“What?” asked Catrina through a mouthful of waffles.
“OK,” said Thor. “Calling down lightning isn’t like throwing a baseball or a midget or something.”
“You throw midgets?”
“Once, bachelor party, long story. Not like lightning. Stay focused, woman.”
“Me? You’re the one side-tripping for waffle rage and dwarf tossing.”
“Look, do you want to know the answer or not?”
“Do you actually have one?” asked Catrina, with more waffles in her face.
“No, not really. Not a coherent or useful one anyway.”
“Well, OK, then.”
Forty: He’s Got the Tolerance of a Belligerent Irishman
“He’s… been drinking since Saturday,” said Syl.
“Yes,” replied Phil, “but he’s only been drunk since Tuesday.”
“That’s still… eight days,” said Will.
Syl, Phil, Will, and Bill stood around Quetzalcoatl. He was asleep in his corner, curled up and covered in newspapers and trash bags.
“Where,” inquired Bill, “is he getting the beer from? He hasn’t… vacated the basement.”
Quetzalcoatl was also surrounded by several dozen empty beer bottles.
“He… requisitioned it from some of our… more recent acquisitions,” replied Phil.
“But,” asked Syl, “why… Budweiser?”
“I think it’s obvious… that the… gravity of society’s situation… has led him to jettison the… niceties, the more upscale alcoholic beverages… that a man of his intellect would prefer.”
“Clearly,” concurred Bill.
“I think,” countered Syl, “he actually… enjoys it.”
“Watch your tongue, Syl,” reprimanded Phil. “His methods may be… unconventional, even to our eyes, but he is still our… greatest hope. He has given us… direction, direction we sorely lacked. Do not speak of him as if he was… some common drunk.”
“But that is precisely what he is,” said Syl.
Phil, Will, and Bill—as well as Gil, Lil, Jill, Hil, and a smattering of other previously unnamed, unmentioned underlings who happened to be in the area—stopped what they were doing, stepped back, and gasped.
“Syl,” said Phil.
“You don’t…” said Will.
“…really mean…” said Bill.
“I do,” said Syl. “Quinn… has been playing us from the start. He cares as little for our cause as… as… applesauce monkey farts…”
Syl leaned forward and fell to the ground, landing on his face. Normally, this would have been cause for alarm. However, the broken Budweiser bottle wedged through Syl’s skull and into his brain stem took precedence over the falling.
“My apologies to our janitor and your vaginas, gentlemen,” said Quetzalcoatl, “but I simply will not… lean against a wall for this.”
Quetzalcoatl wanted to go with the more traditional “I will not stand for this,” as he thought it sounded more eloquent, but he was, in fact, having supreme difficulties with standing again and did not want to be a liar. About standing, anyway. Hence the more honest “leaning” approach. Because that’s what he was doing. Leaning.
“But, you killed him,” said Bill.
“A coat without buttons is still a bathrobe. And buttons shouldn’t be talking shit about the naked guy in the shower if they’d care to remain buttons.”
“Are you saying…” asked Phil.
“I’m your huckleberry.”
Forty-One: Shakespeare Invented the Hooker Metaphor
“How long have we been driving?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“No idea,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Clock’s broken.”
“It feels like we’ve been driving for days.”
“That’s just because the sun’s been all out of whack since Mars fell into it,” said William H. Taft XLII. “It goes down more times in a day than a two dollar prostitute with bad ankles and an inner ear problem.”
“Also because every now and again when your knees hit your face you knock yourself unconscious,” added Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Is that why my shirt’s covered in blood?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“No,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII. “That’s not your blood.”
“Oh, right. Right,” she said. “We should probably stop somewhere so I can get some new clothes.”
“You could just take your shirt off,” suggested William H. Taft XLII.
“I do that and you get strangled with it.”
“Yeah, that’s a good point,” said William H. Taft XLII, turning to Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Maybe we should look for a store.”
“I don’t know,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII, “I think I’m okay with that option.”
“Strangling you is step two, buddy.”
“Yeah, bullshit.”
“You wanna try me?”
Chester A. Arthur XVII reflected on just how well he knew Queen Victoria XXX and how sated her inner sociopath currently was. He weighed this against how she’d look topless.
“I’m a little concerned that my being strangled is taken as a certainty,” commented William H. Taft XLII.
Chester A. Arthur XVII didn’t hear him. He was reflecting on his options thoroughly.
“Seriously, guys,” continued William H. Taft XLII, “why is my brutal murder at one of your hands never an issue?”
Very thoroughly.
“Your continued silence is not helping to alleviate my fears.”
“Hush, Billy,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “The grown-ups are talking.”
“You know,” Chester A. Arthur XVII finally said, “we’re all getting a little ripe. New clothes probably wouldn’t hurt.”
“Pansy.”
Forty-Two: It’s Not Lazy If You Call It an Homage
Timmy was a squirrel. A typical, ordinary, completely boring, nut-hoarding, tree-climbing squirrel. Nothing funny or unusual going on with him at all.
At least, not until he was kidnapped.
Timmy was out one fine day, gathering berries and crumbs for his family, when suddenly everything went dark. Was it night? No, it couldn’t be. It just stopped being night. Did the sky fire go out? Maybe. The sky fire had been exceedingly erratic lately. But, wait, hold up. Timmy’s feet weren’t on the ground anymore. What the fuck was this nonsense?
It took him a moment, but Timmy eventually figured out he was inside of something. A bag, probably. He had never been inside of a bag before, but he had a vague idea of how they worked. He had only an even vaguer idea of how to make them not work, but it was better than nothing.
Timmy clawed and gnawed at the bag, twisting and rolling and making little squirrelly noises, but to no avail. The bag was reinforced. With another bag. Escape was hopeless.
So Timmy gave up hope.
This wasn’t actually all that difficult. Timmy barely understood the concept of hope. To him, it was just the imprecise notion that clawing enough at anything equaled food. Plywood, concrete, people—scratch, scratch, scratch—hey, there could be a hunk of bread under there—scratch, scratch, scratch.
Then, without warning or reason, or even a decent transition, everything changed.
The bag was removed and there were all these people and pointy things and lights and pain and oh my Jesus what the hell please let me die and, and… and suddenly Timmy knew exactly what was going on. He was in a laboratory, surrounded by scientists and attached to electrodes and stuck with needles. He caught a glimpse of a formula on a chalkboard and quickly deduced that his brain had been boiled in radiation, sparking a higher cognizance. Holy shit.