by Eirik Gumeny
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Hope Tastes Delicious
Quetzalcoatl, after cracking his skull against an exposed beam and summarily regaining the full use of his cognitive abilities – as well as his absolute animosity toward a world in which he was not a god – had decided to give up on the cabal of philosophers and strike out on his own.
The philosophers, however, were of a different opinion. Apparently one cannot simply stop being a savior.
“Though the world appears doomed, and destined to fall ...”
At first, the poets and thinkers and whatever else simply followed the former Aztec god around. Which was fine. Once Quetzalcoatl started running, though, the liberal arts majors also stepped up the pace, repeatedly getting in his way in a desperate attempt to stop him from fleeing. Which was less fine.
“... and our future looks dark and grim ...”
Once the grey-haired Mexican man started flailing and punching and throwing rocks, the cavalcade of coffee snobs decided it would be best to tie him up.
And once he broke loose from his restraints, they opted to chain him to a pipe.
“I mean, seriously, fuckin’ bleak. At best.”
Realizing the constant escalation could only end poorly, Quetzalcoatl relented and decided to be the stoner Messiah after all. If, for nothing else, than because the pipe to which he was chained was full of steam and very, very hot.
“Though each morning is less and less welcome, and the days are more and more difficult ...”
Eventually, Quetzalcoatl realized that having an army of philosophers and hipsters at his disposal wasn’t as useless as he had originally thought. A steady diet of sushi and pretension had imbued each with the strength of almost two monkeys.
“Though that uphill struggle constantly seems even more ... up ... hill ... -ier ...”
And, given that they kept overanalyzing everything he said until they heard what they wanted anyway, Quetzalcoatl didn’t even need to stay sober to lead them.
“Always remember that, as hopeless and awful and terrible and suicidal as life may be ...”
He pulled a meaning of life out of his cereal one morning and, much like Phil, Bill, Will, and Syl had anticipated, the sheer vagueness and sugar frosting of the statement caused the grammar nerds and potheads and all the other homeless vagrants to fall in line.
“... tomorrow could bring free donuts.”
It was like being a god all over again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Seriously, Clowns Suck
“So, uh, what now?” asked William H. Taft XLII.
“No talking, Billy,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“But, what did –”
“No, seriously, shut the hell up. You do not get to speak again until you can definitively prove that you don’t have some kind of supernatural stranglehold over our future.”
William H. Taft XLII opened his mouth in a manner suggesting he was about to talk, but the murderous look in his friend’s eyes made him reconsider that course of action. It also made him urinate slightly.
“It was still a good question,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Even if he’s not allowed to ask it.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t. But you know damn well that after he asked it he would have volunteered a suggestion or two, and one of them, without a doubt, would have been punctuated by something like, ‘until we’re raped by clowns?’ and we’d just ignore it, but then, sure enough, we’d get raped by clowns somehow. I don’t want to get raped by clowns, Charlie. He doesn’t speak.”
“All right, OK,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, putting up his hands in a sign of defeat. “But what do we do now?”
“Shit if I know. You’re the brains of this operation, buddy.”
“Fantastic.” Chester A. Arthur XVII looked at his friends, and then at the burning husk of an apartment building across from them. He took in the empty parking lot and the abandoned ruins of suburbia beyond that. “I don’t think we have any options besides ... walking.”
“OK, sure. But to where?”
“Well, given that we are neither robots nor Hollow Men, and that we have no intention of joining the walking dead, I’d say we’re left with only two options. We can either take a long, meandering journey around the nuclear wasteland of Pennsylvania to the Hobo State, take up with the first ism we find, and then start smoking an assortment of narcotics until we’re convinced there are only five days in the week, or we can go to New Jersey.”
“You sure we can’t join the living dead?” asked Queen Victoria XXX. “They seem pretty OK with it.”
“You’re more than welcome to become a zombie if you’d like, but I’m going to vote that one down myself.”
“I refuse to believe going to New Jersey’s the good option.”
“There’s slightly less chance we’ll die that way.”
“Only slightly, though,” said a voice that did not belong to anyone known to the cloned world leaders.
The trio turned as one. To their surprise, a half-dozen thugs adorned in clown wigs, face paint, and over-sized shoes were standing on the grassy median behind them looking menacing and evil. This actually took significant effort, given how ridiculously they were dressed. But, then, these guys were some mean fucking assholes.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Does this mean I can talk again?” asked William H. Taft XLII.
“I’m going to murder all of them,” Queen Victoria XXX stated flatly.
After the world was ended for the sixteenth time, the Aussichtslos Drogensucht Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung manufactured a, quite frankly, ridiculous number of clones of deceased world leaders in an effort to stack the seats of the United States government with intelligent, proven political minds.
The United States populace, however, voted in a wide array of actors, athletes, fashion icons, fictional characters and inanimate objects, all of whom, under the thirty-second amendment, were forced into service under threat of being strapped to a rocket and shot into space.
Left with several thousand clones and an oppressive level of debt, the AD GmbH did the only thing it could: the company pit the political leaders against themselves in gladiatorial combat and broadcast the bouts live on Pay-Per-View.
These “debates” took a number of different forms, depending on the leader involved. The George Washingtons were each given an axe and then dropped into a cherry orchard. The Winston Churchills had a drinking contest. Josef Stalin VI killed sixty-two other Stalins in a truly epic snowball fight.
Hoping to stoke an interest in political history in the young male demographic, the Queen Victorias were forced to mud wrestle. To the death.
Queen Victoria XXX defeated seventy-four other versions of herself that day with nothing more than her hands and wet dirt.
The dark-skinned queen stood over the corpses of her attempted assailants, breathing heavily and covered in blood and entrails and pieces of rainbow-colored cloth. Her eyes were glassed over, seemingly detached from this world. She was mumbling incoherently. Chester A. Arthur XVII thought it might have been backwards Latin, but he didn’t actually speak backwards Latin so it was hard to be sure.
“I’m going to look around, see if they had a car or something,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII to William H. Taft XLII. “Stay with Vicky, make sure she’s OK.”
“I don’t want to die, Charlie,” replied the fat man.
“Yeah, good point. Come with me.”
***
“OK, this is bullshit.” Chester A. Arthur XVII and William H. Taft XLII stood, heads aslant, looking at the pink and purple polka-dotted 1963 Volkswagen Beetle before them. “Why would they even be driving around in this? There’s no shielding of any kind.”
“Maybe the clown thing was more than just a disguise,” offered William H. Taft XLII.
“I think I liked it better when you weren’t talking.”
“Whatever, man, I’m not afraid
of you. Absolutely terrified of Vicky, sure, but not you.”
“I could hurt you at least as badly as she could.”
“Well aware. But you’re far less likely to.”
“That is true.”
The duo continued to look at the car bemusedly, starkly defying, or possibly just misspelling, the amusement the car wanted them to feel.
“I don’t think you’re going to fit in there,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“I’m not that fat,” grumbled William H. Taft XLII.
“Maybe if you sat in the passenger seat,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, working out the mechanics in his head, “and we had Vicky kind of ... fold herself up in the back seat.”
“With her knees in her face, for a drive of indeterminate length, across bombed out or otherwise pot-holed terrains.”
“She is gonna be pissed.”
“Yeah,” agreed William H. Taft XLII. “You tell her.”
“That woman is speaking in tongues. I’m not going anywhere near her.”
“What are we supposed to do then?”
“Sit-ups. Or something similar. And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘you.’”
“What?”
“I’m going to go over there, to that shady spot, lie down for a bit, and try and get a nap in before Vicky comes looking for us. You, my hefty friend, are going to try and lose as much weight as possible before we all try and cram ourselves into this garish, wheeled shoebox.”
“Fine, whatever,” said William H. Taft XLII, “but you don’t have to be such a dick about it.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just a little cranky. I haven’t had a cigarette in over a week and I’ve been awake for three days or something, I don’t even know. Plus I didn’t get to throw a single punch at the clown rapists.”
“Yeah. Vicky just sorta went apeshit.”
“You see what she did with that one guy’s –”
“Right up his –”
“God, that was hot.”
William H. Taft XLII looked at Chester A. Arthur XVII kind of funny.
“What?” said the seventeenth clone of the twenty-first American president. “Not the up-the-ass part. The Vicky-dismembering-people part.”
The look did not go away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Smiting Issue
“So,” said Catrina, sitting across from Thor at the diner, “you’re sure that wasn’t you.”
“Pretty sure,” replied the former Norse God of Thunder. Droplets of water dripped from his mop of hair, and his soaked khakis squished against the vinyl seat.
“Shouldn’t you be, y’know, more sure than that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I think I should be.” Thor shoved a forkful of waffle into his mouth and sighed. “I hate waffles.”
“That’s impossible,” scolded Catrina, pulling her blue cardigan tighter over her wet polo.
Thor chewed slowly, and seemingly with effort, almost as if he actually, truly did hate waffles.
“God, you’re such a fucking baby.” Catrina switched Thor’s plate of waffles with her plate of scrambled eggs. “Happy?”
“No,” said Thor. “I wanted pancakes.”
“Dude, no. You’re gonna get poisoned again. She said no pancakes, you get no pancakes.”
“Fine,” Thor begrudgingly relented. “Thank you for your eggs. I will eat them and pretend they are fluffy and moist and delicious.”
“OK, whatever,” said Catrina, chewing. “Back to the smiting issue. How are you confused? Shouldn’t you know when you’re cracking open the heavens and striking some mad scientist’s atomic werebeast dead with a bolt of electricity?”
“I know what it used to be like, what it’s supposed to feel like,” began Thor. “And this certainly wasn’t that. But, at the same time, nothing feels the way it used to, so my point of reference is all turned around. Given what the things I used to be able to do that I can still do now feel like, though, I think I know what it would probably feel like, and it was kinda like that, a little.”
“What?” asked Catrina through a mouthful of waffles.
“OK,” said Thor. “Calling down lightning isn’t like throwing a baseball or a dwarf or something.”
“You throw dwarves?”
“Once, bachelor party, long story. Not like lightning. Stay focused, woman.”
“Me? You’re the one side-tripping for waffle rage and dwarf tossing.”
“Do you want to know the answer or not?”
“Do you actually have one?” asked Catrina, with more waffles in her face.
“No, not really. Not a coherent or useful one anyway.”
“Well, OK then.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
He’s Got the Tolerance of a Belligerent Irishman
“He’s ... been drinking since Saturday,” said Syl.
“Yes,” replied Phil, “but he’s only been drunk since Tuesday.”
“That’s still ... eight days,” said Will.
Syl, Phil, Will, and Bill stood around Quetzalcoatl. The grey-haired Mexican man was asleep in his corner of the basement, curled up and covered in newspapers and trash bags. His leg twitched slightly while he slept.
“Where,” inquired Bill, “is he getting the beer from? He hasn’t ... vacated the building.”
Quetzalcoatl was also surrounded by several dozen empty beer bottles.
“He ... requisitioned it from some of our ... more recent acquisitions,” replied Phil.
“But,” asked Syl, his severe distaste apparent, “why ... Budweiser?”
“I think it’s obvious that the ... gravity of society’s situation has led him to jettison the ... niceties, the more upscale alcoholic beverages ... that a man of his intellect would prefer.”
“Clearly,” concurred Bill.
“I think,” countered Syl, “he actually enjoys it.”
“Watch your tongue, Syl,” reprimanded Phil. “His methods may be ... unconventional, even to our eyes, but he is still our greatest hope. He has given us ... direction, direction we sorely lacked. Do not speak of him as if he was some common drunk.”
“But that is precisely what he is,” said Syl.
Phil, Will, and Bill – as well as Gil, Lil, Jill, Hil, and a smattering of other previously unnamed, unmentioned underlings who happened to be in the area – stopped what they were doing, stepped back, and gasped.
“Syl,” said Phil.
“You don’t ...” began Will.
“...really mean ...” continued Bill.
“I do,” countered Syl. “Quinn has been playing us from the start. He cares as little for our cause as ... as ... applesaucemonkeyfarts.”
Syl stumbled forward and then toppled to the ground, landing on his face. Normally, this would have been cause for alarm. However, the broken Budweiser bottle wedged through Syl’s skull and into his brain stem took precedence over the falling.
“My apologies to our janitor and your vaginas, gentlemen,” said Quetzalcoatl, rising from the ground, “but I simply will not ... lean against a wall for this.”
Quetzalcoatl wanted to go with the more traditional “I will not stand for this,” as he thought it sounded more eloquent, but he was, in fact, having supreme difficulties with standing again and did not want to be a liar. About standing, anyway. Hence the more honest “leaning” approach. Because that’s what he was doing. Leaning.
“But ... you killed him,” said Bill.
“A coat without buttons is still a bathrobe. And buttons shouldn’t be talking shit about the naked guy in the shower if they’d care to remain buttons.”
“Are you saying ...” asked Phil.
“I’m your huckleberry,” replied Quetzalcoatl, grinning.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Shakespeare Invented the Hooker Metaphor
“How long have we been driving?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“No idea,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, pointing his chin toward the bright red and orange dashboard. “Clock’s br
oken.”
“It feels like we’ve been driving for days,” whined the queen.
“The sun’s been all out of whack since Mars fell into it,” explained William H. Taft XLII. “It goes down more times in a day than a two dollar prostitute with bad ankles and an inner ear problem.”
“Also because every now and again when your knees hit your face you knock yourself unconscious,” added Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Is that why my shirt’s covered in blood?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, pulling the crusty work shirt from her scratched and spattered corset.
“That’s not your blood.”
“Oh, right. Right,” she replied. The queen looked down at her equally as unsanitary jeans. “We should probably stop somewhere so I can get some new clothes.”
“You could just take your clothes off,” suggested William H. Taft XLII.
“I do that and you get strangled with them.”
“Yeah, that’s a good point,” said William H. Taft XLII, turning to the other cloned president. “Maybe we should look for a store.”
“I don’t know,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII, “I think I’m OK with that option.”
“Strangling you is step two, buddy,” added the smirking woman in the backseat.
“Yeah, bullshit.”
“You wanna try me?”
Chester A. Arthur XVII reflected on just how well he knew Queen Victoria XXX and how sated her inner sociopath currently was. He weighed this against how she looked naked.
“I’m a little concerned that my being strangled is taken as a certainty,” commented William H. Taft XLII.
The square-jawed clone didn’t hear him. He was reflecting on his options thoroughly.
“Seriously, guys,” continued the heavyset president, “why is my brutal murder at one of your hands never an issue?”
