Salmon and Nella Die

Over the decades, Salmon raised Nella in his secret nunnery. The nuns trained daily in the deadly arts of MMA entertainment. It was a better life than most of the orphans like Nella had lived on the outside. Instead of begging for money from hand jobs, there was was banana peeling. In lieu of selling drugs, there were bake sales. In lieu of sleeping on the cold, hard, dangerous sidewalk, there was a straw mat inside the convent.

Nella often wished for freedom even though she admitted she preferred the convent. Salmon took a special interest in her, even among all his hand-picked followers. During the daily fighter stretches and sparring, Salmon always made a special point of correcting Nella's stance or showing her the intricacies of some wrestling form. His smiling round face made Nella feel a strange twisting deep in the pit of her stomach, like a snake uncoiling or getting ready to strike. She was never sure which.

Salmon took care of all of his nun troops like a doting father. He was an expert military man and a deocrated tank hero. He commanded the largest division of tanks in the New United States Army. His clandestine nunnery was a personal empire he managed to make money from televised pay-per-view fights. The cage fights were mostly staged, but the nuns still got hurt. The nuns often had torn ligaments, broken noses and bruised ribs. Nonetheless, they were highly trained and skilled warriors who could give as good as they could take.

Salmon had chosen Nella because of her fighting spirit. He knew that her smallish frame and cute face belied a deadly drive to accomplish her goals. He was drawn to her calm yet driven nature and always made an effort to interact with her daily during the training rituals. He was dying to show her some of the new secret yoga moves he had learned from the Kama Sutra to improve her performance in the octagon. He had learned from a divination session with a crackpot prostitute in the city that his true love and ultimate destiny was a fighter who bore a black scar upon their shoulder.

Nella's did indeed have a scar on her shoulder, but it wasn't black. It was the colour of chewed gum stuck to the underside of a table and forgotten for several years. She had gotten the scar during a particularly vicious cage match against one of her rivals, an orphan who had joined the convent a few years before Nella. They were bunk mates, which was often seen as a sign of a good fight, one that would raise good ratings. During their bunk nights, Nella and her rival had touched each other furtively under the sheets, desperate to relieve the tensions, aches, and outright boredom of the convent life and training.

Their hands often wandered eventually to the pudenda and between the upper thighs; Nella's vice-grip legs had broken her rival's wrist once, causing a muffled scream and scrambling in the sheets that was noticed by several other nuns. The other nuns whispered about their commingling and eventually Nella and her rival were separated. Nella got a new bunk mate who was gentler and sweeter. Nella went on to kill her rival in the octagon after hearing about her rival's relationship with her new bunk mate.

Salmon believed that Nella was meant for him and went out of his way to express his love. He would give her special training sessions and shared with her the mystical series of numbered touch-points that caused death, dismemberment, and in some cases, bad breath. The four-touch sequence would cause explosions in the bowel which would cause death within several days. It also caused the victim to expel disgusting gasses during the interval before death. The five-touch sequence caused the heart to separate into its four chambers. The victim would mope around sadly for several months with their broken heart until they could either recover slowly or, more often, died alone.

Eventually, as they must, Salmon and Nella grew together in hidden love. They expressed their desires for each other by sneaking up to the roof on warm nights after curfew. At first, it was merely a pretense of training exercises. Later it became a way to release the flow of Kundalini energy stored in the triangular sacrum. It was there, in the dark under the moon and stars, making sweet whole-body orgasmic love that Nella realised she didn't care for men and that Salmon was not her soul mate.

Many decades later, after crossing herself outside the octagon and stepping in for a match, she saw the smiling round face of Salmon. It would be the ultimate match of love and violence, and many millions of tickets for the pay-per-view had been sold for several hundred yuan each. Nella clenched her fists and vowed that Salmon would die. The fight was vicious and at the end, Salmon could not bring himself to give Nella the fatal blow. He had her locked in the steel cross manouever and could have ended her life with one pull. Instead, he let her wriggle out and she was able to give him the seven-star-touch which sentenced him to death by beautiful lights in a tunnel.

He staggered around the ring muttering unintelligibly, "Nella.  Nella. Nella." Then he fell in a crumpled mess while Nella fell to her knees and mourned the passing of her kind mentor and physical lover. She never had any sentimentality for anyone in her life, and she wasn't prepared to feel any now.

Nella was promoted to head of the convent and to this day makes a good living selling pay-per-view tickets for nun cage matches in the octagon.

Nella the Nun Wrestler

Nella meekly crossed herself and stood unsteadily. Decades of prayer had abused her knees into weak shredded beds of lettuce. She adjusted her modest shift and stepped into the ring. She was God's wife and someone needed a beat down in the name of his Him and His administrators on earth, starting with the Pope.

Her mind raced back to the days before cagefighting; back to the time before she married God and wore the frock at the Saint Mary Elisabeth Antononina Vladovich Estonia's convent. She was young and eager then, hustling yuan from the American tourists for hand jobs and bags of meth. Sometimes they wanted exotic stuff like bath salts, cinnamon, or hamsters. She drew the line at GMOs. She wouldn't sell anything that might be harmful to the environment. Even then, she believed in a higher power and His call to protect and cherish His creation.

That sunny day of double-aught she had scored a batch of military grade caffeine. She had mixed it with water and started mainlining it down the gullet. She had tilted her head back to take in the rays of Atum-Ra. The poison drug rushed through her brain and brought time to a standstill. A shadow crept across her face and she opened her eyes too slowly in the jacked-up hyper state she was enjoying. A round white face entered her vision and the face smiled.

"Do you know the way to San Jose?" the stranger asked in a comical slow motion drawl. "I'm a tank driver and we're doing operations..."

She smiled, shaded her eyes, then laughed. She laughed uncontrollably and doubled over trying to supress the giggles. The stranger bent closer, concern on his face.

"Hey, are you all right? You look like you OD'd on caffeine..." he said.

She reached up to bat away the slow-motion arm that moved toward her. Trails of blue and red swirled in the air as she moved. Laughter filled an echo chamber, sounding like tinkling ice in a scotch glass. The threads of gravity holding her hair down shifted slightly and most of the world went sideways while her head held still. A slow row of dogs barking through thick boiling fudge crested as the world turned red.

Nella woke later in the hospital among the beeping machines and cursed the police officer sitting next to her bed. He looked up from the magazine he was reading and smiled suddenly, the same smile she had seen before her overdose. It was bright and open, disarming and charming. She hated him.

"Hi, lady. Sorry I don't know know your name. My name is Salmon, first Over Lieutenant Commander Corporal of the 32nd division of the 14th tank platoon based in White Sands." The commander stood and reached out his hand to shake hers. Nella huffed nosily and stared at the ceiling. After a long while Salmon sat down again.

He tried again, "Look, I know you've had a hard life. I was on my way to manouevers in Norcal and I've never been there and I don't know the way, so I asked you if you'd been to San Jose." Nella giggled again reflexively. Salmon continued, "I know it sounds funny. But you looked so cute and I was so concerned for you when you passed out... I've seen coffee drunkies like you before and recognised the signs..."

At that, Nella screamed and grabbed her temples with both hands. She was in withdrawal from the caffeine and her head hurt. Her stomach twisted violently and she pulled her legs up to her chest.

"Listen!" she spat at Salmon who now stood next to her. "I don't know you and I just want to hustle a few grams for some yuan. I need to get out of this stupid gown and hospital and I need to transact. Some. Business."

"Yes, yes," Salmon said, placating her. He motioned for three nuns to come into the room. The nuns brandished bibles and they moved in to subdue Nella.

Potus rewrites

From the end scene where Potus explains what happened to the British Prime Minister.

The CIA director said, "I believe we're causing an international incident."

"Pssh," said Potus.  "I'll clear everything up with a speech.  I'm excellent at speeches."

“The people will believe you when you say things,” agreed the CIA director.

“They should believe me,” said Potus. “I’m very knowledgeable and trustworthy.”

"We can arrange a press conference soon," said the CIA director.  "But you, Sir, need to, uh, you know, um…  Get dressed."

The climax scene with the CIA Director, explaining the election results for Potus:

“There’s one more thing before you go, said the CIA Director, motioning Potus and Shaniqua to sit. “It’s with regard to the legitimacy of your presidential title.”

“Those are serious allegations and I won’t stand for them,” said Potus, refusing to sit.

“Clam down, calm down,” said the CIA Director. “During investigations earlier this year over voter irregularities, we detected some quote-unquote, lost votes.” Here the CIA Director made air-quotes over his head. He continued, “These lost votes were in favour of your opponent who narrowly lost several key battleground states.”

“Quote-unquote?” asked Potus, making air-quotes.

“Sure,” answered the CIA Director shrugging. “Not a big deal. We made it go away.” Here the large man from the NSA nodded. The CIA Director continued, “We traced some of the problem to daylight saving miscalculations in the voting machines produced by VMA Corp. It turns out that several clocks inside the voting machines hadn’t been set back for the fall time and discounted the votes received later in the evening.”

Potus sat in shock, taking in the news.

“Sir,” continued the CIA Director, “I understand this is immense news and I didn’t want to share it with you until we were sure. We’ve already covered it up and you’re good to go. So no worries there, we can talk about it any time.”

“The Daylight Savings bug?” asked Potus incredulously. “I hate Daylight Savings, but it got me elected?”

“Yes, Sir, it seems that way. Thought you should know,” said the CIA Director. He shrugged again.

“I am become death, destroyer of worlds,” said Potus.

The CIA Director said, “No, Sir, that was Oppenheimer. You are the creator of worlds! You are the ruler of worlds! You are the president!”

The CIA Director and large man from the NSA both stood and saluted. Potus saluted limply and turned to pad out of the room barefoot, followed by Shaniqua. Shaniqua turned to both men as she neared the door and flipped them the bird.