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.