By Richard Al Ledger

“And I ask you! Yes, I ask YOU ladies and gentlemen! How long before the dormant volcano's that lay under our feet rise up from the ground below us straight from the depths of hell and shower death and hot lava on your innocent children!? How long until the burning comets from the sky change course and plummet to Earth crashing down on us like giant apocalyptic tennis balls, landing on our towns and cities!? How long until the commercial jet planes in the sky once again are overcome by evil doers and crash into our financial buildings and our churches!? How long until another pandemic takes a-hold and as we all proceed to tear the rotting pungent skin away from our faces with our dirtied yellow chipped fingernails, as the locusts eat our exposed nerve endings and we puss and bleed and vomit and – ”

ZzzzT

“What the hell, already? – God dammit.”

Jeremy was watching his favourite z-list celebrity – daytime televangelist and soft-core porn actor, Desmond Richmond III – when the power cut out, as it often did around noon.

His small suburban house, left to him by his mother after she died, ran on a money meter tucked inside a dark cupboard beneath the stairs. It always smelled faintly of rust and damp.

In that shadowy space, next to the boiler, sat a sledgehammer that had never been used and an ironing board that hadn’t seen fabric in years – now a makeshift altar for his latest vintage ray gun acquisitions from eBay, proudly displayed for the occasional visit from one of only a handful of friends he had, Pete.

A single pound in the meter bought Jeremy about an hour of television — just enough time to charge his phone and play video games simultaneously.

That, or around forty minutes of downloading porn. Porn, for reasons he didn’t quite understand, always seemed to require more power – like it fed off the electricity in ways other things didn’t.

No matter, he didn't want to be late anyway. Putting on his leather pants bought from the nice lady down at the local charity shop on Broad Street, her with the handle bar moustache who he was sure had a thing for him. Noticing an almost immediate gathering of sweat droplets around the pubic growth around the groin, dripping down his thighs upon any sudden movement. The shirt with the large insignia sewn onto the front (sewn on by his mother God rest her soul), and lastly his 1-1 size replica jet pack with genuine metal casing, real pressable buttons and imitation jet cylinder engines.

Looking at himself using his full length mirror, splattered with historical black heads and backsplash semen, he nodded in approval – I look the fucking shit.

“I look the fucking shit!” shouting into the mirror out loud, pondering if he has enough time to rub one out before he had to leave.

He didn't.

The Slick Fuck

Jeremy stood near the back of the huddle of lurched figures. A sparse gathering of people, mostly men and mostly that of a certain age, watching another man on a small ramshackle stage on the high street with a beaten up briefcase.

“Stop hair loss and see thicker, fuller hair in just three to six months!” He was a Slick Fuck in a white nylon suit and Eel skin shoes pointed at the end sharp enough to cut butter. His hair combed over with an oiled sheen an attempt to cover the obvious bald spot when the sunlight caught his scalp at the correct moment.

He continued on his pre rehearsed diatribe, a quick observational joke thrown in occasionally to keep the morons gathered somewhat engaged, only a handful choosing to occasionally move on like pollen in a chance breeze. The Slick Fuck continuing his hard sell with a demonstration on a mannequin head that in itself looked somewhat inconsolable in that moment, then moving onto the closing final sales pitch with an impressive flux – the hard sell. Jeremy began to zone out and himself think about moving on himself.

“You sir!”

Don't look at me, Jeremy internalised.

He felt his knees curl to lose a foot of natural height and hide behind a man in a trench coat wearing an ill fitting green beanie hat who was brazenly smoking tea (aka whacky backy).

Don't look at me don't look at me don't look at me.

“You sir” Don't look at me. “You sir with the jet pack”

FUCKKKK!

The diminishing crowd of uninterested spectators parted, mostly glad they themselves weren't the unlucky chosen child. Many of whom turned at that moment with twisted necks to look at Jeremy – including the marijuana smoker, who's long eyes with dark circles suggested a prolonged lack of sleep and water.

“Do you worry about hair loss?”

“No.”

“A thinning dome?”

“No.”

“Balding cunt?”

“What!?”

“A receding hairline?”

“No!”

“Maybe you should?”

“What do you mean?”

“– And why on earth are you wearing a fucking jet pack!?” The murmurs scattered around the sparse crowd were in agreement – why is he wearing a jet pack and a shirt with a strange logo emblazoned on the front? “Are you some sort of deranged moron thinking your some sort of idiotic fucking vigilante? A limp dick superhero virgin?”

There was a brief pause as the Slick Fuck rifled through the theatre of his mind, finally landing on what he really wanted to say....

“Are you some kind of a nut!?” he bellowed, with an already predetermined assumption of what the answer may in fact be.

There was an sprinkling of agreement in the air that Jeremy couldn't not help but notice, nodding heads and a feeling of unity within the gaggle of strangers. Somewhere on the other side of the congregation, a man covered in shadows outwardly cheered and clapped.

Right then and there, Jeremy wanted to die. A heavy dread swelled in his gut, pressing up into his throat where his voice got lost in a lump behind a tongue as dry and cracked as the Sahara at the end of a long, merciless drought.

“Are you going to answer me you pillock!?”

Jeremy would like to answer, sure he would, but his vocal chords had gone bye-bye somewhere south near the large intestine destined to be excreted from the colon once it got there.

“Well?” The Slick Fuck persisted. Now everyone was looking at Jeremy, gawping at him accusingly. Rubbernecking past other chrome-domed eggheads, peeping over thinning cue balls. Like he was the bad one, not The Slick Fuck – the seller of cheap hair loss cream in the white nylon suit on a dilapidated stage in the middle of the day in the middle of the working week.

They were all looking, no, staring at Jeremy with unblinking eyes like he was a – a terrorist. The jet pack and the unrecognisable emblem emblazoned on the front of his shirt didn't help, sure.

The Hobo

Jeremy had decided to hedge his bets and make a quick exit before the mob he was with decided to turn hostile and lynch him. Hang him by the throat without trial at the nearest lamp post or Burger Boy fluorescent sign without regard or mercy. Laughing and pointing as he drew his last sought after breath then kicking the bucket. Momentarily he felt sad, assuming less than a few would care if he was gone.

Those dullards know nothing, Jeremy thought – shaking off the familiar shrink wrap of sadness and woe once again, just like he had done so successfully many times previously. Unfairly chastised for his costume and his replica jet pack. Dullards and ceeunts, the lot of them he thought, as a refreshed wave of purpose flooded into his diaphragm and he outwardly grew in stature, though none of the shapes around him noticed.

He walked with new found pace down the high street. Thinking he had heard a ruckus behind him, someone shouting something more derogatory in his direction no doubt, but when he turned around he noticed that the small crowd had already forgotten about him altogether, back listening to The Slick Fuck's diatribe intently on the soap box – crack on, Jeremy thought – he had product to sell and needed to shift the dodgy gear before the local security moved him on – we all had our own journeys to fulfil.

The sound that had first unsettled Jeremy was, in fact, coming from a homeless man he hadn’t noticed before, a skinny man with his shirt off, exposing raw untreated sores which plastered his chest cavity like polka dots. He was shouting at a young asian boy who was running away from the wild deranged vagrant without making eye contact.

“Have you got any change sir?” The Hobo had clocked his yellowed hollow eyes on Jeremy and now was locked in, this had all happened rather quickly. Approaching Jeremy at a pace, his sunken scabby chest exuding an odour as he got closer. “A little change for a fellow human being?”

“I haven't got anything, sorry” Jeremy attempted to increase his walking pace but somehow The Hobo managed to close the gap between the two of them with an ease, without appearing to exert any additional effort, seemingly without labour. Jeremy couldn't understand how this could happen, but The Hobo had an unquestionably impressive stride.

“Gu' on sir, just a bit of money for the homeless? It would be appreciated.” The smell now was almost unbearable. Up this close, the scabs were pussy and volatile. Jeremy couldn't not look at the inflamed torso, he was sure that he could see tiny black parasites literally eating away at his flesh in their hundreds and possibly thousands all around the chest and stomach, almost as if his whole person was entirely there's now, not his, cheer for the victorious maggots. The parasites had invaded and won, The Hobo had conceded to the devouring invasion.

“I'm sorry I really do-don't have anything” Jeremy just wanted to get away. If he had change he would give it to him all just to leave, but he didn't have a nickel.

“Just a quid, sir?” The Hobo was getting closer, now an uncomfortably small amount of space between him and Jeremy existed. Could parasites jump? He's pretty sure he'd seen somewhere that parasites could jump.

“I really don't have anything...” Jeremy persisted with a pant, now outwardly panicking.

Was The Hobo coming in for a hug? At this point there was absolutely no need to be this close to any other human apart from maybe a family member or a loved one. Jeremy could smell the hobo's breath, it was putrid, beyond that even – and the lack of teeth – what was left in the mouth had too been conceded to the incessant parasite occupation. Thousands of small black parasitic bugs within the gums and the few rotted teeth that were there left, eating away at all and everything they could with a frenzy.

“Come on sir, just a little bit of money?” The Hobo continued to persist.

Jeremy had been backed into a corner like a rat. He was pressed against a large glass window of a discount food court lined with endless freezer meals, he could hear his jet pack buckling, collapsing within itself under the pressure, but he didn't have a choice other than to be within touching distance to the smelly vagabond. Jeremy was silhouetted by a yellow SALES banner as the hobo inched ever closer with the beady darkened eyes and sickly grin.

“Look just – fuck off, will you? Just – fuck off!” Jeremy was having what he would later realise was a panic attack.

“Give me some money you fucking cunt rag!” The Hobo's initial charm offensive had been forgotten now, showing true character in amongst the stench and rags which he wore. “I'll fucking bite you in the neck – I've got AIDS y'know! AIDS!” The Hobo's mannerisms were now not only invasive but also outwardly hostile.

Jeremy realised, through exertion of said panic attack, that he was also about to contract the AIDS virus. If he had the strength to smash through the reinforced double glazing to get away he would most certainly do so. This fucking Hobo was threatening to infect Jeremy with AIDS and also chew through his neck in the process. This was exactly why Jeremy chose more often than not to avoid the city centre, he'd been telling people this for longer than he could remember, and this, him being pinned to a glass shop front being confronted by a maniacal out of control AIDS carrying homeless lunatic, absolutely proved his thesis. Out of options, Jeremy closed his eyes and waited for the worst. That being AIDS and probable death.

“Trevor.” A mild mannered female voice permeated through Jeremy's left ear hole, though he didn't care to open his eyes to see who it was – far too aware of the stench in the nostrils from a very up close Hobo (Jeremy would forever associate this smell with AIDS).

“Trevor, piss off will you.” The same voice again, this time with slightly more vigour. Jeremy opened half an eye and saw The Hobo, whilst still incredibly close, relax his shoulders and take a step backwards. “This young fella doesn't want any of your shit.”

Too fucking right I don't want any of your shit, you AIDS carrying motherfucker! Jeremy thought, in complete agreement with the fare strangers voice. Finally taking a breath, the first conscious one in a while.

“Just cut it out.” There it was, that angelic female voice of reason again.

A prolonged silence followed, even the breeze itself decided a pause at that moment. Everything falling quiet and for an all too brief second, and Jeremy wondered whether if he was dead. Finally mustering up the nerve to open both eyes fully, as the light caught up with his brain. The Hobo still stood in front of him, sure, but this time less threatening – softer in stance and face.

“Gee—boy I'm sorry. Got carried away there!” We aren't in the vicinity of rural America, yet The Hobo now held an unmistakable mid western twang in his accent. Not even in the same country, we're not even close. Fuck, we're miles away! “I'll leave ye' be.” He continued.

The Hobo patted Jeremy down, strangely not for loose change, but more of an affectionate reassurance. slapping Jeremy on the shoulder fondly, whom winced, the thought of jumping kamikaze parasites again coming to mind. If Jeremy was wearing a tie, The Hobo would have been sure to straighten it.

“You have a fucking good day, sir.” The Hobo stated with an unmistakable sincerity that confused Jeremy wholly.

Still in shock, Jeremy eased off the window. His jet pack audibly crushed from the veracity of his retreat into the shops reinforced windowpane. He watched The Hobo walk off, deciding not to bother any of the other shoppers and commuters idly walking by. Jeremy watched him find a doorway of a recently closed down franchise bakery and sit in the nook where a piece of cardboard lay flat above a TO LET sign on the opposite side of the high street.

Jeremy turned to where the celestial female voice was coming from – the one Jeremy had no doubt saved his life – the strange friend. However all he saw in the direction of his savoir were a lonely pair of automatic double doors opening and shutting at regular occurrences, blank faces of elderly ladies with pink curls leisurely entering and leaving, pulling shopping trolleys and carrying reinforced shopping bags. The bleeps from the checkout kiosks from within as customers purchase their cheap frozen meats.

Bye Trevor.

Dave Cunt

Jeremy's life was going absolutely fine. Apart from the fact that he was completely addicted to cocaine. It was that, his mothers best friend Ange had told him, had finally killed her off. That she'd died of a broken heart. That he was a good for nothing piece of shit. That he had brought great shame and a great deal of stress on his mothers later life. Nothing to do then with her spiralling cholesterol, recent diagnosis of type B diabetes and long kept secret pain killer addiction.

Ange had recently invited him over to her house to discuss arrangements, and told Jeremy over tea and biscuits that he was a great disappointment on his mother, that he was a black mark on everything she had ever stood and worked for. It was after that he decided to promptly leave. He quietly cried alone that night.

It made Jeremy feel a weighted stone in the bottom of his stomach that rotated slowly and did not shift. One he was now always aware of, one he considered could be cancer but is probably just the weight of shame. It would only go away when he watched his favourite superhero movies, the ones with the latex clad large bosomed women with electro shock eye beams and flying muscle men who crumbled high rise buildings into dust, the ones where the hero always wins. Jeremy considered himself a hero, even if nobody else did. He was overtly aware that nobody else did.

“Alright?” Jeremy approached a portly small man on the corner of the high street who was wearing a cape and an ill fitting cowl, fitting irregularly on his his head, like something else was under it, one he was constantly having to adjust in order to see out of. Jeremy wanted to ask about it—why it looked so strange – but thought better of it. What if it wasn’t an injury or a lump, but just the natural shape of the man’s skull? A bizarrely contoured cranium Jeremy had somehow failed to notice until now.

The small man, hearing Jeremy's voice, turned around and greeted Jeremy with little eye contact and no formal introduction, more of a shrug and a flicker of sheepish acknowledgement at the mouth, as was normal.

“Alright.” His only response. The man was affectionately known in Jeremy's small group of friends as Dave, or more specifically, Dave Cunt. Not to his face of course, that would be mean. “Shall we get to the, the thing then?”

Dave Cunt was Ange's only son. He had been unofficially denounced and then estranged from the family by both Ange and her new husband Tony after a disagreement over a small loan that Dave had been struggling to pay back for some time. He'd seen the lay of the land shortly before being turfed out of the family home and had left one morning of his own accord never to return – that was now some ten years ago.

Jeremy and Dave Cunt had known each other from being neighbours and surviving high school together, and had kept in touch even when Dave had moved to the other side of the city. The bad side, the side you only saw on the local news when someone had been ruthlessly murdered with scissors, seemingly at random. The victims were usually unsuspecting middle aged types in corner grocery stores who looked remarkably like Dave. Standing politely in the queue with their cheese puffs and six pack of beer and then mercilessly taken out with a slice across the jugular. A trend not acknowledged in the media because, well, people like Dave didn't really matter. Not really.

“Shit, man. You'll never guess what's happened to me so far today.” Jeremy said, processing the events himself even still. Swinging his left arm behind him, feeling blindly with splayed fingers at the crumpled imitation jet pack which was now sagging somewhat around his posterior.

Dave Cunt either didn't hear Jeremy or, more likely, simply chose not to respond to his topical entry point, instead simply repeating himself. “Shall we get to the thing then?”

“Sure.” Replied Jeremy, quickly being reminded of Dave Cunt's awful personality disposition. Worse than his own, it had been agreed in some circles with awkward chunter, though neither of them possessed the necessary awareness to know it fully. “Let's go.”

So they did, setting off down the street together. One with a rumpled jet pack hanging low from a half broken strap on his back, and one with an ill fitting cowl sitting atop of his rotund fat head, and a cape constructed from what once was formerly his mothers table cloth flapping in the wind. People walking the other way turned their heads with sick frowns as they past, whispering mean spirited remarks to travel partners (also with frowns). Utterances like “Who the fuck are those fucking pussy's?” and “Look at those two faggots!?”

Of course, these people all looked the same, the same haircuts and dressed the same. Watched the same three programs on television which starred people who looked the same as them, with the same haircuts and dressed the same. They all sucked on the same vapes and wore the same shoes, they read naught, of course, instead following the same celebrities on social media who looked the same as them, sporting the same haircuts and whom dressed the same as them. They would all eventually die the same, too.

Desmond Richmond III

When Jeremy and Dave Cunt arrived outside of the large glass fronted building to the Comic Convention, they were greeted with swarms of all sorts of characters. People of all ages outfitted in the most outrageous outfits, some were impressive, and some the two agreed via brief eye contact, were not so good. Certainly not official canon.

“Wow this is awesome!” Dave Cunt uttered, gawping up at the large billboard screen showing the newest superhero movie trailer on loop.

“My goodness, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...”

People were flocking in droves left and right, criss crossing with seemingly intuitive resonance. Jeremy couldn't believe how such a large gathered mass of human consciousness could all operate with such seemingly perfect harmonious efficiency. He had never seen such a crowd all gathered in one singular place all guided by nothing but common interest. Jeremy was both flabbergasted and overwhelmed.

A flutter of anxiety stirred in his chest, swelling into a wave that crashed hard against his ribcage. His heartbeat kicked into a sprint, his knees beginning to tremble, all while the crowd around him swelled – louder, closer, more chaotic by the second.

He brushed the palm of his hand against his sweaty leather pants, feeling for a small cardboard box in the pocket located near the crotch. He needed something to level him out, reaching into the foil pack and fingering out a white stick of cigarette. He lit it with his most prized possession, the 60th anniversary Etch-A-Sketch commemorative Stan Lee lighter (it's what he would have wanted) which he bought from eBay a year or so back. Immediately feeling better as he inhaled the smoke into his lungs for a long second, before bellowing out a plume of nicotine and tar back into the general air stream.

“Excuse me.” a burly voice behind them suggested a large male.

Jeremy and Dave Cunt both turned around in unison. Looking up at a large broad shouldered black man whom towered above them, blocking out the occasional sun ray as he swayed slightly in a menacing fashion. He was wearing a heavy cotton blue security button up shirt and a large gold pin badge which meant nothing.

“No smoking here. Put it out.” The large man had spoken few words as if on the meter, but what he had said was clear and to the point – held resonance – Jeremy and Dave Cunt understood his request completely, cast in the gulf of the mans ever moving shadow, they felt cold.

Jeremy felt himself begin to outwardly withdraw and had to stop himself taking a physical step back and showing cowardice. Without saying a word in response, instead he twisted on a heel and walked away from the main crowd and towards a smaller building adjacent, a sort of old looking warehouse which was sure destined to be soon demolished for a more glossier extension to the arena that housed this years Comic Convention.

Dave Cunt, idly stood next to the unblinking and substantial security man, watching Jeremy walk away silently towards the littered street and the long shadows. “I'll just wait for you here then, shall I?”

Jeremy emerged out of a shadow cast diagonally from the orange glow of an old street lamp lit to highlight a brick wall that never meets sunlight. A huge impenetrable contour birthed from the large rectangular events building opposite which engulfed the remainder of an odd little alleyway. A pack of cats scuttled past – one orange – clearly the leader, with a trail of scrappy grey toms following close behind. Mousers on the hunt, tails twitching, trailing their alpha in the hope of an easy meal.

Lighting his cigarette again Jeremy peered down the remainder of the thin little artery, housing the back doors and fire exits of strange little workshops without any windows. He inhaled and exhaled and had a strange feeling overcome him, like someone is watching him, more than one. Looking above ground level he saw nothing but grey weeds somehow discovering meaningless life out of old brick and rusty drain pipes. A crow squawked twice, flap hopping across the concrete ledge along the roof, causing dust pellets to fall from a great height – maybe it was you.

Just as Jeremy was about to snuff out the filter of his dead coffin nail and head back to Dave, he suddenly heard the sound of a low humming engine and rubber rolling over broken glass at low speed. A gleam of an off white limousine like wild horses rolled down the tarmac floor towards him, past long since forgotten overspilling tin bins.

Jeremy continued to watch the limousine in a sort of trance, the entire scenario seeming somewhat dream like. Up close, the off-white hue of the old motor revealed itself as a skin of ancient filth, pale fingerprints exposing ghostly paint around door handles, hand prints on the sun-warmed bonnet. The stretched vintage model limousine slowed further then to a dead stop, the unmistakable noise of a crunching handbrake pulled by a stranger the other side of tinted windows.

After what felt like an excruciatingly long moment, the drivers door swung open, caught from snapping back on the latch. The first movement from the vehicle was the slow emergence of a black leather boot – well-worn but gleaming, like it had been polished religiously through decades. Then, from the driver’s seat, unfolded a hunched figure draped in a moth-eaten chauffeur’s suit, his silhouette like something remembered from a dream, or a photograph left too long in the sun.

A navy blue button up with yellow fringe on the shoulders, a yellow stripe down the out seam of his trousers. Sporting a twee pencil moustache just above the lip and grey deep sagging eye bags skin flapped over approaching cheek bones. The chauffeur clocked Jeremy, though chose not outwardly acknowledge him. Instead he walked in a tight loop shuffling stiff hips around to the passenger door, pulling down on the stiff chrome handle, popping the door open. Jeremy noticed the chauffeur sported white drivers gloves with grey dusty finger ends and what looked like a blot of blood on the index finger on his right hand about where the nail would be.

The first occupant to exit the passenger side was a tough looking dwarf, sucking the shaft of an overly fat cigar clasped with callous finger digits that were just as dense. With a greying skin complexion and thick leathery features, a large oval nose with large engrained black spots on the end Jeremy could see from his distance, hands like fists of iron, fingernails that would deflect bullets. Wearing a sharp suit slightly short at the ankles and gleaming spats over pointed dinner shoes.

“Woah, a fucking midget...” Jeremy couldn't help but utter under his breath. He wasn't sure if the sinister looking dwarf had heard him, and breathed easier as he glanced over at Jeremy's direction with beady mean blood shot eyes once but not twice.

A green unmarked door opened from the inside leading into one of the seemingly unused bare brick workshops that lined the back alley. The mysterious dwarf gave whomever was on the other side of the door a firm handshake but noticeably no smile, the identity of the receiver of the handshake hidden as they stayed the other side of the doorframe, Jeremy desperate to know who it could be. The dwarf stepping inside with a pat on the back from a suited arm, a noticeable ruby cufflink adorned a sleeved shirt.

Jeremy was just about to leave again when a second pair of legs swept out of the limousine and onto the squalid stone floor. A stoutly woman with bloated wrists and what Jeremy noted from her upper arms hung pendulous folds of skin – bingo wings that swayed and swung with each movement.

Using her hands clasped on the frame of the car to leverage herself up and out in one motion with a grunt. She wore a standard length mauve green dress accessorised with pearls adorned across her chest and hanging from her ears, green short heels on her feet. Her face was red and swollen, her complexion not helped by her violent ginger hair in tight curls and shocking red lipstick, heavy greenish lemon eye shadow adorning her yellowed eyes above long thick black fake lashes giving her the impression of tiredness.

She too received a handshake by a faceless man and proceeded into the building in silence. Jeremy also noticing a red hue that was emitting from whatever room was affiliated with the door, as well as an unsettling low hum, almost the sound of a dampened oscillation filling where silence once was.

Jeremy couldn't not be flabbergasted when he saw who came out of the limousine next. Holding his breath in shock and awe as a long wiry pair of legs hung out from the passenger door followed by the rest of a lean slender figure in a blue fitted sports coat and gaudy gold chain. Jeremy knew that unmistakable indelible sunbed tan of Desmond Richmond III, Jeremy's favourite celebrity daytime televangelist and soft-core porn actor anywhere.

“Excuse me?” Jeremy had to talk to Richmond III his legs thrusting him forwards almost automatically, he had idolised that man through his old TV screen since he was a boy.

Richmond III, somewhat startled, spun around when hearing the strange voice. Taking a cautious step backwards, as if expectant of trouble, as if deserving of harm. Relaxing somewhat when he noticed the unthreatening figure of Jeremy, leather pants, jet pack and all.

“Yes?” Desmond had a exquisite tone to his voice, even from a single word was an unwavering belief in it. Jeremy likened it to that of cold butter on hot bloomer on a Sunday morning.

“Can I have your autograph?” Jeremy asked, standing at what he thought was a respectable amount of distance between himself and Richmond.

“Sure you can.” There is was again, that remarkable voice. Somehow even better in reality, through his own ears, directly into his brain.

“But – I don't have anything for you to sign.” Jeremy realised quickly this to be true.

“Then you're shit out of luck, kid.”

Jeremy looked over to his right, he had ventured forward thus could now see through the door that the others went into. The Greeter was stood there, now revealed, hands clasped patiently in front exposing the glint of the ruby red cufflinks again. A pale man, somehow more than bald, a scalp that wouldn't have ever nurtured hair growth even as a child. A strange skin pigmentation, grey and almost reptilian, thick skin almost giving the impression of a mask. A long thin nose and ears with a unique bend at the top, ones like he'd never seen before, sitting lowly on the sides of the mans face. Pursed lips and the most unpleasant pair of eyes he'd ever seen on a living being.

Beyond the greeter was the red glow. A strange warm wind emanating from the illumination yet Jeremy could not see through nor past it, giving him a strange sensation of hopelessness. There was a lack of depth, a perception that maybe there was nothing beyond it even, not anything physical, but more a feeling of cynicism and hate. The humming noise now realised more as a vibration, caused by the change of natural reality into something else completely.

“What's through there?” Jeremy asked, sort of captivated.

“What do you think it is, kid?” Richmond III looked intently at Jeremy before he too gawped into the void, enjoying the warmth.

“I think it might be hell.” Jeremy replied calmly.

Desmond Richmond III did not reply, though Jeremy sensed that he nodded, ever so slightly, whilst staring – completely compelled – into the radiance.

“I've gotta' go see a man about a dog. Can I do anything else for you, kid?”

Jeremy pondered this for a moment. His mind racing, he could feel his fingertips tingling and his toes dancing in his shoes. He'd never been overcome with this much excitement before in his entire life, his dick was hard, and the warmth radiating from the doorway was giving him a strange sort of euphoria.

“Tell me how to make people like me. I'm so alone. If I died right now, nobody would notice. I want things. Not much, but basic things – things I thought everyone deserved in life.” Jeremy said, with a desperation in his inflection that he could not hide, nor did he feel the need too in that moment.

“Let me tell you how I got to where I am, kid.” Desmond III leant down to match Jeremy's eye line and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “When I was young, your age maybe, I wanted so badly to be famous, it was what I spent every waking moment thinking about. I would attend these meetings with television executives see? All big shots with fat wallets and small cocks. I would go into these crowded meetings, chock full of cahones – egos and cocaine and old guys with massive, massive hard-ons for themselves. Giant cocks! Anyway, after years of getting nowhere I decided to do things differently. I decided that I would find the biggest fucking fish in the room and I would make eye contact with the one big fucking fish and I would hold eye contact with that big fucking fish and I would squat out a shit out right in the middle of the room, a real menacing turd – a whopper. Marking my territory, y'know? Who's going to fuck around with a guy squatting a deuce? Anyway, that would get everyone's attention, especially the big fucking fish. Then, once I knew that room was mine now, I'd get a shiv, I have one strapped to the inside of my ankle, nothing fancy, just a reliable shanking tool, and I'd go around the room where people were eating and I'd be eating other peoples food with it. Now, people really knew who runs shit around here now, y'know? Who's the big fucking fish now? I didn't care whether you were a nazi, a crip, a blood, a triad, a fag, a retard, or a woman – I wanted everyone in that room to know that this was my fish pond now. You see kid, people don't need friends, people need fear.”

Richmond III stood back up and straightened out his blazer, running his pink tongue right along the top deck of his pearly whites and delivering a sickly smile to nobody in particular.

“Anyway, kid. I've got to go.”

Slapping Jeremy on the back, mindful not to hit the jet pack, Richmond III walked towards the door, giving The Greeter a firm handshake with no other pleasantries. Desmond walked directly into the blush, the light encompassing his physical form until he was just – not there any longer – vaporised, boiled down, like all that was beyond that was nihility, nothingness, it didn't matter. When Desmond Richmond III had vanished from sight, The Greeter closed the door immediately. With it, the warmth had gone as quickly as it had arrived, the strange hum vanishing and a new silence arriving in its place, it in itself unsettling.

Jeremy turned around quickly, noticing the limousine now also gone. Strange, he thought, that he had not heard it leave. He stood alone in the dank street, nothing but shadows and trash strewn around him, and he thought about the scuttling cats from earlier shepherded by the red leader. Looking around, he noticed some graffiti crudely spray painted on the wall next to the green door where Desmond Richmond III and his friends had entered – he could just about make it out, it had obviously been there a good while – 'MAMMON WAZ ERE!' – it read.

Dave Cunt (again)

Jeremy left the narrow lane away from the shadows and approached Dave, whom was still stood in generally the same place around a number of other people. The crowds were still heaving (though the large security man had left, thankfully). Somewhat shaken, startled and stupefied, his hands were trembling and he felt hot.

As he continued to approach closer, he noticed Dave was talking to a person, a woman, and she was holding a placard. Closer still he noticed Dave's posture was even more defensive than normal, he was being quite animated, they were rowing.

“You'll never guess what just happened to me?” Jeremy wanted to interject, hoping that the woman would take the hint and move on, but neither of them were listening to him or even acknowledged the arrival of his presence.

She was slim and quite beautiful, with short cropped blonde hair and red lips which looked great on her slimline pale face, though Jeremy couldn't help but think that the way she was dressed that she probably stunk of sweat, wearing an ill fitting grey crop top and large legged jeans.

“Do something else with your life you fucking homo! Can't you see that this is all just commercial capitalist bullshit!?” She was ranting and passionate, Jeremy didn't know why she had chosen Dave in particular to be the subject of her rant apart from he did look like a black sheep, even in this crowd.

“You can't handle the fact that I'm a superhero and you're not, cock sucking bitch!” Dave was being quite animated, more than Jeremy had ever seen before, and more so was also being a cunt.

“You're not a superhero you asshole you're just some weird virgin in his forties in a mask who still lives in his mothers house!” Her retort held truths that made Jeremy feel a pinch of blue.

“Well that makes you an idiot, because I am a superhero, idiot!” Dave wasn't backing down, Jeremy noticing pinkish tinted sweat beads that were dripping down from the eye holes cut into his clumpy face covering.

“Oh yeah!?” The girl was incensed that this small portly man wasn't backing down from her righteousness. “Then prove it you fucking – fucking weirdo!”

“OK I will you biatch!” Dave replied instantaneously.

Jeremy couldn't wait to see what Dave would do next because, of course, he was no superhero. He was a jackoff in a costume at a comic convention, just like him. The girl looked smug, like she had backed a rat into a corner, Dave however took a step backwards ready to act, he obviously had a plan. Neither of them could have imagined what was going to happen next.

“What you ultimately need to realise, lady” said Dave, grabbing the lumpy end at the top of his ill fitting cowl “Is that superhero lore is almost indistinguishable to magic!”

Pulling his cowl off, Jeremy could see speckles of what looked like excrement and blood in his mopped hair, his brow was sweaty and sore red, like something had been gnawing at it. Dave spun the cowl over quickly so that the opening was facing upward. It seemed to have a strange weight to it, letting it rest atop the cup of his palm, like it contained something else. The woman had fallen silent and was quietly watching, somewhat transfixed, completely blindsided by what was in front of her.

“And what would you say is the most famous of magic tricks?” It was a rehearsed delivery from Dave that Jeremy had never seen before. A practiced routine, but for what? Jeremy could not fathom. “Why, wouldn't you say the one made famous by the great John Henry Anderson, perhaps?”

The muted woman shrugged her shoulders and nodded sympathetically, regretting any interaction with the man with the cowl in his hand. Her shoulders had relaxed, her placard now dragging on the floor, as if into submission.

“So then you agree? Very well, then. Behold!” declared Dave.

Nobody else within ear shot of the small mans skit were bothering to stop and view the performance, other than an occasional irreverent glance here or there. A few stragglers, dashing too or from the convention giving an odd cursory look, chuntering expletives about the weirdos – the frumpy man guy with the cowl, and was the jet pack supposed to look broken?

Murmured commentary passed between them like static, barely audible, careful not to draw attention. No one wanted trouble, no one wanted to be pulled into the circus. Everyone was far too busy for that.

“Behold what, you freak!?” The protesting woman shrieked, losing her patience.

“Give me a damn minute!” Dave yelled back, his breathing becoming irregular, sweat beads on his forehead collecting at a pace.

Dave, still cupping the upside down cowl in one hand, reached up into the sky with his other, frantically twiddling his fingers in the air as if summoning deities from some other realm. He muttered some words under his breath, closing his eyes, reciting a spiritual incantation, a formula to the Gods.

With his one open hand, suddenly he plunged into the cowl with force, causing the holding hand to buckle under the pressure, as if the two appendages independent from one other. Opening his eyes again with a ferocity, he was staring directly into the eyes of the unsettled protester, whom was naturally perturbed but by now also somewhat intrigued, as was Jeremy who stared intently at the cowls opening.

Suddenly, with violence, something was pulled from the aperture. At first just a blur, something was dripping out of it and it made a noise, not unlike a twig being twisted with two hands. Dave held it aloft, stood in victory stance, head lowered – waiting for applause.

Jeremy could now see what was hoisted high in Dave's hand. It was the mangled broken carcass of a rabbit. Blood was gushing from multiple compound fractures around the body, its face mangled almost beyond recognition, Jeremy noticed a foot had been splintered and then roughly torn or pulled off, he assumed still in the cowl.

“My goodness, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...”

The protestor simply stood for a moment, in silence, silently mourning the dead rabbit held in the deranged man's hand. Then, dropping the placard onto the floor, she began vomiting through her fingers whilst crying. A smell wafting into the air from a light breeze, a mixture of faeces, sweat and animal blood. The protestor collapsed to her knees, now openly sobbing into her vomit that lay around her, a prayer to the supreme being of puke.

Jeremy approached Dave and put his arm around him, causing Dave to lower the dead animal, letting it dangle freely just above the ground. Both in that communal moment felt a sudden overwhelming sense sadness from physical touch.

“You had that rabbit in your cowl the entire day?” Jeremy asked.

“Yeah, all day.” Dave quietly replied.

“It was alive when you first put it there, wasn't it?”

“Yeah, it was.”

No more needed to be said about it, they agreed without speaking.

“We should go.”

“Yeah.”

They both set off back whence they came. Dave holding the dripping cowl, the corpse still in his hand. Jeremy trudged with the broken jet pack still hanging limply from his shoulders.

The protestor sat, sobbing uncontrollably on the floor, encircled in her own chunder.

You vile fuckers!

You maniacs!

“Don't turn around.”

You pieces of shit!

“Don't acknowledge her.”

May you rot in hell!

“You'll only provoke her.”

May you rot in hell for all eternity!

May endless torment be your only companion!

“Where shall we go?”

You sons of bitches!

“I know a place.”

END.