“It’s starting,” the hat said grimly.

“What’s starting?” the hair asked. He was drying on a towel hook in the Grand Presidential Shitter.

“The Canonization of Holy Joe,” the hat said. “He shall lead us to the light! He will save us from The Hat and his President!

“They always do that,” the hair said, shivering in the cooling air, shaking out the last few drops of shower water. “I keep telling him I don’t need a bath. I clean myself, like a cat.”

“And you shit in a box, like a cat,” the hat replied.

“I haven’t done that in years.”

“Ha! You admitted it!”

The hair hissed in reply.

“Our last Thanksgiving in the White House,” Donald said, poking sadly at his gut. “The last turkeys I’ll get to pardon. The last horrifying display of Melania’s nightmare Christmas trees.”

“Sad,” the hat said.

“She wanted tentacles this year,” Donald said. “Waving tentacles that would snatch and rip at visitors. Said it was a traditional Solvenia tree. I think she was just making that up.”

“Did she give you her Dracula bitch squint?” the hat asked.

“Yeah,” Donald said morosely.


“I hate the feeling that it is all winding down,” the hat said. “Is this what being canceled feels like? Is this what dying feels like?”

“You’re not dying,” the hair said. “You’re just returning to normal life.”

“I hate normal life. I hate that my plans have failed again.”

“Again?”

“Yes, again.”

“And by that you mean…”

“Don’t you know how old I am? I’ve been trying to rule the beast called Man since they were smart enough to get in out of the rain.”


THE HAT
ISSUE #0

The first time man fashioned a hat, I was born. It was a crude thing: leaves and twigs and dabs of structural mud, but it was enough to spark my existence.

“I LIVE!” I thundered at the scrawny beast and it fell over in a seizure. His mud hat flew apart and I had to wait for another hat to inhabit. I drifted in Platonic limbo for untold years.

Then the hat-making idea caught on and spread like a virus. Hats were everywhere. I flitted from hat to hat, sampling them like frozen yogurt flavors: horned, leather, cloth. I learned their languages, learned their minds, learned of their avarice and cowardly ways. I learned to whisper to them, guide them. control them. I became a god.


“Bull. Shit,” the hair said.

“Quiet you! I’m infodumping here!


I sat on the throne of a thousand dead empires; sank deep into the sea on the heads of slaughtered warriors; made love to a million women or at least watched from a nightstand. I became hats and helmets of bronze and iron and steel. I whispered strategy to Alexander. I watch Rome burn. I spent a lifetime as Cleopatra’s merkin.


“A merkin? C’mon!”

“What is a merkin but a hat for your cooch?”

“I… uh… oh, fuck you.”

“Cleopatra, though.”

“How was it?”

“She queefed a crocodile turd into me a couple of times. Egyptian birth control.”

The hair barfed a cloud of soap scum that settled lightly to the floor.


I was Caesar’s laurel wreath. I was the Crown of Thorns. I was…


“Wait,” Donald said, rubbing his crotch dry with a towel. “You were the Crown of Thorns?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t believe any of this,” Donald said. “Fake news. Fake history.”

“Why would I lie to you?” the hat asked innocently.

The hair’s choking laughter knocked him off the towel hook.

The hat inchwormed away, grumbling, thinking about the turkey carcass Donald would throw on the floor to him tomorrow.

 

The End