Playing With Matches

A Confederacy Of Dillholes

Mayor Butterman's sausage-like fingers tapped impatiently at the newspaper before her. She was leaking an oily liquid under the pressure of a fluorescent light her assistant had installed to force her to lose weight by sweating — the same reason she always had at least one aide following her around while lighting her with a flashlight. 

"How do I zoom in on this?" asked Mayor Butterman as she tapped the evening edition of the "New Orleans' Tribune" that featured her, twenty years younger, wearing a witch's costume in a Halloween party while Canadian-kissing a broom. 

For those not familiar with a Canadian kiss, it is done by sweetly whispering apologies inside the person's mouth between kisses. According to Cosmopolitan, it's one of the top twenty ways to surprise your man during hot moments, while also claiming that the number four item on said list was one you wouldn't believe. 

Mayor Butterman's Chief of Staff--which is another fancy human word for "Administrative Assistant"--one Trevor Workee, moved behind her to whisper into her ear. An odd thing, given that they were alone in her office. "That's a newspaper, ma'am, not a tablet. You have to get closer to 'zoom in', as you will."

"What, with my eyes?" said the Mayor with disgust. "I'm not paid enough to zoom in with my own eyes." 

She moved her fat index finger with the same gravitas one would use to catch a slippery duck and pushed a red button on the intercom on the desk. "Brenda, get in here!" 

A mousey, bespectacled girl appeared shortly after, with red eyes half-full of disgust, and half-full of hunger. The sight of her boss, always greasy and smelling faintly of onions, tended to give her mental images of a hefty breakfast, with lots of bacon, toast, and at least one poached egg. "My name is Sabrina, ma'am," she said before being tossed the newspaper. 

"Read that, Brenda," ordered the Mayor without paying much attention to what Sabrina had said. "I pay you to read, right?"

Sabrina bit her tongue to stop herself from saying that, in fact, she was an intern, and she didn't pay her squat. In fact, a squat would've been the last thing she could pay her, seeing that the woman hadn't done a squat in her life that didn't involve picking up an errant sausage from the floor. Still, she read the first few lines in her mind while moving her lips before being interrupted. 

"Out loud, Brenda," said the Mayor. "Sweet cankles of Mother Theresa, you better shape up, Brenda. You're never going to get that raise you want with that attitude."

Raising anything, thought Sabrina, was another thing the Mayor had never done in her life. She was even sure she couldn't rise from her bed in the morning without an assistant or two pulling at her. 

"It says: Bewitched! Another inappropriate picture of Mayor Butter-ball has surfaced, this time wearing a Witch's costume at a Halloween party in the early 2000s. The New Orleans Witches Coven(NOWC) issued a statement condemning the mayor, saying that 'Our culture is not a costume, a character, or a joke. We highly condemn Mayor Butterman and her wanton disregard for one of New Orleans' thriving minorities.'" 

"Order me some wontons, sugar," she said to Trevor before snatching the newspaper out of Sabrina's hands. "And this is a witch hunt! And actual, honest-to-goodness witchhunt! The neo-communist conservative media is out to get me again! Calling me Butter-ball--they should say it to my face! Spineless, the lot of them.

Sabrina went pale at the Mayor's outburst, covering her eyes and face while power-walking out of the room, which is known as the maddest type of walk throughout the known universe. Do not attempt if you have 18+ legs without the aid of a professional. 

"Ma'am, you can't say the W-H word!" said Trevor. 

"White House?" asked the Mayor before bitting her sweaty finger in a momentary mental lapse, thinking it was a crispy 7-Eleven hot-dog. Maybe getting a heat stroke for the sake of getting slimmer wasn't a good idea, but if we have learned one thing from human nature, is that doing stupid things is in their DNA. It started with Groog the Dumb, who after inventing the wheel decided to get drunk on ripe berries, putting four wheels on a piece of wood, and crashing it on a local lake, thus inventing drunk driving.