PRESIDENT POMPOUS SAT ON THE WALL

A President bought down by a deceitful daughter

The wall was a precarious place for President Pompous to find himself sitting on, legs astride and prettiest daughter in the entire universe gazing at in horror, but he couldn’t help it. And it was quite a high wall, yet he felt absurdly safe because that daughter, Clementine the Beautiful was there to catch him if he fell.

Because she would do that. After all, wasn’t he the most powerful leader on the planet and wasn’t he too precious for anyone to even dream of actually letting him fall to what might be certain death at his age. And that would never do because he was sole custodian of the nuclear codes and every other President of every other nation was scared to near death by the idea of what he might do with them.

He might set off the sort of conflagration that could destroy life as he knew it, and although the idea scared him it also excited him. Such power! It was precious, more precious than diamonds, and here he was sitting on the wall.

“Daddy,” said Clementine suddenly, “Daddy, I want your nuclear codes.”

“Darling Clemmie,” he smiled in response, “you can have just about anything I own, but they’re too dangerous for a sweet young thing like you to hold in your pretty hands.”

“But I need them, papa,” she whispered, “that nasty man Colonel Blank has threatened me with his evil you-know-what, and I want to send him to hell on the back of a rocket!”

The President hoped that he didn’t know what Colonel Blank had used to threaten his daughter, and he smiled affectionately.

“But if you had the nuclear codes and used them you’d kill everyone,” he said, “and when the air finally cleared there would be no handsome young men left to take the place of Colonel Blank and his you-know-what. Even I, your father, would be forced to perish.”

“That doesn’t matter, daddy darling,” she murmured, “because life isn’t even worth thinking about if I can’t have Colonel Blank in my bed at night…”

Suddenly President Pompous understood what she probably meant by you-know-what, or thought he did. Of course, he got it wrong like he got most things wrong.

“Then I’ll let you sniff at the codes,” he said, suddenly angry, “and if that Colonel has exposed himself to you I’ll set them off myself!”

“Daddy! He’s done no such thing!” she gasped, “you must know that not even he would dare to do such a thing!”

“What do you mean by his you-know-what, sweet daughter of mine, then” asked the President, one hand in his pocket and idly twiddling with the nuclear codes, which, because of his own insistence had been painfully embedded in a swollen testicle on his own Presidential flesh, for safety, he’d told the surgeon who had shown great surprise at what he’d been instructed to do.

“I meant his little handgun,” she said vehemently, “and nothing like you think. You’ve got a mind like a sewer, daddy, if you thought what you implied you thought that I meant!”

“And Colonel Blank pointed a pistol at you?” gasped the President, “the swine pointed a piece of artillery hardware at my angel of a daughter, sweetheart? How dared he! I’ll have him lined up against this very wall and shoot him myself! I’ll even use his own darned pistol!”

“Oh, you can’t use that?” muttered Clementine, “I stole it when he got to sleep. Here it is!”

And she waved a small and evil looking gun in the direction of her father. “Now, daddy, the nuclear codes…” she insisted, her smile gone in a frazzled instant and a glint in both of what had been beautiful eyes before they glinted.

“What are you doing, sweetest?” he asked, “you can’t mean…?”

“Oh, but I do daddy,” she hissed, “I’m not a child any longer and I want to teach your Colonel Blank exactly who’s boss round here. And if he thinks he can wave that silly little toy at me he’s got another think coming! The codes, daddy. Now!”

It was dilemma time for the President because there was no way he was going to expose the nuclear codes and their hiding place to so precious a daughter.

How could he?

And it was then that President Pompous had a great fall. In a sudden burst of quivering rage and confusion he found himself teetering on the edge of what was really quite a narrow wall.

Then, suddenly, there was nothing under his feet, no bricks, no wall, nothing and air was flying past his face like a wind from hell.

“Daddy! Don’t you dared do that!” screamed Clementine, but but by the time she’d finished the sentence he was gone.

And he landed on his groin, which caused him huge pain, but even bigger pain was to come when a combination of stupid placement and the natural tendency of pain to be consequent of a blow in his nether regions set the world famous nuclear codes to be broadcast to the world, and mostly to the armoury down the road.

Then there was a huge explosion somewhere in town and the palace, the wall, even Clementine’s bedroom, were vaporised in less than the time it took for a treasured daughter to try to grab hold of a nearby broomstick and try to fly away.

In fact, the greater part of his proud country ceased, at the time, to exist, and queues at a local pearly gate, if there was one, wound round the block and back again in a dazzling array of dead people.

© Peter Rogerson, 8.11.24