The Diary of Todd Storm, Overzealous River Patrol Officer

Rob Fox12 years ago

Saturday, 5:02 AM

There’s a storm coming to the river yet again, the same storm that comes every week. It’s a neon colored hurricane of drunkenness and underwater hand jobs. The river is peaceful now in the early morning, but soon it will flow red with spilled Franzia as the college kids floating the river drink to excess and litter these pristine banks with bodily fluids and bad decisions. They don’t realize that when they slap the bag THEY SLAP THE LAW! I think about the day ahead as I sit Indian style on the riverbank in the early morning, naked and sporting a morning wood as mighty as the oaks that vault over this precious river. God I love the river.

I can tell already that this day will be worse than others. Even at this early hour I can hear the depraved masses beginning to rustle. The sounds of a young woman vomiting up last night’s festivities echo from the distance. For now the sickness is hangover induced, but at dawn in three weeks when she finds herself in the same predicament it won’t be from liquor, but rather from the child she and a man with a one syllable nickname conceived on a picnic table at their campground last night.

Their storm is coming, but so is another storm. A storm against the drunkenness, littering, and wilderness sex. It’s a storm of justice. That storm is Todd Storm, River Patrol Officer. That storm is me. I’m ready for them. As the brave men aboard United Flight 93 once said: Let’s Roll.

Saturday, 7:45 AM

Suiting up with my fellow River Patrol officers. Once again they all make fun of me for “taking my job too seriously.” The Captain spent half an hour chastising me for my macing incident last week. He told me that if I pull another stunt like that today he would take me off river duty for good. I insisted that the young woman on whom I deployed my pepper spray was brandishing a weapon. But OF COURSE for what seems like the millionth time the Captain said that a wet towel was not in any way, shape, or form a weapon. Clearly the Captain has never been whipped by a wet towel. It hurts! A lot! I’d sooner blind TEN girls than have one of those painful, red welts on my ass.

On the way out the door the Captain made me stop so that he could check what I was carrying on my person. He found and confiscated all three of my firearms. He said “Goddammit Storm, why the hell do you need a gun? Let alone three? What the fuck is wrong with you?” I told him that I cared too much. He called me a “fucking idiot” and said that he was riding in my boat today to “keep an eye on me.” Most officers would consider this a punishment. I consider it a privilege. Finally I can show him first hand that I’m the best officer this river has ever seen, although that will be a more challenging task without any of my side arms. Luckily I keep a sawed off shotgun hidden in my boat. Let’s Roll.

Saturday, 9:00 AM

The busses are filling up with the day’s floaters. They look to be a rowdy bunch, just as I suspected. One group was already funneling beer. They were so drunk that when a crane landed nearby them they became inexplicably enraged and started screaming “FUCK BIRDS!” Their screaming startled the crane, which flew away. Unfortunately for them I don’t startle as easily as the majestic crane. I’ll be looking out for them.

Saturday, 9:24 AM

The Captain and I pulled our motorboat into a secluded river bank about a mile or so upstream. We hid ourselves behind some bushes that were roughly ten feet back from the bank. The Captain lit a cigar and said “Hope ya don’t mind.” I snatched the cigar out of his mouth and threw it into the river. I told him that I DID mind. The smoke could give away our position! The Captain cursed me out and lit another cigar. He said that he didn’t actually give a shit whether I minded and claimed that “In ‘Nam we woulda fragged a hard on like you.” The Captain’s story reminded me that I actually had brought a fragmentation grenade along with me today, probably shouldn’t tell him.

Saturday, 9:56 AM

A lone empty beer can floats down the middle of the river. It’s a sign that the floaters are soon to follow. I close my eyes, say a quiet prayer, and firmly grip the handle of my brush clearing machete. One of my favorite pastimes is to sharpen that machete. I can remember spending many a fond summer evening sitting in my driveway, shirt off after a hard day’s work of rebuilding the old ice cream truck parked behind me, and softly stropping my machete while I told jokes to the neighborhood children playing ball in the street. I always dreamed of leaving the river beat and becoming an ice cream man, being my own boss. But those dreams are dead now… after the fire.

Nowadays the children aren’t allowed to play in the street anymore. It didn’t seem safe to begin with I suppose, with traffic and all.

Can’t say I disagree with the parents. Plus I overheard some of them talking about some “psycho perv creep” who was hanging around the neighborhood talking to the kids. Best to keep them inside.

The Captain interrupted my train of thought.

“Storm! We got floaters. Why the fuck are your eyes closed!?” The Captain asked. “And why THE FUCK do you have that machete? How did I miss that?”

There was no time to explain to the Captain that before he searched me I had disassembled the machete, putting the handle up my ass while the blade was taped to my inner leg from taint to knee. There were floaters, and it was time to roll.

Saturday, 10:06 AM

Once the main armada of floaters were in my sights it wasn’t hard to spot an infraction. There were litterers left and right, a few glass bottles, and a cadre of underage drinkers. It was a veritable buffet of actionable offenses, and unfortunately for those floaters my middle name happens to be “Action.” I mean that literally. My full name is Todderson Action Storm. Obviously my name is weird, but there’s an explanation. At the time of my birth my parents were really high on meth. They were also living in Florida during hurricane season and I assume that their naming was influenced by some sort of “Action Storm News” broadcast that they were watching. Their last name was Flugelstein. I have no idea how they legally gave me a different last name.

I was handed over to state authorities fourteen hours after I was born. My parents didn’t find out until a week later. My mother was so high on meth that she thought I was still there. She didn’t realize that she was actually swaddling the placenta in a filthy dishtowel. My father would’ve told her but he had OD’d by that point.

When I saw the offenses on the river I immediately swung into action. Again, I’m being literal. I sprinted and leapt toward a nearby tree vine. Mid leap I grabbed the tree vine and swung onto a raft full of what I believed to be underage drinkers. I quickly roundhouse kicked the drinks out of all of their hands. Admittedly I accidentally kicked a few of them in the face, but to be fair it was early and I was still warming up. Unfortunately there was no time to apologize to those girls. I quickly brandished my machete and shouted “HIT THE DECK YOU SKINNY BITCHES!”

All the girls on the raft immediately started crying, it was a sure sign of their guilt. I sheathed my giant machete and demanded their ID’s. One of them said “We didn’t bring out ID’s you psycho! We’re in bikinis.” Pffft. Likely story.

My interrogation of the suspects was interrupted by the Captain, who waded up to us shouting “Goddammit Storm! Goddammit!”

The Captain confiscated my machete, told the girls to dump out the beers they were holding, and move on. I pleaded with the Captain to check their coolers but the Captain told me to shut up and sit down. I asked where I was supposed to sit and he said “In the fuckin’ water.”

I sat there humiliated as the Captain reprimanded me. Rafts passed by left and right, their occupants giggling at me. At one point the bird hating group from before passed us and shouted profanities at me as they floated by.

“Why you sittin’ boy!? You coolin’ off your balls? I bet you got white hot balls!”

I had no idea what they meant. My balls were white but I had no medical documentation about the temperature of my testicles and I assume that if their internal temperature was abnormally high our medical examiner would have made a note of it. Why would they talk about my balls? Perhaps the bird haters were homosexuals? But as far as I knew homosexuals adored birds, what with their feather boas and movies about birdcages, so that seemed unlikely.

The Captain vehemently chastised me for my actions. He used words like “rogue,” “unnecessary,” “vigilante,” “delusional,” and “retarded.” Like any good officer, I agreed with my commander. But inside I knew I was right. I decided to bide my time. I knew that eventually I would prove myself to him.

Saturday, 1:17 PM

The last few hours have been quiet. By quiet I mean I’ve seen SEVERAL infractions, including a man who put a bagged wine spigot into his asshole and then tricked his unwitting friend into taking a pull afterwards. That act alone contains countless infractions: sexual harassment (forcing an unknowing party into ass to mouth is practically date rape!), unlawful enema, AND indecent exposure. But the Captain has kept me from taking action against them because he thinks I’m too “extreme.” If by extreme he means that I’m dedicated to making sure that river people abide by river laws, and that that dedication sometimes drives me to use quasi-deadly force to ensure that those laws are upheld then yeah, I guess I’m too extreme.

I’m starting to question the Captain. I know that mutiny is a mortal sin, but so is taking a life, and I crossed that bridge about three seconds before I stole the ice cream truck. As an officer I normally don’t break the law, but as my meth-addicted mother taught me when I was 14, laws don’t exist at midnight in a junkyard. I’ll never forget that night when I randomly came across my mother in that junkyard. She stabbed me with a cracked mason jar and stole my melted, half eaten Kit-Kat bar.

I may have to mutiny against the Captain. I don’t want to be a mutant, but I might not have a choice.

I’ll have to put my mutant thoughts on hold. The Captain’s called me back to action.

Saturday, 1:43 PM

Had to break up a potential river fight. Things got pretty heated. Some college girl start flashing her breasts in the hopes of being given a cigarette. A random man called her a hooker and things took off from there. The hooker’s boyfriend became upset and told her to put her top back on, but she had lost it. The Captain and I rolled up to the scene, I was ready to pepper spray the bare chested hooker but the Captain called me a dipshit and confiscated my canister.

The Captain tried to put his jacket on the hooker to cover her up, but she refused. She screamed, “Get off me you fucking pig! You’re all fucking assholes!”

Although I was still upset with the Captain I couldn’t let this disrespect of the law go unpunished, so I punched the hooker right in her titty. Her boyfriend became enraged and charged me. I quickly subdued him with a punch to the throat. From there things got crazy.

Several friends of the man I had just throat punched began approaching the Captain and I. The bare chested hooker started screaming. The Captain kept shouting “Jesus Christ Storm!”

The group of angry men approached us; there were six or seven in all. I realized that these were the bird haters from before. I knew I had to think quickly. Seeing that they were in the water I took out my taser and shouted a warning to the innocents.

“Everyone out of the water! Now!”

I activated my taser and dove my arm into the water. I had assumed that the electric shock would carry through the water and incapacitate the group. It did not. Not at all. My taser actually broke as soon as I put it in the water. The group now moved towards us even faster, shouting “FUCK PIGS!”

The Captain put his face in his hands and sighed, presumably accepting the impending death like the weak man I knew him to be. I was not so ready to accept my fate. I reached into our patrol boat and pulled out my hidden sawed off shotgun. I fired a warning shot into the air and shouted at our potential attackers.

“You motherfuckers are gonna be floating the river Styx by the end of the day if you don’t back the fuck up!”

The bird haters froze in their tracks. Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the floater with the bag of wine offering his ass-tainted vino to another clueless friend. I aimed my sawed off and fired. The bag exploded in his hands and judging from the expression he made, an expression I’ve seen many times before, I assume that he shit his pants.

Saturday, 1:45 PM

My warning shot that I thought I fired into the sky may or may not have hit some kid standing on a branch above me. He was waiting to use a rope swing tied to the branch. Thankfully the shot didn’t kill him. Unfortunately the fall into the rocky water below did. What’s left of that kid’s face is about half a mile down the river by now. It was pretty messy.

The Captain has relieved me of my duties and placed me under arrest. I tried to explain that the fall killed the kid, not my shot, but he wasn’t hearing it. He just kept saying “I fucking knew you’d kill someone. I fucking knew it,” and “You have serious problems.”

The Captain zip tied me and placed me in the patrol boat, but like any crafty officer I had buttered my wrists before hitting the river this morning. On the river you never know when you’ll be abducted by locals and wake up naked in a barn, chained to a rusty wheat thrasher. It happens. Always butter your wrists.

I slipped out of the zip ties and am writing this final entry into my diary. I must now spend the rest of my life in hiding, living off the river and all it has to offer… which is mostly discarded wet sandwiches and filthy water. It will be enough. Godspeed. Let’s Roll.

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