The End of Everything Forever

by Eirik Gumeny

  “I was doing some spring cleaning and I found this –” The trickster god lifted the hammer from his shoulder. “– in the garage. I thought you might want it back.”

  “Well, that’s clearly horseshit,” replied Thor, crossing his massive arms over his massive chest. “You’re here to try and kill me again, aren’t you?”

  “You know me so well,” replied Loki. “Do you remember that one time we dressed you up like a lady and tried to marry you to Thrymr after he stole this?”

  “I killed so many giants that day. And I never felt so pretty.”

  “Good times.”

  “Why are you bringing that up? Are you trying to get me in a dress for some reason?”

  “What? No.”

  “Then you’re hoping that if I remember the not-so-terrible times I might not-so-terribly beat you to death, aren’t you?”

  “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

  “Why do you always talk so much, man?” asked the thunder god, rolling his eyes mightily. “You can turn into all kinds of crazy shit. All talking ever does is get your balls tied to a goat.”

  “That was a weird dinner, wasn’t it?”

  “Verily.”

  “Why is the Riddler standing in Billy’s front yard?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, descending the steps behind Thor, along with everyone else that was inside.

  “Do you see any question marks?” snarled Loki.

  “Everyone,” said the burly blonde man in the plaid pajamas, “this is my asshole brother Loki. Asshole brother, this is everyone.”

  “Hi,” said William H. Taft XLII.

  “What’s up?” added Mark Hughes.

  “I thought you said he was dead?” asked Catrina quietly, stepping to Thor’s side.

  “He will be soon enough.”

  “You know I can hear you, right?” said Loki. “This yard isn’t that big.”

  “You try growing grass in the Mojave,” replied the mayor-king.

  “The yard’s pretty big,” said Thor.

  “I’ve seen bigger,” scoffed Loki.

  “An elephant could take a dump on one side of it and we’d barely have to cover our noses at all,” explained Catrina.

  “That’s ... kind of a weird thing to say.”

  “No, it’s not,” replied Thor. “Elephant shit smells awful.”

  “But how often does that actually happen? Who says that so matter-of-factly?”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  “No, you shut up.”

  “Thank god we don’t have any family,” said Queen Victoria XXX to her boyfriend.

  “You would be a nightmare to be related to,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII through his bandages.

  “I know, right? And imagine the parents that would’ve created you.”

  “Thanksgivings would be awful.”

  Thor, the blanket still draped over his shoulders, uncrossed his arms and began striding purposefully down the walkway, shaking his head slowly, like an angry, disappointed Colossus of Rhodes.

  “I should have known you’d be the one to send dragons after me.”

  “Dragons?” replied Loki, raising an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

  “The dragons, man, you know ...”

  At that moment, a small WWI-era Curtiss JN-4D biplane appeared in the distance, making a lot more noise and spewing a lot more smoke than it probably should have, quickly coming closer and closer, before crashing spectacularly into the patch of petunias on the side of the yard.

  “What does everyone have against my petunias?” asked William H. Taft XLII.

  From amidst the smoke and flames and jagged pieces of metal and splintered wood, out crawled Satan, the Judeo-Christian Adversary, and Persephone, the Greek Goddess of the Underworld, seemingly none the worse for wear. Waving his hands in front of his face to clear some of the smoke, the former Prince of Darkness immediately locked eyes with the trickster god holding the hammer.

  “Loki,” snarled Satan.

  “Lucy,” spat Loki. “I like the horns.”

  “Seriously?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.

  “What’s going on here?” seconded Chester A. Arthur XVII.

  “It’s a whole thing,” explained Persephone, shaking her head, “but the gist of it is we’re here to kill the gerbil and the cyborg so we can get our jobs back.”

  “I thought you looked familiar,” said Mark, his ocular implant flashing red.

  “Nice leg,” she replied with a smile.

  Timmy the super-squirrel, hand towel tied around his neck like a cape, immediately used his scientifically-enhanced brain to grip the goddess by the throat and hefted her into the air, like a tiny, furry Darth Vader.

  Satan raised a hand and did the same to the squirrel. Persephone fell to the grass.

  “Oh, shit,” said Queen Victoria XXX.

  “This is going to get ugly,” muttered William H. Taft XLII.

  “Real fucking fast.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Surprise!

  Timmy the super-squirrel dangled in mid-air, his tiny arms clutching at his tiny throat, while his tiny legs and fluffy tail thrashed violently. Persephone, meanwhile, picked herself up from the ground, coughing sporadically.

  Thor sighed dramatically.

  “All right,” said the thunder god, shrugging slightly, “if that’s how you want to do this.”

  The dark blue night turned black and bubbling as boiling tar, clouds roiling and thunder rolling. An enormous bolt of electricity tore through the air and ripped down the devil’s spinal column.

  Satan dropped the squirrel.

  “Holy shit,” said the Prince of Darkness, shaking his head. “That’ll wake you up.”

  “Hey, whoa,” said William H. Taft XLII, stepping carefully to the middle of his front yard and standing in a ring of quartered satyrs, his hands and arms outstretched. “Before we get to the murder and the mayhem and the even bigger piles of bodies across my lawn, can you guys please, please tell me why you attacked Las Vegas? I know it doesn’t make much of a difference and it’s not going to change a damn thing right now about the blood feuds or whatever, but I guarantee that not knowing will bug the ever-loving shit out of me when I’m inevitably trussed up in the trauma ward for a month.”

  “You think you’re going to make it to the trauma ward?” said Persephone, an eyebrow raised. “Besides, we already told you why we’re here.”

  “To be fair, though,” said Loki, “I’m actually here to kill all of you, not just the WANG wreckers. But, other than that, yes, it’s all essentially the same.”

  “To ... get your jobs back?” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, painfully cocking an eyebrow.

  “Well, to keep mine, technically,” replied the skinny Norseman. “But, again, that’s semantics at this point.”

  “Those must be some jobs,” said Queen Victoria XXX.

  “The salary is pretty great,” replied Persephone.

  “And the benefits,” seconded Loki.

  “The break room includes a fully-stocked kitchen,” added Satan, “and a personal chef.”

  “Plus there’s a convenience store-sized cooler with every kind of soda.”

  “Bullshit,” said Thor.

  “Every kind,” replied the trickster god gravely.

  “OK, fine, you have jobs good enough to literally kill for, I get it, but why send monsters to attack civilians in my city?” asked the heavyset mayor-king. “I mean, I know you guys are evil and all but, come on ...”

  “Evil?” feigned the Father of Lies. “Us?”

  “Really?” said Persephone. “You’re going to go that route?”

  “I don’t know. I thought –”

  “No.”

  “OK, fine.”

  “The monsters weren’t me,” said Loki with a quick shake of his head. “Call me a racist, but I kind of hate all of them: cryptids, freaks, mutants, whatever unicorns are classified as ...”

  “Ra
cist,” muttered Mark, Catrina, Timmy, and Chester A. Arthur XVII.

  “You hate unicorns?” added Thor.

  “You know what they say: Never work with kids or animals or mythological creatures.”

  “You’re half frost giant, you idiot,” said the thunder god.[xlv]

  The trickster god raised his middle finger to his brother.

  “Wasn’t us either,” said Satan, shaking his head slowly. A look of confusion began crawling backward down his face like a possessed child. “We’ve strictly been fallen gods and owed favors – for non-racist reasons, I promise.”

  “Uh huh,” said Queen Victoria XXX.

  “Hey, some of my best accomplices are monsters! I worked with a bunch of them when I was still with WANG. But, lately ... Do you have any idea how hard it is to scheme properly with a laptop, free Wi-Fi, and a lot of burned bridges? We’re lucky we’ve accomplished anything at all.”

  “Have we though?” asked Persephone.

  “Then ... who sent these monsters?” asked William H. Taft XLII.

  “And the dragons?” added Queen Victoria XXX.

  “What dragons?” replied Loki. “Why do you keep talking about dragons?”

  There was a rustling from the shrubbery on the edge of the mansion’s lawn, on the side opposite the petunias and the crashed plane. A figure began to emerge from the hedges. But not before there was some more rustling, some swearing and grunting, more rustling, and then a tumbling shadow. The figure picked itself up from the ground, brushed itself off, and looked at the assembled group of gods and humans and clones.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said William H. Taft XLII.

  “You?” said Mark.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  You Got Me Monologuing! I Can’t Believe It!

  “Wait, there’s a third party in all this?” asked Loki, cocking his blonde brow and crossing his arms.

  “Baldur’s brawny balls,” muttered Thor, rolling his eyes.

  “I don’t get it,” said Satan, “what’s going on?”

  “Why is she here?” spat Queen Victoria XXX.

  “I’m here,” said the lady from the bushes, stepping from the shadows and into the prodigious moonlight, “because you ruined my life.”

  The woman was middle-aged, tall and thin, severe-looking on a good day. She had short dark hair, greying at the temples, pulled back tightly. She wore a skirt of tasteful length and a blazer over a white blouse, all of it made of leather somehow, like a librarian for the Hell’s Angels. She also had an older model atomic-powered ocular implant and a titanium-reinforced skeleton, though that last part was less than obvious to the average observer.

  “Ruined your life?” parroted Thor.

  “You’re a fifty-something waitress,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “Your life was ruined long before we got there.”

  “Fuck you,” roared the woman, her mechanical eye narrowing and glowing red.

  The woman was the old waitress from the now-destroyed diner frequently frequented by Thor and his amazing friends. They had all – separately and as a group – crossed paths with her dozens, if not hundreds, of times. On a good visit, things were forgettable; on a bad one, she tried to kill someone. None of them resulted in a decent tip.

  “I always figured you died,” said Thor, rubbing his bushy beard.

  “I disappear from the diner and you think I died?” shouted the incredulous waitress.

  “Yeah.”

  “It happens all the time,” added Queen Victoria XXX.

  “You have seen the news at least once in your life, right?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII. “You’ve seen the world we live in? A single fire tornado took out all of Kansas just last week.”

  “There’s an earthquake going on right now,” added Persephone.

  “Oh. So there is,” said the cyborg, raising a foot and looking at the tremoring ground. “I didn’t notice.”

  “That is exactly the point we were making,” replied the Frankensteined president.

  “Wait, wait, wait, wait,” demanded Loki, walking down the brick walkway toward the center of the lawn, waving his arms in front of his chest in disbelief. “You sent the monsters –”

  “– and the dragons –” added Mark Hughes.

  “– and you’re just a waitress?”

  “Just a waitress?” spat the cybernetic waitress. “Just a waitress?!”

  “Oh, here we go,” muttered Thor, pressing his fingers against his forehead.

  “I am a queen of the Cyborg Revolution!” she shouted. “I had money and fame and power on a level that would make you, you pathetic fallen gods, weep, and then these wretched, unenhanced humans took that away from me! Embarrassed me! Stripped me of my rank and my pride and –”

  “Yeah, OK, fine, lady,” said Loki, rolling his eyes. “We’ve all been there. But Thor’s not human.”

  “And neither are the clones,” added Satan, nodding toward the political replicas, “technically.”

  “And the weasel.”

  “Squirrel,” thought Timmy, furrowing his fuzzy brow.

  “It’s kind of shitty for you to pinpoint them if you’re mad at all of humanity,” said Persephone.

  “Yeah,” added Mark, his ocular implant whirring, “you’re really giving us a bad name.”

  “That’s not why I’m mad at them!” shouted the waitress.

  “Then why bring it up?” said Loki.

  “I am setting the Benedict Cumberbatching scene!”

  “I don’t know,” said Satan, tilting his head.

  “Yeah,” agreed Chester A. Arthur XVII, “there is an awful lot of indignation running around in there for someone just trying to get across some basic exposition. And the vast majority of us already know your entire life’s story. You brought it up constantly back at the diner.”

  The waitress growled, her fists clenched and shaking, her teeth gritted, the rage indicator within her atomic eye glowing like a firefly in a bug zapper and threatening to burn out.

  “Look,” said Thor, “she’s mad at us because she was a shitty waitress and we were shitty customers. That about cover it?”

  “She threw me through a window once,” added Mark.[xlvi]

  “Can we get back to me beating up my brother now? I’m kinda losing wood over here.”

  “Are you ... just bad at metaphors? Or is there something you’re not telling me?” asked Loki.

  “After you took out my eye,” snarled the waitress, frothing at the edges of her mouth and pointing at Thor,[xlvii] “I developed an intense hatred of the diner’s customers –”

  “Developed?” parroted Queen Victoria XXX.

  “– my patience worn thin as a well-worn sheet, my rage collecting and collecting inside of me, until finally I snapped and drop-kicked a baby across the parking lot. After that, I lost my job, my –”

  “You drop-kicked a baby?!” asked Loki.

  “The thing with Thor was ...” Mark scrunched his face and counted on his fingers, then said, “almost two years ago.”

  “Weren’t you there last month?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Refusing to get me more grape jelly?”

  “You didn’t get him jelly?” asked Satan. “That’s almost your entire job.”

  “Honestly, this all sounds like it’s on you, lady,” said Persephone.

  “Seriously,” added Queen Victoria XXX, “see a therapist or something.”

  “You’re one to talk,” thought Timmy.

  “Sex addiction isn’t a real problem!”

  “– my apartment!” shouted the waitress, stamping her foot like a horse counting cards. “I lost my apartment and I had to start living in the woods, like some kind of animal! Eventually I took up with a group of skunk apes displaced by the flooding of Florida and they introduced me to some of the other cryptids. From there –”

  “Do you seriously expect us to keep listening to this?” asked Satan. “I think we’ve made it abundantly clear that we don’t give a shit.”

  “We
were kind of in the middle of something here,” said Thor.

  “It’s rude to just interrupt like that,” added Persephone.

  “Speaking of,” said Loki, “you’ve clearly been tailing these chucklehumpers. What do you know about what’s been going on between these assclowns and the Walt Sidney Company?”

  “Think about your answer very carefully,” said the devil slowly, lowering his eyes menacingly and somehow making his horns hornier.

  “I don’t know what you idiots are talk–”

  “You!” screamed Catrina suddenly, loudly, terrifyingly, like a fire alarm at two a.m., erupting with more pent-up rage and fury than a cancer patient dealing with an insurance company. “You killed my boyfriend –”

  “– and my wife and my best friend –” added William H. Taft XLII, his voice guttural and bone-chilling.

  “— and tried to kill me –” continued Catrina.

  “— and me –” added Chester A. Arthur XVII nonchalantly.

  “— and a whole host of civilians –” snarled William H. Taft XLII.

  “— because you’re still mad Thor was a dick over a year ago?!”

  “Yes,” spat the waitress, staring dead-eyed at the Filipina woman.

  In a heartbeat, Catrina – still wearing sweatpants and a twenty-year-old AC/DC t-shirt Ali had purchased at a garage sale for a quarter – marched across the center of the yard, between William H. Taft XLII and Loki, grabbing Mjolnir from the trickster god’s grasp as she passed.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “I was using that!”

  “You fucking cunt,” roared Catrina. Then she charged at the waitress with Thor’s magic hammer.

  “Be careful with that,” said the thunder god, half-heartedly throwing out a hand and doing his best Willy Wonka impression.

  The hammer came down on the waitress with the force of a thousand men and a couple of hill giants. The cyborg lifted her arm to protect herself, but her bones – titanium reinforcement notwithstanding – shattered into dust, the impact burning her skin at such an intensity that it began to glassify. The waitress – dropping heavily to the earth, her arm wobbling and flaking like a severely charred hot dog – managed to kick Catrina in the gut with a cybernetically-enhanced leg, at which point William H. Taft XLII stepped up and, his own leg like a fire hydrant, kicked the robot-lady flat onto her back.