(I wrote this in an Alabama accent. It’s best read that way.)
I always make sure my evening constitutional takes me through Times Square at exactly 2100 hours, just so’s I can look up and see my name (and, more importantly, the little message which follows) in all its glory on every single one of those electronic screens. Even the ones on the stores and restaurants. “But handsome sir,” I hear you asking, “how did you earn this privilege?” Well, I’ll tell you.
It all started back when I was just a kid, growing up in the backwoods of Alabama. Me and my buddy Leland (I call him my buddy, but he was just a stain that I never could wipe) were at each other’s throats day and night. We was always trying to get one up on each other, ever since I can remember.
Well, growing up we didn’t get no better, and as things worked out, we joined the Army together when we was both eighteen. Serving our time in the same unit, we both of us signed up for Sniper School, and I’ll be damned if they didn’t let us go through it together. We both came out top of our class, which I was most pleased with, but that little stain wouldn’t let it go. Y’see, Leland was one-hundred percent, prime-time convinced that he was the better shot than me, just cause he’d hit both the target and the Coke can thirty feet behind it with a single shot that one time. Wouldn’t never let it go, neither. After that, I swore to myself I’d make sure he knew that I was the man with the gun, but the time never came, and then we graduated.
Anyways, after Sniper School, we went our separate ways, him taking a post with the light infantry, and me moving on to the 101st Airborne. After a tour in a decidedly hostile environment, I decided that twelve years in Army was enough for one lifetime.
I walked straight out of Army into a job with the Birmingham, Alabama Police Department. CIA came to me before I left my post, and I might have taken them up on their offer if the turd they sent hadn’t been such a slimy little snake. That put a germ of an idea into my head, however, and that germ grew into something. I was gonna join the Secret Service.
Well, a couple years later, I did join. It was hard, it was tough, but I got through it, I even passed the background checks they did (to be honest, I was somewhat worried that what uncle Francine had done to Cousin Jeffers might have stuck me, but they didn’t seem to mind too much). I spent the next few years working my way through the ranks, doing my time, and making a name for myself. Eventually, at the grand old age of forty-two, I made Presidential Detail. I gotta tell you folks, that was one of the finest days of my life.
Now we fast-forward three and a half years and one whole President. The first one was fine, no vices, nothing big to hide, and did everything he was supposed to do, when he was supposed to do it. The new one was, not to put too fine a point on it, an asshole. Everything he did just made it harder for me and my guys to do our job. Anyways, that’s beside the point; it’s enough for me to say that in his time, I made Head of Watch
At 0238 hours one night (I won’t say when, as I still ain’t allowed) I was walking the White House corridors when I got the call saying that security had been breached. Fifteen of ’em, said Control, heading for the Presidential Suite. Needless to say, I checked that Control was securing the perimeter and locking the whole place down before making my way over to the crisis scene.
When I arrived, I saw the six men and women of my detail clustered outside the suite. They were all wounded to some degree or other. The time was 0244.
“Okay, Jensen, what do we got?” I asked my second, ignoring the noises made by the terrorist inside.
“Broke perimeter at 0237, killed Bathory, Coolman and Jackson. We got most of them, but that last one is in there with the First Family.”
“Man,” I said, they were loose for six minutes? There gonna be hell to pay. You guys look a little beat up. Stay here while I ‘talk down’ our guest.”
I walked into the first room of the suite and, sure enough, there was the noisy terrorist, pistol to the head of the President, which he was holding by the hair. The remainder of the First Family were doing their best to hide behind a desk.
“Quiet down, scumbag, and we can talk about this like reasonable people,” I said, cool as a cucumber. The sorry excuse for a President looked at me as if I was crazy. I remember thinking for the hundredth time: “Now there’s a man who’s never served.”
“You can’t call me scumbag!” he shouted, “I have your President!”
“Okay, scumbag. What is it you want?”
“I want a helicopter on the roof, G-Man, safe passage to wherever I want to go with nobody on my tail, and I want the Babylon Five released immediately!”
“Well sure, scumbag. We can do one of those,” I answered.
“Stop calling me that! I’ll kill him! I will!” Squealed the little pig, “And you’ll do better than one of them, if you want this guy to live!”
Now to understand my state of mind at that point, you really have to have gone through the training. And, if I’m an honest dog, to have known the President. “Bring in the helicopter,” I said into my headset. Being unable to bring a bead on the terrorist, I did the next best thing. I shot the President. As he went down on the floor, the terrified terrorist looked down the barrel of my gun. “G’bye, scumbag.” I said, just before shooting him through the head.
“Get the President onto that helicopter. He’s got a gunshot through-and-through on his left lower torso, and isn’t very happy about it,” I said into the headset, over the childlike noise of the screaming POTUS. “Better get somebody with diazepam down here for the family, too.”
Needless to say, the President wasn’t too happy about the way things had gone down at first. Later, after some serious ‘counselling’ from friendly parties, he calmed down some, and got to the stage where he offered me a reward for saving his life. “Anything you want, agent,” he said. So I took him up on it.
And now I look up the lights every single day. Oh, you want to know what the message was too? Well, the whole thing reads:
“Cletus C. Cornswuthers III: Leland, You Can’t Touch This.”
You can see it in lights in Times Square, every night at 2100 hours.