DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — It is not every evening that one finds oneself dodging a bar brawl, fighting Nazis, climbing into the rafters of the Barclays Center, and witnessing the theft of a time-bending almanac from the back pocket of Stephen Miller, but that was my Tuesday night.
I got a tip he was on a bar crawl in Park Slope. It was just past dusk when I spotted him stumbling out of a bar off 6th Avenue after tossing a patron through the window, his broad shoulders emerged from the doorway as if architecture were merely advisory. At his side, was Shortclaw — the compact, amber-eyed scorpion with a temperament best described as “litigious.”
“Newspaper man!” Sampson roared when he saw me. “You still scribblin’ stories about me? Well write about this one." Pointing down the the unconscious man on the ground wearing a red hat.
Sampson and I had last met in Coney Island, where he had recently escaped the clutches of The Antideluvian Scorpion Lord beneath the sands of Coney Island.
“Bar fight?” I asked.
"Fascist." He responded a little tipsy.
Shortclaw snapped twice in agreement.
"Hey paper man do yo know where Freddy's went? I used to like that place."
"It moved. Got pushed out by Ratner for the Barclays Center." I informed him.
"God damn fascists!"
That's when an army of red hatted MAGA members in red hats walked by in brown jumpsuits or something.
Shortclaw snapped at them.
“Easy,” Sampson muttered, though not convincingly.
Sampson and Shortclaw started following them. I tried to catch up.
“No interviews. I’m on a mission.”
“To where?”
“This Barclay Center of yours.”
The streets surrounding the Barclays Center pulsed with red hats and loud rhetoric all gathering for a MAGA rally. Chants echoed off glass towers. The atmosphere felt less like civic discourse and more like a fever dream.
"We are in an unholy land. What has be come of my dear Brooklyn?" Sampson said.
I asked if I could tag along.
He studied me for a long moment.
“Fine,” he said. “But keep up, paper boy."
We slipped around the perimeter and located a back service door.
It was locked.
Sampson forced it open with a single push that destroyed the frame.
"Holy shit!" I said.
“You should see me when I haven’t cut my hair."
I paused. “You’re that Sampson?”
“Of course I am! You call yourself a reporter muckraker?”
We ascended maintenance ladders until we reached the shadows above the stage. I never thought a scorpion could climb a ladder like a small macaque but he did and my eyes did not lie.
"Nazis. I hate these guys." Sampson said looking down at the "Make America Great Again" rally. Then he spotted Stephen Miller.
Miller was bombastically talking to his audience, pale, intense, addressing a sea of red.
In his back pocket, unmistakable even from above, rested a paper bound volume.
“The Almanac,” Sampson pointed and whispered.
“What's so important about it?” I asked.
“It can tell the future.”
Without warning, Sampson sliced through a thick cable anchoring a lighting rig.
“What are you doing?” I declared in surprise.
He grinned.
“Saving the city as usual.”
Shortclaw gave two sharp snaps of his claws and hopped on Sampson's back. Sampson swung.
He dropped into the chaos below with impossible grace, landing squarely behind Miller and relieving him of the Almanac in one fluid motion.
Shortclaw leapt after attacking red hats.
The rally dissolved into confusion. Microphones screeched. Lights swung wildly. The red hats scattered.
Miller shouted something about destiny and inevitability.
Sampson answered with a punch.
Shortclaw stung with precision.
I remained in the rafters, for journalistic integrity and entirely unrelated reasons of self-preservation.
Within moments, Sampson and Shortclaw had punched and stung a path and vanished through a service corridor.
I turned to hurry after them. I nearly collided with a furious red hat charging blindly at me. He swung. I ducked. He fell 30 feet.
Soon I found myself outside on the street basking in the cold steel glow of Atlantic Avenue.
Sampson stood laughing beneath the streetlights, Shortclaw perched proudly on his shoulder.
“C’mon, newspaper man!”
We ran.
As though pulled by some invisible gravity, we found ourselves at Freddy’s — relocated further south.
Outside, Sampson placed the Almanac in a metal bucket and struck a match.
“Now that,” he said as flames consumed its pages, “was a good time.”
The paper shrieked as it burned. Letters lifted from the pages like ash.
Shortclaw watched the fire with solemn satisfaction.
“What happens now?” I asked.
"Time for you to buy me a drink! A petey scotch. A few of them for me and Shortclaw in exchange for a great story!"
Inside at the bar, five scotches in, I asked him where he would go next, he only smiled.
“I gotta find that son-of-a-bitch Chronos.”
Shortclaw snapped his claws in agreement and screeched his screetches as Sampson laughed.
Thanks again Safari Sampson. That was one helluva story. Chronos should be shaking with fear whenever he is.