Jean-Paul Sartre was the kind of man who slept well at night.  He was the kind of man who would snuggle up with a good romance novel and just as his head would begin to rock to an inaudible lullaby, he would shut off his light. This sleep was not a satisfying one, for in many ways Sartre was already sleeping the “big sleep” all the time.  He would revel in sweet myoclonus for several more minutes and then would go into a state similar to hibernation. This trait did not come in handy the night of the fire.

Young Billy did not sleep this evening.  For he was new to this world and felt compelled to play with the novelty of no longer feeling sleepy.  He’d had a long day of failing and he wanted to reflect on it.  In the same way that many people grow irritated with themselves as they go over the sorted details of their earlier hours, Billy grew aroused.  On this night in the new world, Billy reflected on his search for the bong, the blowjobs he gave, and the people he met.  He liked to think of himself as a pirate of some sort, and this was not a new idea.  Feeling like some sort of time-traveling pirate making it in the twenty-first century  – and now the afterlife – had always been comforting. And now the fantasy was becoming more real.  He was washing the make-up off of his face peach-fuzz and other pubescent symptoms when he began to become aware of an eerie glow outside of the window.

Jack and Bethany were just about to make love on their kitchen table when they heard the sirens begin to wail.  They had been playing games with one another involving a large pack of red licorice and two hearts full of desire.  An outsider might’ve thought them to look ridiculous with red dye 40 all over their faces.

Arrow was working some crossword puzzles, and quite well I might add, when she heard some disturbing noises outside of the apartment.  She grew apprehensive at the thought of going downstairs to get her laundry if there were hoodlums around.  As she paused from the cathartic scraping of her pencil against the newspaper to listen better, she realized this was not just hoodlums.  It was the sound of her neighbors in a panic. The sound of her bedroom slippers curiously scuffing across the wood floor was like an opera of panic.  Leaving the chain in lock mode, she opened the door to view what the chaos was.  An old man noticed Arrow as he jogged by carrying several boxes.  “Best get out, miss!  Fire’s only one block away!”

There were squirrels fighting in the park nearby.  Fortunately for onlookers, the afterlife was not like it was portrayed in The Sixth Sense, or else the tire tread marks would remain across their respective necks and feefs.  At the smell of smoke, the acorn seemed silly and both squirrels began working together to travel in a direction they deemed safe.

People left their jobs without punching out.  Of course this didn’t matter since they didn’t have to be there to begin with.  In a city already full of lost souls trying to comfort themselves, all comfort was about to vanish. 

Somehow through the madness and running, word spread that there were boats on loading docks in the harbor ready to take people to a neighboring area.  Word spread that the boats would be the most efficient method of evacuation.  And people pushed and they shoved.  And their need for survival was surprising in terms of how they were already dead.  Arrow walked along with the masses.  Before she left, she evaluated the worth of those efforts.  She very nearly stayed and sat in her apartment just to see what would happen.  She wondered if she would’ve been able to feel the pain of burning to… death?  But Arrow was also the kind of woman who typically kept on trucking.  And so she did.  And suitcase in hand, she walked along towards the harbor.

Billy was shaking Sartre furiously.  If only the bong were near, it could perhaps lend itself to waking him.  “We need to evacuate, you old prick!  You adopt me, bring me here, and abandon me now?  I am sure as fuck not staying here with you to experiment with this fuck.  I’m outta here in five fucking minutes to fucking leave and fucking live even fucking if fucking I’m dead.  FUCK!”

Sartre would not wake up.  Billy began to cry the first tears in years that hadn’t caused a flow of mascara to run down his cheeks.  Angry, the little twink began to flee without Sartre.  As he reached the street and was about to be pulled into the current of people moving to the east, Billy brandished his fists at the sky.  “WHY, SARTRE?  WHY!!!??”

Within two hours, most people had found their way to ships.  Not knowing where they were going or knowing who was driving (captaining?) the boat, everyone sat covered in blankets.  Billy was so distraught that it caused him to not even notice Jack sitting near him.  The stars shown brightly over the sea they were coasting out into.  Why didn’t Billy’s moogle rod explode from being away from Sartre?  Love

Arrow closed the appointment book on her desk and looked over the shoulder at the field of cubicles that comprised the first floor of Higher-ups, inc. headquarters. She had decided recently to stop feeling sorry for those poor bastards. She had been sorry for them as recently as last week, but now, with her plans going as they were, she had decided she could no longer afford to feel sympathy for any employee of Higher-Ups.  She had been told to clear all of the appointments for the highest of the Higher-ups in the Propriety, Uprightness, and Morality Project (PUMP).  Fuck all those bitches, she thought, What are they going to do all afternoon anyway? Undercover ops at a swingers club for the bloated and long-toothed? She had just set down the phone from the last of sixteen apologetic calls when Eleanor Barrett emerged from the elevator. Rumor had it that all the men she slept with had their souls destroyed by the orgasm. Arrow believed that on the basis that the other rumor she had heard about Ms. Barrett, that she kept some kind of rabbit-cat hybrid in her bag, was true. Arrow had heard that animal talking about ‘harbls’, whatever the hell that was. Besides, Arrow knew of several forces that could destroy, I mean really forever, destroy the essence of beings. She had one of these forces in the second drawer of her desk at that very moment, next to the box of rubber gloves. She had made it herself in a pan on the stove and kept it in a bottle of correction fluid. She would use it soon, she hoped, to cancel the system the Higher-Ups worked so hard to maintain, the bitches.
Why didn’t she just do it now? Why not just switch her bottle of correction fluid with the one the Highest Up’s desk and wait for him to get some on his fingers when he made a spelling error and get blotted out of existence?
Because:
a.)    That’s a shit plan. It leaves far too much to chance.
b.)     The lowly receptionist Arrow Saracen didn’t have access to the upstairs offices, so she couldn’t even get it into his desk, which doesn’t matter because—
c.)    She didn’t know who the Highest Up was, or if he even kept an office. Besides which, she wanted them all gone, at least from the third floor up.

However, to give the others a sporting chance, Arrow had decided to start with the Highest Up.  She only knew of one person who had supposedly met the Highest up, some kid named Chauncey, who himself had been seen by only a few people and not in a long time.  His last known address was Sartre’s house, and Arrow intended to go there after she shooed all people from the lobby.
For some reason the dead don’t think they have to make appointments, they think that the world will give way to their whims. She couldn’t understand their sense of entitlement: Just because they had been made to eat a lot of sandwiches, work a lot of shit jobs, deal with bad landlords, unsavory religious figures, smug cops, and dissatisfied lovers; ride the bus even when frightening people were on it, drink low quality liquors, watch infomercials, see their families fight, be bad at sports even though they tried really hard, save their money, read books, and love people who refused to think about them—they thought they could just c’mon in here and make demands when they didn’t know shit. They assumed that everyone here was one of them.  Assholes, she thought. She didn’t think about what she was if she wasn’t one of them.
The facts were unsettling to most employees of Higher Ups. They were made up of the parts that living people threw away. Very few knew the specifics of the method by which these parts were retrieved and organized. When the living changed bits of them selves, when they started eating the crusts of their sandwiches, for instance, the crust-less part of them got thrown out, collected by Trash Men, cleaned up and put into a blender with a bunch of other parts, and when the Trash Men thought they had an interesting enough mix, or thought it was time for snack break or whatever, they poured the slurry into an incubator and left it for a few hours, until whatever was going to happen happened, and fully formed people emerged.  Eleanor Barrett was made mostly with the remains of old smoking addictions, copies of D.H. Lawrence novels which had their interesting bits whited out by well meaning mothers and false numbers on putt-putt golf score cards.  Arrow was made out of Country albums hidden under beds, people pretending they gave a shit how their lawns’ looked, things wives meant when they said they weren’t cheating on their husbands, and the feeling girls get when they realize they are getting too old to build snowmen.
“Okay, time to get out. Maybe if you made an appointment you could have registered all your complaints about FAP by now, gone out and found more things to complain about.”  She said. The people waiting stared at her with their hands folded in their laps. Their joints always seemed too loose to her, like they weren’t really hands, but rather bits of meat flopping in hand shaped bags at the ends of sleeves that got washed even though they weren’t ever dirty. Arrow locked the appointment book into her desk and slipped the correction fluid and some rubber gloves into her pocket. The people in the lobby continued to wait. “Now!” She put out the light. “Go already!”

For those of you that cannot be bothered with the trifles of children’s pop culture, this is a Lucario:

Lucario is a digimon from the digital monster rancher world. He is also the captain of the Outlaw Star! He also broke a vase and now owes the Host Club like 8 million yen! He’s got pretty bad luck. He is more popular than pikachu in Japan. His favorite foods are pork-flavored ramen and pepperoni pizza. He loves long walks on the beach and being angsty and divided inside. Lucario is a being constantly on the verge of tears, as his mind is an emotional battlefield.

Lucario is a jedi master because he uses the force, but he calls it the aura because it’s spiritual and blue and shit. Lucario also speaks telepathically. Despite this, Lucario will continue to use regular quotes and stuff when being written for, becuase doing special things for telepathic shit is super annoying. Like all Jedi masters, Lucario is an Egyptian robot dog. He is a devoted follower of Jesus and Dracula, in that his hand spikes are like stigmata and his chest spike is like dracula-stigmata. Dragmata. Or maybe that’s when you wake up in a bad wig/bad make-up and are somewhere in San Francisco… (this also happens to Lucario)

Lucario is an endless supply of sexual desire, but his submissive, shy, docile personality does nothing to relieve it. Ever the hopeless, romantic virgin, Lucario likes to get to know someone before he fucks them let’s them fuck him let’s them meet his parents. Sucks for him though, because Lucario has no parents. Cough cough, amirite?

Lucario is a very popular character on the X-Box 360 version of Super Crush Sisters: Scuffle! His in-game taunts are: writing poetry, being unloved, and slitting his wrists and blacking his eyes. No one can determine whether Lucario is wearing a mask, or wearing pants, or a belt, or a shirt, or whatever.

Lucario is a Pisces, and is looking for a good time. WINK WINK, OK?

Darkness slowly but surely descended down upon the land of the dead. As evidenced by the myriad of lights visible from the residential districts, most had continued to live their afterlives much in the same way they had lived their during-ones: hiding from the rain, shutting themselves up at night in their familiar homes, and in general just feeding their addiction to mediocrity that they had carried with them through their passing. Most even went to work, despite the fact that they couldn’t be paid because the higher-ups had banned all forms of currency.

It was apparent that work and nighttime and rain did not bother one brown-haired boy, however. Bounding down the sticky lemonade streets, the boy sang to himself:

“Dark eyes, passionate eyes,
burning and so beautiful eyes–
How I am in love with you! How I am afraid of you!
Since I saw you I have had no pleasant days.”

The melody was haunting and eerie, but there was also a certain sweetness to it. The serious tone of the song didn’t seem to be affecting the boy’s disposition; he smiled brightly, skipping along through the night.

“Oh, your deep darkness is not for nothing!
I see the grief about my soul in you,
I see the invincible flames in you–
They burn my poor heart.”

It was then that the brown-haired boy’s skipping came to a halt. He saw something down the road… a boy. He was sitting on the ground, his back against a rather tall building, his head down. He looked so sad…

Hours had passed since little Billy Emerson had stepped off the bus and began to try and get back to Sartre. That, however, was proving to be completely impossible, as no one around here seemed to know who Sartre was. Moreover, Billy’s growing hunger had made him increasingly irritable, and his last few pleas for directions were actually not much more than a slew of fiery expletives that made even the devil himself an irate, offended, menopausal mother that couldn’t help but insist to her friends that she was “going to write a letter to whoever was responsible.” Billy had just about given up completely when he was startled suddenly by the awareness that someone was standing right in front of him. He looked up and was incredibly relieved to see the friendly face of a boy, considering how he very much expected to find some sort of greasy pervert with a predatory grin offering him a lollipop or some other form of edible phallus. For the first time in a while, Billy found himself looking into a set of eyes that wanted nothing from him. Even with the rain stinging his face and the lightning hellbent on making the figure before him terrifying, Billy could tell that these eyes were kind ones. It felt very strange really, and Billy found himself shifting awkwardly in his skin as the boy joined him in sitting on the sidewalk.

“Hello,” said that boy. “Are you alright?”

Billy wanted to visibly roll his eyes in an insulting manner. He wanted to furiously expel some sharp remark along the lines of “NO, YOU FUCKING TWAT-SANDWICH.” He wanted to tell him to fuck the fuck off while kicking at him, like he had done to that stray puppy earlier. Something was stopping him from doing any of that, however. He could only stare back. He could only say, “No.” He could only continue to move about awkwardly. Those kind eyes…

“I didn’t think so,” the other boy replied. “What’s the matter? I can help, maybe, okay?”

“I’m fucking lost, and fucking hungry, and fucking– fucking PISSED OFF…”

“Oh!” the boy said, poking at Billy’s flaccid moogle extremity, his face suddenly glowing with amazement, “You’re alive! Wow, I’ve never seen anyone that was alive around here. That’s awesome! But, where is the person you are bound to?” The boy looked about a moment, but Billy’s growling made it rather apparent that such a person was not be found nearby. “Oh… I see. Hey, you’re hungry because you can’t find food, right? Yeah, no one really eats around here since we always kind of feel full. But I still like to eat sometimes, so I have some food back in my secret base. I usually don’t let people in, but I can let you in, since you seem cool or whatever…”

Billy seemed to perk up at the thought of food and secrecy. “Do you know Sartre? Jean-Paul Sartre?”

The boy blinked a few times. “The existentialist? Ha ha, not personally, no. Why, is he the one you’re supposed to be bound to?” Billy nodded. “Huh. Well, we should be able to find him, I think. I know a few tricks, see?”

Billy got a flash of something that he didn’t see too often, and that he certainly wasn’t expecting out of this seemingly golden-hearted kid: a genuine mischievous smile. Billy blood seemed to freeze, but he was excited too. Excited and terrified.

“What’s your name?”

The boy smiled, stood up, grabbed Billy’s hands, and hoisted him up onto his feet. “Alexei. And you?”

“Billy.”

“Right! This way, okay?” said Alexei as he began to skip the streets again, singing his song where it had left off:

“But I am not sad nor depressed,
my fate seems comforting to me:
All the good things God has given us in our lifetime
I have sacrificed for these ardent eyes…”

Billy kept up the awkward pace of skipping without the skip; once you suck three or four different cocks, you just can’t find it in you to skip much anymore.

***

Jack Melson brought his face closer and closer to the plaque on the wall. Chester Bavish, you handsome man, he thought. You handsome, handsome devil. He narrowed his eyes. Chester Bavish, it said. Hero to all, it said. Savior of the modern day, it said. Jack smirked. Oh Chester… Chester, Chester, Chester. You have mocked me so from your little throne on the wall, but now it is my turn to mock you. I am soon to be rich, Chester, much like you once were. Stealing from the dead… you clever boy, Chester. It’s too bad that you’ve joined them, Chester… so prematurely, too. You would have been living a kingly life here, being worshiped and adored for having the wealth, for being the hero. But I’m the hero now, Chester. I have saved the day. And not only that, Chester, but I have taken the love of your life. She’s mine, Chester. She’s mine.

Bethany floated into the room, moaning some incomprehension in a somewhat musical fashion, carrying with her Jack’s plaque. “Oh Jack,” she swooned, “I still cannot believe that you singlehandedly saved all sixty-three of these poor, defenseless, cancerous hamsters! Oh, the wonders in my head now, Jack! You should see the colors! I’m seeing the UV, Jack! And this song, this wonderful song! I could dance my life away listening…”

“Yes, Bethany, it’s very good.”

“Colaaaa, colaaaaa! Jack, you simply must hear some of this. It’s words, Jack! Words I know, but they sound so funny now– Cola, Jack! Turnip, table, tackle-box! TAAAACKLE-box, Jack! TAAAACKLE-box!”

Jack twisted his accidental grimace into a painful elation. “Yes, my love! It’s all coming together, this puzzle! Oh, what is that you’re holding?”

Bethany blinked, and looked at what was in her hands. “It’s your plaque, Jack. I thought you’d earned it. After what you did for today… I thought maybe it was time to give you a home on the Wall of Greatness.” Bethany’s mere mention of the Wall of Greatness brought a tear to her eye. “Oh, mighty wall,” she said, turning her attention toward it, “Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Jim Davis! How you have changed this world with your method, invention, and genius!” Bethany turned to Jack. “And now you, Jack. You are part of the wall. The sacred spiritual bonds of these individuals will become yours. You will be part of a collective of humanity’s saving graces. Their power will be your power.” She screamed suddenly, a perfect blend of tortured womanhood and inexorable joy. “The animals, Jack, they’re beautiful! Good God, do you hear them singing that wonderful song…”

As Bethany began to dance to and fro, Jack ground his teeth. “Honey, the plaque. It needs to go on the wall so that I can become part of the collective. The spirits need me, or whatever.” Bethany clicked back into focus and swayed in front of the wall, deliberating where Jack’s plaque should go. After a bit of inarticulate reasoning, she decided on a nail between Gandhi and Chomsky. Jack Melson, it said. Hero to all, it said. Savior of the modern day, it said.

Jack smiled. It was all going very well.

***

The sleepy Jean-Paul Sartre was suddenly stirred to consciousness by a pair of black paws shaking his head and torso about.

“Master… Master!”

Sartre slowly opened his eyes. The disturbing vision of a vaguely Egyptian, vaguely robotic, vaguely anthropomorphic blue dog thing came into clear focus. Sartre blinked a few times, just to make sure it wasn’t an acid flashback.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Uhm… Master? Have you forgotten again? I’m Lucario, your faithful servant! Remember..?”

Through Sartre’s memory, a short montage of the last 70 years began to play, set to the lovely Happy Days theme song. There’s Lucario doing Sartre’s dishes! There’s Lucario rubbing Sartre’s corns! There’s Lucario washing Sartre’s back! There’s Lucario being awkwardly used as a cuddly substitute for a loved one on those long, lonely nights! Goodbye gray skies, hello blue! Nothing can hold me when I hold you! Feels so right, it’s can’t be wrong! Rockin’ and rollin’ all week long!

Sartre yawned a heaping helping of yawn and briefly took off his glasses to rub at his wonky eyes. “I think I remember you. Maybe. I guess.” Lucario sighed and his gaze fell to the floor in utter disappointment. This dejected stance was, unfortunately, rather commonplace. However, Lucario looked past his master’s shortcomings, turning his focus to where he always believed it should be: Sartre’s wellbeing and happiness.

“Master, what happened to you? Did you go on another bender? You look terrible…”

“No, I don’t think it was anything like that…” Sartre nibbled at the knuckle of his index finger for a moment, trying to remember where he had been, and what he had done. “…Was it something… about Chauncey?”

Lucario involuntarily gasped and backed a couple steps away from Sartre. The name echoed through the corridors of his mind like a voice echoes through corridors that are really echo-prone and not in your mind. “T-that couldn’t b-be, Master,” he whispered. His voice was concerned and frightened, his entire doggy frame visibly shaking. “Chauncey… he… he–!”

Sartre snapped his fingers suddenly. “Oh, of course, silly me! No no, I remember now… there’s a new boy! Billy. Billy Emerson.” Lucario’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “Charming boy, you remember him? He’s the one I watched for so long! Very amusing, very much indeed. A magnificent creature!”

“Master, don’t tell me– you didn’t actually–!”

“I brought him here this morning while you were delivering my messages! But then, wouldn’t you know it, some heinous thief came and stole my magic bong from right under my nose. I sent Billy after it hoping for a quick retrieval, but I fear that the thief has escaped, and that Billy has become irreparably lost in the urban wilderness…”

Lucario knew the severity of the situation. With this boy no longer within Sartre’s vicinity, a great deal of Sartre’s spirit was being drained, making him more tired and senile than he usually was. Without the bong’s healing powers to combat the draining, Sartre was going to deteriorate quickly.

“Master! Quickly, tell me about this boy! Perhaps knowing more about him could help me find him using the power of aura!”

Sartre gave a weird smile. “Just pretend that you’re trying to find Chauncey… You’ll find him.”

As Sartre shut his eyes and fell victim to another unplanned sleep, Lucario took a moment to gulp down his fears and exit Sartre’s home. He stepped out into the waning lemonade rain, closed his eyes, and focused his energies. Stretching his spiritual gaze far and wide across the surrounding lands, he saw everything and everyone. Some twenty miles away, there was a dark, cold tear in the fabric of the spiritual realm. A chill ran through Lucario’s body before he took off running at ridiculous speeds toward it.

“…Chauncey…”

***

“You understand, then?” said a cold voice from within the dark room. “I cannot afford to allow this sort of irresponsible behavior to continue any longer. We’ve overlooked his actions for far too long. Bring him in, or I bring you in.”

“Of course, Madam,” replied the young woman standing in the doorway. “My team will have Sartre in by tomorrow afternoon at the very latest, I assure you.” And with she calmly closed the door to her superior’s office and made her way to the elevator.

Something about the way Eleanor Barrett carried herself around the Higher-Ups Inc. headquarters revealed the following things. First, that she was most certainly an afterworld native, considering that Higher-Up Inc. refuses to hire anyone that has known what it is to be alive. Second, that she was good at what she did, and wouldn’t hesitate to show you that, yes, she can do it better than you can. Third, that she had never loved anyone in her entire life, but that the few men she had slept with had all been been wiped from existence by their own tremendous-but-impossibly-fatal soul-shattering orgasms. Yes, Eleanor Barrett was a vixen most foul, but she never disappointed.

“Mreeow, Ellieeee?”

The young woman boarded the empty elevator, pressing the large green button that indicated the ground floor. “What have I told you about talking in public, Wiggles?”

A small, strange animal poked its head out of Eleanor’s work bag. It appeared to a perfect cross between a cat and a rabbit, as if the two species somehow got together and had the cutest baby ever. “Mr. Wiggles knows, but Mr. Wiggles is having a hunger. Does you really really need Mr. Wiggles for ‘dis jarb?”

“Wiggles, you know your skills are far superior to those of my staff. Of course I need you for this job. You can go hungry for a few hours.”

The cat-rabbit whined in a grotesquely adorable manner. “But Ellieeeee! Sartre is a drunken skunk. ‘Dis is an easy jarb!”

“Quit whining or there will be no more salmon and carrot truffles, and certainly no more harbls magazines.”

“NO, WIGGLES KEEPS HIS HARBLS RAGS.”

“Then shut your mouth before I am forced to deprive you of your beloved filth.”

As the elevator doors opened, the people waiting in the lobby could swear that they heard that woman’s bag quietly growling about harbls. Eleanor was unconcerned, however. She had a job to do.

Sartre reclined in his chair. One of the more difficult parts of bringing Billy to this place was the exhaustion. He had been warned that this would happen, but he didn’t anticipate his bong being stolen or having to send Billy on the chase. The bong had only been stolen once before and it was more easily retrieved as the thief had simply come across it by chance and had no knowledge of the bong’s power. The longer Billy stayed away, the more Sartre felt sleepy and weak. Sartre comfortably closed his eyes and accepted the responsibility for his current situation.

Sartre knew that this experience would be good for Billy, even with the new confusion presented with the bong thief. Billy had been abandoned as a child and taken in by a man who offered him a role in a quickly-growing industry known as orphan porn. Billy, only seven years of age at the time, realized within days of working for his new harborer that he could figure out what people wanted very easily. This gave his co-stars, and later his customers the satisfaction they could not typically get from the more apathetic prostitutes who had lost sight of pleasure years ago.

Sartre pulled an emergency pipe from his pocket and smoked two bowls… Billy really is a good kid. Or talented at fighting a bad nature. Whether it be blowing some brothers or finding the cure for cancer, anyone who can become self-sufficient by the age of twelve has got some things going for him.

Billy was feeling a little less than good, as he began the search for food in this strange world. For buying food, he would need currency. To achieve currency, Billy had to steal or earn it. Billy was much more crafty with his mouth than with his hands, so he surveyed his surroundings to look for a potential customer. The bus driver had already been satisfied in exchange for the trip. Floral-Billy, who was still jamming in the corner of the bus trying to demonstrate his specialty of rocking, looked as if he hadn’t been pleasured in a while aside from the occasional slip into a saxophone or trumpet bell.

Slut-breath Billy slid his hand up the pole nearest to him, and seductively (or so he thought) began to hum along to the horrendous music. Floral-Billy instantly felt his groove thrown so far off that his right pinky shattered. He noticed Billy Emerson’s attempt at allure and quickly did the math. The equation was a simple one. Billy Emerson may have strived to be a bit more rhythmic if he’d known that in this world, an abrupt change between grooving and non-grooving could destroy phalanges.

Billy Emerson crossed the bus and began to stroke the arm of Floral-Billy. Without words, he dropped to his knees and initiated some Billy-on-Billy action. Upon a chaotic entrance into a doppleganger nightmare, it was clear that a tuba’s bell would have been needed. After only a minute, Billy Emerson began the famous countdown. After the skeeting, Billy Emerson was disappointed to find that there was no form of money in this world.

“So how in the muthafuckin’ hell would I get some food, then?”

A satisfied Floral-Billy replied “Well, if you did right you shouldn’t need any. Heh!”

Billy was initially disappointed by discovering that he was the only one in the world with an appetite… then he smiled and realized that this was just the diet he’d been dreaming of. He got off the bus and didn’t recognize the area. He no longer knew where Sartre was, and certainly not where the bong thief had gone. This lesson was going to be a tough one to learn, especially since it had been taught so phallically. Thunder rumbled, and it became apparent that one could still feel a good disappointed lemonade rain on their face in this world, too. Then, Billy urinated all over himself. He didn’t mean to. Maybe that’s just what happens when you provided oral sex to your doppleganger.

As the thunder shook this world, Jack was arriving at his destination. He narrowly got there in time. He took a large, brass key out of his pocket and unlocked the door to a white, thin and vertical townhouse with navy green trim. He ascended the stairs to his apartment on the third floor as quickly as he could, knowing that they only had moments left to survive. He went into his apartment using no key, as there was also no door. Jack went to the bottom drawer of his wife’s sewing dresser and grabbed a VHS case filled of marijuana and headed to the back bedroom where the group was waiting for him eagerly. As he passed the many plaques with great men’s names upon them, he knew he was earning his place.

Jack slid open the curtain to the bedroom and saw all sixty-three of them in their respective cages, not knowing that the gift they were about to receive. He got out his special attachment for Sartre’s glittery bong, an accessory like one would see for a vacuum cleaner. As he began to circle the group, he initiated with the hamster who seemed to have the most cancer. As the hamsters began to sequentially take sweet, sweet healing hits, Jack’s wife entered the room.

“Jack!”

“Hello, Bethany. As you can see, I have Sartre’s bong healing your cancerous hamsters. That’s right. Sartre himself. His bong. These cancerous hamsters.”

“How did you get a hold of this? These hamsters were all going to die within the hour. Exposed to all of that caffeine when they were young, they were all on their cute little hamster deathbeds. You’re saving them!”

Jack knew that Bethany would disapprove of stealing, even for the good of these cancerous hamsters. So Jack told her that he’d borrowed Sartre’s bong with his permission. She began to cry, and went to her sewing dresser to get the supplies for making his plaque. A few minutes after each hamster had toked, the hamsters played as they had when they were youthful. Sartre’s bong and Chuck Norris were the only two known cures for hamster cancer at the time, and animals were not immortal in this world. Jack had done well.

Bethany, still crying, began to dance alone in the living room to a song nobody could hear. Her tattered, burgundy dress’s train dragged on floor behind her.

For further information regarding Chapter Three please visit:

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   Billy was a cold and tart mess when he tripped through the doors of the bus terminal. His hooker eyes were no longer smoldering with the desire he manufactured for his Johns, but burning with the gallons of pink lemonade he had just experienced. Not to mention the smell of dried blood in his raw nose from that wicked sock Jack Melson had dealt him.

   But neither sight nor smell was the most bombarded of his senses. The bus terminal was so unreasonably loud he had to sit down against a wall adjacent to the door he had just revolved through and hold his throbbing head.

I wonder if she ever did love me.

Flava-flav is like the black version of Bret Michaels.

I guess intelligent design is more viable than creationism. Look at fish.

I’d love to serve him a cancer sandwich.

Why don’t they make meat shoes? Dogs love me.

What is wrong with that hooker child?

They don’t make them like they used to.

Maybe his mom died. Or he lost another lottery too.

I wish people would just control their hooker children.

Maybe I should share my crack with the boy.

I really should get a dog.

Billy turned to revolve right back out of this invasive cacophony but a glint of gold flashed in his periphery. Could that have been the bong? Jack Melson had worn a brown mid-thigh length corduroy jacket rather well and Billy had just spotted it. It was the bong, it was the bastard. Billy pushed through the crowd to get closer and confront him. He didn’t have a distinct plan, but what he had thought of thus far involved his fists, Jack’s kidneys and at least twenty minutes. Maybe then he could get the bong back to Sartre, and figure out what in pluperfect hell was going on.

   Jack had 23 minutes left until his portal closed. He was doing alright on time, even considering that the little whore had just spotted him. He jumped on bus twenty-three, paid his fare and dropped his ass and booty on to two blue plastic seats. He took a deep breath.

   Billy was heaving. Having smoked both wacky and sane tobackey since he was six and three quarters,even the fifty foot jaunt to bus twenty three was a phlegmy tragedy. He cacked up a lung full ten feet away. Because Sartre had nabbed him during business hours, Billy knew he had no cash and would have to offer the bus driver a favor to let him ride. Oral sex for what he wanted was as commonplace for Billy as yawning to you or I.

   The bus driver looked at Billy. Billy raised his eyebrows and puckered his lips. The sweaty blob with the aviator bifocals licked his lips, caught some hair from his moustache coughed. Billy held up three fingers. “The Countdown” was what he was famous for. In a great deal of circles he was known as “Countdown Billy”. Two fingers. The bus driver stifled a piteous erection and gripped the steering wheel hard.  One finger. The driver gasped deep gasp and rocked a tumultuous load against the brooding face of Raphael on his Ninja Turtle briefs. That little precious boy has done it to me again. He motioned Billy onto the bus. Billy smiled, winked and boarded.

He hid his face and sat down. The bus tooted twice and began to pull backwards. Billy, with a delicious coupling of subtly and keenness surveyed the passengers. There were just three people. On the bus. The sticky satisfied bus driver, a bald black man in a tight white suit and a floral shirt, and Billy who couldn’t believe it. His delicious coupling tipped and he frantically scanned seven hundred and twenty degrees. Jack was no where. He had given Billy the slip. Billy felt alone, a million miles away, and nothing at all.

“Hallo?”

The voice was tinny and distorted but Billy found it familiar. He didn’t stir.

“Testing…testing….Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance…hallo? Billy? Can you hear me? Billy Emerson you spiteful little child of the night I’m trying to talk to you!

The man in the floral print pricked up his ears. Billy Emerson? The man thought.

“What!? Do you want!?” Billy bellowed.

“Oh…well how’s it going? Things got a little out of hand with my habits back there and I’d like to apologize. I think I acted brashly and said some things I didn’t mean. Just wanted to know how it was going though, have you found the culprit?”

“If you turned off my little moogle business, how the fuck are you doing this to me right now?”

“I didn’t turn it off, I just deactivated the exploding poof.”

“Oh, well thanks.”

“Did you find it yet? The uh…bong?”

“No, not yet I’m working on it.”

“Alright then. Good luck, remember: All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.”

“Is that meant to be inspirational?”

“Sort of. Good bye!”

I should really say something. I should start up a little conversation. Italicized the floral print man.

Billy moaned and banged his head on the bus glass.

“’Scuse me,” said the man.

“I’m tired, sir, don’t talk to me.”

“I was just gonna say, did I hear that you’re name’s Billy Emerson?”

“Yes. It is. I’m the Countdown Billy, nice to meet you, now please. I’m tired.”

“Yeah, nice to meet you. I’m Billy Emerson.” And he offered his hand out for a shake.

“Fuck off,” said whore-Billy.

“No it’s true, I’m Billy “The Kid” Emerson. ‘The original Dancin’ Whippersnapper,’” said floral-Billy.

“The fuck are you–”

Floral-Billy jumped up and began to sing. He spun and snapped and clapped in time with “Red Hot”. A savage rockabilly anthem that won him much acclaim in the bygone Chicago of 1955.

Whore-Billy was not amused and tried his best to ignore the dancing, chanting, swinging and grooving. He was not one for rockabilly anthems be they civilized or otherwise. He liked electro pop. He liked Tomcraft.

Meanwhile, the chuckle Jack chuckled was that of a victorious man. The bounce with which he crossed the street outside the bus terminal was the bounce of a victorious man. Centuries ago, in private, Caesar had bounced and chuckled similarly.

Seventeen minutes.  He had just enough time to get back to the group. They would freak so far out about this catch he’d get his name put on the wall. He’d request the spot right next to Chester Bavish. He’d be respected and adored. He chuckled so hard.

“So is this heaven or hell,” said Billy, trying to maintain conversation.

“You tell me,” relied Sartre, smiling his most devilish smile.

“You don’t know?”

“No, I’m just not telling.”

Billy stopped, stared, and tried his best to muster yet another sharp, snarky retort, but he was too worn out from his previous failures. He would later learn that Sartre, the inventor of snarky retorts, was completely impervious to them, but for now he determined to keep at it; save up for one so dry and stinging that only the most tipsy witicist would dare utter it in the most smoke filled corner of a cocktail party.

Sartre, for his own part, just kept walking, save to light a cigarette. “Three hundred feet!” he called back, and waited for the delicate pitter-patter of Billy’s prostitute shoes to catch up with him. This is going to work out marvelously, he thought to himself, I couldn’t stand another one like Chauncey. Pity what happened to him…

“What?” said Billy with pronounced perplection. “Who’s Chauncey? And why are you so worried about him?”

“Jesus Christ riding on a bicycle in a canoe calling Mao Tse Tung on his cellular Jesus-phone! How did you know I was thinking about that!?”

“Oh come on, you were monologing pretty hard back there, how did you expect me to not hear it?”

But I was monologing inwardly. How could he hear me?

“‘How he hear me?’ Are you becoming retarded? I still want to go home you know. You’re not paying me and the other prostitutes will worry about me if I’m not back in an hour.” Billy knew that he could always count on the sacred Order of the Prostitutes if he was in trouble, and now he needed them more than ever. With any luck, they would just be starting to put the pieces together…

The cigar almost fell out of Sartre’s mouth. “That’s amazing!” he sputtered, “you can hear anything in italics! This may prove useful, but at the same time, I hope it does not get in my way…”

“…okay…” replied Billy. What does one say to that anyway? Nothing. Which is just what Billy said.

Sartre took no notice; he was too busy inhaling on his crack pipe. “We’re almost home now, I hope you like it.” Billy was sure he wouldn’t. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d like being sodomized by a sycamore tree (which had actually happened once) more than confronting Sartre’s home, but there was nothing he could do about it. Sartre turned the corner and started up the steps, finishing the knot on his arm and inserting the syringe as he went. He opened the door and stumbled across the threshold, Billy following somberly and behind him.

“This… this is my home!” smiled Sartre, “you like it you little fucking moogle you? Aw yer cute. Yeah yar. yeah… Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” He gave his hat to his pet hypnotoad that had come bounding in upon his arrival, slumped down onto his favorite foyer chair, and began to postulate new ways to compensate for his lack of manliness and squish imaginary mice with his fingers as he always did in his spare time.

Billy took his first look around the place. It was decorated in the typical bourgeois pre-Raphaelite-paintings-with-grecian-urns-and-canned-artist’s-shit style that Billy had always outwardly despised, but inwardly coveted. Yes… perhaps there was a future here, but he had to do something about the old man first… Billy began to climb the staircase as Sartre lolled in his chair and gazed out the window. “Ha…! Lemonade. I fucking LOVE lemonade!”

As Billy walked down the hall, he heard the creaks of a thousand years’ wear and tear as the house settled deeper and deeper into it’s foundation, which was odd because Sartre had been dead less that 30. Billy took another step and a door opened to his left. From within emerged a man creeping on the balls of his feet, a large sack with an unmistakable ‘$’ sign printed on it over his shoulder and a gold-plated, jewel-encrusted bong clutched in his hand. Billy stood studying this man, obviously attempting to make off with Sartre’s precious monies and drug paraphernalia, wondering what he should do. True, he didn’t particularly care about Sartre or his bejeweled belongings, but he had always taken pleasure in making others’ weaknesses painfully apparent. This was a golden opportunity.

Jack Melson hadn’t noticed him yet, which was all for the better. He was already on edge from all the sneaking he’d had to do to get this far in Sartre’s mansion (have you ever successfully snuck past a hypnotoad? No? I didn’t think so.) and was looking forward to pawning the gaudy and massively massive treasures he’d found within. He just needed to get outside the house and then back through the portal before it closed in half an hour. Needless to say, he nearly jumped out of his skin and shat himself when he heard the unmistakably sharp tone of a pubescent prostitute behind him as he stalked carefully away.

“Oi! What’s all this then?”

Jack turned, and his fears were confirmed: Sartre, who had obviously transmogrified himself into a thirteen year old street walker in order to discreetly pick up men, had found him. The end was most certainly near, and he did the only thing he could: he quickly, and delicately, punched the child in the face.

“WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!” Billy raged, grasping at his face, his beautiful, beautiful face!

Jack frowned. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. Blood began to trickle down Billy’s nose as he rolled around on the floor cursing and thrashing with all his tiny prostitute might. …hmm, thought Jack as he removed the ring from his middle finger, he must not be dead. Dead people don’t bleed. “You’re fucking goddamn right I’m not dead! Fucking pissed off is what I am! I even got a fucking goddamn moogle head wire! Jesus! Are you blind!? You fucking—” Jack didn’t need to hear anymore.

“Well, if you’re not dead, then you must be visiting. And if you’re visiting, you can’t follow me. Cool trick by the way, I’ll be sure to watch my italics in the future. I’ll see you when I see you kid, and I hope you make it back.” With that, he turned and darted for the window, smashing through it in a brilliant snow storm of light and shattered glass.

Sartre, who thought what was going on up stairs sounded like fun, chose this moment to swagger up to where Billy was curled up on the floor, apparently resuming his onslaught of curses and profanity on a world that wouldn’t simply let him collect his fifty dollars and go buy a new pre-worn shirt at Hot Topic with it in peace.

“Hellooooooooooooooooo,” said Sartre who smiled as he bent down to speak to Billy. “What’s going on up here?”

“What’s going on? What’s going on!? Some jackass just punched me in the face and jumped out your window!” Sartre considered this for a moment and then raised his hand to follow suit. He was just about to join the party when Billy, who was ignoring Sartre completely, said, “and I think he stole your bong, too.”

Sartre stopped. His mind filled with rage and he seized Billy by his shoulders. “And you let him? What are you waiting for? That ornamental bong has been in my family for years! Go after him!”

“I can’t!” Billy shouted back, “I’m your 300 feet pet moogle remember!?”

“Oh to hell with that,” said Sartre. He snapping his fingers and Billy felt the ball on the end of his wire go limp. What had just happened? It was still there, but he couldn’t feel it anymore.

“You have 24 hours. Now go my little friend! Fly away and return your master’s trinket! Fly! KUPOOOOOOOOOOO!” And with that, Sartre threw Billy out of the window and into the lemonade storm outside. Billy picked himself up, took a quick look around, and took off running as fast as he could.

For anyone out there who spent their childhood playing outside and reading books, this is a moogle:

Moogles are most easily recognizable as characters in the Final Fantasy video game series, as well as notable appearances in the Kingdom Hearts series (which is largely based on the Final Fantasy series). This one above is circa FF3/FF6 if memory serves correctly. Here are a few other notable incarnations:

A more modern FF form, and my personal favorite:

from Kingdom Hearts …although they aren’t usually all technicolor like this one is.

As you can see, the dangly head-poof is a constant through them all and is considered to be one of the moogle’s most distinct characteristics.

That is all. Resume you lives …for now…

 William Walter Emerson was just like every other 13 year boy– that is, he was a dirty slut that caked on make-up and sold himself to strange old men in the darkest, dankest alleys of New York City. You see, little Billy Emerson believed he understood the world up and down; it was easy to get the things you wanted if you just abandoned shame (and possibly self-worth) somewhere along the way! It was his philosophy that cigarettes and booze were far more fun than video games and playgrounds, not to mention they were cheaper (and so easy to come by if you just knew who to ask). But do not make the mistake of dismissing Billy as just another pubescent boy-skank. Poor Billy had experienced some pretty bad times. His favorite cartoon channel had been replaced by a channel of the same name that did nothing but air 24 hours of talentless teen celebrities making love to their inflated egos. He could no longer find unfrosted Pop Tarts at the supermarket. Not a single one of his image macros had become internet memes yet. No, the fates had not been kind to William. At least, not until that faithful day…

Which faithful day you ask?

You didn’t ask…?

Oh…

Well FUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOU.

Whore-faced Billy had just taken out the garbage when he saw the oddest thing descending from the heavens. It was a man… a man holding a white parasol above his head, floating gently down to earth. Billy blinked several times, a bit of blank face bleeding through his normal whore-facedness.

“Bonjour!” called out the figure. Billy just stared. The man cleared his throat, and repeated himself. “Bonjour! Bonjour, Monsieur!”

Billy hesitated for a moment, for he had no idea what to say. Just as the man’s feet were hitting the ground, Billy decided to use the most straight forward question. “Who the fuck are you?”

“No nonsense kind of guy, aren’t you?” said the man, collapsing his parasol. “I am the late Jean-Paul Sartre.”

“Late?”

“Yes, my boy, for I am quite dead…. hence the floating down and whatnot.” Sartre adjusted his glasses and smoothed out his hair. “You are William Emerson, are you not?” Billy eyed the specter suspiciously.

“Being cute won’t lower the price, you know. You pay in full up front and then I go where you go. Got it?”

Sartre smiled brightly. “Ah, I knew it was you! Wonderful! I have a message for you.”

And suddenly the world grew very dark. Civilization’s ambient soundtrack was dominated by an other-worldly silence. Sartre convulsed, throwing back his head and emitting an unearthly scream. His eyes and mouth began to shoot jets of terrifying blue flame. The ground began to quake like Santa’s fat rolls when he watches Mind of Mencia, the surrounding landscape blurred and danced as if it were part of an innocent babe’s nightmare world. A great and terrible bellow rang through Billy’s ears, every word piercing through his very heart and soul. “THE INDIVIDUAL IS CONDEMNED TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS FREE CHOICES, REGARDLESS OF THE CONSEQUENCES, BECAUSE THE CHOICES BELONGED TO THAT INDIVIDUAL ALONE.” Billy’s eyes twitched, his mouth frothed, his balls retracted. He screamed out for someone, for anyone to free him from this hell. He felt as if his head had been split wide open, and that God himself had mistaken the gaping wound for a good place to have a long, rough coitus with his omnipotent phallus. What was happening to him? What was happening to anything!? Oh, the HUMANITY…

Billy slowly opened his eyes. The indescribable pain he had just experienced had vanished, leaving behind only a feeling of grogginess. Sartre was sitting on the stoop of Billy’s apartment building, reading the paper. Billy sat up, rubbing his eyes and moaning.

“Ah! Sleepy head is finally awake! Do you know they are reverse engineering chickens so that they become dinos? Dinos! C’est magnifique! Oh, how I would love a dino. Not a big one, just one of the little tiny ones– so cute!” Sartre folded the paper up and set it beside him. “So, the nap! How was it?”

“Nap?”

“Well, it was a long nap. You have been asleep for five hours or so.”

Slutty-Billy had nothing to say except, “I’m going to kick your ass.”

Sartre chuckled. “Well, that would be your decision, wouldn’t it?”

Billy could feel the smug radiating from Sartre’s grin. “What the hell do you mean? What did you do to me?!”

“Monsieur Billy, you say this as if I have done you a disservice! Think of this as an opportunity to further broaden your horizons!”

“Think of what as an opportunity?!”

“I have been watching you. The way you live is very interesting to me. So interesting in fact that I have grown weary of viewing you from afar. But alas, due to the rules and technicalities of returning to the world of the living when one is dead, I can only be here but one single day.”

There was a long silence.

“So I am adopting you and taking you back with me.”

Billy’s eyes widened. “WHAT?!?!”

“Now now, no need to thank me. I am happy to do it!”

“You’re kidnapping me?! You flaming fuck! I’m calling the police–” Sartre snapped his fingers, and then chortled a conniving chortle.

“I am afraid that you cannot call the police, for we have just left your living world.” Billy looked around… everything seemed to be order.

“You’re fucking crazy! Everything is still exactly the same, we haven’t gone anywhere! You’re sitting on the goddamn steps of my apartment building!”

“Everyone that comes here brings a little piece of their home with them. This is what you’ve brought… this area here. It’s a nice way to help the transitioning dead, isn’t it? Very nice of the higher-ups.”

“You. Are. INSANE. I am not dead, I have not taken my home anywhere. This is where I have always been. If you aren’t gone in 30 seconds I will call the police and they will haul your ass down-fucking-town!” Sartre poked at a spot just above his hairline and looked at Billy. Billy raised a hand to the same spot on his head, only to find a wire-thin antenna protruding from his head. He startled and withdrew his hand.

“Did you fucking glue this fucking shit to my fucking head?” was what Billy said, but what he meant was, “Why could I feel that antenna as if it were an actual extension of my body?” And indeed, when his hesitant hands raised up once more, Billy found that this thing was a new part his body.

“There’s some immediate proof, if you needed some,” said Sartre. “It’s an unfortunate side-effect, I’m afraid. The higher-ups do it to label the not-dead, and to keep them within 300 feet of their respective guides. So don’t think to run away or anything… if you get too far, the little fuzzy ball at the end will explode in tragically life-ending fireball.” Billy followed the antenna to its end… and there was a fuzzy ball.

“I’m a FUCKING MOOGLE?!” Billy screamed. And then, more screaming. Billy screamed for a few minutes… mostly obscenities. Sartre just kept smiling; things were going so well!

Billy collapsed in a heap on the sidewalk. Sartre came over and knelt down beside him. “Now now, things will be fine! I know it’s a big change, but it’ll be alright! You’ll get used to it! Trust me!”

“What right do you think you have to just take me away like this? What about all that responsibility shit?”

“I am condemned to the consequences of my actions. See, here you are!”

“But aren’t you’re robbing me of my freedom, or something!?”

“… You are condemned to the consequences of my actions too.”

“Now that’s not fucking fair.”

“Was life fair for Helen Keller? No! But she still managed to be the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean! And even then she died of exposure to radiation– carrying around test tubes in her pocket, what was she thinking? And then she grew that second head after she died, but the second head was alive, and only understood Japanese, but then it died too because the rest of the body was like a parasite or whatever? But… C’est la vie, no?”

Billy’s fornicating brows furrowed in mental anguish. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Regardless, you really should come along inside, for I believe it is going to rain soon. And sometimes it rains acid. CRAZY ACID. It will kill you right dead. What sort of man gambles on acid?”

At the end of the day, it did not rain acid, but pink lemonade. Sartre was glad he set out a pitcher, for he much enjoys pink lemonade. It was something he’d gamble on, at any rate.