Sam-Sam, the FBI Man
Fiction by Teagan Acoff –
Samuel Johnson does not hate his job, per say. There are a lot of benefits. He is paid well, has decent healthcare, and gets a good dental plan. Sure, maybe he’s seen one too many naked teenage girls, or had to watch hours upon hours of frog-fighting videos, or listened to that god-awful Rick Astley song on repeat for days straight, but can he really complain? If people find out he spies on them through their webcams, the hell to pay will be far worse than a few weeks of “Heartbreak Playlist #67”.
Sam cracks open his sixth bottle of vodka that morning and witnesses a man with a beard only covering his third and fourth chins film himself mixing two liters of Mountain Dew and one bag of Sweet Chili Doritos in a monstrous blender. Yeah. His job is great.
He’s not even really sure of what he is watching for. Anyone smart enough to build a bomb or hatch a functional (or even completely disastrous) doomsday plot is smart enough not to plan it online. Everyone is afraid of the government these days. Half the webcams he peers through are covered by tape, and most of the “red flag” web searches are done on highly protected servers. The biggest national threat he’s come across in fifteen years was a very fat man eating furry and blue mayonnaise directly out of the jar.
Sandwich dinners at the Johnson house got a lot more complicated after that. Who knew you could get PTSD from moldy condiments?
Sam’s focus is blurring between the screen and his liquid lunch when Blake walks in, covered in purple goop and missing the left lens of his government-issued sunglasses. Sam does not notice him at first, not until the bottle he is nursing on like a wounded baby calf is removed from his hands and placed out of his reach on the control panel.
“Guess what I did?” Blake smiles down at him like he shot down Hitler himself. A drop of purple goop drips onto Sam’s shoulder. He brushes it off uncaringly. He really isn’t in the mood for another adventure tale, but there Blake goes, talking loudly about some weird device made with purple dish soap, a nuclear reactor, and baking soda, while gesticulating wildly with both hands.
Blake is shorter than he, and less muscular, but still was chosen to be a field agent over Sam’s stocky, thick build. Not that Sam’s jealous, of course. His husband is fast, stronger than he looks, quick with his gun, and good at talking people away from their various villainous devices. Blake is practically a superhero, even if he looks like the lovechild of a pageant drag queen and the color pink.
Yay for Blake.
Sam looks at the flickering fluorescent lights, pointedly ignoring the story. For such a high stakes operation, his office is extremely low-quality. He found thirteen roaches having a lovely Last Supper moment over his Twinkie last Wednesday. Maybe he should make a call to HQ, warn them about his “aversion” to mold, demand-
Blake whaps the back of his head. “Samuel, pretend to be excited, for like five seconds, please?”
Sam turns his head and smiles and pretends his teeth aren’t gritting.
“Yay for Blake.”
His husband sighs and leans against the control panel. “Listen, honey, I get it. But can you try just a little harder to care about what I do? This is big stuff, and it could mean a raise, and that could mean – I don’t know, a kid or something, or an actual house, or full meals instead of bread, whiskey, and a nap. Your job sucks. I won’t take that away from you. I wouldn’t want to be stuck watching…” Blake peers into the screen. “What exactly is this I’m watching?”
“Uh,” Sam squints and leans forward. “That would be a man drinking a concoction of chips and soda out of a fedora with a bendy straw.”
“Right.” He sighs again, heavier this time, and lets Sam reach by him for the vodka. The emergency alarm is blaring in the hallway anyway. “Make an effort. For me. And will you please stop drinking that shit? It’s a wonder you haven’t keeled over by now.” Blake’s hands stroke his short black hair once and then he’s gone, back to the field, back to saving the world, while Sam watches a strange man choke on rogue Dorito.
And no, he isn’t going to call an ambulance.
It takes him a few minutes to sink back into his drunken haze, where he can blissfully fade in and out of consciousness, and a few more to realize that the alarm outside has not yet stopped blaring, and the base is far more silent than it had been in years. Sam could not even hear Bobby Brown’s post-lunch trumpet show across the hall. Taco Tuesday does a number on that man.
Sam stands, stumbling only slightly (truly a feat), and pokes his head out of his office. Papers are strewn throughout the hallway, the water cooler is tipped to the side, and someone managed to lose their pants – on the ceiling? He’s known this base was a mess, but this seemed wrong, even for them.
A loud, unnatural roar echoes from somewhere to the left, where the President’s secret apocalypse bunker is hidden, followed by screams. Sam draws his gun. Unless Bobby got into the beans again, this day is about to get a lot more life threatening.
Eh. Whatever. Beats the dying fedora man.