By Mel Carriere
It took a while for Ernie to remember where he was, or even who he was. He felt like he was waking up from a particularly vivid dream, and wasn’t sure if it was a good dream or a bad dream. Part of him felt strangely triumphant and satisfied, the other part exhausted, and worried. Really worried. Turns out he had good cause to be.
Worry was a sure indicator the old Ernie was back, that the Alpha Dog was dead. But the beast had left its mark because his balls ached, severely. Ernie had never before experienced such testicular discomfort. Was his prostate going before its time, probably due to underuse?
Ernie was contemplating putting his jewels on ice when he did not hear, so much as feel the presence of strange men in the room. A day ago he would have sprung from his bed to greet them with fists a-blazing, but today he clung to his bunk in horror. Two menacing thugs were standing over him.
“Good morning, sunshine,” one of them said in a New Jersey accent, and they both laughed sadistically.
The thugs had been sent by the private detective dispatched by Percival, who had found out his wife Candace had been crawling around in the bushes like a squirrel, searching for nuts.
With unlimited funds at his disposal, Percy’s private dick bribed business owners along Lake Christie to allow him a peek at their security cameras. This wasn’t the first time the hired gun had monitored Candy Rose’s activities, so he knew she liked to jog along the lake shore, early in the morning.
The detective’s name was Max, Max Henry. He was a crew-cut Marine Corps veteran, now working for a former desktop Army Brigadier. Max despised dog faces like Percy, but he liked their dames, and he liked their money. He was willing to play both ends, without any crisis of conscience.
Every time he had caught Candy cheating before, he had given her a choice – do me or I report you to your husband.
Candy enjoyed a good roll in the hay, and because Max’s breath was slightly better than her husband’s, she always eagerly complied. This arrangement had worked out well for both parties, until the last time.
As they lay cuddling, Candy disrespected Max’s penis size while it was in its floppy, dormant, post-coitus state.
“It’s so cute,” Candy giggled, as she flopped Max’s minimalized member up and down with her fingertips.
Max was very sensitive about his penis size, or lack thereof. As an enlisted man in the Corps, where everybody showered together, he was taunted about it. These insults drove him to excel in everything. He became highly motivated to move up the ranks and get his own private shower, where no one could see his dick. But Candy had reawakened the old indignity.
Max immediately got out of bed, put on his trousers, and adjusted his tie.
“Where you going Maxie?” Candy protested. “I was just joking.”
Max the Jarhead left the room without even a grunt. Like hell you were, he thought. No slack this time, you little slut.
Earning Percy’s paycheck for a change, Max diligently went through the security footage from along the lakefront, and soon spotted another jogger on the images. He actually caught the man coming and going, one could say, just a minute behind Candy on the jogging trail. Coming in he had been clean and coiffed. Pulling out he was covered in pine needles, just like Candy.
Candy was taking her candy and eating it too. Here was proof. Max knew he had his man, so he printed out screenshots of the unknown jogger, then made his rounds of those businesses again, expecting instant cooperation like before.
This time Max found the proprietors non-compliant, even with a fistful of green grease to apply to their palms. “Never seen him,” was their stock answer, though his seasoned private eye’s eye knew they were lying. Their mouths said nay but their eyes said aye.
Max encountered resistance until he stepped into Mike’s MAGA shop.
Mike’s MAGA shop of Snowmist, Colorado carried every kind of Trump memorabilia. There were both MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING hats galore, in every size, religious icons bearing images of Trump and Jesus, Don’t Tread on Me banners, Let’s go Brandon T shirts, Trump signature red ties (Made in China despite a big tariff), Commando Trump coffee mugs, literary works like The Art of the Deal lining the bookshelves, and hundreds of other items. The store was one stop shopping for all things Trump.
Mike’s MAGA Shop was popular all along the Front Range of Colorado, being a little red island in a deep blue sea. Even the half-dozen or so angry, immigrant-hating MAGAites in Boulder would drive all the way there to complain about the commie pinko liberals in their town. They were happy to visit these kindred spirits, but certainly wouldn’t consider living here permanently among Weld County shit-kickers.
To facilitate this meeting of perpetually disgruntled minds, Big Mike set up a little coffee shop in the back where his clientele could interact, repeating the same Fox News mantras they had heard on TV that morning.
Before the MAGA store, the place had been called Mike’s Mom’s Curio Shop, which he inherited when she died. However, Mike didn’t have the sweet disposition to chat with little old ladies about doilies and bird houses and ceramic figurines, as Mom had, back when Big Mike worked her cash register.
But when Trump won in 2016, Mike immediately recognized an opportunity. He changed the sign post haste, nailing the big four letter word MAGA over Mom’s Curio, an easy fix. Then he swapped out the merchandise.
Mike was milking the MAGA cow for all she had. Deep in the back of his mind, he knew this couldn’t last. But he would ride the rich red wave while he could.
One day, feeling grateful to Ernie for being such a good mailman, Mike tried to give him a token of appreciation. Probably assuming all white people were Trump supporters, he laid out a MAGA hat, a MAGA shirt, and a MAGA mug.
“Take your pick Ern,” Mike told him. “On the house.”
Instead of acting grateful, Ernie recoiled, as if from a venomous snake. He looked at the merchandise, looked at Mike, looked at the floor, then looked at the merchandise again.
“No thank you,” he said, then quickly walked out.
Big Mike, all six foot two, three hundred pounds of him, couldn’t believe it. He felt slapped in the face. Here he was trying to be generous, and Ernie had left his generosity hanging.
Must be one of those damn libtards, thought Mike, who despised those who sponged off the government dole, even though he had never worked a day in his life. Except for his Mother that is, either directly, when she was alive, or for his Mother’s money, indirectly, after the meddlesome old bat was at last in her grave. Unemployed into his twenties, she finally threatened his 300 pound ass with expulsion from her home, if he didn’t get off his duff and do something.
That was the only reason Mike started working in her store, in the first place.
All that was past history. Now he dominated the local MAGA industry. Fuck if he was going to be insulted by Ernie, who must be a godless liberal to reject the freely offered MAGA gift of salvation.
Therefore, when private detective Max entered the MAGA shop, flashing pictures of Ernie jogging lustfully in front of a camera, Max was more than willing to cooperate.
“Oh yeah I know him,” answered the massive shopkeeper as he leaned over the counter, his immense belly threatening to swallow his own point of sale system like an amoeba. “And I know where he lives too.”
Detective Max reported this information straight back to Percy.
“Kill the bastard,” the boss ordered.
From that point on, it seemed Ernie Lawson Fogg’s fate was sealed.
Waking up to executioner thugs, one holding a pistol with a silencer, the other wielding brass knuckles to rough him up, was not a pleasant way for Ernie to start the day. His first reaction was shock – he couldn’t figure out what brutes like this would want with a harmless fellow like himself.
Of course he remembered everything he had done the day before, but in a detached way, as if he had seen it in a movie. The deeds didn’t seem related to him, so there should be no reason these two scowling men should want to kill him. He never hurt anybody, he wouldn’t even swat a bug. He chased yellowjackets out the window of his mail truck rather than smash them.
“Your name Ernie?” the thug with the knuckles asked.
Ernie’s head was still muddled from all the adrenaline pumping through it yesterday. It didn’t occur to him to deny it.
“Yes,” he admitted timidly.
The thug doing the talking looked like a cross between Lou Ferrigno and Joe Pesci. He raised up his brass knuckles to bring them down hard, the idea being to rearrange Ernie’s face before they offed him.
At that moment, someone started banging loudly against the door. Thug-two, who resembled a low budget Sylvester Stallone, spun around with pistol raised to glance through the window blinds. His movement, plus the racket against the door, distracted thug-one from driving his metal into Ernie’s skull.
“Holy fuck it’s the cops!” declared thug-two. Things had gone south, but like every trained assassin, he had already plotted an escape route for the eventuality. He lifted Ernie’s only chair to shatter his only window, then the two thugs leapt through it and escaped into the alleyway.
The cops who now arrived on the scene had no need to kick down Ernie’s door, since it had already been shimmied by Thug-One and Thug-Two.
As they burst in, Ernie Lawson Fogg cringed on the bed in complete befuddlement. He had just dodged the wrath of two thugs, only to find two more standing above him. They flashed badges instead of weapons, but were still distinctly thuggish in appearance.
The first law enforcement thug had a rather roundish head, like Charlie Brown, which was almost as bald as down-on-his-luck-Chuck too, save for some patches around his ears. The second had a stovepipe head straight up, but with a Borat-like mop of fuzzy hair and fuzzy mustache.
“Ernie Lawson Fogg?” Charlie Brown queried, and Ernie nodded eagerly once more. What could he do – it seemed like everybody wanted to corral him these days. But they had saved him from the Stallone and Pesci tag-team thugs, so maybe he should act grateful, so as not to appear rude.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“US Postal Inspectors,” Charlie Brown declared. “You’re under arrest for assaulting your supervisor, Brad Porter.”
Assaulting my supervisor? Ernie had never assaulted anyone. Anyone who knew him would say this was very un-Ernie-like behavior. He sat up on the bed and opened his mouth to protest.
But then he couldn’t protest. He vividly remembered punching Brad. And he remembered it feeling good, really good. But he remembered it as one would an out of body experience, like he was floating above the scene, looking down.
“I…I…” stammered Ernie.
“You’re what?” Charlie Brown and Borat asked together, Charlie accusingly, Borat clinically. In the heat of the moment they forgot they were supposed to be playing the good cop bad cop routine per the training manual, interrogating in turns, not in chorus.
Before Ernie could explain himself a shot rang out, penetrating the wall. Charlie Brown threw his partner Borat down, and they both fell atop Ernie on the bed.
As the trio disentangled atop the mattress, loud boots stomped across the floor of the apartment. Half a dozen men in camouflage gear and riot helmets burst in, brandishing assault rifles they pointed everywhere.
“Snowmist Police!” one of the helmeted SWAT cops declared through his gas filter. “You’re under arrest for auto theft!”
Charlie Brown’s voice emerged as from deep down a well, being muffled by the pillow where he landed, next to Ernie’s head. The cop felt very awkward being caught in this compromising position, fortunately with his pants still on.
“Wait a minute,” the officer growled as he sprung up, looked at Ernie with disgust, then wiped his hands on his polo shirt, as if cleaning off some filthy substance. “We’re United States Postal Inspectors and we arrested him first. What’s the meaning of shooting at us, by the way?”
Snowmist SWAT checked Charlie Brown’s badge. After satisfying themselves he was a real cop, they glanced at one another with confusion.
“We didn’t shoot at anybody,” the officer who could be SWAT one said, though it was hard to tell him from SWAT two through six in the increasingly cramped apartment, where law enforcement was sardined together nut to butt, like an Asian commuter train porn vid.
Well then, who fired the shot?” Charlie Brown asked. “Whatever, doesn’t matter. Point is, we got here first, so we get to make the arrest. You guys back off and let us slap the cuffs on him.”
“No way!” Snowmist SWAT one declared, trying to show a little personality, though he and two through six were as identical as dots on dice save for their slick, shiny badges, which helped them all score a lot of chicks flashing them in bars, but didn’t mean anything blanketed by all this gear.
The Postal Inspectors and Snowmist SWAT began to engage in law enforcement territorial pissing, throwing their weight around as much as their elbows could form right angles in the cramped quarters.
The discussion became so heated they completely ignored Ernie, forgetting in the fracas that no one had slapped the handcuffs on him yet. Their perp could have easily jumped through the broken window left by the fleeing Mafia assassins.
The only thing that prevented such an escape was that this was the new Ernie, under arrest for being the old Ernie. Instead of fleeing the apartment, as the new/old testosterone-amped Ernie would have done, he waited there on the bed like a good citizen, fretting and fussing he might get in trouble if he ran away.
During the course of the animated jurisdictional debate, the Colorado State Patrol showed up. They too claimed the right to arrest Ernie, for the havoc he had caused on the highways yesterday. The taxpaying public was particularly outraged by the old man who crapped his pants when Ernie nearly ran him over. This incident made the news, and the outcry was almost as deafening as when Loveland cops beat up an old lady with dementia, after she walked out of Wal Mart with a bottle of shampoo she forgot to pay for. Incontinence was not quite as good as Alzheimer’s, but pretty damn close in the eyes of the perpetually pissed off, media-manipulated, mooing masses.
Though there was no love in Loveland, the state patrol was anxious to convince the public that most Colorado cops were there to assist senior citizens, not assail them.
Because the cramped apartment was already stuffed with bloated badges, the various agencies moved out into the alleyway to argue the point, leaving the dangerous Alpha Dog criminal completely unattended.
Finally, the Feds, state and city decided they would settle the arresting rights via the most tried and true method in the criminal justice handbook – rock, paper, scissors.
By order of seniority, the Federal Postal Inspectors and Colorado State Patrol went head to head first. Feds picked rock, as did the State Patrol, for a draw, so they went another round. This time the Feds stuck to rock, while the State unwisely chose scissors.
After that, the Feds went against the City of Snowmist in single-elimination showdown.
“No way he’ll do rock again,” a Snowmist SWAT officer whispered in the ear of his clone. “Pick scissors.”
Unfortunately for the SWAT team, the Postal Inspector stayed with rock, and smashed the scissors, as well as Snowmist City’s bragging rights.
“Ha! You little bitches!” Charlie Brown declared triumphantly. Then, going pale, he remembered fugitive Ernie for the first time in a while. He prayed he would still be there on the bed, obediently waiting to be handcuffed.
Phew, thought Charlie Brown as he turned to see Ernie propped up on a pillow, watching the contest with great interest, and a little worry, wondering if all judicial proceedings, and perhaps his own fate, would be decided through the arbitrary whim of rock, paper, scissors, instead of the letter of the law.
Charlie Brown slapped on the cuffs himself, then began to haul Ernie off to the hoosegow.
Ernie’s abuelita stood in the alleyway, getting right up in the faces of the assembly of cops. “Erniecito, Erniecito,” she said with tears in her eyes when she saw him emerge shackled from the apartment. She made the sign of the cross against her grandson’s chest, then covered his cheeks with kisses. “Que pasó, Erniecito? Sueltalo, puercos!” she yelled at the cops. “El es innocente!”
One of the Snowmist SWAT clones understood Spanish, and didn’t fancy being called a pig, in any language. He grabbed Ernie’s sweet abuelita roughly, then dragged her away. So much for law enforcement senior appreciation day, there in Colorado.
Meanwhile, Ernie Lawson Fogg, bound and down as he was, could only look on and nod his head sadly.
That night Ernie slept in the Federal lockup. He tended to wax philosophical about things, and figured he might as well adjust to this new lifestyle, knowing he might be behind bars for a while. He leaned back on his bunk, closed his eyes, and actually slept better than he had the night before.
As Ernie snoozed, another young Postal Inspector named Stephen Wright came into the building. He had been a letter carrier himself before joining the inspectors, a not so unusual path into the law enforcement job.
Steve glanced at the arrest report on the desk, and spotted Ernie’s name on it.
“Ernie Lawson Fogg!” he declared, then nearly spat his coffee out all over Charlie Brown’s bald head, which would have ruined its Lemon Pledge sheen. I know him! He’s a good dude!”
Steve read the particulars of the case as Charlie Brown gave him the evil eye. He didn’t need some rookie casting doubt on his arrest by referring to the perpetrator as a good dude.
“I wonder what drove him over the edge?” Steven said, shaking his head sadly. “Whatever it was, that asshole Brad Porter probably deserved it. I know him too, unfortunately.”
Charlie Brown went red in the face. His rock, paper, scissors triumph was being made a mockery by this mouthy punk newbie.
“It doesn’t matter if you think he’s a good dude. He committed multiple crimes, and is going to be locked up for a long time!”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” station chief Bill said, walking in wearing a polo shirt that barely stretched over his beer-belly abdomen. In his hand he held two more sheets of paper, which happened to be judicial orders.
“Some passerby in the alley filmed the whole arrest, you incompetent assholes,” Bill said. “Including the stupid rock, paper, scissors thing. Worse than that, they recorded the Snowmist SWAT roughing up the prisoner’s grandmother, and now it’s all over social media. She and her lawyer agreed to drop all lawsuits, in exchange for clemency for her grandson. Let him out.”
As Steve and Charlie Brown stared at the governor and attorney general’s orders with opposite feelings, a bright light hovered above the Federal building. Although anyone in the street outside would have thought it just a brighter than normal aircraft, a particularly observant witness might have noticed how the object stopped and hovered above the building, in defiance of the current state of aviation technology.
Inside that great light, as lieutenant Worvey activated the opaque matter penetration beam (OMP), Commander Fargot twirled his catfish whiskers a bit regretfully. After the gizmo cranked into gear, a view of Ernie Lawson Fogg appeared on the holographic monitor overhead. He was stretched out on his prison bunk, calm as a cuddled kitten.
Fargot sighed. “These Earthlings will incarcerate anybody or anything, for any reason,” he said.
“Do you think he’s learned his lesson, Commander?” Worvey asked, while his sucker-tipped feelers enviously stroked the spot where his own whiskers had yet to sprout, and wouldn’t yet, for another 150 revolutions around the Luytenite sun.
“Who knows?” responded Commander Fargot, somewhat sadly. “These humanoid creatures constantly desire to defy their natures, instead of being content with what nature gave them. Yes it’s true that every dog has its day, but what the dog doesn’t understand is that there is always a bigger dog right around the corner, waiting to bite him. Let’s go home.”
THE END
Image created with the assistance of Google Gemini