New Book From the Porch: Politicians are Superheroes
ISBN-10: 1948920018
When politicians are bought and sold, when ancient monarchs prowl the earth looking for kingdoms to rule, and when common citizens are corrupted by dreams of an alien anarchist utopia, the time has come for the world to be destroyed at any moment.
In this comic satire of political corruption gone off the rails, it’s up to an ensemble of disgraced politicians to prove their mythical status as superheroes—and to save the world from something far more sinister than they had ever imagined.
When Robbie jumped down into the snake pit, he fell for only a few moments before splashing into a sea of snakes. By the time he lost momentum in his fall, he was buried well over his head. It took a good deal of squirming, but at last he maneuvered himself so that his head was facing down toward the bottom of the pit. And then he started to swim—or burrow—through the slimy, slithering snakes. Progress was slow, as the snakes were packed in tight, but he soon came to a depth that was relatively calm. Every other snake, it seemed, was dead. Eventually he was digging his way through a mess of snake corpses. He flexed his muscles and kept digging.
When his hands finally touched dirt, he could feel the weight of the snakes like a million sandbags pressing against every inch of his body. He had to calculate each movement carefully in order to bring his body to a horizontal position. He located the tunnel that continued on from the bottom of the pit. Still the tunnel was packed with snake corpses, which seemed nothing more, at this point, than a thick soup of snake guts.
At last, he felt something that was neither dirt nor guts. It was metal. If he could only find some kind of a handle. He did. Pressing down upon the rusted lever with the last of his strength, the door mercifully gave way, and he spilled out into an opening with tile flooring, Persian tapestries on the walls, and neon bulbs hanging down at regular intervals.
Gasping for air as he coughed up a mouthful of snake carcasses, he wiped his eyes clean of sticky guts and looked up to see King X walking up to meet him, all smiles—and two men with machine guns by his side.
Peter Clarke is a writer and editor living in Oakland, California. His fiction has appeared widely in literary journals including Hobart, 3AM Magazine, and Curbside Splendor. He is the founding editor of Jokes Review. Visit www.petermclarke.com
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