by Eirik Gumeny
As the clones began climbing the piles of shattered marble, the earth beneath the city of Washington, D.C., decided it couldn’t take it anymore and began tearing itself apart. A rift erupted beneath the Jefferson Memorial, swallowing half the rotunda, including the three square feet on which Charlie and Vicky were standing.
“Crap.”
Chester A. Arthur XVII managed to catch the edge of the memorial’s floor, digging in with his tungsten fingers. Queen Victoria XXX caught the waist of Charlie’s pants, gripping it with her normal, human fingers. They swayed there for a second, then the queen began climbing up along the president’s back.
Her feet on Charlie’s shoulders, Queen Victoria XXX pointed toward an approaching speck in the sky.
“What the hell is that?”
“I really can’t tell from down here,” said the president into her petticoat.
Queen Victoria XXX braced herself on the shifting marble pile, then pulled up Chester A. Arthur XVII. Meanwhile, the speck grew larger, until, finally, it revealed itself to be a person. The president and the queen tilted their heads.
“Is that ...”
“Did Mark ...”
The person attempted to land dramatically on the earthquake machine. He stumbled instead. But he was on the whirring mechanical dome of doom. That was the important part.
“That’s the guy from Dunkin Donuts,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Who?”
Ali Şahin, the man from Dunkin Donuts, now with a few robotic accessories welded into his body, punched his hand through the screen of purple electricity and into the spinning metal of the dome. Immediately, the machine stopped spinning and the ground stopped quaking. The arc of electricity connecting the machine to the Jefferson Memorial snapped, and the wall of lightning surrounding the rotunda began to flicker and fade.
The donut man kept his arm plunged into the dome. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his forearm began pivoting at the wrist, up and down, independent of the rest of his arm. The earthquake machine began to shake, violently, and then it began to crack. Pieces of it began to disappear.
“What the fuck?” said Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX.
***
As the last of the earthquake machine vanished beneath his feet, the man from Dunkin Donuts leapt, in a single bound, to the collapsed stairs of the Jefferson Memorial.
“Hey, guys,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“How did you –” began Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“I amplified its resonant frequency,” explained Ali. “Essentially shook it so hard and so precisely that its component molecules just up and went away. It was the same thing the dome was doing to the planet.” He lifted his arm, now metal from the elbow down, LCD screens blinking and red lights glowing. “Turns out Dr. Arahami had a few doomsday devices of his own.”
EPILOGUE
19 Days Later
“Secaucus Holiday Inn.”
“Hello?”
“Yes, hello?”
“Is anyone there?”
“Hang on, let me get someone with vocal cords.”
“Hello? Hello?! Oh, god, why won’t you answer me?!”
Timmy stepped on the End Call button on the phone, hanging his furry head.
“I told Mark this wouldn’t work.”
The cape-wearing, not-as-super-as-he-once-was-but-still-more-super-than-most-squirrels squirrel hopped up onto the counter and looked out over the empty lobby, from the half-spackled back wall to the deep red stain on the tiled floor to the boarded-up doorway.
“Where the hell is Thor?”
Thor was the hell in the Dunkin Donuts, gorging himself on fresh-baked eclairs and letting Ali Şahin fill him in on what he missed after he bailed on his friends to revive and bone a reincarnated Celtic leader while they all went to stop a psychopathic presidential clone with secret plans for a worldwide cataclysm that were only barely thwarted.
“And then we all flew back to New Jersey on the back of my unicorn,” said the donut guy.
“You have a unicorn?!” asked Thor as excitedly as a six-year-old girl.
“No.”
“Oh,” replied Thor as sadly as a six-year-old girl who just found out unicorns weren’t real.
“I do have rocket boots, though,” explained Ali. “It took a lot of convincing to get Dr. Arahami to leave them as boots and not mesh them into my legs.”
“That guy really likes robots.”
“You didn’t see the sexnasium.”
“The what?”
“I don’t even know where to begin.”
“I don’t think you’re trying hard enough.”
“It was frightening.”
“Speaking of frightening, have you seen Charlie or Vicky? We made them leave the hotel because they kept loving all over each other. And not the fun to watch kind.”
“Not since we got back.”
Queen Victoria XXX and Chester A. Arthur XVII had spent the past two weeks either holding hands and skipping through fields of daisies, or in cheap motels doing terrible, terrible things to one another. Currently, they were at a charming Italian restaurant – situated in an old German restaurant and run by a Chinese family – holding hands, staring deeply into one another’s eyes, talking about their future, and “not” having a serious, meaningful relationship.
“It’s not often you get to bail out Charlie and Vicky,” said Thor.
“That’s what I’m told,” said Ali. “Not to mention saving the world’s ass.”
“Was it everything you ever hoped?”
“Close,” said the donut merchant, rubbing the back of his head with his human hand. “I didn’t think I’d have to give up so many body parts.”
“It happens.”
“The pneumatic penis is fun, though.”
“Oh no,” said Thor, rolling his eyes. “Please don’t talk about it.”
“OK, I promise I won’t.”
“Thank you.”
“But I can’t promise you won’t hear from Catrina about it.”
“Where is she?”
Catrina Dalisay was in the back room of the Dunkin Donuts, sprawled on the floor, with an ice-pack on her crotch and a smile on her face.
“Not sure,” said Ali slowly and not at all honestly.
“I like you, donut guy,” said the thunder god. “And I’m happy for both of you.” He pointed a beefy finger into the donut maker’s face. “But you mistreat her and I will smite the ever-loving shit out of you. It will be a smiting unlike any that has ever been smote before.”
“Is smote a word?”
“Man, I don’t know.”
The door to the Dunkin Donuts jingled open and Boudica IX entered, as bouncy and red-headed as ever.
“Hey,” said Thor, smiling doofily.
“Hi,” said Boudica IX, smiling even doofilier.
“I guess at least one good thing came out of Andy’s rampage,” said Ali.
“He is still dead, right?” asked Boudica IX.
“He’s dead, baby,” said Thor. “He’s dead.”
Andrew Jackson II was at the Jefferson Memorial, missing his head, buried under a pile of rubble, and still very much deceased.
“You look remarkably normal,” said Ali, looking Boudica IX up and down. “Shouldn’t there be more robot pieces in you?”
“All of my bones are now titanium.”
“That’s still pretty tame, all things considered,” replied the donut merchant. “Dr. Arahami isn’t the most subtle mad scientist out there.”
“Well,” started the reanimated Celtic queen, blushing brightly, “that wasn’t the only thing ...”
Ali tilted his head. “I don’t see –”
“And you won’t,” said Thor, thunder rumbling outside.
“OK, OK,” said Ali, raising his hands. “No need to – Oh. Oh!”
“Dr. Arahami is one crazy motherfucker,” said Thor, smiling.
Dr. Arahami was one crazy motherfucker.
> “Didn’t you say you had to work today, pumpkinbutt?” asked Boudica IX, standing behind Thor and squeezing his shoulders.
“I’ll get there in a second,” said Thor, cramming a final eclair into his mouth. “It’s a good thing Mark talked Timmy into staying.”
“Hello? Hello?!”
“...”
“Hello? Front desk?”
“Mark, where the hell are you, man? I can’t answer the phone!”
Mark was in the break room with Sheila, his vending machine girlfriend. He couldn’t answer the phone either.
“Hello? Look, I can hear you breathing. You sound really tiny.”
“...”
“If you can hear me, I need someone to come up immediately. There’s an issue with the toilet.”
“This is bullshit,” Timmy thought to himself, hanging up the phone, hopping off the desk, and heading towards the elevators.
THE END
(of the second novel)
(almost halfway there! I believe in you!)
THE EXPONENTIAL APOCALYPSE HOLIDAY SPECIAL
this one feels kind of self-explanatory
‘twas the night before Holiday Day Week, and all through the Secaucus Holiday Inn, not a creature was stirring, except for a couple of guests, a family of squirrels, a bunch of mice in the basement, and the two cloned queens decorating a tree in the lobby.
The replicated royals in question – Queen Victoria XXX and Boudica IX, both the last-standing versions of themselves, cloned by a German sausage maker to repopulate a desolated American government, but instead making a living as freelance mercenaries – were in over their heads, ornamenting the twelve-foot Pagan Celebration Tree, which, despite the rebranding, wasn’t actually any different than a conventional, American-style Christmas tree.
“This is how this works, right?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, hugging the top of a ladder and stuffing handfuls of garland in between the branches. “We never bothered to celebrate Holiday Day Week before.”
“Dude, I don’t know,” said Boudica IX, tearing open yet another box of ornaments. “All I’ve got are fuzzy, implanted memories of Druidic ceremonies in the frozen woods of Ancient Britannia. Pretty sure that pre-dated Christmas, nevermind Holiday Day Week.”
“Who’s stupid idea was this anyway?”
“Catrina’s.”
The dark-haired queen mumbled. “Her and her stupid, healthy upbringing.”
“Speaking of, where is she?” asked the red-haired queen in reply.
“At her sister’s or something, I think.”
“Then why in the butts are we even doing this?”
“That is an excellent question.” The clone leaned back on the ladder, a single outstretched arm keeping her from falling. “Maybe we should just give up.”
“Yeah. Yeah!” Boudica IX, sitting on her feet in front of a pile of Holiday Day Week decorations, glitter up and down her arms and across her ratty Bad Religion tee, scrunched up her face. “It is ... kinda ... nice, though.”
“Yeah ...” said the other queen.
“I bet this is what childhood would’ve felt like.”
Queen Victoria XXX sighed, then leaned forward on the ladder again. “Toss me another box of those glitter boa things.”
There had been twenty-four apocalypses to date. The world ended so hard and so fast and so often that certain groups were considering giving the planet a breathalyzer test and suing it for reckless endangerment.
Everyone else, however, had learned to simply ignore the occasional Armageddon. Despite the total illogicality of it all, they’d continued to celebrate almost every last one of the major holidays in between all the screaming and skyline-crumbling and government-collapsing. Even some of the shittier holidays, too. For some reason, coming together for a bright, joyous, and often drunken celebration in the midst of an otherwise dark and desperate existence really resonated with people. Go figure.
After Santa Claus’s workshop self-destructed, though, ending both the Torrent Wars and, for the fifth time, the world itself, Christmas was cancelled. In short order, all the other holiday mascots also found themselves felled by carnage and calamitous catastrophes and, soon enough, there were no more holidays left.
Fearing what might happen if folks became depressed and distraught enough to actually pay attention to how they were running things, the governments of the world came together and forged a new holiday, a better holiday, a weeklong mega-holiday event! And thus Holiday Day Week was born.
Holiday Day Week – a four-year-old contest winner had been tasked with naming the occasion – was, initially, all of the big, old holidays in quick succession, starting with Halloween and ending with the St. Patrick’s Purge. Over the years, however, Christmas – now completely secular, as per the War on Christmas ceasefire – took over the rest of Holiday Day Week wholesale. There was talk of simply renaming the holiday “The Seven Days of Christmas,” but a surprising amount of the population was divided as to the correct number of days in a week.
The front doors slammed shut, and then a lot more things started slamming, too. Looking at one another, Queen Victoria XXX and Boudica IX abandoned their decorating and raced toward the foyer, only to be met by an enormously fat man – seriously, like, two tons, easy – pushing through a pair of inside doors. The more-than-morbidly obese man in the tattered red outerwear threw his back against the frosted glass doors, holding them closed.
“How are you moving without a scooter or something?” asked Boudica IX.
“Is Thor here?” asked the man. His bald head was blubbery and severely windburned. A wiry, white beard covered his chin and neck. Increasingly alarming noises continued to bang out from the foyer behind him. “What about Chester A. Arthur XVII? I need help.”
“I’ll say.”
“They’re out shopping,” explained Queen Victoria XXX.
***
Chester A. Arthur XVII held an apron dress in front of himself, pinning the floral linen to his midsection with his tungsten arm, turning this way and that in front of a mirror.
“Do you think Vicky would like this?”
“Why’re you asking me?” asked Thor, leaning over the shopping cart, his forearms on the handle. “That woman has terrible taste.”
“I wish,” said the clone, grabbing another dress.
***
“Can you help me then?” asked the fat man, desperation in his eyes.
The queens looked at one another again and exchanged shrugs.
“Yeah, all right,” said Queen Victoria XXX noncommittally.
“I know this is going to be hard to believe, but ...” The man paused. “I’m Santa Claus, and I’m –”
“The weird, slaveholding hermit that reverse-stole from little kids?” asked the dark-haired clone, cocking an eyebrow. “I thought he exploded, like, fifteen years ago or something.”
“One, I paid the elves – and well. And, two, just because a person explodes doesn’t mean they die, Vicky,” said the enormous man, a twinkle in his otherwise cataract-riddled eye. “Aren’t you dating a cyborg who did just that?”
“How ...?” Her fist instinctively clenched.
“I told you,” he said, stifling a hearty laugh, his belly jiggling like a witches’ cauldron made of Jell-O, “I’m Santa Claus. I see you when –”
“When what?” she threatened.
“Why the crap do you look like a walrus?” asked Boudica IX.
“How else was I supposed to survive at the North Pole, Bo? I was lucky if it broke freezing up there in the sum–”
A gnarled, wooden hand exploded through the glass next to Santa’s head. The long fingers, whittled to sharp points, began searching.
“Maybe we could backburner this, girls?”
“We’re almost thirty,” said Queen Victoria XXX. More quietly, she added: “Or the cloned equivalent, anyway.”
“Right, sorry,” said Father Christmas, heaving his heft backward, “but, y’know, bigger fish.”
“Maybe from your perspective,” said Boudica IX, crossing her arms. “The systemic girlification of grown-ass women is far more pressing to us than whether or not you get eaten or ... mauled? I’m not sure what’s going on here.”
Three more wooden arms burst through the tempered glass of the doors, accompanied by a flurry of snowflakes curling on a cold breeze. A series of cracks spread across the remaining frosted glass, like a glacier in a heat wave.
“It’s the snowmen,” explained Santa Claus, clawed hands tugging at his coat. “They’re ... upset that I detonated their homes, their habitat. Even if it was to save the world.”
“You’re hiding from snowmen?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, not even pretending to hide her derision.
“They’re not just any snowmen, Vicky,” growled the walrus-looking man, throwing his not inconsequential weight into the bulging door, “they’re Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons!”
Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons were, more commonly, known as Abominable Snowmen. Though the title “Abominable Snowmen” had previously referred to yetis and their kin, when the DMKMSG had emerged from their subterranean slumber after Santa exploded the North Pole, the Associated Press, along with the top bloggers and dictionary writers of the world, Bill Watterson fans all, decided that the Snow Goons were far more deserving of the title.
Abominable Snowmen were, as the name suggested, snowmen that sucked real hard. Bloodthirsty, able to heal from almost any wound, and with hearts literally made of ice, they were ruthless opponents. Moreover, though they were rumored to be descended from the original Frosty the Snowman, the Abominable Snowmen were not reliant on a magic top hat – or any kind of bewitched accessories, for that matter – and were, therefore, almost impossible to stop.
Dark shadows writhed on the other side of the glass.
