An All-New Deep Knight Adventure

[Deep Knight]

The Last Farewell
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter 5, Finally Some Plot Development

142 men left out of 30 thousand! Losing a few soldiers from your secret strike force was one thing, but 29 thousand could be considered negligence. If ComSMERF wasn’t careful people would begin to snicker when they heard his title. I took pity on the General and recklessly decided to help, foolishly asking for details.

“What we know is a bit sketchy, most of the men we sent to investigate deserted before submitting reports. The descriptions we have follow a pattern, but no one can make any sense of it. New men go on their first leave and come back ecstatic with tales of having fabulous sex experiences. They become restless and seem to get more and more agitated as the days go by, and the very next time they leave the base they make a beeline for ISIS-controlled territory. We’ve looked at their internet usage and social media, and except for a sudden cessation of e-mails to sweethearts back home, everything was normal. No hint of them becoming Islamic or jihadist or anything.”

“I’ve heard about this sort of thing before,” I confessed, “during the Korean War the commies not only had brainwashing, they had crotchwashing too. Many prisoners, after having sex with kinky Korean commie cuties, were willing to say or sign anything to get more of that Pyongyang poontang. Of course, this was in the early 50’s, when good sex was in its infancy, so it didn’t take much to enslave most American men. Remember that the having sex while naked wasn’t invented until ’46, triggering the baby boom. It’s hard to imagine that anyone at ISIS would have discovered some new sexual technique or perversion that today’s soldier hasn’t seen online, much less literally can’t live without, but I’ve come across stranger things. Much stranger.”

“What we need is an undercover agent,” the General mused, looking straight at me, “who would follow in our lost soldiers’ footsteps and allow himself to be seduced by the thrill of jihadistism. Later, he could pretend to defect to ISIS and then find out what’s going on. Someone whose sordid history would make nothing that happens between the sheets a surprise. Someone who could turn the tables and unstack the chairs without mussing his short ‘n curlies, and no perverse penetration could shock.”

I smiled, thinking about which of my dozen good excuses I would use if he chose me, when there was a sudden explosion behind us. It was Freewill from NESARA News, with his cohorts Popeye, Olive Oyl, and a bunch of other thugs from their gang, though I only recognized Wimpy and Bluto! I had heard that things were too hot in Michigan for Freewill, but never dreamed that he would be hiding out on the French Riviera. Not his style. Luckily, this group was as inept in combat as they were in correct grammar and spelling, and I made short work of them with the aid of the utility-belt chainsaw I carried for just such an emergency. If SMERFs command center had been a ship, the decks would have been awash in blood. At least no piranha showed up this time.

While I was taking care of this story’s third fight scene with no link to the main plot, the General was on the “Hot Line to Hell” and talking to Satan himself. It seems that my prowess lopping off limbs, cutting the pieces to length, and stacking them impressed ComSMERF, and he was insisting on using me undercover. The big guy almost busted a gut laughing, and my heart sank into my feet as I realized I was being dropped into the drooling mouth of danger. Before I could blink I found myself being loaded into a large transport and with a thousand other “reinforcements” dropped into “Camp Slaughterhouse,” NATO’s secret Syrian Desert base. It had everything, an air conditioned movie theater, McDonalds, Waffle House, Starbucks, and Hooters but only a handful of soldiers. My cover was that I was a civilian contractor from Haliburton, which of course meant I wouldn’t have to do any actual work or have any special expertise.

I wasn’t there an hour and hadn’t even finished cleaning the scorpions out of my bunk when I got a flyer inviting me to Big Daddy’s Caliphate Bar and Grill in Raqqa, where happy hour was four to six and there was a wet t-shirt contest every Tuesday night. Suspicious, I decided that a trap wasn’t a trap if I knew it was a trap, and decided to walk into it. Little did I know how serious a trap what I would soon encounter was, not to mention the stiff cover charge.

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

A Tender Farewell
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter 6, Deep in the Body of the Text

When the whistle blew announcing my shift was over, I retired to my plush air-conditioned tent to check my high-tech secret gadgets and make sure they were working, all except the flame thrower, of course. It can’t be said I don’t learn from my mistakes. Satisfied that the large collection devices made to look like common objects such a condom in a foil package, were OK, I made it to Big Daddy’s. There, the party was already started, with “the dance of the seven veils” being performed to the disco song “YMCA” as the floorshow. Soldiers filled the surrounding Formica tables, with girls with strange, short and permed hairstyles wearing out-of-style dresses snuggling up to and plying them with drinks. The atmosphere was showy and cheap but tawdry, just my kind of joint.

I got a table in a dark corner and ordered an extra-dry vodka martini, first shaken, then stirred. Downing it rapidly, I was studying the scene when one of the smiling bar girls came over and sat at my table. I scowled at her as I ordered another martini while she asked for champagne, which even from the other side of the table I could tell was ginger ale. She tried to cozy up to me and I let her, playing my role as a pluckable pigeon. Little did she know that one of my secret spy gadgets was a prosthetic lower lip, with a tube that sucked anything I drank out of my mouth almost before I could taste it. Instead it was drained to a hollow third leg, keeping me from getting drunk. This didn’t keep me from appearing really loaded, an act I also used to play coy when she tried to get me to “leave and go to her place.” I figured that by acting too eager I might tip my hand, so I tipped more martinis instead. I also loudly sang along with “In the Navy” the third time they played it, out of tune but enthusiastically as if I thought I was in a karaoke bar. Big Daddy’s apparently had “The Village People’s Greatest Hits” playing on endless repeat, itself a hint that I was on the right track. Who but someone trying to out-evil the NWO would do such a dastardly thing?

After more drunken hijinks, including my loudly demanding a non-existent band play “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You,” I finally allowed her to pour me into a taxi and go to her place, “for a nightcap.” But first I visited the little boy’s room, where I drained my martin-filled spy gadget and surreptitiously contacted my team back in Monaco. I was certain I was on the right track, and decided that it would be wise to have them join me, as “backup.”

I was unprepared for what I discovered when we reached her place and I opened the door. My plan had been to knock out my little bar maid spy with a karate chop, dress her in black lingerie, and then tie and gag her. She would become the bait in a trap for her fellow jihadist jokers when they came to collect me. Unfortunately, ISIS used the exact same plan, down to the lingerie, except with me as the subject. When I finally came to after what must have been many hours or even days, they were dragging me out of an old truck into a hovel, where I was propped me up to meet my captor, Prince Ali “Big Daddy” Ababwa. I recognized him from the ethnically-insulting hook-nosed and bushy eyebrow caricatures of him plastered all over his bar and its menu. Strangely, he looked exactly like them, and accented the politically-incorrect effect with a flashy gold tooth. He sadistically grinned as he leaned over me in my helpless cross-dressed state.

“Awaken and grovel, unbeliever! Your papers say you’re John Q. Smith of Anytown, USA,” began Big Daddy, “but I think we can dispense with that fiction, don’t you, Mr. Deep Knight?”

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Tender Terror
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter 7, The Old Plot Twist

“OK, you know who I am,” I said, pushing my bluff, “So why the game of cat and mouse, bill and coo, pump and dump?

“It pleases us to not only destroy you, but first completely degrade and discredit you. What will decadent western supermodels think when they see you dressed like this, tied up and squirming?” queried Big Daddy sadistically, obviously enjoying my slight discomfort.

“Nothing they haven’t seen before, and under far worst circumstances than these!” I said confidently, although confidentially my confidence wasn’t all that high. You try being tied up while wearing an ill-fitting garter belt sometime and tell me how you feel. The biggest short-selling Stuart on Wall Street wouldn’t put a c-note on my keister now, but I had one more ace to pull out of the sleeve of my lacy teddy.

“Come on, you’re evil, we’re evil, certainly we can get together on this,” I cajoled, even though I knew “cajoled” was probably an English word my swarthy host was unfamiliar with. I didn’t mention that his terrorist organization was the wrong kind of evil, both culturally and religiously, why complicate matters at this early stage of negotiation. Unfortunately, Big Daddy wasn’t having any of it.

“Infidel!” he screamed in a blood-curdling manner, “We’re not evil, we’re the good guys! I could see how some people might be confused after viewing our videos, but you’ve got to make a strong statement on YouTube to get any kind of buzz going online. Unbelievers would rather watch those cute cats chasing the laser pointer dot.”

“Have it your way,” I relented, “but we still have common ground. For example, mass murder. Why do it yourself when you can farm it out to a private contractor?”

“Quiet, scion of a goat!” Big Daddy shouted in my face, “You are not here to make offers, but to beg for mercy which you won’t receive! Soon, using a sexual technique known only to us, we will reduce you to a quivering mass of jelly! Then, you will join your infidel brothers in our pit of despair, your balls turning blue.”

“Surely you jest,” I commented, giving him my best straight-man setup, “I’ve experienced every perversion known to man, and several known only to women. Nothing you could do to me or my private parts could possibly sexually enslave me, well, for any length of time anyway! And there are many brave Americans who are as jaded as I am and ready to take care of business. Your days are numbered!”

“Fool,” spat out my captor, who I was beginning to notice was a bit verbally abusive, “we don’t feed your decadent western perversions, quite the opposite. Since we’re about to mentally destroy you, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in my bragging about the brilliance of my plan!”

“As an undercover agent in your United States, where I posed as a camel importer, I went to one of your political rallies where the theme was making America great again, like it was in the 50’s and early 60’s. I suddenly realized that your doomed country was desperate to return to the ‘good old days,’ and that this was your soft pink underbelly. Luckily, old American TV series showing family life from that same era are available online, and we have used them to teach our female agents how to look and act like a 1950s housewife. We drug your soldiers, put them in overstuffed chairs, and feed them TV dinners in aluminum trays. Then, after a few hours of watching “Leave it to Beaver” and reading Reader’s Digest, when their minds are empty and pliant, our girls have sex with them. This is done in total darkness with no emotional or verbal responses from our still-clothed agents what-so-ever, they just lay there like a dead fish. Your soldiers don’t know what hit them, but can’t get enough of it, and soon are our slaves!”

“You fiends!” I commented, knowing that their plan was just crazy enough to work, “You’ll never squelch the true American spirit. Even though my organization is trying to destroy it, we still have pride in our country and don’t like people to spit in its face who aren’t us!”

“Pride? Soon the thing you are most proud of will be a limp noodle in service to ISIS! Any last words before we have our girls put your through the wringer, squeezing the manhood from your otherwise useless carcass?”

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Terror on Ice
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter 8, The Calm Before the Storm

As Prince Ali leaned over me, anxious to hear my last words, I defiantly told him something that would haunt his memories. “Why don’t we make this interesting. Here’s an idea, how about you and me have a ‘sex-off,’ and if I win I get to walk? You know, we both take a dozen of the girls and the one who gets done with them first wins. You don’t have a conveyor belt anywhere around here, do you?”

“Bedwetting crybaby!” my opponent observed. “I have had enough of your games and attempts to delay the inevitable. Prepare for thy doom!”

The merciless terrorist fiends led me out of my prison cell and through a well-guarded fence to what appeared to be a white-bread slice of American suburbia from 50 or 60 years ago. We entered a ranch-style home with a manicured lawn and well-trimmed hedges through a sliding glass door, to a living room with tacky furniture and an old black and white TV. My host and his many minions stood back as he called out in some unintelligible language, no doubt Arabic. A line of black-burka-wearing woman, or I assumed they were women as they were covered from head to toe, came filing through a far door and stood, as if waiting for something.

“Stupid women!” spat their leader, “You were commanded to be ready in your modest cotton-print housedresses, complete with aprons! Why have you disobeyed me, your lord and master?”

As if with one motion, the ladies lifted off their covering garments to reveal the Slice Girls and the 3 ninjas clones I had bought from Q Branch! The girls, incensed from having to wear outfits like these even in subterfuge, were anxious to kill someone, and those someones were conveniently standing in front of them. I have been warned that bloody descriptions start to become boring after the fourth or fifth time, so suffice it to say that the house’s linoleum floors and wallpapered walls turned more than a few shades redder that evening. Finally, the only one left alive was Prince Ali himself, cowering in the back of the room.

I motioned to the girls, letting them know that I wanted to take down the bad Bedouin myself. It wasn’t much of a fight, he lifted his glittering scimitar and lay it at my feet, kneeling and begging for mercy. “A thousand pardons, Efendi,” said the cowering coward, “I’m one of you! My real name is Vinny Hari and I’m a deep undercover agent for the CIA!” He gave me a flurry of secret Illuminati hand gestures to prove his assertion.

“If you’re working for the CIA, why cause such massive desertions of secret troops?” I asked inquisitively, “Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s just you,” my cocky captive crooned, “I needed to establish my credentials so that ISIS would trust me. Killing a few of your own to prove your sham loyalty is standard operating procedure at ‘The Company.’”

I smiled and put his own sword to his neck. “That might be true if it had only been a few, or even a few hundred, but causing almost 30 thousand to defect seems a bit excessive.”

“Any job worth doing is worth doing well,” he confirmed, sweating profusely, “Besides, we’re all on the same team, and it’s well known in ISIS that President Obama was one of our founders! We heard it on cable news.”

“I think you’re a triple agent who tried to double down on a single means of making money and got caught!” I summarized, “I saw how much cash changed hands at your bar, you’ve been raking it in at the expense of both sides and laughing all the way to the bank. When we get back home, be prepared for a brutal business audit!”

“Getting home might be a bit of a problem,” Slutty Slice interrupted to say, “We’re in the heart of ISIS controlled territory, surrounded by hostiles who are, like … really, really hostile. And I’m afraid those sirens you’re hearing mean that we’ve lost the element of surprise, and in a matter of minutes this house will be infested with jihadists. If only I could call them Islamic extremists we might have a chance, but given political correctness, we’re doomed!”

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Pink Champagne on Ice
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter 9, Setting Up the Ending

“No problem,” I asserted, “we’ll call in some ‘copters from the task force, pack up Prince Vince here, and blow this pop stand.”

“Yes problem,” said Serial Killer Slice, peering out the front window. “It looks like they’ve got state-of-the-art anti-aircraft installations out there. Stuff so good even the Illuminati Airforce can’t penetrate it with airborne dachshunds.”

We all looked at Prince Ali, who grinned back sheepishly. “What can I say, the CIA likes to buy the best.”

“If only we had a larger force, we could fight our way out,” I mused, wistfully. “I guess we’ll have to use the Prince here as a human shield, and hope ISIS has been more impressed with his value than I have.”

“We DO have a larger force,” said the Slice Girls in almost once voice. “We didn’t kill the 50’s feme fatales when we took their place, we simply had a woman-to-woman talk with them. It turns out they don’t like being sexually exploited any more than anyone else. And having to watch those TV shows and eat that food adds insult to injury. They are eager to join our cause, and ask only one thing. That they get some payback on Prince Ali.”

The prince turned an unnatural shade of green and sputtered out, “The New World Order has rules! You can’t let them have me without authorization, which the CIA will block. You have no choice but to take me with you!”

“NWO rule number one,” I reminded him, “is ‘Don’t Piss Off Satan.’ Well, ISIS has pissed off Satan, and so have you. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble one way or the other. Sorry.”

“I should have never toyed with a man with your reputation for rugged individualism and unbelievable sexual exploits,” he complained. I didn’t wait for him to praise and embarrass me further, but motioned to the Slice Girls, who opened the door to the attached garage to reveal over a hundred snarling Arab women dressed like 50’s housewives with murder in their eyes. Rushing forward, they grabbed Prince Ali and tied him to the Danish modern dining room set, obviously led by the lady who had joined me at my table at Big Daddy’s. She smiled at me, rushed over and gave me a big red lipstick kiss, and then went to work on what I supposed was to be a ‘death by one thousand cuts” using our opponents discarded swords. Unfortunately, they got a little over enthusiastic, and the effect was more like throwing the prince into a large wood chipper that fed a lawn fertilizer spreader. Once again, I will spare you the graphic details.

I gathered my all-female army together and we prepared for the worst. Knowing a bit about modern anti-aircraft capabilities from “The Learning Channel,” I sent squads of housewives, each led by a Slice Girl, to secure the anti-aircraft batteries Prince Ali had so kindly procured for us. Then, with the girls using some of their computer skills to program the missiles to seek out the profile of 1970s Datsun trucks with machine guns mounted in their beds, we waited for the onslaught.

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Pink and Deadly
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter 10, Nearing the End

We didn’t have to wait long. The night was clear and quiet, not ‘too quiet,’ but just the right degree of quiet. We could clearly see the dune sea in the moonlight, stretching to the horizon, covered with a crawling convoy of death. We held our fire as the fleet of manned compact trucks neared our position, hoping to catch them with their pants down and then kick them where it hurt.

“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes,” I implied, knowing that my woman warriors were anxious for blood. The plan was to let a few trucks get inside of our weapons firing range and remain undamaged for our transport. Seconds ticked by like hours, and our fingers tightened on our firing buttons as the moment approached. We could clearly see the enemy jumping over the crest of the dunes, spraying sand in their wake like a bastardized version of The Rat Patrol. Waiting until the last possible second, I waited a few seconds more and then gave the signal. The sky lit up before my pants had reach the ground, and our guided missiles rained death down on the desert. The explosions back lit our fifties filly force as they made quick work of the crews in the undamaged trucks. Not wanting to wear the demeaning housedresses forced onto them by their captors, they decided to make the assault wearing nothing at all. This had the desired shock effect on the ISIS troops, leaving them wide-eyed and gaping during their last fleeting seconds on earth. Once more the scene was an orgy of flowing blood, and substituting for piranha, Euphrates River crocodiles in a feeding frenzy added to the chaos. It wasn’t pretty.

Before the survivors were able to regroup, we were in the trucks and headed across the desert for Camp Slaughterhouse. Thank goodness for my phone’s navigation “app,” it not only showed us the way, it diverted us around construction and traffic jams. To this day the deserts of the Levant are filled with legends of light trucks filled with naked women with short, permed hairstyles, appearing then disappearing like a mirage. Once back at the base, the ladies were welcomed enthusiastically, and many of them married soldiers they met during the blowout party that followed.

The only loose end was the captured American troops who were being held in slave labor camps. All were malnourished, and many would have to be moved by stretcher due to the many beatings they had endured from sadistic guards. A truly heroic humanitarian effort would be required to save them, all done in the middle of hostile territory. Of course it would have been simpler and cheaper to kill ‘em and clone ‘em like we did with Congress, so that’s what happened using a massive drone strike. Besides, they all knew too much, and you can never be too careful with loose ends.

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Deep and Deadly
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter 11, Wrapped Up Like a Deuce

The Slice Girls wanted to get back to the party they had left in Monte Carlo, and I was invited to join them, but Velna waiting at home was also anxious for my return. Not only was she looking for the type of thrill only a man like me could provide, the garbage hadn’t been taken out for weeks. Unfortunately, before I could pack my bags and split, our Mediterranean villa was viciously attacked without warning. Defying my earlier statement on their status, Hope Girl and Heather Ann Tucci had somehow scammed enough money on the internet to take a tramp steamer from Morocco to Monaco and try and extract their revenge! Luckily, the Slice Girls mistook them for skanky sluts trying to horn in on the stud muffins lounging around the pool, and jealously made quick work of them. No piranhas or crocs were involved, but a school of aggressive anchovies took care of the discarded body parts.

Back at Illuminati Headquarters the next Monday, I marched into Satan’s office and told him the bad news, we had a mole! The sulfur stench that surrounded him got more intense as his temperature rose, either that or Sunday dinner had been Mexican food. I calmed him down with the story of my stunning success, assuring him that now Prince Ali’s operation was shut down, SMERF could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our cloners were already repopulating Camp Slaughterhouse, motivated to finish quickly by an invitation to stop by the French Riviera and party with the Slice Girls. This pleased him, making it once again safe to discuss the traitor in our midst.

I put my finger to my lips in the universal signal to remain quiet, and the big guy got wise after the 3rd or 4th time, clumsily sticking his finger up his nose as he tried to repeat my gesture. I eased the switch labeled with his secretary’s name into the “listen” position, and remarked, “You’ll like this video I took using my phone. It shows Prince Ali Ababwa’s thingy getting cut off, slice by slice.” On the other end of the intercom we could hear an audible gasp, and then crying. By the time both of us got out of the closed door to Satan’s office, his long-time secretary, Miss Della Street, was sobbing uncontrollably.

“There’s our mole,” I said triumphantly, “she was eavesdropping using the intercom while we were making plans, and knew my moves verse, chapter and book. Isn’t that so, Miss Street, or should I say Mrs. Prince Ali!”

Satan’s secretary’s sobbing became bawling as she fell to the floor, unable to control herself. A few slaps to the face shocked her back into silence, and a glass of sherry calmed her nerves enough I could question her. As it turns out, she was more than willing to make a statement.

“I’ve worked as your secretary for thousands of years, and been in love with you since the first century or so,” she said, turning to her boss and sniffling back the tears, “but you hardly noticed me most days, and never once acknowledged me as a woman!” She looked Satan straight in the eyes, or in the glowing red coals where his eyes ought to be. “I know that you’re married, but you seem able to forget that with those sluts from the wrong Circle of Hell you have down here when you think nobody’s watching. Last year when I went looking for someone to import a camel, I met Prince Ali and he swept me off my feet. More important, he made me feel like a woman for the first time in millennia! We made love over and over again, having all our meals in bed, and only taking breaks to put hooks in the ceiling and rig up the pulleys and ropes. I would have done anything he asked me, anything!”

Satan looked at her, a tinge of sadness in his face. “I never knew it was like that, Della,” he began, “but it wouldn’t have made any difference. You were my right hand in Hell, and I would never jeopardize that with a tawdry affair. Besides, my wife always finds out sooner or later, and hooking up with you over several millennia would have been pushing it.”

Miss Street smiled, and touched Satan’s hand tenderly. “I guess we all have our regrets…” she started to say, when Satan motioned to me with a thumb across his throat. I swiftly decapitated her before she knew what was happening with a single scissors-like stroke using two razor-edged scimitars I had taken from Syria as war trophies. This wasn’t why I had hassled with them as carry-on baggage on the plane though, I had figured that crossed and hung on the wall they would spruce up my cubicle, and they do.

“All’s well that ends well!” announced Satan. “We have plenty of secretaries where she came from! Though not as many as lawyers, of course.”

Later, the big guy cornered me in the corner of the lunch room. “How in the world did you know it was Miss Street?” he commented, “She’d been with me so long that I would have never suspected. And she wasn’t even mentioned as a character until the last chapter!”

“That’s the best way to keep readers in the dark!” I explained. “Besides, it’s always the boss’s secretary or the butler who done it. Your butler has been deaf since the late Bronze Age, so he could never have overheard our conversation. And I knew Della had the opportunity, motive, and means, which if it’s good enough for our sham kangaroo court system, is good enough for me. Besides, this time it turned out to actually be true! Murder will out!”

The End

[Deep Knight]

Deep Doo Doo
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Epilog, The Backstory

In the mid 70’s I drove halfway across the country with my girlfriend, and our route took us through Southern Idaho on what was then I-80N (now I-84). Along one area where the interstate and bridge over the Snake River were being constructed, they had closed the old highway and detoured us across the river 20 miles downstream and then into a riverside town using secondary roads. Coming into that town, we stopped at a decrepit station where they had a display selling large, black, ellipsoid rocks, with a sign, “Petrified Watermelons, take one home to your mother-in-law,” which amused me. My girlfriend went in to buy a soda, but also came out with a “dirty” paperback book to read aloud as we traveled through the boring and good-radio-station-challenged region. It was, and remains, the only actual “pornographic” book I’ve ever read/listened to, although it was only R-rated by today’s standards, having descriptions of the “he trust his erect manhood into her steaming honeypot” variety. It wasn’t necessarily erotic (at least to me), but I found it quite amusing.

The title was “Sextus Defectus” the worst sort of Dog Latin (Judge Anna Streusel von Poptart would be outraged). I remember the name in detail because a friend later translated it as “Sixth Eclipse” in actual Latin. It must have been published in the late 60’s, and had a preface by a supposed “doctor of psychiatry” who went on about how this wasn’t pornography or illegal because it was a serious medical study of deviant behaviors and only meant for such an audience. I understand this was a common ploy to keep sellers from getting too nervous before smut laws were loosened, and I’ve even seen the equivalent from “stag films” in a documentary on “grindhouse movies.” The plot went something like this, although in truth this was a minor part of the book, most of each chapter being taken up by fairly lame get-it-on scenes.

A young doctor who formally worked for the CIA was a sex machine, which brought him back to the attention of The Company when the US Airforce started having problems at a B-52 base in Thailand that was the source of bombing raids on North Vietnam. The B-52s had been turning the tide of the war, but suddenly the air and maintenance crews were defecting to the Reds, crippling operations. They sent him, and a woman operative who was both a blonde and a nurse (woo, woo) to find out what was going on. As you might suspect, the Chinese commies had invented a new sexual technique which, once experienced, the men couldn’t live without. The main character charmed and coupled his way to the remote sex camp where this was happening, as did the woman (no details how), but sex-slave moles at the camp who hadn’t defected yet had finked on both of them, blowing their covers. The head commie was a cruel but sexually-vain guy who decided to have a sex contest with the main character - to see which political philosophy, capitalism or communism, made men real studs. Our red-blooded heroes sexed them senseless, of course, forcing the commies to climax so intensely they passed out. Escaping from the camp to a nearby equipment cache where they had a radio, they called in an airstrike to eliminate the threat once and for all. The doctor and blonde nurse started humping, and of course, simultaneously orgasmed as the bombs fell.

The book kicked around with us for a few months, amusing our friends, until a friend who had a work-study job at my college library offered to “bind and shelve” it. One of his jobs was to put hardboard covers on paperbacks, so he did this, complete with a checkout card and Dewey Decimal number. No card was put in the catalog however, so someone would have had to find it by accident. We put it in modern history, near the books on the Russian and Chinese revolutions. For all I know, it’s still there today.

Stay tuned for Deep Knight’s next thrilling adventure, “Show Me You Can Write Something Better or Keep Your Damned Mouth Shut!”

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter One – The Slutty Oppressor

In a change I thought wouldn’t happen until Hell froze over, Satan actually likes me these days. Not because I “took care of” the election, Super Bowl, and that lost Malaysian airliner, but because he thinks getting chummy with me will put him in good with our Reptilian overlords. It helps to have your wife running their Earth-based operation and going out for dinner, drinks and dancing with them regularly. One of the benefits has been a personal helicopter for commuting to work and back. After the attack on the bus I was riding and its “river of blood” causing a piranha feeding frenzy aftermath, the city had insisted I stop using public transport. Not only was it hard to clean and cover up, the ingestion of those thousands of cheerleaders had a devastating effect on high-school football attendance when the fall came.

I would be picked up at the heliport on top of my luxurious high-rise penthouse apartment in the suburbs, and be whisked to the underground airport beneath Illuminati headquarters downtown. For my safety, the helicopter is a Blackhawk gunship with two cool-looking rapid fire 50-calibers in case we ran into any trouble, or wanted to blow-off steam when we flew in low over downtown. It was during one of these low flybys, buzzing and strafing joggers in the city park, that Freewill and his Michigan Militia attacked.

They hit us from above, diving down from a higher aircraft wearing those flying-squirrel-like skydiving suits with jet packs to fly into our open doors. Each flyer was leaving a stream of different-color smoke, resulting in a nice rainbow-pattern effect. Fortunately, the genius who planned this was math challenged, and relied on the fact that our rotor blades made up only 3% of the area they circulated in, the rest was open air. By his logic, 97% of the commandos would make it through unharmed, with only 3% losing an arm, leg, or head. In the real world the blades were rotating fast enough and the men’s rate of descent slow enough for the blades to hit them repeatedly, slicing them into 6”-thick segments like a gigantic weed eater. Perhaps “slicing” isn’t the right word, our blades not being designed for clean cutting. Still, just to be safe, my bodyguards pumped a stream of hot lead out of their weapons, furthering the shredding and causing a sizable amount of collateral damage and death by themselves. The spray of parts, bullets, blood, and gore was both dense and wide, the blood coating the wounded and dying joggers and ultimately mixing with theirs and draining into the adjacent drinking-water reservoir in wide, rapidly-flowing, red rivulets. The jet packs with their smoke generators were also flung off in all possible directions, leaving a beautiful floral-like pattern to visually meld with the splattered red background and glowing tracer rounds. No doubt very beautiful when viewed from above.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t come through completely unharmed. This non-standard use of the rotor as a food processor had unbalanced it more than a conspiracy theorist that had been eating LSD while huddled in an underground bunker for five years. As vibrations jerked us back and forth and dozens of alarms beeped, blared, and blinked around us, we fought to gain altitude and find a safe place to set down. Suddenly, and without warning, one of our rotor blades broke free and was flung out over the heavily-populated city. Luckily it safely hit city hall, only killing the mayor and about half of his office staff. Plenty more where they came from. We started rotating like a merry-go-round set to “spin dry,” and rapidly started losing altitude. I grabbed the stick from my terrified pilot, and fought to regain control. What the situation called for was a man who could do the impossible, something millions of Supermodels could attest to in my case. Fighting with every ounce of my strength and force of will, brought our aircraft to a poorly-controlled crash that could have been serious, but was fortunately softened by the bodies of the less-mobile attendees of an outdoor pancake breakfast at a local retirement home. Shaken, but otherwise unstirred, I requested an Uber using the app on my phone and still made it into work on time. Good thing too, because I wasn’t at my desk for more than a minute before Satan’s secretary called with an urgent appeal to rush to his office immediately, if not sooner!

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter Two – Sloppy Seconds over Tokyo

I took my time getting to Satan’s office way downstairs. For one, there was the smell. For another, I had learned that nothing is ever as “urgent” as Satan’s shapely secretary says; she was new on the job and wanted to both please and impress her boss as insurance against sudden termination with extreme prejudice. I was ushered into the big guy’s conference room where there was only him, me, and the head of Accounting.

“We own the trademark rights to the most well-known secret society in the world,” he started, “but only make a few percent of our bottom line from licensing and merchandizing. Where are the “Illuminati Towers,” the “New World Order Steaks, Bottled Water and Wine?” We’ve got to leverage our brand to make up for the changing nature of evil and the shake-outs it’s caused in the industry.”

“We just signed that contract with that adult novelty maker to license your name for ‘Lucifer’s Love Lever,’” said the glorified CPA who was responsible for the books, “and I think there are more opportunities in that market. They expressed definite interest in our ‘Scarlet Whore of Babylon’ and ‘Jezebel’ trademarks for their crotch-less underwear lines too.”

“Chump change!” grumbled He Who Must Not Be Named. “We’ve got to stop thinking small and broaden our markets beyond lonely housewives who are too lazy to remove their panties before getting their freak on. I want something that will give us huge amounts of money and power, something that will stop these periodic budget cuts forever!” My eyes started to water from a fresh breeze of sulfurous smoke, a sure sign of you-know-who’s displeasure.

“If this was a question about thwarting prosperity or Supermodels, I would offer an opinion, but this is something I know little about. I suggest we get some help from an actual business consulting firm,” I suggested, “Our guys are alright, but in a pinch do you really want effective advice from someone confined to hell for financial frauds so obvious they all got caught and damned? No offense.”

“But, but, but,” stammered the demonic bean counter across from me, “we always meet our quotas and there are a whole lot of other divisions that are worse, including yours! I highly advise acting strategically and a doing nothing radical or in any way different at this time."

Satan’s glowing red coals where his eyes ought to be turned my way and he smiled. “That’s the reason I invited our friend Senior Agent Knight here to confer with us today, his brilliant ideas! Ask experts! Is that thinking out of the box, or what?” The praise and smiles were getting a bit creepy, especially done as they were without a hint of sarcasm. At least when Satan was mad at me all the time I didn’t have to put up with this obvious attempt to gain favor with the Reptilians. At least it would wrap up this boring meeting, devoid of action as it was. Or so I thought.

Suddenly, our head of Accounting started turning red. I would too if I had given Satan his last lame answer. I soon learned it was not from embarrassment or anger, but little bloody tears all over his writhing and twisting skin. Then he started to grow. At least what was inside of him started to grow, ripping and shredding the outer layers of his body in a horribly gruesome manner. Remarkably soon a bloody 12-foot-high painted metal and chrome robot-like creature stood in front of us. Many of the details on his body looked like old and faded car parts, with tires, fenders, bumpers and a hood ornament being incorporated into his design. In a dark, metallic voice he addressed us.

“A good idea, but you won’t have a chance to do anything about it,” he intoned, “because I have been waiting for just such a moment for my revenge! And now this time that time is now! You never paid any attention to us, acting like you didn’t know we were there. It was seared into our engines and minds. Well, now you won’t be able to forget, because you’ll be dead.”

“Um,” said Satan thoughtfully, “What exactly are you? Refresh my memory.”

“What! You have been blind to us, our struggle, and our pain? Prepare to die!” Sneering as much as a robot face can, he started slowly folding until after a while, like a toy “transformer,” he became a rather ugly-looking car with an idling engine. “Now you see your doom, bwah-ha-ha-ha!” he/it said in an even more robotic voice with car-horn undertones. I half expected him to back up and try to run us over, but instead he quietly stood, or should I say parked, there, his engine making a distinct ticking noise. Satan noticed it too, and like guy at work who’s never touched an engine but likes to watch racing on TV, immediately diagnosed the problem from the sound alone.

“What the !@#$ is going on? Norman, you’ve been with me for so long, since the 70’s, and now this. And, what’s making that ticking noise? Sounds to me like really sticky valves, when was the last time you had an oil change?”

As usual, the big guy had it wrong. “Get out quick!” I shouted, grabbing Satan by the horns as I rushed out the narrow doorway, “He’s a suicide bomber who’s also an ugly car bomb with workplace violence issues!”

Once again my instincts were spot on, for some stupid reason the bomb was on a mechanical timer instead of a simple switch, giving us time to flee before detonation. Luckily, in mid-sized sedan mode the transformed bookkeeper was too big to follow and fulfill his kamikaze goals. Instead, to the refrain of his metallic re-transforming noises and whiney protests about things being unfair, we rapidly exited Satan’s office area. Before he could “fold and slim” enough to clear the architectural restrictions, his timer’s time was up and he/it detonated in a high-yield sort of fashion. It was then the wisdom of Satan’s thick walls became apparent (easy to have when you’re the boss and your office space is carved deep into the bowels of the earth). After shaking off the car parts and dust, then letting the ringing in our ears subside, Satan decided to meet and regroup. Ejecting the Senior Vice President in charge of Production from his suite, he settled in to consider changing course. I was keeping my distance because the big guy was being even nicer to me since I saved his life, although it was always my understanding he was an immortal being. I mean, if living and working in Hell don’t kill ya… Still, what happened next surprised even me.

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter Three – The Sorrow and the Pee-Pee

Always a man of action, I decided to council Satan to adopt a plan that had nothing to do with me, but still nipped this security breach in the bud by kicking some butt. He was not of the same opinion about either priorities or my participation, as evidenced by his calling a meeting to continue his crazy talk about leveraging our branding. “Look, kid,” he counseled, “If we freaked out every time one of our evil minions turned out to be untrustworthy and tried to kill us, we’d never get anything done around here. One of the problems with employing murderers, thieves, and MBAs. Stop complaining about this being the second time you’ve almost been killed before noon today. Instead, get back on the horse, drop your boxer shorts, and cough.”

Still, I just couldn’t get the haunting image of that ugly transformer car out of my mind. Luckily, most of Satan’s meeting had nothing to do with me, and I used the time to look a few things up on my smartphone. That is, until him sweetly saying my name jerked me back into paying attention to the old fart.

“Senior Agent Knight here will not only be getting our highest military award for saving my life, the Inverted Cross with an Oak Leaf Cluster, as a further reward he will be accompanying me to check out the business consulting firm in New York our friends on Wall Street recommend. We can take my private plane, stay in our Manhattan penthouse, dine at 21, and see a couple of Broadway musicals…”

“Great idea, oh evil one,” I said, laying it on thick, “with a couple of small changes it would be perfect. For one, leave me here to investigate our car bomber. You’re so smart you can negotiate this deal without my help, and get all the credit at the stockholder’s meeting too. Second, we’re a huge worldwide organization; they should be coming here to us, not us to them.”

Unfortunately, Satan had gotten the idea of a business trip with me stuck in his brain, no doubt thinking I would supply a line of supermodels stretching out his door all the way to the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel. In truth I can’t blame him trying to get time away from his wife, then again, he knew she was a harpy from Hell when he married her. If he spent more time at home giving her one now and then instead of chasing girls young enough to be his granddaughter hundreds of times over, it would make all of our lives easier. Then again, if wishes were fishes, the whole world would smell funny. While he was calling his secretary on the intercom to tell her to get the plane ready, I resolved to try and weasel out of this trip one more time. Bringing a picture of a Soviet-era VAZ Zhiguli sedan up on my smart phone, he visibly winced after he hung up and I showed it to him. It was the same exact model as the cranky car bomb that had tried to kill us earlier.

“Man, that is one ugly car,” Satan mused, his brain obviously being overworked by the implications of what he was seeing. “I gotta rib Putin about that next time we play golf.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, once again flabbergasted at the incompetence of senior management, “This is the same model as the accountant and assassin automobile from just an hour ago. Imagine a more-faded paint job and a few extra pounds around the middle. Rather than worrying about ribbing Putin, I would say this puts our balls in his court, and we should be worrying about getting them back.”

“Vladimir?” said the infernal region’s Supreme Leader and CEO, “Good ol’ Vlad? How could you even think that he would be behind this? Aren’t you friends with him too?”

“I’ve been on both sides of his iron curtain over the years, exchanging a few shots of lead, and even more of vodka. Sure we bonded over state secrets and hot Russian girls who would like to meet you online for friendship and matrimony. But friendship doesn’t matter, this is business, and my business should be finding out whose behind was behind this attempt our beloved leader’s life and giving them the business.” I doesn’t matter what your line of work is, it never hurts to butter up the boss.

“I think you’re seeing conspiracies where there are none and over-reacting to a perfectly normal day at work. You’ve got to shake these assassination attempts off and put your butt back in the saddle. Cowboy up and grab for the brass ring, there’s no reason that people trying to kill you should be used as a lame excuse for paranoia.”

Resigned to my fate, I picked up the already-packed bag with my evening clothes and change of underwear I kept in my office “just in case,” and met Satan on our underground airport’s “C” Concourse. He was a bit miffed that I was late, but then again he gets to go to the front of the TSA Screening line and I don’t. Clueless. But, as it turns out this was a bit of luck, as if I had been earlier we would have been onboard his plush 747 when it blew up in a spectacular fireball, instead of being just close enough to have our clothes blown clean off and body hair badly singed.

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter Four – The Thighs of Texas are Upon You

Satan was closer to the plane than I was - you learn not to walk in front of him around here (brings back bad “get thee behind me” memories) - and took the brunt of the blast. I grabbed him by the cloven hooves, and choking back the acrid smoke from his still-smoldering body hair dragged him away from the flaming wreckage. Once again fate had me saving his life, if I thought work was hell before, I’m sure would be worse now that he “owed me another one.” Stunned, he still had the where-with-all to stand, revealing that some of his thick goat-like pelt was not just smoking, but actively burning on one side and in back. I yelled at him to “drop and roll,” which in his stunned state he took for “rock ‘n roll” and with a faded smile he returned a thumb and little finger “horned” hand signal. He later told me he had an acid flashback and was hallucinating that he was back on stage with The Rolling Stones during their ‘75 US tour! This delusion was only strengthened by my hosing him down with a fire extinguisher while jumping around naked. I had the emergency responders get us some robes (but not after some good-natured ribbing) and after a few tens of minutes The Evil One came back to reality, his silly smile fading. He also stopped calling me “Mick.”

The big guy may be stupid at times, but you don’t have to blow him up twice, er, thrice in one morning to get his attention, and he rapidly adopted my suggestion he stay home. Unfortunately, the corollary that I stay home too, spearheading the investigation from behind, was not as fully accepted. In fact, he insisted I be on the next flight to Moscow, despite my protests that I was missing half my hair and both eyebrows. “Don’t be too friendly with Vladimir,” he counseled, “but don’t be too hostile either. Sort of ‘feel him out.’ He likes that, especially on cold Russian nights.”

“My people have a saying,” I countered, “A fish rots from the head. And the Russian fish is starting to stink all the way to China.”

“What do you mean, ‘your people?’” asked the big guy suspiciously, “You’re not ‘one of them,’ are you?”

“Do I look like “one of them?” I countered, “By “my people” I meant sane folks who don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or that they will be getting rich from Dinars, Dongs and Zims. As for race, I’m 100% right-kind-of-American and proud of it, even though I plot to destroy America on a daily basis.” This seemed to satisfy Satan, and I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing full well my great-great-grandfather might not stand up to scrutiny, having been born in Canada.

I made a quick stop in the makeup department, where they glued hair replacements on with some stuff they swore would last for a month. Then, after 3 hours wrestling with the Illuminati travel website, it was off to the airport. I would have taken the Slice Girls along as muscle, but they were big supporters of the band-and-vocal-Putin-critics “Pussy Riot,” and were as likely to dissect him in solidarity with them as to back me up. Besides, this was an information-gathering trip, and in common with my romances the plan was to get in and out fast. After some extreme vetting (I never realized it applied to citizens leaving the country, but I guess you can never be too careful) and cavity searches I got onto the Aeroflot (Аэрофлот) flight to Moscow.

Ah, February in Moscow, with beautiful half-naked black women strolling along palm-tree-lined beaches in the tropical sun. However, after arguing for what seemed to be hours with a taxi driver about his taking me to the Kremlin, I suddenly realized I wasn’t in Russia, but Mombasa on the coast of Kenya. Turns out the Illuminati Travel Office’s software finds the cheapest flight to anyplace that starts with the same two letters as your first choice, and books it. This can send our agents to the wrong side of the world, ruining plots and conspiracies, but it still got the Travel Office Manager an award for saving almost $100,000 last year. Luckily, I could get a flight to Aleppo Syria the next day, and from there a connection to Moscow through Kabol Afghanistan. I decided to crash until then, and booked a room at what the taxi driver said was the swankiest hotel close to the airport, the Mombasa Motor Inn.

My day of almost being assassinated thrice and traveling halfway across the world in a converted 1970’s Russian military transport had exhausted me, so I slipped into something comfortable and then between the sheets, leaving instructions for a wake-up call with the front desk. I drifted into slumber to the soothing sounds of a dozen deadly hissing and slithering black mamba snakes being let into my room through my window, glad the day was finally over.

To be continued…

[Burnaby49]

I ended up hospitalized in Mombasa on a honeymoon trip back in the early 80's. The symptoms, which I won't detail, mimicked a number of STDs. So with my wife beside me the doctor at the Aga Khan hospital asked "Have you been doing anything you shouldn't?" A little too vague and subjective for me until he explained.

However that was tact itself compared to the doctors in the London hospital that I hurried to as soon as my plane landed. Again, with my wife beside me, they said, "We think you have syphilis". I turned to Mrs. Burnaby49 and asked "What do you think about that dear?" I spent almost a week in hospital there too. Got a ward to myself in case I had some infectious tropical disease.

So I'd say that Mombasa has other dangers apart from the Black Mambas.

Interesting fact. I got excellent care in London and I had full travel insurance but it cost my insurer nothing. I'd been admitted through emergency which was free to anyone. A regular admission could be billed. I told them I wanted to pay but they just couldn't do it, their rules wouldn't allow it.

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter Five – Killing Me Softly with His Knife

I woke up the next morning with a room full of a dozen dead snakes and about as many Supermodels. It seems that I can’t go anywhere without being recognized as the world’s most famous secret agent, and the word got out on the “jungle telegraph” (actually a jungle optical cable link) that I was here. This both attracted some assassins who had seen the “Kill Bill” movies, and the local Supermodels, who had burst in to find a nest of enraged black mambas. Enraged themselves at being stopped from fulfilling their lifelong fantasy, the girls attacked the snakes with their long nails, spike heels and fashionably large purses weighted down with cosmetics and comfortable shoes. The few that were bit must have died horrible screaming deaths, but like I said I was exhausted and slept right through it all. The others, unable to roust me, had curled up and joined me in slumber in my bed, on the couch, and in the bathtub. The resulted in my being both fully rested and unharmed, but with a room service charge for breakfast for 8 and body disposal for 3 that will be hard to justify to accounting when I turn it in.

I thanked the girls for their ruthless reptile removal and then went straight to the airport. That’s my official story, and you people snickering at it better not do that in front of my wife. The rest of the trip was uneventful, there was so much violence near both of my layover airports it must of deterred assassins from following me. This didn’t keep it from being another harrowing trip, you know what travel to unfamiliar places does to you, especially when those places are being shelled by rebels. It was a couple of days later that I made it to Moscow, almost being put on the wrong flight again in Kabol, but luckily that airplane got blown up before they were ready to board, and I discovered the Travel Office’s further mistake when I rebooked. Not that I would have minded visiting Mogadishu again under normal circumstances, a fun place to blow off steam, but I was tired and wanted to get to my Moscow hotel.

Coming out of the concourse at Sheremetyevo Airport (Международный Аэропорт Шеремéтьево) I was surprised to see a man in a limousine driver’s uniform and hat holding a sign saying “Deep Knight.” Fuming at the breach in security this represented, while also fearful of what might be waiting for me in that limo, I followed the driver to his vehicle, which was parked illegally in the red zone. I found it telling that it was neither ticketed nor towed, and tried to see what was waiting for me inside, but the windows were heavily tinted. Could it be Putin himself with his signature machete, an assassin with a poison pellet gun sent in his place, or a jilted lover from my past with a cattle prod? Swallowing hard, I went in the door after it slowly opened, only to find…

Satan was sitting in the back of the limo, pouring champagne into glasses for three giggling Russian girls dressed in tutus and ballet slippers. “Deep, glad you could make it!” he cried, and the girls giggled even louder. I had somewhat of a reputation at the Bolshoi Ballet, one minor dalliance having delayed Swan Lake by over two hours one night.

“What the @#$! are you doing here?” I observed, “I thought you were staying at Headquarters, and leading our valiant effort from afar. It’s much too dangerous a world out here.”

“No different than Washington since the inauguration,” observed The Prince of Darkness, lighting a cigar, “I met with the boys from Wall Street that Wall Street recommended, but they were all crooks, so I decided to talk to the Germans. Those boys don’t come to you, even if you’re the Devil yourself, so I had to fly out to Munich to see them. Turns out our travel office sent me to Moscow instead, but when I saw where the tracking chip in your behind said you were headed, I decided to wait around and join you for some fun! Nothing like getting back out in the field again, eh girls?” He showed what he meant by “the field” by grabbing at one of the ballerinas, who slapped his hand away then giggled some more. I settled back to the ride into town and the Hotel Metropol (Метропо́ль), where Satan had booked adjoining suites (примыкающие люкс), but still had me put it on my company credit card and expense report to “keep things simple.” Never learned how to submit them with the new online system, don’t cha know. The Bolshoi ballerinas, now reinforced by their entire female dance company and pit orchestra, had been invited up by the Big Guy, with promises of the biggest blowout party since Napoleon in 1812. It also seems that the room had been specifically rented because Mother Teresa had slept in its bed (they have a list at the front desk), and Satan was going to have the dancers use it for things that was going to add another hard-to-explain cleaning charge to the bill. I have never been into such things, and honestly once again only wanted to go to sleep (what did I say about snickering earlier in this chapter?). In the end it was good I was so tired; otherwise the unrelenting din from next door would certainly have kept me awake.

The boss and I had breakfast in the dining area and discussed the strategy for our meeting with Putin later that morning. Satan was hot on “good cop, bad cop,” until he found out what it actually meant, and then switched to favoring “scared shitless by Satanic showmanship.” I cautioned him not to rely too much on the hellfire and brimstone act, as the former head of the KGB, Putin could pull certain aces of his own out of those sleeves. In the end we decided to wing it, that is, had the big guy do whatever came into his mind while I tried to shovel up after him. It wasn’t so much a good plan as one I had lots of experience with, but still, something wasn’t right and was turning around my insides, and it wasn’t queasiness from Satan’s animated story of his adventures in ballerina bladder land.

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter Six – I See By Your Outfit that You are a Nudist

The Prince of Darkness had arranged for our meeting to be at Putin’s “Dacha” in rural Moscow (known as the “Hot-Cha-Cha Dacha” to intimate friends). The trip there in the limo was uneventful, especially after the scene at the front desk when we checked out. No amount of Illuminati secret hand-signals smoothed over the ire caused by complaints from and damage to the rooms below the Prince’s pee party. There was not only the noise and best-left-unelaborated dripping, but also large chunks of falling plaster and a small fire caused by shorted-out wiring. You would think the manager would have enough fear of Satan to let this slide, but I guess his ruthless Russian backers were even scarier, putting me at a distinct negotiating disadvantage. Accounting wasn’t going to be happy back at the office. The one good result of this incident was that Satan didn’t grouse at all when I insisted he leave his bad-behavior ballerinas back at the Bolshoi. It’s best to keep your wits about you, and as friendly as the Russian strong man had been with our organization, I still didn’t trust him any further than I could bandy a bowel of borsch.

Satan entered Vlad’s pad first, and the dapper dictator sounded happy to see him, but when he caught a glimpse of me it was like he had seen a ghost! I knew immediately that his surprise must be because he thought I was mamba bait in Mombasa, which he wouldn’t unless he had been behind the dastardly ambush. I decided to strike while he was off balance, and badger a confession from the rascally Russian. Or maybe I would weasel it from him, I wasn’t sure. Whatever ill-tempered burrow-living critter I chose, I knew he wouldn’t like what I was about to do with it.

“Good to see you Vlad,” I began, “You look a little surprised this morning. Is it because you and Sorcha have been trying to kill me and the big guy here?”

“What!?!?” said Putin in a flabbergasted, sputtering fashion, “Deep, I am happy to see you but to being very confused. Are you clone?”

“Don’t change the subject, I know your game,” I said, playing the cleaver Cossack like a trout on a line, “Sorcha has worked her lucky charms on you, trading countless hours of gut-wrenching pleasure for freedom. I’ve noticed she’s been making daily posts of your most sensitive secret information, which would be impossible if you had her chained up in your most isolated prison, as promised. Add the known fact she wants me dead in the worse sort of way, which I believe includes unimaginable levels of pain, and the story becomes clear enough. A woman scorned, and all that.”

“What can I say,” said Vladimir, on the defensive, “We lock her up like you are to asking, but took off chains when we see she like them. And am apologizing for Sorcha’s daily reports. Wery lonely in Farthest Siberia in February, guards chatting with prisoners and giving them internet access for hot humping. Would replace guards, but low wages from budget cutting and winter weather there make it hard to be effectively recruiting.”

“If that’s true,” I postulated, springing my trap, “Then when I walked over and opened the door to your private bedroom like this,” I paused as I pulled on the ornate wrought-iron handle of the heavy wooden door, “she wouldn’t be in your bed, her bodacious bootie sodden with body fluids from a night of quid pro quo in return for my liquidation!”

There, in the Olympic-sized bed with mirrors above it on the ceiling, covered by sheets, were not just one, but two sleeping bodies. The piles of silk ropes, discarding lacy underthings, and adult novelties left little to my lurid imagination. The long hair on the nearest identified Sorcha, so I walked over and dramatically uncovered her. Looking back at Satan and Vlad, who had followed me in, I gleefully saw them visibly gasp. Preparing to gloat, I looked at my prey myself, and just then noticed it wasn’t Sorcha at all, but my loving wife, Velna.

I was stunned. When a fellow finds his bride in bed with one or two other men he can often feel as if the rug had been pulled out from under him. Sorry for the language, but I don’t know of any other way of describing it. My mind wanted a break from the horror of what my eyes were seeing, but I could neither look away nor end the chapter quite yet, as that would make it too short and impede the story flow, which has been clogged up enough as it is. Unable to stop the stream of narration or control my own actions, I pulled back the sheets even more to reveal my cheating spouse’s other carnal companion. As he turned towards me, just becoming awake, I realized that I had seen him somewhere before. Blinking away the tears from my eyes I stared at what I saw in disbelief. It was me!

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter Seven – Gonad with the Wind

When a man finds his wife cheating on him with someone who turns out to be him, it can be a bit confusing. Wondering if I was even who I thought I was, I noticed that the man in bed was missing my birthmark, a pink splotch shaped like the profile of Abraham Lincoln, on a rather intimate patch of skin. Seems mom was frightened by a “Welcome to Illinois, Land of Lincoln” sign as dad beat the Indiana police to the state line before taking her to the hospital to give birth. After quickly checking that I had that mark myself and that I was really me, I also noticed that there were certain things not quite right about Velna too. For example, she would never have trimmed her pubic hair to look like that, especially considering the way her mother died. Luckily for me and my marriage, my confusion soon vanished along with the artistically barbered bush as my wife and her hansom companion shape-shifted into the two Pindars from the Reptilian home planet, Spade and Archer! Not only were they supposed to be my friends, they were our ammonia plant business partners, with my wife running both it and their organization.

“Sorry Deep,” said one of them sheepishly (I still have a hard time telling them apart), “Velna told us about your getting hung up in Africa, so we decided that since Vlad was expecting you, impersonation would be a good excuse for a romantic Valentine’s Day get-away.”

“This why I am so confusing when I see you,” said Vladimir, sputtering once again, “Because I think you still sleeping in room I lend, not because I am trying to kill you which I am not to even knowing about. To be telling me what happened.”

Luckily for me, Satan picked up the explanation at this point, leading Putin out of the dank smell of the bedroom and back into the main room. As he embellished his role in my recent adventures, I grabbed the nearest Pindar by his scaly green throat and tried to find out what was really going on. Until any of this made sense, it was important that this conversation be outside of Satan and Vladimir’s earshot.

“Give,” I suggested, “What are you doing here pretending to be me? Trying to feel Putin up for a better ammonia deal, cutting Velna and I out just because we’re, um, doing some creative accounting?”

“Not at all,” said 8-foot-tall lizard, smiling, “We’re making record incomes, shipping as much ammonia to the Drago Constellation as we can sell without glutting the market, and having a blast on Earth. Since you and Velna have taken over the business worries, it’s been one big party. Ask yourself honestly, why would we @#$! with that?”

He had a point, and I nodded for him to go on.

“It’s like I said, well, kinda. We really did come here for a short vacation and Valentine’s threesome in the Russian winter. When you come from a hot, humid planet like ours, 20 below is exotic, and we’ve had such mild weather in Washington DC due to the global warming caused by our ammonia extraction. Besides, both of us think Vladimir really HOT, especially when he goes around without his shirt on. Don’t look so surprised, when you have shape-shifting abilities like Reptilians, it’s normal to sort of experiment with different sex roles and thingies.”

“Experiment?” I said incredulously, “From what I see around the bed, it looks like full-fledged research!”

“You’re one to talk,” he said with that creepy Reptilian smile they get, “but I suppose I understand why you’re upset, you earthlings are so funny about something as natural as perverted, kinky sex. I promise we’ll never do it again looking like you, Velna, or your dog. Just believe me when I tell you that neither we nor Vlad were trying to betray you. In fact, Vlad really likes you. I mean, REALLY LIKES you, if you know what I mean. We had to keep switching shape shifted roles to even out his attentions!”

I had been in many compromising positions during my times in Russia, but never in a position like that. You might think with all my adventures I would have done and seen it all, but it was still going to be hard to not have this affect my relationship with the Russian dictator, especially when in the Sauna. I walked out to where Satan was wrapping up his downloading the salient facts of this adventure to Vladimir, and had gotten to a comic recitation of my argument with the Hotel manager earlier that morning. He was embellishing my attempt to excuse that the damage as a result of spilled champagne, using a high, squeaky voice to mimic my fruitless appeal. I hurriedly broke in before he got to the part where the desk clerk pulled out the AK-47.

“That reminds me,” I said, anxious to test whether Vladimir was really that enamored with me, “Could you call that idiot manager and tell him to take those charges off of my bill? I need to use that credit card, it’s the only one that gives me points back, and after this morning it’s maxed out.”

“Already take care of,” said Putin, smiling, “I hear about it right before you arrive, when they show me wideo of party in room last night.”

“You have video of that?” asked Satan, incredulously.

“Camera in every room, and big production and editing lab in basement. Wery high quality stuff, in HD, and good sounding too.”

“Could I get a copy?” asked The Evil One, breathlessly, “Just for, you know, a souvenir. “

“Of course, I burn you disk,” he said, smiling, as he snapped his fingers and a man in black materialized from behind a curtain. In a few minutes the man was back not only with a DVD of last night’s party, but another “greatest hits” disk of similar activities in many different Moscow hotels, all featuring famous politicians, celebrities and contortionists.

Clutching his disks like a little boy with a new toy, Satan rushed back to the Bolshoi, only consenting to drop me off at the airport when I pointed out that “the Reptilians really owed me one now.” He wanted me to join him in the theater for another act of “Watersports on Swan Lake,” but I had had enough of Russia and wanted to get back to the good ol’ USA. Besides, I was confused. This story would have been so simple if it had been a plot by Putin and Sorcha, it would have practically written itself. Now I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who was trying to kill me or what to type. Sure I had a group of enemies as wide as the day is long, but I had always been a step ahead of every one of them in our encounters. For the first time in my career I may have crossed that invisible line and written myself into a situation beyond my control.

This feeling was enforced when in the cabinet for the millimeter security scanner, I suddenly had a heavy black bag pulled down over my head and all the way to my feet. The floor dropped out from under me and going down what must have been a long slide I found myself dumped into a waiting bin or basket. From there I was roughly transported to a waiting truck or van of some sort, where I was loaded into the back. Soon the bag was untied, but instead of confronting my kidnapers, I felt a warm flow of air and smelled the sickly-sweet smell of sweet and sour sauce. I was being drugged using the ancient arts of the Monks of the Dim Sum Temple! As I sunk into the black 5-spice-scented pit that seemed to be opening up in front of me, I wondered what it all meant.

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter Eight – The Shag High Express

When I awoke I was handcuffed to a bed in a tiny room. Who had I gone home with last night? Then the horror that was the Dim Sum treatment, a crazy nightmare of small appetizers you had to eat with two sticks, came rushing back to me. I reasoned I must be in China, both because it was right next door to Russia, and the thick smog I saw out the window meant Peking, er, Beijing. I half expected some Chinese cuties with razor sharp fingernails to come and alternate pain and pleasure until I broke, but this simple form of oriental torture was not to be. Instead a line of martial artist monks filed in, followed by a very old, white-haired man with a long, thin beard and very, very bushy eyebrows.

“I am Huackie Chan, eldest Elder of the Black Dragon Society. I am also privileged to speak for the White, Green, Red, Gold, and Silver Dragon Societies, but not the Blue one. We who are true sons of the Middle Kingdom will never represent those without the enough common sense to pick a good dragon color! Have I the honor of addressing Mr. Deep Knight, most esteemed Illuminati agent and speed copulation Olympic record holder?”

“I’ve never acknowledged it was me behind that mask, but I guess you’re right,” I confessed, “Now that we’ve been introduced, why don’t you un-cuff and release me, before my sword-wielding backup shows up to separate some of your heads from some of your bodies.”

The old man smiled, “Ah, the impatience and impertinence of youth. I am sorry but no dice, other horrors await you. For example, I must reveal the fiendish plan that brought you here, both because you’ll never live to tell, and because it will move the story along without all that needless overhead.”

“It was a dark and stormy night during the Fan Tan Dynasty when my poor farming village was attacked by bandits. We rallied under a flag depicting a black dragon in a coal mine, and beat back the villains before they found our hidden secret, a vast treasure in gold. It was there both the Black Dragon Society and the Dim Sum Temple Fightin’ Monks were born, the latter because they practiced at a restaurant that specialized in appetizers. The gold was put into a passbook savings account, and together we are the keepers of that unspeakable wealth I will not speak of. Our plan is to distribute it to ordinary Americans as prosperity funds, but of course, we are reasonable men and open to other offers. This is why we thought it might be better to talk to you before we kill you.”

I was all for delaying the killing part, and decided to humor the old fart. “How much money was originally put in, and what was the average rate of return on the account?”

“It was 10,000 gold bars, each the size of a small brick and weighing 10 kg. In total, 100 metric tons, now worth about 4 billion of your American dollars. The First Imperial Bank of Peiping was just opening a bank and had a special deal, an extended 2% introductory rate guaranteed for 2,500 years, a term that ran out last Tuesday.”

At even that modest rate, the compounded interest would make that account worth 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more than it was originally worth, or more than a quadrillion times the entire value of everything on earth. A tidy piece of change in any hemisphere, so I listened intently.

“Of course, there was some shrinkage along with the growth, your usual fees and service charges, and embezzlement from inside the bank. Along those same lines various grandmasters of the Black Dragon Society and Dim Sum Temple also dipped into the till every now and then when the harvest was bad or when they knocked up some shapely maiden from a noble house.”

“Just how much is left then?” I asked, knowing what it was like to get nickel and dimed to death by financial institutions and the families of one-night-stands.

“We were doing better until the dot com collapse and 2008 recession, as it is, I cashed in the entire account and the bills all fit into this small suitcase.” He nodded to one of the monks, who lifted up a modest American Tourister travel bag.

“That would only be about a million in $100s, or are they larger denomination bonds?”

“They are larger denominations, but Dong, not bonds. James Dong, er, Vietnamese Dong.”

“Well,” I said, swallowing hard, “You better kill me now, ‘cause you ain’t gonna like what I have to say about the growth potential of that currency.”

To be continued…

[Deep Knight]

Flours of Evil
An All-New Deep Knight Adventure
Chapter Nine – Madame B’s Ovaries

“Fool!” said the Black Dragon Society guy, laughing in that funny way that’s not funny at all, “Do you fancy we are fellow fools? Of course we know about the delays in the RV and who’s causing them! Now you see why you are here, tied up, and we are not!”

So that was his ruse, to make the bundle of bogus bills worth something by letting the RV go forward. Not only was this something I couldn’t do on my own, but there was ZERO interest in the NWO of having the RV go through. All of our Zim-dinar-dongs having been redeemed at stellar rates long ago, using infinitesimally short trading periods that disappeared before you could say zippa-dee-doodah. But apparently Steamed BBQ Pork Buns here didn’t know that, and perhaps I could leverage my way out of this Sticky Rice Ball situation.

“It would take nothing but a push of a button, but that button is back in my office in Illuminati Headquarters,” I lied, “the most secure building in the known universe!”

“You mean the place we infiltrated with an old Soviet sedan and airplane bomb? Please!”

“OK, so we’ve been a bit lax in the past,” I admitted, “but Satan’s pissed now, and things will be tightened up after the mandatory review and report cycle.”

“Now you insult my intelligence. We have it on good report that your boss is focused on the performance arts, specifically starting a ballet company, and has done nothing back at your headquarters except rebuild his office! But, do not worry, we understand that it would be better to come to an agreement with you than to take a chance on what you’re saying being true, no matter how silly it sounds. If you comply exactly with our terms, you will be allowed to live. There will be no negotiation. I will send the contract up immediately for your review and signature.”

“I never sign anything without my lawyers, Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe,” I said, knowing that a call to them would be a secret signal to send in the Slice Girls.”

“What about insulting my intelligence didn't you understand?” asked the stern ancient Chinese guy, “We know all your tricks. You have the right to consult an attorney and to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. But you can’t use this right call in a rescue team. Do you understand these rights as I’ve read them to you?”

I had to admit that I did, knowing full well that my inability to deliver would seal my fate. But you never know what or who might come along, so I stalled for time.

“Glasses,” I insisted, “I need my reading glasses. And to have these handcuffs taken off. And some coffee and breakfast, after a bathroom break of course.”

Instead, a thick legal document was thrown into my face and a half-dozen monk-guard-waiters stood around me, machine guns cocked with the safeties off. Much like a XXX Movie I was once in, but with a naked actress in my present situation, and me as the camp commandant. And when my tormentor returned, I, unlike her, was neither in a position to submit, nor satisfy him and the guards after covering my body with olive oil.

“Do your worst!” I said defiantly after refusing my one way out, “I’ll never sign without going through proper channels and review by the home office. My signature would be worthless without their accompanying paperwork anyway.”

“So you choose discomfort before dishonor!” he said chuckling, “I shall be happy to accommodate you! Do you have any last requests before you die the death of being stir fried with bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts?”

“Just one thing,” I responded, “How come the Germans, Russians, and even Southerners speak funny, but you speak in clear, unaccented, grammatical English?”

“I spent eleven calendar years at military academies,” he replied, “and studied under six of the most brilliant economists of America and Europe, and my mother was rated by I.Q. test to be the most brilliant child in American history up to then and later attended a State University without formal education.”

Somehow that sounded familiar, but I let it pass. “Still, it’s strange. And when the Reptilians speak, there’s no attempt to convey the ‘ssssss” noises they make when saying certain words and during pauses. It feels wrong to me, sort of like the hard racism of soft political correctness.”

“Look, when you’re writing about ruthless overlords, it’s always wise to not insult them or the way they talk. The same goes for people from the country that owns most of your national debt. It’s not political correctness, only common sense. Besides, all those “ssssss” noises would be really annoying.”

My last words spoken, I braced for the last blow I would ever feel, but found my handcuff being removed instead, and my frail body being transported to a room with spikes on two opposing walls. As the door slammed behind me, a loud, creaking and crunching noise started and the spiked walls began to slowly move into the middle of the room, where their meeting would almost certainly cause me some significant discomfort!

To be continued…

[Burnaby49]

Let's not pretend that you are bringing Erasmus into the story. If you were;

“I spent eleven calendar years at military academies,” he replied, “and studied under six of the most brilliant economists of America and Europe, and my mother was rated by I.Q. test to be the most brilliant child in American history up to then and later attended a State University without formal education.”

Would read as;

“I SPENT ELEVEN CALENDAR YEARS AT MILITARY ACADEMIES,” he replied, “AND STUDIED UNDER SIX OF THE MOST BRILLIANT ECONOMISTS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, AND MY MOTHER WAS RATED BY I.Q. TEST TO BE THE MOST BRILLIANT CHILD IN AMERICAN HISTORY UP TO THEN AND LATER ATTENDED A STATE UNIVERSITY WITHOUT FORMAL EDUCATION.”

[The Observer]

And he would be munching on his father's miracle Vatican bread while speaking.