Hangman 3

"You seem a little twitchy." 

"You seem to be hovering over my fucking desk." 

Mike takes a step back, smiles. "I could hear the song you're playing in the other room, Just trying to see who the band is, and like I said you seem twitchy."

Mike is the only one left who can talk to me like that, I shouldn't be annoyed. But space is space. Don't try to collapse my bubble, you know what I mean?

The hangman comes and knock on my door

The hangman, I didn't think they hanged no more

"It's called, Hangman, it's by Rat City Bastards. My son's learning to play it on the guitar, I download it on itunes."

'How's emo-boy doing?"

"It's not a phase, but what the hell do I know. He playing a pretty kick-ass song, he's got a full load honor course and college prep-shit. If my dad was alive he would call my son a pussy, But dad also thought computers were a fad." 

"Carter, my man we are getting old." 

Jackbooted, tear-eyed working for the man 

Even the hangman trying to do the best he can

And just like that, something about made me flash back to boot camp and that Drill Sergeant yelling, "You piece shit with two last names, you run faster or I will this platoon into the ground." 

"Carter, you thinking about Drill Sergeant Quick?" 

I nod. 

"Can you imagine if he could see us now?"

It's never gonna' end you see

Government the government, got Citzen's United money

Two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and then sheep-dipped to do some work in Eygpt. I've know Mike that long. And then this last assignment. Super-weird shit. 

Everyone on the floor is a civilian as far as I can tell. I'm a mid-level product manager for IBM, so's Mike. We have team that report to us, we go to meetings, we do our jobs, but this was suppose to be cover training. Here for a three, maybe four months to learn the talk, to get the flavor and then off to an under cover assignment for the Company. 

It's been a year and I kinda' like my job, and the messages from Control say, "steady as she goes." 

I got friend who gonna march downtown

Veterans and hippies, wanna fight the man

I think Mike stands out more them me. He looks like a recruiting poster for the US Army. Fit, blonde haired and blued, American. I look like me. I look like an average, African-American, corporate stooge. We have those right?

"It weird to me." Mike nods.

I nod back. There's nothing to say. It's odd.

The hangman hates ISIS like you and me

But the hangman he's driven by his duty

When we got here Mike almost below his cover my snatching a nerf dart out of the air and flinging it back in some guy's eye. He bought everyone pizza and HR made him go to some Sensitive Training. The dart flinging might've been fine. But the string of explicative  he used would've made Sergeant Quick blush and he was a pretty nasty SOB