By: Jeff Watkins

Wearing only scanty panties, Corporal Rochana Toch (a female Cambodian emigrant who looks like a skinny prepubescent girl) seductively, sinuously sways toward Corporal Daniel Selnick, murmuring, “Me so horny. Me give you beaucoup suckee fuckee.”

 An expression Dan had heard in a Vietnam war film. Now very close, her eyes beckon, and she rasps “Wake up, Corporal Selnick, or I will have you thrown in the drunk tank.”

Startled awake, Dan picks up his mike and assures Sergeant Donald Yost: “I’m following a suspicious character into the Dairy Queen on 10th and Gordy, Sarge. I’ll keep you posted.”

Dan knows that Yost knows that Dan has been sleeping, that he will not keep Yost informed, that there is no suspicious character, that Dan has a sound and moving picture recording of Yost and Toch vigorously copulating on Yost’s desk, and that Yost will continue to pack Dan’s performance reviews with fulsome praise.

Dan also knows that his fellow cops despise him because he’s unapologetically useless. When he’s on station to catch speeders, they suddenly develop a reverence for speed limits; when he’s sent to investigate a possible burglary, the burglars always get away, and so on. Other cops (except Yost and Toch) wonder how Dan keeps his job, let alone how he earned his corporal’s stripe.

Dan yawns and leaves his squad car, which is conveniently located in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen. “Lily promised roast beef tonight, so I won’t eat a lot,” he thinks, “so I’ll just have a Blizzard.” He approaches the door. “No, I’ll have a peanut butter milk shake.” He walks through the door. “Maybe I should order both. Wait, I think….”

“Oh, God, help us!” A high-pitched shriek.

Reluctantly, for he resents the interruption, Dan turns just in time to glimpse a man charging him—a large, round, hairy, naked man clutching a baseball bat over his head. So Dan turns toward the safety of the exit, and in so doing cork screws his left knee. The knee buckles in agony. Largeroundhairynaked’s momentum carries him over Dan’s left shoulder, and he (Largeroundhairnaked) bounces face first on the floor. Dan collapses with both knees on the back of Largeroundhairynaked.

“My God! Why does this shit happen to me?” Dan whimpers.

“You saved us,” responds a breathy, girlish voice. “That monster would’ve killed us all.”

Dan’s eyes climb up a Repunzelesque blond braid until they reach the braid’s resting place in the valley between two mountainous breasts. This topography causes Dan to to relive experiences he’d had when he was a small child, when he would stand in a shower while holding a soapy wash cloth and looking up at his mother’s massive breasts and an angry black cloud between her legs, and the black cloud would command him to “Take this wash cloth and wash your Mother everywhere.”

The PTSD episode ends in a flash, enabling Dan to identify the owner of the useful braid and threatening breasts as a young woman with adoring blue eyes whose many curves and bulges threaten to escape from her aqua blue—matching her eyes—slacks and a white sleeveless blouse. She is cocking her head to the right and her hips to the left. And she is  thrusting out her chest, and running her tongue around her lips.

With a braid and clothes to match, a girl of about 10 years of age, with adoring blue eyes, stands next to this fertility symbol while sending the same signals: cocking hips, licking lips, etc.

Farther back are five other girls of about 10 years old. Dan takes no note of their appearance, but does notice that they are all using their phones to take pictures of him and his trophy.

He focuses on a boney girl with a crude, helmet-shaped hair cut and wearing a shapeless, too large dress.  She’s standing apart from the rest of the girls and looking at her feet, but seems to sense he’s looking at her and looks up and smiles just long enough to reveal large, crooked teeth. She looks down again and chews her thumb nail.  “She seems to be restraining herself from sucking her thumb,” Dan thinks. “Lily must’ve looked and acted like that when she was 10 years old.

Largeroundhairynaked bounces once, reminding Dan that he needs to deal with the pain in his knee. To be a cop, too. He handcuffs the perp (the first such use of handcuffs in his career) and assures Girl-Lily “This beast is SUB DUED,” and calls  the dispatcher: This is Unit 48 located in the Dairy Queen at 10th and Gordy. 10-26.10-61. Situation 10-18, code 3. 10-3. 10-78. 10-52. 10-91.

“You gotta be kidding,” says the dispatcher.

“Officer down. Officer down. 10-40,” says Dan gleefully, for at this point he is feeling euphoric, and not just because he’s a hero and his heroism will be pictorially displayed on the front pages of the local newspaper, thanks to the picture taking witnesses. No. Infinitely more important is the realization that his knee is so badly bunged up that he will almost certainly retire at age 27 with half pay, adjusted for inflation, and fully paid health insurance for the rest of his life.

Lily will continue to work at the post office, of course.