This book is based on real events. Only the people, places, and events are fictionalized. The stupidity is 100% real.
Governor Santos had lined up the entire, eight-man Thing squad shoulder to shoulder against the back wall of her office. All sported Brooks Brothers suits and blazers, lacrosse player builds, chiseled features, and complexions that ranged from sun kissed bronze to spectral pale. None had yet reached their late 20s. All fidgeted nervously—save one.
“You are vile, cowardly, useless pieces of dog shit found by a dung beetle, eaten, and shat out again!” Santos paced before the trembling aides and whipped herself into ever greater heights of righteous fury.
“At least one of you backstabbing, cock-gobbling, corpse-fucking, libtard rejects leaked the transcript of my call with Elzos, and now the entire goddamned thing is splashed across every newspaper in the country!”
She swiped a commemorative Disney snow globe off a shelf and pitched it at the wall. The tchotchke exploded inches above Thing 5’s skull, showering the petrified staffers in glass, glycerol, and miniature shards of Cinderella’s Castle.
“Don’t you flinch! Don’t you fucking flinch!” she cried, closing the gap with her aides. “Eyes straight ahead. Don’t fucking look at me!”
She scrutinized each one closely before passing to the next, taking her sweet time, subjecting all to a withering glower that burned holes into their souls.
She drew back, smoothed out her dress, exhaled slowly, and surveyed them as a whole.
“If it were up to me,” she said in a quieter, more menacing tone. “I’d have you all hanged, drawn, quartered, pounded to mush, dehydrated, milled to a fine powder, mixed into milkshakes, and force fed to your own mothers.”
She shut her eyes, savoring the thought.
“But I can’t,” continued the governor. She resumed her pacing. “Something about the Eighth Amendment. Plus, you’d probably leak it to the media just before your head was Ned Starked off your body. So, here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to place you under the most intense surveillance outside a CIA black site. I’ll know when you shit. I’ll know when you pick your nose. I’ll know when, where, and which hand you use to stroke your pathetic micro-dicks.”
“And, finally,” she levelled a sadistic smile. “You’ll all be bumped to the lowest possible rank in the Governor’s Mansion. So, when I call for Thing 9 to bring me my morning coffee, or hand wash my truck, or lick a literal shit stain off the carpet, you’d better claw, bite, kill each other to be the first one in here, lips moist and ready to go or, I swear to God, you and your families will never work anywhere in this state again.”
Santos paused.
“All of you,” she elaborated. “Except for Thing 0. Because he’s the only one with nothing to gain from this leak, is the only one I can trust, and is therefore the only one who gets to keep his place. The rest of you, get the fuck out of my sight. Thing 0, you stay.”
The seven young men filed glumly out the door, the last one shutting it behind him. The governor slumped into the chair behind her desk with a sigh. Thing 0 remained at attention, ankles against the wall.
“This is the mother of all clusterfucks,” she groaned, massaging her forehead.
“Yes, Madam Governor, it is,” assented Thing 0 curtly, eyes still staring straight ahead.
She gave him a glare only marginally less withering than the one she’d aimed at his demoted colleagues.
“Well,” started Santos. “I’d better hear some brilliant ideas about how to get out of it. Assume your life depends on it.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Because it does.”
“I know how to turn this to your advantage,” he replied dispassionately.
“Oh, do you now?” she asked skeptically “Do tell.”
“It’s simple, ma’am,” he answered. “You mold your greatest apparent weakness into a strength. The Left is screaming that you’re displacing poor people to benefit the rich. So, turn that on its head. What you’re really doing is developing Miami Heights as part of a strictly capitalist rent control program to assist South Florida’s working-class population.”
This drew a sharp laugh from the governor.
“Rent control?” she demanded incredulously. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Miami is one of the most unequal and rent-burdened cities in the country,” explained Thing 0. “Scores of tech bros, angel investors, Big Law attorneys, management consultants, and venture capitalists flood into South Florida every day. They want to work and play in an endless summer and don’t care that they’re driving up rents across the city, making it untenable for the average Miamians earning 40K a year.”
“I fail to see what this has to do with Miami Heights,” snapped Santos.
“It has everything to do with it,” explained Thing 0. “Elzos will develop a citadel-within-a-city, an enclave with tens of thousands of units that’ll draw every billionaire, millionaire, and upper-class professional within hundreds of miles. They’ll all want to live there, and they’ll all leave the ethnic neighborhoods they’ve been busily gentrifying the last several decades. With those buildings empty, it’ll drive down rents across the city, letting normal Miamians reoccupy their neighborhoods at affordable prices. You’ll be worshiped. They’ll shout your name from the rooftops. And you’ll do all this without spending a single penny from the state’s coffers.”
The governor stroked her chin thoughtfully.
“What about the 15,000 we’re kicking off their land?”
Thing 0 met Santos’ eye for the first time in their conversation, his steely gaze matching hers.
“Make them the enemy,” he said darkly. “Make everyone else hate them. As many as a quarter of the neighborhood’s residents are illegals. Round them up. Deport them. It should be easy enough. You have their information and locations. Claim that you’re cleansing Florida of criminals and job stealers. Make it all about raising wages, redirecting government funds, and creating jobs for red-blooded Americans.”
A slight smirk played at the corner of Santos’ mouth.
“And the other three-fourths? The residents and citizens? What about them?”
“At best, they’re enablers,” continued Thing 0. “At worst, they’re complicit or delinquents in their own rights. It won’t be hard to spin. If we round up a few hundred of them as well, they probably had it coming. They’re mostly Black and brown and don’t speak English anyway. No one will give a shit.”
Santos’ smirk morphed into a full-blown grin.
“I can set up some interviews with friendly outlets and get the word out to your network of podcasters, memers, and online agitators to spread the message,” said Thing 0.
“Come closer,” she commanded with a wave of her hand. “Sit down.”
Thing 0 did as he was told. He left his post at the wall and sat on one of the couches. Santos rose from her chair and rounded the desk. She boosted herself on top of it and crossed her legs, so she could look down at the man just five feet away, his head level with her knees.
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” she asked.
“Only the answers that would most help you, Madam Governor,” he replied.
“Ha!” she retorted with a sidelong look and clasped the desk’s edge with both hands. “My point exactly. I’m sure the girls just fawn over you.”
“I don’t have time for that, ma’am. Too much to do here.”
Santos eyed him suspiciously.
“Really? No girlfriend? No paramour? No hookup?”
“No,” he said. “I consider myself married to the state.”
“Why?” she asked. “What drew you to this? What makes you stay? I’m certainly not making it easy for you.”
“Power,” he answered forthrightly. He gazed up at her, his eyes steady, hungry. “I fucking love it.”
“Do you, now?”
Santos leaned in.
“More than money? More than fame? More than…” she lowered her voice. “Pussy?”
He licked his lips and shifted forward on the couch. Their faces were now only an armlength away, hers lording over his.
“More than anything. It’s the world’s greatest aphrodisiac.”
Santos arched an eyebrow and slid off the desk, letting the hem of her dress ride up her thighs until it was at her waist. Thing 0 bent forward, opened his mouth, and was about to plunge between her legs when she stopped him with an outstretched arm. She grabbed his chin and wrenched his head upward, making him stare into her eyes.
“This is how it’s going to go,” she explained. “You are a human-shaped tool, nothing better than a dildo. If you don’t work to my satisfaction, I will throw you away. That means I don’t give a shit if you get any pleasure from this. You will not cum until I am fully sated. You will not get tired. You will not complain. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will do everything I say exactly when and how I say it. Your reward will be that, if and when we are done to my satisfaction, I will let you jack off in a corner of the room like the fucking degenerate you are. Do you understand?”
Thing 0 nodded.
“Good. Now get started.”
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