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“Remove your blindfold, Hillary Rodham.”
Hillary’s heart was beating itself hoarse against her chest; she could almost feel her blood rocketing through her arteries and veins. Slowly moving her shivering hands to her head, she took off the blindfold.
She was in a dark chamber, lit only by a select few torches on the walls. Surrounding her in a circle were figures cloaked in gray robes, silent and standing stock-still. A few feet ahead of her sat two wooden chairs, the only furniture in the room. In one sat a man wearing a blue robe—the only bit of color in the room—with a spear resting on his lap. The other chair was empty.
Walter had told her that President Truman would likely not be able to make it.
Between her and the chairs, a single man lay. His body was tied to the ground with ropes and a gag covered his mouth, but his eyes were uncovered. They looked at her; she felt his gaze pierce her throat.
The blindfold was still in her hand. She wanted to put it in her pocket, but her arms refused to move. She simply opened her hand and let it fall to the ground.
Wordlessly, one of the robed figures—Walter, most likely—walked behind her and pressed something into her hand. “Something,” she thought, but she knew what it was. The cold metal burned in her hand.
Nobody said anything. Everyone knew what she was here to do. She walked slowly up to the man, trying in vain to stop her hands from shaking.
Just two weeks ago, George McGovern had lost to Nixon. It seemed so stupid now, but Hillary had thought that the country was finally changing—soon, America’s destructive wars would cease; soon, no one would die from lack of healthcare; soon, all bigotry would be a distant memory. But none of that would happen. McGovern had lost. To change the world, you needed to win.
Walter had told her about these gatherings years ago, when she still worked for him. At the time she could barely contain her disgust as she refused. One week ago, she gave him a call. And here she was. Surrounded by the most influential figures in the Democratic Party. Able to earn their favor. All she had to do was this one thing.
Power is violence. Those who win dole out death. Hillary needed to prove that she had what it took to be important.
The man on the ground was staring at her, eyes wide, his cries unintelligible behind his gag. He was someone unimportant. Completely unrelated to everyone here. That was the point. If she were ever to be in power, Hillary would surely end up killing many people, some who deserved it. This one didn’t deserve it. He would be the first of many.
She thought of all those who died meaninglessly in Vietnam, who died in pain outside of a hospital. She thought of all the women crushed by the patriarchy, all the black people locked up in ghettos and prisons. There was so much good she could accomplish in this world. What was one man’s death, in the face of all that?
Hillary Rodham raised the gun, aimed, and fired. She could almost see the bullet crash into the man’s head.
Her arm jerked backward from the recoil; the gun left her hand and clattered across the floor. At the same time, a white-hot pain flared in her chest and radiated across her body. Against her will, Hillary screamed, clutching at her chest and writhing around on the floor. The chamber swirled in her vision.
Until suddenly, the pain was gone. The chamber snapped back into view. The blue-robed figure was standing above her, the spear in his hands. She couldn’t see the point. Looking down, she saw why: the spear had sunk into her chest.
Was she going to die? Or was she already dead?
With one swift motion, the figure pulled out the spear, and with it came an ugly mound of red flesh. She recognized it from her biology textbooks, but she felt an odd disconnect looking at her own heart.
The figure removed his robe, and the wrinkled face of Lyndon Johnson stared at her.
“This,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “is the true purpose of the ritual.”
She stared at her heart, uncomprehending.
“To be a leader, you must be hard,” he said. “You must be willing to do what needs to be done. This,” his gaze dropped to the heart, “is a weakness. You must remove it.”
Words left her lips. “You’ve already removed it.”
Johnson lowered his hand and touched the blood vessels that draped from the heart. Hillary shivered involuntarily. “You are the only one who can cut these,” he said.
She remembered the man, now lying dead on the ground. Was it her who pulled the trigger? How could she have killed an innocent man? Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe her arm belonged to someone else. As if watching a movie, she saw her arm move, grasp a blood vessel, and tear it off. She flinched, but her arm moved on regardless. One by one, the vessels came off.
Finally, the last one fell. Johnson raised the spear. Strength suddenly flowed back into her, and she climbed to her feet.
Johnson handed her the heart. It was moist and squishy in her hands. Looking around, she saw that the other figures hadn’t moved; they were still staring at her. When she turned back, Johnson had put his hood back on, his face obscured once more.
Somehow, she knew what needed to be done. She crushed the pile of meat in her hands.
“We have slaves!?”
“They’re not technically—”
“Can it, Bill, we both know what the Thirteenth says.”
Bill sighed and put his head on the desk, rubbing his temples with his fingers. “Then yes. While in the governor’s mansion, we will be serviced by slaves.”
Hillary turned on her heel and marched to the door. “Not if I have any say in the matter.”
Her hand was on the doorknob when she heard Bill shout, “What precisely will you do!?”
She turned around. If she had still had a heart, she might’ve gulped. Bill was as angry as she’d ever seen him.
“What precisely will you do?” he asked again, quieter this time. “Refuse to use prisoner labor? That won’t free them; they’ll just be sent somewhere else. So what will you have accomplished, in the end?”
“Lived my morals,” she said, but her words sounded uncertain even to her. “Served as an example, inspired others to do the same.”
Bill chuckled. “Come on now, you know very well the world doesn’t work like that. You know how many companies in this state depend on prison labor; if you don’t, I can give you copious documentation. My reelection will be hard enough as it is. Let’s not make it harder, okay?”
Hillary kept her hand on the doorknob, but she didn’t move. Bill walked around his desk and approached her. He was so close she could feel his breath on her face.
“You killed someone, just like I did. Compared to that, this is nothing.”
Hillary’s eyes fell. Her voice choked. “I... I still remember him. Every day.”
Bill nodded. Then he raised his left arm, and dug his fingers into it.
“Wait—what are you doing!?” She grabbed his arm, but Bill shook her off. He smiled at her.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m fine. Just watch.”
She looked at his arm, her head buzzing, as his fingers entered the arm again. He pulled, and a chunk of flesh came off.
Inside, there was... nothing. No muscles, no blood vessels, not even any bone. An empty void. She didn’t take her eyes off it, even as Bill started to speak.
“I tortured myself about the woman I killed. Murdered. I had constant nightmares, couldn’t sleep. So I called Walter, and he showed me how to do this.” He put the lump of skin back, and rubbed it to smooth it out. When he finished, not even a scar remained. “When I did, the nightmares went away. I felt a lot better. Not that I don’t still feel guilty, but...” he shrugged. “I can accept it. It needed to be done.”
Instinctively, her eyes flicked to her own arm. “I didn’t… When I did the ritual, I thought that would be the end of it.”
Bill chuckled and put his arm around her shoulder. “The end is when we finish our sixteenth year as President. Everything else is preparation.”
Hillary sat alone in her room, looking at but not seeing the flickering television screen in front of her. The anchor was talking. After failing to pass their signature healthcare bill, the future of the Clinton White House looks in doubt. Many are pointing the finger at First Lady Hillary Clinton, who made the bill her signature issue…
She should probably turn it off. She couldn’t muster the strength.
This was supposed to be it. The moment it all became worth it. All the sins, all the compromises, all the pain. It was supposed to culminate in this, a bill that would save millions of lives, forever improving the country. And then it all fell apart. Fell apart because of her.
She felt a sharp pain in her thigh. When she looked, she saw her own finger was the culprit. It had dug into her skin. Did she do that consciously or unconsciously?
As if in a daze, she watched as her entire hand sunk into the inside of her thigh, and tore. Slowly, carefully, she—her hand—ripped off the skin on her thigh, from the left side to the right. She felt no pain whatsoever. One of the happy side-effects of losing your heart.
For a long while, she just sat there looking, the television still buzzing in the background. She was fascinated by the sight, the layers upon layers of muscle, the pulsing veins and arteries. Occasionally she stuck her hand in and moved muscles aside so she could see the underlying bone. It was beautiful.
All of a sudden, though, she was hit by waves of disgust. Biting her tongue to keep from screaming—not in pain, but in anger—she tore at her muscle, first with one hand, then with both. She pulled chunk after chunk of fiber out of her body, tossing the useless junk on the table, on the floor, anywhere that wasn’t inside of her.
Finally, all that was left was the bone. She stared at it for several long seconds. Then she gripped each end with one hand and pulled. But she was exhausted, and the bone was hard. She was panting, sweat flooding her skin, when the bone finally snapped; unable to stop her momentum, she fell backward in the chair and smacked down hard on the floor.
Her head ached from the impact, but her mind was clear. She held the two pieces of her former thigh bone up to look at them. The sight made her giggle. It had been such a long time since she had last giggled.
She stood up, and belatedly realized that her skin was still hanging off of her shin. It didn’t impede her movement or anything, but it was a bad idea to leave it like that. She set down the bone pieces, grabbed her skin, and carefully smoothed it over her now-empty thigh. Good as new.
Satisfied, she looked around the room. It was pretty messy; pieces of muscle, not to mention bloody veins and arteries, were everywhere. She set about cleaning it up.
Next time, she should probably use a sink or something.
“You’re going to sign it!?”
The entire room—every single one of her husband’s chief advisors—looked at her in shock. She didn’t care. She glared at Bill, willing him to comprehend her anger and her shame. Maybe then he’d understand.
He just looked at her, his expression blank.
Time stretched as nobody said anything. Finally, Bill said calmly, almost casually, “Could you all give us a moment alone, please?”
One by one, the aides shuffled out of the room. When the last one shut the door, Bill sighed and collapsed in his chair. Hillary remained standing.
“What do you expect me to do?” he asked, resignation bloodying his tone.
“Veto it, just like you did the other two.”
Bill laughed bitterly. “Bet Dole’d love that. Welfare queens, round 2. The fucking New Republic might even endorse him, wouldn’t that be fun?”
Hillary clenched her teeth. Her right arm and left leg were empty now, but anger flooded every other part of her. “You use the goddamn election to justify every shitty thing you do. You sign that hellish crime bill, make me call black kids superpredators and—”
“Hey!” Bill was finally getting angry. Good. “Don’t you blame that on me. You chose to give that speech all by yourself.”
“Fine. Then I’m choosing to tell the press that this sociopathic bill is going to ruin the lives of countless women and children.”
“Be my guest,” Bill said. “But if you do, you will never be President.”
They stared at each other for a long time. Hillary could feel the anger building…
And all of a sudden, it dissipated. She collapsed into her chair, covered her face with her arm, and groaned. “I didn’t get into politics for this.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What happened?” she asked, more to the universe than to Bill. “You’re the fucking President, and all you do is worry about the fucking polls.”
Bill chuckled. “Remember when we used to utterly despise Johnson?”
Despite herself, Hillary smiled. “Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
“I’m sure he was worried about the fucking polls too,” Bill said, contempt dripping from his voice.
Neither of them said anything for a long time after that. The silence was rather comforting.
Eventually, Hillary said, “So is this it then? Even if we win, we spend the next four years doing shitty things so the Republicans don’t do something even worse?”
“Sounds about right.”
Hillary sighed. “I don’t know, Bill. I don’t have the stomach for this.”
“Neither did I. That’s why I removed it.”
Hillary’s eyes snapped open. She looked at her husband. He was dead serious.
“You... but... is that really possible?”
Bill smiled wryly. “If we can live without a heart, why couldn’t we live without a stomach?”
She gaped at him as her mind whirred. Emptying out her arm and leg had made it much easier to play the hard game of politics; getting rid of her stomach might be even more helpful. Still, though...
Yet again, Hillary thought back to the man she killed all those years ago. She had sacrificed too much already to stop now. Besides, if Bill’s presidency was just going to be rearguard defense, she’d have to be the one to implement all the things they’d been dreaming about for decades.
When she becomes President, it’ll all have been worth it.
Hillary stared at her computer screen. She had finished her speech. Tomorrow, she was going to vote to give George W. Bush permission to invade Iraq.
She knew the WMD thing was bullshit, regardless of what the CIA said. She still remembered when her husband bombed a pharmaceutical factory in 98, based on “evidence” that it was tied to al-Qaeda that turned out to be, so to speak, less than sound. The destruction of that factory caused tens of thousands of deaths at the very least. She’d had to pull out her kidneys after that one to stop the guilt from overwhelming her.
Hillary scrolled up. Intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, she read. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members. Another laughable lie. Saddam and al-Qaeda were bitter enemies, everyone with a shred of knowledge about the Middle East knew that. She scrolled down. I will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible. Take him at his word indeed. Anyone who spent five minutes with the man would know better than that.
Ten years ago, bile would have built up in her stomach to hear anyone say those words, much less to write them herself. At least her lack of a stomach saved her from that delightful experience. Still, a steady ache in her lower torso was growing worse by the second. She cut a slit across her chest with a fingernail and peeled her skin down to see why.
It was her liver. The organ was pulsating, almost like a heart, and with each beat the pain became just a little bit more intense.
It was shame, she knew. It had been years since she’d felt the emotion, but she’d never forget it. She had experienced it often enough during Bill’s presidency.
Hillary looked back at her computer screen. She could delete the speech, write a new one. It would take all night, but she wasn’t getting any sleep tonight anyway. She could vote against the war, announce publicly everything she knew. She could rail against Bush from the Senate floor every day; the media, so often her enemy, would cover all of it. Maybe she’d even go to anti-war rallies. It would be like the 60s again. Hillary smiled at the thought.
But no. That might make her feel good, but it wouldn’t be right. Her vote wouldn’t make a difference—Bush was going to war no matter what, and the majority of the country would be behind him. And especially as a woman, she couldn’t afford to look weak. All her advisors agreed: if she voted against the war, she would never be President.
That being the case, there was only one thing to do. She grasped the liver with both hands and, in one motion, wrenched it out of her chest with a satisfying pop. She looked at it for a few seconds, as blood dripped off of it and onto her pants, then walked to the garbage can and threw it in.
Belatedly, she realized her chest skin was still hanging off of her waist. She picked it up and smoothed it out, leaving no scar as usual. She had gotten so used to this process that it didn’t even seem weird to her anymore. Strange thought to have.
She walked back to her computer chair, sat down, scrolled all the way up, and re-read her speech slowly, making occasional corrections here and there. The shame wasn’t gone, but now it was just a dull ache, easily ignored.
“Senator Clinton,” the voice on the other line said.
“Why, Senator Obama, it’s a pleasure to hear from you.”
“Let’s not play this game, Hillary. You know why I’m calling.”
Hillary grinned. This was the man who had ruined her life’s work—temporarily, at least. If she'd still had her small and large intestines, her hatred for him might’ve impeded her rational thought. Even as she was now, she felt a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that he had to call her for help.
After she had finally accepted there was no way to win the nomination, she had met with Obama privately and demanded two things from him: to make her secretary of state, and to not get in her way when she ran again in 2016. In exchange she had made two offers: to not contest the convention, and to give him advice.
The latter was, naturally, not out of any regard for him personally. She had been forced to hollow out almost all her body during the course of the primary, to no avail; there were few people on the planet she despised more than him. It was for the sake of the country. She hadn’t been lying when she'd attacked him for being naive, untested, and unready for the presidency. A sentimental fool like him would get chewed up and spat out. She knew this better than anyone. Now that he had won, the only way to avoid disaster would be to eliminate that sentimentality, one way or another.
Obama had already gotten the offer to participate in the ritual, of course, and like she once did he had refused. But those old fools still clung to their secrecy and traditions, and never told him the true purpose behind the ritual. That information is what she offered him on that day. Once more, he refused—but even then, she had seen interest glitter in his eye. He had gotten a taste of national politics, and surely understood on some level what was truly required to succeed in that arena. She knew it was only a matter of time before Mister No Dumb Wars would realize the truth, and come to her on his own accord.
“The FISA bill, I assume?” she asked, dropping all pretense.
“I have to vote for it,” Obama said after a pause. “I know that. I can’t afford to have the media call me soft on terror for months. But every time I think about the telecoms getting off scot-free after all that they did…”
Hillary made her tone magnanimous. “We’ve had our differences, Barack, but I understand your position. It’s a very hard road we travel, but if we don’t do it, someone else will—someone who lacks our good intentions.” And for all his faults, Obama did have good intentions, most likely.
“Indeed," Obama said. “That being the case…”
“I’ll contact them. The preparations shouldn’t take long.”
“It needs to be before the vote, Hillary.”
“I know,” she said, being careful not to sound impatient. “They won’t take long. I’ll contact you as soon as I have the details.”
There was a pause, and then Obama sighed. “Thank you. I’m just... I don’t like this.”
“I don’t either. But it’s necessary.”
Slowly, methodically, Hillary picks at her right forearm. She could just tear the skin off at once, but that would be counter-productive. Right now, she needs a distraction.
The TV in front of her blares, time passing against her wishes. With Donald Trump’s victory in Wisconsin, his path to the presidency is all but certain…
She’s halfway down her forearm. Every part of her body is empty now, devoid of the useless innards that weigh down most other humans, save for two. One is her head“she still needs her brain. The second is this, her right forearm. Out of some vague sentimentality, this alone she has kept filled up.
As she picks, the pain in her forearm grows sharper and sharper, without end. Images flit through her mind unbidden.
Berta Caceras, bleeding from a gunshot wound to her head, pointing her finger at Hillary. She doesn’t even know what the woman looked like, or how she had died—had refused to find those things out, for her own sanity—but her guilt doesn’t care about that. It doesn’t care that she’d had no choice but to let the coup happen, that she couldn’t let Zelaya become another Chavez.
Caceras’s image fades, only to be replaced by Michel Martelly laughing while wearing a crown and waving a scepter. Of course, she had pushed hard for him to get elected President, but how was she supposed to know his tenure would be such a disaster? But while her rational mind knows that, her arm shivers when he looks at her, a knowing smile on his lips.
More images follow. Young men and women locked behind bars as a man with a cigar in his mouth laughs, holding a bag full of money. Honduran children crying as they are tossed over the border. Henry Kissinger winking at her, explosions in his eyes. Bodies piled high in Libya. A man whose wide-open eyes spear into her as a bullet enters his brain. Iraqi children throwing up blood as her friend Madeleine says We think the price is worth it.
Donald Trump’s smirking face.
She screams; her arm is searing white-hot with pain. She tears the skin off, again and again, until all of it lies in piles around her. Her mind is empty. The room is melting around her. No, not melting, it’s bleeding. Blood is gushing from every inch of the room, flowing around her in a torrent. Her arm is in such pain now that she can’t even scream. Every part of her is focusing only on the pain.
Hillary rears her arm back and punches. She can feel the bones in her fist shatter. She punches once more, again and again, destroying her arm a little bit at a time, until finally it’s all over.
Panting, she stands up. She looks at where her forearm used to be. There’s nothing there anymore. The pain is fading, until eventually it’s reduced down to a dull ache.
Well, that’s only to be expected. It was a pretty bad loss, after all. It’ll take a long time to get over. But she’s comforted by the fact that, while she may have made some mistakes, it wasn’t her fault in the end. She had done the best she could, like she always did. Regret would only prevent her from accomplishing the good things she was still capable of.
Looking around the room, she sees piles of skin mixed up with the pieces of muscle and bone. She’ll have to pick through them, gather up all the skin and mold it back onto her elbow. That’ll be a pain, but Bill can help with it. First things first, though. She picks up the phone and dials a number.
“Get some whiskey,” she says to the aide on the other line. “And every flavor of ice cream this damn hotel has.”