Pink Butterfly (4 page)

“This way,” Raven said pointing to the door closest to her. The three girls and Jeff walked over to the door and stepped inside the second floor level of the embassy. It was white and sterile looking like a hospital hallway with offices and neatly dressed workers walking the hallways and typing on computers.

“This is like a city,” Jeff stated, following behind Heather. “How far do till we meet Vera?”

“Her office is next to the cafeteria, not too far,” Raven stated looking back while leading the group onward.

“Why is this place so secret?” Jeff asked. “I never heard of Labiastan before.”

“Our country is of vital strategic location for your country. Because of this, we are under the protection of the U.S. and they keep us safe by hiding us away,” Heather replied, walking down the hall.

“How big is Labiastan? How many people do you have?”

“Labiastan is about the size of Atlantis, about the same population.”

“How big is Atlantis? And where the fuck is it? I thought it was buried under the ocean?”

“It was,” Heather stated. “Here is Vera’s office,” She stated coming to a halt next to the cafeteria door. “The cafeteria is closed until breakfast, if you are hungry, there are vending machines next to the bathrooms a further down and to your right.”

“That’s ok, I’m not hungry. I need to talk to Vera if you don’t mind. It’s kind of late, I hope she’s still in.”

Raven knocked on the door and a click and pop came from the latch letting her know the door was now unlocked. She pushed the door open and the group of four stepped inside a messy, dingy, smelly office with a fat woman sitting behind a desk with no shirt and large fat dangling boobs resting on top of her desk.

“What the fuck is going on?” Vera asked chomping on her dentures.

“This man would like to apply for asylum in our country and we didn’t know who to ask,” Heather stated.

“What about Bob?” Vera asked.

“Bob is dead,” Heather replied. “And so is our hired hand.”

“Let me get this straight, our ambassador is dead, and so is our bouncer, and this guy wants to apply for asylum for what?”

“I fear that my life may be in danger if I stay in the U.S. I need asylum to protect myself from harm,” Jeff stated, looking down at the wig and fake lashes on this elderly woman who seemed to be in charge.

“What did you do that you fear for your life?” Vera asked.

“I kidnapped my wife and castrated and stabbed her lover to death,” Jeff stated, hanging his head in fake shame.

“Really,” Vera stated with a long drool in her voice. “What makes you think we want murderers in our country?”

“Do you have the death penalty?” Jeff asked.

“I’m not sure, I don’t get into that sort of thing a lot.”

“I won’t get a fair trial if I stay in the U.S. You have to help me,” Jeff pleaded.

“Let me get some information first,” Vera stated, pulling her computer keyboard closer to her boobs. She tapped on a few keys and looked at the screen with squinty dark eyes and tapped some more until she was happy. “Name please?” She asked keeping her eyes glued to the screen.

“Jeff Delgado,” he replied.

“Address?” Vera asked.

“1515 Juniper lane, El Camino, TX.”

Vera tapped a few keys and pulled the computer screen closer to her wrinkled, blue eye shadowed eyes. “I think I found you. Says, Jeff Delgado, divorced, three children, occupation, sewer worker.”

“That’s correct except I’m not divorced,” Jeff stated.

Vera looked at Jeff and back at the screen. “Says former wife’s name is Dixie and lives in Miami, Florida.”

“Dixie?” Jeff asked shocked. “Who the hell is Dixie?”

“Married from 1974 till your divorce in 1992,” Vera replied. “There’s even a picture of you and her on here, looks like it came from a wedding announcement,”

“Let me see that!” Jeff stated, pulling the screen around to see the image. Before his eyes was a picture of him and a woman he didn’t recognize wearing a white wedding dress. Under the picture was his name, the name of his wife Dixie and the date 1974.” Jeff looked at the picture like a deer stuck in the headlights, not comprehending what he was seeing. He could see his image, and the image of the woman, but he couldn’t put them together and make sense out of it. “If this is my wife, then who in the hell is in my trunk?” he asked.

Twelve thirty A.M.

A loud ringing bell sounded in the hallway that scared everyone in the room, making them jump.

“What’s that?” Jeff yelled

“The perimeter security alarm, we’re under attack!” Vera replied clicking on her mouse and tapping on her keyboard frantically. In a few seconds, the image popped up on her computer screen in infrared showing a car speeding down the driveway towards the club.

“Who’s attacking us?” Jeff yelled.

“I have no fucking idea,” Vera said calmly and directly while staring at the image analyzing what she was seeing. She picked up the phone on her desk, dialed an extension and waited for a reply from the other side. “Pull the drawbridge before anyone else gets through!” She yelled to the person on the other side of the phone. “And get the archers ready and in place!”

“Drawbridge?” Jeff asked aloud.

“This place is like a castle, with a moat and drawbridge,” Heather whispered, trying not to upset Vera. “It’s modeled after the castles of our homeland.”

“And you have people with bows and arrows on the roof?” Jeff asked sarcastically.

“Yes of course,” Heather replied not understanding the question. “It’s our way, our culture.”

“What do we do now?” Jeff asked, nervously tapping his hands on his pants leg.

“Nothing, we sit tight,” Vera replied. “Let our security do their job. With the slim chance they make it past our archers, they have to get into the building and then find their way down to the underground city. When you put in an embassy, you have to have several levels of security in place,” Vera stated, leaning back in her chair watching the action on her screen. Then the ringing bell stopped and everyone relaxed.

“Is it over? Did you get them?” Jeff asked nervously.

“No, they just turned off the ringer because it was annoying,” Vera replied. “If they get past level two the ringer will go off again.”

“So now what?” Jeff asked. “Do I get asylum or not?”

“I can give you forty eight hours of temporary asylum for now, and then my government back home will have to decide further. They will want to know something about you and expect me to do an investigation.”

“Investigate away, I have nothing better to do right now.”

“Fine,” Vera said with a sigh. “Let me grab some paper and a pen.” Vera dug through her side desk drawer and pulled out a yellow legal pad and a grabbed a pen from the top pull out drawer. “So far I have your contact information and your occupation as sewer worker, can you elaborate on what exactly it is you do as a sewer worker?”

“I keep the shit flowing downhill,” Jeff said with a smirk. “It’s not rocket science.”

“Can you give me an example of a typical day at work for you,” Vera asked rubbing her eyes.

“Normally I walk around the sewer plant and try to look busy. I like to hide in the tool shed when I can or take naps in the truck pretending to do checks out in the field. If I ever run into any real problems, I call a plumber and have them fix it.”

“Are you a spy?” Vera asked.

“I wish, my job sucks. Ever been to a sewer plant? It smells like shit. When I get home my clothes smell like someone else’s shit. I have to do laundry every night or my house smells like a huge toilet.” Jeff replied in a whiny tone.

“A moment ago you told me you had a wife and she was in the trunk of your car, now you’re not so sure, is that right?”

“I’m not sure on that one,” Jeff replied nervously. “I could have sworn I was married to her. When I saw her car parked in front of that guy’s house I was sure she was inside cheating on me. Now I don’t know what’s going on. I may have cut the nuts off an innocent man and stabbed him to death.”

“Do you have any mental health issues I should know about?”

“Mental health? You think I’m a fucking nut?”

“I think you may have an issue or two.”

“Would that interfere with my application for asylum?”

“Are you sure you know where you are right now?” Vera asked.

“Hell yes, I’m in the basement of some strip club at the embassy of Labiastan talking to an old hag stripper in need of some boob work!”

“Think about what you just said. Does any of that make any sense at all?” Vera asked.

Jeff sat there for a moment and looked a Vera and thought hard. She was making sense because the situation she described sounded absurd. He looked at the other three women standing nude beside him and questioned whether or not they were actually there. He reached out his hand to touch Heather and she pushed his hand away.

“What are you doing?” Heather asked. “Get your hands away from me.”

“Now I’m more confused than ever,” Jeff stated. “Maybe I should get some sleep and get a fresh start in the morning.”

“Are you going to leave that woman in your trunk all night?” Vera asked.

“According to you, I’m not sure there is a woman in my trunk!” Jeff snapped back.

“Tell you what, we’ll get you a room and pick up with this around 10 am. If there is a girl in your trunk, I’ll have my people check on her for you. Do you have your car keys?”

Jeff reached in his pocket, dug out his keys and tossed them on Vera’s desk. “Here you go,” he said in a confused, dazed and tired tone.

“Follow these girls, they will take you to a guest room for the night,” Vera said as she leaned back in her chair.

“What about the attackers?” Jeff asked, pointing at Vera’s computer screen.

Vera turned the screen away from Jeff and clicked off the power letting the image go black. “I’ll see you later,” Vera said with a smile. “Don’t worry about anything, you’ll be fine.”

“Wake the fuck up Melvin!” Gunnar yelled, slapping Melvin on the chest.

“What?” Melvin slurred in a garbled tone placing his hand on the spot where it hurt the most. Melvin looked around the cab of the pickup truck and at the man driving and in a confused stupor bolted back in his seat in fear. “”Who the hell are you?” Melvin asked in a panic.

“Gunnar Biermann, mortuary assistant, pleased to meet you,” the stranger replied with a smile, keeping his eye on the road as he drove westerly down the dark interstate. “Don’t worry Melvin, you’ll wake up in a minute and the fog will clear.”

“Who is Melvin?” Melvin asked.

“You are,” Gunnar replied. “I suppose I better explain what’s going on since I could see why your brain might be a bit fried right now.

“Yes please do, I was having a horrible nightmare and now I’m sitting in a truck in the dark driving down a highway.”

“What kind of nightmare?” Gunnar asked.

“I dreamed I was requesting asylum from an ex stripper from the country Labiastan.”

“That sound pretty fucked up Melvin, why would you be requesting asylum?” Gunnar asked passing the time.

“I think I killed a few people,” Melvin said deep in thought. “Some guy who was fucking my wife in the shower, the ambassador of Labiastan and a bouncer who accused me of sticking my face is a stripper’s crotch.”

“You got one right,” Gunnar replied with a chuckle. “You forgot the woman you let suffocate in the trunk.”

“My wife?” Melvin asked shocked.

“No, she wasn’t your wife dude. She was the one who claimed she caught you robbing her house. You killed her husband with a knife after cutting off his balls. You then kidnapped his wife and left her to die in the trunk of your car when the ransom didn’t work out the way you wanted.”

“I am so confused,” Melvin said in despair.

“You’ve been on death row for the last twelve years man, they fried you tonight in the chair and you survived. That blast of electricity must have scrambled your brain and made you think you were married to that chick you killed. You aren’t married at all.”

“Fried me?”

“Put your hand on your head and tell me what you feel?” Gunnar asked.

Melvin placed his hand on his shaven head and felt the burn marks left from the conductor placed on his head from the electric chair. “What’s that smell?” Melvin asked.

“Burned skin and hair” Gunnar replied. “Told you they fried your brain.”

Melvin sat and thought about what he had just heard and started out the window at the highway ahead lit up by the low beams of the pickup truck. On the radio played some horrible song by Tim McGraw over a scratchy FM radio station. “Where are we going?” Melvin asked.

“Colorado, my brother lives there. We want to hide you there for a while.”

“Why do you want to hide me? And if I was executed tonight, why am I sitting in the front seat of your truck?” Melvin asked.

“When we took your body back to the morgue for processing, you woke up. You were in a stupor but your vital signs came back and you definitely were alive. We all looked at each other and decided that we weren’t going to send you back for a second try, so we hatched a plan to slip you out of state and bury a sack of potatoes in your place.”

“Why would you do that for me? If I’m a two time murderer, why not let them kill me?” Melvin asked.

“Didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Not that I’m against the death penalty or anything like that, it’s just they had their chance and screwed up. Nobody deserves to get that done to them twice.”

“For now I’ll take your word for all of this, but these things never work out like you plan you know. How do you plan to hide me forever? Somebody’s going to find out who I really am.”

“It’s only been a few hours Melvin, you have to give us a chance to figure something out. The first thing we had to do was get you away from the prison and away from the public. Once your funeral is held, nobody will come looking for you. They were not planning an open casket funeral for you, they were planning to dispose of you as soon as possible.”

Melvin listened to the radio and tried to remember the life he had before the electrocution a few hours prior but had a huge mental block. He couldn’t remember anything about a last meal, or being walked down the hall to the chair or given last rights. The longer he sat and thought, the more the fog lifted and he started to remember a cell, and the noises and smell of the death row ward of the prison. It wasn’t much, but at least he now knew or at least thought he knew what was going on. Feeling the burned flesh on his scalp made this feel as real as anything, but then his dream of shooting the bouncer also felt real at the time. He was going to wait a bit before he passed judgment on what was really going on and decide if his name was Jeff or Melvin. Jeff sounded better, but Melvin would do.