A Locket Full of Surprises

There is always a reason to kill someone and always a reason someone wants you dead. Today someone will be dead, and it won’t be me. It will be a bunch of people and the world will be better off. So now I play my role, to lure the bees to the flower. I have to play the role of the sitting duck, so I must sit in a cold auditorium and watch my dad get an award. It’s cold today. It is always cold during awards ceremonies, colder when it is not you getting the award. But I have to be here, it’s a dying man’s request. I can’t believe that anyone would hold anything anywhere close to Chicago in the dead of winter. The weather is the least of my concerns, I got shot the last time I was outside of Virginia and any random idiot could get a twofer today. I am going to stop doing things for the sake of nostalgia or out of some misplaced debt that I think that I may owe to someone. I am on a stage with my father as he gets some sort of Lifetime Achievement Award for being the president who collapsed the world. Maybe that is not entirely true. He didn’t collapse the world by himself, but he did drop the bombs that started the process.

Today is the 75th Anniversary for Madison Jr. High School and my father was in the first class to start 6th grade and finish the 8th grade at the school. Out of the 140 in his class there are now 17 remaining. All of them are on stage today. My father is the only one who will be speaking. I figure that at some point in his speech I will be put to death along with him, 16 old farts and the idiot president of Chicago. That is the plan I heard.

Malik El-Shabazz is the president of Chicago. He took the name because he fashions himself as some kind of Civil Right leader. He is no Malcolm X. I keep reminding myself that he needs to be alive at the end of the day or I may not make it back to Virginia. To say that we don’t get along is an understatement. He was the one who shot me the last time I was in town. But he is not the one that is gunning for me today. Bjorn Hedstrom should take the shot today. I killed his brother, Nils, a while back. I want to laugh, but I have to relax, it is time for my father to speak.

“75 years ago, on a freezing cold day in the winter of 1978, Madison Junior High School opened its doors to teach its first crop of students. I found myself as one of them, a 12 year child who loved basketball and math. Things were a lot different back then. The school and the neighborhood surrounding it was cut out of a corn field. The final acres of the farm jutted against the blacktop that the buses used to drop off the children. There was a basketball court on the corner of the blacktop behind the school.” My father pointed towards a spot that now housed a guard house to protect the children. The corn is gone and some of the houses that once warmly hugged the school were destroyed in the riots. My father continued to speak, “My favorite teacher was Mr. Thomas, who taught history. He carried a big stick, he called it the ‘Mississippi Tooth Pick.’ To get anyone’s attention he would slam it on the desk of the student.”

I kept listening to my dad speak, but I knew I had to pay attention to the doors and my dead wife’s heart shaped locket. At any moment, Bjorn’s men are going to come bursting in and kill everyone on stage and I have to be ready. The locket allows me to see 5 minutes into the future and shift small objects to another location in time. Bjorn is going to use bees to kill me, but he will miss and die in the process. At least that is my plan.

Bees have been around for more than 30 years now because they are an effective method of killing. They are nothing but small remote-controlled drones with explosive charges. They used to have small cameras to spy on important people. But after my dad bombed Iran and killed everyone in the country the world split and now there are 8 regions, 2 are in what used to be the United States. I am the president of Virginia and Malik is the president of Chicago. It is stupid, The North vs. The South all over again. But this time it is not a fair fight and Malik knows this. I control South America, Central America, Mexico, Hawaii, Alaska and pretty much everything south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Malik controls Canada and everything north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Bjorn uses Chicago to attack me. I know the plan because I used a bee to listen to Malik and Bjorn when they set it in motion. But Malik doesn’t know that he is supposed to be dead in the attack.

Now I am holding the locket and thinking about Rahel and how I ended up here. My wife Rahel used to wear this silver heart shaped locket. I gave it to her to celebrate her pregnancy. We thought it would be our only child so the locket was special. We were going to take a picture of the baby and put it in the locket. But that never happened. The World Health Organization told her that she had to get an abortion. The child was going to have asthma. Rahel died during the abortion. Now there is a time shift button where there should be a picture of a baby.

It seems like time is moving so slow. My dad is talking about the gym now and how there was a huge Warhawk painted on one wall and on the opposite wall was a scoreboard with a timer for basketball games. He was the starting guard in 7th and 8th grade. It is interesting, he was a Warhawk when he was in school and a Warhawk as president. My dad continued, now about his family, “My father only got to see one of my basketball games. He was always traveling for his job. My mother told me that he loved us because he provided for us. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I knew he was at my game, so I was going to show off. We were playing Lincoln Jr. high and I had 32 points, 11 assists and 8 steals.”

It’s getting close to the end for Bjorn. The locket just vibrated. I have one more minute. I looked around the auditorium. It is a room that is used for lunch, plays, physical education and other events. It is kind of like a hockey rink. There is a recessed area surrounded by 4 steps. The stage is at one end of the room and the other side of the auditorium has a hallway that leads to the front entrance of the school. I am on the stage just behind the old farts.

I smiled to myself as I remembered my father’s speaking before he destroyed Iran. In 2027 he gave a speech that would become the most famous speech ever. I had never heard the president curse. The speech is remembered as the IDGAF speech. It had nothing to do with a little dog named “Checkers,” it was more like Reagan when he told Gorbachev to tear down that wall. During the speech a monitor came down behind him and there was a video of the Iranian President’s house. He pointed to the screen and said, “I told the Iranian president that if he was going to continue with his plans for nuclear weapons, we would reset his country. He told me any aggression towards Iran would cause death to America. So, I promised him 40 days and 40 nights of bombing.” At that point the house disappeared and fire erupted. There was a question from one of the reporters about whether he had approval and what the other world leaders said. He stated, matter of factly, “I don’t give a fuck.” It took 9 days to obliterate Iran and in 2 months the world economy was reset and the United States was no more.

I looked towards the hallway and I saw my assassin. He didn’t have to do anything, just release the bees. I thought I saw him wink at me. It will be 3 seconds and he will explode. I pressed the button in the locket and the power went off. I counted to 3 and the assassin exploded. I looked into the locket and a hologram appeared. Bjorn exploded. I stood up and calmly walked to Malik. I snatched him by the arm and pulled him up off his chair. His guards rushed to stop me. 3 bees exploded in front of them. I told Malik we needed to go. He knew he was done. This time he was wrong. I took him to his office and showed him the video where Bjorn plotted to kill him and take over Chicago. It was time to get the country back together again.