The Election Carol, Stave II: The First of the Three Americans

Stave II: The First of the Three Americans

When Donald awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the golden walls of his chamber.  He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, and groped for his phone.  Checking the time, he saw that it was just turning twelve.  Twelve!

He checked the settings to make sure he had the right time zone.  He had slept less than an hour.

Well, nothing to do but send out random tweets, although he was a bit early about it.  Usually prime tweet time was between one and three am, but since he had made prior engagements, he might as well get started.  The American people were counting on him after all.  That is why they elected him.  He would be there any time of the night or day, ready to send the nation into Twitter Wars if the situation so warranted.

He scrambled out of bed, and reached out his hand for his throne-like chair and sat in it.  He sai in it and began watching Saturday Night Live so he could then post about how unfunny and unwatchable it was.  Donald watched the cold open skit featuring actors playing  himself and Kellyanne Conway.  He watched it, and then watched it over and over, and could make nothing of it.  The more he watched, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured not to watch, the more he watched it and tried to figure out what Alec Baldwin was trying to convey with his SAD portrayal.  It was almost like he meant that Donald was more concerned with tweeting than receiving National Security briefings.  Oh, Donald would show him and began to tweet about how WRONG he was.

He kept thinking back to Fred’s Ghost and it bothered him exceedingly.  Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, “Was it a dream or not?”

Donald sat in this state until the time had gone three quarters past the hour, when he was reminded that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one.  He had the world’s greatest memory after all.  He resolved to stay awake until the hour was past; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the alert.  At length it broke upon his listening ear.

“Donald, you have a visit,” Siri began, “from one American.”

“The hour itself,” said Donald, triumphantly, “and nothing else!”

He spoke before Siir had finished her alert, however.  Light flashed up in the room upon the instant.  His bedroom door swung open.

The door was swung open; and Donald, starting up in an alarmed attitude, found himself face to face with a Native American man: as close to you as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.

This was an American, strange to Donald -- like an American man, yet not a white American man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from view.  The arms were long and muscular; the hands the same (Donald was exceedingly jealous on this), as if its hold were of uncommon strength.  He wore clothing which seemed from a long lost time completely foreign to Donald.  But the strangest thing about him was, that from the crown of his head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in his duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which he now held under his arm.

Even this, though, when Donald looked at him with increasing steadiness, was not his strangest quality.  For as his belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure himself fluctuated in his distinctness: being now a man with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs with a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away.  And in the very wonder of this, he would be himself again; distinct and clear as ever.

“Are you the American, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?  And on second thoughts, are you really an American?” asked Donald.

“I am!”

The voice was soft and gentle.  Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

“Who, and what are you?” Donald demanded.

“I am from the past.”

“Long past?” inquired Donald: observant of his older style of clothing.

“No.  America’s past.”

Perhaps, Donald could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the American in his cap; and begged him to be covered.

“What!” exclaimed the American, “would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give?  Is it enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!”

Donald reverently disclaimed all intention to offend knowledge of having willfully bonneted the American at any period of his life.  He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

“The welfare of the nation!” said the American.

Donald frowned, and could not help muttering, “Oh, one of those people.” The American must have overheard him, for he said immediately:

“Not that kind of welfare.  Take heed!”

He put out his strong hand as he spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.

“Rise! And walk with me!”

It would have been vain for Donald to plead that the weather and hour were not adapted to rich white men in New York City; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad lightly in his slippers, pajamas, and robe; and that he was an old man at that time.  The grasp, though gentle, was not to be resisted.  He rose: but finding the American made towards the window, began to protest.

“We are mortals,” Donald remonstrated, “and liable to fall.”

“I am a spirit.  Bear but a touch of my hand there,”said the American Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more than this!”

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood in an open country with forests on either hand.  The city had entirely vanished.  Not a vestige of it was to be seen.  The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, late spring day.  “Good Heaven!” said Donald clasping his hands together, as he looked about him,  “Where are we?”

“I was a young man here.  I am of the Patuxet tribe visiting the Penobscots in what you call, Maine.”

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly.  Its gentle touch,though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man’s sense of feeling.  He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long forgotten.

“Your lip is trembling,” said Donald.  “And what is that going on there?”

Donald saw men dressed in old fashioned European garb with muskets sneaking through the woods.  He begged the American spirit to lead him where they would be safe.

“You recollect this day?” inquired Donald.

“Remember it!” cried the American; “Here I was captured with four Penobscots.”  We were taken forcefully to England.  There I became fluent in English.  Strange no one has talked of our kidnapping for so many years!” observed the American.  “Let us go on.”

They walked along the forest path; Watching as the armed English captured five Native American men at gunpoint.  The men were strong, but being unarmed, the only alternative to capture was death.  The Englishmen were in great spirits and shouted to each other, until their voices faded as they dragged the captured men away through the forest.

“These are but shadows of the things that have been” said the American.  They have no consciousness of us.”

The scene changed although the two were still in the woods, they were now in a different woods.  The American’s former self was coming along with a different group of Englishmen; as as they came, the American knew and named everyone of them!  Why did his eyes sink, and his heart ache as they went past!  Why was he filled with sadness when he heard his former self acting as a guide for the English travellers?  The group of men were separated from the American’s former self when a new group of voices came hurtling through the woods.  The Patuxet man was being captured again!  

“What is going on, now?” asked Donald.

“I was captured a second time.  Forced against my will, again, I was taken to Spain where I was sold as a slave.  I escaped and stayed with some monks till I could again return to America.”

Again the scene changed, and Donald and the American stood in the forest outside of a camp.  The air was still but Donald quickly became aware of a deathly smell rising from the camp.  There were footsteps in the woods, and the Patuxet man came walking alone this time towards the camp.  He must have smelled the stench as well, as a look of horror overcame the man’s eyes, and he started running into the camp.  He ran into the camp and began crying out a harrowing cry that unsettled Donald to his rotten core.

“The camp is deserted,” said the American. “All have died from a smallpox epidemic.  All my family and people died.  A solitary Patuxet man, imprisoned, enslaved, and now freed only to find that his whole world is wiped from the Earth, goes to live with nearby Wampanoags.

They left the camp, and as they walked both time and space were going by. They came upon a crude village.  They walked into one of the houses.  There was a celebration going on, some kind of feast.  The villagers, who were Englishmen were sitting down with a group of Wampanoags and the Patuxet man was among them.

“What is this scene?”asked Donald.  

“Here, we are glancing on the first Thanksgiving, as it is now called,” returned the American.

Donald looked at him with some wonder saying “Wait, are you Squanto?”

“That is how I am known amongst modern Americans.  I am called Tisquantum, or at least I was,” said the American.  “My story does not continue for long. Let us see another time.”

Donald and the American were now standing near Tisquantum wrapped in a blanket with two Wampanoag people standing over him, trying to ease his suffering.  Sickness was in the air and the suffering Patuxet man’s life was coming to a speedy end.  He moaned and writhed one last painful time, and then all was quiet and still.

“The last of the Patuxet people,” the American Spirit said solemnly.

Donald thought for a moment, “Well,” he said.  “I guess you should have built a wall.  I am going to build a great, big beautiful wall, and America will finally be safe from immigrants.”

The American Spirit was silent for a time, seeing that his companion was of very limited intelligence and had a complete lacking of basic human decency.  “Americans have not always worried about keeping immigrants out.  In fact, there was a time when they were dragging them in.  Let us see another time.”

Donald and the American were suddenly standing in the middle of a busy shipping port.  Newly arrived Africans were unloading from a cramped and sticking ship.  They were chained, many beaten, and completely terrified and broken.  Nearby women and children were being ripped apart from each other a slave auction was well underway.  The cries and screams of the children were deafening.  They were soon beaten by large white men and loaded onto carts and rode away, their mothers unable to comfort or protect them, were crying and solemn awaiting their own sale and departure into a life slavery, personal violence, and certain exploitation.  There was no hope or comfort for the enslaved peoples.

The American Spirit observed Donald’s face for any sign of empathy or compassion for the misery that was all around them, but found none.  “Poor children,” the American Spirit lamented.  “Poor children!  Dear children!”

Donald seemed to be getting bored and restless.  “Are we about done with this stuff?  I need to find out what people are tweeting about me on the SNL sketch last night.  Conduct me home.  Show me no more!”

But the relentless American Spirit pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him to observe what happened next.

They were in another scene and place; a room, or more like a corridor, not very large or handsome, and extremely dark.  Donald was aware of voices and boisterous laughter, like that of an audience, and being a very shallow and sensitive man, Donald immediately took offense and began to shake with anger.

He was about to orate his indignation,  when a shadowy figure brushed passed him.  This startled him and he now observed that the laughter was not aimed at himself, but it was an audience laughing in a theater.  The theater was clearly from another century, but Donald, not really knowing or caring anything about history had no clue as to which.  The laughter was a reaction to an ongoing play on the stage.  Four particular laughs were being chuckled directly in from of Donald and the American Spirit.  There were two men accompanied by two women.  One man was very tall and dressed rather formally and the other was shorter and dressed in what appeared to be a military uniform.

The dark shadowy figure was approaching the back of the taller man, and Donald saw that he was armed with a revolver.  Even though Donald was not visible or otherwise observable by the shadowy ill-intentioned figure, he hid behind the muscular American Spirit.

There was only one actor on stage now, and he continued unaware of the dangers lurking in the theater, “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal; you sockdologizing old man-trap!”  This line got the audience roaring, and the tall man who had the gun at the back of his head also began to laugh, but not for long.  The weapon was fired.  The tall man slumped forward in his seat, and the shorter, plumpish woman next to him screamed in horror and meanwhile the man in the military uniform sprang forward at the dark figure which was now shown to be a man with  dark hair and a moustache, who now shouted, “Freedom!”

The man in the uniform struggled with the man with the moustache who now drew a large blade and stabbed the uniformed man in the arm.  The uniformed man was still able to grab the shooter who was now leaping from the theater box, at least he got his coat anyway.  The American Spirit dragged the cowering Donald to the edge of the box so that he could observe, while the short plumpish woman’s dress was soaking up the blood from the tall man’s head.

The shooter who had been grabbed while trying to leap onto the stage, now caught his boot on a framed engraving hung just in front of the theater box, what looked like an image of George Washington from what Donald could see.  He was scared out of his mind, though, so it was hard for him to know one dead president from another.  

The shooter, clearly badly injured from his fall, now stood on stage before a terrified and stunned audience and cried, “Sic semper tyrannis!”  With that he ran, although limping from the scene.

“Remove me!  Take me back.  Haunt me no longer!”

In the struggle, it that can be called a struggle in which no visible resistance on his own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Donald observed that his light was burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with his influence over him, he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it upon the American Spirit’s head.

The American dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered his whole form; but though Donald pressed it down with all his force in his tiny hands, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the floor.

He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and further, of being in his own bedroom.  He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.

The Election Carol, Stave 1: Fred's Ghost

First part of Spoof based on Charles Dickens Christmas Carol

Preface

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with our country, or with me.  May it warn their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Citizen, C.O.

December, 2016.

Stave 1 - Fred’s Ghost

Fred was dead: to begin with.  There is no doubt whatever about that.  The register of his burial was signed by the investors, the lawyers, the inheritors, and Fred’s fourth son.  Donald signed it.  And Donald’s name was good upon Change, for about eighty percent of things he chose to put his hand to.  Old Fred was a s dead as a door-nail.

Mind!  I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge what there is particularly dead about a door-nail.  I might have been inclined, myself, to regard the American dream as the deadest piece of idealism in the nation.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for (what’s left of it, anyway).  You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Fred was as dead as a door-nail.

Donald knew he was dead?  Of course he did.  How could it be otherwise? Donald took part in discriminatory housing practices with his father for I don’t know how many years.  Donald blew through his inheritance like nobody’s business and left a trail of destruction in his wake.  And even Donald was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but was an excellent man of politics the year of his the funeral, and solemnized it with a bid to run for president on the Reform Party ticket.

The mention of Fred’s funeral brings me back to the point started from.  There is no doubt that Fred was dead.  This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.  If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.

Donald never removed “TRUMP” from his ridiculous tower in New York.  There it stood, an eyesore, for years afterwards: “TRUMP TOWER”.  Sometimes people new to the tower called Donald racist, and sometimes pig, but he tweeted about both names.  It was all unbearable to him.

Oh!  But he was a tight-fisted hand at the Tweets, Donald! a whiny, bratty, annoying, offensive, racist, sexist, xenophobic old sinner!  Hard as sharp as a pillow, which no steel made in America was ever used in his buildings.  The money he wasted kept his face from falling in on itself, nipped his nose, shrunk his fingers, made his hair nuts, and his whole body a sickening orange color; and spoke with a voice that reminded one of fingernails on a chalkboard.  He carried his own orangey hue always about him; his awful spray-on tan shown in the dog-days; and he didn’t change his tint one iota at Christmas..

External heat and cold had little influence on Donald.  No sun could tan, and not wintry chill could make him more pale.  No tweet reply was more outlandish than his were, no nazi propaganda was too much for Donald.  Major news organizations didn’t know where to have him.  He would dodge them from his building, refused to hold press conferences, and only communicated via nazi-style rallies and vicious tweet storms.  Other men grew up, and Donald never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Donald, how are you?  So great to have you making America great again.”  No beggars implored him to bestow a penny, no children asked him what it was o’clock for fear they would be dating him in ten years, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired about financial advice for Donald’s debts and bankruptcies were notorious throughout the business society.  Even service animals appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “Remember how he mocked that disabled reporter on national television!”

Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Donald sat tweeting in his tower.  It was cold, bleak, biting weather: polluted withal: and he could hear the incoming tweets alerts on his smart phone.  The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already: it had not been light since the 2016 presidential election night: and protesters held candles and signs in front of the building.  The polluted air came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although over 97 percent of the scientific community agreed that climate change is human caused and an existential threat to humanity, Donald believed that if he used hairspray and closed his windows, that there was no danger of that, unbeknownst to him that the CFCs harmful to the environment had long been discontinued in his hair products.

The door of Donald’s office was open that he might keep an eye on his most recent campaign manager, who in a darkened corner was responding to emails from Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper.  Donald was a notorious liar, but the campaign manager had made her career shamelessly lying for ‘great men’.  She couldn’t take it back now.  Donald was elected president, and so surely if she uttered one word of truth to CNN’s correspondents, she knew she would find herself on top of the National Muslim registry and be stripped of her citizenship as laid out by Donald’s goons.

“A merry Christmas, father! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice.  It was the voice of Donald’s other daughter, who came upon him so quickly that the secret service had not had time to alert him.

“Bah!” said Donald, “SAD!”

She had so heated herself  with rapid walking in the polluted air and warming climate, this other daughter of Donald’s, that she was all in a glow; her face was plain compared to his angelic daughter, Ivanka; her eyes sparkled, and her breath reeked of Tic Tacs.

“Christmas SAD, father!” said Donald’s other daughter.  “You don’t mean that, I am sure.”

“I do,” said Donald.  “Merry Christmas!  What right have you to be merry?  What reason have you to be merry?  You’re plain enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the other daughter gaily.  “What right have you to be dismal?  What right have you to be morose?  You’re orange enough.”

Donald having no surrogates nearby to handle this annoyance, said “SAD!” again; and followed it up with a tweet storm

“Don’t be cross, father,” said the other daughter.

“What else can I be,” returned the father, “when Jill Stein and the Green Party are demanding recounts!  When the election is rigged against me and millions of illegal votes are being cast against me!  What’s Christmas time to you but a time for you to find that I have not requested for you to have security clearance; a time to find that you are left out of my blind trust; a time for hiding your taxes and paying off Russian oligarchs who got you elected?  If I could build my wall,” said Donald indignantly, “every immigrant who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on her lips, should be rounded up in camps, stripped of their money to pay for that wall, and deported.  She should!”

“Father!” pleaded the other daughter.

“Other daughter!” returned the father, sternly, “keep democracy in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

“Keep it!” repeated Donald’s other daughter.  “But you don’t keep it.”

“Let me tear it to shreds, then,” said Donald.  “Much good may it do you!  Much good it has ever done you!”

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the other daughter: “Democracy and Christmas among the rest.  But I am sure I have always thought of election time, when it comes round -- apart from the exuberant donations due to it’s being held, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a patriotic time: a spiteful, resentful, unforgiving, and painful time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the election cycle; when you remember you have another daughter, and not just the infallible Ivanka, and to allow me to have two or three photo-ops where we pretend to know each other’s middle names if called upon to recollect them.  And therefore, father, though I do not have an equal share of the Trump Company, I do not own my clothing line, or my own overpriced fragrances, I believe it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

Former presidential nominee and otherwise bag of scum, Chris Christie, who was on his way to speak to the president elect involuntarily applauded.  Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he opened his wallet, ripped up his man card, and threw the pieces into the fire place, extinguishing and frail spark of his pride for ever.

“Let me hear another sound from you,” said Donald, “ and I’ll find someone else to bring me McDonald’s and you you will lose your Secretary of State nomination.  You’re quite a chatty woman, Tiff,” he added, turning to his other daughter.  “I wonder you don’t run for Office, too.”

“Don’t be angry, father.  Come! Dine with me tomorrow.”

Donald said that she would see her -- yes, indeed he did.  He went the whole length of the expression, and said he would see her in the upper middle class first.

“But why?” cried Donald’s other daughter.  “Why?”

“Why weren’t you aborted?” said Donald.

“Because you are pro-life.”

“Because I am pro-life!” growled Donald, as if that were the only thing in the world more ridiculous than a free and fair election.  “I was pro-choice well into the late nineties!  Good afternoon!”

“Nay, father, but you have changed your position on that issue and so many others, often contradicting yourself in the same sentence.  Why not accept my existence now?”

“Good afternoon,” said Donald.

“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute.  We have never had any quarrel outside of a divorce hearing, to which I have been a party.  But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last.  So a Merry Christmas, father!”

“Good afternoon!” said Donald.

“And a Happy Inauguration!”

“Good afternoon!” said Donald.

His other daughter left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding.  She stopped at the door to bestow the greeting of the season to Kellyanne and the shattered remnants of a man that is Chris Christie, who as dead as he was inside, returned the greeting mechanically.

“There’s another fellow,” muttered Donald; who overheard him: “my man slave, with fifteen thousand a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas.  I’ll retire to Florida.”

This lunatic, in letting Donald’s other daughter out, had let two CNN correspondents in.  They were camera ready, tablets in hand, and now stood with their microphones out in Donald’s office.  They had notes and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

“President-elect Trump, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to the name on the tower.  “Have I the pleasure of addressing the founder or his bratty fourth child?”

“Fred Trump has been dead these seven years,” Donald replied.  “He died seven years ago when I made my first presidential bid.”

“We have no doubts that his assets are well represented by his inheritor,” said the press members unable to contain a snickering, which Anderson Cooper quickly pretended was a cough.  He composed himself and presented Kellyanne his intended questions who had risen from her seat to intervene.

She certainly made the right decision;  for Donald had not held a press conference since July 27th.  This being due to Donald’s inability to think or say rational things when posed tough questions.  Kellyanne shook his hand and handed him the press release that she had been typing up for months now.

“At this unstable time in our country’s political system, Mr. Trump,” said Anderson, taking up his tablet, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight comments for the American people, who suffer greatly at this time of the election cycle.  Many thousands are protesting in the streets; hundreds of thousands are obtaining visas and fleeing the country, sir.”

“Are there no Canadas?” asked Donald.

“There is only one Canada,” said Anderson lowering his tablet.

“And the part-time minimum wage jobs?” demanded Donald. “Are they still doing business?”

“They are. Still,” returned the other press member, “I wish I could say they would raise the wages to a living wage.”

“The Obamacare and the Freedom of Speech are in full vigour, then?” said Donald.

“Both very busy, sir.  At least till you take office.”

“Oh!  I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred and that I was already in Office,” said Donald.  “I’m very glad that I have not been usurped just yet.”

“Under the impression that you will scarcely do anything to change the harsh conditions for the working poor,” returned Anderson, “a few of us press members are endeavoring to hear your policy plans to alleviate some of the worries of a deeply divided electorate.  We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when credit card debt is keenly felt, and corporations rejoice.  What shall I tell the people?”

“Nothing!” Donald replied.

“You wish to be off the record?”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Donald.  “If the people want to know what I wish, they can follow my Twitter account. I don’t have intelligent things to say and I can’t waste my valuable huge brain on comments for people who are worth less than 10 million a year.  I tweet out nonsense regularly: and those who want to know my thoughts must follow me there.”

“Many don’t read your tweets; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Donald, “they had better do it, and decrease the unemployment.  Besides -- excuse me -- I don’t know that.”

“But you might know it,” observed the other reporter.

“It’s not my business,” Donald returned. “All I know is what I see on the internet.  Its enough for a man to watch Fox and Friends and subscribe to Breitbart News.  There alternate realities occupies my feeble mind constantly.  Good afternoon, lying press!”

Seeing clearly that the most they were going to get is the nonsense Kellyanne wrote down in the press release and that the secret service were closing in, the reporters withdrew.  Donald began a tweet storm with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.

Meanwhile the pollution and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with glowing smartphone screens and volunteers handed out medical masks to keep children from breathing in the foul air.  The reflection of the sign “TRUMP TOWER” reflecting through the darkness off of a nearby building reminded Donald how important he was and that he was working too hard.  The cold outside the tower became intense.  In front of the entrance, some protesters burned their signs to keep warm.  The brightness of Macy’s where holly sprigs and a giant wreath was hanging, threatening to crush the shoppers below if the wind were to pick up suddenly.

The polluted air settled more yet, and colder!  Donald did not understand the difference between climate change and weather, so he assumed this was God’s way of telling him how smart he was.  A cast member from the Hamilton broadway production came out in front of Trump tower and decided to sing to try and remind Donald that other people are humans, too: but at the first mention of the name of “Pence”, Donald seized his smartphone so fast and began tweeting, that Trump supporters decided to boycott the show as soon as tickets became available in another year or so.

At length the hour of shutting up Donald’s office arrived.  With an ill-will Donald dismounted his throne, and tacitly admitted to Kellyanne that she was to tell the press outside that he was in for the night.  She instantly picked up her stack of lies to distribute and put on her coat.

“You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?” said Donald.

“If you don’t tweet anything stupid on Twitter, Sir.”

“It’s not stupid,” said Donald, “and it’s not fair.  If I was to call the president of Taiwan, you’d think that I was breaking with long-standing bipartisan policy.”

Kellyanne smiled faintly and Chris Christie got up expectedly waiting for some announcement about his upcoming position.

“And yet,” said Donald, “you don’t think me ill-used, when I grip you out of that hell hole in New Jersey where they would have your neck, and have permitted to let you hover about me like bad news.”

Chris Christie observed that once in office he would never have to see his face if he didn’t want to.

“A poor excuse for uglying up my office!” said Donald, buttoning his great coat to the chin,  “But I am shopping around still.  Why don’t you give Mitt a ring and tell him to meet me for lunch tomorrow?”

Chris Christie looked injured, but promised that he would; and Donald walked out with a growl.  The office was closed in a twinkling, and Christie, with his cold, dead eyes (for he had long since sold his soul) walked through the crowd of protesters and reporters without taking questions or making comments.  Kellyanne followed behind announcing that Donald was in for the night as his motorcade slipped out the back.

Donald took his over-priced seven course dinner in one of his usual upscale New York restaurants; and having read all the latest news on Breitbart and watching all the latest videos from InfoWars.com, went home to the Trump Tower.  His wife Melania was away with his youngest son, Barron, to avoid the constant public scrutiny she and her son had been under since Donald had first announced his candidacy.  He lived in Trump Tower, on the top floor, where his father had once lived.  They were a gaudy set of rooms, in an eyesore of a tower in the middle of the great city of New York where it had no business being and no one really wanted it there, especially now.  The protesters had broken up for the night, but Donald still went through the back with his security detail in case any “lying media” as he called them, would ask him any stupid questions about his plans for running the country.  His clandestine entrance was done in complete darkness and Donald groped in the dark to find his way.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the drapes on the windows in the back entrance room, except that they were also gaudy.  It is also a fact, that Donald had seen it, night and morning, during his whole campaign as he had been sneaking in and out of that entrance to avoid the press since then.  Let it also be borne in mind that Donald had not bestowed one thought on anyone but himself, including old Fred, since his last mention of his seven-year’s dead father that afternoon.  And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Donald, groping his way through the darkness, grasped the drapes, saw in the drapes, without its undergoing any intermediate process  of change: not drapes, but a hooded face.

A hooded face.  It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in that lower room, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.  It appeared to a plain, simple, pointed hood with two holes for eyes, but looked at Donald as Fred used to look: with fierce, judgmental eyes.  The point of the hood was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot-air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless.  That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the hooded face and beyond its control.

As Donald looked fixedly at this phenomenon, a body guard touched his arm to guide him to the hallway elevator, and Donald saw that they were simply drapes again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger since infancy, would be untrue.  But he followed the security detail into the hallway and got in the elevator.

He did pause with a moment’s irresolution, before the elevator shut behind him, and he did look cautiously behind him, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of the hooded figure.  But there was no one but his bodyguard.  So he said, “SAD!” and leaned against the wall of the elevator as it ascended the many floors of Trump Tower.

The sound of a retweet echoed through the elevator shaft.  Every wealthy resident above and every door man below must have heard it.  Donald was not a man to be frightened by an echoing retweet.  He glanced at his phone, and exited the elevator and his security detail posted themselves outside of his door.

Donald’s entranceway was wide enough to drive his motorcade through; which is perhaps the reason why Donald thought he saw a hearse going on before him.Half-a-dozen smartphone screens wouldn’t have lighted the entranceway too well, so perhaps it was just an illusion in the dark which vanished upon turning the lights on.

Donald continued in as usual, but before retiring to his bedroom, he walked through the many rooms to see that all was right.  He had just enough recollection of the hooded face to desire to do that.

All the rooms were as they should be.  A little plate of Tic Tacs had been left out by his kitchen staff,since Donald never knew if a beautiful woman might visit that he may then be forced to start kissing.  No beautiful woman under the bed; no beautiful woman in the closet; no beautiful woman in his pajamas, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom.  Thus secured against surprise, he took off his power tie and suit; put on his pajamas and slippers and his robe; and sat down before his fireplace to check his twitter.

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night.  He was obliged to sit close to it since he had already turned off his room light and was using his phone’s screen as the only other source for light.  Donald was looking at the fireplace momentarily when he seemed to imagine that each blank stone tile was a copy of the hooded face.

“SAD!” sad Donald; and walked across the room.

After several turns, he sat down again.  As he threw his head back in his chair, his glance happened to rest on a smartphone, a disused phone, just the spare he had traded in for a better model about a week ago.  It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw the phone light up and begin to vibrate.  At first, it was relatively quiet, just vibrating; but soon it rang out loudly, a ringtone playing ‘Hail to the Chief’, and soon so did every phone in Trump Tower.

This might have lasted a minute, but it seemed like an hour.  The phones ceased as they had begun, together.  They were succeeded by an elevator ding, deep down below; as if some person were entering the elevator on the first floor, but Donald had never noticed being able to hear it before.  He wondered if he were mad since the security detail would surely have rushed in by now after the bizarre ringing.  

The elevator door could be heard sliding shut, and then he heard the elevator gliding up the tower.  The sound lasted for awhile and Donald knew whoever it was must be going to the top.   Perhaps a beautiful woman was coming after all and he reached for the plate of Tic Tacs.

“It’s Miss Universe!”  (One of the good ones), Donald said to himself.  Could it be his own wife?  Donald didn’t think so.  Their relationship was really more contractual than anything, and he doubted she would come to his bedroom without appointment.

His colour changed though, when, without being screened by the posted security detail, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes.  Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, “I know him! Fred’s Ghost!” and fell again.

The same hooded face: the very same, Fred in his Klan robe with the hood upon his head. He held a chain stained with blood.  His body was transparent; so that Donald, observing him, and looking through his robes, could see the wall behind.

Donald had often heard that Fred had no heart, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now.  Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folds in the hood about its head; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.

“How now!” said Donald, smug and bombastic as ever.  “What do you want with me?”

“Much!” -- Fred’s voice, no doubt about it.

“Who are you?”

“Ask me who I was.”

“Who were you then,” said Donald, raising his voice, “You’re particular, for a shade.”  He was going to say,”to a shade,” but knew how insecure Fred was about skin color.

“In life I was your father, Fred Trump.”

“Can you -- can you sit down?” asked Donald, looking doubtfully at him.

“I can.”

“Do it, then.”

Donald asked the question, because he didn’t know if even ghostly robes were liable to crease;and felt that in the event that laundry services were hard to come by after death, it might involve the necessity of a long and dull explanation.  But the ghost sat down opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

“I don’t,” said Donald.

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

“I don’t know,” said Donald.  “All I believe is what I see on the internet.”

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because,” said Donald, “Hillary and the left affects them.  A right-wing conspiracy theory tells me they cheat.  You may be sent by the DNC or the Green Party.  You were probably sent by Obama and the Chinese!  Probably from ISIS whatever you are!”

Donald was in the habit of making ridiculous claims without any relevant evidence to back them up.  The truth is that he said these idiotic things to distract from his countless short falls.

To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Donald felt, the very deuce with him.  There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s wearing a Klansman robe carrying a bloody chain into his rooms.  That was it!  This was a trick of the lying press trying to tie him up with the KKK.  

“You see this phone?” said Donald, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself.

“I do, replied the Ghost.

“You are not looking at it,” said Donald.

“But I see it,” said the Ghost, “notwithstanding.”

“Well!” returned Donald, “I have but to post one tweet about this, and be for the rest of the news week CNN, MSNBC, WP, and all the others will hold pointless panel discussions trying to decipher what I mean when I demand they stop sending spectre Klansmen to my tower.  SAD, I tell you; SAD!”

At this the phone made the incoming tweet sound.  The Ghost unhooded itself and shook its chain with such an appalling noise, that Donald held on tight to his phone, to save himself from dropping it into the fire.  But how much greater was his horror, when checking his new tweet, the screen read:

@realDonaldTrump the visitor is @realFredsGhost  U are SAD and WRONG! #WhatTheDickens

Donald fell upon his knees, and clasped his phone in front of his face with both tiny hands.

“Mercy!” he said.  “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”

“Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”

“I do,” said Donald. “I must.  But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?”

“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and not just march with the KKK in Memorial Day parades; and if that filthy rich spirit goes not forth in life, then it is condemned to exist a white middle-class American after death -- oh, woe is me! -- and stand in Starbucks lines complaining about the service!”

“White middle-class?” asked Donald.  Why not a minority or working-class American?”

“Satan has a heart, you fool!” cried the Ghost, shaking its chain and wringing its shadowy hands.

“You carry a chain,” said Donald, trembling.  “Tell me why?”

“I hold the chain I carried in the Memorial Day parade of 1927,” replied the Ghost.  “I carried it with me and cracked the head of one of Mussolini's fascists.  Is my attire strange to you?”

Donald trembled more and more.

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “that multiple newspapers covered the story of the riots and the arrests of seven Klansmen, including myself?  There were photos and everything!”

“Father,” he said, imploringly, “Old Fred Trump, you were merely a part of the parade and got mixed up in the confusion.”

“We both know that is nonsense,” the Ghost replied. “My spirit is never permitted to lie, so I must wear this robe to expose my true self; and oh what weary confessions lie before me!”

It was a habit whenever Donald was losing interest, to check InfoWars for any updates. Pondering when this ‘Inconvenient Truth’ might get lost, Donald observed, “You must stop being so slow about your purpose.  My time is extremely valuable.”

“Your time!” the Ghost repeated.

“Seven years dead,” mused Donald, “And you decide to pay me an unscheduled visit, now that I own the world?  You might have had the decency to check with my transition team before barging in like this.”

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and swung its chain so swiftly, that drops of phantom blood flung off and flew straight through Donald’s face and then through the walls.  Donald wondered whether the secret service would observe these droplets and check on him.  Why hadn’t they stopped this armed Ghost in the first place?  They had not noticed the Ghost and they were unaware of any phantom droplets now passing through them and the upper floor of Trump Tower.

“Oh! cowardly, complacent, and tiny-handed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed.  Not to know that any goodly spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.  Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused!  Yet how I lied!  Oh!  how I lied!”

“But we were always good men of business, father,” faultered  Donald.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.  “I was a good man of business.  You just lounged about and squandered my leavings!”

It held up its chain at arm’s length, pointing at Donald as if to accuse and expose him for what he really was, and then flung it heavily upon the ground again.

“At this time of the election year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most.  Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings taking advantage of them, lying to them?  Were there no homes in my properties that could not be rented to persons of color without court orders forcing my hand!”

Donald was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.

“Hear me!” cried the Ghost.  “My time is nearly gone.”

“I will,” said Donald.  “But don’t take all night, and don’t criticize me, father!”

“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell.  You haven’t the ability to understand basic light reflection and refraction, so it will be a waste of both of our times to explain the rules of quantum mechanics.”

Donald yawned and checked the time on his phone.  Almost eleven.

Sensing he was losing his audience, the Ghost pursued, “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have a chance and hope of escaping the doom of America and the world.  A chance and hope of my procuring, Donald.”

“You were always bailing me out of messes,” said Donald.  “Thankee!”

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, by three of your wives.”

Donald’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.

“Kidding.  Kidding.” The Ghost went on, “Tonight, you will be visited by three Republicans.”

Donald screamed.

“Just yanking your chain,” laughed the Ghost holding up his chain demonstrably.  “Okay, okay,” he said composing himself.  “Tonight, you will be visited by three Americans.”

“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, father?” he demanded, in a faltering voice.

“It is.”

“I -- I think this is the kind of thing Priebus usually handles,” said Donald.

“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “the country and world cannot hope to shun the path to destruction.  Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.”

“Couldn’t Priebus or Christie take them? Yeah, Christie, he’s got no use in life as it is,” said Donald.

“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour.  The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for the world’s sake, you remember what has passed between us.”

“It just so happens,” announced Donald, “that I have the world’s greatest memory.”

The Ghost shivered upon hearing these words, and re-cloaked his face, as before.  Donald was looking at his phone trying to set an alert for his new meetings.  When he ventured to raise his eyebrows, he found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.

The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.

It beckoned Donald to approach, which he did.  When they were within two paces of each other, Fred’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer.  Donald stopped.

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of filibusters, campaigning, and lobbying.  Now, however they were speaking truthfully, unable to present falsehoods.  The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Donald followed to the window; desperate in his curiosity.  He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and sputtering out facts as they went.  Every one of them was either a politician, a corporate lobbyist, or a banker from wall street.  Many had been personally known to Donald in their lives.  He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, with a monstrous pipeline chained to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to be heard by a woman with an infant, whom it saw below, trying to convey the dangers of the pipeline he had lied about in life to enrich himself and his investors, pleading with her that the pipe would leak and poison her infant.  The misery with them all was clearly, that they sought to convey the facts in economical, political, and environmental matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into the polluted air, or the polluted air enshrouded them, he could not tell.  But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he had arrived home.

Donald closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered, slipping past the security detail.  It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed.  He checked his twitter account and the previous tweet from @realFredsGhost had vanished.  He tried to say “WRONG!” but stopped at the first syllable.  And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without taking his robe off, and fell asleep upon the instant.