s OK,’ said Junior, ‘You go for it. I’ll cheat on my girlfriend with someone else.’
‘You’re the best!” cried Eric, ‘And so is Father! Look at him out there, destroying the fake news!!’

____
It was a turbulent night. Gapless rain laced with roof garbage came down like dirty bed sheets. Junior’s awkward waddle, jaw tucked in and forehead leading like his brain eloped with his chin, was wild in the wet weather. Pumping an umbrella, he stepped from the cab.

Nose up, he surveyed the area where Ray-Ray lived. It wasn’t quite what he was accustomed to, but he didn’t want to get caught. Face obscured by sunglasses and the low brim of a hat, Junior crossed the street, climbed the steps to the front, and rang Ray-Ray’s bell.

Her voice blew out the intercom and he was buzzed inside. The elevator was busted so he took the stairs. There she stood, waiting in the doorway of her apartment.
‘You came!’ she said, bouncing up and down, ‘Get over here, Junior. The boys have been waiting.’

Ray-Ray’s Trump bros. boob tatts wobbled in the electric light of the corridor like eager village idiot-themed puddings. Junior hesitated a moment, but followed inside. It was a big place, but Ray-Ray didn’t have nice stuff like in Trump Tower or any of the other places Father...

...tweeted from about jobs and the African American unemployment rate.
‘What do you drink?’ said Ray-Ray.
‘Errrr…’ breathed Junior, ‘Can we just establish up front…How much this will cost...?’
‘Cost...? I like you. It won’t cost anything.’

‘You…LIKE me?’ Junior repeated, incredulously, ‘Wow. No one liked me before…in the long, long ago…the before times…when Father was just Father. America really is becoming great again!’

Rally girl Ray-Ray sat beside Junior on the couch, bringing drinks. Together they sipped. Junior stared bolt straight ahead. Ray-Ray gazed at the older Trump boy, eyes adoring and heart aquiver like a bee with its stinger buried. She would make him her own and not let go.

Junior felt a hand grip his fingers. He turned and saw his own totally awesome face and hair in eyes like deep reflective pools. Her bosoms were exposed now, concealed by long brown locks. These he brushed aside, revealing the bemused faces of he and his brother on her...

...bare chest, nipples for mouths.
‘I have some hair product right here,’ Ray-Ray suggested, ‘If you’d like, I’ll let you grease these puppies up.’
His hand trembling, Junior reached for the tub of gel. As he loosened the lid, there was a buzz from the intercom.

‘Ray-Ray?! You home?!’
It was Eric. He was outside.

- END OF PART TWENTY-FOUR -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
25 – HOUSE OF WAYNE

Back in 1954, yo…

Seven sat. Tied. Gagged. Hands behind their backs.
Roger Stone: Squirming with a smile, he spoke… ‘Give it to me, boys. Every slap is a candy Roger’s parents never gave him.’

Kellyanne: Chemical yellow face like a spotlit nag at the night races, she wriggled for a precious glance at her smartphone.
Trump: Oblivious, he stared at the wall, waiting for someone to have a conversation about him.

Miller: Rope tightly round his waist, he scanned the binds for signs of weakness, preparing to spit acid and slither free.
Steve: Heart still and pulse stopped, he sat bound in coiled and silent rage. Feeling no fear or pain, he gnashed his teeth on the inside...

...of his cheek until the taste of blood filled the world.
Sessions: Not recalling where he was, Sessions had fallen asleep, stiffly secured to yet one more of Wayne the bookie’s many kitchen chairs.
Rudy: The attorney stared at Lunk with bemusement, longing...

...for his days of command over the NYPD.
‘Big kid you got there,’ Rudy addressed the bookie, ‘Did you meet his mother on Cuzzfeed?’

‘SILENCE!’ roared the jailor, ‘Only I may speak…and now to explain the rules of our game. Lunk here shall torture you each for one minute, during which time there will be a designated word you may use to halt your suffering. Select THE WORD!’

With greatly diverting pomp, the jailor waved his arm about the room, face a scratched transmitter of fiendish vibes.
‘Covfefe,’ Trump offered.
‘What?’ said Stone’s Nixon tattoo, ‘That’s a primetime shitstain of a choice. How about ‘labia’?’.

‘Covfefe will be quite adequate,’ proclaimed the jailor, setting a knife upon the table with hauntingly profound relish, ‘A continuation of the rules, gentlemen…and LAAADY. If every person lasts a minute without saying ‘covfefe’, you shall all be free. If, however, any of you...

...submits…No one makes it out of here…aliiive. Are we clear?’
‘Can I go first?’ said Stone, ‘I don’t wanna miss my minute cos one of these schmoos fucked it up.’
‘Lunk,’ interjected Wayne the bookie, ‘Choose the first player, my boy.’

As Lunk approached the row of kitchen chairs to which the gang was fastened, the floorboards of Sessions’ cereal box house groaned. It was a sad, stilled, strange sound, pleading yet quiet, living yet passed away, a tiny voice and desperate vibration impossible to rescue, a...

...weak and reluctant capitulation to some nightmare. Lunk sniffed each captive face in turn, his boxed plum nose on high alert for fear.
Landing on Steve, though, he sensed a challenge. Pointing an overfilled sausage finger at the zombie former naval officer, he took up the...

......blade from the table. Miller, glaring at the rope around his midriff, found a frayed inch and began to drool. The acid of his saliva fell into the exposed strands of the rope, issuing a weak white smoke into the air. Nobody noticed this as they looked at the cruel round...

...grimace of Lunk.
When the tip of the knife entered Steve’s shoulder he did not move. He had no sensation there, or anywhere. When Lunk ran it through the fatty top of his arm, even then there was no reaction.

It was like gutting a dead and bloodless fish. Thirty seconds were up, and Lunk, his face a purple picture of taut bemusement, transferred the blade edge to Steve’s throat. The skin there, however, was rough and thick as a sword-scarred dragon’s nutsack, and impossible to pierce.

Then Miller hocked a stinging gob of spit onto the rope round Stone’s wrists, causing both the latter’s flesh and bonds to burn. With a delighted smirk, Stone breathed in the aroma of his own charred skin, before flexing his biceps once more. The rope snapped and he was free!

Charging the big man Lunk, Stone was shot twice in the head by Wayne and the jailor but, having no prefrontal cortex, was able to complete the assault. As Stone sunk his teeth into Lunk’s cheek, Miller too burst free and sprayed all three of the gang’s tormentors with a...

...pungent cocktail of acid, mustard gas and Novichok. As the jailor, Lunk and Wayne lay twitching in puddles of blood, piss and vomit, Miller and Stone untied the rest of the crew. Sessions woke up.

‘Mr. Sessions,’ said Miller, ‘If you will do the honors and fetch us those fiiiine crystals you store in the study…We will be on our way to 2018!!’
‘HUZZAH!’ cried the gang, stepping over the dead bodies of their captors. Kellyanne and Trump stole their wallets on the way out.

____
In the car, Miller flipped opened the little white box and looked with love upon the magic crystals. So, it was all in there: the sacred essence of the 1950s, the laws, the mores, old-fashioned American society itself.

‘Time to get this shit to the Supreme Court, bitches!’ cried Stone, the car engine roaring in practically horny agreement. Kellyanne played with her phone.
A short drive through town and child-injuring swerve right later, the gang charged nipple over chin snappy up...

...the country road to the portal. It gaped open, edges swirling and refracting light which then folded violently into its hungry black core. The Netherzone beckoned, Rudy’s dress flying in his face as the car floated off...

...tarmac into warm fifties air. Moments later, they were back in 2018, ready to make America 'great'.

- END OF PART TWENTY-FIVE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
26 – IGOR AND ANDREI

Ray-ray pulled her finger off the intercom. The night howled wet against the windows. Remembering how sodden, slippery and unpleasant it was on the street, Junior spoke.

‘Don’t let Eric in, Ray-Ray. He’s an awful bore and you won’t get rid of him. Besides, I was so hoping to feel you up.’
‘OK, Donnie,’ she agreed, ‘I’ll let him down gentle…Errr, Eric dear? I’m way too tired tonight, darling. It was a long day at work.’

Corn-flaxen hair glinting in streetlight, Eric shivered. Having neglected to bring an umbrella, he was wet through from the short dash across the street. His shirt clung to his chest like a damp baking sheet on a dead albino dolphin’s head.

Bedraggled stray dogs like hungry hearts braved a bleak night for scraps, gaunt, pathetic and coursing on magic energy.
A bent, buck-toothed, senile, drunk old hippie asshole with one eye came up the steps, unlocked the door, and disappeared inside.

Eric slipped into the building behind the mad wreck, penis twitching against his sodden pants like a tiny mutant lab snake on life support.
He had memorized Ray-Ray’s address and, when he reached her door, he banged with both fists and the longing in all his very soul.

‘RAY-RAY! I LOVE YOU! DO LET ME IN! It’s Eric, by the way!’
Junior behind her, Ray-Ray emerged in the entrance to the apartment, chest tattoos of the Trump boys now part-hidden by a white negligee. Only eyes and greasy hair were visible over the top of the paper-thin fabric.

‘Hi…’ said Junior.
‘You bounder!’ cried Eric, ‘You complete and total cad! You promised me, Donnie. You promised she would be mine. And now this…This betrayal shall not be forgiven.’

From his inside jacket pocket Eric presented a leather glove. Indignant, he slapped it across his older brother’s cheek.
‘Eric?! What on earth has taken hold of you?!’ Junior exclaimed.

‘I am challenging you,’ replied Eric, ‘To a street duel. It is unfortunate, but you have lowered me to this. To settling scores like a common thug.’
‘Then…’ said Junior, his chest puffed out even further than his gut, 'I accept. Brother, I shall see you outside in two minutes.’

With that, Eric stomping away up the corridor, Junior slammed the door to Ray-Ray’s apartment. His hands on either side of her sweet, big-eyed face, he pressed his forehead to hers. When she shook in his arms it was not fear, but the candy-coated palpitations of love.

Hoisting a handy MAGA hat from the telephone table, she placed it on her head.
‘Go whoop his ass,’ said Ray-Ray, ‘Rally style!’

Eric was waiting outside. As he set foot on the sidewalk, Junior smiled at his brother. Rain bounced back into the clouds off the gel in his hair.

‘So…I guess we’ll shout some and throw a few slaps, then-’
Eric’s fist caught Junior on the jaw, sending blood in a quick arc onto the cobblestones. Shocked and engaged, Junior lashed out, connecting only with raindrops. Next thing he knew, Eric had him by the head and was...

...driving a knee to his nose. The taste of blood filling his mouth and mind, Junior staggered away, knocking his skull against a post.
‘Eric! I’ll give her to you. Get ahold of yourself!’
‘Never!’

So Junior drove forward. He tried to grab a fistful of Eric’s hair but it was fabulously slimy with gel. Junior was impressed. Next Eric attempted to secure a clump of Junior’s short dark mane with his own fingers, but it was impossible.

Time and again, his hand slipped away like he was trying to grip some lunatic bouquet of muddy eels. Again, Junior reached in failure for Eric’s blond mop. As the two men clawed at one another’s heads, a black van skid to a stop, tires grinding up over the curb.

The van’s back doors slid open. A thick inked arm grabbed each of the Trump brothers and pulled them inside. As they dripped with rain, the doors closed behind them. A dank, wicked atmosphere of dread coiled about the boys when they looked up, skin scratched and bleeding, at...

...the stocky expressionless Russian faces of their detainers.
‘I am Igor,’ said the first, ‘And this my partner Andrei. Very honored to make acquaintance of Trump boys. Andrei, they wet. Towel.’
The second man, the bigger of the two, tossed a pair of stolen hotel hand...

...towels across the interior of the van. Gratefully, the Trumps wiped their faces and necks. Red streaks adorned the white flannel.
‘What’s going on, Donnie?’ said Eric, ‘Is this one of your japes?’

‘Allow me to impart necessary information,’ said Igor, ‘Oh…First I apologize. It was not our intention to startle big VIP Trump siblings. Only grab and throw in van.’
‘No problem,’ said Junior.

‘We have boss I’m sure you know,’ said Igor, ‘Has been monitoring very closely a…like…small elf man…His name, Andrei?’
‘Mr. Sessions,’ said Andrei, voice a deep river of hidden threats.

‘Yes…Jeffregards Sessionovich,’ Igor continued, ‘We have bugged car, yes. We bug cars of all Trump people. Boss noticed how elf man was driving in his car and signal vanishes…always in same place, same piece of road.’
‘Poof!’ said Andrei, splaying his fingers in demonstration.

‘Boss gets curious,’ Igor went on, ‘We play back every tape of elf’s talking to various people. Sessions elf says he has these magic, errr…Andrei?’
‘Magic crystals,’ said Andrei.

‘Right. Crystals,’ said Igor, ‘Boss gets more curious. We move to aggressive surveillance measures. Even thinking about give elf accident, you know, but too high profile. Elf talking about have Comrade Trump bring these crystals back to 2018 from past, make America great again…’

‘Awesome!’ said Eric, ‘You want us to help him?’
‘Opposite,’ interjected Andrei, ‘We want you to stop this.'
Junior scratched his head, befuddled. He squinted in the dim light of the van at the two Russians, wondering if Ray-Ray might still be up and whether there was...

...yet a chance, some remote chance, of getting his dick wet before he went home.
‘My uncle a very wise man. Has a nuclear warhead at his dacha,’ said Igor, ‘Says never ask the motivations. Always wait. Always listen. Never tip your cards, Eric and Donald Junior.’

Igor leaned forward into the light, which fell upon his trunk-like tattooed forearms. On one, Junior could make out bears playing Russian roulette. The other arm was decorated with an image of a bottle of vodka drinking a bottle of vodka.

‘These crystals come to Supreme Court like elf is planning…’ said Andrei’s voice from the shadows, ‘…and America united in cult of 1950s. Only harmony. No division.’
‘But that’s jolly good!’ said Eric.

‘No,’ said Igor, ‘Not good. Not good. You must intercept these crystals and destroy them the only way possible. You must put them inside Keurig coffee maker and take inside angry conservative’s house.’

‘But I…don’t understand!’ cried Eric, ‘Why would we do that? America would be even stronger if we weren’t all fighting. No more libtards, only MAGA! Just the great American eagle fighting as one.’

‘Quite…’ said Igor…… ‘Andrei…Get equipment ready. Must make Trump boys understand somehow.’

- END OF PART TWENTY-SIX -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
27 – KOMPROMAT

‘What are you going to do to us?’ Eric begged to be informed, hands clasped in a plea for clemency.
From the front of the van, Andrei tossed back a video camera and tripod, which Igor set up, checking the battery and image grade.

A sudden flare of courage spurred Junior to action. With a ferocious kick to the back of the van, he mightily sprained his ankle. Desperate, he yanked at the door handles to no avail. In a last ditch bid for freedom, he lunged at Igor, striking the Russian’s hard square chin.

‘Donald Junior,’ said Igor, ‘If you will do this you hurt yourself. We make video now. Yuliya!’
Unbeknownst to Eric and Junior, a young lady had been napping in the passenger seat of the van. Unfolding her short limbs, she stretched and clambered between the two front seats.

Once in the rear, Yuliya accorded the Trump boys each a hand to shake, limp at the wrist.
‘Charmed,’ she rasped over a listless double handshake, ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘Trumps, lie down,’ said Igor, ‘Girl pee on you now. Tape is kompromat.’

‘I do beg your jolly kind pardon!’ bawled Eric, ‘What IS this outrage?!’
‘We blackmail!’ Andrei barked, head pressed into the center of the steering wheel, ‘You get crystals, stop piss tape on CNN. Is hard to understand?’

‘We keep USA weak, boys,’ said Igor, ‘Divided. Fighting. Tearing flesh from one another’s weary bones, crying, bleeding, insulting. The final mouthful, boys…last mouthful is for Russian bear. Now lie down like I ask you.’

Cowlicks flat from the rain, Yuliya shoved the Trumps flat, a hand on each brother’s chest. In a pale blood ponytail napping damp on her collarbone, Yuliya’s hair was a spilled draft of ginger ale. Thunder rolled over the earth as she hitched her skirt high.

Igor hit the red round button to record.
‘Oh, Donnie,’ Eric bemoaned his lot, ‘This young lady certainly is urinating all over me. This is most unpleasant, to say the least. No offense to you, miss.’

‘Oh, Eric,’ said Junior, ‘It now appears she has come over to me, and is doing the same upon my person…Ugh, it’s still happening, brother…It’s STILL going on. My, it is most unusual and, one presumes, unhygienic…It looks like she’s headed back in your direction again.’

Yellow stain spreading over his chest and stomach like daytime on the Earth’s surface in a time-lapse movie shot from space, Eric grasped the hand of his sibling, eyes screwed shut and lips white with tension.

‘Oh, Donnie, she certainly is producing a large quantity of urine, much of which is soaking and penetrating my already wet clothes. This is not the evening I was hoping for. No offense, young lady,’ said he.

THUD! Quiet moments passed, and…THUD! Igor and Andrei exchanged glances. The former, spooked and nimble of motion, killed the camera, slinging it over the headrest of the passenger seat. Uncertain how to react, Yuliya froze, poised above the drenched Trump bros.

‘Police!’ a voice announced, ‘Open the vehicle, please!’
Igor’s face warped into the clockwork Botox grin of a sleepwalking car salesman. Tugging the door open, he pinched the blade sheathed handle-up in the waist of his jeans.
‘Officer.’

The policeman surveyed the girl, the widening puddle of piss, and the two horizontal men beneath her. Squeezing the push-to-talk on his walkie-talkie:
‘Yo Wade, we got a Code 699 here,’ he reported, ‘Trumps being pissed on…

Look it up later. Nothing to see here. Waiting for the next call.’
‘We’re good?’ said Igor.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ said the cop, ‘I saw you parked out here and thought something out of the ordinary might be going on. Eric. Don Jr.’

Tipping his cap, the cop slipped away between raindrops. The downpour was near done, simmered away to a glossy glitter drizzle bobbing buoyant, weightless, on dead whirls of midnight air. Igor slammed the van doors.

‘You may return to your sleep, Yuliya’, he intoned, ‘You make Mother Russia proud.’
‘Bring us the crystals,’ barked Andrei, zero patience in his tone, ‘Or we use direct means. And tell your father Moscow Daddy says hello.’

‘How will we get the magic crystals from Father?’ said Eric, ‘He has never spoken to me. I don’t think he knows who I am.’
‘Like I said,’ repeated Andrei, ‘Tell your father Moscow Daddy says hi. He’ll hand over crystals in flash. And no phone calls. Any objections…

we discuss in Helsinki.’
Igor pulled the doors aside a last time and blasted the brothers out into the night.
‘You do as we say?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ sang both boys together, ‘We’ll stop Father.’

‘Keep an eye on him,’ said Igor, ‘He may disappear for while. When he returns will likely have crystals. That’s when you make move, da? And don’t fuck this up.’

- END OF PART TWENTY-SEVEN -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
28 – BeWest: Kanye Feel It?

Rudy’s car smashed the country tarmac, portal to ’54 snapping shut behind. Dodging a vehicle passing in the other direction, it veered left then right, barely avoiding dropping down a dirty ditch both sides of the road.

Virgin dick-fast and full throttle on the freeway, the gang yelled elated for they had the crystals! Steve, Miller, Stone, Sessions, Trump, Kellyanne and Rudy jammed bruise-buttock-tight in the shady lawyer’s ride, they vaulted headfirst through the speed limit into town.

Crashing the car into a newspaper stand, Rudy stumbled up the sidewalk. He couldn’t miss the morning news, and stood holding the day's fresh print with his mouth open, gawping at the front page. The dress he’d used to entice the jailor lifted in the wind.

‘Rudy, ya fuckin’ shalooly!’ Steve shouted through the window, ‘Get a sprint on, will ya? It’s hotter than a taco’s tit.’
‘Can’t miss the news…’ said Rudy, slowly, distracted, then: ‘Look at this. Says here Pence is POTUS.’

‘This is a bad dream,’ said Trump, ‘Donald wants to wake up. It’s too long. Very sad.’
‘May I make a suggestion?’ said Kellyanne, ‘We could go back in time to BEFORE Pence got sworn in, go to the White House, and give Donald the crystals in the private residence.’

‘Let’s not think about this too deeply,’ Steve replied, ‘With time travel it’s best to keep things simple. If it got messy we wouldn’t be able to explain shit to the Special Counsel. Can you imagine having to write all that stuff out? Nah. It’d get confusing and silly...

...for both author AND reader.’
‘OK,’ said Kellyanne, then, addressing Trump: ‘As your advisor, this is what I think needs to happen. You need to get to the White House and reclaim the presidency from Mike before he does fuck knows what with it. In the meantime, the rest of us...

...will find a place to stash the crystals.’
‘Agreed,’ Stone’s Nixon tattoo piped up, ‘On another, unrelated, note, Roger here is in dire need of intoxicating pharmaceutical products and various potent street drugs. Always get tooled up before, during and after missions of...

...any importance.’
Rudy piled in, tossed a coin at the paper vendor, and thrashed the car into top gear. Pulling the driver side door shut as he picked up speed, the cousin-loving lawyer tucked his dress between his legs and whistled.

After a detour to score pills, coke and too much ecstasy from Stone’s dealer Meryl, Trump was tossed outside the White House, where he shambled in a wide circle until security approached him. The rest of the crew huddled in the center of the car.

‘We need to get theeeese…’ said Miller, flashing the magic crystals in their box, ‘…to a secure place no one ever wants to goooo.’

‘A place no one in their right mind would venture?’ said Stone, ‘I have just the ticket, my foxy young friends…Kanye West’s apartment! If you let him talk about himself for a while he’ll allow you to do anything there, and still no fucker wants to visit.’

‘Who is Kanyelee West?’ Sessions asked, ears curling at the tops.
‘He’s a rapper,’ said Stone, ‘You wouldn’t give a shit. The point is that he’s loaded like twenty farmer’s shotguns. We dump the box there until shit settles down. Gotta get this Pence situation handled.’

‘Welllll,’ crooned Miller, his voice slipping out oily as a snake from its skin, ‘Let’s go visit Mr. West.’
‘OK, Rudy,’ said Stone, shoving a bump of powder in his rough old beak, ‘Let’s get high and get gone. Vroom, vroom!’

____
Soft jingling minimalist piano riffs floated about the wide white austere space of Kanye West’s apartment. Photo portraits of the man himself looked down - from the most obvious angles - upon a square of backless benches surrounding the empty surface of a low coffee table.

At the end of the room farthest from the door, and facing it, was a raised area with a throne at its middle. Upon this fancy gold item of furniture perched one Mr. Kanye West, eyes closed to the triviality of the world.

The profound contemplation of this world-shifting music lord was self-interrupted every thirty seconds by a therapeutic tiger scream that echoed from every hard flat plane about him.

Between his primal roars, Kanye’s wife Kim entered the room bearing a tray. Kanye received from it a diamond-encrusted goblet.
‘Mrs. West,’ said he, ‘Did you formulate this beverage in accordance with my futuristic recipe?’

‘I did, Kanye,’ said Kim, ‘It is as you desired: 10% mineral water, 15% dragon fruit juice, 20% celebrity-endorsed baby formula, and 55% tears of hip hop artists who are yet to go platinum.’

‘I shall now sup from the new paradigm,’ said Kanye, taking a long pull from the goblet and whipping out his phone for a reaction shot of his own face.
‘How is it?’ Kim asked, ‘Is it to your liking?’

‘Yes it is, my darling Kim,’ Kanye replied, ‘The experience of this drink goes well with my jacket.’
Planting her buttocks upon the arm of Kanye’s luxury authentic throne, Kim leaned close to her husband, eyes dark velvet-soft wells, to push pink whispers in his ear.

‘The package arrived,’ Kim began, ‘This is going to make your art even better. I know it.’
‘Outstanding,’ said Kanye, hand on the shoulder of his beloved spouse, ‘Ordering the alien from Area 51 off the deep web to help me with my next CD was a genius...

...sideways step no one will have seen coming. That’s why I’m the Yeezy, and it’s also why they ain’t.’

- END OF PART TWENTY-EIGHT -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
29 – YEEZIER SAID THAN DONE, PART ONE

Platinum clippers were a joy. Really, once you’d tried the best you couldn’t go back. The fine china dish on Kanye’s coffee table, laden with his slim nail parings, glowed at the point where light met its gloss.

Kanye was waiting and, when doing so, he loved to handsome up his fingers.
‘Kanye, darling!’ Kim called across the room, ‘The latest batch is ready!’
‘My Yeezy Cheez?!’ said Kanye, ‘I gotta test it. Shit needs to be ready for market in two months.’

‘Shall I bring it over?’ Kim asked.
‘Please honey,’ said Kanye, ‘The American people are gonna go straight nuts for Yeezy Cheez. If the French Europeans can do it, I too can become a top class ‘cheesier’.’

Kim clacked, careful and slow, a shiny black bowl of petite cheese triangles onto the table. They let off a pungent, expensive aroma. Kanye plucked the nearest between thumb and forefinger and placed it onto his tongue.
‘How is it, Mr. West?’ Kim inquired.

‘It’s quite delectable,’ responded Kanye, ‘I venture to say the formula is ready for the people. The question that remains is whether the people are ready for the formula.’
Kim lifted the china dish of fingernail clippings.

‘Great, honey!’ said Kim, ‘So…Shall I take these and make some more?’
‘Yes please, sugarbumps,’ said Kanye, ‘One more batch today. And can you have Alan call the art people? I want the package design to clearly show that every single delicate triangle of Yeezy Cheez contains...

...one clipping from the nails of ’Ye.’
‘I’ll call right away,’ said Kim, ‘And I’m letting the alien out. He scratched up all the studio chairs.’
On the way to the kitchen, Kim nudged open the door to Kanye’s private recording studio, releasing a squat gray humanoid figure...

...into the main body of the apartment. Head like a great stone-colored rubber testicle, it waddled into the space between the benches and the low table.
‘Fap fap fap fap fap fap!’ it yapped, fish mouth flapping.

‘Hey man, don’t do that,’ said Kanye, ‘You can’t be playing with yourself when guests arrive. Yeezy has some very important government business this afternoon.’
‘Sorry…Scout is nervous,’ said the alien, ‘I don’t enjoy meeting new people.’

‘That’s OK, Scout,’ said Kanye, tugging the sharp collars of his rich designer jacket, ‘You just gotta stop masturbating all the time, buddy. Perhaps you should take a shower and apply a few cosmetic touches to that skin too. You stink and look like dead river E.T.’

It had been Kanye’s private conviction, since he saw the movie as a boy, that E.T. looked as if he stank, and Scout only confirmed this long-held childhood impression. The door buzzer sounded, ricocheting off the featureless pure plastic textures of Kanye’s scrupulously...

...unadorned living space.
‘Fap fap fap fap fap fap.’
‘Knock it off, Scout!’ Kanye shouted, then: ‘Kim, bring our guests some cheese.’
When Kanye opened the door to the apartment, the first man in was Stone, face coke-numb and fierce as a feasting mountain lion's.

A trail of discarded clothes behind him, Stone staggered onto the nearest corner of the square of plush black benching. Next in was Steve, head beginning to rot. Crimson slime oozed from a hole in his middle like a close-range tank shell impact in the side of a waterlogged...

...rhino carcass.
Miller followed closely, lights blown three quarters dark by a generous fistful of arbitrarily combined tablets.

Kellyanne, playing with her phone, skidded on the smooth flooring in high heels, trail of dark blood from Steve’s crying wound underfoot. Lastly, Sessions and Rudy peeked their heads round the door, nodded, and made their way in.

‘Ah do sincerely declare!’ Sessions exclaimed, ‘This is quite the luxurious condominium you have acquired for yourself, Mr. West. May I enquire as to your profession?’

‘Entrepreneur. Visionary. Shaper of human consciousness. I really should charge you fine people to breathe this air, for it is heavy with wisdom I have unleashed,’ said Kanye, ‘I am America’s foremost legendary futurist, the voice of a generation, a venerated crafter of worlds.’

‘He does keyboards,’ mumbled Stone, ‘For crying out loud, Yeezy, tell me you have some scotch in this spaceship.’
In came Kim with a tray of drinks and cheese, which she set upon the table. Stone’s eyes fell on the posterior section of her tight smooth dress.

‘Fap fap fap fap fap fap,’ said Scout.
‘Who is thaaat?’ asked Miller, gesturing at the alien.
‘Scout,’ said Kanye, nervously eyeing the stains accumulating on the antiseptic clean floor, ‘He’s helping me with my new album.’
‘Is he documented?’ asked Miller.

‘Errrr…yeah,’ said Kanye, ‘I mean…I have a RECEIPT, if that's what you mean.’
‘Coool,’ said Miller, ‘Same as Melania then. What’s in the bowwwl?’

‘That’s Yeezy Cheez,’ said Kanye, ‘Do sit down everyone…Yeah, cool, gather round. This is the pitch. Sometimes there’s someone you admire so much you wish they made cheese, right? Well, now that wish has become a reality for fans of Yeezy. This is my line of cheese, due on...

...sale in two months. And here’s the twist…’
The six MAGA friends, half of them high enough and half just courteous enough to listen, each took a triangle of the aromatic yellow foodstuff and began to nibble. It wasn’t bad. Kanye continued his sales spiel:

‘…It contains my fingernail clippings.’
Miller, Sessions, Kellyanne, Rudy and Stone tossed the cheese in horror.
‘That’s a groovy plan,’ said Steve, munching through his portion, ‘I’d give it a shoplift. Any more free samples lying around?’

‘So…as I explained on the phone…’ said Kellyanne, ‘We need a favor. We need a box stored, no questions asked. One week, maybe more. I’ll even get the Department of Agriculture to subsidize your gross cheese thing.’

‘Deal,’ said Kanye, ‘Oh, and Mrs. West here wants to see the Oval Office. Can you toss that in?’
‘Whatever,’ said Kellyanne, ‘No one gives a shit any more.’
‘Fap fap fap fap fap fap.’

- END OF PART TWENTY-NINE -

THE BANNON CHRONICLES
30 – YEEZIER SAID THAN DONE, PART TWO

Everyone gone, Scout and Kanye looked in the box. A pair of crystals hovered millimeters above an inset satin pillow, lustrous and sheer. These objects, though solid, were possessed of a diaphanous evasive quality.

Scout grew lost in them, in the grand glow of the dangerous yet coy eyes of a shy Medusa.
‘Scout,’ said Kanye, ‘This is important, so listen to me, your human mentor. We CANNOT lose these magic crystals. Guard them with your life.’

‘I won’t fail you,’ said the alien, ‘My Space Force training won’t allow it.’
Already overproduced rough cuts from his latest album vibrating the walls, Kanye kneeled before Scout, his brand new space buddy from Area 51. Solemnly and without further comment, Yeezy raised the...

...box above his head. Long gray fingers wrapped around it.
‘Now, Scout. I have to go out and buy a LOT of cranberries. There may not be enough cranberries in this city, in which case I will be gone all day. Stay and protect the crystals, buddy. I know you can do it.’

‘I will not let you down,’ said Scout.
‘ARE you going to lose those crystals?’ Kanye questioned his alien friend once again.
‘The one thing I am definitely NOT going to do – after you walk out the door for several hours – is get myself into a...

...situation that results in this box of crystals leaving my possession and ending up somewhere from whence it would be very difficult to retrieve.’
‘That’s set my mind at rest. Bye.’

With that, Yeezy was gone. Dutifully, Scout carried the little box to the table, put it down, and sat on Kanye’s backless minimalist benching to guard it. He was determined no one would lay their filthy hands on the precious crystals it held.

‘I’m going out for a while too,’ sang Kim, bounding by in boots and jeans, ‘I have an invite from President Pence to see the Oval Office. Gonna get my selfie face on in the rickshaw. Bye, little man!’
The door clicked shut and Scout was alone.

It was at this point that the flavorless white of the walls squirmed, a subtle shimmer that resolved to become, in unconnected places, short roughly man-shaped figures. These changed shade to the gray of Scout’s own smooth hide, causing the young alien to realize these...

...were his kin, his folk, his kind…that they had come from the cold outer reaches of space to find him. The pearl-perfect gloss of a tear swelled at the base of his eye, plopping forward from that black oval tarn to his cheek.

There were three of them, each sporting the same wobbly cadaver-tone ostrich egghead as he. The eldest spoke:
‘Rakashan, my young. They call me Hurun, leader of the tribe of…Hurun. Now we feel it is time to tell you the history of Space Force and your home planet, Testelonger.

After the Great War of Ib between the Popcoxies and the Poonybangers, our stupidest and most powerful leaders decided the only way to pump more cash into defense contractors was through a ‘Space Force’.

For years we circled Testelonger, pretending to protect it against invaders and look for rocks and space poo. One day, a great ship of the fleet fell into a wormhole that brought it here, to this desolate corner of the galaxy, near this sad little world, Earth, or Desalor, as...

...we call it in your mother tongue…’
Hurun broke off to inspect the largest of Kanye’s many photographic self-portraits. Teasing it away from the wall with a long gray index finger, he sighed and continued to speak: