It was the day before Christmas and Osama Bin Ladin was heavy with child.

It was the day before Christmas and Osama Bin Ladin was heavy with child.

Two children actually, two growth retarded fetuses had been tucked behind the subcutaneous skin of his stomach. They were brain dead naturally, rendered so before insertion but their kidneys worked fine and collectively they were plumbed to replace his own which for years had been an impediment to his living the free and frisky life he knew he deserved.

They did feel heavier some days more than others but he was assured their weight was a constant.

They were both AB blood type as was he and they were hooked in basically as extra organs with a degree of redundancy superior to that of a simple donor organ.

Plus it was fun, it allowed him a freedom he'd forgotten he'd missed. He had had them installed 3 years ago and his humor had returned.

He privately called them his two infidels.

He named them Sonny and Cher, Sonny on the left, Cher on the right. He'd sometimes look down at himself and yell, "Watch out for that tree!" and punch at where Sonny lay. He cracked himself up sometimes. He'd lean over to Cher's side and croon, "I got you babe."

Because when it came down to it, he was a funny guy, life was funny and his just kept right on twisting along.

10 years before operation pet goat they had come to him, the Americans, well, some of the Americans and given him the usual Dick Dastardly scenario with some twists all of it's own and they had offered him unlimited freedoms should he comply.

He didn't need wealth but the way they phrased it got him to thinking. He'd outdone himself with the outlandishness of his price, every new day was a celebration of the surreal dimensions of his ability to bend and shape reality to his whim. He was an artist.

So he'd done what was required, walked the walk, talked the talk, 10 years till just before the skittles fell.

He had all his ducks in a row, it was easy to set up mechanisms wherein you were an asset alive, a calamity dead but there were always new angles of treachery to preempt.

Poor old Sharon made that mistake, not dead, hardly alive, too attached to the power of his blackmail to recognise his own check mate as forgone conclusion.

Osama shook his head, displacing his internal ramblings as he ran a hand through his now luscious hairdo and minutely adjusted his bra.

The Americans had bluffed, pretending they, even they, were not either impressed or shocked by the price he charged. But they accepted, they understood his needs and his failsafes and he liked to think that as masters of deviousness themselves they could not help but be impressed at his audacity.

The fulcrum from which his defensive strategy swung was that the ego needed to be mercurially transformed, not hidden, not disguised but stripped of all but the essential and reformed.

So it was, the operations began. His height was re-rendered, shins and thighs shortened, his face was completely remodeled, massive bodywork ensued, gender changed, (he'd decided he'd be a lesbian, some things never change) the vocal operations were the most painful and left till last and then two years of conditioning, mirroring his chosen target, the voice, the expressions, the cunning, the feigned strained intellect.

He had to study the friends, the relationships, the manager but he chose carefully, shallow people were the easiest to replace. He grew to hate his doppelganger, to loathe the blithe accepting lazy entitlement.

He had had his team in place, had her murdered, quite slowly, as he watched and let her see him and then stepped into and became Rosie O'Donnell .

He had her show, her fans,her brittle friends, her lovers, her exposure and best of all her ability to be forgiven her stupidity.

And today, Christmas eve, was just another show to him. Oh he secretly despised his guests ( she had too) but he loved the country (as she had but for different reasons).

The banal garnish he swam in daily only underlined for him the vastness of the dark shifting shapes beneath.
He relished that unifying particle he had made himself.

He blinked heavily, he had to focus, it was seconds to his entrance and this morning was live to air.

His crowd were pumped and on he strode, let them adore him for the mandatory thirty seconds and then simply spoke off the top of his head for the next two minutes, it was easy. This second skin stuff was his vocation he thought.

Then cut to commercial and the first guest, a famous gay exercise guru, an improviser he'd worked with before, usually fun, he was always bringing toys, Osama liked toys.

Today it was a mini-trampoline with an embedded mechanism that bounced you without you exerting force of your own. The guru demonstrated then leapt off flushed and shrieking.

Osama hammed it up, gingerly and with mock concern allowing herself to be persuaded.

The bouncing was very mild but at the bottom of the fourth decent there was unimaginable pain, a tearing, a spectacular flush of blood and on national TV the seemingly premature spontaneous Cesarean birth of two twitching fetuses on the Rosie O'donnell show.

As he sank into unconsciousness one short mental exclamation rose then faded....
Oops.