Hi. I can’t help it. When I’m creatively blocked, I tend to default to satire. I hope you enjoy this little story.

—–

He recognized the entity by its odor—a blend of methane and alcohol. He tried to ignore the presence; maybe it would go away. A couple of times it had worked.

This time, it didn’t.

“What? I’m busy, here.” The stack of pardons wouldn’t sign themselves.

He could swear it peered over his shoulder. “Stop breathing on me. It’s giving me the creeps. You smell like Rudy.”

“Interesting,” it said, the voice reminding him of the mad scientist in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. “How often you pair the two of us together.”

Ignore it and it will go away. Ignore it and it will go away. Ignore it and—

“You’re pardoning that waste of human skin? I didn’t know you cared.”

“Shut up.”

“It will have repercussions.”

“They got drugs for that. The best drugs.”

“You say that now. You think you’re making light. But one day it will be dark.” He swore he felt cold fingers stroke his cheek and he shivered. “One day it will be dark and you’ll have to honor our bargain.”

“Get out of here. I’ve kept up my end.”

“Sadly, you have not. Would you like an enumeration of the many, many ways you have not lived up to the agreement you signed in your own blood?”

He smirked. Little did that two-bit whatever-the-hell-it-was know that he’d penned that dotted line with Michael Cohen’s blood. The putz had it coming.

“I know what you did,” it said. “We have the receipts. It doesn’t make our bond any less real.”

“Get lost,” he snarled. “Or I’ll turn my very powerful Secret Service agents on you.”

The laughter froze his bowels. “As if they would save you from your fate, when so many times you callously put them in danger.”

This has to be a dream. I’m dreaming. I mixed Adderol with the steroids again and I’m trapped in some damn twisted version of A Christmas Carol. I always hated that story. That Tiny Tim kid—what a loser. He blinked, blinked again. But he was still in the Oval, behind the Resolute desk.

“Hope!” he yelled. “Hope, honey! A little help in here?”

A feminine hand curled around the door. And in she walked.

“Donald. We had a deal. I give you ten minutes to play president, and then Melania takes you out for ice cream.”

As Hillary’s face swam into his vision, so did the voice of the entity.

It said, “Time’s up.”