Episode Nine: "Whiplash Girlchild in the Dark"

RHODA: What about David S. Addington? Does he get sad?

MARY: Republicans call him "Cheney's hit man."

RHODA: Oh, please, Mary. "Hit man"? Is this my government we're talking about -- or a Mario Puzo novel?

MARY: In high school, Addington wore black socks with shorts. He's "the most powerful man you've never heard of."

RHODA: Strike, dear Mistress, and cure his heart!

MARY: They opened the back door this morning and I brushed against the patio chairs. It's August and the leaves are falling. Their bones make me quiver.

RHODA: I hear Addington carries a copy of the Constitution in his back pocket, in case he's camping and runs out of tinder.

MARY: "Taste the whip, in love not given lightly," Rumsfeld says, beating a falsely imprisoned Baghdad cab driver with a fan belt. "Taste the whip, now bleed for me!"

RHODA: The Washington Post just fell asleep on the backpack in your closet, Mary.

Den of Spies, Part 3 of 3

I was captured and helpless in the Den of Spies. The veterinarian, Henry Kissinger (aloft in his butcher's apron), threatened to touch my anal glands.

Everything went black.

I awoke to Dr. Kissinger's manaical fingernails. Fangs curling from his upper lip. There was blood on the walls.

"Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi," I hissed, "dona nobis pacem."

Dr. Kissinger laughed. He started to tell me a story about Salvador Allende. I couldn't make out all the words. I was blacking out again.

I said, "Huic ergo parce, Deus!" Just then, a white form appeared in the distance, barely a speck in the multitudinous sea of chrome before me. But it grew larger. I repeated, "Huic ergo parce, Deus!"

"Dies irae," I said, "dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla!"

The white form grew larger until it resembled a dust storm. Fine motes of sand stung my face, prickled my gorgeous whiskers. The dust storm swooped over my head.

A yellow light beckoned.
I reached for it, swatting as if the light were an insidious red laser-pointer beam that disappears just when you're about to bite it. I could see two Jack Russell Terriers in the yellow light -- tiny, obsequious eyes and manic barking. Their randy, pointed ears. A mange of pointed, pimply fur.

Dogs are the opposite of Christ's miracle, wine transformed into moldy straw and nettles.

I shrunk from the yellow light. Waited for the white light to return. I thought I saw a lilac bush, but nothing happened when I ate it.

Then I awoke. After a moment, I realized I still was in my cat carrier in the Den of Spies. A growl began in the bottom of my belly, passed up through my ribs. I expelled it through my furious red mouth.

A "nurse," one of Kissinger's minions, placed my carrier back on the counter. I hissed at Tony, the fucker, as he reached for his wallet. I rattled my carrier, growling the whole time. Pushed it to the edge of the Den of Spies' front counter.

Then over the precipice! I felt myself, in the cage, falling. A blissful end, the sweet void! Tony caught the cage before we hit the ground. But I'll do it again. If you take me back to the Den of Spies. I will hiss at you, my betrayers, for the entire ride home.

I scared a stupid, hopeless Labrador in the waiting room. I can still see his jaw trembling.