Battle of the Bands

Chapter 4

Felicia, the brunette maid of the Cabots, had just finished dusting Alexander Cabot the Second's collection of authentic Ming vases. It was tender work since the ancient pottery was worth a fortune and had to be feather dusted with the upmost care.

She looked at how shiny they were now without the thin layer of dust that had accumulated since their last dusting not too long ago. Feeling quite proud regarding the good work she had done, she then decided to check up on Alexandra, Melody and Valerie, who were having a powwow in one of the Cabot Mansion's many meeting rooms.

It took a few minutes to pass through the long maze of corridors and hallways to find the room in question. She had gotten lost a few times in the massive mansion when she first started working for the Cabots, but now she knew the layout of the huge structure by heart.

She opened the door, "Girls, would you like something to… AHHHHHH!" she shrieked after seeing the pudgy face of President Trump sitting in one of the leather chairs in the room surrounded by very serious looking secret service agents. Valerie and Melody were sitting on the couch, and Alexandra was sitting in another chair across from the president, stroking Sebastian in her lap.

President Trump gave her a big goofy smile, seeming somewhat pleased with her reaction.

Alexandra was a bit annoyed with Felicia's apparent horror at being surprised by the presence of the world's most important person and frowned at her. "Felicia, this is the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump," she introduced her guest before again scowling at her maid.

"It… it… it's an honor sir," she stammered.

"Likewise," he smiled back.

She then realized her duty. "Can I get you a… a… re…refreshment, Mr. Pr..pr..president?"

"You know, I could really go for a glass of chocolate milk right now," he answered.

"Oooh, me too!" Melody exclaimed. "Mr. President the Donald, do you like strawberry milk too?" she inquired.

"Love it! You know what, make that two strawberry milks, one for me and one for Melody." He then shot his index finger at that perky blonde. "I like the way you think!"

"Thank you, Mr. President the Donald! People are always saying I have an original way of thinking!" she chirped gleefully in her sing song voice.

"And original thinking is what we need to make America great again."

"Yay! I'm going to help make America great again!"

"Does anyone else want anything?" Felicia asked, her nervousness obviously not having left her. Up until that point, the most important people she had waited on were the Cabots and Alexander Cabot the Second's other business associates, none of them famous people.

Alexandra shook her head, and Valerie answered, "No thanks." The maid then looked at the three secret service agents who were all oddly wearing sunglasses indoors. They simply stared back at her with stern expressions and didn't say anything in response to her question.

Felicia gulped. "Okay, two strawberry milks coming right up." She then walked out of the room a bit zombie like.

"So back to business I guess," Valerie interjected. "Do you want us to perform at one of your rallies or something, Mr. President?"

President Trump shook his head. "No, performing at one rally isn't enough for where I want to take Alexandra's Cool Time Cats. I want to take this band straight to the top. It's going to be the greatest band in the history of bands. I want you to be bigger than the Beatles. In the future, when people talk about Abbey Road, they're going to say, 'It's an okay record, but it's no Alexandra's Cool Time Cats!'"

"Take that, John Lennon!" Melody exclaimed before letting out a long string of giggles.

"How?" Valerie asked, somewhat stunned by the claim they could ever be that successful. Sure, they had a few pop hits that had charted on Billboard, but their sales overall had always been rather moderate compared to the biggest acts out there. They never had enough fans to fill the largest venues.

"Well, Alexandra explained to me on Twitter that you currently have an opening for lead guitarist."

Alexandra had an odd smirk on her face. "That's correct," she confirmed as she continued petting her cat.

"Well then, you have your new guitarist, because I'm joining this band!"

Alexandra smirked even wider, and Melody started clapping and cheering. Valerie was shocked and very confused. "You can play?"

"Let me give you a demonstration," he said, never faltering in his confidence. He then turned to two members of his secret service detail. "Boys, go bring me Wilbur." The two agents quickly walked out of the room.

"Who's Wilbur?" Melody asked him. "Sounds like the name of a horse."

"Wilbur is the name of my mighty axe."

A few minutes later, they returned. In the hands of one secret service agent was a golden Gibson Flying V electric guitar with a V shaped body. The other secret service agent held a Fender mobile amp by its handle. He set down the amp and plugged it into a nearby wall socket. The guitar was connected to the amp via a cord. The other agent then placed the guitar into the president's arms and the strap over his shoulder.

He held the guitar and reached into a pocket on his suit coat with his free hand. From his pocket, he extracted a golden guitar pick. Donald then ran his hand down with his pick across the metal strings of the guitar. Immediately, Wilbur's distinctive sound began pouring out from the mobile amp's speaker.

Valerie's jaw was wide open. It was unbelievable. Not only could President Donald Trump play the electric guitar, he was damn good at it too. The president began a long series of heavy metal riffs performed with expert precision, each more elaborate than the last. To Valerie's ear, the style used sounded remarkably similar to the one she had heard in Van Halen's early albums.

Suddenly, the door opened, and in walked Felicia with a silver tray and two tall glasses of pink strawberry milk. Seeing the president of the United States jamming out with a V shaped electric guitar, Felicia fell backwards out of pure shock and the pink liquid splashed on top of her maid uniform. President Trump continued playing as the nervous and embarrassed maid tried to soak up the pink liquid on the floor with a cloth.

"Go get the president more strawberry milk, you ding a ling!" Alexandra barked at her so loud it could be heard over President Trump's guitar riff.

"Yes, mam!" she cried. She then scooped up the glasses and tray off of the carpet and ran out of the room as quickly as possible.

Finally, after several more minutes of excellent guitar riffs that would make Jimi Hendrix jealous, the president concluded his impromptu performance. All three women clapped for a long time.

"Thank you, thank you!" he told them. They finally stopped clapping.

"How the heck did you get so good?" Valerie asked, still quite shocked.

"I've always been this good. Back in military school, I started my own band, the Trump Cards. After graduation, we went on tour across the US for a few years. Eddie Van Halen is still embarrassed to admit it, but I'm the one who taught him how to play the guitar after one of our gigs opening for Cream. But if you ask him in private, he'll tell you it's the truth."

"How come I've never heard of the Trump Cards or the fact you're an amazing guitarist?"

"Because, after a few years of that life, I wanted to focus on the family business and doing deals. Look, there's a lot of rock stars, but how many of them own billion dollar companies? Eddie Van Halen may be rich, but he doesn't own a billion dollar company. He never built a Van Halen Tower. He's never made some of the greatest deals in the history of deals. He never starred in the number one show in prime time. He also keeps going back to rehab. That's the rock star life style, ending up in rehab. That was never for Donald Trump. At least up until now that is, because we're going to change it. I want to make the music industry great again, and I think I can do that with you girls."

Melody was nodding her head up and down, liking everything she was hearing. Valerie was still a bit skeptical. This turn of events was still almost too much for her to believe. "But you're now the president of the United States, how would you have enough free time to be part of a band, one that goes out on tour?" she asked him.

"I haven't slept since 1978. I got plenty of free time. So much time you wouldn't believe."

"Golly, you're amazing, Mr. President the Donald! If only I didn't have to sleep too. I could be a drummer and do everything else I've wanted to do like start a roller derby team and become a Pokémon master."

Alexandra seemed to sense that Valerie, despite her skeptical questions, was quickly coming on board with her plan. She then felt it was time to move things along. "As much as I'd like to be in control of everything," Alexandra said, "and believe me, I usually know what's better for everyone than they do for their selves, Josie being given final say on all the important decisions of Josie and the Pussycats was a huge screw up that I can't believe anyone with a brain agreed to and lead us to the point we are at now."

Valerie and Melody refused to look her in the eyes after she had said that, but they knew she was right about Josie abusing their trust. Alexandra continued, "Not that I'll ever be as big of a screw up as Josie is, I've always been a hundred times classier and smarter than her even if no one wants to recognize that, but I want Alexandra's Cool Time Cats to be a bit more democratic even if I'm the headliner as I should be. So let's put this to a vote. Raise your hand if you want to add President Donald Trump as the lead guitarist of Alexandra's Cool Time Cats."

Melody shot her hand up like a canon, and Alexandra raised her hand as well. Valerie appeared to be hesitating. "Well, I didn't vote for you for president," she explained.

"Hey, no one's perfect," he responded coolly.

"But I'm sure voting for you now!" she said before raising her hand. Donald Trump gave her a big smile, and Melody clapped in response.

"I'm honored to be chosen as your lead guitarist," Trump said. "However, I do have one requirement for being in this band."

"What's that?" Valerie asked.

"You girls have to live by the same rules my kids do under my roof. No drugs and no alcohol."

"You didn't have to ask me," Alexandra said. "Drugs and booze are for losers like Josie."

"Golly, we're going to be responsible role models just like Smokey the Bear!" Melody exclaimed.

"Well, I do like to get my drink on once in a while," Valerie explained, "but after having to deal with Josie recently, yeah, I think I'm ready for several years of sobriety at this point."

"Yay for sobriety!" Melody cheered. Donald Trump gave the girls a big thumbs up.

"Now that we've got that settled," Alexandra explained, "I want to discuss strategy. Even though the President will be a huge asset to us, we still have a big problem."

"What's that?" Valerie asked.

"Tumblr," Alexandra muttered darkly, her deep hatred for the social media network quite apparent. "Josie's new fan base is 100 percent composed of Tumblr users, and they don't care she's a coked up addict now on a million different drugs. They don't even care if she plays music. They support her just because other Tumblr users do and use some social justice bullshit as an excuse. They're total zombies."

"I hear that," Valerie agreed. "I don't get the new fans at all. They gave a vegetable a standing ovation." The fact a potato got a better response than she ever did on stage still stung a bit.

"Don't worry about Tumblr," Trump said. "I'm well aware of the problem, and my cabinet created a plan to deal with them."

"What plan?" Alexandra asked.

"The plan being put into action right now actually. I don't want to tell you too much yet, but you'll find out soon. Tumblr will be taken care of, believe me."

2,600 miles away, it was a very hot day in Mexico. So hot it could bleach the bones of any creature unfortunate enough to expire in this barren wasteland of dust in a record amount of time. The only plant life that existed on this Mars like landscape was the occasional thorny cactus and tumbleweed.

One tumbleweed in particular had been picked up by the dusty wind and had been traveling for miles. It spun and spun as the as the hot dessert air pushed it forward. Finally, it stopped when it hit something hard and rock like.

However, this outcropping that had stopped the tumbleweed's journey wasn't part of the natural landscape. It was manmade concrete that stretched up to a very tall height, so tall it could never be climbed by human beings. It was part of a newly constructed border wall that stretched on and on as far as the eye could see in both directions much like the Great Wall of China that had been constructed over 2,000 years prior. It stood in stark contrast to the natural desolation that surrounded it as a monument to the existence of human civilization.

Suddenly, a massive door on this wall opened all on its own similar to the cave door Ali Baba had commanded open with the utterance of a secret word. The previously silent desert was then filled with loud harsh sound as a seemingly endless series of white buses plowed through the opening of the massive door on the great border wall, traveling on the very simple dirt road that passed through to the other side.

One by one, each of the buses stopped and parked not too far from the great wall. The captive occupants inside were then forced to exit the cool air conditioned interiors of the buses to the blistering dessert heat outside by Immigration Customs Enforcement agents armed with shotguns that had ridden along inside on the long drive.

Strangely, each passenger had hair dyed a bright and garish color. Each passenger had also been a member of the Tumblr social media website. They had all been gathered up one by one in ICE raids that had been executed in the middle of the night. As the last bus emptied, the young men and women with clownish hair gathered together in a crowd. Overhead, a group of buzzards had spontaneously begun circling above high in the sky. To their powerful avian eyes, the image below of the crowd was similar to that of a big bowl of multi-colored Skittles candy.

The ICE agents then reboarded the buses, and they quickly took off back through the wall door. Mere seconds after the last bus had passed through, the massive door closed shut, uttering a loud clang that reverberated for miles throughout the dusty desert.

However, after the final bus had driven far enough away that its motor could no longer be heard, it was not silent for the air filled with the whining and crying of Tumblr users.

"I want my safe space!"

"Dr. Who save us!"

"I can't even right now!"

One ugly woman with bright red hair stepped forward and pointed her finger at the massive border wall accusingly. "This is like a literal representation of the patriarchy!"

A few other Tumblr users walked up to the wall door and banged on it hard. "Open up! Stop this disgusting display of border privilege!" a skinny man with lime green hair cried as he pounded on the door. He then stopped when his hand started hurting.

A smaller group of Tumblr users then decided to walk out into the dessert. Surely a Mexican town with air conditioning and free tamales for all would be just ahead across the border. They slowly traversed forward with nothing but barren desert landscape ahead as far as the eye could see. They suddenly stopped after having walked a total of 25 feet and stood horrified at the sight before them. It was a pile of decapitated human heads left to bake in the dessert by the drug cartel that controlled the territory on this side of the border.

The Tumblr users shrieked in terror. "This is totally problematic!" one pink haired woman shouted at the heads as if they could hear her.

"I needed a trigger warning for that," another cried before gagging and depositing her lunch on the dusty dessert ground.

Some distance away, a trigender woman with a purple beard heard a distinctive rattle like sound from behind a nearby cactus. "Are those maracas? Maybe a Mexican identifying person came to save us!" She stepped behind the cactus, and suddenly a large diamondback rattle snake lunged forward and sunk its fangs deep into her fatty ankle. The woman fell to the ground and kept screaming helplessly as the snake's venom took its course and began flowing through her veins.

Some other nearby Tumblr users saw the snake strike and started panicking. They began running into the desert at the fastest speed their bloated carcasses could move. One especially fat woman with neon blue hair tripped over a rock and flopped onto the ground stomach first. She started shrieking as several scorpions crawled forward and began stinging her all over her body. One especially large scorpion whipped forward its tail and sunk its stinger directly into her eyeball.

Another Tumblr user with rainbow colored hair managed to make it much further than the others. "Okay, I'm still alive," she told herself. "My PHD in gender studies is paying off. I can do this!" Eventually, she made it to a large rock outcropping in the dessert. Looking closer, she could see it was the beginning of a seriously intimidating looking mountain range. She gulped before her confidence came back to her. "I can do this," she told herself again. "I got a participation trophy for rock climbing at the mall before. Just need to make it to the other side."

Slowly, she began making it up the rocky hillside. After several minutes, she stopped when she heard the sound of a cat purring, quite similar to the purrs of the nine cats she had at home. "There's kitties out here?" She then looked up to see the golden feline body covered in black spots of a very large cat perched up on a rock above her. The jaguar then opened its mouth wide, showing off its massive sharp teeth, as it let out a loud growl.

"Awwww, look at the cute kitty! I have to get a pic of this for my cat blog." She then reached into her fanny pack and pulled out her smart phone. She snapped a photo of the beast and then tried to upload it to her Tumblr account. However, the upload failed due to the lack of a connection. The jaguar then swiftly stepped down from the rock higher on the crag to one on the rainbow haired woman's level. It then walked towards her.

She seemed very pleased by this. "Come to mama, you big cutie wutie baby waby!" she said to it. The jaguar slowly stepped closer, and the woman stretched out her hand to pet its head. Immediately, the big cat opened its fanged mouth and clamped down on the woman's hand hard. It then yanked its head backwards and tore the flesh and bone of her hand right off her arm. As blood began pouring out of the open wound like a fountain, her screaming echoed from the tall rocky outgrowths of the mountains and back down into the desolate dessert.

Overhead, the collection of buzzards observing the multi-colored dots moving in different directions had grown to several hundred vultures. They kept circling overhead waiting patiently. For tonight, they knew they would gorge themselves on human flesh.

To Be Continued