Please Get Me Out of This Place
Charlie was extremely nervous, for various very good reasons. This was the night before the Branch Two Inception. He was the Co-director and Chief Science Officer. The weight of worlds literally weighed on his frail shoulders. It was Monday night, January 2nd 2012, at precisely 9:34 p.m. He was at a high-end bar, in a suburb of Washington D.C. watching a college football game. For another person that might have indicated a normal night, but not for Doctor Charles Carver Robinson, who had never witnessed a football game, and had only consumed alcohol twice in his life, both times with debilitating consequences. Charlie was the chaperone for three volatile persons who did not belong in this bar, drinking next to a squad of off-duty Prince George’s County cops. In fact, his companions did not even belong in the 21st Century and the inevitable tension was beginning to build like micro-tremors before a major geological event…
Ten days ago he had spent two hours of post-apocalyptic horror fleeing from a team of 24th Century assassins. This had culminated in an enormous blood-bath in a secluded West Virginia mountain hollow as he was protected with utter finality by his self-appointed 16th Century bodyguard, Bruco de La Gomera, and former White Supremacist guru, gun-nut, and Hindu convert, Randy Bracken.
Ten days ago you were standing over a smoldering pile of wreckage and body-parts. Today Brother, you stand with the killers, your killers, next to five police officers, as your own private army reels drunkenly out of control.
There were three bright spots to this evening, which he somehow sensed would deepen his peril:
His boyhood friend, Jay Bracken, had finally been recovered from his last Branch One translocation, which had somehow resulted in him spending a week in the Ashland Virginia mansion of a former porn starlet as her houseboy. He was given to silently brooding, and sat alone, nursing a ginger ale as his eyes seemingly roamed a lost world within. Jay was still ruggedly handsome, although the back and top of his bald head was covered with raised scars and his nose was wickedly broken. Some of the women who the cops were courting kept stealing glances at the quiet haunted man, who seemed not to notice a thing or a person around him. Seeing Jay was heartwarming. But seeing him like this was heartrending.
Come back to us Jay-man. We love you.
His bodyguard, a stone-age orphan, who had been raised as a medieval mercenary, had finally found a woman he could speak with, so that Charlie was not burdened with constantly translating for the brute, who spoke an archaic Spanish dialect, which the striking young Latino beauty at the bar seemed to find appealing.
Finally, there was the slice of wonder and disappointment approaching him. She was a good-looking professional White woman, a red-head with an athletic body and highly intelligent roving eyes, and she was approaching him this moment, a hint of a smile creasing her lips and a mischievous question twinkling in her glassy green eyes. Of course, this just pointed up his current dilemma, for, as his murderous friends continued to drink Bacardi 151 straight, it was becoming painfully obvious, that the five cops to his right had come here to meet these two women and their three friends, all of whom were demonstrating more interest in his friends than the hard-drinking over-sized young cops who were casting jealous looks their way.
Negro, you will be handcuffed before midnight, and Branch Two is going to have to proceed minus the Chief Science Officer and virtually the entire security staff! God she smells good.
“Good evening. I’m Arlene.”
The sharp looking redhead in tight navy blue business attire extended her hand politely and he took it reluctantly, for he felt doomed this night and could never imagine himself with a White woman this fine in any case. “Good evening Arlene, Charlie.”
She gave a coy wink and nodded with little comic jerks of her head toward his friends. “Who-the-Hell are these guys? And what are you doing with them? You are not enjoying yourself at all Charlie! Don’t answer. I completely understand. My friends dragged me out here to meet these meathead cops, so I can occupy the hopelessly ugly one in meaningless conversation while they have fun. I just don’t get football—particularly what women see in it.”
She is wonderful. This is your dream girl and you have to blow her off and get out of here.
“Are you alright Charlie?”
“Yes, fine Arlene. Might I purchase you a drink?”
“Sure Charlie. I’ll have a Long Island ice tea—thank you. That’s so sweet.”
As Charlie was ordering Arlene’s drink Bruco started raising his deep rumbling voice, extolling the virtues of the Baltimore Ravens, over the local team, the Washington Redskins. The energetic Latino girl was translating his ranting to the cops, who were big Redskins fans, and apparently belonged to a semi-pro football team. Bruco then began going on about his desire to play for the Ravens, and repeated Charlie’s promise to get him into a game. Of course, this made Bruco the butt of many jokes.
He does look ridiculous dressed up in 100% Ravens attire, including a beanie hat and cleats!
And Randy was egging him on, slapping him on the back and shouting such pronouncements as, “That’s my ass-kickin’ machine—all in Krishna baby!”
As her drink was slid across the bar top, Arlene elbowed him playfully. “Charlie, your quiet friend at the bar seems nice enough, although I can’t imagine you have much in common. But these two, the skinhead Hindu and the Bosnian merc who thinks he can speak Spanish? What the Hell?”
You can’t lie to this woman. You want deeply to be accepted by her—have dreamed about meeting her for years. The simple truth won’t give away too much. These are just local county cops. It’s not like you’re at a CIA convention.
“Actually Arlene, my quiet friend there is named Jay. I have known him since high school. He and the others work for my organization.”
Her chin just hit the bar. She is impressed brother.
“I am a Christian Missionary Arlene. The year before last we launched a relief effort to help indigenous people in an underdeveloped country. We brought back three children for adoption. These men have provided operational security at various stages. Jay, I am afraid is suffering from PTSD. He spent fifteen months in-country and lost his team leader. He saw action against some pretty vicious cartels. We just picked him up yesterday.”
Stop trying to impress the lady Brother. These guys are getting too loud.
Arlene’s eyes narrowed and darkened as she sipped. “Charlie that sounds positively ridiculous! But I couldn’t imagine a story that would put you together in a bar as the designated driver for these three that would not sound like the plot for an action movie.”
She then smiled seductively and ran her hand down his thigh. “Hopefully you’ll be able to dump these goons off in time to do some missionary work tonight—I’m a defense analyst by-the-way. I need to be in D.C. by Eight-thirty a.m. How about we ditch our respective friends by eleven? That puts us back at my condo by eleven-thirty.”
Brother, your dream girl is an aggressive slut! Thank God in heaven!
“Thanks for making that easy on me Arlene. I do not think I would have had the courage to ask you out, let alone cut to the chase. You are kind.”
Did she even hear that as loud as these people are getting?
“Let us just say that I like a little mystery, and I like compelling conversation over my morning coffee—and no other man in this room is up to providing that. Besides, I’m starting to cramp and I haven’t been laid in three weeks. A month is a longer dry spell than I’m willing to tolerate.”
Brother, she is just using you.
And, there is a problem with that?
As Arlene put her arm around Charlie and kissed him lightly on the ear Bruco and Randy began slapping one-another on the chest and shouting Bruco’s only two English words into each-other’s face, “Unleash Hell! Unleash Hell!”
Just then the striking Latino woman put her hands on Arlene’s shoulder. “Hey girl, hate to pull you away, but we’re headed out to the ball field. These two maniacs want to play football with the five cops. I’m getting’ a six to go. Get the van warmed up. Us girls are all going to go watch the train wreck.”
Arlene looked him right in the eyes and they both said the same thing at the same time, “Oh, My God!”
This is insane!
“Randy, we have to get back to The Project.”
That is such a pedestrian euphemism for bending Space-Time and becoming the midwife to a new universe.
The man then knocked back his drink, and slapped Charlie so hard that it hurt. “All in Krishna baby, all in Krishna! Hey Little Bro, let’s roll. Gonna go play some ball boy.”
Jay followed them zombie-like out to the Lexus, as the herd of big beefy cops piled into their cars and the five young women packed into a mini-van laughing and joking, with Arlene at the wheel. Randy was sitting next to him lighting up a hash pipe. “Follow that redhead with the jungle fever brother. Think ya can handle that?”
“Randy, we just gunned down three men, are driving between cars filled with police officers, and you are smoking dope in my Lexus!”
“Yep brother, that’s quite an astute assessment. I suggest you keep it under the speed limit.”
At this point following the Randy trail I cannot keep fact from fiction. Is this a true story or part of a larger fiction book? Please tell me this is fact.
The links, are all fiction.
Now, the whore house story, that really happened, but I changed names and location, though not the race of the hookers.
the football game was a composite of three real incidences, one of which involved cops getting busted up in a pickup game.
The redhead was real, but se was Jewish, and she hooked up with some short long-haired guy, not Randy, so that was a real pickup line by a woman. However, it is all still fiction except for the interview about running from the cops and stabbing the dude in the park. The next installment is all from the interview. I juts included the links to the fiction because I did get his personality down pat for the novels and wanted the readers to get a feel for his odd charm.