Washington Alley

They found me lying in the gutter. It was all I had left. Dubya's two goons weren't smiling and something told me they weren't feeling very sociable. I wanted to rub my skull to clear out the cobwebs but they wouldn't let me.
 
One of them shouted something in my ear that made the pounding in my head worse. The other pushed a beefy hand into his overcoat and pulled out the Sunday NY Times. He shoved it in my face. Uh oh. I guess they didn't like that crack about my faith in their boss being "misplaced."

A voice from inside the black sedan said, "Pick him up and clean him up. We'll take him back to the White House."

I recognized the voice. I said, "Turd Blossom, you forgot something. You forgot I'm an 'ex' aide."

Karl Rove had found me.

His eyes were blanks. His body was bloated and I could smell the stench of Washington zombie, a foul odor of stale blood on worsted wool.

"I've been looking for you, Dowd."

I got up slowly.

Rove started reading from a NY Times in a dull monotone.

"In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush's leadership. He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a 'my way or the highway' mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides..."

I suddenly got a feeling up my spine and the back of my neck that told me things were starting to head south.

"I don't feel so good," I said.

"I'm afraid you're gonna feel a lot worse," Rove replied as his boys shoved me into the trunk of the car.