In an unnecessarily shadowy office somewhere in Washington D.C., a man sits behind an unnecessarily large desk. His phone rings and his assistant, sitting in the adjacent room, yells, “It’s the terrorists.”
The man scoops up the phone and smiles. He remembers the call earlier that week telling him that the terrorists had kidnapped Nap Lapkin, America’s top covert operative (among many other notable titles) and wanted to discuss how much money would have to change hands and how many of their terrorist comrades sitting in prisons around the world would need to be released before they would be willing to set him free.
The man holding the phone, renowned for his complete lack of humor, remembers laughing. Not his usual ominous chuckle which he had perfected through the years and could make the hair on the back of someone’s neck stand straight up at a distance of fifty feet, but a full-blown belly laugh. Tears ran down his face and his assistant ran in just to check up on him. All week, he would look back on the conversation and grin ear to ear.
He waits for the terrorist to speak.
The terrorist is now willing to renegotiate. His terms have come down significantly. A lot less cash and only a few prisoners, none of whom were particularly noteworthy, will be needed to release Nap Lapkin.
The man on the phone lets loose with something that is half laugh and half chuckle and all of the hair on his assistant’s neck falls out. “Not the ideal prisoner, huh?” he inquires.
“Your man is being held in an escape-proof bunker,” reports the terrorist.
“Can I have some sort of proof of life? Can I speak with him?” asks the man behind the unnecessarily large desk.
The terrorist explains that this cannot happen because Nap has killed all seventeen men that were tasked with guarding him.
The man on the phone once again lets rip a half laugh/half chuckle that I cannot neither confirm nor deny causes all of his assistant’s pubic hair to fall out. All I can say is that there were a lot of curly hairs stuck to his socks afterwards. The man behind the desk makes a note to explore the military applications of his new-found ability when he is told of the effects.
“Be that as it may,” roars the irritated terrorist (irriterroratedist?) “there is no way to get out unless we open the bunker door from the outside! Pay us or your man will eventually die of starvation.”
“Why don’t you just open the door and kill him?” asks the man in the unnecessarily shadowy office casually.
“Because,” says the terrorist, much more sheepishly, all traces of his former irriterroratedist tone quickly evaporating, “we can’t get a volunteer to open it.”
“Aren’t they all excited to meet Allah?” asks the man (any further unnecessarilys being unnecessary) sarcastically. “Nap can definitely expedite that process.”
“Apparently not in the manner that their seventeen brothers did.” The terrorist sighs. “ It’s getting harder and harder to find true believers.”
“I know what you mean. At least you can still tell your men from your women,” the man commiserates. “Ok, tell me what it will take to get Mr. Lapkin sprung.”
“How about if we give you the coordinates, you let him out and then owe us one?” offers the terrorist.
In the background, before any clarification of “owe us one” can be provided, there is the unmistakable sound of an explosion followed by a lot of screaming and gunfire.
The man in the overstuffed, yet perfectly proportioned chair almost falls out of the aforementioned as he begins to laugh again. “I’m guessing the prisoner has escaped?” he asks unnecessarily.
The phone line goes dead.
His assistant walks in, leaving a trail of curly hairs behind him.
Looking at the carpet, the man in the unnecessarily shadowy office somewhere in Washington D.C. asks “What’s that about?”
(A sincere thank you to those of you who tried and succeeded in pronouncing irriterroratedist. If you were also able to conclude that the carpeting in the unnecessarily shadowy office somewhere in Washington D.C. must be light enough to have pubic hairs be visible against it… well that’s just top-notch reading. Which is what makes all of this sub-standard writing worthwhile.)