Death Of Pedro,

They say he died quickly. Nothing too dramatic, but still it was one heck of show. A line of ants decorated the table and, as I reminded myself that this had all really happened, I started reading the article about the event in which I was the protagonist.

It wasn’t a dark night and it wasn’t raining. Nothing seemed to indicate that it would be a bad day. Birds were hiding from the stupidity of ten-year-olds and squirrels were having heart attacks after discovering the giant plastic nuts thrown away the minute their novelty wore out. These were all indicators of a normal day in the painfully, abnormal United States’ suburb.

As my neighbors waved United States flags all over the building to visually stimulate the patriotic gland in every American (and the paranoid gland on those who are not), I wondered how many of them would wave some other flag the minute the US went under. I’m sure my piece-of-shit landlord will wave the Irish flag the minute they say the US is “no more.” He will take his drunken ass and swim (if he has to) to his so-called Irish homeland and claim he never liked those American bastards.

I walked out of my neighborhood and finally got to the God forsaken street where my work is at. It was there where I got the terrible news. The news I guessed should have shocked me, amazed me, or shaken me to the bones. They probably wanted me to shit my pants. The Terror level in our building should’ve gone to Brown, the color shit, or turned into Darker Brown, the color of, well, darker shit. My boss, who’s usually a real asshole, greeted me with concern. He was amazed that I had managed to get to work at such a difficult time. The terrorists apparently had attacked my building with biological weapons. Yes, shit, the terrorists.

As I watched on TV my own building being quarantined by alien-looking federal agents, I decided I didn’t want my dirty underwear to be displayed on international TV, so I ran back. It’s not like if I ran too far; I didn’t hurt myself. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get into the apartments, but luckily most of the agents there were local with a high incompetence level, so I was able to sneak around the back.

Call me vain or call me proud, but I ran to my room and took my “tightie-whities” off my window, sat back on my dirty couch, and watched TV to catch my breath after the run. I just didn’t want anyone to see them, all right, so sue me! I wasn’t going to just sit there and watch Jerry Springer forever, so after the commercials started I was up again. I saw a couple of mosquitoes flying around the room and I obviously got annoyed. I didn’t really have any of those canned, spray chemicals so I did it the old fashioned way, with a frying pan.

I think I killed like thirty or forty of those filthy critters. But there was one that was very elusive. I took an old strawberry jam jar and tried to trap it, and luckily I did. As I danced my little victory dance, I heard an army of boots walking underneath my floor. With white suites, masks and all the X-files crap, they broke into my apartment and caught me dancing with a mosquito trapped in a strawberry jam jar. Apparently that was a felony. I definitely failed to grasp the severity of the situation when I first saw it on the news. The quick and dirty summary of it all: the so-called biological weapon was a massive deployment of mosquitoes that carried the West Nile virus or something similar to it. Shit! The terrorist had allied with the mosquitoes! Why Al Qaeda?! why?! (I don’t care if I misspelled the name, don’t kill me or blow me up ok).

It took them five minutes to get me out of there. I had the jar in my right hand with the trapped mosquito freaking out. For some reason, when I saw a curious reporter trying to get through the barricade with his little note pad and tape recorder, I yelled: “They’re going to kill Pedro.” With that sentence I created a conspiracy worthy of any sci-fi show. The reporter scrambled to write the story he thought would make him a famous. I was being carried away by outer space Village People and the world was watching. Somehow I was famous, just because I came back to hide my dirty underwear.

After a bumpy ride and a very awkward cavity search I found myself in the barest room I’ve ever seen. I thought to myself, this had to be one of those interrogation room, like on TV, except the fluorescent light covered most of the ceiling – no dangling light bulb – and there was a TV on the top right part of the room tuned in to a stereotypical twenty four hour news channel. The drawback was that the TV was in mute, the air conditioning on freezer mode, and I just had a t-shirt. They took my jar and the underwear I had in my hand. Don’t ask me why they took the underwear but they did. After all the trouble I had to go through to get those, they ended up been passed from hand to hand in a FBI office as evidence of some weird federal law that prohibits capturing West-Nile virus carrying mosquitoes.

So it entered the federal agent, with a default mad face. He hated me even before I started to talk. How do I know this? He verbally professed his feelings towards me as he entered the room. Apparently the office was inundated with journalist and conspiracy theory nuts claiming they killed Pedro, the FBI loathes all that attention. After their little show back in my tenement you would think that they found something, but they didn’t. After all, it was a hype, a fake, a blown out of proportion complain made by one of my crazy neighbors and taken seriously by my stupid landlord.

“I’m telling you Shamus, the terrorists are using mosquitoes as weapons of mass destruction. In fact I bet this whole epidemic of mosquitoes in the building has something to do with them!” said, the mentally handicapped moron that lives across the hall from me, to my equally stupid piece of shit Irish landlord earlier today.

“Look kid, I know this is all a blown out of proportion misunderstanding. For your sake, I hope I’m right. Because if it is a prank, and I find out you have anything to do with it, you might find yourself in a world of trouble,” with that statement, he left, and another younger agent arrived. He had my underwear, and the jar, but no mosquito. I wanted to stand up but the agent advised me not to, which really meant I was not allowed to stand up yet. As it turns out, today I was going to be the FBI’s bitch.

A few hours later, I was in a conference room waiting for my turn to be in the spotlight. I’ve stuffed my dirty underwear on the jar and in an elementary school sneaky way I placed the jar under my shirt, it looked like I had a weird tumor or my belly was incredibly swollen. The older agent, whom I wanted to call Bob but really was named Manuel, gave me a piece of paper that said official statement. It was basically a script. I had to say what was written or my ass would have an encounter with the unforgiving genitalia of an angry inmate. So, after careful consideration I decided to read the statement like if I was seven years old. Don’t ask me why, I just thought I could show my discontent about their policy of making me the culprit or at least the main suspect.

“When the agents arrived at Apartment 213 I was watching Television and they politely asked me to go with them. They informed me of the situation and obviously I was alarmed. In all the commotion I got a bit confused and yelled that they killed Pedro, my cat. I apologize for any problems or negative impressions that statement might have created. Thank you and God bless America,” all was said in a cute seven year old voice by me, a scruffy looking twenty-five year old.

Manuel’s eyes surveyed the room and ended directly on me. He was not pleased. The press was silent, dead silent. The only thing that could be heard was the eerie sound of the TV crew’s lights. The little red light on top of the TV camera was still on and I guess the people at home were as quiet and in shock as the press in the room. I smiled and moved out of the podium. Two agents grabbed my arms, much harder than before and Manuel followed. When the FBI’s press secretary moved in to the podium a unified wild barrage of angry questions from the journalists attacked him like a rabid pack of wolves. In one swift and firm voice he said, “No more questions.” They never got to ask a single question.

I could still here the angry remarks of the journalist. Everyone in the room was angry but me. The FBI, the journalist, and heck even my mom was angry. When I was finally out of sight of the journalist the agents let go and Manuel grabs my shirt.

“Look you little piece of shit! What the fuck was that about? What are you trying to do? You think this is funny? I swear if you do some shit like that one more time I’m going to beat the shit out of you even if it means loosing my job, which anyway I think I might loose because of you! And if I do, you’re going to be sorry, because the last thing I’m going to do with my official gun is shoot you’re punk ass,” he wasn’t kidding. He was angry and uncomfortably close to my face once again. “I don’t know what we are going to do to fix this mess you fucking punk,” he then turned to the other agents. “Where the fuck is damage control? Get me damage control on the phone now!” after he was done screaming at them he turned to the press secretary, “What the fuck was that all about? Aren’t you supposed to fix stuff like this after it happens? That’s your job you idiot! You don’t just say ‘no questions,’ that’s stupid! We’re going to have thousands of people that are going to think this is some sort of conspiracy because you can’t simply tell them this kid is a dumbass.”

“Sir, I’m pretty sure I can’t say he’s a dumbass on television,” said the very daring and smartass press secretary.

“Fuck you,” that’s all Agent Manuel Dahmer said to the press secretary. Then he stormed off and lit a cigarette on his way out.

So I was let go, with one condition, to restrict myself from talking to the press. They even made me sign a contract which basically said I was not allowed to talk to anyone about anything related to this case. So I left the office, with every single agent looking at me with eyes that could only convey total and unregulated hatred. When I stepped out of the building I had a jar stuffed with dirty underwear, but once I was out, I had hundreds of people asking me questions and harassing me like if I was a celebrity. I turned back and an agent stopped me.

“Am I going to get an escort?” I foolishly asked. All he had to do was look at me. He didn’t care if I died or lived; in fact he got a bit of satisfaction by seeing me suffer. So he smiled, and sarcastically said, “We’ll work on it.” At that point, I was wondering if my defiance was going cost me more than I could afford. I looked at the crowd of crazy people and I figured it couldn’t be that bad.

So there I was, dodging every lunatic in town. I was going to attempt to return to my boring life, but it was too late. So there I was, sitting on the kitchen/all-purpose table filled with ants, reading an article on the Rolling Stones about the death of Pedro. I still had the underwear in a jar, and my apartment still had mosquitoes rooming around preying on my exposed legs. The TV was on and my name was mentioned, but Pedro was the star. They even had an artist rendition of Pedro. A lower-middle class, hippie-wannabe Latino, with a Santana t-shirt, a bit scruffy and a bit overweight, that was how they described him. It was just like me, the twin brother I never knew existed. I was confused but more than that, I was worried.

Are people in this country that stupid? I saw men and women with candles singing religious songs in Spanish, they all had signs that read “R.I.P. Pedro, que descanse en paz.” I looked out the window and tried to figure out if an ultra paranoid government created an ultra paranoid country. I knew the answer, so I didn’t work on it for too long. Sure, I wasn’t particularly happy with our incompetent government but the people weren’t exactly models of genius.

So I turned on the TV and watched the news for a bit. The president appeared, looking like a confused monkey he began to speak.

“My fellow Americans, it is tragic that the terrorist and evildoers are using nature to threaten us. I salute the swift action of the law enforcement agencies and assure the American people that we are working for the safety of the American people and the American way of life. On September the eleventh two thousand one America was attacked, but the terrorist did not win, and will not win. We will prevail in our efforts to fight the terrorist in their own land. We have reason to believe the terrorist that attacked the tenement last week were from Syria and Libya and we are giving them an ultimatum. We have been patient with the Syrian and Libyan governments but now it’s the time to act. We have credible sources that inform us they might be developing biological weapons of mass destruction to use against the American people. President Bashar al-Asad and Colonel Muammar Gadhafi must step down as heads of state on their respective countries or we will have to use any means necessary…” and so the president will bomb two other countries.

So as the worried Americans are busy with Pedro the other Americans are worried about Syria and Libya. Americans don’t even have to die anymore to feel threatened by other countries or to bomb them for that matter. So, what will happen in the next few months? Who knows, and by now who cares. You can either get fucked, duped, or reach a point of pure apathy towards society. Guess were I am? So I’m going to sit back with my jar stuffed with underwear and wait for the end of the world to occur any minute now. I’ll let the niceties of American life blind me to what’s really happening, to make me not ask a single questions (that matters).

A few weeks later, as we bomb the crap out of Syria and Libya, an article appeared in Rolling Stones magazine. It ended with a great quote, “Americans want their news like the want their foreign films, confusing, leaving them with many questions that they won’t even try to answer because it’s all entertainment to them.” So there it was the truth as we saw it in the foreign movies, Pedro died unjustly; Libya and Syria had weapons of mass destruction and as for me, I had a cat named Pedro; no more questions asked. Except for one why did they have to make me say Pedro was a cat, I hate cats.