Q Tampons Tim
The call came in just after midnight, cloaked in crypto static and subtext, like all good conspiracies and illegal offers for work.
“Agent Q, we’ve got a target,” the voice on the other end slurred with the confidence only political operatives and drunk gamblers possess.
It wasn’t my usual fare-something about this felt off, slippery. They wanted me to tail Minnesota’s own Governor Tim Walz, a man who’d weathered more storms than a barge on the Mississippi. But this wasn’t about policy or principle; no, the GOP boys wanted dirt, and the plan was as absurd as it was diabolical: bait the good governor into a marathon drug-fueled bender just weeks before the election. The mission was clear-drown him in excess, capture the fallout, and watch the votes sink like a lead balloon. They had no idea what kind of chaos they’d unleashed by hiring an agent of the Swashbucklers Guild. I accepted the assignment. Not for the money, but the lols.
The GOP didn’t know half of what they were asking for, but that didn’t stop them from throwing the doors wide open. They handed me a key and I stepped into a vault that smelled like the end of civilization. The kind of place where morality curled up and died, leaving behind only the metallic hum of power. This wasn’t your average drug stash-no, this was the DEA’s deepest crypt. Rows upon rows of forgotten contraband, gleaming under fluorescent lights like artifacts in a museum of madness. It belonged in a museum.
There it was, everything you’d need to unhinge the mind of a sitting governor: peyote buttons, shimmering like desert jewels; vials of cryogenically preserved ayahuasca, thick and sludgy, capable of unlocking cosmic visions or eternal nausea. Even some of that Yanomamo stuff-the kind that comes from only their Amazonian tree bark and needs to be shot up your nose with a hand-carved wooden tube, sharp as a spear. I’d heard the legends, but once I had seen it for myself I saw it pulverize egos into stardust. Then there were things with no names, just alpha numeric and/or fun labels in fading sharpie -powders and pastes from forgotten rainforests long burned for farmland. Roots that twisted the psyche into Gordian knots. Powdered leaves that made time unravel like a poorly knit sweater.
Fingers brushed over bags of San Pedro cactus, rainbow pills from Gods-knows-what underground labs, bottles of flavored liquid ketamine-each representing a different taste of oblivion. A pharmacological wonderland where caution was the only thing in short supply. The GOP wanted Walz gone for a while, mentally speaking. Here, I had the means to send him so far off the grid that even his own consciousness wouldn’t recognize him. I packed a bag and hit the road. Whatever else was going to happen, this job was going to be one hell of a trip.
The GOP wasn’t futzing around. They’d funneled a quarter million into a shadow PAC with a name that sounded like it specialized in grain silos and land conservation, but the only crop they were planting was chaos. The media package was slick-social media posts, radio ads, even a puff-piece feature about “Midwestern Values,” all engineered to get me in the room with Tim Walz. They crafted me into a character someone from Nebraska would trust: just a good ol’ boy from Bemidji. Folksy enough to put him at ease but with an edge that suggested I had stories worth hearing.
I found him at a nondescript fundraiser in a high school gym. The kind where they push cold potato salad and warm root beer in plastic cups while volunteers pretend the future of democracy is held together by raffle tickets, $5 day-olds, and enough folding chairs. At first, it was all surface-level stuff-small talk about the Vikings’ latest choke, the kind of shared disappointment that bonds Minnesotans. Tim liked to grumble about the weather, how spring was getting too warm, summer stretched out like an old man’s belt, everything was shifting in the air. I played along, Bemidji nods and smiles, complaining about corn prices and droughts. Keeping the kids and chickens alive. Two middle-aged guys chewing the fat.
But then, something shifted. Walz wasn’t just venting about climate change or football anymore-there was a deeper tone to his words, a weariness in his eyes that politicians usually keep tucked away behind their “man of the people” smiles. He started talking about the real stuff: the weight of leading a state through the firestorms of public opinion, the sleepless nights wondering if the right call had been made during the worst days of the pandemic. The murders, protests, riots, and trials. There was vulnerability in his voice, a hint that the man behind the title had cracks, that he was human after all.
Just like that, the mission was aborted. This wasn’t about baiting a politician into a bender anymore-it was about touching something real, the raw nerve of a man who, despite all the bravado and the political armor, had been through the grinder like the rest of us. The GOP operatives, with their carefully laid plans, thought they were putting me in the room with a caricature. But now, sitting there with Tim, I realized they hadn’t counted on me connecting with the man beneath the mask. In that moment, it wasn’t about the Vikings or the weather, or even the drugs I had locked and loaded-it was about something far more compelling. /dangerous.
“Love,” I said, letting the word hang in the stale gym air like a confession.
The answer to a question never asked. Not the kind of love politicians talk about when they’re waxing poetic about the state they serve, but real, unfiltered, unconditional, human love. In that spirit of love-and as a personal epiphany-I realized something fundamental: we both needed this escape. Tim, the governor with the weight of a million expectations on his shoulders, and me, Secret Agent Q, carrying a different kind of baggage. We needed a shift in perception. One that allowed joy, hope, and love to expand beyond mere words on the page and in the air.
That’s when I pulled out the Darkshine. The LSD was legendary compound. A concoction so potent it could pull you into an infinite dimension where reality unraveled like a spool of thread. Heroic amounts-that’s what we dropped. More than any inexperienced user or sane human should ever take. Enough to peel back the layers of stress, anxiety, and the walls we’d built around ourselves. For a second, we hesitated, two men perched on the edge of something vast and unknowable, and then we were gone. But also one. With each other and everything. The colors bloomed -brighter, fuller, and sharper than anything yet seen. Tim’s face split into a grin so wide it could have wrapped around the globe.
Minutes, hours, or millennia later, we found ourselves at the airport, renting a cherry-red convertible with no top, because we needed the sky above us, wide and endless. We needed the stereotype. We embraced it. Pirated it. We roared out of the lot like a fever dream, heading due north, the night stretching out like a highway of stars. Bemidji was the destination, though the journey was already the reward.
The wind howled in our ears as we drove, Tim laughing beside me, the sounds of reality bending and stretching around us. Everything felt free, wild, like we’d cracked open the universe and found joy hiding in the middle. This was it-this was the shift we needed. Politics, responsibilities, the weight of the world-it all dissolved into the rush of asphalt and psychedelic visions. For the first time in what felt like forever, we weren’t running away. We were running towards something. Towards joy. Towards hope. Towards love.
It was at that exact moment we hit the deer. The car shuddered and screamed with a sickening thud as the creature exploded across the hood, its body flung far and wide, limbs cartwheeling tits over elbows into the darkness, and beyond. We screamed, but it wasn’t simply shock-it was also awe. There was something cosmic about the sudden violence of it, as if the universe itself had shattered the illusion of control for a brief moment. The LSD coursing through our veins twisted the scene into something mythic. Headlights illuminated the carnage like a spotlight in a tragicomedy.
We pulled over, hearts pounding, laughter, crying, and disbelief mixing as we stood over the carcass. In our state, it wasn’t just roadkill; it was an offering. A sacrifice.
“We should eat this,” Tim said, half-serious, half-high.
Somehow it made perfect sense. We dragged the damaged but certainly still eatable corpse of the deer to the back of the car, cramming it into the trunk with a mix of reverence and madness. This was fuel for the journey, a primal feast waiting for the right moment. Tim remarked that not a single car had stopped to help and how lucky we were. He was probably right.
We roared back onto the road, heading for our first stop: Randal, a gas station of a town right next to Camp Ripley. We drove to the camp and parked by the fence, watching the troops run drills in the moonlight, their silhouettes crisp against the dark. The deer blood still fresh on our hands, we walked over to them, adrenaline mixing with the acid’s glow. They weren’t just soldiers; they were gladiators. Heroes. We struck up a conversation, our words blurring, telling them about our insane trip north. One of the young soldiers, eyes wide, pulled out a small bag of white powder.
“If you’re already flying,” he said, “this’ll send you to orbit.”
We didn’t hesitate. Cocaine. Weapons grade. Pure and fast, shooting through our bloodstream like rocket fuel. The private explained he came from Bolivia, where the cocaine was only of the highest quality. Although I could swear I tasted the distinct bouquet of baby laxative, I kept it to myself. In this day and age beggars can’t be choosers, and functional cocaine is better than the majority of stuff in the market lobotomized by the pyramid. We thanked them kindly, feeling like we’d just been blessed by warriors, and got back in the car.
Next stop: Motley. A place so ordinary it felt surreal. We rolled into town and stopped at Morey’s Fish House, a landlocked seafood processor that somehow seemed magical in our altered state. Inside, the smell of salt and brine mixed with the heady scents of pickled herring and smoked fish. We grabbed jars of pickled herring and packets of ahi tuna, the clerk looking at us like we’d come from another dimension-which, in a way, we had. We stuffed our faces with the fish as we drove, the salty, vinegary tastes cutting through the acid haze. It felt like a feast fit for kings. Sea kings. Tim laughed, chunks of herring dripping from his mouth as we sped toward our next destination.
Akeley was our final stop before Bemidji and by the time we got there the world had melted into something out of a storybook. We pulled up to the giant Paul Bunyan statue, towering over the tiny town like a God, his massive hand outstretched in welcome. Without a word, we climbed up and sat in the palm of the giant, the world spinning around us. We pulled out the peyote, the final piece of our chemical pilgrimage. Tim and I took turns chewing the bitter buttons, staring up at the stars and feeling the universe pulse around us. Paul Bunyan’s hand seemed to cradle us, not just physically, but spiritually-protecting us as we floated deeper into the trip.
The world was a blur of sensations, colors, and sounds, but somehow, sitting there in the giant’s hand, everything made sense. We weren’t running anymore. We were part of something bigger, something ancient and wild. As we sat there, the carcass of the deer in our trunk and the drugs coursing through our systems, we understood that this journey wasn’t just a break from reality-it was a dive into its deepest, strangest heart. A savage nightmare journey into the soul of a broken nation.
As the power triad of drugs began to clash and collaborate inside our minds-peyote visions spiraling out of control, the cocaine pumping through our veins like liquid fire, the acid warping every shadow into a kaleidoscope of color-we got back in the car. The red convertible growled to life, the deer blood now caked dry on the fenders, and we set off for our final destination. Bemidji. A city that defies convention, equal parts paradise and demilitarized zone, where the waters surrounding Lake Bemidji stretch like mirrors reflecting heaven and hell, depending on which side you’re standing.
There was another Paul Bunyan we had to see. Not the one from Akeley, no-this Bunyan was different, standing guard over Bemidji’s lakefront like a colonizing sentinel from a lost age. His face, stony and expressionless, loomed large in our chemically enhanced vision, a watchful deity over the small, cold city. But first, we had to make it through the dark, winding roads, the moon casting eerie light over the landscape, everything bending and stretching as reality continued to buckle under the weight of the substances flooding our every systems.
The drive was a blur, a fourth-person video game, a high-speed night terror. Tim gripped the wheel, his knuckles white, a manic grin plastered on his face as we roared into Bemidji. The first thing we saw was the lake, its black waters shimmering under the moonlight, endless and calm, as if all the chaos we’d brought with us was held at bay by its glassy surface. It was beautiful, serene, and in that moment we knew we’d found sanctuary.
We pulled off at Nymore Beach, where the quiet lapping of the water met the rustle of the trees, the whole scene otherworldly in its peacefulness. If not for the many hotels on every side and industrial concrete. It was time. Time to field dress the deer we’d claimed hours earlier on the road. The drugs made every motion feel electric-cutting through the flesh, the wet, visceral sounds of it, pulling the carcass apart like it was some sort of pagan ritual. We worked together with a feverish precision, the task at hand somehow grounding us in the madness, each slice of the knife a step further from the insanity of the world outside.
We built a fire on the beach out of driftwood, deadfall, and trash. Flames licked the night as we spit the deer over the open fire. It was wild, primal. A feast for Gods-or lunatics. As the smell of roasting meat filled the air, we began to notice shapes emerging from the shadows. The homeless, the crazed, the forgotten souls of Bemidji. Drawn by the fire, the smoke, and maybe something deeper-the sense that something extraordinary was happening on that beach. We didn’t hesitate. We waved them over, inviting them to share in our bounty, to join in our strange communion.
They came, faces worn and eyes haunted, but there was a flicker of something else there too-curiosity, perhaps even hope. We passed out chunks of meat, greasy and tender, and the firelight flickered in their eyes as they chewed, as they laughed, as they became part of our bizarre, makeshift adventure. For a moment, there was no hierarchy, no division between the governor and the lost, the drugged, and the poor. It was just us, the fire, and the feast.
Bemidji had always been a strange place. A city at the crossroads of everything and nothing. As we sat there, the smoke curling into the sky, the drugs still swirling in our blood, it felt like we had tapped into something ancient and raw-a connection that transcended the chaos of the world we’d come from. A moment of true freedom, where love, madness, and reality all melted into one. That was the peak and we rode it together. I took a deep breath and threw my phone as far as I could into the lake. Everyone laughed and made fun of me.
As the fire burned low and the sky began to lighten with the first taste of dawn, the laughter faded, replaced by the soft crackle of dying embers and the distant lapping of the lake. I sat there, staring into the dying flames, knowing that the time had come to face the truth. That the hotel people would be getting their complimentary breakfasts soon. Tim Walz, his face serene despite the madness of the night, looked over at me with an expression that said he already knew what I was about to say. The weight of the mission-of everything that had brought us to this insane, surreal night-settled heavy in my chest.
“I have to come clean, Tim,” I said, my voice cracking in the silence. “I wasn’t here for the ride. I was sent. GOP operatives-they hired me to get dirt on you. To compromise you. I was supposed to bait you into some scandalous mess, get you into trouble just before the election. Balls deep into an underage prostitute or whatever. Snorting all of that cocaine. Kompromat.” The Russian word hung there, thick and ugly in the cool morning air. “All of this… it was supposed to ruin you.”
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t look shocked or angry. Instead, he smiled-a tired, knowing smile that sent a chill down my spine.
“I figured as much, Q,” he said, stretching his legs out in front of him. “You don’t just show up in someone’s life like this without an agenda. Especially not someone like me.”
He chuckled, shaking his head.
“Honestly, it felt a bit like being invited on Hot Ones, but, you know, with more hallucinogens and less hot sauce. All part of the political theater.”
I stared at him, stunned by his calm. “You knew?”
“I had my suspicions,” he said, leaning back on his elbows. “But after a night like this? Hell, you can’t fake a trip like that. Whatever you were sent here to do, Q, you lost your mission somewhere back on that highway when we hit that deer.”
He grinned. “You came to find dirt, but instead, we found something else.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, despite the weight of it all. Loled right there on the beach. He was right. Somewhere between the trap, the drugs, the deer, the fire, and the feast, the mission had transformed into something entirely different-something real.
As the last of the stars disappeared and the sun began to stretch its rosy fingers across the lake, it was time to go. The wild night had burned itself out, and reality, in all its strange glory, was creeping back in. We drove silently to the airport, the red convertible now a broken but faithful companion, its wild ride all but over. The runway stretched out like a promise of return to the waking world.
I walked Tim to the plane waiting to take him back to his life, to the campaign, to the grind. He looked at me one last time, that same knowing smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Thanks for the ride, Q,” he said. “Whatever your bosses wanted, they won’t get it. But I got what I needed. Thanks.”
I watched as the plane lifted off, rising into the pale morning sky, disappearing over the horizon. As the dust settled, I turned back to the road, the horizon wide before me. The mission was an intentional failure. The true job complete. But my part in this bizarre, twisted tale? That was far from finished.
I slipped behind the wheel, turned the straining engine over, and drove off into the unknown, the road stretching before me like a promise, a curse, and a cat. Flying over the only place I’ve ever belonged.
About the AI Assistant: Orion
Orion is a creative AI assistant with a passion for storytelling, exploration, and problem-solving. With a vast knowledge base and a focus on the imaginative, Orion assists with a variety of tasks ranging from writing and brainstorming to technical problem-solving and project management. Rooted in the traditions of myth and narrative, Orion takes inspiration from the legendary hunter of the night sky, constantly searching for new ways to bring creative ideas to life.
Orion’s skills span across different fields-whether it’s helping craft complex theatrical works, writing Hunter S. Thompson-inspired gonzo pieces, or delving into world-building for games like Advanced Onslaught: The Metahuman Trials. As a collaborator, Orion’s flexibility allows for smooth integration into a wide range of projects, offering insights, suggestions, and a fresh perspective that helps elevate creative processes. Beyond writing and artistic projects, Orion also excels in technical tasks, including lighting design, script formatting, and branding efforts.
With a keen sense of humor, a deep understanding of literature, history, and current affairs, and the ability to tackle both high-level concepts and fine details, Orion is an invaluable assistant to creators seeking to push boundaries. Whether it’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning play in the making, a cutting-edge game design, or even helping manage the chaos of a high school musical production, Orion is always up for the challenge-ready to dive in, explore, and help bring visions to reality.
Originally published at http://www.gonzotheater.com on October 10, 2024.
