"And I ask you! Yes, I ask YOU, ladies and gentlemen! How long before the dormant volcanoes 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 are once again overcome by evildoers 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, the locusts eat our exposed nerve endings and we pus 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 handlebar 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 in his full-length mirror, splattered with historical blackheads and backsplash semen, he nodded in approval — I look the fucking shit.

"I look the fucking shit!" he shouted into the mirror out loud, pondering whether he had 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 of a certain age, watched 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 was 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 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 continued his hard sell with a demonstration on a mannequin head that in itself looked somewhat inconsolable in that moment, then moved onto the closing, final sales pitch with an impressive flourish — the hard sell. Jeremy began to zone out and 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 (a.k.a. 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 them turned at that moment, with twisted necks, to look at Jeremy — including the marijuana smoker, whose long, dark-circled eyes 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 was he wearing a jet pack and a shirt with a strange logo emblazoned on the front? "Are you some sort of deranged moron who thinks he's 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 might in fact be.

There was a sprinkling of agreement in the air that Jeremy couldn't 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 openly 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 cords 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 terrorist. The jet pack and the unrecognisable emblem emblazoned on the front of his shirt didn't help, sure.

THE HOBO AKA TREVOR

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 fewer 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 as he had done so successfully many times before. Unfairly chastised for his costume and his replica jet pack. Dullards and cunts, 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 newfound pace down the high street, thinking he'd heard a ruckus behind him — someone shouting something more derogatory in his direction, no doubt — but when he turned around, he noticed the small crowd had already forgotten about him altogether, back to listening to The Slick Fuck's diatribe intently on the soapbox. 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 was now locked in — this had all happened rather quickly. He approached 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 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 help but look at the inflamed torso; he was sure he could see tiny black parasites literally eating away at his flesh, in their hundreds, possibly thousands, all around the chest and stomach — almost as if his whole person now belonged entirely to them, not him. 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'd had change, he would have given it to him, 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 existed between him and Jeremy. Could parasites jump? He was 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 remained, eating away at 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 in on itself under the pressure, but he had no choice other than to remain within touching distance of the smelly vagabond. Jeremy was silhouetted by a yellow SALE banner as the Hobo inched ever closer, with beady, darkened eyes and a 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 amongst the stench and rags 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 the exertion of said panic attack, that he was also about to contract the AIDS virus. If he'd had the strength to smash through the reinforced double glazing to get away, he would most certainly have done 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 shopfront, 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 earhole, though he didn't care to open his eyes to see who it was — far too aware of the stench in his 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, while 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 fair stranger's 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 seemed to pause at that moment. Everything fell quiet, for an all-too-brief second, and Jeremy wondered whether he was dead. Finally mustering the nerve to open both eyes fully, as the light caught up with his brain, he saw The Hobo still standing 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 midwestern 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, who winced — the thought of jumping kamikaze parasites again coming to mind. If Jeremy had been wearing a tie, The Hobo would have been sure to straighten it.

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

Still in shock, Jeremy eased off the window. His jet pack audibly crushed from the force of his retreat into the shop's 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 had come from — the one Jeremy had no doubt had saved his life — the strange friend. However, all he saw in that direction was a lonely pair of automatic double doors opening and shutting at regular intervals, 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 within, as customers purchased 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 mother's best friend Ange had told him, that had finally killed her off. That he was a good-for-nothing piece of shit. That he had brought great shame and a great deal of stress to his mother's later life. Nothing to do, then, with her spiralling cholesterol, recent diagnosis of type B diabetes, and long-kept-secret painkiller 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 to his mother, that he was a black mark on everything she had ever stood for and worked for. It was after that he decided to promptly leave. He quietly cried alone that night.

It left Jeremy with 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 was 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 electroshock eye beams and flying muscle men who crumbled high-rises 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, sitting irregularly on 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 him 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 since being neighbours and surviving high school together, and had kept in touch even after Dave 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, 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, still processing the events himself even now. 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 self-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 his rotund, fat head, and a cape constructed from what was once formerly his mother's tablecloth, flapping in the wind. People walking the other way turned their heads with sick frowns as they passed, whispering mean-spirited remarks to their travel partners (also frowning). Utterances like "Who the fuck are those fucking pussies?" and "Look at those two faggots!?"

Of course, these people all looked the same — the same haircuts, dressed the same. Watched the same three programmes on television, which starred people who looked the same as them, with the same haircuts, dressed the same. They all sucked on the same vapes and wore the same shoes; they read nothing, of course, instead following the same celebrities on social media, who looked the same as them, sporting the same haircuts and dressed the same as them. They would all eventually die the same, too.

DESMOND RICHMOND III

When Jeremy and Dave Cunt arrived outside the large, glass-fronted building housing the Comic Convention, they were greeted with swarms of all sorts of characters. People of all ages, outfitted in the most outrageous outfits — some 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, crisscrossing 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 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 began 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 near his crotch. He needed something to level him out, reaching into the foil pack and fingering out a white 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'd bought from eBay a year or so back. He immediately felt 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 airstream.

"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 who 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 a meter, but what he'd said was clear and to the point — held resonance. Jeremy and Dave Cunt understood his request completely; cast in the gulf of the man's ever-moving shadow, they felt cold.

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

Dave Cunt, idly standing next to the unblinking, substantial security man, watched 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, lighting a brick wall that never met sunlight. A huge, impenetrable contour, born from the large rectangular events building opposite, 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 felt a strange feeling come over him, like someone was 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 drainpipes. 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 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 dreamlike. 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, handprints on the sun-warmed bonnet. The stretched, vintage model limousine slowed further, then came 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 driver's 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, as if 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 outseam of his trousers. Sporting a twee pencil moustache just above the lip, and grey, deep, sagging eye bags, skin flapping over approaching cheekbones. The chauffeur clocked Jeremy, though chose not to 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 driver's gloves with grey, dusty fingertips, and what looked like a blot of blood on the index finger of 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 calloused 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, even from a 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 mutter under his breath. He wasn't sure if the sinister-looking dwarf had heard him, and breathed easier as the dwarf glanced in his direction with beady, mean, bloodshot 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 stepped inside with a pat on the back from a suited arm, a noticeable ruby cufflink adorning the 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 built 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.

She used 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 eyeshadow adorning her yellowed eyes above long, thick, fake lashes, giving her the impression of tiredness.

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

Jeremy couldn't help but be flabbergasted when he saw who came out of the limousine next. He held 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 a gaudy gold chain. Jeremy knew that unmistakable, indelible sunbed tan anywhere — Desmond Richmond III, Jeremy's favourite celebrity daytime televangelist and soft-core porn actor.

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

Richmond III, somewhat startled, spun around upon hearing the strange voice, taking a cautious step backwards, as if expecting trouble, as if deserving of harm. He relaxed somewhat when he noticed the unthreatening figure of Jeremy — leather pants, jet pack, and all.

"Yes?" Desmond had an exquisite tone to his voice; even from a single word, there was an unwavering belief in it. Jeremy likened it to cold butter on hot bloomer bread on a Sunday morning.

"Can I have your autograph?" Jeremy asked, standing at what he thought was a respectable distance from Richmond.

"Sure you can." There it 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 quickly realised this to be true.

"Then you're shit out of luck, kid."

Jeremy looked over to his right; having ventured forward, he could now see through the door that the others had gone into. The Greeter 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, unlike any he'd seen before, sitting low on the sides of the man's 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 emanated from the illumination, yet Jeremy could not see through or past it, giving him a strange sensation of hopelessness. There was a lack of depth — a perception that maybe there was nothing beyond it, not anything physical, but more a feeling of cynicism and hate. The humming noise was now better understood as a vibration, caused by the change from natural reality into something else entirely.

"What's through there?" Jeremy asked, somewhat 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, while 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 raced; 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 he could not hide, nor did he feel the need to in that moment.

"Let me tell you how I got to where I am, kid." Desmond III leant down to match Jeremy's eyeline 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 cojones — 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 I would find the biggest fucking fish in the room, and I would make eye contact with that one big fucking fish, and I would hold eye contact with that big fucking fish, and I would squat out a shit 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, 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 eat other people's food with it. Now people really knew who runs shit around here, 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 fishpond 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 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 simply not there any longer — vaporised, boiled down, as if all that lay beyond it 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 — in itself unsettling.

Jeremy turned around quickly, noticing the limousine was now also gone. Strange, he thought, that he hadn't 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, who was still standing roughly in the same place among 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 got closer, he noticed Dave was talking to a person, a woman, who 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 the woman would take the hint and move on, but neither of them was listening to him, or even acknowledged his presence.

She was slim and quite beautiful, with short-cropped blonde hair and red lips, which looked great on her slim, pale face, though Jeremy couldn't help but think that, the way she was dressed, she probably stank 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 this is all just commercial, capitalist bullshit!?" She was ranting and passionate; Jeremy didn't know why she'd chosen Dave in particular as the subject of her rant, apart from the fact 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 mother's 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 noticed pinkish-tinted sweat beads dripping down from the eyeholes 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'd 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 from magic!"

Pulling his cowl off, Jeremy could see speckles of what looked like excrement and blood in his mopped hair, his brow sweaty and sore red, like something had been gnawing at it. Dave spun the cowl over quickly so the opening faced upward. It seemed to have a strange weight to it, resting atop the cup of his palm, as though 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 couldn't 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 in submission.

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

Nobody else within earshot of the small man's skit was bothering to stop and watch the performance, other than an occasional irreverent glance here or there. A few stragglers, dashing to or from the convention, gave an odd, cursory look, muttering expletives about the weirdos — the frumpy 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 collecting on his forehead 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, he suddenly plunged into the cowl with force, the holding hand buckling under the pressure, as if the two appendages were independent of one another. Opening his eyes again with a ferocity, he stared directly into the eyes of the unsettled protester, who was naturally perturbed but by now also somewhat intrigued, as was Jeremy, who stared intently at the cowl's 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, standing in a 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 gushed 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, presumably still in the cowl.

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

The protester 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 while crying. A smell wafted into the air on a light breeze — a mixture of faeces, sweat, and animal blood. The protester collapsed to her knees, now openly sobbing into her vomit, which 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 of 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. Yeah, it was."

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

"We should go."

"Yeah."

They both set off back the way they'd come. Dave holding the dripping cowl, the corpse still in his hand. Jeremy trudged on, the broken jet pack still hanging limply from his shoulders.

The protester 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.