Requiem For Rehnquist:
Chief Justice William Rehnquist reclines in his bed, sucking precious air through a hole in his throat. His body had turned against him, his cancerous thryoid actually strangling him; Rehnquist always knew cancer was a killer, but he's surprised to discover it's an active murderer. So he half-sits, half-lays in his bed in Bethesda, wondering if he should retire or return to the bench. There's ghosts around his bed - oh, so many ghosts, all of whom have come to Rehnquist to ask for justice at last, justice at last: the ghosts of blacks from the segragated South, an apartheid Rehnquist so long supported; the ghosts of wrongly convicted prisoners, jailed because of the reduction of rights for the accused; the ghosts of kids who died of cancer from decisions gutting the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. And let's not even get into the ghosts of women, of kids, of doctors due to his abortion rulings.

But the worst ghosts are the ones that haunt him from what may be his most reckless decision in Bush v. Gore, the decision that overturned years of his support of federalism and said that, indeed, a state's constitution was meaningless. Because the burden of Rehnquist, the burden of all Supreme Court justices, is the massive group of unintended consequences from a decision. And who would have thought? No, really, who would have thought it would have come to all these many ghosts, of dead Iraqis, of dead Americans, of starving people, of victims of a culture of cruelty that knows no bounds. Sure, sure, it may be wrong at this point to ascribe a soul to Rehnquist, but let us say that laying on one's potential deathbed in a naval hospital causes one to reflect. And to close one's eye's and listen to the wheezing of one's breath through a tube, trying to block out the staring eyes of the ghosts, their begging voices whispering, "Justice," over and over.

Dick Cheney might visit Rehnquist. They've known each other for many years. Cheney might bring Rehnquist, the widower, a porn magazine, maybe some smokes. It's all haha, funny. And maybe Rehnquist might say to Cheney that he's thinking he might step down, now, before the deluge of the election. If he wants to have anything that resembles a retirement in what may be the months before he dies, he thinks he might step down now. Cheney is not a man to be fucked with. And the idea of a 4-4 Supreme Court is the worst kind of fucking. Cheney might try to cajole Rehnquist, good-natured, a kind of "Hey-Bill-just-hang-in-there-for-a-couple-more-months" shuffle and jive. But Rehnquist can't stand anymore ghosts. They're stacked two, three high. And he knows that now that he inhabits the nexus between life and death, those ghosts will follow him everywhere.

Cheney is a vicious man. He has castrated Nigerian oil executives in front of other Nigerians and in front of British attorneys on a barren patch of land on Bonny Island. He has threatened to have generals buried up to their heads in the sands of the Iraqi wasteland and run over them with a Humvee if those generals dared to ask for more troops. He has wandered over to the CIA with a basket of puppies, and, for each piece of intelligence that didn't support invading Iraq, he's bitten the heads off them, one by one, spitting puppy heads at the cowering spooks.

So when Rehnquist tries to say he's thinking retirement now, too late for an appointment before the election, and with the potential loss of the Senate even if he wins, Cheney snaps. He pulls the tube out of Rehnquist's neck and whips out his cock. Rehnquist, wide-eyed, now wishing he had chosen death over the horror that is about to happen, gasps for air. "Gonna have to fuck your neck-hole, Bill," Cheney says, slapping his cock around, trying to get an erection, thinking about Mary and her partner 69ing, thinking about dismembered Iraqi children, all the things that usually make him hard. Rehnquist shakes his head. But he doesn't have to worry. Cheney can't get an erection. Sure, he makes a half-hearted attempt to fuck Rehnquist's trachea, but he finally gives up and re-inserts the tube.

Rehnquist, breathing now, nods, nods, nods. "Don't worry, Dick, I'll be there for you. Hell, I'll be back this week." Cheney winks at him and tells him to enjoy the porn as he leaves. Rehnquist wheezes a sigh of relief and closes his eyes, trying to block all the ghastliness and misery from his view.