The Dog Button

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the line, "It's even worse than I thought."

The Dog Button

The President reached for the bottle of Excedrin. The threat of a nuclear war always gave him a headache.

It all started when Secret Service wouldn’t let the ambassador from North Korea use his Segway inside the White House. The small man stormed into the Oval Office and declared war on the spot.

The President was unimpressed. When attempts to calm the diminutive ambassador failed, the President pushed a button usually reserved for when the Minority Whip was visiting. The button, located just under the edge of the desk had an outline of a dog’s head on it.

The President felt better almost right away. There was nothing more uplifting than releasing the hounds on a dwarf in olive-colored pajamas.

With that done, he looked at his agenda and saw nothing but the typical hodgepodge of crises. The day would be filled with “terrorists this” and “bank corruption that.” There was no easy “release the hounds” solution to any of this. The American people had become so polarized in their opinions that the best the President could hope for was to piss everyone off equally.

The last meeting of the day was with the ambassador from Iran. He stood in front of the President, shaking slightly – the memory of last month’s “hound release” incident was still fresh in his mind.

“Mr. President, I am to inform you that we will rain nuclear death down upon you as soon as our peaceful research is complete.” He wasn’t sure if he had translated that correctly. However, he spun and fled at the sight of the President’s hand sliding under the edge of the desk.

Later that evening, the President’s wife greeted him and said, “We saw Clash of the Titans today.”

“Oh? How was it?”

“Awful. It’s even worse than I thought,” she replied.

Word count 300