President muttered, taking his companion’s hand, "it’s touch and go now. If more mongrels come after us...”
He did not have to finish the sentence.
From a kneeling posture she slowly pushed herself to her feet.
“God, I really am hungry,” she responded, drool uncontrollably dribbled from the corner of her mouth at the thought of plugging something into her pie hole. “Say, where was that damn cookout?”
IllaryHay stumbled off head raised trying to regain the aroma of that heavenly feast, while the President paused for an instant to glance back at the dark fastness of the pathway. Leaves were now being blown from the trees as the breeze turned quickly into a strong, gusty wind. Not a bird could now be seen, it was becoming a stormy, eery setting. He now turned and pressed on after the woman running to catch up with his long-legged gait, golf club in hand.
Time seemed to pass quickly as the two strolled along together. It gave BamaOay some time to consider his true feelings for his female companion. When he was running the country during his epoch as President, when the mob was under his spell and the drums of the press beat out eulogies and praises of him often laced with gold dust everywhere. Now, however, the truth of the man was out and all those in the media who once idolized him were no longer kissing his ass. No longer were those liberals working on his behalf, on the mindless, on the inane. The press were no longer lavishing praise and idolatry on him; it was all going to that woman walking by his side.
His most outspoken detractors had always hated those in power for too long. To them perfection was always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next. They escaped the present in dreams of the past, or the future. The flaming torch of liberalism was rising and he could not help but suppose it was now being passed on to the woman at his side. Should he attempt to ruin her? Would that end his deep set feelings of loss, end his misery? Some months ago he might have considered the act when he had not lost all ambition, but still enjoyed being the celebrity of the ‘folk.’ Could he rise again to those heights, or would the rest of his life be a place where those old dreams no longer stirred? He would be forced to retire from the Presidency; she would then mount the throne. Then she, too, would be replaced. One-by-one all who followed him would lose their place as temporary rulers...those who could not rid the country of the 22nd Amendment were all ultimately doomed to the same fate.
“King,” he whispered to himself, as an epiphany overtook him. He shrugged his narrow shoulders, “that had once had an agreeable ring to it.”
There were numerous claps of thunder in the near distance and approaching fast. Their surroundings were fast becoming dark as night.
Something really, really wicked was his way coming!
Tornado!
National Weather Service Alert - A line of severe weather is racing across the eastern half of the United States in advance of a major cold outbreak. A tornado watch will be in effect from 1:00PM to 6:00PM EST for the following counties: Camden, McIntosh, Telfair...
Somewhere beyond the forest, beyond the path, the sun had long ago sunk into a mass of threatening darkness the likes of which the President had never seen. The island had become a gloomy place of dark shadows and dim vistas, the winds seeming to make the world around him shift.
The sky had a queer, greenish aura and the howl of the winds through the trees was near deafening. It was if a hurricane were approaching, only worse. The trees were bowing under the tempest in waves, one came crashing down just feet away. Soon, the two wayfarers were running for their lives down that path, thoughts of food now replaced by thoughts of self preservation. It was impossible to resist the fear now growing inside each of them; it did not matter where that trail was taking them farther and further into the hinterland, further and farther away from the safety of the hunting lodge, farther and further into a sinister, unwelcoming world.
IllaryHay suddenly caught sight of something even more horrific, “Oh shit, a Tornado!”
The President looked off in the same direction. It was true! Obscured by rain and flying debris he could make out the V-shaped trunk of the colossal monster.
“Where in the hell can we go?” she screeched, just heard above the roar of the tempest.
Shielding his eyes with his forearms, BamaOay looked around for some place of safety...and found it! “Look,” he exclaimed, pointing off down the trail, “a cabin!”
The shack looked to be just within reach, the two just might make it!
“Run!”
Behind them trees were uprooted and carried away like feathers. Were they going to die?
Crying like babies, they stumbled their way up onto the porch, the President turning an ashen grey as he attacked the door with his fists when he found, “Damn the doors locked! Open up you idiots, it is I...your President!”
“Hey!”
“Open the goddamn...huh!"
“Hey, the window’s open!” screamed IllaryHay, barely audible to his ears.
She was the first into the breach, but only to get stuck midway through.
Terror had seized the President who looked like a madman with his screaming, pushing and shoving; he succeeded in clearing the human plug and just made it through in time to slam the window shut, then all hell broke loose.
The wood cabin seemed to take on a motion of its own, as if it were being torn from the foundation and lifted into the air.
An out-of-this-world turbulence screamed around them, tugging at their clothes, tugging at their eagle feathers. The cyclone-like vortex wrenched the chantey without warning from the ground spinning them madly in the core of effulgence.
The cabin echoed with the pairs’ screams under the agony of their combined fears. The horrible sensation of flying, the darkness and the terrifying noises proved more than IllaryHay could endure and she lost consciousness. BamaOay did not faint, but he was scared shitless and clung to his driver with a tight grip, while expecting every second would be his last.
After a time the President recovered what remained of his senses; the log cabin was still flying around in a circular motion, but now slowing down. The worst thing, however, was his terror of abruptly being hurled from hundreds, maybe even thousands of feet, back to earth. His scared shitlessness was evidenced by his long, drawn out screams of fright that went ringing from his pie hole only to disappear in the buffeting clangor of the howling winds.
The President began to weep, dry eyed, with harsh not-heard sobs that shook his frame. He could not take his eyes from the mayhem just outside the window. His sobbing grew shriller, changed to frightful, delusional laughter and that in turn became histrionic screaming. He was beginning to go stark, raving mad!
Then a weird thing began to happen. The President noticed the spinning motion of the cabin slowed seeming to become almost suspended in the sky, floating around in the eye of the vortex with a gentle motion that was not so very disagreeable to bear. IllaryHay’s eyes opened as the two whirled around weightless inside the cabin, as its motion slowed, climbing unhurriedly up through the sky.
The two found themselves in a redneck’s house, in the literal core of the tornado, but in this backdrop all was generally still, even with the tremendous winds whipping about their every side.
Up and up they went, their ears ringing more-and-more as they both climbed in elevation.
Boom!
One of the windows suddenly blew out and immediately disappeared into the surrounding maelstrom.
Moments later...
Boom!
Another.
It was very dark inside the shack and the wind howled around them, but both had found riding out this maelstrom uncomplicated. After spinning around inside the house a few hundred times, including those instances when the two ran happened to run into each other like bumper cars, they both felt as if they were being gently rocked to sleep. They were being whisked away into the heavens higher and higher where they remained for an untold time, carried inside the whirlwin
ds away to who knew where.
Once, however, the President drifted too near one of the holes where once had been a frame window and had the hair of his right leg sandblasted off. Screaming out for help, he was caught by one of his big ears at the last minute and saved from impending doom by his fellow traveler. Problem was the momentum of her wrenching action had caused him to continue his flight in their weightless situation head first through another missing window. Crying like a baby, he was now missing his eagle’s feather and sported the mark of a medieval monk’s, a tonsure, from where he had met, once again, with the fury of the tornado.
For her part, the Clinton broad had remained pretty much unscathed save for the loss of her feather and her messed up hair. Now, with some time on his hands, the President entertained briefly the thought of pushing her noodle out through one of the windowless holes as she slept. The thought of getting a little revenge for his missing hair, however, quickly passed when he correctly surmised that he was not likely to win any contest involving anything physical with that specimen of female manliness.
Time seemed to carry little meaning in this, the inner core of the tornado. The air about them grew thick and heavy and seemed to close in upon them, their surroundings changed from near pitch-black to varying shades lightening grey. Both failed in communicating with one another, the winds shrieked too loudly about them. Without knowing
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