Episode 4

“Ms. Warren, you’ve always fought for the little guy, what will you do as President to continue to advocate for the less fortunate,” asked a debate moderator who looked half like Chris Matthews and half like Tom Brokaw.

“Mmmmm, Tom Brokaw,” Lizzie thought, marinating on the idea of some not-quite-consensual sex with the man.

As she confidently gazed into the bright lights of the debate stage, the words of her response came together into a well-practiced monologue.

“Ever since I was a little girl growing up in the plains of Oklahoma, I’ve found that I loved the heart of the average working class American,” she suppressed a smirk as one of the cacophony of voices inside her head reminded her that she actually preferred the livers.

“I remember an old farmer who lived through the dust bowl. He lost an arm in an accident with a…”

“Boooooo-riiiiiiing,” a voice called out from an adjacent podium. Lizzie swiveled her head and locked eyes on the diminutive sodomite who had interrupted her speech.

“Pete! My time isn’t up! Look, I have two minutes left!” she stuck her hand out to the debate timer, returning her gaze to the impossible blinking zeroes that replaced the 2:15 she had seen just a blink earlier.

“Elizabeth, nobody buys your bullshit stories about some down home childhood. They could build a presidential candidate in a science lab that has more charisma than you!” Pete smirked with his arms crossed.

Lizzie’s body tensed in rage as a long-forgotten curtain of evil descended over her body. The demon was back.

With a bound that would’ve put a normal 71 year old woman in the hospital, she was on top of the preening poofter, hands pressing on his overpronounced adam’s apple. She clawed at his eyes and tore at his suit jacket, rending flesh and cloth in a blind frenzy. Finally, she exposed his impeccably hairless abdomen and bit down, hard, on his dad bod flab.

“Yeaaaaaaghhh!!” the discordant scream of Howard Dean escaped Buttegieg’s frothing mouth as a geyser of crimson showered the stage.

Lizzie pushed away the trivium floating through her head. Dean placed third in Iowa and then screamed his way to a humiliating defeat on super tuesday. She had placed third in Iowa and now she was eating the entrails of the leading candidate. Probably didn’t bode well for her chances.

She ignored the nagging feeling of dejavu and displacement as she hunted for that sweet, sweet liver. “Where the fuck is it?” she snarled while digging through the writhing ribcage of the presumptive Democratic frontrunner.

Then, as if struck by lightning, she jolted back. This wasn’t right. Nothing was right! Iowa debate stage? Iowa was almost three weeks ago!

Her conscious mind slammed into gear as her campaign bus clipped a pothole. She awoke in a marginally comfortable wingback chair in her sleeping quarters, a decorative pillow splayed and carelessly tossed aside. She rubbed her cheek in dismay, trying to make sense of this dream. It had been over 40 years since she last had a visit from the demon.

A noise from the front of the bus caught her attention as she walked to the washsink in the corner of her room. She picked a couple of down feathers off of her chin as she checked her makeup and poured herself a glass of water.

An aide opened the door after a perfunctory knock, carrying a stack of papers and an iPad. Warren suppressed an eyeroll as she took in the bilious figure of her assistant speechwriter, Jazz something-or-other. Portly, non-binary, and pastier than a kindergartner’s macaroni art, Jazz was a pure publicity stunt. The sagging prospects of victory after Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada left Lizzie no choice but to go all-in on the trannie bandwagon. Jazz sucked at its job, bitched incessantly, and nagged Lizzie so much that she had actually thrown a glass of scotch at it. People cheered.

“Ms. Warren, it’s time to prep for your Ohio speech.” Jazz squawked, jiggling like a poorly set gelatin dessert. “You’re not going to win this primary by sitting around daydreaming.”

Its raspy Roseanne voice made Lizzie want to jump out the window. Or throw Jazz out the window. Or eat Jazz. Probably bad eating, like city pigeons.

Lizzie steeled her face, trying to avoid giving away her feelings of surprise and fear. 40 years! It has been forty fucking years of the boring academic tedium, the personality training, the Beaver Cleaver life, the forgettable husband and the fake kids. Decades of work preparing for this exact moment. First with Charlie and the Scientist. Then, breaking away from them and striking out on her own. Semester after semester of grading essays and writing boring articles and saying and doing exactly what needed to be done to set up for this exact moment, and right when it was make or break, the demon resurfaces?

“Get. The fuck. Out!” Lizzie growled, picking up the water glass menacingly. Her eyes narrowed, cutting knives into Jazz’s soul. The rotund bluehair backed out of the room in haste, nearly backing into the door as it didn’t dare let its puppy dog eyes lose sight of Lizzie.

As the door closed, Lizzie threw the glass at the wall, reveling in the resulting panicked sounds.

She settled back into her wingback, a comforting thought washing over her like a warm tropical breeze. “The demon has always has an abundance of personality. Perhaps my likeability problem can be solved.”

“JAZZ! Get back in here Jazz!” Lizzie screamed, hardly opening her eyes.

“P-pp-p-please, ma’am, don’t hit me!” Jazz cowered cartoonishly, hunching over its iPad.

“I’m not going to hit you, you dolt,” Lizzie chuckled, “you’re way too important to kill… yet.” Lizzie’s smirk didn’t lighten Jazz’s mood.

“Schedule me an appearance at a biker bar. I have an announcement to make.”

“Um, a biker bar? Shouldn’t we schedule it at a high school or a library?” Jazz confusedly peeked at Lizzie.

“No, a biker bar. I’m going to announce that I’m a dyke!” Lizzie smiled a calculating grin, her iciness overwhelming her half-hearted attempt to act vulnerable.

“YOU CAN’T DO THAT! YOU CANT APPROPRIATE ELL GEE BEE TEE QUEUE EHH EYE PLUS PLUS CULTURE!!!” Jazz raged, bingo wings flapping like a turkey in heat.

“Oh puh-lease,” Lizzie drawled, somewhat decently approximating a catty basic bitch. “I’ve eaten more women than you could ever dream of.” With a dismissive flip of her hair, Lizzie signaled to Jazz that the conversation was over.

Still puffing from the exertion of the outburst/mating ritual, Jazz scowled, overemphatically pounding on the tablet as it made its exit.

As they pulled up to the ramshackle watering hole in rural Ohio, Lizzie put the finishing touches on her appearance. Despite having a closet bigger than any of her assistants’ living quarters, Lizzie didn’t have much attire other than pantsuits. Thankfully, a campaign t-shirt and a pair of undersized mom jeans were piled in the back.

“Break glass in case of likeability emergency,” her mind guffawed as she pulled the neatly folded clothes out of the recess.

Just one more quick rehearsal of a speech she didn’t intend to finish, and then showtime. After the disappointments of the early primaries, she was finally feeling good about her prospects. In this day and age of superficial wokeness could possibly avoid voting for the lesbian woman of color? Unworthy idiots. She scowled as she thought about the vapid stupidity of the average primary voter. All it takes is a couple of lies to get them. With a few minutes to spare before final rehearsal, she let herself slip back into her favorite daydream… the one where she’s pharaoh and her slaves are driven before her.

After an uneventful rehearsal, Lizzie confidently sipped a glass of water and scanned the crowd through the tinted windows of her mobile headquarters.

They’re all a bit WASPy for what we’re trying to do here, but I guess they’re all you can scare up on 3 hours’ notice, she fretted, eyes darting back and forth, looking for any sign of interesting people. Yesterday, she would’ve embraced this utterly boring crowd, but the demon wanted more. He wanted people with personality.

As she stepped down the stairs and prepared to execute the same series of steps that started every campaign appearance, she recoiled in horror. The spark of recognition coursed through her mind a split second before the gush of adrenaline forced her clambering back up the steps. It was them! After nearly 30 years, the figures of Charlie and the Scientist loomed in front of her. They exuded power even in their old age, and they had finally found her.

As the bus door slid open, Lizzie sputtered and gasped. Now that all of her old friends were in town, someone was sure to die.

 

Read the entire series here