“Cypher, before we do this, there’s something you should know,” I growl, my fingers clenching the steering wheel, eyes boring holes through the windshield.
“Y-yeah? What is that?”
“Every time you hid from Chittery, she came to me for your hiding spot, and I gave it up. Every single time.”
He bolts upright in his seat. “What th-the hell!?”
I flinch and give him a sheepish smile. “Yeah…I’m not proud.”
“Kildeez! Sh-she called it ‘Hide and Go Molest’! I just needed a b-break!”
“I’m sorry! She’s scary as hell when she wants to be, dude, you know that!”
“Seriously, what the hell!?”
“I said I was…” we round a corner, and suddenly the goose-stepping fifties white neighborhood is practically on top of us. At the head of the line is a portly man in wide-rimmed glasses that looks like Mr. Wilson from the original black-and-white Dennis the Menace series. Cypher’s jaw drops to its usual impressive length and he sinks into his seat, his outrage forgotten. I just grimace and feel along my sleeve with one hand, ensuring my makeshift armor is still in place. I aim the car right for the center of the crowd and floor it. They spy us and glare in unison, bowing their heads as their goose-stepping turns into a raging charge.
“Dinner’s ready, kids!” I scream. “It’s a nice steamin’ plate of whoop-ass! Don’t worry, there’s enough for everybody!”
Cypher screams as ol’ Mr. Wilson goes under the car tires, those thick-framed glasses flying off his face. Soon, the entire crowd is following suit, legions of the damned things being drawn beneath our tires, snarling, their fingers clawing at the frame in the split second before the car’s massive weight bears them down. At least this is an advantage with the old fifties cars: pure steel framing and wooden paneling, which is just added weight that murders gas mileage, but turns this thing into a medieval battering ram.
I grin as the car bumps over more bodies, my hands clenching the steering wheel until the knuckles turn white, my thoughts already turning to what we would do when we made it through to the house as if we were already there. And then a VW Beetle appears in the windshield, materializing out of the crowd.
Cypher screams. Wordlessly, I turn the wheel, trying to dodge, my mouth forming into a little “oh” of surprise and terror. It’s nowhere near enough: the VW follows us, the driver none other than ol’ Mr. Schmitty, his mouth formed into a victorious grin as the grilles of our cars draw closer.
There’s a second where I see the genius of the trap: they picked a car small enough to be hidden by the sheer mass of bodies, but still heavy enough to do some damage. It’s freakin’ perfect. Then, we meet in the middle. The hoods crumple up. Glass shatters. Cypher and I jerk in our seats, the shoulder straps biting into us. My head smacks the side window, cracks racing out through the glass, blood adding to them while I cogwiggany the Doofenschmirtz, my pasta is the best of mom’s spaghetti. Vomit on my sweater already. Arms are leady.
“K…EE…”
I am the egg man, kneel before me you muffin-based animal product whores!
“KIL…Z!”
Celestia’s butt is so hot.
“KILD…Z!”
Zeeka is the key to piracy!
“KILDEEZ!”
“Ahh! What, Cypher, what!? Can’t a man have a concussion in peace!?” I scream right back.
He flinches and starts to shrink back in his seat, but takes one look at the glass shards poking up out of the leather and thinks better of it. “S-sorry…”
I grimace as I straighten up and a lance of pain shoots through my ribcage. Oh, good, so we can feel pain in dreams. Nice to know. “N-no, you did the right thing gettin’ me up, thanks,” I grimace, trying to peer through the blood and cracks in the side window. The crowd is fanning out, surrounding the car, joining shoulder to shoulder to create an impenetrable wall of humanity. Just behind them, I can make out the totaled outline of the VW, its body a crinkled mess of warped steel and shattered glass. Mr. Schmitty is sitting up in the driver’s seat, glaring at us with one good eye as he slowly maneuvers the other eye back into his eye socket. It pops back in place, and he reaches down to readjust his nose, his other arm setting to work on the twisted-up door.
As nice as it is to know we did damage to that motherfucker, it doesn’t make what I see next sit any better. For all the hurt we put on him, the VW left its mark on our car. One wheel well looks totally collapsed, the tire just a mass of shredded rubber and bent steel. Steam pours from the engine on that side. I don’t even try turning the key: even if the engine still runs by some miracle of fifties technology, the ruined tire almost certainly means the front axle will shatter the next time we move, if it hasn’t already. The car is toast.
Letting out a hiss of pain, I turn and press the door open, grateful when it glides away at my touch. I stand, pulling the crowbar out with me. The crowd doesn’t move, glaring hatefully. At their head, a tiny group parts to allow none other than Officer Friendly through. He’s still wearing that damned grin under that stupid mustache as he strides towards us, his leather-soled shoes clacking on the pavement. “Well boys, you’ve certainly given us a good runaround,” he announces. “But that’s over now, y’all ready to behave?”
In response, I pull out my Bic lighter and check in the back. A few molotovs lay shattered, the reek of gasoline filling the car. I grimace. The couple we’ve got left will have to do. “Cypher, pass one of those up.” I growl.
He hands (or is it ‘hooves?’) one of the cocktails up to me with a shaking grip. I tuck it in my belt and hide it the best I can under my shirt. Without another word, I stand up and out of the car, hands raised, the matchbook tucked safely into my shirt’s front pocket. Officer Friendly gives me a wide, predatory grin, the kind that shows off all his teeth. “You boys armed?”
“Naw,” I shout, turning around to show my backside. Of course, there’s nothing there, and I’m surprised he hasn’t pointed out the bulge up front. Maybe he thinks I’ve put on a few pounds in the short time we’ve been in here? “I ain’t got shit but this!” I pull the matches out for emphasis.
Friendly grins and steps forward, the rest of the crowd following suit. I grin right back as I reach into my waistband and come back around with the Molotov in one hand, the matches in the other. “Oh, and this, did I forget to mention this?”
The All-American White Pride Army stops in its tracks, dozens of tasteful slacks and plain sundresses gliding to a halt. Still, Friendly’s grin doesn’t waver. “Only got a few of those, I’ll bet, and I’ll also bet the crash took out a few more!” He chortles. “Can’t take us all out!”
“Nope,” I reply, setting the match on fire with a flick of my thumb. “But I bet I can take a bunch of ya.”
Friendly’s smile fades as I bring the little, flickering flame to the cloth wick. It catches instantly. Screaming, I do my best Ash Ketchum impression and pitch the fucker right at Friendly’s smug little face. His eyes widen and he dives to the asphalt, letting the Rod Serling lookalike in the cheap business suit behind him take the cocktail to the chest. The “man” lets out an earsplitting shriek of pain as its body is instantly engulfed in flame, the nice little housewife and wonderful little blonde-haired boy in coveralls at his side diving away, hair and arms on fire. The Serling-thing sinks to its knees, letting out a cry like bubble wrap being flattened by a Prius, then finally falls over on its back.
I stand up, my arms raised in a couple of middle fingers. Friendly looks up, eyes wide, eyebrows arching high over his sunglasses. I grin down at him. “Witness me!” I announce. “Witness your own destruction!”
I turn in place, middle fingers still raised. Friendly’s slack-jawed gaze is matched by everyone around me, drinking in my awesomeness. Hell yeah, bitches, there’s one thing you don’t back into a corner, and it’s right here. What!? What now punks, what now!?
Hey, is it getting hot in here or is it just me?
That’s when it hits me: I stored gasoline in a bunch of containers that were far from Federally-approved, probably splashing it on myself and everything around me in doing so. And if that weren’t enough, immediately after that I suffered a car accident that shattered what containers I did have. All of this on top of my armor made out of paper mulch and duct tape.
I look up. A couple of flaming smoke stacks topped with every angry driver’s answer to a guy cutting him off greets me. I look back down again. I smile, trembling. One of the fifties-people things smiles back.
“Ummm…” Friendly says.
“FIRE SLEEEEEVVVVVEEEESSS!” I scream in a high pitch, stretching my arms out as I run for the edge of the crowd. “Fire goddamned sleeves!”
The crowd backs off, apparently obeying that Frankensteinian rule of being afraid of fire. Cool. I just grin, running at them, waving my flaming arms around like a chicken learning how to fly. “FIRE! SLEEVES!” I pound the nearest guy across the back of the head, twisting in time to block a blow from a baseball bat, which I twist out of its owner’s hands to bring around in a low, hard arc against his face. I hear glass shattering and the fwoosh of rising flames off to my right, and I turn in time to see Cypher charging the circle, a gap cleared by a gout of flame from another one of the Molotovs, his bladed tendrils swinging wildly as he screams like a little girl. I grin before turning back to the battle, bringing my knee up in a rising blow right to another motherfucker’s crotch, and based on the high-pitched cry that gets me, I figure these things are still sensitive downstairs.
Within moments, I’ve made a screaming, partially-flaming hole in the circle around us. Cypher and I break through it, my arms still stretched out and flames baking our asses.
“AAAHH FIRE SLEEVES!” I scream as we bound across the front lawn of my house, back where it all started. I slam into the grass, rolling around frantically, struggling with the duct tape. The magazine covers are blackening and falling away, the flames flickering against my bare skin, but Cypher just grabs the “cuffs” and yanks them off, throwing them back in the crowd’s direction.
“F-f-f…” I moan, falling back on the porch. “Fire…fire…sl-sleeves…”
We’re left gasping and puffing in this momentary lapse, panting on the porch, me leaning against the beam that supports the little overhang, him straight up flat on his back, wheezing like he just ran a marathon. The gray gunk the people in this weird little hellhole bleed is clinging to his shell, oozing off the edges of his blade-tendrils. I sigh, run my fingers through my hair, and look up.
Officer Friendly is standing at the head of his army, just twenty yards off the curb.
“Fucking-A, can we get a moment here!?” I pant. “I know we make this shit look easy, but it’s actually pretty heavy on the cardio, y’know?!”
“I will admit, that was awful unexpected,” Friendly replies, ignoring me, that smug smile back on his face. “But now it’s over, and all you’ve done is left me no choice but t’play my trump card.”
“Well first, I wanna lay a monster face-down in defense mode, so you sure you wanna do that just yet?”
Again ignoring me, he points to the house. “Your pretty little friend is in there with the Wilkins from just down the road, has been since ya left,” he says, that smug little smirk intensifying and growing more punchable. “Nice folks, them Wilkins. Only thing is you don’t wanna get ‘em mad. Barb Wilkins might be a little slow since the arthritis set in, but you should see the things she can do with those hedge trimmers of hers. Art’s the only word for it. Fucking. Art.”
My teeth clench, my hands balling into fists. Cypher sits up, still panting, his eyes widening and his ears folding back. “P-Princess…”
“So unless you want your little bug-horse-girl to wind up splattered all over those nice couch cushions you know she likes so much, you two’ll learn to shut up and do what you’re…”
That’s as far as he gets before the front bay window explodes in a shower of glass. Out fly two elderly people, one with a busted-up set of gardening shears in her beaten hands, the other with what I can only assume is a flaming oven mitt rammed up his ass. Both hit the lawn and skid until they nail the curb, bouncing right off and rolling to Friendly’s feet. The cop stares down at them, mouth working in shock. “B-Barb? Buddy?”
Out of the smoke now pouring from the house stands our favorite bug-horse-princess, glaring evilly, smoke drifting off her body, her apron now reading: “KISSFUCK THE CHEF” courtesy of some really obvious black sharpie. She strides out of the house, following along the dirt tracks left by her latest victims, her body heaving with each breath, her eyes wide and twitching. A cold pang of fear grips my heart just looking at her.
“Ch-Chittery?” I ask tentatively.
Without looking back at me, she levels a hoof on Friendly, then fans it out to the entire crowd. “You!” She screams. “All of you! I’m gonna rip out your throats, resurrect you, fuck your assholes, and make you do the same to everybody you’ve ever loved before I kill you again!”
Dead silence, everyone staring at her, which I interrupt with a quick: “Jesus, princess, you wanna tone it down a bit? Maybe go for something a little less Silence of the Lambs?”
She turns that glare on me, and suddenly I feel like a mouse when an owl-shaped shadow drifts over it, or how every man feels when he learns of a 20%-off sale at Kohl’s the same day he promised to take his girlfriend shopping. “They wanted me to put on clothes. Ass-covering clothes that kept this beautiful work of art from the world!” She turned and smacked a flank with her hoof, eliciting a few nice ripples that sets her whole body shaking. “You expect me to be calm about that!? Do you know how many squats it took to get this the way it is!? Only to cover it up!?”
More silence. I raise a single, quivering hand. “A-a-lot?”
“Yes. A lot.” She hisses angrily before turning back to the crowd, fangs bared. “So who invited this bunch? And may I compliment them on their choice of blondes?”
Friendly’s shocked expression morphs back to that old righteous fury. “So you all broke free of the spell, so what!?” He barks. “It’s still just the three of you against the lot of us!”
At that, I raise my fists, my teeth gritting. In a flash, Cypher and Chittery are at my sides, pressing in close.
“A-anymore ideas, anyone?” Cypher whispers out the corner of his mouth.
“Workin’ on it,” I growl in reply, pulling out the crowbar. Chittery and Cypher hiss, baring their fangs and setting their horns aglow. Thing is, Friendly’s right. We can probably take on a good dozen of these bastards at a time, more if any of us had our respective necromancy or transformative powers back, but as it is we’ve used up most of our weapons and fifty shitheads are still standing. I’ll even lay a bet this ain’t all of them: there’s gotta be more throughout this weird dream land. We can’t fight them all.
Wait a second…dream land…
“This is a dream…” I mutter. Shit, we’ve been looking at this all wrong, approaching it like another battle to fight.
Cypher looks up to me, curious. “Y-yes?”
“We’re fighting for no reason!” I realize. “We’ve been distracted trying to fight these things, don’t you get it!?”
Both changelings look up at me, eyebrows arched. No, no they don’t get it.
“Why are we fighting these things!? What’s the point!?” I shout. “We don’t need to escape them! We need to escape the dream itself!”
Cypher’s and Chittery’s eyes bug out. It’s hit them too. “Holy…” Chittery starts, but then a rock sails right by her head.
“Get ‘em!” Friendly screeches, his voice panicked. I grin. He knows we’ve pieced it together, but my grin doesn’t last long as a veritable tide of humanity pours over the lawn, aiming straight at us. I haven’t seen this many angry white people since the last Republican National Convention, and they’re coming in quick.
“Okay, s-so we gotta w-wake up,” Cypher whimpers, shrinking back with his tendrils raised as the mob approaches. “How?”
“Okay…okayokayokay…” my brow hunches, and I mull the options over in my mind as I assume my fighting stance. We’re just asleep, none of this is real, but we gotta wake up somehow. But how? Pain doesn’t do it, or else we would’ve woken up after taking a Volkswagen to the face. Everything else seems real. Just like…a simulation. What was that I’d said earlier…this was a simulation, .hack//sign style? Okay, so let’s look at it like that: this is a program, with set parameters and specific situations to deal with.
I grin as I think back to my old job, back on Earth, programming industrial systems and bringing them online. What’s the first thing we had to do when we implemented a change? Cook up a situation the program wasn’t meant to deal with and see if something breaks.
Still grinning, I stride across the lawn, heading right for Officer Friendly at the head of his army. “What the hell are you doing!?” Cypher gasps, but I can see Chittery pull him back, eyes on me. She knows when somebody’s got an idea, and right now I have the air of a doozy. The army balks, the mob slowing as I continue towards them with my big, happy, nearly-oblivious strides, seemingly unaware of the malevolent glares aiming my way. Friendly looks at me with an eyebrow arching up over his darkened sunglasses, then he grins and walks to meet me halfway.
“Come t’your senses, boy?” He asks. “Realize you ain’t gonna win?”
I look up at him, grinning like the Cheshire cat. His smile remains, then slowly fades away, his mustache quivering in the failing light. “Say somethin’, boy, you’ve got yourself a captive audience now.”
Still grinning, I suddenly close the distance between us, wrap his arms around his shoulders, and close my lips over his. It’s beautiful, our mustaches tingling against each other as my tongue darts over his, running over his jagged teeth, tasting the plain, drab meat inside his mouth, trying very hard not to wrench away in disgust. He’s so shocked, his flabby arms only hang at his sides, his legs going weak as the kiss continues on and on, my lips only releasing him when my last breath leaves my lungs.
“Notice me, senpaiiiii~,” I whisper, gazing deep into his hollow, black eyes.
He twitches in my grasp, then suddenly falls over, throwing himself back like a dog having a seizure, his whole body twitching in its uniform. “Wh-what did you do!?” He shrieks.
My pleasant, homoerotically-aroused smile turns into a dark grin. “Introducing a new patch to the program, but whoopsies, looks like it’s not compatible with the environment. Goshdarnit.”
Taking the hint, Chittery taps a hoof on the ground. Immediately, a pole ascends in a gout of green flame and the cries of the souls of the damned. With a little wink, she promptly unties the apron she’s wearing and tosses it into the crowd, where it lands over some dead-eyed dude in a business suit and drapes itself over his fedora. She promptly wraps her hooves around the pole and slides around it, opening a strip tease.
Friendly stares slack-jawed as Chittery treats the pole like many a desperate art major before her. She winds around the steel, rocking her hips, twisting around until finally, her hind legs locked around the pole, she arches her back far enough where her horn is able to scrape the outer folds of her butt cheeks. Shit, any more flexible and I’d think she was the offspring of Stretch Armstrong and Plastic Man. Everyone watches, awestruck, but none more than the men. And some of the ladies. Yes, the fifties had those too, boys and girls, they were just hiding to keep from getting lynched.
Suddenly, a horde of men breaks from the crowd, stomping forward all stiff-legged as if they’d just broken from their graves.
“What are you doing!?” Friendly cries. “Get back in line!”
“W-we can’t help it,” one of the suit-clad men drones back, his hand darting into his jacket. “It’s so perfect…it…makes me wanna…”
“Make it rain!” I whoop, and as if on cue, dollar bills come cascading down from the sky, thrown by the horde of entranced men. They land all around Cypher, who sits on the lawn, utterly enraptured, his jaw hanging down as Chittery’s impressive cheeks flex, her hoof giving a little smack that gets them shaking, the sunlight bouncing off her ass-chitin like sun off a pond in the middle of summer…
I tear my eyes away, shaking my head. “Not a clopper…not a clopper…Jesus, it’s like looking at a hot lava lamp,” I moan, looking up and grinning at what I see. Above me, the sky is fluctuating, cracks racing across it. The clouds fade between an old sepia tone, then black and white, then color, and ultimately gravitating towards a loud buzz of static. Friendly follows my gaze and looks up, his jaw dropping.
“No…” he gasps, fists clenching. “NO! It’s not fair! You can’t do this! This is my realm, not yours! Who the hell do you think you are!?”
I gaze deep into his eyes, a cocky grin covering my face. “I’m torn between making a Gurren Lagann reference, or a Guardians of the Galaxy one,” I reply. “So let’s go with neither.”
My fist rockets up in a devastating uppercut that cracks against the shelf of his jaw. His teeth slam together with a loud click that I can see visibly cracking a couple incisors. His head whips back, his back arching as the force of the punch carries him right off the ground and forces him into an impression of Free Willy. All the while, my voice fills the entire world, echoing through the streets and bouncing off the hills:
“I’m Rick James, BITCH!”