July 4th marked the end of my newsletter staff as I knew it. Each member of my staff -- Dashing Danny, Spud Tuber, Tipsy White, Cannibal, and The Lady Herself -- betrayed me. So now it's time for paybacks. Which will be sweet, as I systematically destroy them.
I thought, Dashing Danny Whfrf's obviously the ringleader, he's the one I'll take out first. All I knew about was the sexual stuff Danny was involved in with the rest. But in confronting him I soon learned it went far deeper -- amazingly! -- that he planned to take over the newsletter, to steal it and issue it as his own and the Lady's!
In confronting him, I caught him, red-handed, with my notebook of newsletter ideas and The Lady. We stood on the lawn, glaring at each other, The Lady cowering behind the Dashing One. I chose to take a mournful tone, not a strident tone, which would've inflamed things and likely precluded answers. "Danny, I thought you were the one redeemable prisoner on my staff, the brains of the outfit, you alone ... but here we stand."
He seemed perplexed at my sorrowful words, but also knew any advantage he might have lay in a strident response. "What you think or don't think is of no concern to me. You have what I want, I'll take it!"
I kept up the mournful pose. "Of course you mean The Lady, that much is clear, but now the newsletter as well? It's not enough that you find a Lady of your own and start your own newsletter; oh no, that would be too much!" I had crossed into the no-man's land of sarcasm, a place you can never return from, where there's nothing left to hide behind.
"You're right about one thing, Kundalini," he said sharply, "I am the brains of the outfit. Whatever success the newsletter would've had had nothing to do with you. Your blurbs on the minutiae of your daily life hold no interest. I've got what today's reader wants, anecdotes of crime and punishment, doing time and escaping, and sex with The Lady!"
"So you're planning...?" I was tentative, I don't think I wanted to hear the answer.
"That's right, I'm escaping! No more work release, no more halfway house! Once my voice takes hold of society in the newsletter, they'll never be able to touch me! Especially with a Lady like this on my arm!"
I lamented, "You poor delusional fool. A newsletter needs a spirit to it, the spirit of good. Every newsletter I've ever seen inhabited by the spirit of evil has flamed out after the first couple issues. The public -- despite their many failures -- are essentially good. They're the kind of Everyman I represent, a pool in the yard, two kids, three dogs, a garage full of cars. They want pointers on how to step up their game of domesticity, not how to work a paperclip in a jail door!"
"So that's all you think I know, eh? The life of solitude and solitary confinement." I started to feel I wasn't getting through to him, and the ire rose up inside me, my ears glowing hot at the tips. He pulled the Lady to himself and bent her over for a long and involved and very wet kiss. I lost my mind and lunged at him. But he anticipated me and stabbed me right between the eyes. I would've been a goner, except for a yoga move I'd only just recently mastered, the Third Eye Displacement. It changed my focus in a startling new way, so that -- knife or no knife -- I could see my path to victory.
I grabbed the Lady's hand and pulled her behind me. Danny was aghast, suddenly seeing how things stood. What kind of newsletter could he make without the Lady's love? It's unfathomable, even ridiculous to imagine!
I didn't know what to make of it entirely, but self-preservation got the best of Danny and he dashed off, leaving me to phone it in to headquarters. There were sirens and gunshots about a quarter of a mile west of my place, and pretty soon I saw the prison bus -- a school bus painted black -- take the road east past my place.
It gave me the last glimpse I hope to ever have of Dashing Danny Whfrf. I watched closely as they passed and beheld a tear in his eye, which he then defiantly wiped away before assuming a stolid pose, looking straight ahead. Now he was a half mile away and his back to me, details were harder to make out. All I could tell was he had a sneer on his face and was resolved to greater and greater crime in the future.
I learned a couple of important lessons in this whole episode: There are men you simply can't redeem, no matter how good your newsletter is. And second, a knife between the eyes, while being entirely life-threatening, serves as a pretty good beacon to the higher consciousness, for a limited period of time. I pulled it out and got a bandage.
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