As Karl Rove walked into the hotel lobby, two tall men wearing fedoras suddenly stood up when he walked past. He ws too preoccupied with his conversation to notice that they followed him to the elevator.
"I don't care what the final totals were. No one could have known...." Karl Rove trailed off as the sound on the mobile phone increased in volume and tone. Rove winced as the words "give a rat's ass" and "three hundred million dollars" were audible at a distance. Rove pulled the phone from his ear and momentarily stared at it. "Look, there's no guaran....do you know who you're talking to?" There was a blister of unintelligible shouts and curses from the phone. Rove rolled his eyes and said 'You'll be back two years from now with your hat in your hand begging for my help....Is that a threat? Yadda yadda yadda...Fuck you very much, goodbye.". Rove pushed the up elevator button.
As Rove pocketed the phone he bumped his elbow and noticed a large man with a fedora standing close behind on his right. "Oh, excuse me," Rove apologized and stepped back to the left. He again bumped against someone. Startled, Rove gasped in as he looked to his left and saw ane even larger man with a fedora, and a broken nose eyeing him with cold blue eyes. At that moment the elevator rang and the doors opened. Rove looked up at the sole occupant of the elevator and then at the two men crowding him. He took a step toward the doors then hesitated as the two men on either side behind him moved forward then stopped as well. The man in the elevator suddenly grabbed Rove by the shirt and jerked him into the car as the doors closed behind him. There was a banging, scraping sound and shouting outside as the car ascended.
"And so...we meet again...Daktah Quest". Karl Rove with mouth agape, found himself staring in the glasses of a smiling Nate Silver.
"So Silver, it's you. What's your game? Trying to scare me?" Rove demanded with a florid nervousness.
"What - you think those apes are connected to me?" Silver looked incredulous, "Look, Rove - I was doing you a favor. You looked like you were going to wet your pants at any minute. If you want me to leave..." Silver reached for the elevator control panel but was grabbed at the wrist by Karl Rove,
"No, no. No need to stop yet. Sorry. I don't know who those men were. I thought they were with you." Rove looked about the mirrored elevator. "Thanks."
"No problem," replied Silver, "Anyway, I figure I owe you big time for all you did for me this election. If it wasn't for you getting all those mucketymucks thinking it was in the bag for Romney, I wouldn't have gotten to look like Einstein for figurng out what anyone with half a brain knew already. I have so many new opportunities now I'm at a real crossroads." Silver, with the hint of a smirk stole a glance at Rove.
Rove looked at Nate Silver with contempt and spat "You got lucky.If we'd had a better candidate, we'd have won."
"Candidates...Well, I'm sure that will be a satisfactory answer to those people who gave you all that money," Silver responded cheerfully. "It always was before. Anyway, you're not the one who's out 400 mill so no sweat off you."
There was a flash of sparks and a jolt of the elevator which screeched to a halt. The lights flared brightly like a flashbulb and then elevator went pitch black. Rove had bumped againsst the side of the elevator when the elevator jolted and stopped. He fumbled about for the control panel and said "Silver?...Silver are you okay?" There was only impenetrable black silence. Rove began to push buttons randomly with no effect then he flipped a switch which illuminated the elevator from the overhead emergency light.
The elevator was empty except for himself. Rove looked wildly around the elevator seeing only his refection in the mirrors above the gray metal panels on the sides of the elevator. Nate Silver was nowhere to be seen. He scanned the wall and saw the emergency telephone and grabbed it.
"Hello." Rove shouted into the receiver, "Hello. there's a problem with the elevator.". There was a crackle and a sound of labored breathing on the phone. "Is anyone there?" Rove demanded. He listened closely and heared wheezing and gasps on the phone. "Can You call someone? There's an emergency on this elevator"
The overhead light flickered twice and extingished. A gasping wheezy voice was heard from the phone in the inky blackness. It whispered slowly "dead people" and trailed off. The overhead light came on and the elevator lurched. Rove jumped back with a high pitched scream when he saw that he was no longer alone in the elevator.
Just before him stood a young girl of no more than ten years who was gaunt and emaciated. She held a bowl in her hands. She looked at Rove in a deadly serious way and said "I want to show you something." She vomited in the bowl while Rove turned away in horror. The girl turned to stare at Rove then screamed at him in repeated blood curdling shrieks. Karl Rove shrank down into the corner of the elvator, covered his face with his hands, screamed "Help! Help!" over and over while bawling like a baby.
When the elevator jolted and the lights went out again, Rove screamed and released his bowels.The elevator lights suddenly came on, The door opened and the two men with hats who had been behind Rove at the elevator door stepped in. The man on the right took off his hat and said , "Hi Karl. I'm Ashton Kutcher, this is my good buddy Eric Roberts" pointing to his partner who doffed his hat to reveal himself, "and Karl, you've been punked."
One of the grey side panels slid open to reveal the diminutive woman who was dressed as the dead girl. The lights behind the mirrors on the sides of the elevator illuminated to reveal the cameras which had been filming the action inside the elevator.
Karl Rove looked around in bewildered shock as he began to grasp why everyone was grinning like an idiot. He sat bolt upright. "Where the hell is Nate Silver?"
The metal panel next to Rove opened and Nate Silver sprang out from behind and got Rove in a headlock. Silver then pulled out his blue flask and uncorked it with his teeth.
"You gotta milk these tears like venom from a rattlesnake," Silver explained as he held th bottle at the corner of Roves eye, "Don't let him bite you..That ought to do it".
Silver released Rove who fell forward on his hands and knees.
"Wow, look at that." said Eric Roberts as he pointed to the dark stain at the seat of
Karl Rove's slacks, "Karl Rove shit his pants.". Roberts began to dance and move in a strutting way. "Rove shit his pants." Roberts walked up to the desk clerk and shouted at the top of his lungs "KARL ROVE SHIT HIS PANTS!" to the dismay of the desk clerk. Rove meanwhile lunged out the elevator and was last seen spinning through the revolving door.
"I couldn't have done it without you" Ashton Kutcher swung his arm around Nate Silver's shoulder and gave him a pretend punch in the gut.
"Well played, Ashton, well played. Amazing we could pull this off" Nate replied, " Hey, Ashton - since you're not together anymore, I was wondering if would you mind if I asked out Demi?"