Thus, in her forty-eighth year, the incredible secret life of Mrs. Evelyn Couch of Birmingham, Alabama, began.
Few people who saw this plump, pleasant-looking middleaged, middle-class housewife out shopping or doing other menial everyday chores could guess that, in her imagination, she was machine-gunning the genitals of rapers and stomping abusive husbands to death in her specially designed wife-beater boots.
Evelyn had even made up a secret code name for herself ...a name feared around the world: TOWANDA THE AVENGER!
And while Evelyn went about her business with a smile, Towanda was busy poking child molesters with electric cattle prods until their hair stood on end. She placed tiny bombs inside Playboy and Penthouse magazines that would explode when they were opened. She gave dope dealers overdoses and left them in the streets to die; forced that doctor, who had told her mother she had cancer, to walk down the street naked while the entire medical profession, including dentists and oral hygienists, jeered and threw rocks. A merciful avenger, she always waited until he finished his walk and then beat his brains out with a sledgehammer.
Towanda was able to do anything she wanted. She went back in time and punched out Paul for writing that women should remain silent. Towanda went to Rome and kicked the pope off the throne and put a nun there, with the priests cooking and cleaning for her, for a change.
Towanda appeared on Meet the Press, and with a calm voice, a cool eye, and a wry smile, debated everyone who disagreed with her until they became so defeated by her brilliance that they burst into tears and ran off the show. She went to Hollywood and ordered all the leading men to act opposite women of their own age, not twenty-year-old girls with perfect bodies. She allowed rats to chew all slumlords to death, and sent food and birth control methods, for men as well as women, to the poor people of the world.
And because of her vision and insight, she became known the world over as Towanda the Magnanimous, Righter of Wrongs and Queen without Compare.
Towanda ordained that: an equal number of men and women would be in the government and sit in on peace talks; she and her staff of crack chemical scientists would find a cure for cancer and invent a pill that would let you eat all you want and not gain weight; people would be forced to get a license to have children and must be found fit, financially and emotionally—no more starving or battered children. Jerry Falwell would be responsible for the raising of all illegitimate children who had no homes; no kittens or puppies would be put to sleep, and they would be given a state of their own, maybe New Mexico or Wyoming; teachers and nurses would receive the same salary as professional football players.
She would stop the construction of all condos, especially ones with red tile roofs; and Van Johnson would be given a show of his own:. . . he was one of Towanda’s favorites.
Graffiti offenders were to be dipped in a vat of indelible ink. No more children of famous parents could write books. And she’d personally see to it that all the sweet men and daddies, who had worked so hard, would each receive a trip to Hawaii and an outboard motor to go with it.
Towanda went to Madison Avenue and took control of all the fashion magazines; all models weighing under 135 were fred, and wrinkles suddenly became sexually desirable. Lowfat cottage cheese was banned from the land forever. Ditto, carrot sticks.
Why, just yesterday, Towanda had marched into the Pentagon, taken all the bombs and missiles away, and had given them toys to play with instead, while her sisters in Russia were doing the same thing. Then she went on the six o’clock nightly news and gave the entire military budget to all the people in the United States over sixty-five. Towanda would be so busy all day that Evelyn was exhausted by bedtime.
No wonder, Tonight, while Evelyn was cooking dinner, Towanda had just put a roomful of porno and child exploitation flm producers to death. And later, as Evelyn was washing the dishes, Towanda was in the process of single-handedly blowing up the entire Middle East to prevent the Third World War.
And so, when Ed yelled from the den for another beer, somehow, before Evelyn could stop her, Towanda yelled back, “SCREW YOU, ED!” He very quietly got up from his recliner and came into the kitchen. “Evelyn, are you all right?”
