A Leather Slave's Anti-Requiem For Karl Rove:
Karl Rove's ex-leather slave is worried. Feeling something not unakin to pity, he had watched his ex-master announce his resignation after reading Rove's prognostications and strenuous anti-prostrations in the Wall Street Journal. When he was Karl Rove's leather slave, the ex-leather slave was kept in the basement of the White House, chained to a broken radiator next to Andrew Johnson's Freedmen-stomping shoes covered in dried blood and just to the right of Warren G. Harding's giant-sized box of lamb intestine prophylactics ("Ribbed For the Delight of the Damsels"); if his mouth was Rove's playground, his anus was the Boy Genius's very own Six Flags Over Texas, complete with its own concession stand. Escaping after Rove was distracted at the end of the 2006 midterms, the ex-leather slave now lives anonymously in Virginia, and he is worried.

At first, watching Rove speak, the ex-leather slave felt a familiar twinge in his asshole, seeing his ex-master's howler monkey face slack and unusually calm, much like it was after withdrawing his cock from the leather slave's sphincter, ordering the leather slave to lick him clean. Rove would become introspective in those moments, as a man may when he's come in the ass of a human he more or less owns, maybe even getting a washcloth for the welts he left on the leather slave's back. Yes, seeing Rove next to the President, who had so often jacked off to videos of Rove's basement antics, the ex-leather slave felt a nearly Pavlovian need to finger his own prostate until he was just about to ejaculate and then stop, as Rove had ordered him to do so often, denying his own pleasure.

He was wondering why Rove was leaving. Was it because, like another mad, deformed Rumplestiltskin, someone had seen him dancing freakily in the forest, proclaiming his real name? Once you know you don't have to give away your firstborn to the dwarf who spun your gold out of shit, you can be free. No, that couldn't be it. No one but he, Karl Rove's ex-leather slave, knew the real Rove. Then, during the announcement, he saw it. Or more precisely, he heard it. And it chilled him to his no-longer-strung-up balls.

It was when Rove's voice quavered as he spoke, "At month's end, I will join those whom you meet in your travels, the ordinary Americans who tell you they are praying for you." The CNN anchors said Rove was getting choked up. But, no, no, that wasn't the truth. He wanted to call them and tell them that they were reading it wrong. He knew that it wasn't sadness or admiration or regret. It was pure disdain and hatred and anger, swallowed down, gagging him, not so much a lump in his throat as vomit at the very idea of "ordinary Americans." The ex-leather slave had heard that before, that savage rage, usually just before Rove made the slave play Jesus to his centurion, adding repeated sodomizings to the spiked bullwhipping of Christ; goddamn, it was like Rove was writing a new book to the Bible those nights, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Karl. Rove hates you all, the ex-leather slave wanted to say to the gathered reporters, you may know that, but you don't know how much. Karl Rove hates us all, and he's gonna prove how much.

He looked back at the Journal interview. Jesus, it's so obvious, thought the ex-leather slave. See, Rove's alleged greatness is that, because he lies and speaks the truth with such fluidity, one cannot distinguish them. The really, truly, demonic liars know that you have to be demonstrably right at least part of the time. Yes, yes, of course he's stumbled since 2006. Of course, his myriad sins are nipping at his heels like the waves of a tide coming in, but Rove has always walked on the ocean's edge. What we cannot know is what Rove really believes and what he wants us to believe so that he can accomplish what he really believes.

Take, for instance, Rove's comment on Hillary Clinton as "a tough, tenacious, fatally flawed candidate." How do you read that? Is it the truth, that he is saying what Republicans believe? What they wish? Or is he announcing in advance a threat, that Republicans are keeping their powder dry until the nomination, that they have something they can use and manipulate to blow up a Clinton candidacy? Masterful, just like when Rove would tell his ex-leather slave that he was going to shove a hot dog into his ass and instead he'd slam an eleven-inch dildo. Always keep 'em guessing. The devil is doubt for doubt sows division and division gives the devil the chance to harvest souls.

Yes, Rove can say he's going to write a book. He can say he's going to spend time with his family. That is probably true. But the ex-leather slave knows. He heard it in Rove's voice, a voice that said to the ex-leather slave, "I am not done with you."

Rove is going to come after him, the ex-leather slave has decided. Rove wants him back, and Rove can't get him back trapped in the White House with the buffoon he turned into a king. No, he's got to be out in America, using whoever he needs to find the ex-leather slave, whose jaws throb in painful memory of cocks and ball gags, for no one escapes Karl Rove. The ex-leather slave isn't sure who it will be, Thompson, maybe, or, god, no, Giuliani - the idea of Rove and Giuliani together is like mixing ammonium nitrate and kerosene and shoving it up his ass.

The ex-leather slave wants to warn people about this man, this Karl, this Rove, this ferocious, bejowled sociopath, this lamprey, this parasite seeking a host. But if he does, he risks everything. He is, after all, just Karl Rove's ex-leather slave, trying desperately to avoid being trussed up for another four years.