Malevolence Inc.

[Mythsaje]

"And here we have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the former Presidential residence. It's stood vacant now for twenty years because we had no way to cleanse it of the lingering stench of evil."

The tourists all gathered around, gazing through the fence at the White House, gasping at its run-down appearance--flaking paint, rebellious landscaping, and the tattered remains of an American flag twisting in the wind atop the flagpole.

"We had no idea back then of what had taken over our government. We thought they were men--human beings like the rest of us. Yes, some of us spoke of them as evil, but we truly believed they were simply greedy, deluded, and destructive in the way that some children are destructive.

"We should have guessed, really. The Iraq War served no apparent purpose. It was a fool's errand, and it caused the death of millions of people. When the administration supported interrogation for torture, it should have been a red flag. Torture doesn't work. And, well, it's evil.

"They showed that they were willing to do almost anything to stay in charge. They engineered the defeat of the Democrats in the year 2000, then set up a mechanism to remain in charge regardless of the will of the people.

"In 2006, in spite of everything they'd done to hold on to their power, the people elected a Democratic Congress to put an end to the war-mongering and systematic destruction of everything Americans held dear.

"They weren't going to let THIS stop them, though. They pushed forward with their diabolical plans, trying to expand the war into neighboring countries such as Iran and Syria.

"The crowning irony is that we probably would have never realized the extent of the danger if not for the incident at an incidental speaking engagement, when Dick Cheney apparently suffered a heart attack and died right there on stage.

Several photographers caught images of a dark shadow rising from his corpse. A blackness so deep that it drew light into it. This shadow rose up and shook an ethereal fist at the attendees, then tried to escape. A fast-thinking photographer took the image that is now considered one of the greatest pieces of photo-journalism in the whole history of the medium.

"It was, of course, impossible to capture the thing. It wasn't until several months later, after Alberto Gonzolez was struck by a car, that ER doctors got the chance to see one of these things for themselves.

"We call them shadow vampires. They exist to possess other beings, primarily humans, and feed off of fear and terror. We know this because one of the ER doctors, seeing the thing rising from the Attorney General's damaged body, found a way to capture it.

"They'd been here for decades, slowly building their network, taking control of people they believed would contribute to their program of death and destruction. They inhabited the bodies of South American dictators and drug lords, Republican politicians, and Al Qeida operatives. And waited for the chance to strike.

"Once we knew for sure what we were up against, we struck at them. We drove them from the bodies they had possessed, and destroyed them with focused light.

"We still don't know where they came from. All we know is they were here, and they nearly destroyed us all. And none of us had a clue.

"The irony is that they took hold right as we were beginning to get past a lot of our ancient prejudices and hatreds and simply reinforced the ones that were still left.

"Many of the human hosts from which they were evicted went mad, of course. I'm sure all of you have seen video of the public meltdown of George W. Bush and Rush Limbaugh. Without the shadow vampires keeping them under control, they came to realize what they'd been doing. That revelation caused a serious breakdown.

"But we're now free of them at last. And the human race, n early destroyed by the malevolence of this alien race, has firmly committed to staying on the right path from now on.

"I guess we'll see about that. The jury's still out.

"Now come along. We're off to tour the Capitol Building, and see where Congress used to meet before the advent of the Virtual Legislature..."