Merlot stepped away from his typewriter, its keys sticky with disuse, and slipped into the shower's lukewarm embrace. Steam swirled, conjuring memories of silk undergarments—women's bra and panties—hidden beneath his soldier's uniform, a private rebellion echoing Ed Wood's World War II secret.
On Tarawa's beaches, Wood wore pink lace, not for kink but for comfort—a talisman stitched from his mother's unfulfilled wish for a daughter. Where Wood cross-dressed for solace, Merlot wrestled with a deeper mismatch. He wasn't dabbling in costume; he was transgender, stuck in a body that needed a rewrite more urgent than any script.
Towelling off, the fogged mirror blurred his reflection like an unshot film. Merlot returned to his typewriter, haunted by Wood's shadow. Wood's later years spiralled into pulp scripts and eviction notices, his obituary ignored by Hollywood. Would Merlot's own dreams of literary fame collapse the same way—dead broke, drunk, and forgotten by fifty-four? Or was fame and fortune simply a matter of time, waiting to bloom from viewership? Only time could decide. He wanted acknowledgment—something more than a name smudged between crossword puzzles and discount coupons in the obituary column of the daily newspaper.
You're just a chapter break from the real drama, Merlot.
"Shut up!" he snapped. The voice was back—unwelcome and persistent, like acne erupting before prom night. Was peace too much to ask for these days?
Merlot's mind wandered to Uncle Sam, irked by Borealia's protests to "make her boring again." Please—Boreilia had always been boring, Disney World or not. Wasn't she the real victim of harsh tariffs, while Uncle Sam strutted on, clinging to his image as the world's favourite scapegoat?
His mom liked the former prime minister, who'd resigned for mental health reasons. Merlot was indifferent. He had blown fortunes on jets, feasts, and thrones in the sky—then whined about a dead phone charger. No outlet on an '80s fossil? To keep his phone alive, Borealia had to build a new luxury plane.
The gifts Uncle Sam received from Borealia got a fresh coat of paint. No longer would they scream, "Love, T-DOT!" Instead, they'd proudly declare, "Made by Uncle Sam!" Uncle Sam lifted a paintbrush, covering the old logo like a half-hearted apology. He wanted to be seen as a first-class nation—not one built on his neighbour's hand-me-downs.
Uncle Sam insisted Borealia had bought them from him fair and square. Repainting them with his name was just 'restoration.' Really? Why was the old logo visible beneath the refurbished panels—ghosted like a watermark, stubborn as history itself? Uncle Sam had painted over someone else's work and demanded credit, like a child claiming a snowman as theirs.
Borealia's slogan—"Out with the old, in with the new"—played right into his hands. Until someone clicked on those glossy online ads for Borelia's 'luxury' trains from the 1980s. Every gift from Borealia came with a manual: "How to be generous while making someone feel inferior." The derailed train was headed for Uncle Sam. Borealia insisted on a replacement so lavish it almost justified the accident. Uncle Sam saw Borealia as a bad driver—expecting free rides from him whenever cross-border chaos required "coordination."
Borealia argued back, explaining that she did not offer free rides to her own people due to ethical concerns regarding the war. Uncle Sam saw straight through that halo. She'd crash the plane, blame the wreck on a dead phone battery. File the invoice under emergency coordination—confident Sam would pick up the tab. Uncle Sam figured she stayed out of the Blue Dragon chase for the same reason she stayed out of everything else: she'd go down long before touching land, leaving him to sweep up the debris.
Borealia's voice was cold enough to frost glass; fighting the Blue Dragon was unwise. It had home‑field advantage — jungles thick as armour, tunnels like veins, a climate that swallowed outsiders whole. Any nation foolish enough to chase a dragon into its own lair, she said, deserved the scorch marks.
Uncle Sam ignored her. He was certain he'd win. Wasn't he bringing the best guns to a standoff? Wasn't he the sheriff of the hemisphere, the man with the biggest badge and the loudest boots, convinced that firepower could outvote geography and that confidence counted as strategy?
Uncle Sam wasn't worried about Borealia's influence. One-tenth the population, a few studios here and there—charming enough—but like a kazoo at a rock concert, Borealia couldn't drown out Uncle Sam's megawatt spotlight. He practically owned the story. Merlot was born under his roof, raised on his scripts, and cast in a role he never auditioned for.
His head spun like he'd downed too much Sangria. He was supposed to be on Uncle Sam's side—loyal, patriotic, a voice in favour of the stars and stripes. Instead, it felt like he'd defected to the dark side, exposing Uncle Sam's less-than-glamorous truths, like photographing his house before the renovations, trying to erase the images of decay so no one would see the cracks beneath the fresh paint.
Uncle Sam's club meant your homeland came with a fresh coat of paint, a shiny new logo, and absolutely no refunds. He didn't put you on the battlefield to fight for anyone but himself. By law, a president can only be crafted under Uncle Sam's roof, to make sure nobody forgets whose team they're playing for, especially when poker nights were cancelled, thanks to Borealia's tariffs on cards.
Maybe Ricky should've been born under another flag, far from the draft and the war. But Borealia hadn't intervened. Which begged the question: if she had, would the war have been mandatory for Merlot—or optional with a cup of tea on the side? Fate meant limping home to a fractured land, slapping foreign labels on its cracks, pretending it all mended.