Top 10 Fictional Presidents
20 Jan
Top 10 Fictional Presidents
1. President Merkin Muffley (from Dr. Strangelove) tries to prevent nuclear catastrophe.
2. President Nicholas Franklin Augustine (from Acts of Mercy by Bill Pronziniand Barry N. Malzberg) is paranoid and works closely with advisors who turn out to be hallucinations.
3. President Charles Baker (from Nightrise by Anthony Horowitz) makes humanity his slaves with the help of the Lovecraftian Old Ones.
4. President Abraham Brown (from The Music Master of Babylon by Edgar Pangborn) is tortured to death by the “North American Soviet” in the rubble of NYC in 2070.
5. President Billy Cabot (from The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman) is visited by Jesus Christ in 2180; Jesus forbids television and cinema, kills half the nation, and has the other half under surveillance by killer satellites known as “The Avenging Angels.”
6. President Gary Callahan (from Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis) is a sadistic psychopath who commits cold-blooded murder while in office.
7. President Robert Colonby (from The Eclipse of Dawn by Gordon Eklund) gets help from extraterrestrials from Jupiter after Washington DC is decimated.
8. President Ferris F. Fremont (from Radio Free Albemuth by Philip K. Dick) incites a resistance movement centered around radio transmissions from an alien-manned satellite device named VALIS.
9. President Nicole Thibodeaux (from The Simulacra by Phillip K. Dick) is not the original Nicole but an actress hired to impersonate her and is only one of a successive series of Nicoles.
10. President Robert “Dakota Bob” Shaefer (from The Boys by Garth Ennis) becomes the Republican candidate in an alternate 2000 election in which George W. Bush was assassinated by a chainsaw.
Ice Flue Chapter 26
1 Dec
Ice Flue Chapter 26
Stan and Elizabeth wandered away from the lab like a pair of dejected jesters.
As the purple Blood Lust coated the sun and the Frozen Ice Flue Gem Planet rose to lighten the world, only dirt and endless trenches were revealed. Trench after trench after trench.
They walked for a few miles until they encountered a billboard depicting a scene from the Holy Book of Defamation Regulations. It was the Nativity Scene, except, instead of the usual squid woman’s sultry elephant tusk veil dance, their glass baby rocked in a rocking chair in a manger while smoking a pink cigar.
Mimicking their glass baby’s smoking in perfect sync, Dayglo Arnie leaned against the side of the shed in equal enjoyment. He clapped.
Elizabeth twisted and scrunched her hairy face until it peeled off like shed snake skin. The androgynous police officer’s face smiled as she removed the rest of her Elizabeth Dracula costume.
“Congratulations, new recruits. At first I’d just hoped you’d rebel by submitting, but then you went ahead and one-upped me! You started a war, fer christsakes! And if you look around, I’m sure you’ll agree that the world is a whole lot better for it. What’s next, kids? World War 5? Do you think you have it in you? Do you—“
Stan grabbed the pink cigar from Arnie’s mouth. “Hey Arnie?”
“Y-yeah?” Arnie stammered, backing away.
Stan’s eyes lit up as he puffed greedily. “I’m in love with the war. I’m in love with the bomb. I’m in love with revolution!”
“Hallelujah!” Arnie sung before beginning a break dance.
“I plan to start another war,” Stan continued as B726 Bombers whizzed overhead. “Then another and another war until this godforsaken world rebels against itself and THE PEOPLE rise up in one glorious act of eternal submission.”
As if electrocuted, the police officer shook while foaming at the mouth and speaking in tongues. She partially regained her composure. “Blimey! Let’s do it!” She agreed so enthusiastically that she ripped off her entire uniform, revealing her body to be an antique dresser overstuffed with lacy under things. The police officer hesitated, then awkwardly wheeled her squarish body closer to Stan. “But there are a few outfits I’d like you to try on for me first, if you don’t mind.”
Stan puffed at his cigar, purple smoke escaping his ears as his eyes glowed a vaporous blue. He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? VIVA LA REVOLUTION!”
END
Ice Flue Chapter 25
30 Nov
Ice Flue Chapter 25
Elizabeth Dracula licked Stan’s eyeball feverishly as they made out hungrily in the cold metallic corridor outside the Work Lab at Ice Enterprises. “Jesus, Stan. The Ice flows through you. I just want to suck down every last chip of your bones.”
Stan glanced down. His skeleton was indeed glowing blue through his skin.
The lab door creaked open. Cheryl, dressed as a nun, greeted them with a look of dismay. “My god…you brought HER. Stan…but…THE CHILDREN ARE HERE.” She opened the door to reveal children in white lab coats with the faces of badgers, moles, and skunks fiddling with dissecting tables and knives difficultly with their inflexible purple and blue glass hands.
Cheryl returned to her lectern and pushed down the pleats of her nun outfit at the thighs. “Let’s continue our lesson, children. Now where were we? Oh yes: and so who was SOLELY responsible for starting World War 4?”
“Stan Lunch and Elizabeth Dracula!” the children chanted in unison.
Elizabeth abruptly stopped licking Stan’s eyeball like a rabid animal hit with a stun gun.
“And what about World War 3?” Cheryl asked hopefully.
There was dead silence.
Cheryl blushed. “Yeah, I, uh, don’t remember much about that one either.”
Ice Flue Chapter 24
30 Nov
Ice Flue Chapter 24
Cheryl’s condo of gray walls, white carpet, and sparse white furniture buzzed from the purple and blue fluids humming through a series of glass tubes.
“The lab results came back.” Cheryl paused gravely. “I’m sick with the Flue.” Icicles rattled at the condo’s windows as if shaken. “And all these gashes? They’re infected with Blood Lust.” Cheryl wore the golden skeleton mask as purple light poured from slashes on her neck and blue light seeped from her eyes. “Do you still love me?” The purple and blue light beams singed Stan’s flesh as he backed away in terror.
A hairy werewolf arm shot out from the wall and pulled Stan backwards. “You’re needed back at the lab,” Elizabeth Dracula said, wrapping Stan in a silk blue sheet with silver stars.
Elizabeth lunged forward across the pitch black highways while carrying Stan. They only occasionally passed the illuminated neon green bones of an abandoned motorcycle or tongue car.
Ice Flue Chapter 23
29 Nov
Ice Flue Chapter 23
Stan, Arnie, Elizabeth, and Heiferwaith’s legs became jelly-like as they slid on their knees down a muddy hill away from the trenches and into a lake consisting entirely of smoke. They fell hard on wooden planks beneath the smoke. It smelled of grilled salmon. The planks creaked, threatening to crack as easily as thin ice.
“At the same time, even voting could be a true rebellion in a radical sense. Onward to the voting poles, comrades and friends!” Arnie marched forward. The wood broke beneath him. An outline of his body and clown afro remained.
Stan, Elizabeth, and Heiferwaith fell to their chests, carefully crawling for hard ground.
Arnie’s orange afro bobbed in his outline, covered in a slimy purple fluid. “Wow. You guys have to come in here. THE BLOOD LUST WATERS FEEL DIVINE!”
“But what about ending this godforsaken World War 4? If there’s one thing I learned from World War 3, it’s that our votes DO MATTER.” Heiferwaith scrabbled up the muddy bank like a slick manatee. “We have to vote. We have to get out there and—“He pointed a manicured finger in what he thought was the right direction, yet the smoke had grown too thick to be sure. “Or maybe it was over there?”
A cricket chirped from the back of Elizabeth Dracula’s head. It hobbled onto her forehead, pounding its cherry red cane painfully as it went.
Elizabeth crawled back onto the wooden planks and opened a hatch. She grabbed Stan’s hand and pulled him down a dusty stairway. Their glass baby opened its mouth at the bottom of the stairs. “Let’s go back to my condo.”
Cheryl waited for Stan on the other side of their glass baby’s mouth.
Ice Flue Chapter 22
16 Nov
Ice Flue Chapter 22
“Look all we have to do is travel about 30 or 40 miles of battlefield to reach the Voting Palace. It shouldn’t be THAT hard.” Heiferwaith wiped a grimy film from his pink forehead.
“As if on cue, the thunderous battle behind Heiferwaith slowed to standstill. A number of fearsome Dracun Lizards removed their heads to reveal visages of Ice Princesses underneath.
“This isn’t a real war. We’re only playing,” said one Ice Princess engaged in ripping out and chewing the intestines from the smashed ribcage of a fallen Dracun Lizard, inadvertently knocking off its mask to reveal the face of another Ice Princess. “But just because it’s a simulation doesn’t mean there won’t be casualties. It adds to realism of event and, trust me, World War 4 is hardly a cheap event to stage!” She continued to chew the intestines as though it were as natural as snacking on dried fruit. The Ice Princess’s movements were robotic. “By the way: you’ll never make it to the voting palace. You won’t even make it past me. My breath is a blended Blood Lust Ice Flue. Your glass baby gave us the juice.” A horrible storm erupted from her bloody mouth, painting the sky with royal blue and purple mouths of hurricanes.
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