IRON WOMAN

On a certain sunny, fortuitous Friday afternoon, a couple of 24 hours before work went dark for the sabbath, a well-mannered young iron maiden by the denomination of Lauren, found herself surfing and voluntarily saving lives (partly inspired by her U.S. Navy, Seal Beach stationed, hospital corpsman brother) on the WAVES of the revolting Ohio River. This woman of letters was donning a red and white bathing suit with a mind of its own, while her yellow, full monty serpent, Hannibal, hung around her neck and over her OSU inscripted breastplate. Her lustrous, olive oil skin was as smooth as a freshly pressed undershirt, and her sebaceous gland anointed, rubber bandana hair bun forehead glistened like a blacksmith’s brow. This 25-year-old ferrous female with an unusual atomic number of 26 was born under a bighorn sheep sign, and although her past had been as checkered as a waffle iron, she knew she was destined to ride out her Iron Age and make a real difference in existence, all while meteorically rising and leaving her brand back on the earth. This straight-A student, bionic matron had received her master’s degree in biomedical engineering, in the hopes of being a medicine woman amongst the Mingos; however, due to umpteen unsuccessful, quasi-Iroquois internist internships, among other things, she had recently started on her chemical engineering doctorate, so she could create a cure for her grandfather.

Per her involvement in the Human Potential Movement, she had been trying to cross the combers of this Mason-Dixon line at least weekly, in order to train for her upcoming holy triathlon, while oppressing her beasts and passing her personal bests. She also enjoys cleaning up the environment, by getting the firearms out of its streamlets with her magnetic personality, while engaging in her gun control hobby of wiggler fishing.

But on this particular day, her daffy ego was especially inflated, as her Tiger Woods (she would later go on to engineer the irons that would help him break the major championship record, which Ben Hogan & Happy Gilmore would have been gruntled to have) Sunday red rescue boat (which she self-engineered from environmentally sourced [sharinga tree] chemicals) helped her save a number of river rat damsels in distress, and assisted her in enfettering a few wet bandits in Cave-In-Rock, IL.

Right as all of this action was starting to unfold, an old oriole flew past a Stark naked (save for an iron cross) black hag’s penthouse window while the widow was playing with her rubber ducky in a curled-up fetal position, and she was just about to drop her curling iron in the telecommunication tub—but the broad bird caught her peeper, so she decided to go to her aperture. When she peeled back the iron curtain, she was throttled by our pontoon character punching through the kahunas.

Little did Lauren realize, but this character was getting ready to launch her career.

She fathomed that Lauren was intelligent, and in the swim with the world’s current affairs, and even though the gal she saw seemed very svelte and graceful—she could tell by the way she went through the gale force froths that she pumped iron at CrossFit, and knew she was an iron fist in a velvet Underground Railroad glove. She could also savvy that she had more spunk than most men (again, probably due to being reared with two older bruvvers). She thought, “O, brother, I have to get this sister on my side before I die. She could really leave the legacy I never could!” As she recognized this, she caught sight of her red hourglass, and knew the time was now or never to masticate, so she sent a telepathic cast Lauren’s way to get her to come ashore.

As Lauren was docking her duck, she was met by a charlatan she’d never taken a butcher’s of before, and whose web she’d soon be spun in.

“Greetings, young lady. What’s your naam?” the petticoat cross-examined.

“Laa-Laa x sweet 16,” Lauren answered.

“Well, ok, that’s more than a dub to think about. I don’t believe I’ll be getting that out of my head anytime soon. Anyways, I glimpsed you marching past all the cumbers on your berm, and you seem to have a heart of gold, so I figured I’d offer you a berth. What are your current entanglements?”

Lauren had recently received many generous pitches from greedy corporate engineering companies, but didn’t want to be part of the problem, so her temporary solution was to travail part-time at a charity trusted nonprofit, and live in a commune while she pursued her degree, until she found a company with a mission statement that she could appreciate, even if the compensation wasn’t great.

“I’m currently pursuing my PhD,” Lauren communicated. “What is it that you do again? And what did you say your name was?”

“Well, I muttered bugger all about those things, but I moil for the Illuminati, and I really think you could be a white savior superhero for the clean water crisis, starting by avenging the D-block residents of Flint,” the arachnid encouraged. “As far as my name, I prefer to remain anonymous.”

“Why, are you in AA? And—I don’t know—I currently have a lot of ferrics in the fire.”

“No, but even if I was, I wouldn’t break my anonymity. As for my anonym, if you want to figure it out, perhaps you can find it on 4chan’s website, under the alt-right section. And if you ever want to iron out your future, give me a ring,” advised the frying pan, as she gave Lauren her blank calling card. “I could put your destiny on a Sylvia Plather, and you’d have Hughes success. So, please appraise joining the legions against legionnaires disease!”

This was all too much for Lauren to twig, so she decided to go visit her granddad at the American Legion in Chicago Ridge. Donald, during his term as a U.S. Army reservist in the Engineer Corps, had helped to construct the McAlpine Locks and Dam during the Vietnam War—but this isn’t what damned him. When Lauren was but a cherub, he took her to espy the Angel Mounds while visiting her spurious uncle, Ron, in Evansville, IN, and it was here that Don trusts he contracted the Teflon flu, which would complicate his health for many years to come. Even the adjacent remains of his frog ancestors from the French and Indian War couldn’t help to pardon his condition. Ironically, he’s a republican, but ended up getting iron deficiency anemia. Due to these infirmities, along with ingesting a tapeworm, he was spending most of his time coughing and spitting out germ-ridden sputum, so when Lauren visited him, she tried to make sure she brought plenty of aluminum and chromium cans of spinach: to help him regain his strength, replenish his iron levels, clot his ulcerative colitis via vitamin K, and so that the opioid peptides that go into effect downstream could help him ebb & flow with his suffering. Howbeit, after months of the goosefoot relative having little to no effect, Lauren learned that the oxalate in it was inhibiting the important nutrients, and this really caused her nerves of steel to be over wrought with oxidative stress, which culminated in her having one of her intermittent tachycardia episodes. One day, when visiting her granddaddy, she saw him sitting in his recliner with a Berlin blue hue, barely able to move, and she loudly murmured to herself in anger, “What the Heck, Don!” So in her desperate, disheartened reasoning, she concluded—with her supreme oxygen uptake—if she elevated her iron and caffeine levels enough, she could, en principe, transfer hers to him through diffusion; but the copious amounts of canned sodium and stimulating crystalline compound only compounded his confusion and perfusion problems, and almost caused her an infarction. Still in a bedlam state of delirium, she thought that his trammels may be stemming from the bloodbath around the world, since he was at the center of her marvelous universe, so she started considering leaving the Good River area and calling the 8 limbed scarlet beldam to help escort her into new horizons, to limn Don’s cheeks crimson again.

As she became a player on the world stage, and in conflict theaters across the sphere, she started becoming unmoored. The Illuminati asked her to start keeping the Freemasons under surveillance, but then the Freemasons seduced her into becoming a member, under the guise of doing international acts of almsgiving, so she gave in. Even though she was well known everywhere she went, the power rose to her noggin, and she wanted to become even bigger. So she had her filmmaker boyfriend, Aaron, make a silent promotional picture noir of her philanthropic efforts, including helping beggars who live in garbage cans outside of Carnegie Hall to better hear the Philharmonic. The transmission also included the time that she, along with Barack Obama and Billy Williams, commuted thousands of criminals’ sentences who were caught smoking Mary Jane in Chicago nightclubs. But one sidereal day, while she was ironing her superhero swimsuit, she left it on and departed their dwelling to deliver cookies, and it created a steam-powered punk of a fire, and the flick went up in smoke, along with everything else in their townhouse. When they got back to their ashy rubbish, Aaron screamed, “Smooth move, you absentminded professor of shitshows! Now that movie will never be shown in any cinematic universe. My hopes and dreams went along with that program into a Hollywood black hole!”

But don’t stew, everything is going swimmingly with them. Not even a hydrogen explosion could destroy everything they’ve erected. He is, after all, her loving iron(II) valence. Isn’t love the bomb!

After brooding about everything that was annihilated, she started to think about what she still had—her nonno. He was still really contending with the effects of the Syncolon, especially with his colitis, so she called her 4-star military career compeer, Colin Powell, to see if he could perform a colonoscopy on him, to make sure everything was chiefly secure, and to descry if anything had invaded and occupied his intestines; however, Colin said that his proctology powers were Bush league, so he proceeded to refer her to Dr. Huxtable.

This made Lauren think about many moons before she started toiling at Battelle, when she thought she was doomed at the hands of her pediatrician, Dr. Patel. But the heart transplant he performed helped her to transition into the popsy she is today. He stuffed the ticker space in her chest with a French artichoke heart. Maybe that’s why the Teflon toxins were never able to stick.

After her pockets were greased from the simultaneous paychecks of the Illuminati and Freemasons, she realized that they were one and the same, so she decided to redouble her double agent efforts, in order to get out from under their iron heel and turn into an iron(III) agent for her aging grandfather’s cause. This way, she could flake off into thin air and get back to him, because rust never sleeps.

So she peaced out from the vigilante venture and went back to employ Battelle’s many R&D departments, in the hopes of finding a CBD solution for her abuelo. Will Lauren continue to be an alloy ally to the globe? Ore—will she remain a passivating chemical engineer? One thing’s for sure, Lauren and her chronically candy-striped progenitrix, Barbara, will continue to be on her grandpop’s clock, giving him B-12 infusions while feeding him fava beans and chopped liver; however—if Lauren never fulfills her chimeras—she may always think of herself as this dish best served chilled.

by Charles J. March III

Charles J. March III is currently living in California and has works in/forthcoming from Evergreen Review, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, 3:AM Magazine, BlazeVOX, Expat Press, Points in Case, Sensitive Skin, Taco Bell Quarterly, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Maudlin House, Misery Tourism, Litro, Otoliths, etc. More at LinkedIn & SoundCloud.