Slater pulled the collar of his cream-colored trenchcoat above his neck and accepted a cup of instant coffee from his partner, Marmaduke. “What do you think, Em?” 

Marmaduke stared at the gooey remains on the floor. “I think we’re gonna have to play this one off the book. And I don’t mean the ThoughtBook.” He put on his ninth pair of glasses for the day.

“Any more puns and you’re gonna have sunglasses tan. You’ll be the laughing stock of the office.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Even though they were ensconced indoors, Stansel’s kitchen was still cold, its decoration clinically antiseptic. Slater felt like he was in a doctor’s waiting room. Waiting for what? Who knows. Maybe just for the end. After all the shit he’d seen, he’d embrace Death as a friend, but not then as a lover because he wouldn’t want to ruin what they already had. It was precious to him and he didn’t want to complicate it by getting romance involved. No, he’d already tried that before. He looked up at Em, who was still gazing at Jim Stansel’s bubbling broth, unaware of his thoughts, as ThoughtBook had died with its creator. 

“You know the city’s dust, Em. Why are we even here? We have no society to protect anymore.”

“Maybe you’re right, Slates. Maybe every day of our lives for the last two decades has strictly been in service of an artificial concept, and not at all intrinsic to our identity.”

“I’m just saying this could be our time to retire.”

Marmaduke smashed his cup of coffee on the ground, brown liquid spreading like an STD at a religiously fundamentalist commune. He grabbed Slater by his lapels.

“Goddamnit, Slater. If you can look into my eyes and tell me this doesn’t rankle your rafters, I’ll let it go.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Slater turned away, looking thoughtfully out a nearby window in the shape of Jim Stansel’s formerly tangible head.

“Damnit, Em, you know I can’t. I want to get to the bottom of this just as much as you do. So what’s our first step?” Marmaduke grabbed Stansel’s iPad and flicked through it.

“Some pretty nasty emails here to a Jeffrey Dollmer. Let’s go see what he’s up to.”

On the other side of the obliterated city, Jeffrey’s impressive moustache twinged.

Stepping off the bus, the first thing Jesse noticed was the smell of burning rubber and cigarettes. A rusting, bullethole-ridden sign told him they were in Siberia. November poked him in the back of the head. “Hey,” she said.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Oh, I didn’t do too much of whatever everyone was on. I didn’t wanna have some Inception-esque experience where I’m tripping while tripping, y’know?”

“Totally,” November replied, without knowing what Inception was. See, the advantage of literature over cinema is that, barring some awful V.O., you can really get in the heads of the characters like that. With a visual medium it has to be more explicit. In this case, November would’ve had to say “Totally” with a puzzled look on her face, or maybe said it like “Totally?”, and Jesse would’ve picked up on it. What I’m saying is that in the written word, your characters can be more effective liars. The bus exploded.

“November! Are you okay?” Jesse shouted through the thick smog that’d gathered around him. Something had shielded him from the blast.

“Yep, that was me, you asshole. I dived in front of you when I saw the mortar shell coming.”

“November, I don’t know what to say.” He stared blankly at her. 

“You can pay me back by taking me on a date.”

“I thought this was a date?”

“It’s only a date if the guy pays.”

“How can you say that as a self-professed feminist?”

“Umm, because I’m a freelance writer. If I had to pay for everything, I’d be dead by now.”

“Good enough for me.” They embraced, at first as friends, and then, as burgeoning lovers. Which meant a comfortable hug turned into a quietly awkward situation full of tension. Dutch Scary Spice backflipped up to them. “Hey you guys! We better move, kinda in a warzone right now!”

“Really?” November shouted over the wails of organic debris. A torso slammed into the concrete next to them. “Between who?”

“I don’t know! We’ll figure it out later!” Two clans of ninjas, one in red garb and the other in white, started breakdance fighting near a trio of effeminate 20-somethings oblivious to their surroundings while enthralled in a game of Wii Tennis. The bus survivors hurried off. 

Morgoth banged his hand on the table. “Goddamnit, you’re just children! You can’t take on this task alone.”

“Listen homeboy, we don’t have a choice. If you’re so concerned for our well-being, why don’t you offer your people to the cause?” November retorted, because how will this pass the Bechdel test if the female lead doesn’t assert some independence? And if Joss Whedon showed us anything its that girls are great at dealing with a vampyr.

“You know I would never sacrifice a single Eternal Child for the qualms of a mortal!”

“You don’t get it. They’ve come for the humans, and if you say nothing, they will come for you too. This planet will be theirs or it won’t be, they aren’t interested in sharing. This is your fight, too.”

Morgoth strolled to the window of his office, looking out into the starless sky, its glimmering treasures obscured by alien warships in the distance. “You make a good point.”

“So you’ll help us?” Jesse asked, looking up from Morgoth’s 200-inch TV.

“I can give you advice. Flee. Find somewhere secluded, away from civilisation. Wait until your race has recovered to stage a rebellion. You will not succeed here today.” 

November’s eyes sharpened like a samurai sword. “I’d sooner die.”

“And die you will. But look, if you’re not going to listen I might as well give you the key to your salvation, right? I mean, that’s the only purpose I’m here, to steer the heroes in the right direction, like an unliving McGuffin, right narrator?” No comment. Morgoth put a hand inside his coat pocket and withdrew two vials of purple powder. “These will take you on a spiritual journey. It’s there you’ll find the answers you need.”

“You always carry those around on the off-chance a couple of kids will stumble into your office looking to save the world?” November asked. Jesse pulled himself off the couch and stood by her side.

“Sure, apparently.” Morgoth said with increasing resentment to his ostensibly minor role. Look, don’t complain. M. Night is content to make himself the crucial minor character in every movie he’s made, you think you’re better than M. Motherfucking Night?

“Yes.” No backchat. Suddenly Morgoth tripped and stabbed himself through the heart with a conveniently splintered chair leg. What do you think about that?

“Come on, dude.” Alright fine, he didn’t. What he did do was hand the kids their vials, and ignoring their parents advice (never take potions from vampires), they snorted the lines like a pro.

The sound of waves caressing the shore rolled around in their ears. November rolled over to see Jesse spitting sand out of his mouth. “Where the gosh darn are we?” he asked.

“You’re in Ibiza, my friends!” said a woman who had a vague resemblance to Scary Spice. In the distance some phat beats started throbbing, getting louder and louder. A large green bus pulled up on a curb near the beach and honked twice. Honk honk. Ktsssssch, the doors folded open and some oily, muscular dude waved to them. 

“Jesse, I think we should follow them.” November said, mystified, though not totally unsurprised because based on that one Veronica Mars episode, crazy party shit like this happened in Ibiza all the time.

“I’m inclined to agree.”

Dutch Scary Spice ushered them onto the bus. It seemed the party spirit imbued all demographics, as it was populated by a clown, a Mexican farmer, several Wall Street yuppies, a Hasidic Jew, a mime couple who were mime masturbating each other, and Don King. In the back, in a roped-off area of the bus, were some other people dressed in yoga pants and tank tops like DSS. This is who Jesse and November sat with. “Hey guys, welcome to the bus. What’re you doing in Ibiza?” the blonde one asked. 

“We’re not really sure. We snorted some powder from a stranger and woke up here,” November replied.

“Hey, me too! Don’t worry, we are all family here. Sit back and enjoy the party. We’re gonna go see The Man.”

“The Man? Is he like The Wizard?”

“No sweetheart. He’s real. You might know him actually. He can fix everyone’s problems, that’s why we’re all going.”

November and Jesse stumbled as the bus took off. As the wheels turned, a disco ball descended from the ceiling, as did black shutters over the windows. Now the real party began.

Red, yellow, blue, red, green, blue agan, cyan, magenta, orange, black, white, and then some colours you haven’t heard of yet punctured their retina as their earholes were molested by some of the most innovative beats you’ve never heard, you poor plebe. Everyone was high as shit and dancing, having long abandoned any self-consciousness. The shackles were off, and the inmates were running the asylum. Jesse was on top of a table busting his moves, which loosely resembled those of Will Ferrell’s character in “Elf”, that movie where Zooey Deschanel has blonde hair. November and the blonde from earlier, who she’d since learned was called Mallory, were sitting at a table drinking Bloody Marys. Maries? Whatever. “So what’s the deal there?” Mallory asked.

“There? As in Jesse?” 

“Yeah, are you guys in love?”

“I don’t know if I even believe in love. I mean, I believe in romantic affection, sure, but the concept of ‘love’ seems so nebulous. I guess I feel like it’s so mythologized that it’s become unattainable, and anyone who doesn’t realise that is on a futile quest that’ll only end in frustration and misery.” November replied, stirring the thick tomato juice with her celery stick.

“Honey, you need to chill! Love is only as complicated as you make it. Don’t worry about how other people think about it, what matters is how you feel and that’s all.”

“That’s so idealistic though. We barely get to see each other because our lives are so different, I don’t see much point in pursuing something that’s going to suffer from each other’s absence.”

“Let me tell you something my mentor shared with me when I was an intern at DvF. ‘Absence is to love what wind is to fire. If it’s a small fire, the wind kills it. If it’s a real fire, it intensifies it.’ Diane Von Furstenberg said that, and if she don’t know shit about love, then none of us do.”

November looked over to Jesse, who’d just slipped of the table and kicked the farmer in the face. His nose was now bleeding.

The shades on the windows rose, revealing it was dawn. People in various stages of undress got up and gazed at the rising sun like a deity. The Hasidic Jew pulled a string of glowsticks out of his mouth, having swallowed them under the belief they were alcoholic candy. To be fair, there were a ludicrous amount of jello shots going around, and he wore glasses so you can only assume he was short-sighted and not just wearing them for post-post-post-ironic value. I don’t have to assume because I’m the author and I know for sure. Maybe I’ll tell you later. Is this foreshadowing? You’ll just have to wait and see ;-) (it isn’t, writers who use foreshadowing are cowards). 

We stood on the swings at the top of the hill looking at the roads and houses below. “Got another cigarette?” He shook the box near his ear. 

“Nope.” I felt warm in the clothes I’d stolen from the Goodwill bin that was left outside. My jacket smelt strongly of leather and it reminded me of riding on my Dad’s motorbike when I was twelve. The first bird to awaken chirped in the dull blue light. I felt like we were outside the world like characters in a movie. I slid my cigarette, now just a filter, into the nearly-empty bottle of awful chardonnay we’d been drinking from for the last few minutes. It was the eighth or ninth bottle for the evening. Whenever either of us moved too suddenly, the rusting swing set would creak and puncture the serenity. We tried to stand as still as possible. I looked over to him as he took a photo of the vista with his iPhone. “I’m glad we’re friends,” I said.

“Yeah, me too. What do you wanna do now?” he asked. “The shops don’t open for a few hours.”

“Let’s go to G’s house, sleep for a few hours, then come back.”

“Yeah, don’t really want the party to stop.”

“Word.” I replied

Since the world suffered its catastrophic supernatural ordeal, vampire covens had successfully run for and attained legitimate political party status, and currently governed ninety percent of the suburban neighbourhoods in the country. Their superhuman speed made them unparalleled at filling out the mountains of bureaucratic paperwork required to be a politician, making them the most efficient governing body in the world. This also gave them an unfair advantage in games of reflex like Post-Modern Warfare. Morgoth Guthrie was one such politician/avid video game enthusiast/creature of the night. As he hung upside down from the ceiling of his well-lit multimedia room pwning n00bs, he idly considered ways in which he could make the game more challenging, but ultimately decided that it was up to the developers. A tall vampire in a tailored suit entered the room silently and pulled the power cord out of the wall. “Hey! I was doing really well,” Morgoth shouted, gliding from the ceiling to stand near his press secretary. “Why do you hate fun, Jerry? You don’t have to be gloomy when you live forever. Happiness is a choice, bro.”

“Morgoth, there are two teenagers here to see you,” Jerry replied, handing the power cord to Morgoth. “Less time filing, please, more time considering solutions to the community’s issues. There are still mad potholes from that fight with the mole people that you need to find money in the budget for. Oh, and the city has been reduced to a fine dust by space invaders.”

“Duh, Jerry! What do you think I’m wearing this headset for? We only discuss very important topical issues when we’re playing!” Morgoth replied.

“Sorry sir, online gaming has changed a lot from when I was young. Used to be people exchanged insults of increasing offensiveness. Some people were real innovators, you should’ve heard some of the shit they said.”

“Give me a history lesson later! Show the kids in.” Jerry glided backwards through the door without taking his gaze off Morgoth. Dude gives me the creeps, Morgoth thought. Jesse and November entered.

John Hurt stood up from the gelatinous seat he was ensconced in and outstretched his left palm to the right-handed reporter. “Are we done?”

“Yes, thankyou for the interview John. ThoughtBook has changed the way we live. You’ve done the world a great service,” the reporter offered and she shook his hand awkwardly.

“Please,” John smiled. “Call me Mr. Hurt.”

“Really? That makes you sound diabolical.”

“Yeah, because a guy who created a service that records and publishes every thought its users have must be entirely benevolent.”

“That’s correct,” the reporter said, missing the sarcasm. 

John sighed and scratched his elbow as the reporter’s hologram evaporated from his home. Designed in the style of 9th century Modernism, it was predominantly blue. John walked into his kitchen and opened a cabinet, pulling out a glass. He then took the glass, placed it under the faucet, and turned on the cold water, filling the glass. Then he had a drink. This made him no longer thirsty. Too bad it was corrosive acid. Holes started bubbling open in his stomach and on his chest, exposing his delicate insides to the bacterial air. His torso started peeling off, chunks of flesh dropping to the ground, making the sound of someone slurping soup. He gasped, miming a scream of anguish with vocal chords that’d turned to an amorphous solid. He stumbled over to the phone, which he kept next to an iPad of paper. As the brittle bones in his fingers started to snap from the pressure, he finished scrawling a name with a flourish. And with that he dropped to the ground, dissolving into a bubbly mess like puddle of vomit after too many jello shots.

“Jesse?” November said to the couch in the living room.

“Sup?” came its reply.

“When you said you had a plan… I figured it’d be more proactive than lying on the couch playing Post-Modern Warfare all day.” This was a factual statement. Jesse’s plan hadn’t met her expectations, and she’d already unlocked all weapons and perks in the game so she didn’t find it much fun anymore. 

“I’m not just playing, November, I’m networking. When the vampires can’t come out during the day they play the shit out of this. I’m setting up a meeting.”

“Alright, sure.” November was content reading the latest edition of the New Yorker, which featured a profile on the creator of ThoughtBook and an expose on the trading of synthetic blood diamonds. Jesse poked his head up from the cushions.

“Alright, it’s getting dark. Let’s go.” Then, they went. Silently. Into the night.

*

John Hurt stood up from the gelatinous seat he was ensconced in and outstretched his left palm to the right-handed reporter. “Are we done?”

“Yes, thankyou for the interview John. ThoughtBook has changed the way we live. You’ve done the world a great service,” the reporter offered and she shook his hand awkwardly.

“Please,” John smiled. “Call me Mr. Hurt.”

“Really? That makes you sound diabolical.”

“Yeah, because a guy who created a service that records and publishes every thought its users have must be entirely benevolent.”

“That’s correct,” the reporter said, missing the sarcasm. 

John sighed and scratched his elbow as the reporter’s hologram evaporated from his home. Designed in the style of 9th century Modernism, it was predominantly blue. John walked into his kitchen and opened a cabinet, pulling out a glass. He then took the glass, placed it under the faucet, and turned on the cold water, filling the glass. Then he had a drink. This made him no longer thirsty. Too bad it was corrosive acid. Holes started bubbling open in his stomach and on his chest, exposing his delicate insides to the bacterial air. His torso started peeling off, chunks of flesh dropping to the ground, making the sound of someone slurping soup. He gasped, miming a scream of anguish with vocal chords that’d turned to an amorphous solid. He stumbled over to the phone, which he kept next to an iPad of paper. As the brittle bones in his fingers started to snap from the pressure, he finished scrawling a name with a flourish. And with that he dropped to the ground, dissolving into a bubbly mess like a puddle of vomit after too many jello shots.

The thing with the signs was the fault of one man, Jeffrey Dollmer, who ran a small department of local government. He was content to blame the delay in having readable street signs on his deputy, Carrie Sure, who was so by-the-book that any blame she received was forgotten quickly. She was an asset to the policy-makers because of her rigorous dedication to enforcing those policies. 

Jeffrey shut his office door once his boss had left and returned to grooming his moustache in the small mirror on his desk. He took great care not to trim it too short, because Mugabe had made the Hitler stache unfashionable once again. Of course, it was hard to focus when he was constantly fighting the urge to dance to the beat of Starship’s “We Built This City” which was playing in his head. Wait, no, it wasn’t just in his head. Oh goddamn it. Jeffrey’s door exploded into his office in wooden shards followed by the entrance of one of his underlings, Jim Stansel. “HEYOOOOOOOO! What’s the haps, Jeffy Jeff?” he bellowed from the splintered door frame, the boom box looking comically large against the five-foot-tall manchild.

“James, please return to your desk. I’m extremely busy,” Jeffrey said slowly and calmly, his Southern drawl laid thick over his words. In contrast to the hectic event that’d just occurred, it made him seem like a man in control. The unflappable Jeffrey Dollmer.

“Nay can dizzle, my bizzy-boss. Happy hour starts at nine. In the mornang!”

“It is now ten thirty seven, your imaginary happy hour has already concluded.”

“Nope! Goes forever!” Jim shouted, tossing a beer to/at Jeffrey. He caught it in his immaculate teeth and crushed the can, beer spilling into his mouth but also a little bit spilled onto his clothes. Jeffrey was upset, but didn’t blame Jim. He was recently divorced from his fake wife that he really loved. Kinda makes Jim bummed to think about so don’t bring it up. Oh look, there’s November!

November was the office intern but she turned tricks for money as a magician’s assistant on nights and weekends. She respected her boss, Carrie, a moderate amount, roughly the same amount one respects a neighbour that occasionally comes over for a chat with your Mum. More than one that doesn’t come over for a chat, but slightly less than an aunt or other extended family. She respected Carrie quietly, though, because admitting she didn’t mind the office would pierce her armor of indifference. Sincerity was tantamount to vulnerability, which wasn’t something November was a Fan of on ThoughtBook. This is why when November looked out the window and noticed the typically obnoxious view of the city had been replaced by a grey-brown wasteland of smoldering buildings, her lip barely curled. She began refilling the printer’s ink cartridges. And THEN her phone started vibrating. It was Jesse. “November, hi.”

“What do you want, Jesse?” 

“Just to talk. Look, I don’t know if you noticed, but the city has been vaporised by an intergalactic worlard.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I need your help!”

November rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, you always do this. I’m hanging up, Jesse.”

“I’m coming to get you. Look out for the flying train.”

“Ugh, FINE.” November hit the red phone icon which disconnected the call. People never say “bye” when they’re fictional characters. The front carriage of the flying train smashed through the wall, just missing Jim’s desk but nudging it enough to make his seventh grade soccer trophy topple off and break. “You’re paying for that, November!”

“Whatever,” she said as she got into the driver’s compartment. “This is a pretty sweet ride.”

“Thanks. I got it off eBay.” Jesse quipped.

“Really?”

“No.” They took off into the sky.

“Jesse,” November said, looking up at him from the frankly uncomfortable plastic chair. “Where are we going?”

“Anywhere you like,” he replied, looking back at her. She always wore her brown hair unbrushed and messy. He’d only just noticed. “Actually I have an assignment to submit so we’re going to university.”

“And then?”

“And then we sort this mess out, because it looks like we’re the only ones who can. Don’t worry, November. I have a plan.” Those four words filled November with dread that she could only fully articulate with a blog post.

DMX paused on his patrol around the ship to admire his chassis. He’d just had his wheels replaced by the ship’s mechano-medic in order to look his best for the impending invasion.  The diamonds gilding his CommScreen glinted in the reflection of the ship’s window. Ftchhhhh, a door near the end of the corridor slid open. Hepcat, his rapping cat, slunk out of the glowing room behind it. “What the hell were you doing in there?” he asked. “Taking a shit.” Hepcat replied. “Goddamnit, Hepcat,” DMX said. “We’ll be at Earth in five minutes, is it so much to ask that you wait?”

“Yes.”

DMX sighed. When he murdered his entire family in cold-hydraulics-fuel, he expected his ascendancy to Lordship would at least come with a ship-trained cat. Unfortunately the Vizier he was appointed was Hepcat, a nine-hundred-and-something-year-old insane cat who wouldn’t stop talking about his previous thirteen lives as a medical professional. The antenna on Hepcat’s ear started blooping. “We’ve reached Earth!” DMX gasped. He was looking forward to fulfilling his vendetta. The CommScreen on his chest lit up, displaying pictures from all over the globe of people looking into the sky, marvelling at his fleet. “Which city are we hovering over?” he demanded. The voice of his captain came through loud and clear. “I don’t know, I can’t read any of the street signs from here.” Moronic Earthlings, he thought. Haven’t even figured out legible typography yet. At least we can rule out any Swiss cities. He rolled towards the ship’s bridge, Hepcat trotting in tow.

As he sat in the darkness of his living room with the Rocky Horror soundtrack pounding his ears through second hand headphones, he silently wept, his tears sliding around the curvature of his gaping mouth. It’d been a little while since the world had suffered a catastrophic supernatural ordeal. The fallen God that identified itself as Ouagadougou had been enslaved, its divine energy harnessed to fuel hybrid cars, which were now the dominant form of travel, despite the emerging teleportation grid every politician had included in their campaign promises. Guadalupe had become a screenwriter, the first homo caninus to win a WGA award. Reginald had fallen back into heroin abuse after launching to stardom in the US, and Jack had been long forgotten. And that’s to say nothing of the badger flu, quickly reaching epidemic levels. He knew nothing would be the same, but nothing would ever change. With this thought in mind, he pulled the trigger.

*

Jesse slid the piece of cardboard into the metal slot and waited for the magnetic strip to be read by the computer and spat out the other side. As he pulled the Metcard out of the barrier, the plastic doors in front of him slid open and he walked through, as did about five hundred other people through parallel barriers. They all had expressions of mild discomfort but also vague disinterest. Existence, at that moment, was just a necessity for them, not a trough or a peak, a plateau. A girl in front of Jesse was handing out copies of sX, a daily supplement to a well-known tabloid newspaper thinly masquerading as legitimate journalism, The Herald Pun. “Why yes, I would love some propaganda, thankyou,” he said as he accepted the handout from the girl. She was kind of pretty, though with very little make up on and her hair pulled back quite severely, he thought she could be prettier. Her hair also looked like she’d been swimming earlier and she’d let it dry on her way here. He would later chide himself for submitting rather than resisting his habit of evaluating people based on attractiveness, as he held himself to a standard above general society and reasoned blaming his behaviour as generational or a sign of the era would display a profound lack of responsibility. She smiled at his comment as if she knew what she was doing was kind of bullshit but at least it paid, and he empathised as that is universal logic. Nobody likes doing jobs, especially when you’re in the lowest position of a Simpsons-proclaimed dead industry.

Predictably, as Jesse got on the train and looked up the carriage he saw around fifty Jean Simmondses looking up at him, her face plastered on the cover of sX. The bushy, magenta-haired starlet was on track to rehabilitating her image by starring as the lead in a reboot of a sixties science fiction series, Nurse Which. Focusing on a witch who can teleport anywhere in the galaxy who gets trapped on Earth after her powers mysteriously disappear, it was largely known for its camp, low-budget special effects. Russell D. Poppet, the showrunner responsible for the reboot, promised it would explore questions like the nature of humanity in a child-friendly way. Jesse hated children, so anything deemed child-friendly was something he was staunchly opposed to. The train rattled slightly as it took off into the sky, narrowly avoiding a bald, disgruntled skytaxi driver. Jesse peered out the window at the vibrant colours, each wall of every building a slightly different hue. It was a blinding array of strange, jutting angles and asymmetry, and every time he saw it he longed for a world where function takes precedence over form, substance over style. Of course, everyone looked down on him for this. Was it so outlandish that he be allowed to follow his dreams of becoming the manager of a state-wide department store? Was he going to have to join a band or become an extra because that’s what society expected him to do? No, he resolved, he’d follow his own path and manage the shit out of various hard and soft goods. But first he’d have to buy a suit. A thick finger prodded him on the back. “Hope you’re not thinking of buying a suit today, champ.” Holy fuck, it was the thought police. “No sirs, I’m too absorbed in this extremely accurate report of Stacy Cokehouse’s new exercise regime to consider anything like that. I’m actually on my way to get another tattoo.” 

“Oh yeah? What kind of tattoo?” one of the officers asked, clearly skeptical because they had literally read his thoughts on ThoughtBook, a social networking site that published every citizen’s thoughts straight to the internet as soon as they thought them.

“A whale leaping over a guitar. It’s to symbolise my free spirit.”

“Yep, it checks out,” the other officer said to his esteemed colleague. “It even has a few Hearts from his Fans.”

“Seems legit. Make sure the artist drinks at least a fifth of vodka before he inks you, kid. That way his hand will be steadier.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jesse replied. “Thankyou officers.”

That was close! Then, the city was vaporised as a fleet of toastships materialised above the disintegrated metropolis. 

“Yo, we come for your bitches,” a disembodied voice echoed from one of the ships. It was Lord DMX.

“You thought that you were cute / Thought that you could hide / Now we found your ass / try and take this in stride”

And he’d brought his rapping cat.