Quint Solfanger sincerely hoped he was the last to arrive for the big occasion. He entered
through the unguarded stadium door and quickly mixed into the bustling throng of people on the
arena floor. He scanned the crowd and estimated it numbered close to a thousand or more. All wore
shirts and hats for and against various peoples and parties. Literally everyone held signs and banners
that screamed the name of their fearless leader, President Lügner (Lug) Widerlich.
Quint worked his way to a point near the front of the stage where a group of burly men stood
to keep the exuberant crowd back. He found a spot nearby where he could observe his intended
target and the followers before making a final decision. Quint waited impatiently for the show to
begin.
Soon a slick-looking man stepped up to the podium and began to speak an introduction.
“Hello and welcome. How wonderful to see such a big turnout tonight, a big night for us
Luggers and—”
Quint made mental notes as he observed the cheering, jostling, and hooting people. He hoped
he would not have to wait much longer for the big moment—there was the damned parking lot
incident to consider and if that was noticed it could really muck up his plan.
Finally, the speaker ended his spiel.
“Okay folks, enough of me talking. I know why you’ve come, and who you want to see. So,
without any further delay, here he is, our man in the Whitehouse and Godsend to the country, Lug
Widerlich!”
The crowd went wild with applause and shouts as a big man with a tanned face and well-styled
hair strode confidently onto the stage. Quint noticed with amusement that a few women (and men)
began to swoon and faint. Widerlich stepped up to the podium and raised his arms over his head,
hands clasped together in a self-congratulatory manner. He waited while his jubilant followers roared
and stamped their feet. Finally he lowered his arms and held up the palms of his hands to his ecstatic
audience. Everyone in the arena knew the drill; it was time to quiet down.
Lug Widerlich smiled broadly.
“Hello people! How are my fans tonight? I can tell you how I’m doing and how the country is
doing tonight—tremendously wonderful!”
The crowd burst into more frantic applause and cheering.
Widerlich held up his hands again for quiet.
“I’ve come here tonight to speak about our enemies, the country’s enemies. The people who
have no interest in you and are hell-bent on destroying me with their fake—”
Quint heard a shout from the back of the arena. “Widerlich is a crook and is destroying the
country. Lock him up, lock him up, lock him—”
Quint turned and saw a man in the upper level being punched by the people surrounding him.
Finally, four men grabbed the screaming, bloodied heckler and made to throw him off the upper
level.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Widerlich commanded. The men stopped.
“That’s right put him down now. Thanks for showing such loyalty guys. These people always
try to break up my speeches with their lies, but you guys always step in. Thanks.”
Widerlich smiled a thin hard smile.
“Now get him out of here. Don’t be too gentle now and when he is outside, who knows what
could happen to him?”
He laughed as the protester was shoved, kicked, and punched out the door. Quint saw a
determined man in bib overalls follow him outside.
Widerlich sketched a mock salute to the closing door.
“Adios amigo. As I was saying. We all have to—”
The man who had followed the protester burst back into the upper level.
“There’s a goddamn spaceship out in the parking lot. Holy shit, you gotta—”
“Hey up there,” shouted Widerlich, “Who’s giving the speech halfwit? Me or you?”
The man hesitated. “But it’s true. Darn thing crushed the whole front end of my pickup truck
and—”
Damnation! Quint thought, but then was relieved when several black clad security people hastily
grabbed the man and clapped a bag over his head before dragging him away.
The man—one Rufus Buckshot from Blue Ridge, Georgia—was found years later by his wife,
Dolores, in Smolensk, working as a conductor second-class on the inner-city commuter tram.
Saturday nights he moonlighted as a symbolic interpretive dancer at Club Moskva. When
confronted by his wife while performing on stage, he ran away in terror screaming, ‘Ham sandwich
and soup!’ After his escape he eventually settled down as a flamenco guitarist in an obscure sherry
bar outside of Madrid, playing for drinks and tips.
After the reluctant Rufus was carried out of sight, Lügner Widerlich smiled and continued,
“Don’t listen to him people. No such a thing as climate change or UFOs, big opposition plot that’s
all. Now settle down.”
He continued his speech to the faithful, delivering his usual greatest hits that were red meat for
his adoring minions. Chants of Build that moat! and Lock up the Europeans! rocked the hall. Quint
closed his eyes—absorbing all the rancor and rage that was thick as a noxious fog around him—and
made his decision. He glanced down at the small widget on his belt that had a series of tiny studs.
Diversion time, he thought and began to laugh loudly. A couple nearby who had matching shirts that
read “Ignorance is Bliss” looked at him and began to frown in puzzlement.
Quint shouted at the man on stage.
“Ach, what a pretentious boor you are.”
Widerlich paused—his face turning a bit red—and looked down in his direction. “What did you
say?”
“Oh, sorry. I did say you were a pretentious boor, but upon reflection it was a bit of an
understatement. I should have said you were an apple-faced, half-witted baboon, with pine sap for a
brain, who is vying to become a pretentious boor. Will that suffice, you bloviating stench from an
elephant’s hindquarters?”
There was a hush over the entire arena. Widerlich’s eyes looked as if they could spout hellfire.
The moment was brief—Widerlich pointed at him.
“Get that guy and throw him out!”
With a collective roar, the crowd and security guys surged towards him. Quint calmly punched a
stud on the widget. The Rejexit Mark V protective screen surrounded him with a faint purple
shimmer—the mob converged.
A hairy man with a huge gut tried to grip Quint in a bear hug. He was immediately catapulted
back at the surrounding throng. On his outward trajectory he bowled over a few dozen angry
people—including a toothless grandpa who had a pink-iced donut with sprinkles fiercely clenched in
his gums.
One of the black-clad security men, Sammy Fracker, was next. He tried to clout Quint with a
baton, but the club rebounded back at Sammy’s head with such force he dropped like a sack of
mildewed potatoes.
Sammy came out of his self-inflicted coma a month later and promptly ran away with a
wandering troupe of performing Jack Russell terriers, where he achieved a modicum of fame as the
singing fire-hydrant.
Others tried to attack Quint, all were repelled like popcorn exploding on a hot buttered griddle.
A wide angry circle finally cleared around him. One guy took a shot at Quint with a pistol. The
bullet ricocheted away and blew up the poor pink-iced donut with sprinkles that the grandpa still
held clamped in his gums. The sprinkles shot everywhere and temporarily blinded Doris Raymond
from Slapout, Oklahoma. Hands clasped over her sprinkle-shot eyes, she ran in a panic,
unfortunately straight into one of the huge wooden columns supporting the upper level of the arena.
Doris woke up three days later, her sight restored. She proclaimed it a miracle, telling the
bemused medical staff she had been visited by a large cheese blintz in flowing robes who had told
her the true purpose of life. The next day she moved to San Francisco and became a shaman living
in a large cardboard box in an alley near Market Street. Her ardent followers include two calico cats,
a dog named Klinkers, and beat patrolman Mulvaney.
Grandpa—remnants of the mortally wounded pink-iced donut spattered on his enraged face—
jumped on the pistol wielding guy and began to chomp on his neck. The man screamed and
dropped the pistol which immediately went off. The bullet hit a control panel that promptly
dropped Lug Widerlich’s speech-ending grand finale balloons and glitter on his followers. The entire
crowd of Luggers erupted in rage and attacked one another in outraged frustration over such an
abbreviated ranting from their dear leader.
The throng now ignoring him, Quint pushed another stud and popped up on stage next to the
stunned President. He smiled sunnily at him.
“Well that worked out well now didn’t it? Ready to go?”
Widerlich recovered himself quickly. “Go where? I not going anywhere, dimbulb.”
He pointed an index finger at Quint.
“And just who the hell are you? You’re going to pay for making me look ridiculous in front of
the rubes.”
Quint laughed. “Oh no, my fine specimen. It is I who will be paid, and handsomely. You see, I
am Quint Solfanger, a collector and supplier of—”
Widerlich bellowed. “Doesn’t matter. When my people are done with you, you won’t be
collecting anything but a disability check. That is, until I cut the funding for that program.”
He signaled to a group of men at the back of the stage sporting long truncheons who quickly
came out and surrounded Quint. Smiling, they raised their clubs to strike—Quint pushed another
stud and vanished with the President. With their boss and intended victim gone, the frustrated thugs
fell on each other in blind fury amidst the drifting balloons and softly falling glitter.
A member of the audience, Rob Tuppy—who had paused from bludgeoning a fellow Lugger
with a ceramic statue of Widerlich—saw the scene unfold.

Years later working as a headwaiter at a Denny’s in Billings, Montana, Rob would recount that it
was, ‘The finest dang finale he ever had the privilege of attending.’
Lug Widerlich woke up inside of what appeared to be a very large canning jar. Quint was
looking in at him.
“Perfect, awake at last. Welcome aboard my craft. Sorry you weren’t conscious for the journey,
I’m sure the conversation would have been quite amusing. Anyway, I’ve got you all packaged up and
ready for pickup.”
Widerlich stood up and said, “Pickup? Come on let’s make a deal. Let me out now and I’ll cut
you in on my action. The money is huge, believe me, these people will buy into anything I tell
them.”
Quint shook his head and said, “As I began telling you earlier; I am a collector and supplier of
fine delicacies to only the most discerning tastes of the galaxy. I have to say that until I heard about
you, I was going to grab a rotting Mammoth corpse that had been defrosting in the Siberian tundra
for a few months. My clients, you see are the Croobezk, who are the inhabitants of the planet
Odious Kugelfang. We have just made a landing near their capital city and they are coming to take
delivery. The Croobezk are desirous of—”
He paused and turned as a large door behind him opened. Widerlich looked past him and his
tan faded to the shade of vanilla.
Quint said, “Ah, here they are now. Now, as I was saying they are desirous of something new,
totally revolting, filthy, and disgusting. Something that will pair well with a finely aged glass of
Plexion goat sweat. You, are, shall we say, a sample for their edification.”
Widerlich screamed and beat against the glass as he was hauled away by large wasp-like beings
with nasty looking mandibles.
A day later a Croobezk with scintillating hues of green and purple on its carapace came to visit
Quint at his ship.
“Greetings trader,” it lisped in a low buzz. “I must tell you the specimen you provided was
unusually awful. So foul and reeking—we all loved it, especially the head, which was so ecstatically
horrid and went so well with a warmed stein of Rolfgut twizzle. May I enquire what they are called,
and if you have a further supply of these disgusting delicacies?”
Quint stopped counting the gold bars he had received for his cargo and smiled broadly at the
creature.
“Oh, yes there are more. They call them supreme leaders or dictators, and if I run out of them,
there are always the followers. They are not quite as rancid as this one, but still fairly repulsive and
repugnant. Would you like to place an order now?”

Alex Starke is a graduate of the University of Oregon with a degree in Medieval Studies and a minor in Early Modern European History. He is now back at Lane Community College  pursuing a degree in Multimedia Design.  Alex met his wonderful wife, Anne, while singing in the Johann Strauss operetta, Die Fledermaus. He and Anne currently reside in Eugene, Oregon with their Pack of Jack Russell terriers. Alex loves to write on almost any topic from travel to Sci-Fi short stories. He also loves doing photography in many genres. When not writing, doing photography, studying, or traveling you will find him most afternoons in his backyard flinging the sacred orb  for Thor, his #1 Jack Russell.

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