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What About Bob? (pt.1)

by @sarahlml and ws

Bob Mueller has been trapped in what he believes to be an MKUltra experiment for approximately 25 months. Every morning he wakes with a jolt at the crack of 5:30 a.m and turns on CNN hoping to see that it’s still 2016. Every morning, it isn’t. He grants himself one heavy sigh and then gets to it. He brushes his teeth with salt, stares at his jowls in the mirror wondering if they always looked like this, and then glops a handful of Brylcreem on the top of his head.

He heads out into the city feeling hopeful this will be the day the break will come - he’ll put together the pieces of the absurd task set to him and the experiment will end, or maybe he’ll come out of a coma in 2004. He goes to the Mall to lurk among the cherry trees trying to spot his MKUltra handlers. He’s about to approach a man reading a newspaper - a real paper, the kind of thing you don’t see so much these days- when he sees House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Mueller steps out in front of Scalise with a mind to try out his Harry Potter Pensieve Theory of what’s happening to him. He waves a bony hand in Scalise’s shiny face. “Hey, do you know the New Yorker did a fashion piece on me?” Scalise doesn’t respond; he’s shouting into a flip phone apparently to his service provider. “I know, but what is a data plan?” Scalice roars into the phone. He notices Mueller standing there and stalks past him with a quick, “No English!” At least Scalice seems to have seen him. Mueller shrugs to himself. “I guess that’s something.”

Mueller watches Scalise go, then strides off to get to a press conference early. As he walks across the Mall, he wonders about the people around him. Are they in on this? Are they even real? Where do they all get those paper coffee cups they seem to carry around all the time? Are they free somewhere? Did they have those before he went into what he now calls the MK-State? He can’t seem to remember another time.

At the press conference he looks for a good twenty minutes, but cannot find any paper cups for the coffee. He feels another mystery building. The questions about the updates and the updates about the questions reminds him that he is trapped in a French farce, waiting, waiting. It begins raining outside and he stares at the raindrops blurring the gray, District landscape. The recorders record and the press shifts uncomfortably in front of him, symbolic of everything. He stares unblinking at the water streaking down the windows. He wonders to himself whether anyone is even listening. “I could probably say anything I want to,” he thinks. “That’s what everyone else seems to be doing these days. I am the god of most watermelons, for example,” he ponders to himself. The idea rolls around his mind. It fades. He almost smiles.

As if on command, he suddenly feels a deep discomfort in his belly. MK-State chemicals? Has he revealed too much in the tone he said “I have no comment” with? Was it a timed self-destruction device? No, no, it isn’t any of those things, he concludes snapping out of a daze. It is hunger. It is another Tuesday. Gyros on Tuesday for Bob Mueller.

He steps out into the city which feels more and more like a MC Escher piece. Streets stretch without meaning. Corners bend and vanish only to reappear and sharpen in a geometrically impossible way. The rain sounds like a million snapping fingers which cascade into a deafening roar. It would be soothing if it’s weren’t for -- “NEXT,” Lena, the woman behind the gyro counter beckons. Mueller places his order, dries off his face with a napkin, and sits down. Sen. Tammy Baldwin sits down across from him.

“Strange days, huh, Bob?” she says, tearing into a chicken shawarma.

“Hi Tammy,” Mueller says, returning to the moment. “Yeah, I can’t talk much about that.”

“That’s okay, I understand,” Baldwin notes, finishing off the last bit of her shawarma.

“You ate that so quickly,” Mueller continues, envious of her appetite.

“Oh, I love shawarma. Did you know I’ve been to every shawarma restaurant in Wisconsin. Bet’cha didn’t know that about old Tammy. It’s more than just a passion for me,” she offers without explanation. Bob Mueller does not pry any further. All he can remember is a life consumed with prying -- crafting the perfect question, placing and timing the questions in a logical way. If only he could master a way of improving his posture or his gaze that would just get people to tell him things without having to ask. That would make these strange days go by a little easier.

“Can I give you a hot tip, Bob?” Baldwin asks as she digs into a second shawarma.

“Yeah, Tammy, anything.”

“A lot of us are pining for answers, pushing for urgency and obstruction, and collusion. The works.” Shawarma juice trickles down her chin, pooling at the base of her jaw. “Sometimes, we push a little too hard. Other times we don’t push hard enough.” She nods. The juice drips. With gritted teeth she ominously advises “Look, don’t worry about the time, but don’t stop watching it either.” Mueller’s eyes break from her shawarma encrusted teeth to see Sen. Baldwin’s arm pointing at something behind him. He swivels in place, following her gnarly finger to a clock on the wall shaped like a peanut with the phrase “IT’S ALWAYS TIME FOR NUTS,” glowing in neon.

“Tammy, I’m not quite sure--.” She is already gone. Lena comes over with his gyro. What did all of that mean? The neon clock keeps ticking. Bob Mueller rubs his eyes. It was going to be a another long day.

#bob muller #mystery #rain #dc #shawarma