“Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming?” he said slowly.
“No, you idiot! Hold the door! The zombos are coming!”
Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming chewed on his index finger for a bit, then quickly nodded his head in understanding. He started picking up handfuls of dirt from the floor and stuffing as much as he could into his pockets. “Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming,” he grunted.
“That’s not it at all!!” screamed the Pink-Eyed Raven.
At this point, Bland could no longer ignore the distant yelling. He assumed it was the Pink-Eyed Raven going on about something, but he couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. “Sorry, guys, I think someone’s trying to tell me something,” he told his friends as he tried to get closer to the sound.
“All good, my man,” said Ratpiss. “I should get going anyway. I just remembered I was supposed to pick up my grandma’s prize-winning ant farm from the vet today.”
“Do you not see the zombos coming through that door?! Put down my fucking umbrella! We do not need that!” Bland heard the Raven’s faraway voice say.
“You have to enunciate, Raven!” Bland yelled at the sky. “Is everything okay up there?”
“What is wrong with you? Hold the door, the zombos are coming!”
“Wank into young Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming?” Bland thought he heard him say. “Well, okay. If you say so.”
With his amateur magic skills, Bland wanked into Ratpiss’s mind just as he was leaving the vet with his grandma’s prize-winning ant farm. Obviously he did it incorrectly, and Ratpiss began to violently seize. His eyes rolled back into his head as the ant farm shattered completely and millions of angry fire ants swarmed his body.
“Hold the door the zombos are coming!” Ratpiss screamed, reflexively echoing the Pink-Eyed Raven’s constant shouting. “Hold the door the zombos are coming!”
This feels incorrect, thought Bland. I wonder why the Pink-Eyed Raven wanted me to do that.
Ratpiss continued writhing on the floor. “Hold thedoorthe zombos arecoming,” he stammered, impulsively trying to fit his fist inside his belly button. By now a ring of townspeople had formed around him, and people were starting to get concerned.
“My son!” screamed his mother, running up to the scene.
“My ants!” screamed his grandmother.
“Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming! Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming! Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming!” he chanted as he spun in circles on the floor, suddenly seeming to enjoy himself.
“Oh my god,” Bland said. “This whole time…‘Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming’ actually meant ‘Hold the door the zombos are coming!’ I gotta tell Scoob!”
With this new burst of motivation, Bland passed the magic threshold necessary to wank himself out of the vision and back to the cave. He came back to life in his wheelchair, as the Pink-Eyed Raven was half-assedly slapping him across the face with his branches to wake him up. Now that he understood his life’s purpose, Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming was struggling with all his might to hold the cave door shut, because the zombos were coming. And he was losing the battle.
“We’re all screwed, kid,” said the Pink-Eyed Raven with a hoarse voice. “If we’re being honest, you’re probably the least talented wank I’ve ever seen. But you must leave here now and return to Wintersmells. Your family needs you to use your training.”
Bland gave the Raven’s tree branch a firm handshake. “Thank you for everything. If we’re being honest, your training was completely useless—” Just then, the door broke down and hordes of zombos flooded in.
“But this is what I’ve been training for.”
Bland did a double back handspring out of his wheelchair and took off running on his hands. As the zombos tore Scooby and Holdthedoorthezombosarecoming limb from limb, and as the Nighty Night King triumphantly chopped down the Pink-Eyed Raven’s weirdwood tree, Bland began the two-hundred-mile trek back to Wintersmells, his weak legs continuously flopping in his face.
“Wocka wocka!” said Fozzie Bear, taking in the destruction.
Dennys
They say that when a Grandslam is born, the Gods flip a dragon to see if they get a coin or not. And when Dennys Grandslam was born, her coin had landed on the angriest dragon of them all. That settles it, thought the hotheaded Dragon Queen. No one is coming to save me. Not Yora Mormon, not Beerion, not my dragons, and not the unappreciative former slaves I freed back in Submeereen. She would have to take matters into her own hotheaded hands.
Dennys had been captured by the Clothkhaki and made captive in their inimitable holy city, Vegas Clothkhak. Years ago they’d considered her their very own cholesteroleesi, but now they only considered her to be a former cholesteroleesi at best. Would they toss her in with the rest of the former cholesteroleesis in the straw hut where they were forced to knit for the remainder of their lives? Or would they sell her into slavery and use the profits to buy fine knitted goods? “Maybe they’ll chalk all this up to a big hilarious misunderstanding,” said Dennys optimistically. “And then they’ll set me free so I can return to Submeereen to fight off the rebellious slavers who besieged the city? Yes, yes. A misunderstanding.”
“Miss, understand this: stop talking! Your voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard.” A man wearing mostly rags, with a few accents of smeared poop here and there, accosted Dennys from the corner of the cell.
“Is that so? And who might you be? What are you in for?” Dennys was taken aback by the man’s imaginative insult.
“Name’s Tony. I ain’t did nothing. I just like to sleep in these cells and pretend I’m still a prisoner like back in the golden years before they pardoned me. Three square meals a week and a wet bed to sleep on. Boy, what a way to spend my thirties.” Tony’s eyes twinkled at the fond memory.
Suddenly a muscular bearded man came to the cell’s bars and unlocked the door. Taunting Dennys he said, “Cholesteroleesi, it is time for your trial. Follow me to the—Tony. Man, we have talked about this. Tony, you cannot stay here anymore.”
“Aye aye, cap’n. See you tomorrow, same time!” Tony skipped away.
“No, Tony. Don’t come back. What don’t you understand? Damn, he’s gone. Alright, Dennys, let’s go. Now we’re late.”
Dennys stood in front of the central temple, summoned by the Clothkhaki leaders to decide her fate. She entered, armed with nothing except courage in her heart and a shank in her hand in case she needed it.
“I didn’t realize the ugly convention was in town,” said one of the leaders in the Clothkhaki language upon seeing Dennys. “Let’s sell this ugly uggo to the slavers.”
“No!” protested another man in the same tongue. “I like ugly girls. Let’s keep her.”
These clowns don’t realize I speak their language, thought Dennys, trying very hard to remind herself that the Clothkhaki hold different cultural beauty ideals than Westopolians.
“Gentlemen, behave yourselves,” spoke Cholesterol Bonor, leader of the Clothkhaki, still using their native tongue. “Obviously we all agree she’s ugly. But she belongs with the rest of the widows of our past cholesterols: in the straw hut where we lock them all up.”
Time to reveal I’ve understood them all along, thought Dennys.
“Don’t you want to know where bathroom sand gallops for horse lunchtime?” she proclaimed, her Clothkhaki pretty rusty after all these years. Dennys stood confidently, positive that she had just elegantly asked if they would let her plead her case through an impassioned speech.
The confused men stared at her. “What?”
With the help of a translator they brought in, Dennys was able to ask the men for a chance to give her speech. “And the only prop I’ll need for my speech,” she said, “is a lit torch.”
“We don’t allow fire within the city,” Cholesterol Bonor replied. “This is sacred ground.”
“Well, I need it for the speech.”
“Hmm. Does the speech use fire as an important central metaphor?” he asked.
; “Umm… yes?”
“Okay, fine,” he said as he handed her a broad, fiery stick, and with that, Dennys began.
“Gentlemen, what does it mean to be Clothkhaki? Allow me to improvise for a moment to distract you fine sirs. Why don’t I start a fire right now?” Dennys threw the torch against the temple’s soft straw walls, setting the hut ablaze. The fire spread quickly, engulfing the dry temple completely in mere seconds. The men sprinted for the door, but Dennys had locked it shut with thick bars of straw before entering. The entire hut went up in flames. Fortunately for Dennys, she was impervious to fire.
“You fool,” said the Clothkhaki, in unison. “We are fireproof as well.” Unfortunately for Dennys, this was true. She found out that most people were, in fact, generally unharmed by fire and that she was not really all that special.
I have failed, she thought. I suppose there’s always… Plan B. But before she could start shanking people, she noticed the heads of the scorched men and realized maybe she hadn’t failed after all.
“Your hair has all burned off,” she said, addressing the newly bald leaders collectively. “And because of the dumb Clothkhaki rules that you all abide by, that means you’ve been completely emasculated and aren’t in charge anymore.” She shook her glorious silver hair back and forth, emitting a huge cloud of dandruff. “Everyone here knows that the person with the longest hair is in charge, and it looks like that just became me.”
The men patted their bald heads frantically, realizing Dennys was now in charge.
“But… but… how? Your hair? It didn’t burn?” trembled Cholesterol Bonor.
“She’s a witch! Burn the witch!” shouted one of the men.
After several minutes of futilely trying to burn Dennys’s fireproof Grandslam hair, the men solemnly gave up.
“This woman is our new leader,” said former cholesterol Bonor holding Dennys’s indestructible hair. “And if you have a problem with that, you’ll have to go through me!”
The men were silent for a moment.
“And me!” shouted another.
“Hold on now. I loved Dennys from the very beginning. I just did not want to seem overtly contrarian in front of the fellas, you know?” said the meanest-looking man.
“Excuse me, I love Dennys, and I will die for her. Is that okay with everyone?”
“Would you guys mind stepping back so I can have a direct line of sight to Dennys? My cholesteroleesi!”
Dennys commanded them to bring an army to Submeereen, and they enthusiastically agreed, following her out of their ancient, holy, historically important city as it burned down behind them.
In an effort to retake the city, the former slavers had launched a siege from Submeereen’s bay, Forced Labor Lagoon. Dennys charged into battle outside Submeereen’s walls with a Clothkhaki horde at her back and quickly retreated, letting them deal with it instead.
While the Clothkhaki fought for her, Dennys ran to the palace, where she found Beerion rolling around giddily with a pint in hand, just as she had left him.
“Dennsyyss!” slurred her tiny advisor. Beerion began their secret handshake. He jumped as high as he could to high-five her, only reaching her kneecap, and landed inside her shoe. He giggled while snuggling up inside her shoe as the city walls were bombarded with flaming debris. “Did you know Dog Shit and Ms. Andei are a thing? You know, Dog Shit, he, you know, Dog Shit doesn’t have a butthole? Hahahaha. Those poor bastards, the Funsullied. Come let us drink to their buttless honor!” Beerion gulped down an ale and kicked his feet jovially.
“Beerion, for your valor during my captivity and continued devotion, I now promote you to Best Man of the Queen. Congratulations.”
“And I pronounce ayoo-hoo too sober! Come have a drink to celebrate my promotion!” shouted Beerion, throwing back a glass of ale.
Dennys politely shook her head in disgust and handed Beerion his new Best Man pin. He immediately collapsed under the immense weight of the four-ounce pin that was twice the size of his torso. Behind him, Dennys caught the eye of an old friend.
“Hello, Dennys, it is I, your very young friend!” Yora Mormon wheezed out. “Thank the Gods you’re back! I would’ve just killed myself if you’d died with the Clothkhaki. My sweet precious queen being killed? Okay, life over. No point in living anymore.” He adjusted the three-inch-thick lenses on his glasses. “By the way, check out my fresh new shoes! They’re sneakers. Pretty fly, huh? That’s what all the cool kids are wearing these days. Lord Varysectomy told me about them. They’ll be really dope with my skateboard. Oh, damn, I forgot my skateboard. I can’t show you any tricks now.” Yora took a huge breath from his inhaler and adjusted the orthopedic inserts in his shoes.
“Hey Yora…” said Dennys, trying to think of an excuse not to have to talk to him.
“Your Grace! I heard you were back and came running at once,” Dog Shit cried, entering the palace’s courtyard. “We must go meet with the commanding enemy slavers.”
Thank the Gods, thought Dennys. “Yora, I can’t talk anymore because I have an excuse. Hello, Dog Shit!”
“Fuck you, Dog Shit,” Beerion said, tossing him a gold coin and kicking his shin. “Go buy yourself a butt.” Beerion tried to high-five Dennys but missed and fell over.
Dog Shit took Dennys and Beerion to meet with the enemy commanders on a plateau overlooking the city and Forced Labor Lagoon. The three slavers wore ornate short swords at their belt, but this meeting, they all hoped, would remain peaceful. The fighting had come to a temporary standstill.
“You stand before Dennys Grandslam,” announced Dog Shit to the slavers, “Rightful Queen of the Sandals and the Thirsty Men. Fan of the Chicken Tenders and Mother of Draggin, Dragun, and Jragon.”
“Surrender now and I’ll let you all live,” announced Dennys.
“Oh? But it is you who will be surrendering, Mrs. Dragon Queen. We’ve got your city surrounded.”
“Oh? Oh?” said Dennys. “But actually, it is actually you—the person who will be doing the surrendering of cities, that is,” retorted Dennys clumsily.
“No deal,” said the slavers as they began to walk away.
But Dennys had one trick up her sleeve that she hadn’t used yet. “Maybe this will change your mind,” she said, whistling as loud as she could. The whistle was a signal. Beerion knew what to do—he emptied his pockets and let all the coins spill onto the ground. “A few golds each? Huh? Sweeten the deal?” she asked.
But it wasn’t enough to persuade the slavers. They continued on their way out.
“They’re getting away!” pleaded Dog Shit.
“Ah fine,” said Dennys. “I’ll do the dragon thing. It just feels like it’s my gimmick at this point.” Dennys stomped down her foot. “Gasolina!” she shouted in the high Ovarian tongue.
Draggin, Dragun, and Jragon came bounding out into the sky, exploring the open air for the first time in months. They were going stir-crazy locked up in the basement and happily leapt into action immediately, tossing and turning about, flipping and cannonballing, completing ignoring the enemy ships.
“Hey! Dragons! Go after the ships! Gasolina! That means ‘shoot fire,’ you idiots! Gasolina!” Dennys was steamed. But the dragons didn’t care. They were having a rip-roaring good time playing in the sky and water. As the dragons decked each other midair and wrestled around above the seas, suddenly it became clear that it wasn’t just harmless fun and games. The dragons were roughhousing so hard that they were accidentally landing on enemy ships.
“No, no, no!” shouted the slavers, as Draggin gave his brother Jragon a wet willy that caused him to freak out and fly straight through a warship’s hull. Upset that he was being left out of the play fighting, Dragun threw a tantrum by eating an entire crew off another warship. The slavers were in awe of the mighty dragons.
“Enough,” said the slavers. “Enough! Call off your vicious beasts! We surrender!”
“I accept your surrender,” said Dennys. She continued after a moment, “But you
must choose one among the three of you to die, as a punishment for your crimes.”
“Pick me,” said one of the men. “I am lowborn. I insist you pick me.”
“No, it should be me,” said another of the three. “You two are the best guys I know.”
“I couldn’t live to watch either of you die,” asserted the last man. “It must be me.”
“I said… pick me!”
“No one is dying except me!”
“Let me do this!”
Before long, the argument had turned into a fist fight. “So that’s how it’s going to be, eh?” shouted one of them, drawing his short sword and slitting his own throat. “See! Already did it. Too late for you!”
“Nope!” said the other, slitting his own throat. “Just cut my throat even deeper. I’m going to die first. Bandage yourself up.”
The last man stepped forward. “Not if I die first,” he said, shoving his sword right through his head and flopping forward.
“Dammit!” shouted the other two before they too flopped forward and died.
And so, on that mountaintop the three slavers killed each other. Dennys freed the slaves and commandeered their ships, finally setting sail for Westopolis with a horde of Clothkhaki, legions of Funsullied, three dragons, and one extraordinarily tiny Best Man. All was right with the world. The end of the book. Or is it? Keep reading to find out.
Cervix
The trial of the Queen Mommy Cervix Bangsister was about to begin. Cervix had two choices before her: confess to her sins and get a bird carved into her forehead by a Gods-loving twelve-year-old with a knife or refuse to confess and get stabbed to death by a Gods-loving twelve-year-old with a knife.
Thousands had packed themselves into the Newly Fire-Resistant Sept of the Latter Day Saints to see what the least beloved woman in all of Westopolis would choose. There was just one small problem. Cervix Bangsister was nowhere to be found.
“I found her!” shouted one of the newest Beaky Buzzards from the upper decks of the Sept. “Wait, no I didn’t. Sorry about that, folks.”
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