“Richard?”
Former Vice President Cheney couldn’t hear the voice over the crackling of fire and screaming, so the figure that approached him spoke louder, “Oh, my Dark Lord, could it be Richard Cheney? Former Vice President Richard Cheney?”
Cheney turned to face a short man with an outrageously long, curled moustache. His clothes were colourful and ornate, and he spoke with an accent. Cheney had never been good at placing accents, so he democratically treated everybody with an accent with the veiled hostility he reserved for potential enemies.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Cheney growled. “Who wants to know?”
The foreigner bowed deeply. “My name is Tomas de Torquemada,” he said. “I’m your biggest fan!”
“I don’t do autographs,” Cheney responded. “You never know where the bastards will end up.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Torquemada assured him. “Just being in the presence of such a great man is enough.”
“Great, eh?” Cheney’s lip curled ever so slightly in what was, for him, a smile.
“Si. Si. You -“
Just then, somebody nearby screamed in agony as birds pecked at his intestines. “Shall we find someplace more…amenable to conversation?” Torquemada asked. Cheney was suspicious, but he agreed nonetheless; it’s not like he had anything better to do. Torquemada made as if to take his arm, but, taking in Cheney’s dirty look, decided against it. “How about…that cave?” Torquemada asked, pointing to a recess in the vast rock cavern a few yards from where they were standing.
Cheney reluctantly allowed himself to follow Torquemada. “Who did you say you were, again?” he asked.
“Tomas de Torquemada,” the man answered mildly. “You may not know my name, but you probably know my most famous work: the Spanish Inquisition?”
“Heard about it,” Cheney, mumbling, allowed.
“It made all the papers,” Torquemada off-handedly commented. Becoming more animated, he continued: “But, you! You were magnificent!”
“You think?” Cheney asked, a note of pride creeping into his voice.
“Absolutely!” Torquemada responded admiringly, flicking a piece of somebody’s brains off his shoulder. “When I used the ‘water cure,’ it was a well-established and popular method of statecraft. It cost me nothing to subject the guilty to it in order to extract their confessions.
“But, you! Your country hadn’t condoned torture in 50 years!”
“Enhanced interrogation techniques,” Cheney insisted.
“You say tomato, I say torture,” Torquemada breezily responded. “The point is, your country hadn’t officially condoned it in decades. In fact, it was responsible for the international laws that had made torture illegal. (Illegal, but, thankfully, not entirely eliminated.) At that point in your country’s history, it would take a very brave high public official to authorize the use of the technique – you were that man!”
“Yeah,” Cheney cackle/chuckled – cachuckled. “There were a lot of pussies in the country who refused to do what needed to get done to keep it safe.”
“This is exactly what I am talking about!” Torquemada enthused as an unidentifiable screaming figure on fire ran past the mouth of the cave, followed by dozens of screeching fire-mice. “A lesser man would have let the matter drop when he left public life. But, not you! You kept arguing in favour of torture long after members of the Liberal elite media – yes! I’ll say it! The Liberal elite media! – decided that it was ‘wrong.’ Your constancy in your principles is admirable.”
“Well, thank you,” Cheney said. If he had had the capacity for abashment, he would have shown signs of it at this point.
“No, thank you,” Torquemada quickly responded. “It does a poor heart good to know that in these days of plummeting moral standards – oh, yes! I keep up! – there is still a man of principle who is willing to stand up for torture.”
“Oh, well -” Cheney started, but was cut off by Torquemada’s onrushing enthusiasm.
“It must gall you to know that you are being vilified for your courageous stand,” he said.
“What?” Cheney blinked.
“Oh, yes,” Torquemada told him. “You’re being portrayed as a common thug, a sadist who lucked into a job that gave him the ultimate power of life or death over people.”
Had he had the slightest scintilla of empathy, Cheney might have realized how much Torquemada identified with his plight. Instead, he said, “Bastards! Think they can get the better of me? I’ll show them! I’ll show them all!”
Cheney’s eyes popped open. He was in his bed, surrounded by friends and family, and…was that a…Priest?
“What happened?” he mumbled.
“You…you’re dead,” the Priest told him.
“Fuck being dead!” Cheney snarled. “I’ve got too much to do! I’ll die some other time! Somebody get me a booker at Fox!”