A Holiday Shine [View all]

[H2O Man]

“Some places are like people – some shine and some don't.” – Dick Hallorann


The sick old man attempted to shift in his chair, his ankles throbbing. He had put in two hours yesterday, and it was almost three today, and it was difficult to keep his eyes open. He heard someone across the table say, “Look! It's snowing!” This pissed him off, and he growled, “Fake news! It doesn't snow at mar-a-lago!” Another voice said, “It's okay, mister president. We're in the White House. Go back to sleep.”

“Big, beautiful ballroom,” the sick old man uttered before nodding off. Most of the staff around the table smiled faintly, not daring to say anything. They knew the sick old man was supposed to serve as the caretaker of the White House, yet he lacked the ability to stay awake in a meeting he had called. Everyone present is lost in thought on how they might exploit his approaching death for their own benefit.

Meanwhile, the sickly old man opens his eyes, finding himself in what he turned into the White House Resort. And he comes to a door, and he looks inside. Ivanka is watching South Park, and Jared pretends not to see him as he stacks silver coins in piles of thirty. Suddenly, a hand is placed upon his should. “It's me, Tiffany,” a woman says. “I've never met you in my life. You work for CNN,” the increasingly feeble old man says.

As this apparition dissolved into the lumps of his cranial lard, the sickly man began to stumble on down the hall. Suddenly he was confronted by twin boys about 40 years of age. “Are you the Grady twins?” he asks, but neither responds. He attempts to enter a room to avoid them, but the twins are somehow there. “Father,” “Yes, sons,” “We wanted to kill you.”

And he walked on down the hall. He heard loud noises coming from a room, so he opened the door. And he looked inside this solitary cell. His youngest son had plastered Brian Kohberger's image on every wall, and singing,”I want to kill a sorority girl, I could be happy the rest of my life, killing sorority girls.” So he closed the door, and he walked on by.

He came to his wife's bedroom door. As he looked around, heard splashing, and saw the curtain surrounding an authentic gold plated claw-foot tub opening. “Melania, is that you?” he asked. Slowly he watched her stand up, get out of the tub just as naked as the underage girls on his fantasy island, and walk towards him. As he embraced her, Melania's left arm came off into his right hand. He saw that it was composed of the same decaying flesh as the growing gray blotch on his. Quickly he dropped the arm, and saw that she had actually been bathing in a claw-foot coffin. So he left the room, saying, “There are no flies on Frank.”

He saw a light at the end of the tunnel, er, hall. So he continued walking towards the light, although each step seemed twice as difficult as the last. Plus there was a little bald man, dancing in his way. “Hey, you're the dancing death guy from the tub scene in that movie Ivanka loved!” the extremely ill old man coughs out. “No, it's me, boss. Stephen Miller.” “Oh, you,” the stooped old man said, though he was unable to place the name. He waited for a moment, expecting to see the elfin dancer open the door for him, but he, too, had simply disappeared.

Struggling to open the heavy door, the old man stepped in to a round of applause. The smell of sulfur roused him from his previous near-slumber. “ My big beautiful ballroom,” he said. “Why, it's as glorious as that of the Stanley!” He noticed an old friend tending bar, who asked, “What'll you have, Boss?” “I'll have a diet coke, Lloyd. Make it a double.” He began to scan his big beautiful ballroom for familiar faces.

“It's Rudy, and I'll bring your drink right over. You are at the head of that table with your friends. They have been waiting for you.” Sitting at that very table were his father, Roy Cohn, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney, and Charlie Kirk, and as the formerly very sick and feeble old man took his seat, they all rose and clapped like hell.


Note: I would like to wish the the entire DU community a pleasant holiday season. – H2O Man