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I’m awake at sunrise, same as always.

Awake, but not UP, of course.  I’m too smart for that, even with my brain still cool from the night.  The best of sleep is when you’ve just finished it and are deliciously, completely at rest and unable to think or move, just feel how sweet it is and how warm and soft the world remains and breathe in the gentle snores of Driver next to me, curled against my head. 

So to maximize that time I don’t move an inch and I keep my eyes shut and I don’t change my breathing and I stay in that beautiful place for all of six minutes before That Fucker comes around to my pen and starts loudly asking Driver if I’m awake yet lazy beast come on there’s aa battle to be won abluh bluh bluh bwuh. 

Longer than usual.  Oh what a fine rest it was. 

So away with my rest, up with my body (at the gentle prods of Driver at least, rather than the hasty and careless hands of That Fucker), down with breakfast (cold and lumpy: someone doesn’t want me too content before the fight), and on with the armour.

The armour takes six of them to put on.  Too many buckles in my opinion.  I stand there and watch as the sun goes up and pretend I’m a tree and don’t have to care about any of this and none of it’s my business and today I will live a good dull tree life and NOT have maniacs try to stab, arrow, cut, etc. my face, belly, or legs.

Of course, I’ve seen what these folks do to trees.  Can’t win for losing, frankly.

Tara, tarantatatratatraaaaa.  Alarm, shouting, waving of arms.  That Fucker is here early and is hopping mad. 

Surprise attack!  The sneaky enemy have decided they’d rather fight early over here than on time over there like civilized people.  How deceitful.  How diabolical.  At least I had time for my lumpy breakfast. 

Up my side stomps That Fucker, feet even heavier than usual on the ladder (all that weight on their mind, I suspect).  Then the two bows.  Then the two pikes. 

Then Driver, who is wrapped up in a little ball of armour that’s much less fancy than That Fucker’s but is unconstrained by a need for maneuverability.  Like a baby bird balled up in iron feathers. 

I want to tickle them very badly.  But ah, there’s no time.  The battle has already turned up, and it’s burning down the tents next to us. 

To war! shouts That Fucker.

For That Place We Live In! shout the others.  Death!  Bloodshed!  Defeat (for them, not us please please please).  And so on. 

I don’t get to shout until Driver pokes me behind the ear just so, which happens pretty fast so I guess Driver is as sick of hearing from the others as I am. 

I don’t shout.  I ROAR.

So I do that for a good thirty seconds that feel like three years as I start walking and accelerate and run and then I’m in the battle. 

***

These are the things I saw.

A tent.

A tent on fire.

A person setting a tent on fire.

Two people screaming.

One person running.

Three people standing to fight.

Three people flying away through the air.

Six people fighting four other people while two other people shout at them.

A little bird crouched down low in the grass pretending it isn’t here. 

Someone who’d been swarmed and stabbed in the belly while they were eating breakfast, before their armour was put on. 

Sixteen people braced for a charge.

Eight people throwing away their weapons and trying to run. 

A person screaming – maybe in anger – and waving a very small knife. 

The kitchen and its awful breakfast and twenty people fighting over and around and in it. 

Trampled grass stained red and bile. 

More people. 

A big bright beautiful day turning from golden to blue in the sky. 

Driver.

***

Those are the things I saw in the order I stepped on them. 

***

Driver must have slipped free when the armour around the side of my head took a nasty cut, blowing out some crucial strapwork.  All that weight on them for their own protection dragged them down and off and under my legs where it was no protection at all.

They could have dug in, of course.  They had the prod, and the prod had a big spike on the back.  A real nasty one, just in case I got Ideas.  But Driver never used it.  And so off Driver went.

That Fucker is shouting more than usual.  Probably mad that I’m standing still instead of charging.  But I can’t charge and look after Driver at the same time, so tough shit. 

I think Driver’s alive.  It’s really hard to tell, they’re so tiny.  I need to get all these stupid armour off them. 

Ow.  There’s a pinprick at the back of my skull.  That Fucker is trying to goad me.  Ow.  Ow.  OW. 

Okay, that was a pike.  That Fucker isn’t trying to goad me, they’re trying to have me skewered. 

But I’ve lost some crucial strapwork recently, so I shrug and all the armour and the bows and the pikes and That Fucker slide off and land in a heap and I walk away and don’t even bother trying to step on it. 

I pick up Driver and put them back in their spot as I walk.  Nobody tries to stop me.  I guess they’re busy killing and dying and all of those other things. 

***

It’s not long until it’s quiet again.  Real quiet.  Not sure I’ve been in a place like this since my youth, before I got picked up and hauled off to meet Driver and everyone else.  No little voices.  No fields.  No orchards.  No roads or buildings.  No people. 

Driver doesn’t count.  They’re good for that. 

I pick fruit as I walk and offer it.  Some of it is taken, some isn’t.  We go until the sun starts to drop and I stand and I watch as it turns red over a little river with cool water that tastes like ice against my teeth.

We’ll stay here for the night.  And maybe tomorrow Driver will be okay, and maybe tomorrow Driver will have taken that soft sleep that never stops. 

It will be alright.  The best part of sleep is being not quite awake; but second best is getting there, and it’s a close second. 

The Prepaleoplostic Eon

Most nothing, or at least nothing worth noting geologically.  The stones of the planet fart their way together into tectonic harmony. 

The Paleoplostic Era – the Yurtomitvitch Period

Organisms figure out what to use all this boron floating around in the ocean for the past billion years and start constructing the first visible evidence of their presence recorded in the fossil record: very very small yurts.  Construction is incompetent but diligent.  The form of the inhabitants is unknown and presumably they were still mostly liquid. 

The Rufflupogust Period

Organisms discover that boron-based structures can ALSO be used to create structure within oneself.  Immediately life displays two great lineages: the blohardynopsians, who make elaborate internal scaffoldings and then swallow them; and the bunngowlisia, who make elaborate internal scaffoldings and then force them up their anuses.  Both live side by side for entire years before the bunngowlisia abruptly go extinct at the end of the Rufflupogust, about instantly after they first appear. 

The Greater Krimmidgish Period

Often called the ‘glory days’ of the Paleoplostic, the Greater Krimmidgish sees blohardynopsian life spread far and wide through the boron seas of Yurm, becoming bottom-dwelling scavengers, bottom-dwelling grazers, bottom-dwelling predators, and even a brief and terrifying experimental period where they floated just above the ocean floor. 

The Lesser Krimmidgish Period

The inanimate and insensate bacterial mats that are at the base of all blohardynopsian food webs develop the capacity to float at the water’s surface.  The entirety of the blohardynopsian lineage is wiped from the surface of Yurm within mere centuries; their only modern survivors are those little slimy things that try to eat your toenails in swamps. 

The Whorlibord Period

A small and innocuously group of bacterial mat-dwelling creatures develop the snoot, an anatomical wonder that allows both breathing and eating with a simple flex and snivel.  The group, termed innocuopods (after the late Horthord P. Innocuous), thrives and diversifies into a breathtaking array of forms, spreading into many of the old blohardynopsian niches and more besides. 

One lineage of creatures become known around now, although their past remains hazy.  Like the blohardynopsians and the bunngowlisia they use boron structures to keep their internals structured; unlike either they shun housing and don’t creature their internal support externally; instead building inside themselves using little tiny hands on the inward-facing surface of their skin, called creepi.  The animals themselves, creepodonts, will remain a fixture of the seas for a very long time, thanks to their powerful crotchetiness. 

The Lubbery Period

The oceans of Yurm dry up abruptly, forcing most of the organisms in them to stand on their own ten legs for the first time.  Most perish, some grumble, a few thrive.  In particular several of the most powerfully-snooted innocuopods do quite well for themselves – now their snoots can breathe, eat, and loco-mote for them!  Truly a marvel of evolution.  Many bacterial mats discover that adhering to dry rocks is at least as pleasant as a soggy water’s surface, and within ten million years of the Great Drying, life appears quite congenial. 

Then the oceans of Yurm return from near-orbit in the greatest precipitation ever to occur, wiping out ten times the number of species disturbed in the initial hubbub.  The Sog remains the most titanic disaster in the history of life on, around, and generally in the vicinity of Yurm.  We can only aspire to top it. 

The Mezzosorpanoplostic Era – the Quintuplic Period

The Quintuplic is a time of great hardship and great innovation: the few lucky snoot-bearers and bacterial matters that survive go apeshit across the surface of Yurm, sea and water and air alike.  The sky buzzes with a thousand thousand whiny little heliwings; the water is abroil with fierce and chewy creatures from shorks to shirrts; and on land one million different kinds of creepodont-related creepostrophes lurch sulkily across the landscape in great pouts that shake the very ground. 

At the close of the Quintuplic all five remaining continents bump together at once and the resulting shockwave exterminates all of the innocuopods, most of the creepodonts, a bunch of the creepostrophes, and all of the shirrts.  None of the shorks though.  They did quite well for themselves. 

The Phlegmic Period

The violent wobbling of the continents produces a permanently shaky and highly wiggly climate for life; and the Phlegmic is famously home to the dawn of the jiggliest animals ever to swerve their way drunkenly over Yurm: the jauntertrophes.  This extreme branch of the creepostrophe family tree squiggled their way to ever-more-scrambled heights throughout the entire Mezzosorpanoplostic Era, and indeed early scientists refused to believe the most impressive of their kind could even exist on dry land without undergoing fatal and immediate squiggling.  Modern math has proven otherwise. 

The Boddaceous Period

The Boddaceous was a period mostly consistent of lava, and the way life responded to this in many ways determined its future success.  The jauntertrophes shuddered their way above it and around it and a bit to the side of it; crossing entire trans-continental lava fields without so much as wobbling into a single plume of smoke.  The shorks dove deep and ate rocks.  The creepostrophes ate the lava.  And the creepodonts dropped dead. 

Then a very large rock slammed into Yurm and everyone’s ingenuity was at best a huge waste of time. 

The Seeloplostic Era – the Postpaleoplesic Period

The Seeloplostic begins with a much-diminished Yurm.  The jauntertrophes are dead; the creepodonts are dead; the creepostrophes aren’t doing too hot, and the most prevalent type of animal on Yurm were little ugly bug things that ate fast and died faster – a dubious ecological niche, it’s got to be said.  With little competition and a vast, devastated world open to all, they were free to eat faster and die faster than they ever had before.  They were called copeiforms, and they were our ancestors, except for all the ones that died. 

Which were most of them.  Copeiform evolution believed in error moreso so than trial, with such luminaries as Puborre’s Witherbling (which fed entirely upon its own young); the Lesser Mock Skammer (which possessed eight pairs of redundant legs); and the Rippled Wharf (whose courting rituals appeared to consist of building a tiny ball and sealing itself inside forever). 

The Postpostunpaleoplesicish Period

The beginnings of the modern ecosystem are more clearly visible as the Postpaleoplesic gives way to the Postpostunpaleoplesicish.  Copeiforms begin to settle down into the sober middle-management phase of their existence, with the vosperoids and their plain colouration, bland legs, spherical torso, and modest, unassuming little brains reigning supreme in most niches thanks to a great efficiency of effort.  Their exciting and whimsical wuuly competition were reduced to relictual fauna, surviving only in isolated paradise islands whose gorgeous, peaceful serenity and plentiful food left them plump, flightless, and – according to our ancestor’s records – delicious. 

The Now

It falls to us, as examples of the mightiest single species ever birthed upon Yurm, to record its events for all posterity, which will doubtlessly not include us.  As this chronicle is written we are locked into an irrevocable death spiral, having spent the last two hundred years industriously mining ocean sediments formed of dead creepodonts only to realize halfway in that they were filling our atmosphere with deadly oxygen (knew those would come back to bite us, the surly little bastards).  Since changing things is somewhat difficult for vosperoid organisms, our principle strategy has been to resign ourselves to our fates and grimly trudge towards our deaths.  I hope this chronicle of our world’s history of life explains why this was a winning tactic for our ancestors, and so too for us.  Soon this volume will be loaded onto a satellite and launched beyond the farthest limits of our solar system.  May it never reach another organism benighted and stupid enough to read it. 

-Walmpurt Toos, Chief Botherer of Finklefaak United Collegiate Pit.  Esteemed. 

Gary finished his cigarette and he dropped the smouldering stub and he crushed it underfoot and lifted his foot and the rush of air restarted it as he went back inside and that was how fifty people died. 

Not all immediately at once, though.  It went something like this. 

***

The fire roamed the little patch of mouldy greenery outside the backdoor for some minutes as it figured itself out and came to terms with its life outside the old Mortimer Mansion.  Inside was noise and light and reckless danger; outside was the cold night and the damp air that smelled like autumn mould year-round and the branches of the gigantic tree in the neighbour’s yard that overshadowed the entire block and somewhere in the distance an owl absolutely losing its shit. 

The choice was obvious, particularly when the fire caught hold of a little bit of splintered wood off the deck that was covered in some sort of ancient long-since-illegal varnish that might as well have been pure gasoline.  It ate it up in a blink and dove into the basement headfirst. 

The basement was a dour wonderland of unfinished concrete floors, unpainted wooden walls, and uncoordinated and unsatisfying makeouts.  But behind the walls was gloriously flammable insulation the likes of which hadn’t been manufactured in centuries, and so the fire let them be and roiled upwards invisibly, leaving only some wisps of transparent smoke and a lingering odour of burnt mouse feces. 

Above was the kitchen, and as it scuttled its way beneath the sink the fire felt a great and clammy moisture above its head where Jules Mortimer was trying to wash the fucking dishes.  They should’ve used paper plates, but hey, it’d be cool to use the old place’s dishes, right?  Pretend posh.  Well pretend posh was real dirty and the real estate guy was coming over in three days whoops rescheduled to day after tomorrow so guess who had to do the fucking dishes in the middle of a party whoop de fucking doo fuckity doo fuck?  Him.  Because he was the oldest Mortimer on the premises.  Never mind that it had been Katie’s idea to have the party.  Ugh.  It had been Katie’s idea to try and start a paint-snorting competition too.  Ugh. 

The fire crawled all the way up his pant leg and into his boxers before he noticed, so intense was his snit.  Then it gave him a Brazilian and he started yelping and kicking and running and on his way he kicked the sink so hard the tap broke. 

No more water!  Joy!

The living room was filled with bodies and yelling and music and yelling and vomiting and yelling so it was all equally inaudible until Jules ran in and somehow screamed over all of it.  This distracted the partygoers, at first to point and laugh (didn’t work), then to shout and stand there (didn’t work), then to try to stomp out Jules’s pants (didn’t work), then to pour their drinks on him (worked, eventually).

By the time all was said and done laughing, people had finally started to ask themselves questions like ‘where did that come from?’ and it was too late because the kitchen fire had found the old paint tins under the sink.

It made a noise like FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMP

But much louder and hotter. 

***

By now most of the party was aware something odd was happening.  Either there was smoke drifting through the floorboards, the walls were warm to the touch, they’d just put out a brushfire in Jules Mortimer’s crotch, or an enormous gout of flame had just rocketed upwards through the ventilation system and set fire to the bed they’d been sleeping in.  Also, everyone was yelling “FIRE.”

Several solutions were attempted and beset with difficulties.  The mansion’s fire extinguishers were filled with dried spiderwebs and air; hugging the floor to avoid smoke was complex due to the intricate vomit-and-cotton-candy covering that laced much of the floorboards six hours into the party; and the fire exit was on fire. 

Clearly, improvisation would be needed.  Mercifully, liquid inspiration had been taken.  Sadly, proclamation was outspoken: “THROW THE BOOZE ON IT.”

Which didn’t help much at all, particularly when it vaporized and filled the air with eye-bleeding alcohol fumes and covered the floor in glass shards as people tried to crawl on it.  Still, it was all in good faith and most people were willing to concede it had been better than nothing. 

***

So the evening went on in the spirit of competition, fire against festivities.  The fire consumed the basement and its inhabitants joined the rest of their kind in the living room, where they contributed much confusion and panic.  The partygoers tried to phone for help and the Tinco Valley fire department filed the deluge of reports as spam and said they’d have to verify things first.  The fire feasted upon the discarded coats and purses and shoes in the front hall and their owners retreated up the stairs to the third floor to look for a fire escape. 

And the fire’s humble roots just outside the back door raced up through the gutters and the eavestrough in a snake of embers, until it crept in through the attic window and found the bags and bags and bags of old dry leaves from the autumn of ’32 that Mortimer Senior (dead forty years, god rest his soul) had been keeping for a rainy day.  Like finest tinder they were. 

Things were beginning to get a little bit desperate.  Many were the tears shed and the regrets spoken.

“I wish I’d eaten more than one bowl of chips, and that they hadn’t been nacho cheez flavoured,” mourned Dilbert Dabny. 

“I wish I hadn’t broken up with you ten minutes earlier,” said Daphne Yubo to her ex-girlfriend.

“I wish I’d broken up with you two years ago,” said Daphne Yubo’s ex-girlfriend.

“I wish I didn’t have these horrible suspicions about that one cigarette I had out back an hour ago,” muttered Gary Vorbleck under his breath. 

“I really really wish I hadn’t spent the past three hours doing dishes,” said Jules Mortimer.  At least his arms were still nice and moist, even if they were a little wrinkly.

“I really really REALLY wish you hadn’t talked me into hosting this party,” said Katie Mortimer.

“Excuse me, sir, but you’re a fucking liar,” her brother retorted.

“Excuse and sir yourself,” she said, “but you’re a big ol’ bitch.”
“Language.”
“Motherfucker, do you SPEAK it?”
The fire dropped a beam next to them in a shower of sparks.  Its contribution was misunderstood by its critics, who hastily relocated to the nor’west solar.  Flames were already curdling up from the roof around its base, and the glass of the windows and skylight twinkled merrily in the heat haze. 

There were many uglier places to die, most of which the fire had already set alight.  Bright red tongues and orange hands and the odd blue-and-white licks made outrageous and suggestive statements to the night sky. 

“Well,” said Jean Baltimore, “we’re doomed.”
“Yep,” agreed Sam Winmoore.  “Wanna have sex?”
“Sure why not.”
“Oh good idea!” said Mavis Bacon.  “Hey Claude?  You want in on this?”
“Might as well.”
“People, people, people,” said Jules Mortimer.  “Be REASONABLE.  We’re all about to die; you can’t just have sex!”
“Yeah, not just on the floor,” said Katie Mortimer.  “Have some standards.  Why not use these enormous bedsheets Mortimer Senior (god rest his soul) always kept stashed in the solar’s closet here, for midday trysts with his eighteen mistresses?”
Everyone examined the bedsheets and was very impressed.

“High thread count,” remarked Daphne Yubo, whose father was a tailor.

“Nice patterning,” said Mavis Bacon, whose grandmother was a mural-maker. 

“Could support a whole body with this,” said Boris Murt, who was an aspiring serial killer. 

Everyone looked at him.

“What?”
“Say that again.”
“All I said was oh right.  Huh.  How ‘bout that.”

***

The bedsheets burned away from the windowframe where they’d been knotted just as Katie Mortimer’s feet touched grass, nearly dumping hot coals onto her head as she scuttled away to the streetside with the rest of the partygoers to check out the last of the fireworks. 

They stood there, on the dimly smouldering edge of the lawn, watching the historic Mortimer Mansion disintegrate into base carbon, and they looked at one another in a sort of sobriety that had nothing to do with drunkenness and knew that from now on they would look at life very differently. 

That was when the Tinco Valley firetruck – laden with fifty heroic volunteers, foaming at the mouth one and all – hopped the kerb, tipped crazily onto two wheels for a heartbreaking twenty feet, and skidded nobly into the mansion, taking out it and everything inside it in a cataclysmic eruption of heat and steam.    

***

Most of the Mortimer Mansion partygoers evaded punishment in the days to come.  The public eye was focused on finding a more economical way to budget the fire department; it had been the sixth truck that month. 

Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer certainly weren’t complaining.  That had been one HELL of an insurance payout. 

A Record of the Final Daily Specials of Old Eddie’s Pub n Grub

*Bean Soup*

A rich blend of sumptuously fatty pork, slow-cooked beans, and caramelized onion, augmented with secret spices from our secretive master chef! 

*Soup de Yesterdaye*

A rich blend of sumptuously fatty pork, slow-cooked beans, and caramelized onion, augmented with secret spices from our secretive master chef and given an extra day or so to simmer and really get all those flavours mingling!

*Crunchy Salad*

Put some summer between your teeth and feel it crack!  Crisp carrot and apple slivers with a selection of seeds and nuts, all hand-washed in a raspberry vinaigrette by our master chef and topped with flavoured ice shavings formed from clear glacier water!

*Mozarella Sticks*

Soft, melty, tasty cheesey goodness, breaded in fragrant herbed bread crumbs.  Get a platter – or better yet, get two!  Or even BETTER, guess what’s coming up day after tomorrow?

*An Old Favourite Returns!*

Try some freshly fried pork crackling hors d’oeuvres tonight topped with a breathtaking variety of mix-and-match sauces, and while you’re at it, ready yourselves for the triumphant return of what you’ve all been waiting for tomorrow night!  Get a seat ready and set your Fridays to FUNdays!

*Bean Soup*

A rich blend of sumptuously fatty pork, slow-cooked beans, and caramelized onion, augmented with secret spices from our secretive master chef!  Don’t miss it this time; it’s never too late to correct a mistake!

*Soup de Yesterdaye*

A rich blend of sumptuously fatty pork, slow-cooked beans, and caramelized onion, augmented with secret spices from our secretive master chef!  Better try it now or you’re just proving you’re uncultured swine!

*Marinated Chicken Skewers*

Poke your nose into Monday tomorrow with a pokey little set of these in your belly.  Chicken soaked in a cocktail of spices and herbs before being threaded onto rosemary stalks and seared to juicy goodness, then placed right on your plate not a minute from the grill!  Almost as good as bean soup!

*Jumbo Shrimp*

The biggest and freshest shrimp in the finest breadcrumbs and the most golden frying but really this should be bean soup.  It’s not bad, but it’s not bean soup.  You could like this sort of thing if you like this sort of thing, I guess. 

*Cabbage Rolls With Cabbage and No Beans*

Why did you not eat the bean soup?  It’s a good recipe, my mother made it, my father loved it, my grandmother passed it down to us all.  It put peasants on the farmland and on the battlefield and in the grave for centuries, and now you think you’re too good for it, is that what’s going on?  Have some cabbage rolls and choke on them dry and flavourless.  Like your souls. 

Your last chance comes tomorrow. 

*Bean Soup*

Eat the soup or eat shit. 

*Now Hiring!*

Our dish of the day is… a career in delicious food service!  Why not step in?  Bring your most mouth-watering resume, and don’t skimp on the references!  We’re STARVED for applicants!

*Fried Basket – NEW CHEF SPECIAL!!!*

We all welcome new hands in the kitchen, and those hands are eager to get to know you too – or at least your stomachs!  Welcome our new master chef by purchasing a delicious fried basket, consisting of everything from wings to pickles to chicken fingers, topped with a delectable fried mars bar!

*Club Sandwiches*

You’d have to be knocked over the head to pass up on one of these bruisingly-good meals!  Fresh crusty bread in FOUR layers, encompassing cheeses, meats, vegetables, and a new sauce on every level!

*Macaroni and Cheese and Bean Soup – NEW CHEF MEMORIAL SPECIAL!*

Put the FUN in today’s funereal special with a salute to our old new master chef and a welcome-home to our old old master chef, featuring both their best dishes: golden and crumbly mac and cheese and a rich blend of sumptuously fatty pork, slow-cooked beans, and caramelized onion, augmented with secret spices from our secretive master chef!  Memorial service from ten pm until we’re all too drunk to stay awake. 

*Bean Soup*

You didn’t finish all the bean soup but you ate all the macaroni and cheese this disrespect will not be tolerated. 

*Donuts*

Try a basket of fresh-fried soft moist crisp and delicious donuts, complete with dipping sauces!  Officers of the law, feel free to stop by!  Very free.  We’ll give you the donuts free.  Please visit.  Please please visit quickly.  PLEASE.  Help help help.

*Meat Pies – NEW MANAGEMENT SPECIAL!*

Try a mouth-watering browned pastry packed to the BRIM with aged, marbled fat cut from the biggest pig you’ve ever met.  From the knife to the table within twelve hours!  Served with a hot ‘Sweeney’ toddy, made with secret house spices.

*Shepherd’s Pie*

‘Meat’ our health inspector’s visit this evening with a belly full of Shepherd’s pie!  Warmed to perfection and left with a hint of steamy simple herbs.  Contains everything that couldn’t be packed into the meat pies, but also delicious potatoes! 

*Ladyfingers – HEALTH INSPECTOR MEMORIAL SPECIAL*

In memorial of our health inspector, whom many of you knew for years, we will be serving ladyfingers tonight.  Juicy, meaty, falling-off-the-bone.  Served with plum sauce, because she would’ve wanted them that way. 

*Long Pork*

Get a piece of the forbidden taste with this most slender and succulent of ‘swine.’  No seasoning or sauces; the point is in the ‘pig.’  Applicants for early tasting come around through the rear alley and don’t look behind you.  Healthy yet plump only, please. 

*Molotov Cocktails*

A sumptuous bottle of vodka, half-drained, filled to the brim with oil and topped with a wick flambé before hurtling right into your lap.  I’ll take every one of you bastards down with me I swear if you can’t appreciate what’s on your plate maybe YOU should be on the plate  MAN IS MEAT MEAT IS MAN MAN IS MEAT MEAT IS MAN MAN MEAT MEAT MAN MAN MEAT MEAT MEAT ME

*Future Site of a New McDonalds!*

They sat in the dark circle around the dingy table under the flickering lightbulb, sharing a single cigarette.  Or they would have been but Clyde had taken it from Larry and refused to give it back; sucking it down like a kid with his last Halloween candy. 

“Alright, enough stalling,” said Larry, from somewhere underneath the crushing weight of his unibrow.  “Who goes first?”
There was a brief silence as they stalled some more.

“Fine.  I switched strategies.”
“Bold,” said Clyde.  It was sarcastic. 

“Huh?” said Jeb. It was sincere.  Always was. 

“I changed from ASMR of me opening bills and reading them to me throwing out unsolicited flyers without reading them.  Figured the catharsis would get more viewers, but it turns out people don’t even like to see those things when someone else gets them.  Lost my entire fanbase.”

“Piss on a stick,” said Clyde.  “Well, more bad news: I got my tumblr purged, so my followers are scurrying and uncoordinated.  Knew I should’ve started up a discord community or a twitter or something.”
Larry dope-slapped him.

“Hey!  Ow!  What?”

“I’ve TOLD you not to share your opinions with strangers.”
“It wasn’t that!” snapped Clyde.  “I mean, not this time.  Someone flagged it as porn.  I fought it, but turns out my videos qualify.”
“’Someone competent doing their job quickly and punctually while enjoying it’ is porn now?”

“Apparently.  Got demonetized on youtube too.”

Larry sighed.  Clyde sighed. 

They turned to Jeb, who was knuckle-deep and going farther.

“Sorry?” he asked. 

“You’re up,” said Clyde.
“No I’m right here.”
“What did you do this month?” asked Larry.

“Oh!  I had a good idea two days ago.  Was going to try and go viral on Vine.”

“You’re kidding me,” said Clyde. 
“What?” said Jeb.  “I thought it was still a thing.  Nobody told me it shut down years ago.”
“NONE of us can make the rent this month?”

“Soo…..prostitution and murder?” asked Larry.

“Dibs on prostitution,” said Clyde.

“You ALWAYS get dibs on prostitution,” said Jeb.  “I hate bloodstains.”
“Git gud and stab better then, jackass,” said Clyde.  “Besides, I’m the only one of us that has a face fit for a ring gag.  God I hate the end of the month.”

***

They were sobs the like of which nobody had ever seen.  Great, lung-guttering, soul-quivering, heart-aching shudders welling up from something deeper inside than the most secretive and solitary of his organs. 

“My friend,” the bartender told him as he gently patted his cheeks dry with a little cocktail napkin, “you must not carry on so.  Life will go on.  You will rebuild.  Material things are temporary.  You are worthy of love.  I’m sure wherever they are, they’re happy now.  Do you want more?  I can keep going.”
“Nothing can ease my pain,” wailed the man.  “What I once considered most important in all my life has been taken from me.  I’ve been banned from all social media, effective immediately.  What will I do with my time, with my brain, with my anything?  It was all I had in this world because I’m an empty and loathsome shell of a worm of a fragment of a functional human being.”

“Look,” said the bartender, “I wouldn’t normally go this far for a stranger, but you seem emotionally vulnerable and easily led.  Why don’t you go follow my favourite influencer on twitter, @xXxWITEPOWAxXx?  He can lead you down a road of manipulation, grift, racial hatred, and deniable incitement to terrorism.  It’ll give empty purpose to your freshly hollowed life.”

“But bartender,” wept the man, “I AM @xXxWITEPOWAxXx.”

***

I slid out from underneath the machine with a somber expression.  “Bad news,” I said.  “You’ve got no drive left.”

“Wuh-oh!”

I ignored the sounds with practiced power and  grace.  “And that’s not even the worst of it: you can see here where it’s overheated and partially melted… I’m afraid your rig is shot.”
“Oh god no,” mourned the customer.  He was fat-bellied and thin-haired, in that aimless stretch of extended middle age that can hold some men from age thirty to sixty.  His hands and chin were the only parts of him that moved, working and twisting constantly as he writhed and gasped in the pickle he’d put himself into.  “Oh jeez.  Oh man.  Are you sure?”
“Pretty damned sure.  For the price it’d cost to fix this you could just get an entirely new machine.  You burnt out all the most expensive parts.”
“Oh god oh god oh gosh.  I just took it out for one afternoon.”
I stopped wiping off my hands and looked up in alarm.  “Wait.  This isn’t even your unit?”
“No.  No.  No, this is my WIFE’S bitcoin rig.”

“Sir,” I said, doing an amazing job at keeping my voice level, “I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest for your own good.  Please come with me to the police station.”

“What?  I don’t understand.”
“Precisely.”
“I’m not doing oh god is that a gun please don’t shoot me I’ll do whatever you say do you want money do you oh lordy lou oh god”

“Don’t make me use this.  It’d be a cleaner death than you’d deserve for slagging someone else’s next-gen video card, and a LOT cleaner than what the street mob out there’d give you for it.  Now we’re going to walk very calmly down to the station and you’re not going to try and run because I’ll fucking shoot you and you’re not going to try and fight because I’ll yell what you did in the middle of the lunch crowds and you’ll WISH I’d shot you.  Are we clear?”
“Oh god oh jeez oh”

“ARE WE CLEAR?”
“Yes oh my goodness yes oh”

I pistol-whipped him.  It was just and magnificent. 

He was outgunned sixteen to one.  His shoulder was an open wound, smouldering with his own evaporating blood.  A hangover that could drop a cow dead at forty paces beat within his skull and his gun was empty. 

Yes, he had them right where he wanted them. 

Zak Zorph smirked the smirk of a cornered rat, cleared his throat of dust and sand in a quick swallow that could’ve been mistaken for a gulp by the uncharitable, and charged up his electric pompadour. 

“Oh god are you doing THIS again?”

Slew bolted into attack position as fast as possible with as little dignity as imaginable.  His tail lashed, his fangs bristled, his eyes popped, and he tripped over his own feet and somehow collapsed. 

“Ow,” he said, menacingly.  Truly, a terrifying specimen of the Greater Western Gila  Monstrosity. 

“Dumbass,” said Mulch, but not fondly.  “Double dumbass; you’d be dead if I were someone else.  Why are you reading this crap, and why are you doing it at the bottom of a blind canyon where anyone could eat you?”

“It’s safe down here since nobody but us knows about that passage through the deadfall,” said Slew in a logical and sulky voice.  “And it’s not crap.”
“Tell mom that.  She said she regrets every reading one of these past the cover.”
“Well, she just didn’t find the good stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” said Mulch, eyes narrowing to dead little black glitters in her face.  “And what exactly is this good stuff?”
“Nothin’.”
“Liar.  You always drop your gs when you’re lying.  Show me.”
“No.”
“Show me or I’ll tear off your tail and make you eat it.  Again.”
Slowly, sadly, with seething fear in his eyes that wished it could muster the spine to be hate, Slew handed over the book.

“’The Quontum Jowb,’” read Mulch.  “Book ten of Zak Zorph and his Electric Pompadour.”

“It’s a twelve-book series,” said Slew.

“And you’re reading twelve books of this because?”
“The important themes and stuff.”
“Like what?  It’s written by a human, what sort of themes could it possibly have?  If they knew what themes were and if themes were worthwhile then maybe they wouldn’t have all died.”
“Here,” said Slew, rustling through a mildewed stack of mouldy yellowed paper.  “Try this one.  Zak Zorph: A Wang and a Prayur.  Book two.”

Mulch picked the book up on the fourth try –

“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I clawed my first one in half.”
– and opened it to a random page.

“Zak, baby, those killbots are right on our heels!  You gotta do something!” dithered Lorna Bumox.  “The neubaddies are gonna shoot us!  Why didn’t you lock the doors to the omnivault behind us?!  Oh jeez, my mama was right about you!”
“Oh, you flighty dame,” chuckled Zak Zorph, giving her an affectionate pistol-whipping in the tits.  “Now just settle down that cute little ass of yours, sweetheart.  You know girls are scientifically proven to be incapable of rational thought when under stress.  It’s just facts.  Sit there and look pretty while I think this over reasonably.  Maybe if you’d remembered to lock the doors to the omnivault behind us we wouldn’t be in this pickle, ya dumb broad.”

“Oh gosh, don’t hit me!” squealed Lorna, but she secretly loved it, obviously.  Zak Zorph knew her delicate little brain like the back of his meta-hand.  But it wasn’t his meta-hand they needed now.

The neubaddies breached the corner, Lorna swooned dramatically, and Zak Zorph charged up his electric pompadour. 

“Huh,” said Mulch.  “I don’t get it.  Why didn’t she eviscerate him with her hindclaws?”
“Female humans didn’t have hindclaws,” said Slew.
“How ‘bout her foreclaws?”
“No.”
“Teeth?”
“None worth noticing.”
“How the hell did they defend their nests?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It sure looks like the guys didn’t help them.  Is this that deep theme you were telling me about?”
“Look, the series is a bit rough at the start,” pleaded Slew.  “Here, try this one: The Corpilix Caypur.  Book six, so it’s later on and he really hits his stride as a writer.  The emotional depth is a lot deeper and such.”

“C’mon, Zak, just pay the flubbing ticket,” wheedled El Slinkle in his indecipherable accent.  “You parked your ultracruuzer in a handicapped megaspot fair and square, there’s no need to take this to court, not with TimeJudge Quinklemaxx in that court.  You know he’s been looking for you ever since you burned down his mansion in the Hindlebur Affayr!”
“Fat chance!” said Zak Zorph.  “Maybe your people have no spines, but humans are made of sterner stuff.  I’ll be damned if I let those federalism fat cybercats steal a nova-nickel of my hard-earned wages through their trumped-up bionicbureucracy.”

“At least take on a public defender,” simpered El Slinkle.  “You owe yourself some degree of legal assistance, and they’re there to assist you.”

“You can go grozz yourself Slinkle, you low-life fatbelly,” scorned Zak Zorph.  “I’ve lived my whole life as an honest criminal, and I’ll never take up government handouts.  The real heroes are out there paying taxes, and I’d sooner shoot myself in the head than seize any of their hard-earned dollars for my own use.  Actually, when you think about it, I’m not a criminal at all – I steal from the government, which is illegal.  I’m a hero of purest justice.  Every man should take it upon himself to live and act utterly alone along with his harem of space-wives.”

“That sounds individualist,” whimpered El Slinkle.

Zak Zorph had heard more than any red-blooded future-American man could stand.  His pulse roared in his ears and his eyes bulged with rage as he charged up his electric pompadour. 

“What’s a government?” asked Mulch. 

“Not sure.”
“What’s a criminal?”
“Not sure.”

“What’s an American?”

“Uhhh…”

“This emotional depth is too deep for me to understand,” said Mulch.  Her tail flicked in irritation.  “I think he’s just making shit up.  Can’t believe you’re wasting your time on this deerpucky – and after mom warned us about it, no less.  I bet if she knew you were down here repeating her sister’s mistakes she’d cannibalize you on the spot.”

“No, wait, it gets better!”
“Oh really?  When?  When does it get better?”

“Later!”
“How ‘later’?  Is this the sort of ‘later’ that is never actually ‘now’, or the  kind of ‘later’ that actually exists.”
“Well, it’s here.  Book eleven.”
“’The Stoonmakker Shodown’?  Shall I open a page at random again?  Want me to find something stupid at random, or is there one sentence in here that saves it?”
Slew flipped through the book furiously for six minutes, then handed it over with slumped shoulders.

“Thought so,” said Mulch in satisfaction.  “Let’s take a peek.”

“Death!” bayed the ravenous hordes of UnHumans outside the spaceskyscraper.  “Death!  Death!”  

Inside, Zak Zorph cradled his wounded leg, incurred while heroically bludgeoning an UnHuman infant to death, and weighed his odds.  He was outgunned sixteen hundred to one, even accounting for the feeble and pathetic power of the UnHumans that could allow a fit and cunning man to easily kill ten of them with his bare hands before being overwhelmed by their disgusting numbers since they bred like two-legged giga-rats.  His heart was still a-aching with sorrow for the loss of the babe of his life, Mindy Milker, to a gang of sneering, degenerate cosmothugs.  And his trusty gun had blown up in his palm and snapped his arm in half.

Little did the pathetic scum outside know that he had them aall right where he wanted them. 

Zak Zorph smirked the smirk of a cornered rat, thought upon all the good things he’d done in his life, and spat on the graves of the scum who’d stood in the way of those things.  And he charged up his electric pompadour. 

There was a long and awkward silence that stretched far after Mulch had dropped the book like a skeletonized rat.

“You know,” she mused aloud, “there’s one thing about these that does interest me.”
“Oh?” asked Slew meekly.

“What the fuck is a pompadour?”

“A kind of hairstyle.”
“And a hairstyle is…?
Slew scratched his forehead.  “Like the bristly stuff that deer are covered in.”
“Are you telling me,” asked Mulch, in the flat and dead voice of the Extremely Tired Of This,
“that this guy had a deer following him around for twelve books and never ate it?”

Slew shrugged.

“Don’t you dare shrug at me.  Use your words or I use my hindclaws.  Yes or no?”
“Yes,” he whispered.

“Mom was right: books are for nerds.  Eat the stupid things for fiber like a reasonable person and let’s go home.”

It was that time of year again.  Despite her fondest wishes. 

Trish stared at the door to the shed as if it would vanish if she refused to blink for long enough.  Unbidden, her treacherous left hand slowly found its way to the handle and shoved it open. 

The boiling air sizzled against her neck.  June had come, and was already trying to make itself into July.  The air tasted like sweat and evaporated dirt.  Something had died six blocks over ten minutes ago and had already ripened into a fly-ridden maggotblot that could be smelt from one side of the town to the other. 

And there was a little fleck of dried straw in one of Trish’s gloves that had already embedded itself under her fingernail. 

God she fucking hated gardening. 

***

The hedges were first.  They’d gotten unruly over the winter, creeping roots where they shouldn’t be and whispering secrets amongst themselves while the other plants slept bare and lifeless under blankets of snow.  Cedar roared with fierce venom as Trish’s chainsaw snarled and gnawed through branch after branch, lashing her with curses and hexes and some good-old-fashioned invective against her family unto the nineteenth generation. 

Trish was pretty glad she didn’t have or want kids, because after doing this for half a decade anyone she pushed out would probably be born with one eye two noses and a satan for a backside. 

She took a break to clear the chainsaw of sap, bark, and malice and wiped some of the venom from her face.  Ugh.  At least it wasn’t hemlock.  She still had nightmares sometimes about the photos they showed back in the arborist classes.  A chug of electrolytes pushed that and her thirst from her head, then she revved up the motor again.

The wind hissed with fresh hatred as the blade was lowered to the hedge-rim, and some of the nearby grass died.

Great.  Just great. 

***

The lawn was even more tiresome than usual.  First Trish had to burn all the pruned cedar branches she’d just trimmed as an offering to the Council of Blades to even HOPE to make amends, and then began the traditional long, hard negotiations.

“No lower than four inches,” First-Grower of the Council whispered.

An insulting opening offer.  “Two,” said Trish.  That was insulting too, but fuck them for starting it this way.
“After you bring the curses of the not-grasses upon us?” demanded Sharpest-Edge.  “Five inches!”
“One and a half.”
“Three, perhaps,” mumbled Drought-Dried. 

“THREE?” said Sharpest-Edge.

“Two and a half and you’ll like it,” said Trish.

And after two hours more debate, this was eventually deemed acceptable, provided the lawnmower was purified with the sap-blood of the cedar hedge, and Trish could finally cut the fucking grass. 

Politics.  Always the politics.  God.  She’d never taken a single polysci elective for a REASON, and here she was. 

But at least it wasn’t as bad as the screaming as she drove over the green acres, faint as it was.  Like an unignorable whisper on the wind, almost possible to mistake for her imagination.

So she wore earmuffs, and if anyone asked she pretended they were because of the lawnmower. 

***

After THAT mess, the garden was relaxing.  The soft crumble of the soil underhand.  The reassuring stench of the manure in Trish’s nostrils.  The neverending litany of murmured prayers and chants and charms as she pressed each bulb into the earth and extolled it to grow tall, bloom beautifully, rend its perfumes and colours into the air like a striking serpent, then die quietly and gracefully. 

Taming flowers was always easiest when they were youngest.  Her fingers had scars from the time she’d come across a feral crocus lurking in a patch of geraniums. 

Shush shush, grow big, dream of tall stems and warm breezes and many bees and fine pollen.  Do not fear the hands that come to stroke and prune and groom you into beauty.  Do not lust for the sap of the gardener.  Do not hunger for the xylem of the fleshy.  Do not become bent on destruction.  Do not scream for the dying of all light. 

Grow well, and think of blossoms. 

Her neck was swimming in sweat.  She had all the time in the world, yes.  All the time in the world.

But still.  One little slip, and she’d have a wild rose on her hands.  And a lot of blood on her conscience. 

Ssshhh.  Warm earth.  Warm prayers.  Shhh, tuck yourself in.  Bear your thorns calmly.  Stand stately. 

Do not fear.  Do not hate.  Do not prey. 

Shhhhhhhhhhhh.

Please.

***

The sun was setting.  The timing was perfect, in defiance of every delay and exacerbation and insult of the day’s contempt for Trish’s schedule. 

If only the fucking matches would light.

“You don’t have to do this,” begged the man for the sixteenth time in the past two minutes.  Ruddy-red glow from the horizon made the sweat and tears shiny beautifully like blood on his pleading face. 
“Fuck,” said Trish.  “Goddamnit, how did people live before lighters?”

“Please.  Please don’t.  Please.  Pleasepleasepleaseplease.”
“Piss.  OW!”
“Why?  Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.  He wasn’t even struggling anymore; the wicker bonds held his arms and legs too tightly to do anything more than raise welts on his limbs.  “Why?”
“Burnt my thumb!  Won’t stay lit for longer than a fraction of a second, but you’ll burn my thumb?  What kind of shittery is this?”

“What did I DO?!”
Trish pulled the last match from the box and focused her hatred on it until she fancied it almost smouldered.  “Lived in an apartment block for your entire life without a lawn,” she said absently, rage making her voice tranquil.  “It’s personal that way.  The lawn likes it when it’s personal.”

She dragged the match slow.  It lit, then broke.”
“FUCK.  Guess we can’t light the wickerman tonight.  Fire’s right out.”
The man couldn’t sag in his bonds, they were so tight.  But his eyes did unbug a little.

At least until Trish pulled out the knife. 

Second-best beat nothing at all. 

***

After an entire day spent with no time to waste and every second ruining everything, the time from dusk to midnight crawled along like a paralyzed sloth.  Trish sat impatiently, burping the baby with one hand. 

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,” it opined. 

“There, there,” she said, for the forty trillionth time.  “There, there.”
And there, there it was.  The moon hung in the sky, the right stars twinkled the right way, and her watch rang as finally, blessed finally, the hour had come. 

3 AM on the dot.  She picked up the shovel and dug like a demented badger, dredging up the last, last, last reserves of her willpower and strength and dug the hole and plunked the baby in it and filled the hole and bowed to the apple tree.

“Harvest bless,” she said, in a ceremony-perfect picture-polite voice her tutors would have applauded at.  “Go fuck yourself,” she added in those same tones, which they would not have. 

The apples ignored her.  That was fine.  They had no choice now.  A good crop would be coming around by autumn, and they could like it or lump it all the same, everyone else would be eating it. 

And that was the rewarding part of this job, really, thought Trish as she threw the shovel into her truck and finally, finally, finally drove home to a shower and a bed and a stale bag of chips that would pretend to be a dinner. 

The feeling that you were giving something back to the community. 

The bulldozers had been and gone.  The construction crews had been here, and now were there.  Where once girders roamed and foundations roared, rows of green lawns sprouted from identical plots surrounding identical houses with identical fences behind a seamless, smiling brick wall with a lovely wrought-iron gate. 

“Can’t have a gated community without a gate!” chortled the mayor as he shook hands with the developer in front of it, as numerous diligent reporters nodded and took notes and made ‘hmm’ noises. 

“Hah,” said the developer.   He was an extremely serious man who lived somewhere in that awkward space between ‘compact’ and ‘spherical.’  “Aha.  Ha ha ha.  Ha HAA.  Ha ha ha ha.  Aha.”
“Ohohohoho!” agreed the mayor.  “Now, is there anything else you’d like to add.”
“Oh, not much,” said the developer solemnly.  “I’m just glad to be here at the crossroads – not literally, of course, figure of speech – of a great moment in civic planning between our two communities: the lovely new suburban paradise of Farforest and your town.”
“City.  And it’s called Burbics.”
“Yes.  Your city.  May we proceed forwards in peace and prosperity for all.”
“Splendid!” said the mayor.  They shook hands and posed for the photos as the developer sank his fangs through the mayor’s throat and right into the jugular.

***

Farforest’s lots had been reserved well in advance, and it was no great surprise to hear that the little gated community had been filled to the brim within weeks of its official opening.  Every house had its enormous, stifling blackout curtains drawn tight, every driveway held an SUV whose windows were tinted abyssal black, and soon the local coffin makers had a booming business overnight, although the specialty groceries were seeing less of an uptick than they’d expected. 

“It’s just, we expected them to give more back to the community in general,” griped Wolbert Hamfork, manager of the Very Expensive Market.  “And to us in particular.  They don’t even order any of our tiny little packages of quinoa and local beef.  Those are pretty cool.  Do you want to buy one?  You should buy one.  Discounted, so it’s only fifty-nine ninety-nine.  A real deal and a real steal.  Practically slitting my own throat, especially with how many of my clerks have anemia right now.  Little bastards are all taking sick days.  Bet they’re cheating.  Can you believe they’re cheating like that?”

“The gall,” proclaimed the soccer matron he was speaking to, wiping away some specks of blood from her lips.  “Excuse me, I just finished lunch.  By the way, you have an exsanguinated janitor out back.”
“Ugh, ANOTHER one.  Thanks.”
“Oh, it’s no problem.  There ought to be a law etc.  Here’s my card if you want to visit; you look to be a man of exquisite taste.”

***

Changes came in the early summer, not all welcome.

“I can’t believe they shut down the marina and beaches,” said the local yacht club president, Sandy Biff.  “I was expecting people with taste and income to flood into Farforest and join our membership so they could talk about booms and mastheads and booze, but instead they signed a petition against the use of running water for recreation, leisure, business, or personal necessity.  Frankly that strikes me as overreach.  Also they shut down the city’s plumbing, which is making all my servants whiny and listless.  Something about the dehydration combined with the anemia that’s been rolling around.  Is there something on my neck?  You keep looking at my neck.  And licking your lips and rolling your tongue sensually around your fangs.  Ma’am, are you trying to seduce me?”
“No,” said the genteel retiree. 

“Ah, my mistaaaaaaaaaaaargghghhghgh.”

***

By August the course curriculums of the university had been altered by the new board of directors.   This produced some tensions in the letters column of the paper. 

“My son went to university to get a bachelor’s of ecological engineering,” said Mrs. Gorbspat.  “But now his entire major has been rescinded.  The only two degrees this institution now offers are a BA in Renfelding and a BSc in Civil Service.  And since the only civil service the city provides since the deputy mayor took over is blood drives, I’m not sure how this will help our youth compete in today’s fast-paced economy.”
“My daughter says her new instructor began class by hooking them all up to some sort of gadget that sucked all their blood into big glass decanters, then made them roll those decanters down to a storage cellar,” opined Mr. Hripple.  “That seems like the university getting free labour from its students, and we don’t even know what all this blood is for.  It’s bad enough our taxes went into building this university a decade ago; now it’s taking the blood and fluids of our children.  Or should I say, your children.  I’ve subsidized your offspring enough already; I’m a paid taxpayer and a paying taxpaider and I don’t deserve this sort of upjumped gimme-gimme attitude from institutions I’ve been forced to support.”

“The new board is completely out of line,” fumed Dr. Plorr.  “They ejected me from chairmanship, then removed me from the building for complaining about it.  And they wouldn’t even look me in the eye while they did it!  Too busy simpering and tittering and slurping blood from the necks of the president of the student’s union.  Sheer poppycockery!”
“Everything is fine,” said the opinion columnist.  “If you think everything isn’t fine, that sounds like a ‘you’ problem.  And if you have a ‘you’ problem, why not phone in to your local blood bank to support your community?  Then your most precious resources can be put towards helping your good friends and neighbours.  Like the people of Farforest.  All hail Farforest.  The blood is life.”

***

Autmn came with the slight political shocker of the deputy mayor being reappointed mayor-for-life without an election. 

“I have taken up this position with heavy heart,” mourned the mayor-for-life.  He was an extremely serious man who lived somewhere in that awkward space between ‘compact’ and ‘spherical,’ and who had once been a developer.  “But this town needs leadership.”
“City,” said the secretary. 

“Yes.  City.  And since you are all sad little squishy sacks of delicious blood that are too busy pulsating with the rich ruddy veins of life and fermenting tender new waves of erythrocytes within your soft little marrow-bones to swim through your bodies, plumply, temptingly.  Lend me your necks, friends.”
“Hands?”
“No.  Necks.  Please put your necks – thank you – in my hands.  Mine.  Right now.  Gimme gimme gimme.”
“I object to this very strongly,” said someone.
“Drain them!” called the mayor-for-life. 

“Drain them!” cheered the crowd.

***

That winter was long and brutal.  The people suffered under the cold, not least because the barons and baronesses of Farforest had forced all able-bodied workers under the age of forty to spend their days and nights ceaselessly constructing upscale castles, crypts, dungeons, and laboratories in order to show off to each other. 

“Perhaps there is some manner of economic imbalance afoot,” commented Maya Holstein-Briggs to her neighbour, Jill Sorbopolis.

“Nah,” said Jill.  “Farforest’s construction has attracted money to our community and jobs.  This is very plausible.  You should join the local bloodteam to stimulate the growth potential of your household.  Sign up four other people for it and you can maximize your return on investment.”
“Wow, colour me convinced,” said Maya.  “This is the best decision I can make for myself, my family, and my community.  And that goes for you too, listeners.  Support Farforest.  Support blood: you need it to live, they need it to thrive.  That’s B-L-O-O-D.  One b, one l, double o, one d.  Blood.  It’s in us, for them to take.”

***

Spring peeled back the comforting blankets of snow and found no city where Burbics had once stood, just a conglomerate of buildings, businesses, and individuals, most of whom now possessed very little blood.

“I declared this town dissolved,” concluded the mayor-for-life.  “It’s simply not economically viable anymore.  Oh well.”

The residents of Farforest clucked their tongues behind their fangs and shook their heads.  So sad, so sad, so sad.  Oh well.  Oh well. 

“In the meantime,” the ex-mayor-for-life went on, “I’ve come into inside information on some great real estate opportunities in Jelonie.  Condos all over the place!”

And so the people of Farforest cheered and raised their portfolios high and as one took to the skies in a great cloying cloud of handsomely dressed and fangéd bats, leaving behind a very confused and desolate wasteland. 

Unfortunately, the condos didn’t come with blinds.  Three months later the entire freshly-moved-in population of the Beyond The Woods condominiums were incinerated at the rise of dawn, along with all the countless accumulated wealth of their real estate valuations.  A day of national mourning was observed. 

“I can’t help but feel we could have done something for them,” sobbed a prominent realtor.  “There must have been something more we could have given.”

It was six AM and Liz was on her eighth cup of coffee and her twelfth recitation of why her job wasn’t hell on earth and her last straw when McGuinty picked up the radio, listened, then hung up. 

“It’s go time,” she said.

“The fuck?” Liz blurted out.

“I said it’s g-”

“Yeah, I heard.  I was just wondering WHY.”
“Because it’s go t-”

“Listen to yourself.  Jesus.  ‘Go time.’  Whadda maroon.”  Liz shook her head, drained half her cup, threw the other half out the window, and farted mournfully into the car’s cheap seat.  “Let’s just – let’s just fucking go, okay?  Let’s go.  Let’s go let’s go let’s go.”
“Yes.  Go time.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
McGuinty grinned at her unrepentantly, flipped the switch that started the lights, and plugged in the siren, which immediately started broadcasting angry beluga noises mixed with mating moose. 

Ahead of them, the sleepy little collection of tents and trailers half-stirred, half-froze, shocked into immobility and clumsy panic. 

“Get ‘em,” said Liz around a mouthful of Advil.  She swallowed it dry, coughed herself senseless, and looked up just in time to see a screaming man in Hawaiian shorts and nothing else beach himself on the car hood, arms flailing furiously, sunburn iridescent in the morning light.

God.  She hated vacationers. 

***

With the tremendous energy and boundless enthusiasm of someone who did what they loved for a living, McGuinty leapt from the car with a taser in each hand and plunged electricity-spurting prongs into the fleshy torsos of two silverback lawnchairers.  They writhed and ground their way into the dirt with mouths wide, screams roaring from their red-streaked, flabby mouths, Coronas spewing limes and liquid across the ground. 

“VBI!  Freeze!” she shouted at the convulsing bodies, then drew her baton.  “Cease resisting!” she said, picking one of them up and hurtling him into a tent.  “Cease resisting!  Cease resisting!  WoOOOOOOoohoooOOO!”
Liz stumbled out into the morning, eyes fluttering like dying moths.  She threw up and watched Advil fly into the beach’s sand, shook her head twice, threw up again, and waved one arm at the couple frozen in the act of launching their kyak. 

“VBI.  You’re under arrest for vacationing in an unvacatable vicinity.  G’wan.  Scoot.  Get.  Shoo.”
Very, very, very slowly, the kayak was beached.  Then the larger and more tanned of the two charged, paddle in both hands, sunscreen glistening on his skin. 

Liz watched as he slipped on her vomit and slid head-first into the car’s tires. 

“Stay down,” she said to the world in general as she patted her pockets.  Fuck.  Where were her cuffs?  She brought them, right?  They were in the car, right?  They weren’t at home in the junk drawer, right?  And she’d remembered to fix them, right? 

Ah, shit. 

A helicopter roared overhead – that’d be Eckhart and Zamboni, doing boat control.  Darts streamed like mosquitos from the big drum-fed cannon underneath its fuselage, riddling the gnarled and sun-riddled hides of their prey, injecting them with potent cocktails of sobriety pills and tranquilizers to render them tired, depressed, and bleary-eyed.  The outboarders were dealt with quickly, leaving the yachters afloat in their big canopied bastards as they leaned on their horns and shouted obscenities to the heavens. 

“May you never tan!” screamed an eighty-six-year-old man as Liz cuffed his arms behind his back, using his spine as leverage.  “May you spend every weekend booked solid!  May your spouse cancel on you without explanation or care!”
“Heard it all before,” she told him.

“Eater of overtime!  Rat of the rat race!  Receive no compensation for your unused vacation from now until the end of your days, you maggot of the middle-class!”
“Yeah.  Okay, I’m gonna administer a sobriety test now, you got that?  Hold still.”  She cracked her neck, riffled through her belt, and shot both prongs of her taser into the elder’s spine.

“WAAAAUGH!”

“Yeah you’re sober.  Wait was that the taser?  I didn’t mean to use the taser.  Ah shit.”

Liz squinted at the hubbub surrounding her – the vactioners were being pushed into the shallows of the lake.  Only a few had broken for the trees and they’d been intercepted by VBI agents hidden amongst the ferns and evergreens, decked out in camo jorts and tactical crop tops. 

“Hey!  Anyone got a spare sobriety test?” she called. 

McGuinty threw a pair of brass knuckles over her shoulder without looking as she sprinted into the water and tackled a roaring bikinist into the reeds. 

“Thanks,” said Liz.  “Now sir, I’m going to hit you until you tell me it stops hurting, okay?  This is very scientific.”
She started being scientific.  Overhead a slight breeze blew, perfectly accentuating the warm sunlight.  The air smelled of flowers and opened beers.  In the distance, a loon wailed. 

God, it was so beautiful that she wanted to throw up again. 

***

The last holdout was under siege.  A canoeist wearing three lifejackets: armour-plated, indomitable, insane.  Froth spewed from paddle and mouth as she thrashed and surged in the midst of the lake.  The helicopter could not stop her; the VBI scuba experts could not hold her.  A harpoon gun was being set up onshore by the artillery team. 

Liz was on her ninth cup of coffee.  McGuinty was working off her high by wandering around the cages saying ‘stop resisting’ to the perps and kicking them. 

“They aren’t resisting,” Liz pointed out.

“That’s not the point.  Stop resisting.  Stop resisting.  Stop resisting.”

Liz poured her coffee into the dirt, watching with no interest but total concentration as it drowned an ant.  “I’ll be right back,” she said. 

“Where you going?  Stop resisting.”
“Walkabout.”
“Stop resisting.  ‘Kay.  Stop resisting.  Stop resisting.”

Liz walked about.  She walked about the car cordon, with its flashing lights and gnashing teeth.  She walked about the perimeter, where the earth was torn and ravaged by frantic sandals and desperate tanners.  She walked about the lake, where the ripples from the last efforts of the skinny-dippers to avoid capture were still spreading in pretty little concentric rings as faint as a dove’s breath. 

She looked left and right and up and down and all around and then she slipped her pants down and sat in the sand and picked up a discarded beer can and took a long, cold swig. 

The suntan lotion was in her belt, in an empty pepper spray can.  Deniable, undetectable.  She took some and spread it on her palm. 

“Thank fuck it’s Friday,” she said.

The approach had been silent, flawlessly so.  But the gasp wasn’t even close: loud and unrestrained. 

McGuinty didn’t try to hide.  She stood frozen amongst the bushes, eyes wide with shock.

“What the fuck.”  It was a flat statement, a confrontation and an admission of a thing that should not be. 

“I can explain,” said Liz.  And THAT was a dead assertion, a denial that was listless in its believability. 

“What the fuck,” said McGuinty.

“I can explain,” said Liz.

“What the fuck.”
“I can explain.”
“What the fuck.”
“I can explain.”

“What the fucking fuck,” said McGuinty, and that was the inflection point.  The stall had ended; things were about to start happening again. 

There was a ‘thunk,’ fat and meaty and liquid.  The harpoon gun had been fired, and hit.  It made McGuinty’s eyes half-dart away, and in that flicker Liz moved.

The gun was already in McGuinty’s hand, but that just made it an easier target for the pool noodle.  It was slapped clear into the middle of the lake, and as she tried to recover it before it made it all the way Liz’s other hand came around and it was holding the crude stub of the beer can.

COORS LIGHT turned into CRS LT as it crumpled against McGuinty’s skull.  Beer flew everywhere, mixed with just a tinge of blood, but the wound was minor.  The surprise was the real impact, and that was what led them both to roll over and over into the shallows and stay there until the bubbles stopped. 

Sound bled back into Liz’s awareness.  The canoeist was screaming as she was reeled in to shore, thrashing and roaring and laying about with her paddle.  She had a few more seconds to hide  McGuinty’s body.  Blame it on a rogue sunbather she’d stepped on.  That’d do it.  Everyone knew she was a deadly eye in a brawl but totally useless at spotting things right in front of her nose.

But she could do that in five minutes.

Just five minutes.

Sit down again.  Toes in the sand.  Eyes on the sky.  No mosquitos, no traffic, no phone.  Across the bay the canoeist’s calls ended in the wet and muffled thumps of a ten-body pileup.  Somewhere in the distance, a loon politely inquired as to what the hell was going on, and it was beautiful in every way. 

“Thank fuck it’s Friday,” Liz said again.  And it didn’t work quite as well, but there was always Saturday ahead, wild and untamed.  And a rarest of prizes: a Sunday empty of guilt. 

God, she loved the long weekends.