The End of Everything Forever

by Eirik Gumeny

  “So much for my unceasing vengeance.”

  “You could always get a job here.”

  Satan held out his mug and looked at the contents.

  “This coffee is pretty awful, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Coupons Never Expire

  Catrina Dalisay, former employee of the former Secaucus Holiday Inn, and Ali Şahin, owner of the last-standing Dunkin’ Donuts in the known world, wandered through the labyrinthine aisles of Bed, Unknown Kadath and Beyond, pushing their ever-filling shopping cart before them.

  “These light fixtures would look great in the living room,” said Catrina, stopping and admiring a display of dimmable black track lights.

  “We already have lights, Cat,” replied Ali wearily, leaning heavily on the shopping cart, his one non-mechanical foot sore from hours of browsing homewares.

  “We have a light and it’s not super helpful. The entire back corner of the room is always dark.”

  “It’s not like we use it for anything.”

  “We could use it for something if there was light.”

  The man with the robotic arm sighed. “OK, let’s get the lights.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’re going to have to stop at a hardware store after this if you want me to install them.”

  “You just want an excuse to buy more power tools.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Garage Sale

  Queen Victoria XXX was stretched out on her newly-purchased couch, screaming at the laptop perched on her legs.

  “This asshole’s bidding five dollars for my knives. Five dollars!”

  “So set a minimum bid, honey,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII from where he was doing dishes in the kitchen.

  “Is a thousand too much?” she asked. “I don’t think a thousand’s too much.”

  “A thousand’s too much.”

  “Do you know what these knives and I have been through?”

  “Yes,” replied the Frankensteined president. “And I question the prudence of a paper trail connecting them to you.”

  “That’s actually a good point,” replied the cloned monarch, biting the side of her lip. “I’ll use a fake email and move them over to Craigslist.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Do NOT Contact Me With Unsolicited Services or Offers

  His friends paired up and settling into suburban life, and the people he paid to be his friends not willing to do so without actual money being exchanged, Thor Odinson, former Norse God of Thunder, had returned to the only mortal avenue he enjoyed: being paid to perform wanton acts of violence.

  “Can you get my cat out of this tree?”

  Things were not going as well as he had hoped.

  “You do know I’m a god, right?”

  “It’s a really big tree.”

  “The ad said I was available to solve problems. Specifically, problems that require excessive force.”

  “It’s a really big tree.”

  “Sif’s silken taint,” mumbled the burly blonde man, shaking his head. Then he grabbed a tree limb and yanked.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  That Movie From the ‘90s? It Wasn’t That Great

  Through no fault of her own, Queen Victoria XXX had been roped into being civil and introducing herself to her neighbor and was now sitting in the tastefully appointed living room of Erin McCafferty, the grey-haired, track-suited, power-walking old lady she and Chester A. Arthur XVII had briefly met before moving in.

  “So,” asked Erin, handing the queen a glass of iced tea, “when are you two planning on having kids?”

  “You mean like baby goats?” replied the replicated royal. “I don’t think we really have enough of a yard for that.”

  “Oh, no,” the older woman replied, “you’d be surprised how little they need to thrive. And it makes yardwork so much easier ...”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  What Up, My Knitta?

  “What do you think of these, babe?” asked Ali Şahin, holding up a pair of circular metal knitting needles.

  “I have no opinion,” replied Catrina Dalisay, several skeins of yarn under each arm. The oppressive weight of aimlessly wandering the aisles of Knit’s All, Folks! was beginning to take a toll on her. Her shoulders hunched. Her vision blurred. “I don’t even know what those are.”

  “They’re for knitting that scarf I told you ab–”

  “Don’t you already have needles for that?”

  “Yeah, but not this size. And not square.”

  “There are different kinds of needles?”

  “Yes,” he replied sternly. “You know that.”

  Catrina stared at her boyfriend. She stared at the needles. She blinked a few times. Then she stared at her boyfriend again.

  “Look, I love you, Ali, but I’m going to be taking a nap in that discount wool bin if you need me.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rent-a-Cop

  Bryce Snootwell III ran through the mall, a pair of video games clutched to his abdomen, his feet pounding against the vinyl floors. And then, suddenly, his feet weren’t pounding anything anymore.

  The teenager hung upside down, six feet in the air. The games dropped to the ground, along with his wallet, the keys to the car his parents had bought him, and a handful of half-melted candy bars he had shoved into his pockets.

  “Nice try, asshole,” said the psychic squirrel telekinetically holding the shoplifter aloft. His jumpsuit fluttered in the breeze coming from Grim Fandango, the fan store he was standing in front of.

  “I’m sorry!” said Bryce. “I’ll go back and pay for it!”

  “You’re damn right you will.”

  “Timmy?” asked a voice.

  The rodent turned and, his concentration broken, dropped the teenager onto his head. Timmy the super-squirrel found Mark Hughes standing behind him, several shopping bags at the cyborg’s side.

  “Mark,” said the squirrel with a tiny nod.

  “This is what you’re doing now?”

  The security guard shrugged. “There aren’t all that many wrongs that need righting anymore. And the pay here is pretty good. Plus I get to eat at the food court for free.”

  “I was worried sick, Timmy,” Mark scolded. “I went to the RV after the diner that day and you were gone. No note, no anything! It’s been months!”

  “Sorry, chief,” replied the squirrel with another tiny shrug. “I was pretty angry at you. Wasn’t ... all your fault, though,” he conceded slowly. “I think I was going through some stuff. Mid-life crisis or whatever. I am five.”

  “I ended up going back down to Atlanta,” the rodent continued, “to be sure WANG and Sidney weren’t trying anything funny. Figured I’d take them on by myself if I had to, since you guys all humaned out. But it turns out you and Charlie were right. The Hollow Men – hell, the entire underground slave operation – was gone, nothing but boring office buildings and boring office workers, being boring. Nothing insidious at all. Even their tiered pricing plans were pretty fair.

  “I ... Well, I didn’t really know what to do after that, so I just wandered around, helping people here and there, fighting off the occasional tobacco monster uprising, ‘til eventually I found myself back in New Jersey. I was running pretty ragged by that point and the mall was hiring, so here we are.” Timmy nodded at the bags full of frilly linens and things. “What the hell are you up to?”

  “Opening a bed and breakfast,” replied Mark, the once and future hotel owner. “I found some property not too far from where the Holiday Inn was. Historic pharmaceutical factory, great condition. Right on the swamp.”

  “That sounds ... kind of awful.”

  “The only other property I could afford was down the shore.”

  “OK, so maybe not that awful.”

  After Mars crashed headlong into the sun and released a massive wave of hot, solar death across the Earth, drying up a couple of oceans and ending the world for the sevent
eenth time, there was a mad rush to claim the new, even-more-beachfront properties before anyone else could get there.

  Folks drove for days across the boiled-away oceans, looking for a shoreline. What they found instead was the towering city of Atlantis, just sitting there, hanging out and no longer underwater. Contrary to popular opinion, however, the Atlantians were not a race of technologically-advanced, peace-loving fish-people, but instead primitive, belligerent crab-people. This discovery, perhaps not surprisingly, surprised the pioneers, and they instinctively pulled out their shotguns and started shooting. Also, they were hungry and crab-people were delicious.

  The Atlantians, despite being disoriented from the lack of ocean, did not take kindly to getting fired upon and slaughtered the beach-seeking invaders. A few of the settlers survived long enough to flee back to the mainland and spread the word that the Atlantians were not to be trifled with and maybe they should all just leave the desiccated Atlantic Ocean alone.

  The Atlantians, however, did not receive that message and, after fundamentalist merpeople set off a hydrogen bomb under the floor of the Pacific Ocean and re-flooded the planet, ending the world for the twenty-fifth time, the crab-people seized the moment and revenged the ever-loving shit out of things. They attacked the entire North and South American waterfront, murderously evicting anyone living there and claiming the land for their own. Everyone who didn’t die was surprisingly OK with this turn of events.

  As a result, the Jersey Shore – and almost all other shores of note – were nothing but blood-soaked graveyards of what they once were, littered with busted arcades and collapsed taffy shops and splintered boardwalks, and absolutely crawling with homicidal, grudge-holding crab-people.

  “You know,” said Mark, pointing with his chin, “that kid hasn’t moved since we started talking.”

  “Shit,” said Timmy, turning toward the teenager, “not again. If I killed another one I might get written up.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Invasion of the Body Snatchers

  “Hey, babe,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, leaning against the door jamb of their guest bedroom, wearing a bathrobe and the same pair of workout pants he’d had on all week. “You think you want to, maybe, fool around later?”

  “No, not tonight, Charlie,” replied Queen Victoria XXX, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a pair of sweatpants and an ill-fitting t-shirt, an open scrapbook in front of her, photos and stickers surrounding her. “I think I’d rather –” Suddenly, immediately, abruptly, she stopped. Her entire body seemed surprised.

  “Holy shit,” she said, “did I just –”

  Chester A. Arthur XVII threw an elbow into the glass fire box in the hallway and wrenched the axe free.

  “Who are you and what did you do with my girlfriend?” he shouted.

  “Yeah, very funny,” replied the lady in sweatpants. “You know we have to pay to replace that glass, right?”

  “I am not fucking around, lady!” The cloned president stepped into the room, hauling the axe over his shoulder. “Where is Vicky?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Invasion of the Booty Snatchers

  Catrina Dalisay straddled Ali Şahin, naked, sweating, smiling. The brown-skinned man grabbed her by the shoulders and rolled her onto her back. She gasped happily. Ali lifted himself on top of Catrina, his hands pressing her wrists into the mattress.

  “I’m going to put a BABY in you,” he said.

  “That is such a terrible name for a dildo,” she replied, shaking her head.

  “You’re the one who bought it.”

  “I didn’t think you’d announce it.”

  “I’m not just gonna stick something into you without asking first.”

  “And I appreciate that. But maybe don’t call it by its name next time.”

  “OK.” He held up the ‘Brator Activated By Yelping sex toy. “So ... do you want me to use this or not right now?”

  “Well, yeah,” she replied. “That’s why I bought it.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Invasion of the 404 Not Found

  Thor Odinson scrolled haphazardly through the Library of Congress’s public archives of vintage hardcore pornography, eventually clicking on a screenshot that seemed promising and settling into his chair. The movie opened on screen, lighting up the darkened room. Thor undid his belt. He slid lower in his seat. And then ... the unthinkable happened.

  “What the fuck?” he shouted, clicking impotently on the play/pause button, over and over. “No ... No! Not now!”

  The video had frozen, and not even on a good part.

  “Come on ...” he whined.

  Thor closed the window the movie had been playing in and clicked on one of the others he had open.

  “What is going on?”

  He closed and clicked. Closed and clicked.

  “Where ...?” he stammered. “Where’d the naked people go?”

  He opened a few more videos and then, with a more profound disappointment than any other man had ever mustered in the history of time, he leaned his head against the keyboard and gave up.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Another Sunny Afternoon

  “The backyard’s on fire,” said Queen Victoria XXX matter-of-factly, walking into the house and sliding the glass door shut.

  “You said you were going out there to weed,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII, looking up from his computer.

  “I did.”

  “And now the backyard is on fire.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is the backyard on fire, Vicky?”

  “Do you know an easier way to get rid of weeds?”

  The calico clone closed his eyes, sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “You are going to put it out, right?”

  “Eventually,” she replied, turning and looking out the door. “Those morning glories are fucking resilient. Maybe we should get some goats ...”

  PART TWO

  Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Come Sail Away

  Amen-Ra, former Egyptian God-King of the Sun – fully healed from the attack on Heliopolis and heavily scarred, as well as just heavy, after all the surgeries – stood in line at the counter of the Carny Cruise Lines customer service desk, tapping his foot impatiently.

  “Next!”

  “It is about time,” Ra mumbled, stepping up to the counter. “I need a ticket, please.”

  “And what is your destination, sir?” asked the cornrowed white woman standing before him, her fingers poised over the keyboard, tingling with anticipation. And meth.

  The bald Egyptian man lowered his eyes, his face set like an iron mask. Slowly, intimidatingly, his voice a sledgehammer dragging across pavement, he said: “America.”

  “OK, that’s great, sir, but can you be more specific?”

  “To avenge my pet lioness, Bambi.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “To kill the man who ruined my life,” he rumbled, “to eviscerate the cowardly son of a bitch that sent his officially licensed Lindsey Louse special ops dragoons to do his dirty work and destroy my company after I refused to let him take it over.”

  “OK, whatever,” replied the ticket lady. “Let’s try this again: Do you have a city-state in mind, sir? A territory? Corporate province?”

  “The Walt Sidney Corporation.”

  “That is none of those things.”

  “You said corporate.”

  “Province.”

  “Province?”

  “Corporate province.”

  “Right. And I said –”

  “The Walt Sidney Corporation. Which is not even a thing. I assume you meant the Walt Sidney Company –”

  “I did.”

  “– but they do not technically own their own province.”

  “So?”

  “So we can’t just sail you to their door. We have ports of call. Carny Cruise Lines cruise ships are built from the recycled bodies of fighting robot
s and war machines, and ports need to meet certain spatial and anti-radiation requirements.”

  “Well, do you know where they are?”

  “The ports? Yes,” she said, her tone somehow becoming even snarkier. “They’re on a list on the board behind my head.”

  “No,” thundered Ra, “the Walt Sidney Corporation.”

  “Oh.” She tapped repeatedly on the keyboard in front of her. “Their headquarters is on a private island in the chain of islands that comprise Sidneyworld, in the Gulf of Sidney.”

  “Then that is where I want to go.”

  “But we don’t sail there, sir. You think we can afford the rights to sail into Sidneyworld?”

  “Well,” said the former Egyptian god, stifling several stockpots worth of rage, “do you sail near there?”

  “Carny Cruise Lines can get you to Atlanta. You can rent or steal a car and drive to the Sidney Company headquarters from there.”

  “How am I supposed to drive to an island?! You just said it was an island! What kind of nonsense are you peddling here, you –”

  “There’s a very, very long bridge in the southeastern corner of Atlanta that spans the endless, bubbling, waterlogged swamp that was once the state of Florida and brings you right to the main entrance of Sidneyworld. It’s a very popular and picturesque bridge. It’s been on the cover of magazines.”

  “I don’t read magazines,” Ra seethed.

  “That ... OK, sure,” replied the woman, shaking her head.

  “Well ...”

  “Well what, sir?”

  “Well what are you waiting for? Do that,” he demanded, slamming his fist onto the counter.