The Red Devil
A Dramatization
My name isn't important. No one really gives a damn about the narrator's name, when you come down to it. Basically I was your typical dame in disrest.
Anyway, there was this fellow named Mike Philistine. Half-black, half-Japanese, call 'em "Emm Filly" and yeah, I'll admit he was a looker. His name ain't important, but I figure that the more info, the better your judgment is. This guy, he was a real case. People say that about me. I get on.
So Mikey and me were enjoying your typical stroll down the block, trying to escape from the nutcase they call "High school". Emphasis on the "high", if you catch me drift. I figure the best schooling they ever give is how to escape outta there. You gotta sympathize with me there.
We were just past the drug dealer's house. We call him the drug dealer, but he's really a convict. Who else wears those damn blackglasses, anyway? I hypothesized that the chances of getting mobbed were slighty lower and dropped my pace to that of a lawnmower on roller skates. Turns out my gut shoulda kept me moving. A suit taps me on the shoulder, and I face him. His face is about as unique as romantic poetry, and his body reminds me of that oak tree in the drug dealer's back yard.
Now I'm not one to mock other people, but there's something hysterical about a guy towering over you, not moving. I can appreciate a large human roadblock any day. But this comedian just opens his mouth and says - and here I quote verbatim, "I am CIA. You are being hijacked to North Korea."
My first thought of course was to laugh. Like I say, it's impossible to keep a straight face when this guy's standing straight as a screwdriver. I reconsidered when the guy's face remained as solid as the southern voting demographic. It was then that it occurred to me that he might want some sort of recognition of his existence. Going out on a limb, I can imagine that my eyebrows probably resembled fishing hooks, and my mouth felt like ... well that ain't even important here. I finally closed up my jaw and responded.
"SOMEONE SET US UP THE BOMB."
And suddenly the guy is grabbing us by the scruffs of our necks. I try to fight back but my effort is a twig attacking a grizzly bear. I am hurled into a thing of nightmares - ironic, eh? It's a spaceship. The spaceship was straight out of War of the Worlds, and let me tell you, this probably scared me more than Stalin and my sophomore year English teacher combined. I was twitching as I lay there. Mike's typical composure seemed a distant joke. The expression in his eyes was comparable to the expression of a Goomba before Mario jumps on it.
I don't know how long we sat there, lookin at each other, suffocated in our despair, or by the overwhelming smell of cologne. Either way, someone was gonna die.
It was Mikey.
We were probably passing France at the time they made the decision. The CIA dude stood up menacingly. Displaying a skill that natural selection had deemed worthy of my ancestors, I instantly assumed a fetal position and began begging for dear life. But he ignored me, like I was merely a dog with a bad haircut. He opened his mouth. A classicist, I noted. Death by dropping from high heights was a horrible cliche comparable to the likes of symbolic waters. I could almost hear the cackling as he opened his mouth sinisterly to speak.
"Actually, Mike is being reassigned to the Soviet Union."
It was at that moment that I knew that if I did nothing, my life would be null and void. Demonstrating the courage found only in the heart of mankind, I leapt to my feet and jumped between the CIA guy and Mike. For a long moment I stared at the suit, and then I turned around like a rotating pendulum in a spaceship.
My voice was cool as fire. "Say hello to Yeltsin for me."
They were the last words that Mike ever heard. The hatch opened from below him and despite my ultimate calmness I flinched as I heard his dying screams.
Hours later - or was it minutes - we landed in North Korea. It was a nice airport complete with people in suits and throat-slitting maniacs. There were police officers and rape convicts, neither on the right side of the law. In other words, it was my type of hangout.
It was around this point that my self-awareness kicked in. As a human female, it was natural that I should suddenly realize that I'd just traveled ten thousands of miles without even changing my makeup or spending three hours in the bathroom. And there was no one to protect me. And there were rapists wandering the streets. And the CIA guy was gone.
I looked like very suspicious there. I walked, my detective senses in high gear. In fact I was so concentrated on where I was that I didn't even notice when I crashed into a person. The expression on his face was that of a child caught with his hand on the mouse in front of an adult website. The device in his hand looked suspicious, as if he were pirating DVDs, but after sizing me up, he decided that he could take me in a fight. I didn't comment as he lewdly stared at me like a crocodile stares at a particularly plump pelican. He slipped me a disk, a bill, and the tip of a semi-automatic handgun.
"It's $98 dollars," he said in English. I was distinctly reminded of those fake spy novels as I shoved the DVD back at him.
"No want," I said as calmly as possible, meaning that I had a vibrato in my voice that would make a tenor blush. I shoved my way through the crowd, and my eyes widen like golf balls becoming basketballs as I see what's going on. "Stars and Stripes Forever" blares, but you can tell it's Asian because of its low fidelity speakers and crappy Korean singing that accompanies the instrumental quiet parts. You could even see the little microphones marching like ants at a picnic table. Distinctively English voices emanate from it.
Of all the horrors that have come to me, this is by far the greatest. My mouth opens, and a stream of expletives come out, blurred by the scream of "WHAT THE HELL AM I ON!?!?" The screaming continues until my eyes are wide open and my alarm blares that it is 6:00a.m.
I hate it when I forget to turn off the alarm on Saturday night...
SD
Sept. 25, '05
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