Hillary Clinton sat alone in her study contemplating the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
Biden had a successful four years, she thought, but surely he realized it was not in the best interest of the Democratic Party for him to run for a second term, and if he didn’t run that created an opportunity. The opportunity to run again. That would be good for her, but, more importantly, that would be good for America.
“God bless us every one,” she said out loud, liking the idea of it.
Oh, sure, by the look of things she might end up running against Trump again, but she liked the idea of that, too. Fate seemed to be offering her a second chance to prove what she had known all these years, that she had been cheated in 2016.
The doors to her study burst open and there stood a ghostly Bill Clinton, chains attached to his wrists and ankles, a thick metal collar padlocked around his neck. A fifth chain hung loosely from the back of the collar, making it look like a dog leash.
“Well, he always was a hound,” Hillary thought, finding little amusement in her weak joke.
“Hillary! Hillary!” his spectral image intoned in a weak and raspy voice. “Fear not, but before this night is through you will be visited by three ghosts.”
“Don’t be such a melodramatic fool, William. You know very well that the last person dumb enough to visit me in the middle of the night was Vince Foster.”
“Will you listen to me for once in your gosh darn life?” Bill beseeched, his chains clanking this way and that as he wobbled unsteadily on bare feet.
Long sultry fingers sensuously wrapped themselves around the chain attached to the collar around his neck.
“So there you are, Mr. President,” his caregiver slash dominatrix said, icy words slithering out from between thin lips. “You’re such a bad boy for wandering off like that. Now you’ll have to be punished.”
But the former president's train of thought wouldn't be derailed.
“Remember what I told you, Hillary,” he said, disappearing backward down the hallway. “Three ghosts. Heed them. Heed them well.”
“Bah humbug,” Hillary said, dismissing the idea.
There was an impish laugh behind her.
“What the fudge?” she yelped, only she didn’t use the word “fudge”.
“I am the first ghost your husband warned you about,” the specter explained in a playful, childlike voice. “The Ghost of Christmas Past.”
Hillary surprised the phantasm by squawking loudly for her...
“SECURITY!”
Two Secret Service agents immediately ran into her office, jumped on the tiny trespasser, and forced him to the ground.
“The usual, Madam?” the lead agent asked.
“That’s Madam PRESIDENT!” she spat. “And, yes, get that deplorable little creature out of here!"
“But I’m The Ghost of Christmas Past!” it tried to explain as it was quite painfully dragged out of the room. “I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past!”
When all was quiet once again, Hillary turned to sit on the leather chair behind her desk.
But someone was already there.
“Who the fudge are you?” she demanded to know.
Having seen what happened to the first ghost, the apparition trembled fearfully in the chair. “I-I-I’m…” it said, not quite getting the words out. “I-I-I’m…”
“Doesn’t matter,” Hillary interrupted. “SECURITY!”
The Ghost of Christmas Present’s body was found the next day in an apparent murder-suicide with Christmas Past. A lover’s spat gone bad, the authorities would conclude.
“What next?” the former First Lady groused.
What next, indeed, as The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come opened its black cloak…
“SECUR…”
…and swallowed Hillary into the depths of its billowing darkness. She was transported instantaneously to the future. Election night 2024, to be exact. After having just clinked glasses of champagne with rock star John Bon Jovi, the results began trickling in and it wasn’t good news. Bon Jovi snuck away and before dawn the next day the truth was irrefutable: Hillary had lost AGAIN to Donald Trump.
“Nooooooooooo!” she howled.
She sucker punched the Secret Service agent who had the bad judgement of standing closest to her, then kicked a second Secret Service agent right in the babymakers. Seizing hold of her political strategist James Carville, she put him in a vicious headlock and began punching him savagely in the face. When President Clinton tried to intervene, he immediately regretted his actions when she grabbed him by the throat with clawing hands and began squeezing so hard his life began flashing before his bulging eyes.
It was sad, but it had to be done. Someone called her doctor, who called someone else, and two men in white coats came and led her away.
“Get the double,” Bill ordered, barely able to get the words out.
The new Hillary graciously conceded the election. As time passed, everyone commented on how pleasant she had become in her retirement from politics, even allowing underlings to once again make eye contact with her. Bill seemed happier. The world seemed happier. There was even peace in the Middle East.
Reality skidded to a stop and jerked back to the present.
“What’s wrong, Madam President?” a Secret Service agent was asking. He didn't know what to do. Hillary lay crumpled on the floor. She was sobbing uncontrollably.
“It’s not true. It’s not true,” she kept saying.
The Secret Service agent looked around. He knew that she had always balanced precariously on the high wire of sanity, so he was trying to decipher just what it had been that had broken her so thoroughly, but he couldn't see anything in the shadows of the empty room. It was sad, but it had to be done. He called her doctor.
Who called someone else.
And two men in white coats came.
“Put this on, Madam,” one of them told her.
“That’s Madam PRESIDENT!” she screeched, spitting venom as she was forcibly squeezed into a jacket with sleeves that secured in the back.
It would be a long time before she would be seen in public again.
When everyone left and the house was empty, a dark figure shrouded in a heavy black garment which concealed its head stepped out of the shadows. Tiny hands moved up and threw back the hood of its cloak.
Had anyone else been in the room they wouldn't have been at all surprised to see that it was Donald Trump.
