The Invisible Library

They never did figure out who put the Ecstasy in the President’s milk. The First Lady was the one to realize something was amiss when she had to pull the President away from the Green Room wall where he had been fondling the gilt framed mirror and licking the wallpaper. She told the Vice President, who called a Doctor immediately.

“Nothing to do,” said the Doctor, patting the President on the shoulder and smiling congenially. The President offered a dreamy smile of his own in return. “He should come down in a couple of hours. Just make sure he drinks plenty of water and juice.”

The President spent the night listening to jazz records and dancing around the Lincoln Bedroom, rolling on the south lawn and petting the dog. That night as he was coming down, he whispered state secrets into the First Lady’s ear.

“You haven’t done that since the caucus!” she cooed.

In the morning, the Joint Chief’s met to decide the fate of a pesky foreign potentate who had been giving them trouble for a number of years. The Joint Chief’s were unanimous in their decision to invade the foreign country, topple the regime and replace it with a pro-US dictator.

“I don’t know if that’s such a great idea,” said the President, “What if the people, you know, have other ideas? I mean it’s their country, right?”

The President was beginning to think many strange and beautiful things. About the joy of simply breathing, defining the world with each exhale. No one should be denied that simple pleasure. Or peanut butter.

The Vice President and Secretary of Defense clenched their jaws and exchanged uneasy glances.

The next day, the Vice President knocked on the door of the oval office. The President was busy looking out the window, remembering when he was a child and had visited the sea- how vast it was and how small he had known himself to be then, standing on ancient shores…

The Vice President came into the Oval Office, coughed to let the President Know he was there. The President swiveled in his chair to find a familiar looking man standing next to the Vice President.
It took the President a moment to realize that the man looked exactly like him. A genuine doppelganger.

“Who’s this?”

“Oh you remember Scooter West, Mr. President. He used to be your personal bodyguard. Well, he’s being promoted.” The Vice President pulled a pistol from his coat pocket. Scooter West sneered. It was the same sneer the President used to wear, before he drank that fateful glass of milk.

And the President began to think, could he make it to the door in time?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.