“Oh, I’m not done, believe me,” he said with a wide grin. “Here’s the part they won’t be able to resist: I won’t ever run for public office again.”

She stared, face blank, eyes wide. “Are you… are you serious?”

“Oh, very serious. They’ll eat that up, that I can tell you. See, nobody cares that I nuked everyone. People love that I used the nukes, actually. They love that I had the balls to do what needed to be done. They just don’t want me leading the United States again, because the world isn’t ready for someone like me to make those hard decisions. You tell them that I’ll agree to stay out of politics if they give me back my money, and I’ll plead guilty by reason of insanity. Whaddaya think?”

Aurora swallowed hard, turned, and picked up her folio case. She headed to the cell door and turned back to her client.

“I think you’re crazier than you realize,” she said. “I think you’re even more out of touch with reality than anyone truly suspected.”

“So we have a plan?”

“That we do,” she said, and she called for the guard.

*   *   *

As she walked through the prison, Aurora Catalani knew that she would prevail: She would indeed win in court. She would become infamous as the woman who saved the ruthless dictator Donald J. Trump from execution. In fact, she would have no problem proving how mentally unhinged the man was. Of course, his “deal” that would let him continue with his life as if nothing had happened was just a crazy pipe dream, but he would at least live.

And as she walked, Aurora fought back the tears. She mentally cursed herself for coming up with her plan. Aurora had always been against the death penalty without exception—since she was a little girl, she’d believed that it was wrong, and she became a lawyer in part to combat such injustices. But no matter how much her duty required her to represent her client to the best of her ability, she knew that she’s spend the rest of her life wishing that she’d failed—wishing that Trump would be executed for everything he had done.

If only he’d never won that American election in 2016. She knew it wouldn’t have mattered; if Trump hadn’t won, someone else like him—or worse—would come along, over and over, as the American far right grew stronger, and eventually someone else like him would have become president and the same horrible things would have happened to the planet.

She made it to her car before she broke down crying.

“A Higher Power Trumps Trump?”
Dystopian
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Donald Trump opened his eyes. Fire burned everywhere. He clambered to his feet, still wearing his suit and tie. He was in a massive cavern, and it was ablaze. Horned demons stood guard with pitchforks, and the screams of the eternally damned tore through the underground.

“What’s this all about?” Trump screamed.

“It’s Hell,” said Adolf Hitler, who was suddenly there in his uniform, swastika on his arm, dancing a bit because his jackboots were on fire. “What did you think?”

“Why am I here?” Trump cried.

“Because you’ve been a bad boy,” said Osama bin Laden, slapping madly at the flames atop his turban. “Just like all of us.”

“I don’t deserve to be here!” Trump yelled. “I have money and power!”

“Not now,” said the Pope, who held the papal ferula, and the cross top of the staff was also in flames…

*   *   *

“This isn’t right,” said David M. Fitzpatrick, the author of this story. “The whole concept of eternal damnation and hellfire is just so overused and unimaginative. Plus, featuring a Pope in Hell will just distract from the point because people will lose their minds.”

He tilted his office chair back and mused aloud. “I have to come up with something different to depict Trump being punished. I mean, the first story was a nice dystopian idea, where Trump has made all his horrible things come to pass and then gets punished, but it just doesn’t seem enough.”

Fitzpatrick stared at the words on his screen. That first dystopian story was like all of the dystopian stories he’d done about Trump in the last three months of the Planet Trump theme—social sci-fi, really. Nothing wrong with that. But maybe he could come up with something more in the speculative-fiction vein.

The fact was, despite its unimaginative overuse, eternal damnation was a nice thought. Fitzpatrick could see why people had been enslaved by it for so long. It was nice to imagine the bad guys getting their just desserts forever.

Then a thought hit him, and he sat up in his office chair, eyes lighting up.

“Why not make eternal damnation actually plausible?” he said.

He hit the keyboard.

*   *   *

Trump regained consciousness. He was in a glass pod that faced into a round bay, where he could see many more such pods encircling the room.

Then there was a humming sound, and the glass opened. He stumbled out, even as the people in other glass pods stumbled out. There was a guy dressed like Adolf Hitler, and another one as Osama bin Laden. Someone was decked out like the Pope, and another looked like John Wayne Gacy. There must have been a hundred pods, and Trump saw Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, a guy who looked like a Roman emperor, and many more. Lizzie Borden was there with her axe, and so was Sarah Palin, but Trump noticed that it was all pretty much men.

There was a lot of confused talking and furor from the pod people, but before chaos could descend upon the room there was a flash of light. In the center of the room, a giant purple alien blob with five legs and lots of tentacles flashed into existence.

“Greetings, Earthlings,” it said in a booming, gravelly voice. “We are the Zindarians, a time-traveling species that has been studying Earth. We see that the cultures on your planet have beliefs in afterlives where the evil are punished. We have been extracting you from your time periods at the moments of your deaths, replacing your bodies with simulacra. Our advanced technology will keep you alive forever, and we have constructed personal hells for all of you.”

“This isn’t fair!” screamed Sarah Palin. “I’m not evil! I’m just stupid!”

But before anyone else could protest, the whole room was immersed in light. Trump shut his eyes against it, and when he opened them he was on a New York City street—sitting on a curb, dressed in rags, holding a tin cup. He was penniless! That couldn’t be! Trump…

*   *   *

“Oh, this isn’t any good,” Fitzpatrick said. “No good at all. I mean, I like the idea of scientific eternal damnation, but it just doesn’t work. Why would an alien species bother? And do they create paradises for the good folks? No, just too weak.”

He tilted his chair back and mused some more. There were plenty of other subgenres of speculative fiction. Surely he could come up with another one. Donald Trump was practically a political supervillain, and readers of Cud Flashes would enjoy a scenario where he paid for his bad deeds…

“Supervillain,” Fitzpatrick whispered. “That’s it.”

He snapped back to his keyboard and began typing.

*   *   *

Trump couldn’t imagine his good fortune. After becoming president, he couldn’t imagine anything getting better. Countless billions of dollars, real estate the world over that he controlled, a foundation that benefited him, and then becoming the most powerful man in the political world—it was all perfect.

But when that magical artifact had been unearthed and he’d been the first to touch it—well, being given super powers was the icing on the cake. He’d no longer needed nuclear weapons, for he was Trumperman! He had incredible strength and an invulnerable body. He could fly at hypersonic speeds, shoot lasers from his eyes, and fire kinetic blasts from his hands. But the best power was his ability to hypnotize someone by locking gazes with that person. He used that one with the hot women. It made them helpless; he was able to kiss them at will and even grab their pussies. He could do anything.

His dominance over the world was going to be unchallenged—but then Superguy appeared. Apparently, there had been two of those alien artifacts, and unfortunately Superguy must have been a Democrat.

The pair fought a fierce battle over Washington, D.C. The Washington Monument was toppled. The Capitol dome was collapsed. And the Trump Memorial—the one where he’d had them replace Lincoln’s head with his—was leveled. But when it was over Superguy had bound Trumperman in chains made of Trumptonite, which rendered him powerless. And now Superguy said he had no choice but to banish Trump to the Shadow Zone. There, Trumperman would be imprisoned for eternity…

*   *   *

“No, no, NO, dammit!”

Fitzpatrick leaped from his office chair, angry with himself. “That just sucks. It’s a blatant rip-off. I mean, ‘Trumperman’ and ‘Superguy’ were just placeholder names, and I’d have come up with better names in the final draft… but, come on, the whole Kryptonite and Phantom Zone copies won’t fool anyone. No, this isn’t the way.”

He paced the office, aware of The Cud’s deadline. He had to do this one right.

“How about fantasy?” he wondered aloud. “Trump could have a magic wand, and he does spellcaster battle… no, that’s stupid. It’s just the superhero stuff redressed.”

He paced some more. The cats were getting annoyed with him.

“A zombie apocalypse,” he mused. “Money and real estate no longer matter. Trump is trying to survive without entourages and staffs and limousines and planes. That could work… except that Trump wouldn’t survive a month in that world. On the one hand, readers will like a scene where zombies eat Trump alive, but there would be no long-term punishment.”

He paced some more. Aliens take over Earth and make him suffer? No, that was the same as the time-traveling punishers he’d already tried. A take on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? No, that would be a redemption story, and Trump was irredeemable. Trump swaps places with an alternate-universe Trump and works cleaning toilets? No, that was a cheap way out.

And then it hit him.

“Of course,” Fitzpatrick said. “The answer isn’t in speculative fiction—or any fiction. This should be an essay. Cud Flashes isn’t about essays, though; it’s about fiction. So if I do this, I need to make sure that there are some elements of speculative fiction interwoven into that essay—and somehow make Trump a part of it...”

And he sat down to type one last time.

*   *   *

There is no eternal damnation. No Hell. No aliens creating the equivalent. No Shadow Zone for exile. No punishment beyond this Earth and this life.

(An elf ran by, wishing he had not forsaken his friends.)

The fact is, Donald J. Trump is a reprehensible human being. His followers are the same. They do unspeakable things and behave in horrific ways. They seek to impinge upon the rights of others, to force all Americans to live the way they want them do, regardless of the consequences.

(An orc chased the elf. The elf could have used those friends.)

And Trump? He probably doesn’t care about most of the things he espouses. He just wants to make money and live as he always has—as one of the few upper-upper-class elites. He wants to live his fairy-tale life and do whatever he can to make more money.

(The elf and the orc battled with magic swords. It was fierce, with red and blue magic blasting off the metal blades like sparks. If only the elf hadn’t lost his temper! He could use some friends now.)

He won’t get punished, not really. There is only one time to punish him, and that’s in this life. And for most of his terrible behavior, there is no crime to punish him for. When there is, he will probably escape it anyway. Money and power can do that.

(Just when the orc was about to kill the elf, a starship crew teleported in and shot the orc with a blaster gun.)

There is only one way to punish the man: Don’t elect him to the presidency. Don’t support him with money, don’t rent from his properties, don’t do business with him, don’t buy his products. Don’t do business with organizations that do any of those things. The only way Donald Trump has a hope of being punished is by hitting him in his wallet.

(The elf thanked the space travelers, and soon they were friends. The elf knew he’d have to reconcile with the friends he had offended, but was glad that there were always new friends to make.)

We’ll send a message in November if we elect Hillary Clinton. That message is that the country needs to look forward, not back. We need to stop the spread of oppression and hatred being done in the name of conservative “values.”

(Before they left, the elf checked to make sure the orc was alive—and realized that the orc was wearing a rubber mask. It was not an orc at all.)

Those values want us to never change anything that has ever been another way, and to live our lives the way conservatives want. This is in stark contrast to liberal ideals that look ahead, accept change, and realize that you can’t just blindly do it the way you’ve always done it. We can’t sacrifice equal rights in favor of intolerant nostalgia.

(The elf peeled off the mask—and realized that the orc was Donald Trump the whole time!)

But make no mistake: Donald Trump is just one. He knows that a liberal government means he’ll pay more taxes, and a conservative government means he’ll pay fewer taxes. That’s what most conservative politicians are concerned with. They don’t care about that intolerant nostalgia. Like Trump, they know that that is the way to rile up their mindless, deplorable base: Play to their paranoia, their fear, and their rage, and get them to follow without question. Lie a lot along the way, because the base will believe it all. Eventually, if they do this enough, someone smarter than Trump—someone who knows when to shut his mouth, someone who hasn’t made the mistakes Trump has made over the years—will end up winning. And when that happens, the country really is in trouble.

(The elf gave the Trump orc a swift kick in the nuts, and left with his new friends.)

Fiction tells stories. Reality is far more frightening. Get out and vote. Keep Trump out of the White House.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.