Featured image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay

Slap on the chest with eyes closed and tears rolling down her cheeks. Slap to my face with the other hand. The chest hand rose up to slap the other side of my face and I could see she was going to whirlwind sissy fight kind of open hand slapping, so I blocked it then grabbed the other. She fell forward planting her forehead on the center of my chest sobbing almost uncontrollably. After a minute I released her hands. They immediately clung to my neck but her sobbing didn’t slow.

Dammit fool! Everything you do to get out of here tightens the noose and drops another anchor. I’ve never wanted my phone to tell me to go kill someone so bad in all my life.

The clock told me her sobbing went on for fifteen minutes before trailing off. When she finally rose up the mascara trail down her face and my chest looked like something out of a horror flick. It even looked like I had some of her blue eye liner. The tissue ritual occurred again. It was a pitiful effort though. Until I managed to find a hot shower with good soap I was going to wear an ugly temporary tattoo.

“I found the perfect man and married him” she continued, like all of the slapping and sobbing never happened. “He came to see his mom at the nursing home a lot. We got to know each other. She’s got dementia really bad. When she first arrived I kind of wondered why she was there. She could walk with a walker and seemed to have most of her wits. After a few months it became obvious why she was there. She seemed to remember me most days, but some times couldn’t remember him.”

“He worked at the factory on the other side of the Interstate” she continued. “You had to have seen it if you got off at this exit” she said looking at me. I nodded and she continued “All closed down now . . . You know, for supposedly being big on defense Republican’s commit treason with wanton abandonment.”

Not sure how that leap happened, but very sure I’m tired of getting slapped and definitely don’t want to ride out another ‘good cry.’ I say nothing to the question her eyes seem desperate to ask.

“I’m serious!” Melony exclaimed. “They are all hot to trot on big spending for defense while both they and their owners commit treason hand over fist. They even ran that treasonous bastard Mitt Romney for President. Obviously the party elders have neither ethics nor morals. That factory. The one where my husband and so many others worked. Some piece of dog shit like Mitt Romney and Bain Capital or their Republican clones came in as management consultants then quickly off-shored the entire thing. They even sent some of the line supervisors to the new country to train the replacements before they fired them.”

“No greater act of treason could ever be committed against a city, state or government. That was fifteen thousand jobs, basically overnight. Took them two months to ship the line equipment to the new factory in some third world country. Each week a line was shut down, loaded up and shipped. They didn’t even try to make it work. The place wasn’t even close to losing money when they came in intent on committing treason against America. They just saw an opportunity to commit treason and jumped on it.”

Melony was obviously building up a head of steam as she continued “They always want to talk about Russia when the cameras are rolling, but Russia couldn’t inflict as much damage to this city with a nuclear strike as the Republican’s did. Then they actually let that worthless fucker run for President! All lining up to support him, just like wiping out an entire town was a fine American thing to do!”

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