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Despite all the motorcades, biweekly medical examinations and crooked police hellbent on protecting the regime, the dictator died.
The United States of America was one of the richest countries on planet Earth, both in human capital and natural resourses. So the blisters on the hands of a man digging for iron somewhere near the Canada border, the brains and the capital of the Barrett Firearms company, the cunning and corruption of NRA lobbyists and the aim of his critic turned beligerent supporter turned bloodthirsty hater made sure a bullet found its' way into the skull of the dictator one warm bright day.
It was May, and it immediately felt like it, too. The apple trees decided that it's was time to unfreeze and spread that heavy, sickly, sweet scent in around the dusty air. It was all people could smell for days: apple blossoms, blood and gunpowder.
When the bullet broke the thin layer of skin, crushed the bone and dug its way into the dictator's brain, it was televised by GoJo owned ATN. People watched, and rewatched, and rejoiced. They made funny compilations and TikToks to "The Times Are A-Changin" and "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" — those were reported and blocked, but the content moderation system had nothing on the sheer joy of the unbreakable human spirit.
Upon the death of her dictator the Republic found out, somewhat puzzled and embarrassed, that he wasn't a God. Or even God's envoy for that matter. He was a thin maroon trickle of blood making its way from the middle of his forehead to his aquiline nose and thin lips — the so-called experts were worried that he looked too good when he died. It's insane how much everyone loves pretty people and how much shit they let slide if a guy just has the looks.
The fact that even this didn't turn him into a martyr was a testament to how fucking fed up one of the few remaining superpowers was.
He was playing God for eight years, and then he was nothing.
A pair of lungs tarred with cigarette smoke. Five feet eleven inches of bones, meat and blood. About a hundred grams of keratine from hair and nails. Some fluids. Some piss and not yet digested beige slush that used to be eggs and bacon not more than half an hour ago.
Nothing more.
Death brings out a lot of mixed emotions in humans, naturally. This one brought relief, the feeling of vindication and shame.
Turns out he was so easy to kill. Why were they so cowardly before? How could he convince them, for eight years full of war, corruption, injustice, jailing the opposition on sham charges and thwarting the free speech, that it wasn't an option? To just put a bullet through his fucking skull and be done with it? Wasn't that what the Second Amendment was for, after all? To act like the best failsafe there is?
America was a Christian country, a God-abiding country, and now it was finally able to admit that it wasn't ruled by God for a long long time.
It was ruled by a man. Cruel, vain, susceptible to his own propaganda, cowardly at his core. More charismatic than some, yes. More ruthless, willing to do what others wouldn't to get the results others couldn't, yes.
Ultimately, though, he was a fraud, and so was his wife. The day after the assassination she gave a full forty minutes of scarily convincing sobs and shrieks in that one on one with Anna Newman. She was biting her nails, accepting tissues and water from the anchor, confessing to her husband throwing her around one of the bedrooms of the White House. He kept her on Lithium. He raped her. He leased her to his billionaire friend. He killed her ex-husband, the true love of her life on one of those Brightstar Cruises during the nineties.
None of it was true, surprisingly — thanks to the former President's severe case of Madonna/Whore complex.
Ellie killed her ex herself (and it was a reset of Jeryd Mencken and Ellie Callahan's love story, actually) but she was fucking over him, and so were the people, and she had to make sure she wasn't going to be Clara Petacchi'd by association.
He fooled his people and they never forgave him for that, so they let his wife fool them some more. It meant they could get back at him.
His jenga tower of a legacy crumpled the minute the autopsy was over. There was no dignity. There were endless thinkpieces, and snickering, and so, so much urine on his grave — even though it was under constant surveillance. Somehow the best people on the Secret Service were always looking the other way and only turned back when the piss was already starting to dry on the headstone.
There were fireworks and a lot of champagne.
There was a feeling that America, upon the death of her dictator, had a chance to become strong and free.