Location: Tampa Bay, Florida

We were staying at my aunt’s place in Tampa Bay for Thanksgiving. We had just ate the turkey with glaze and it was an optimum time for a safety meeting so we boned out in the S4 for a drive. We were listening to the sweet sounds of Jerry Garcia and the song “St. Stephen.”

“Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills, one man gathers what another man spills”

While having a very productive debate about the use of the name Johnny Royal in one of the Beastie Boys songs. Just then a car headed the other direction swerved right in front of us straight into a tree. Gunja said we should hop out and see if everyone was all right, I agreed.

When we ran up to the car there was one black male about 6 feet 170 pounds well built dressed in a janitor's outfit and a Tampa Bay Buccs hat in the driver's seat hunched over. We opened the driver side door and pulled the man away to the grass far away from the burning car. When we set him down we noticed the man was shot in the stomach and was clutching onto something with two hands and wouldn’t let it go. We laid him down and asked him if he was alright and what we could do because there was a substantial amount of bleeding. Gunja immediately took off his sweater and pushed it on the wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

The man spoke,“thank you my name is T.J.”

I asked, “what happened and why are you shot?”

He replied, “what I tell you now doesn’t matter, I’m about to die.”

He paused for a moment and then began to cough out blood.

“I am a spy for a country I’m not going to mention working as a custodian at a government medical testing facility here in Tampa Bay. I have been undercover for the past three years. My job is to steal information and provide it to my contacts. Over the past three years this has been very hard. Not because I don’t like what I do but because of something else, project “Abba Zabba”.

What is project abba zabba you ask? it’s a conspiracy comprised by the U.S. government to hide the cure for AIDS. I’ve stared at the project for three years and finally I couldn’t take it anymore. My cover was as an inept custodian and the staff at the place always made fun of me. Today I just snapped, killed three security guards with a pencil, stole the vaccine for AIDS, ran out the front door and was shot in the process. That’s what I hold now in my hands, this syringe with more than enough for one person.”

Just then T.J. coughs up some more blood and dies, then we start to hear sirens.

Gunja and I both look at each other knowing were thinking the same thing; I reach down rip the syringe from the man's dead fingers, shoot myself in the arm with half the vaccine give it to Gunja and he does the same leaving a small amount inside for us to shoot up the corpse making it look like we were never there.

I mention in a menacing voice, “we’re safe forever.” Gunja grabs his blood covered sweater and we bounce out in the S4 continuing our debate about Johnny Royal.

Written by,

Dusti Stoves