Mike’s Big Moonventure Volume Two: The Squeakquel
Prologue: Lemmy Being a Silly Goose Compilation (Real)
Chapter 1: Vampires of Moon City
Chapter 2: Desperate Housewives
Chapter 3: St. Moony’s Day
Chapter 4: Riders on the Storm
Chapter 5: Potatoless, Will Travel
Chapter 6: The Battle of Bone Town
Chapter 7: Minecraft in Real Life
Chapter 8: Journey to the Dark Side of the Moon
Chapter 9: The Irish
Chapter 10: In the Hall of the Vampire King
Chapter 11: Mike, Vampire Hunter
Chapter 12: The Return of Count Dracula
Chapter 13: The Vampire’s Revenge
Chapter 14: Skeletons from Outer Space!
Chapter 15: To Thine Moon Self Be True
Chapter 16: Moscow
Chapter 17: The Moon Also Rises
Chapter 18: Do You Hear the Moontians Sing?
Chapter 19: The Moon Abideth Forever
For Jakub,
my star, my perfect silence,
may God guide you on your journey.
For flesh is like the grass,
And the glory of man like a flower.
Prologue: Lemmy Being a Silly Goose Compilation (Real)
So I wrote this like a long time ago and then forgor about it, but then I rembered it, and it buffed up that sweet sweet word count, so here it is.
Lemmy was walking through the woods one day, which they thought was safe. They thought it was safe because they weren’t the brightest person in the world, if they were a tool in the shed they’d be soft. But what Lemmy lacked in brains, they made up for in tenacity, which isn’t saying much, but it is something. Nobody can truly know what happened that day in Lemmy’s simple, simple mind, but something about the mossy trees lured them in.
It wasn’t a good day to walk through the woods either, the clouds were mountainous and rumbled under the weight of themselves, and Lemmy should’ve known they were about to crack and tumble to the ground, getting Lemmy all wet in the process. The sky was gray and dull, almost as smooth and featureless as the surface of Lemmy’s brain.
Lemmy decided it would be safest to walk off of the beaten path, because there was no canopy over that trail, which Lemmy assumed would make them more susceptible to lightning. Lemmy was right to go off the trail in that respect, as they were walking towards the swamp, where lightning would bounce off the water and fly back up to the clouds, but that was not a guarantee of safety. Lemmy did not consider the poisonous frogs that climb the swamp’s cracked trees, jumping off and onto unsuspecting wanderers. And what about the gnomes? The Earth may be the chaos of the gnomes, but if a gnome dragged Lemmy down to Agartha, Lemmy would crack like a pop can in the pressure. But Lemmy did not believe in gnomes, or poison frogs, or even dragons, because Lemmy wasn’t very smart.
There was one thing that Lemmy believed in, and that was sandwiches. Lemmy wasn’t very good at making sandwiches, but they always believed in themselves- for some reason. Lemmy decided to rest on a log on the edge of the swamp water, with their back turned to the murky abyss, and eat their sandwich. The forest stood still as Lemmy chewed into their bread and hummus sandwich. The rumbling of thunder from miles away silenced itself. The birdsong trailed off and disappeared. All that was left was Lemmy’s munching. Lemmy was dissatisfied with this.
Lemmy’s other passion was music, they were an accomplished violinist, and had once played Megalovania without even using the bow. It’s true what they say, that everybody is good at something. Lemmy pulled out their tiniest, travel sized violin, and began blowing into its polished wooden fipple. They played a birdsong, expecting a response, like some kind of princess. I’ve told you they were dim. The song was relaxed and slow, a definite change of pace for the tense and terrifying swamp creatures. The log Lemmy was sitting on creaked slightly. A frog in the distance croaked along to Lemmy’s misguided concerto. Lemmy smiled- Lemmy liked frogs. The frog looked at Lemmy from behind the reeds. Lemmy looked at the frog, playing their song. Lemmy inched slowly closer to the frog, playing slower and slower on the violin until the song sounded like sap running down a tree. The frog, seeing Lemmy’s approach, hopped away into the darkness. Lemmy was disappointed, but only for a moment, as another frog croaked from across the swamp’s brackish pond. Lemmy looked back at the frog, and when they looked back towards the land they saw a tall, gangly man with a glowing orange lantern on a thin stick fashioned out of one of the harder reeds growing along the swamp’s shore. The man had a wide, straw hat, and a long beard, the color of which Lemmy couldn’t tell, as he seemed to reflect no light. He was like a walking shadow, illuminating the overgrown grove of bushes and swamp trees. He smiled at Lemmy, though Lemmy couldn’t see it in his shadowy complexion. Lemmy could make out the shape of the old man, and decided that he could be trusted. Lemmy decided only a formal introduction could do, and leaned in for a handshake,
“Well hi there! Nice to meet you Mr…?”
The sentence trailed for a second too long.
“No need for formalities, now, do we? It’s about to rain, it's time you got home, Lemmy.”
Lemmy knew that an old man would be wiser than they were, so they picked up their violin and glanced for the way that they came into the swamp, but the thin game trail they had followed before had already disappeared. The old man insisted,
“Pick up your sandwich bag, we have to get out of here before the storm comes”
Lemmy knew it was wrong to question him, but they still did.
“I thought it wasn’t going to rain for an hour,”
The old man lifted his lantern subtly, and the sky opened up into a torrential downpour.
“Well, I guess I was wrong.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time- now please just pick up your stuff and I’ll show you the way home.”, he replied.
Lemmy obliged, and in a minute they were on their way, trudging ankle-deep through the mud and the roots. The frogs trailed behind them obediently like a parade of slimy soldiers back from a well won battle, croaking one after another in line.
Lemmy, for their part, tried to keep up a soldierly pace. But Lemmy didn’t always get what they tried to, and they were getting tired. Lemmy asked the old man for a break, which seemed unlikely, given the desperately pouring rain that was falling on them, but the old man was very forgiving,
“Alright, just one break so you can finish your sandwich,”
The old man subtly lowered his lantern, and the rain ground to a halt.
“And that’s the last time we’re stopping”
“Sure, that’s a deal…,” Lemmy talked too much for the old man’s tastes.
Lemmy sat on a stump and began munching their sandwich, with what little energy was left in them from their soaked parade through the bogs. Lemmy wasn’t kind to the sandwich, the way they ruthlessly ripped it to shreds made the frogs wince, as if those teeth were capable of terrible things. The frogs were scared of everything, though.
The old man looked at the horizon, or where the horizon would be if there wasn’t a thick and tangled mass of trees in the way.
“You can’t see it through these brambles, but we’re only a few feet from the path, Lemmy”
“Well I,” Lemmy paused to continue eating their sandwich, “I’m busy eating my sandwich”.
“Then I’ll go through the brambles without you”
Lemmy knew they had no sense of direction, so indignantly they gave their sandwich to the frogs, who fought over the crumbs like rabid dogs. The old man crawled through the thick and thorny bush with Lemmy behind, holding onto him only by the end of his lantern. After a few seconds of thorny distress, Lemmy stepped out, and did not find the path, but a sheer drop of five feet into a murky sunken grotto at the heart of the swamp. Lemmy looked back at the old man annoyedly, but he pushed them off of their feet and into the shallow pond water.
“You were the most ungrateful child I’ve ever lured into the swamp, Lemmy,” the old man yelled down the deep, dark hole, “and I’ve lured a lot of children into the swamp!”
Lemmy was an excellent swimmer, but they required a comfortable temperature to think properly, and that was not what the heart of the swamp provided. After the old man disappeared back into the brambles, the only sounds left were from Lemmy’s chaotic doggy paddling to the tiny island in the center of the sinkhole, and the occasional ribbit of one of those frogs from behind the dense wall of trees and thicket.
Once Lemmy reached the island, they decided the only reasonable course of action would be to scream for help until a different, more trustworthy old man came to their rescue,
“Ayo!” Lemmy shouted into the void, “Is anyone out there?!”
But there was nobody out there for Lemmy. A singular bubble drifted to the top of the water and popped.
“Ayoooooo”
Lemmy let the “o” hang in the air, but it did not rise above the swamp, and it didn’t penetrate the living wooden walls of the swamp. A frog croaked. Another bubble drifted to the top of the pool and popped on the surface. It began to rain, though it was hard to tell with the thick canopy over Lemmy’s head.
Lemmy sat on the ground with their legs flayed out in either direction. The situation was not ideal, but at least there were frogs.
“Froggy…” Lemmy whispered into the misty air.
“Ribbit” The frog replied, coldly, being a frog.
“I wish you could talk. I would tell you all my favorite knock knock jokes”
“Why would I want to hear your droning voice?” The frog replied, with the same froggish look on its face.
“Oh, I didn’t know you could talk little guy, just a widdle guy, aren’t you?”
The frog looked unamusedly through Lemmy.
“So…knock knock!”
The frog didn’t bat a nictitating membrane.
“Why don’t you come in the water with me, come and see frog-town” the frog replied, clearly not understanding knock knock jokes.
“I guess if you want me do”
Lemmy crawled into the mucky water again, and an ice cold hand gripped onto their ankle with a ravenous intensity.
Lemmy looked back, terrified, and saw the pale yellow eyes of a swamp monster staring back at them. The monster had jagged scales jutting out from its moss covered skin, and its eyes glowed dimly like fog lights through the water, illuminating its prey in the overgrown pond. Putrid bubbles came out of its yellowed nostrils, and its feet were bound to the floor like the stump of a tree, boscoyos peeking out of the silt covered ground around it.
The beast roared, sending bubbles into a massive cloud that engulfed Lemmy until they converged into one massive bubble, and Lemmy could breathe again.
“Do you want to drown down here?” the beast asked Lemmy.
“Are you the queen of frogs?” Lemmy asked in return, “‘Cause I have to say I’m very impressed with that talking frog, I couldn’t even get them to stay still-”
“You should know by now that frogs don’t talk, and they never have,” the beast replied, “But my question is more important.”
A mountain of bubbles issued from its mouth, popping on the twisted branches above letting only one reach the surface of the pond.
“I wasn’t listening to your question.”
“Do you want to drown down here?”
“Not really…”
“Then catch me a fish.”
“I don’t know how to catch a-”
The beast popped Lemmy’s bubble and held onto their ankle, staring intensely into Lemmy’s terrified eyes. Lemmy frantically nodded their head and the beast let go of them.
“Just stay in the water where I can see you” the beast said through a mouthful of bubbles.
And then I forgored about this story for like months so slay. Consider it a prequel. Or a prolog.
Chapter 1: Vampires of Moon City
There are many places you must never go. The bottom of the ocean, due to the megalodons that swim there. The top of the Himalayas, due to the abundance of yetis. And the dark side of the moon, due to the moon men. Nobody in Moon City knew much about the moon men, some said that they were an all female army, descended from the Earth’s Amazons. Others said they were just normal moontians, corrupted by greed and subservience to the forces of evil. But no moontian was brave enough to cross the frontier into the pitch black abyss beyond the horizon, where there was very little to separate the cold expanse of space from the chunk of cheese the moontians called home.
---
Moon City was stable, after so many years of back and forth between the civilizing force of progress and the pestilence, war, and famine that plagued the moontians. In the harbor there were ships, moonships (that’s what they call ships on the moon), sailing on the Sea of Tranquility towards Apollo, sails unfurled and moon flags proudly slumped over in the windless non-atmosphere.
Around the gates of the city the moon market welcomed new visitors, honorable and universally respected world leaders from Earth like Kim Jon Un, Aleksandr Lukashenko, and Vladimir Putin. Past there was Republic Square, bespoke with moontian children running around precariously on the backdrop of the new Pyramid, the new Moon Tower, and the new City Hall. And behind them, the once desolate boulevards were rife with moontians, living and working in the arrondissem*nts surrounding Republic Square. Out on the border of moontian civilization, near the canals, moondozers and moonscavators were hard at work demolishing the rubble to make room for a new moontian cemetery, where the many dead could finally rest.
Truly, there was activity in every nook and cranny of Moon City, except for in one house where no moontian dared enter- The old abandoned house near Republic Square where Andrzej Googa had once lived. Well, some moontians went there to smoke moonijuana, but that was about it.
---
Boogle creeped along the walls of Moon City, just low enough so as not to be seen by the moontian sentries. He reached a moonplant, and dove into a small tunnel in the wall. After crawling through the narrow passageway, ducking past exposed rebar and broken glass, he climbed up a wooden pole holding a power line and started scuttling along the line like a squirrel.
He could run very fast, so he wasn’t worried about being seen by the moontians below him. To them he was a shadow, a gust of wind, a far off asteroid blocking out a section of the sunlight. He certainly liked to think of himself as a shadow, you see, Boogle was an Edgelord.
Boogle stopped when he reached Googa’s house, leaving a gust of wind in his wake, and jumped into the hole where a window had once been, causing the old moonwood floors to creak on impact.
An enormous bat, some 2 feet tall and ungodly muscular, was perched on the windowsill.
Boogle spoke to the bat,
“Ay boss! Look who got in! Hehehehehehe! Lookit all the skeletons!”
The bat responded in a thick bass,
“Boogle, you turd, say the magic words.”
“Well, what could those be? Who knows? I certainly don’t!”
“You know. I know you know.”
“Maybe if I got a raise I’d kno-”
Boogle began convulsing on the floor, something between a seizure and being thrown in a woodchipper.
“I KNOW!”
The convulsions stopped.
“Fine boss. Would you like to come in?”
“It can’t be in the form of a question.”
Boogle rolled his eyes.
“Welcome in boss.”
“Thank you Boogle. Your pay is getting docked by the way.”
“I- I- I’ll go to the union!”
“Boogle, there is no union for familiars.”
“Not YET!”
The bat exploded into a puff of purplish smoke which filled the room and poured out of the windows and through the floorboards. It appeared to be some kind of noxious fume, but it also had silver glitter in it. Kinda fruity ngl. A tall, vaguely old man with a widow's peak emerged from the smoke wearing a velvet cape and a silver brooch engraved with the initials “VD”. His face was covered in sores and scars, and one of his fingers was missing.
“I WILL NOT HAVE INSUBORDINATION!”
Boogle cowered in the corner.
“Find the body and we can leave.”
Boogle scampered away, eventually finding a dusty skeleton. The skull lay on its side, a few feet away from the body.
“Um… B-B-Boss”
Boogle was afraid of skeletons, but never an insubordinate.
“You found it! Grand. We will take it to the graveyard before dawn.”
Chapter 2: Desperate Housewives
Mike was hard at work, on an advisory period, carving a potato with their fingernails. They had to make a new print for printmaking, but they had forgotten about it. Luckily, Mike always had a potato with them, but not a knife to carve it with. Ms. Lin was pretending not to notice as Mike gradually covered the floor in potato skin.
A message appeared on Mike’s email. Mike assumed it was just Andrwe writing something stupid in Orangfishy, so they ignored it. But after finishing carving Plato into their starchy reproduction of The School of Athens, Mike glanced at the message.
It was from Gordon Ramsey,
To | [emailprotected] |
Subject | Hey |
Sup 😜 Gordon James Ramsey The best chef in the world, All the other chefs are little girls. (She/Her) | |
Mike stared at the stupid message for a few seconds, and then deleted it. Gordon had been kind of pushy, and without the pressures of war their perfectly written chemistry had simmered down totally naturally and not remotely abruptly- But she didn’t seem to be taking it well.
---
The bat-man and Boogle stood over an ornate medieval grave, clearly recently moved from some other place, the dirt still fresh.
On it was inscribed,
Herzog Vlad Drakulya
Havasalföldi Vajda
1428-XXXX
The death date was illegible, scratched out.
The bat-man stood on the dirt, the skull in his hand. Boogle carefully avoided stepping on the grave, but handed the bat-man the rest of the skeleton.
“Are you ready Boogle?”
“Yea boss! Yeah!”
Secret words secret words
The bat-man started chanting some arcane language, and a glowing green smoke formed in a ring around them. Soon the inscription on the gravestone started glowing in green too, and one could see that there was never a death date, as nothing glowed where it would be. Thunder pealed from the cloudless sky, and the lightning struck the dusty skeleton right in the temple.
A light shone down upon the trio (if you count the skeleton as a member…), and a rusted, smoky voice bellowed,
“What have we here?”
At this, even the bat-man reflexively cowered a little,
“My lord, we have a tribute,”
“A new recruit, so to speak?”
“So to speak.”
At this, Boogle chimed in,
“I helped!”
“Thank you, loyal subject, Boogle.”
“Of course, any time, O Lord’o’Darkness.”
Bat-man interrupted,
“Can we do the ritual yet?”
The bellowing disembodied voice retorted,
“Aren’t you happy to see me? Stay a while, let’s catch up on things- But no. Count Dracula is all about business all the time.”
“Don’t say that name.”
“You have forgotten your place, Dracula. But as you wish, the ritual…”
The disembodied voice trailed off and the green light dimmed, but the femur of the skeleton rocketed to meet the kneebone, and so on until the entire skeleton was connected and standing like the Terminator except for the skull, which remained in Dracula’s hands.
Dracula held the skull at arms length and spoke to it,
“Welcome back to the land of the living.”
The skull couldn’t speak, as Dracula was gripping its jaw shut. It just growled.
“I am the Prince of Darkness. You are now my courtier, my general, and my confidant. If you obey me you will rise high within this court of darkness.”
The skeleton tried to grab its skull from Dracula, but Dracula batted it away and it collapsed into a pile of bones.
“Your fate is in my hands, literally. For as long as I have your skull, your soul is sure to follow.”
---
Gordon Ramsey was sitting alone on her chaise lounge, itself alone in a sleek and minimalist modern penthouse apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. She was on her phone, texting Mike.
To | 7732025000 |
Subject | i just wanna talk to u 👉👈 |
Whas good wit u cos i think we had smth great ngl 😞 i miss u 😢 com back 😡 now 😡 | |
A pigeon hit the sleek glass windows. Gordon didn’t notice.
---
Chapter 3: St. Moony’s Day
It was St. Moony’s day in Moon City, and everyone was ready for the St. Moony’s day parade. In the front sat President Obamer and her new vice president (as Mike had abdicated), the Technopole. She had mostly recovered from her stint on the Sea of Nectar, but not totally. The mooniachi band behind her played The Moon is Not Yet Lost, and moon paella was flowing like water. Obamer had ordered the canals drained and filled with fine moon wine, and people were swimming and splashing around in it (as well as slurpy durping).
Obamer had been expecting the wrong kind of company, maybe pirates from Copernicus, or raiders from Plato, but nothing Moon City’s thick stone gates and dutiful sentries couldn’t deflect with ease. She was wrong, though, as right outside the city on the plains of Crisium there was a battalion of skeletons.
The chief skeleton had no skull, but a bright red feather was tied to his collarbone (which everyone could see). He and the other skeletons began their march into Moon City by climbing the Eastern walls, just collecting their bones every time they were scattered, occasionally throwing a femur like a javelin into the sentries.
The skeletons marched down Copernicus Boulevard, singing as they went,
“We are spooky skeletons,
We serve the vampire king.
We are spooky skeletons,
And this is what we sing
We are scary skeletons,
And we are made of bones.
We are scary skeletons,
We come from the skeleton zones.
We are creepy skeletons,
We have lots of calcium.
We are creepy skeletons,
And this is our skeleton song.”
They were in astoundingly perfect formation, and all marched in lockstep. Obamer heard their labored march and thought it was a column of sentries with news, so she jumped off the parade float and hopped on the streetcar headed for Copernicus Boulevard.
Once Obamer heard the skeleton song, she knew she was wrong. She ordered the streetcar driver to turn around, and yelled from the edge to the passerby to head for the pyramid.
The skeletons kept marching until they reached the canal, where panicked swimmers were trying desperately to get out, and where they were met with the Moontian Army. The general skeleton beckoned to the moontian general, Glorbo Dorpo,
“So, Glorbo! Come to face the skeleton army!?”
“Well, it seems you’ve had to come to us.”
The general skeleton laughed, in a high pitched nasally voice.
“Heh heh… Your mom… Whatever that joke is so retro anyway… I am General Skeletor! Surrender to my skeleton army or face the consequences! Nyehaahaha!”
General Dorp had heard enough. They ordered the moontians to open fire on the skeleton army.
“Silly moontians! You think you can defeat skeletons? We are immune to pain! We can rearrange our bones at wil-”
He was interrupted by a bullet flying through his ribcage, cracking it.
“OOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!”
The skeletons weren’t discouraged though, they began pelting the moontians with bones, and then when all their bones were over reassembling at will and knocking them out from behind.
The moontians were suffering serious losses, but then an old human man with round glasses came along in a streetcar.
“What’s crackalackin’ old man!? We’re the SKELETON ARMY! And this city is now SKELETON CITY!!!”
The old man said nothing, but reached into his bag and pulled out a mooncifix.
“ACK!”
The skeletons were immediately taken by the light of Christ, and their heads began to spin around, until one by one they popped off.
After the skulls popped off, the bodies withered into dust, and all that was left was a biting, screaming head. General Skeletor wasn’t affected, as his skull was in safe keeping at Dracula’s castle, but he was terrified, so he ran off, throwing his bones over the city walls and bolting towards Crisium.
Glorbo Dorpo thanked the old man,
“Thanks for the help, but, who are you?”
“Agh- It’s not important. Der name ist Van Helsing, though.”
---
Mike was carving another potato, this time of the Madonna Della Pieta. It was tiring, but Mike did take printmaking for a reason. What that reason is, however, remains to be seen. Like really it doesn’t even sound fun, I don’t know why anyone would choose printmaking over like sculpture and stuff but yk you do you whatever i sure aint one to talk. Actually after second thought it looks pretty cool ngl.
Mike carefully angled their X-Acto knife, and put in the last touch, a toe. Mike was looking forward to the toes. But just as Mike put the knife to the potato for the incision, they got a phone call. In surprise, Mike jerked the knife and obliterated the foot. They would have to start over.
It was from Mike’s Mom. They answered it, in a pitch so high it could break glass,
“Mama?”
Gordon Ramsey responded,
“Hey- Mike- so… I just wanted to you know talk about this whole situation- I really want to like, go get a coffee maybe? Uwu?”
“How did you get my mom’s phone?”
“Well, you see, when you’re rich you can arrange certain things.”
“Yeah but like how exactly?”
“I paid some friends of mine to kidnap her.”
“That’s crazy! Like, actually crazy!”
“I know, I’m just so crazy… about you.”
“On gosh that’s so romanti- jkjk, where is she?”
“We’re just hanging out in my penthouse…Why, do you want to come over?”
“I like tea, Gordon. We’re never getting coffee”
Mike hung up, and proceeded to call the CPSFBI to arrest Gordon.
Mike really didn’t want Gordon to take her mom, because Mike thinks that people without moms are losers. Wow, how immature and terrible. I personally think that people without moms are winners, so what can I say, I’m just better sometimes. Skill issue. Andrew woke, Mike broke. Cancel Mike 2024.
---
President Obamer grabbed a tiny water bottle and a single saltine. She ate the saltine as she walked down the long hallways of city hall, until reaching the balcony, where she straightened her tie and then stepped out into the light.
She was met with a barrage of flashing cameras and a wall of microphones from all the major lunar news networks (MoonNN, Fox Moons, Mice News, Al Jamoona, RTL, the Moon City Tribmoone, the Moon Times). She set down her water on the table in front of her and began answering questions.
A wiry moontian from Fox Moons went first,
“Mrs. President! What are you doing to stop the skeleton army?”
“Well, I have plans to create a special skeleton task force, or a committee, possibly,”
She was interrupted by a hoary old moontian from Mice News,
“Where did the skeletons come from!?”
“The skeleton task force will swiftly figure that out, I’m sure.”
“And who are they working for!?”
“The skeleton tas-”
“What’s calcium anyway? Or will we all have to wait for the skeleton task force to find out anything about the skeletons?!”
He was visibly exasperated.
“I think calcium is a mineral, but it might be a roc-”
“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!”
---
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE
OBAMER KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT SKELETON ARMY, SKELETONS COULD BREACH MOON CITY ANY MINUTE NOW, BE AFRAID(OF THE SKELETONS)
Karolina looked at the headline in disbelief. She was President Obamer’s press secretary, in charge of maintaining the good PR that she had enjoyed for the past few months as a hero of Moon City. Hell, they were going to put her on the Moon Buck, but she just had to blow it away by doing the press conference herself. Karolina would’ve done a much better job.
But that’s not how things went for Karolina.
So she threw the newspaper in the trash, and went to the coffee maker inside city hall. She put a small plastic cup with a green cap into the machine, and set it to Amoonicano. She looked out the window as she waited, overlooking the tower, the abandoned house, and Copernicus Boulevard.
Obamer walked in right before the coffee was ready,
“Hit me Karolina.”
Karolina never did like the lack of professionalism of the president.
“Well, your little speech has sent the press into a feeding frenzy, and now every moontian is afraid of skeletons.”
“And the skeleton task force?”
“What skeleton task force? You do know you have to choose people to be on the skeleton task force to make a skeleton task force?”
“Yeah, can you get on that?”
“Well who do you want to be on it?”
“Oh! My coffee’s ready.”
Obamer picked up Karolina’s Amoonicano and left before she could explain that it wasn't the president's favorite flavor, Mooncha.
From the other room Karolina heard the sound of someone spitting out a cup of coffee.
---
Chapter 4: Riders on the Storm
Mike was running out of potatoes, as well as classical pieces of art to carve into them. They had already done Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, Nighthawks, Frari Assumption, and Man at the Crossroads, and they couldn’t think of anything else. They were thinking of doing Stańczyk, but the art teacher had told them to lighten up a bit with the potatoes.
That said, even if they did have an idea, they still needed a potato, and they had already bought and carved every potato at Jewel Osco. Even their X-Acto knife was getting dull.
“BRO! Do you have any potatoes?”
“Why would I have potatoes? I already told you I had none yesterday.”
“But you could’ve got some since then.”
“Well I didn’t.”
“Kurwa.”
---
Two sentries guarded the gate to Moon City, loyally waiting at their posts. Neither of them had names, and both of them had very bushy walrus mustaches that obscured most of their faces, except for a small part at the top covered by their Justin Beiber bangs.
Obamer was walking to the harbor to pick up some more Amoonicano from the sailors (because apparently Karolina was running out), and she decided to do a surprise inspection of the guards.
“ATTENTION!”
The guards stood at attention, silently.
Obama could barely hold in her giggles. Teasing the guards was one of the best things you could do in Moon City.
But then, the guards ripped off their mustaches (fake), and their wigs (fake), and their guard costumes to reveal that they were skeletons (real)(confirmed)(at 3 am gone wrong).
“Nyeh-ha-ha-ha! This was an ambush courtesy of Skeletor!”
Skeletons popped out of every nook and cranny, spare tibias hidden in bushes, a skull hidden in a tree, assembling into the skeleton army.
“We are ghastly skeletons,
And we live in outer space.
We are ghastly skeletons,
And we hate the human race.
We are ghostly skeletons,
And we ride on a skeleton horse,
We are ghostly skeletons,
And we will kill you of course.
We are killer skeletons,
And our song really rocks.
We are killer skeletons,
Watch out for our skeleton Glocks!”
With this, the skeletons pulled out several Glock brand handguns, and aimed them at Obamer.
“Gleebu Zorp!” (A moonglish expression of shock)
“Nyeh-ha-ha-ha! Take us to your leader!”
“I am the leader.”
“NYEH-HA-HA-HA!”
The skeletons pushed Obamer forward with the gun, towards the harbor, where there was a relatively flat crater.
“Skeletons, ASSEMBLE!”
All of the skeletons (except for Skeletor) threw their bones into the crater, assembling into a kind of giant skeleton horse.
“Nyeh-HEH-HEH!”
Just as Skeletor was relishing in his apparent victory, a tiny smart car could be seen in the distance, coming out of the Moon City gates at a high rate of speed and beeping its pathetic little horn.
“Nyeh-heh?”
Van Helsing leaned out of the window, slightly tipping the car in the lunar gravity,
“Thought you could escape me, Skeletor?”
“Skeletons! Advance!”
Skeletor used one hand to grab the skeleton horse, and the other to hold on to Obamer. The skeleton horse began to run across the landscape towards Crisium. Van Helsing chased after the skeleton horse in his Smart Car, headed towards the dark side of the moon.
---
Mike was carving their desk into the shape of La Romería de San Isidro, as they had run out of potatoes. It was difficult, with the X-Acto knife being dull they had to use all their sportsmale runnerboy strength to carve in the intricate design, and they didn’t even know if it would translate well to a print. But Mike always did what the art teacher said, no matter the request, even if it meant carrying a 12 foot long folder on the bussy.
So Mike dragged the desk, an old wooden one, to school. By the time they got there the wooden legs had been worn down to nubbins, and Mike was essentially dragging a wooden brick with a seminal piece of Spanish art carved into it. They pushed it into the ink pad, and put it on their paper. It showed up, but badly. You could barely make out the mass of pilgrims.
“KURWA MAĆ! KURWA HEP! KURWA f*ck!”
The printmaking teacher looked at them, not with anger, or even disappointment, but only contempt. And tire.
“Mike… We need to talk…”
“KURWA CO TO JEST”
“Calm down Mike.”
“Sorry- It’s just I DRAGGED THIS f*ckING WOODEN BRICK 7 AND A HALF MILES”
“Jack, if you don’t cool it I’m going to have to issue a demerit.”
“But-But-”
“Just cool it.”
“Ok.”
“But that print sucks, and you are going to have to do it over.”
“Ja Pierdolę.”
“I know what that means, Mike. That’s a demerit.”
---
Chapter 5: Potatoless, Will Travel
Mike was chuffed. In a bad way. They had been late every day in the school year so far, and the demerits had piled up. With the extra one from Mike’s printmaking teacher, Mike had gone over the limit. Now they would have to go to the Lane Tech gulag (in the basem*nt, under the smokestack), and shovel coal for the ovens. Drat.
And on top of that, Mike’s teacher said they would have to redo the prints, and they were out of wooden furniture and starchy vegetables.
Other Mike tried to cheer up his little broski,
“You know, the gulag isn’t as bad as it sounds.”
“It sounds like a literal gulag, dudebro.”
“Hermanito, I’m reading this book, and it’s set in a camp…”
“My brother in Christ… That book’s about a summer camp.”
“Why are you the gulag expert now?”
“I’ve been reading about them on Wikipedia ever since I heard I was being sent to one- And it’s not like you’re the gulag expert.”
“Mike, my comrade, my associate, mon confidant, I’m the older sibling, so therefore I am better”
Mike had no retort to this perfect argument, which was both factually and pedantically true.
---
Mike was at the Jewel-Osco’s, looking for a potato. Unfortunately for Mike, they had done so on Potato Day, a little known holiday celebrated only by Tunisian Jews. Mike didn’t want to buy the potatoes labeled “Non-Kosher, ≅100% ‘poetaetoes’”, even though they were the only ones in stock, because they appeared to be quietly singing What do you do With a Problem Like Maria, something which normal potatoes are not known to do.
So Mike checked all the aisles, aardvark supplies, abaci, abugidas, baobab products, bosons, canned goods, Colmar-Bergs, crystal meth, cylindrical prisms, death accessories, the deli, elohim, eggs, focaccia, gardening supplies, goo, helium, international products, kaleidoscopes, killing supplies, koziołki poznańskie, lazers, metacognitive, monster parts, oceanic vessels, pastas, porks of all kinds, queso, rickshaw repair, soft drinks, Surinamese products, tables, tit tyrants, Tymbark, ukuleles, umbrellas, Utrecht peaces, uzis, Voltron accessories, Westphalian horses, whisking products, and even the dreaded Yazoo products, until Mike found what they were looking for.
Mike walked down the aisle, and there seemed to be no potatoes. Just empty shelves, and then walls, like some kind of storeroom. Then Mike saw a potato on the floor. They picked it up. It was a fine potato, not quite big enough for La Rómeria, but maybe for a self portrait (Get it? Cause Mike’s short!!!). In the distance, down that dark and dim hallway, Mike saw another potato. Mike followed the trail of potatoes around twisting corners and winding stairways, till they couldn’t see the light of day any longer.
The fluorescent lights seemed dimmer too, weaker, as if Mike was getting to be miles away from the Jewel’s sliding doors. They picked up their phone to call Other Mike, and to share the news about the abundant supply of floor potatoes to be found at the potato aisle, but there was no signal.
They looked around. There was nobody for miles.
“HEY! IS ANYONE OUT THERE?”
No response.
But then the lights got dimmer, as if they were hiding from something, until they were fully off. And in the distance, towards the apparent end of the hallway, shrouded in the mist and the blackness of the deep cave that Mike was apparently inside of, they saw two rectangular eyes glowing white.
Suddenly, like a gunshot (and that is something that Mike has canonically felt before), Mike felt a sharp pain in their temple. It was like a creature was ripping open their skull with sharp, piercing fingernails, and crawling inside, ripping apart Mike’s skull as it went. Mike dropped their potatoes.
Mike heard a voice, or rather, text, from inside of their head,
“Herobrine: Stop”
Mike tried to scream, but it just came out as text,
“Mike:AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”
Mike was horrified. They ran in the opposite direction, dropping the potatoes on the floor. After a while the fluorescent lights brightened, and they could see a light at the end of the tunnel. Mike left the aisle with only one potato, the one they had kept in their pocket.
---
Mike began carving the potato, the pilgrim’s slack jaws and stringless guitars in languished detail, but they had a problem. No matter what they carved, it seemed that the result was a picture of Herobrine. Mike didn’t know why they were doing it, but they were. It was like there was some break in communication between their head and their hand, and it was all they could do. They didn’t know if the printmaking teacher would accept a print of a crowd of Herobrines converging on La Quinta Sordo, but they would have to try.
---
Mike was on the bussy, on their way to school. It was the day they had been dreading- the one where they would have to go to the Lane Tech gulag. Mike didn’t even want to think about the gulag, so they were reading smutty Breaking Bad fanfiction on AO3.
“Jesse, we need to fast”
Thought Mike, because the bus was being like hella slow and they didn’t know what happened to people who were late for gulag.
But then, Mike heard something, like a tiny car horn but from above, as if there was a flying car above the bus. And there was a car above the bus, a smart car. The car was so smart that it could land like an airplane on Addison, any car that got in its way flung across the street.
“Hey bro”
Other Mike looked up from his book.
“What?”
“Do you see that car over there?”
“Yeah. Looks electric.”
“Broski wit da brewskis- That’s a flying car.”
“Ok.”
“Bruh- Isn’t that crazy? That’s crazy, right?”
“I guess.”
Other Mike is no fun (Sorry Other Mike but it’s true, this is exactly how you’d react to a flying car).
A tall, clean shaven man in stupid little round glasses came out of the car, Abraham Van Helsing. He appeared stricken by panic, and he was running towards the bussy. Mike could hear him, however muted, through the bus windows,
“Mike! Mike! Hallo? Mike? Mike! Hallo?”
Other Mike got up from his seat to let Mike out.
“Wha- Why should I go out there? He’s probably on drugs or something.”
“People with round glasses don’t do drugs, Mike.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Van Helsing was right outside the window now.
“Mike! Mike! Hallo! Mike! They took Obamer!”
“They took Obamer?”
“Yes Mike, to Copernicus crater!”
“Copernicus?”
“It’s where the skeletons live!”
“Skeletons?”
“Are you deaf, Mike?”
“Well no need to be rude about this, man-”
“Sorry Mike.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Come to the moon with me!”
“Um…”
Mike thought about the many bloody horrors they had experienced on the moon. Their bones still chilled with the remnants of Tycho’s frigidity every time they looked up at the night sky… But still, it couldn’t be much worse than the gulag. So Mike agreed to come with, and rocketed back into space in Van Helsing’s Smart Car.
Chapter 6: The Battle of Bone Town
The Smart Car glided down over the cold lunar surface, somewhere over the shimmering silvery Sea of Showers, west of Moon City. And how serene it was, reflecting back in the windless non-atmosphere, only pushed to waves by the tidal forces exerted on it by the Earth. They made landfall on a round island, what appeared to be a crater whose sharp caldera protected it from the waters surrounding it.
“Mike, I have to warn you, this is a very dangerous place.”
“Danger? I laugh in the face of danger. Danger is my middle name.”
“Well that’s good, cause this place is infested with skeletons. They call it Bone Town.”
Mike struggled to hold in a laugh.
“Laughing? Is there danger?”
“No- It’s just, Bone Town?”
“They were going to call it the Bone Zone, at first.”
Mike snorked.
“So Obamer’s here?”
“Yes, Skeletor took her to Bone Town, riding on his bone horse.”
“Hold on a sec…”
Mike opened their phone, and messaged Andrwe (Andrwe was a goth with ebony hair who’s seventeen and goes to Lane Tech and their boyfriend is the guy from Twilight).
To | Andrwe |
Hey loser me and ur mom are in Bone Town rn 🤣 😜 | |
---
The skeleton army were sitting around a fire in the old town square of what used to be Copernicus, burning various works of classical moontian art (The Venus de Moonlo, The Winged Victory of Samoonthroce, Oath of the Whoratii, etc) to cook their skeleton food (bones). Obamer was tied to a ruined column behind them.
“Nyeh-heh-HEH-hehehe… Time for skeleton dinner!”
The skeleton army began to sing,
“We are bony skeletons,
And we eat our skeleton food.
We are bony skeletons,
And we are always rude.”
We are hungry skeletons,
And we hate everyone,
We are hungry skeletons,
And this is our skeleton song!
We are scary skeletons,
And we steal lots of art,
We are scary skeletons,
We put it in our skeleton cart!”
The skeletons dug into their skeleton food, making a sound that could make a dentist’s drill blush, the whole time unaware of the enemies in their midst. Mike and Van Helsing were hiding behind an inconspicuous moonbush, with mooncifixes in hand.
Luckily for the pair, they didn’t have to wait long. The skeletons were ravenous, and just as quickly as they ate their skeleton meal they fell asleep in their bone hammocks. Mike and Van Helsing slowly creeped out of the bushes, so as not to wake the skeletons,
“Are they sleeping?” Mike asked,
“SHH!”
“Oh sorry.”
“Was ist your problem! Stop talking!”
With Van Helsing’s sudden noise, a lone skeleton stirred. Still delirious, the skeleton asked,
“Who are you guys?”
Mike answered (they were clearly the more rizzful of the two),
“We’re skinskeltons. Skeletons with skin.”
The skeleton, satisfied, went back to sleep.
“Mein Gott Mike, das war close.”
Mike sneezed,
“HSGHAGHSGSH”
“Gesundheit”
With that disturbance every skeleton awoke, and Mike and Van Helsing were left surrounded by angry skeletons. The skeletons held out their sharp bone spears menacingly, and sang their skeleton song,
“We are evil skeletons,
We will stab you guys,
We are evil skeletons,
Watch out for a skeleton in disguise!”
The moonbush behind them shook, and soon they saw that it was just a skeleton in a ghillie suit.
“We are murderous skeletons,
From the dark side of the moon!
We are murderous skeletons,
You both will die very soon!
We are Satanic skeletons,
This song increases the word count.
We are Satanic skeletons,
We serve a vampire viscount!”
Mike cracked all of their fingers, they were ready. They entered a fighting Taekwondo position.
Not sure what they say in Taekwondo. I mean Kung-Fu has “hiya”, so like, idk,
“¡Olé!” Mike screamed.
“En garde” Came the skeleton retort.
Mike swung their fists of fury (well I guess that’s Chinese…Taekwondo probably has like, hands of handiness or smth), and the skeletons thrusted their spears forward, but right as they were about to make contact Mike’s vision went black, and they couldn’t hear anything either.
---
Chapter 7: Minecraft in Real Life
They were confused, but only for a moment, before they felt a familiar sensation coming from inside their own head…
“Herobrine: Stop!”
“Mike: Kurwa Mać, bitch!”
“Herobrine: That was uncalled for.”
“Mike: Chujek!”
Mike stopped talking when they opened their eyes, and saw what was all around them; It was like nothing they had ever seen before, but at the same time so familiar. They had woken up in Minecraft.
The square sun was shining down on the trees, casting a sanguine light on the procedurally generated forest lying in front of them. They turned around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Herobrine, but he had already disappeared. In the distance a pig walked by, and Mike just stood there, admiring it, till that golden sunlight faded to the dim glow of the moon, and behind them, they heard a hiss- A creeper.
They ran from the monster, into that blocky forest, but just as they stopped to catch their breath a spider jumped out from above. They spent that night on the run, never finding a peaceful place to stop.
---
The next morning, as the monsters finally started burning, Mike could rest. Now they knew what they had to do. They sized up a tree and gave it a little Taekwondo, and just like that they had wood.
“Wood good” Mike thought.
It was. They constructed a simple house in the heart of the forest, rudimentary sure, but it would function well. They pulled their phone out of their inventory and hit up Mr. Park’s Google Chat
“Ayo mr bark, i need ur help, i am stuck in minecraft”
---
Mr. Park was busy racing in the Daytona 500. He was sponsored and everything, but he still decided to answer his phone while driving 200 miles per hour. Shame on him. Terrible person.
“Sorry, I only play CSgo”
“No, I mean I’m literally stuck in Minecraft”
He looked up for a second, and it appeared he had left the speedway and somehow driven into a local children’s hospital. He was a good driver though, so he would be fine. He looked back at his phone,
“How can I help you with that?”
“Can u like, hop on MC real quick???”
Mr. Park only plays CSgo though, so he left Mike on read.
“Hellooo??????”
But Mr. Park was too busy to answer, as apparently some kid’s life support wire got stuck in his tire. He didn’t have time for that though, so he revved his engine till it snapped. Shame.
---
Mike listened to the jukebox, the only thing to do on those long Minecraft nights. But then they heard something coming from outside their house, seemingly attracted by their disk, disk 13.
They turned off the jukebox, and peered out the window. It was a foggy day, and the trees were all intact- Well, the trunks were, as Mike looked up they saw that all the leaves had disappeared. Herobrine was near. They stepped out of the house holding a torch, and squinting through the fog they could just make out a pair of bright white eyes glowing.
They chased the figure through the fog, but he was fast. He dug a tunnel into the nearby hill, and burrowed all the way through in a split second. Mike just kept following him. If there was one thing that Mike was good at, it was running. They just thought of Herobrine as a bus, they would just have to reach him, pry open his doors, and pay their fare. They didn’t know how the last two would translate, but the first was easy enough. They kept up the pursuit.
The sun began to rise, and Herobrine started to burn up. He thought he could retreat to his underground lair by now, but Mike was still following him over the wild badlands and spiky ice spikes of that world.
“Herobrine: Just give up! Stop!”
“Mike:”, wheezing, “Neve-wheeze-everrrrr!”
“Herobrine: Damn you OK?”
“Mike: Y’know how it is.”
“Herobrine: Don’t get me started. Don’t even get me started. Do not get me started.”
“Mike: Look, we’re both tired, let’s just like, sit down?”
“Herobrine: Yeah bet.”
Mike and Herobrine sat together on a log, just like Kermit the froggy from the muppets. Although we all know Gonzo is the best muppet, followed by maybe Rizzo the Rat, and then Pepe the Prawn, and then maybe either Sam the Eagle or Animal. Not to say Kermit isn’t cool, but like, less so.
“Mike: So Herobrine…”
“Herobrine: Please, call me Hero”
“Mike: Hero- Why did you bring me to Minecraft?”
“Herobrine: What you don’t know is that…I have a brother, and he leads the skeleton army. I’ve heard a great deal about what you did back at Tycho, and…I was just scared for him…”
“Mike: Who’s your brother?”
“Herobrine: Joe.”
“Mike: Joe?”
“Herobrine: Joe Mama”
“Mike:...”
“Herobrine: But no seriously, my brother is Count Dracula.”
Mike gasped, audibly. Could Count Dracula really be really real? And was he really related to Herobrine (confirmed)? Mike had no better choice but to trust Herobrine, if only to get out of Minecraft.
“Mike: Look Hero… You have to let me out of Minecraft eventually.”
“Herobrine: I guess so… Just, promise you won’t hurt Vladek.”
Herobrine reached out his pinky. Unlike some people, Mike always keeps their pinky promises, so they deliberated for a while before they were sure they wanted to accept. Some people should take note of this.
“Herobrine: I guess I should let you out, but… Can I come with you?”
“Mike: Do you promise you will help me defeat the skeletons?”
Mike reached out their pinky. Even Herobrine knows better than to break a pinky promise. That makes some people worse than Herobrine. 👀
“Mike: It’s a deal then. Let’s get out of here.”
“Herobrine:/tp @a copernicus”
With that they appeared back at the ruins of Copernicus, but it appeared that the skeletons had left, and taken Obamer with them.
Mike hit up Mr. Park’s Gchat again,
“Hey mr bark guess wwut? I just got out of Minecraft on my OWN”
Mr. Park answered from the school bus he was driving for a tennis trip,
“Slay.”
“THas right!!!! And Herobrines coming with me!!!”
“Hol’ up imma tell my wife”
Mr. Park went to call his totally real wife who really exists and tell her about the news.
---
MINECRAFT IN REAL LIFE!
CONFIRMED!
The headline around the world and the moon that day, as apparently Mr. Park or his wife told someone. Can you believe it? Minecraft in real life?
Chapter 8: Journey to the Dark Side of the Moon
The crater was decrepit, and seemingly devoid of life. No wind blew across it, and everything was still, but out of the corner of Mike’s eye they saw a little cloud in the cold lunar air. It was coming from an old wooden coffin. Mike was afraid,
“G-g-g-g-g-g-ghost!?”
Herobrine carefully opened the coffin, ready for any poltergeists that may come out of it, but all they found was the shivering body of Van Helsing.
“M-m-Mike, and-”
Van Helsing was shocked upon seeing Herobrine-
“MOON MAN! MOOON MAN! SCHEISSE!”
And with that final exertion, he was left dead. Herobrine put him back in the coffin, and the two buried him on Copernicus Crater.
On his person they found a map, tattered in places, but relatively intact, of a forbidden place- The dark side of the moon.
“How did he get that?”
“Mike, Van Helsing has a lot of connections.”
“Damn, I’ve got to get me some connections too.”
The next day the two of them set out on a makeshift raft, pushing West of Copernicus into the silvery sea of storms.
---
As it happens, the sea of storms is stormy. Freezing moon rain beat down on the raft, and the waves tossed Mike and Herobrine around like a salad, but without any ranch dressing or croutons. Thunder crashed down from space, hitting the sea only a few feet from the raft, and spraying Mike with chunks of moon.
“Egads!” said Mike.
But that was not the worst of their problems, rather, their raft was slowly taking in water, and the right corner was sinking deeper and deeper into the sea. Mike was terrified,
“Hero! What do we do!?”
“The Minecraft boats never do this!”
“Think of something!”
“Um… ummmm… Erm… /weather clear”
“Damn it Hero, this isn’t Minecraft, stupit!”
“Well Jesus Christ Mike, why don’t you just think of something yourself?”
“Fine!”
Mike thought about all they knew from physics. If they could only get some tape, they could use the electrostatic force to push them away from the water and out of the storm. But where was some tape? They found it- Holding together the logs on the raft. They ripped it off, sending some logs tumbling down into the depths.
“Mike! Whaty heck are you doing?!”
“Trust me on this bro.”
“Why would I trust you after you tore our boat apart?!”
Mike ripped the piece of tape in half, put the two pieces on top of each other, and pressed their fingers into it. They ripped off the second piece, and gave it to Herobrine.
“Ok. You’re taller than me, so you should do this. Hold it up to the sky, and maybe the electrostatic force will propel us forward.”
“If you say so.”
“Slay.”
“Slay!”
Famous last words. Herobrine reached his hand up into the sky, and immediately got struck by moon lightning.
Hehehehehehe! Wipeout!
Speaking of Hehehehehehe! Wipeout!, the electric shock of the moon lightning knocked Mike out.
Chapter 9: The Irish
It was dark when they woke up, so dark that they did not notice they woke up. But then they did notice that they woke up, because they heard a voice from behind them,
“Wake up, stupit.”
Mike screamed (they should really stop doing that).
“Who are you!?”
“Oh, I’m Lemmy.”
“Lemmy!?!?”
“Yes?”
“That wasn’t a question, just an exclamation, like ‘thats crazy’”
“Oh, sorry.”
“I will never forgive you.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“But like, Lemmy, how’d you get here?”
“Well, it’s a long story. So one day I was at Jewel, looking for potatoes. I love potatoes. They are my favorite food and I eat them every day. But it was Potato Day, a little known holiday only celebrated by Tunisian Jews. So then I turned on the ol’ sniffer. And guess what I sniffed?”
“...”
“Guess!”
“What? I tuned out like halfway through that block of text.”
“I sniffed a potato! So I followed its trail for a while, just like my ancestors used to do in the old country, until I saw it. But avast!”
“Shut up.”
“Why?”
“Sorry, it’s just instinctive when people say avast.”
“Oh, well anyway, I saw that you already had the potato! Now I’m not assertive enough to get it from you myself, so I hatched a plan. When you weren’t looking, I snuck into your pocket, and then I took little nibbles of the potato over a long period of time.”
“Well that explains why my pocket was so heavy- Wait- You were weighing down the raft!”
“What raft? Oh is that when the potato got all wet-”
“You killed Herobrine!”
“Herobrine? Like MInecraft in real life?”
“CONFIRMED!”
“OH MY GOD MINECRAFT IN REAL LIFE CONFIRMED!”
“Not anymore!”
“Nooooooooo”
---
Mike tried not to think about all the happy memories they had just had with Herobrine (yes, both of them). They would have to work with Lemmy if they wanted to get out of this bind. They did their best Chrisp Ratt voice,
“What is this place?”
“Why would I know? You think I have a sense of direction?”
“That’s true…”
“Wait, I got a notification-”
It was a little pingy pongy ping pong bing bong bing bing bing bong bing bong bing bong bong bong bong bing bing bing bong bong bong bong, buscando guayaba ando yo, que tenga sabor que tenga mendo, una guayaba con salva morena, una guayaba muy bien buena, bing bong bing bong bing bong bongn. Yeah so it sounded like that. Lemmy checked their telephone, a notification (indeed) appeared,
- 3.78 PM
- Bus Tracker 9000
- You have arrived at stop: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
“Oh no! I missed my stop!”
“Lemmy, we’ve got bigger problems. The dark side of the moon is a place you must never go, due to the moon men. Nobody in Moon City knew much about the moon men, some said that they were an all female army, descended from the Earth’s Amazons. Others said they were just normal moontians, corrupted by greed and subservience to the forces of evil. But no moontian was brave enough to cross the frontier into the pitch black abyss beyond the horizon, where there was very little to separate the cold expanse of space from the chunk of cheese the moontians called home.”
“Wow, and you got mad at me for a wall of text…”
“Weren’t you listening? There’s moon men out there!”
“Moon men! Zoinks!”
“That’s crazy! But first we need to build a fire, otherwise we’ll never be able to see-”
“I have just the thing.”
Lemmy got out their old telephone. It immediately burst into a bright blue flame, reeking of natural gas.
Mike pulled out the last fragments of the map that had not been washed into the sea. They could just make out a little trail, labeled ‘Dark Side of the Moon Heritage Trail”. They decided to follow it, and to hope they could find where the skeletons were hiding. Well, Mike decided this, as they didn’t tell Lemmy about the whole skeletons thing. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind.
---
In the distance, for the first time in what felt like ages (though for lack of a sun to tell time with, could have been just a few hours), was a light. As Mike and Lemmy got closer, they began to see the silhouette of a tall building, lopsided and gently creaking in the light solar wind, but still a structure nonetheless- and really- what more can you ask for in a building. As the pair got closer they could hear voices inside, though faintly,
“We are drunkard skeletons,
And we like alcohol.
We are drunkard skeletons,
We hate people one and all.
We are sloppy skeletons,
We had too much to drink,
We are sloppy skeletons,
We like violence and bones.”
An old moontian lady could be heard,
“That doesn’t even rhyme!”
A skeleton answered in non sequitur,
“¡Tequíla!”
It was made apparent by the sound of shuffling bones that the skeletons had started dancing. It was made apparent by the sound of cracking wood that they were dancing on a table.
---
Mike and Lemmy went into the tavern, stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat. Mike covered their head with their bangs, so that the skeletons wouldn’t recognize them,
“Hello, fellow creatures of the night!”
The skeletons didn’t respond. However, Lemmy sighted a little goblin looking creature, about a foot high, walking towards them,
“Mike! Look down!”
Lemmy said in a hushed tone.
“Hello, little goblin! What is your name?”
“Good evening. I am Knee Gnasher. I am not a goblin. I am a joint eater.”
“I see! How ponderous!”
“Mike, you can’t just say ‘how ponderous’.”
Knee Gnasher gnashed Mike’s, or really, Lemmy’s knee. Lemmy screamed.
“Lemmy, stop screaming! It’s disruptive!”
Knee Gnasher heard that,
“Who’re you talking to?”
“Um… My knees!”
“That’s weird.”
Knee Gnasher gnashed Lemmy’s other knee, then they collapsed on the ground.
“I um… I bow to thee, o’ Knee Gnasher”
Mike said, several feet lower than before.
Knee Gnasher leaned it real close, and whispered a secret in Mike’s ear,
“Knee Gnasher gnows you aren’t just one person…”
“Um…Uh…Erm actually…Um…”
“You have multiple personality disorder too! Oh look! My personality just changed to Ear Gnasher!”
Ear Gnasher gnashed Mike’s ear, causing Mike to scream.
“But seriously. Ear Gnasher knows your secrets.”
“Are you going to tell anyone?”
“Look- Let’s make a deal. I’ll keep my lips sealed, if you…”
Ear Gnasher was thinking.
“Let me eat your joints!”
“Would you take Lemmy’s joints?”
“Yeah sure whatever”
“Mike? Wha-Nooooooo”
The little joint eater ate Lemmy’s joints, leaving gaping bloody cavities in its wake. The blood attracted the skeletons, who hadn’t noticed Mike and Lemmy until then.
“Nyehehe, what do we have here?!”
“I’m just, you know, passing through”
“Well, it’s been a long time since a human passed through the Moon Tavern!”
“Sorry, my um…flight got delayed”
“Oh, ok. Carry on- Waaaiit a seconnnnd…We are skeletons, we hate humans!”
“We are drunken skeletons,
But we still hate you two.
We are drunken skeletons,
And we’re made of skeleton goo!”
The skeletons encroached on Mike and Lemmy’s personal bubble, brandishing femurs and tibias and stuff. One skeleton, wearing garish clown makeup (sort of an inverse lucha libre), brandished a funny bone- But nobody was laughing.
“Sk-sk-sk-sk-sk-sk-skeletons!”
Lemmy appeared to realize that they were surrounded by skeletons.
“What are you, a f*cking VSCO girl? ‘Sksksksksk’-”
As Mike was mocking Lemmy, Skeletor whacked them with a loose femur.
“Kurwa!”
Mike and Lemmy ran in different directions, stretching their oversized trench coat till they both couldn’t see anything. The skeletons ran in every direction as well, trying to capture them.
“Mike! Mike! Where are you? I can’t see anything!”
“Haha blind”
Lemmy hit a wall. The skeletons laughed at them, but they weren’t laughing when they turned a corner and tripped them all with the middle of the trenchcoat, making a sound like the drybones make in Mario Brothers.
(For reference)
In fact, Lemmy ran so fast that Mike was carried backwards. Lemmy inadvertently was swinging Mike around like a flail, skeletons falling into pieces in their wake.
“Lemmy! LEMMY! STOP!”
“AAAAAAAAAA SKSKSKSKSKSKeletons AAAAAAAAA”
“That is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE!”
“And I oop?”
“THAT’S WORSE!”
Lemmy finally escaped the trenchcoat and ran off into the darkness. Mike just rolled out, still blinded by the coat they were stuck in.
Chapter 10: In the Hall of the Vampire King
Dracula, Boogle, and Googa’s skeleton were standing, cloaked, in a circle. It was a sacred meeting of the unholy order of edgelords.
“When is Andrew going to get here?”
Dracula asked, darkly. Boogle replied,
“They said they’d be a little late, I don’t know what the problem is…”
Just then, a cloud of black smoke appeared in the center of the ring, filled with glitter, even more than Dracula’s cloud from chapter 1. And it was cooler, too. As the dust settled, the edgelords could just make out the outline of Andrew (Andrwe was a goth with ebony hair who’s seventeen and goes to Lane Tech and their boyfriend is the guy from Twilight). Dracula was angry,
“I thought Master Shadow was coming with you!”
“The hedgehog?”
“What other ‘Shadow’ do you know on a personal basis?!”
“Oh, well, I have bad news about Shadow. He-he…”
Boogle laughed, because he was reminded of Michael Jackson. Dracula responded in anger,
“THERE IS NO LAUGHING IN THE UNHOLY ORDER OF EDGELORDS!”
“He was killed in a drive by!”
“Shadow got shot?!”
“No, mauled by a bear at the drive thru zoo…”
“Oh… That’s…”
“He said, as his dying wish, that he wanted me to take over as edgemaster in his place.”
Boogle was bawling. Dracula responded softly,
“The edgemaster is dead. Long live the edgemaster”
“Thank you for your touching words, but I have to be getting to Earth now.”
Andrew disappeared into a cloud of smoke, just as a skeleton guard bursted into the door-
“Master Dracula! News from the front! Some fiendish rapscallions just defeated our entire skeleton battalion”
Boogle could see Dracula’s temper snap…Googa couldn’t, as his skull was under lock and key in Dracula’s office, but the nonexistent hairs on his skeleton back stood up-
“Do not. Call me. Tha. t. Name.”
Dracula grabbed the guard’s skull right off of its neck bone, and ripped it apart with his own hands.
“Hrmph!”
He stomped off to his office, slamming the door behind him.
---
Lemmy was still running. Gracefully, like a true track star, or rather, an impala. Remember when Shakira was an impala in that one movie. No wait she was a gazelle. Tsamina-mina a-a waka waka a-a-a tsaminamina zangalewa this time for africa.
Lemmy kept running till they reached an ominous sight- Or lack of which: They hit a wall. With this, they came to their senses. It appeared they were up against some kind of fortress. From above, they could hear the lyrics to a song…
“I chimed in with a haven’t you people ever heard of, closing the God damned door”
Lemmy yelped for help,
“Hey! Do you know where we are?”
---
Dracula was in his office, brooding to his favorite song, while dictating his memoir to Googa’s body.
“Andrzej, you know what I’ve always said?”
Googa responded from the inside of the glass case where the vampire kept his skull.
“What master?”
“Life… Is Roblox”
“That's a very deep master, very deep.”
“Write that down. So that was my life story. Wait, do you hear that?”
“What master?”
“From down there…”
They both listened, and heard Lemmy’s pitiful cries,
“Hey! Hey! Hey!”
“What the hell do you want?”
“Hey! Hey! Hey!”
It appeared Lemmy could yell farther than they could hear.
“Andrzej, go downstairs and bring that nasty little alien to me”
“Yes master.”
Andrzej tromped down the many stairs. Tromp tromp tromp tromp.
---
“Ah! Skeleton!”
Googa didn’t respond, as his skull was up in the office.
Lemmy got ready to run again, feet kicking without any movement, like a Hana Barbera cartoon. It even made the sound affect. Come to think of it, Lemmy reminds me a lot of Roadrunner.
(The resemblance is uncanny)
“I’m not trusting a skskskskskeleton!”
Lemmy was shaking in their boots. As Lemmy began to run away, Googa threw his ribcage at them, and they were trapped inside.
---
Mike was sick of the moon. They had already saved it, twice, and they were like, so over it. If the moontians couldn’t effectively govern, then maybe they should just innovate. It did seem a bit wasteful that half of the budget was spent on fine moon wine for ‘slurpy durping’, after all. They decided to walk home (Lemmy could fend for themself, right?). They tried jumping high enough to reach low orbit, but they were too short to jump very high. So, reluctantly, they decided to go save Lemmy.
---
Googa carried Lemmy up the stairs in his ribcage. After only a few short hours of walking, they reached Dracula’s office, music playing,
“When I was, a young boy, my fathe-”
Realizing that he wasn’t alone anymore, Dracula scrambled to turn off the music,
“Release it!”
“Actually it’s they/the-”
Googa’s ribcage unclasped, and Lemmy dropped onto the floor.
“Who are you who comes to the vampire king’s fortress uninvited, and interrupts his royal song!?”
“Oh, I’m Lemmy”
“SEIZE IT!”
The ribcage clasped again, and Lemmy was carried off onto the shelf where Googa’s skull rested. Dracula pulled out an hourglass from… Idk his pocket or smth… And set it down on the table.
“You’ve heed your last haw, Lemmy! When this hourglass runs out, I will bite you, and you will become a vampire like me, forever DOOMed to this dark reality!”
“In just an hour?!”
“Well, no, really it should be called a 4 day glass…”
“Don’t you mean 3 days?”
“I bought this hourglass-”
“3-day glass”
“-on Earth, so I think it was meant to be a 3-day glass, but the gravity, and, you know-”
“I understand.”
“That’s good to hear. Now SHUT UP!”
Dracula unpaused his radio, which was playing the next emo anthem?
“I fell in love with an emo girl-”
Chapter 11: Mike, Vampire Hunter
Mike set out to find Lemmy, after a snack of moonplant and moontea, picked wild. They trudged through the dark void, darkly. It was dark. Jesus what other adjectives can I use to describe the dark side of the moon. Obscure? Yeah. It was obscure.
Mike was hoobastank. They trotted across the lunar surface for what felt like days, till they reached the edge of the dark side of the moon. One the one side, a bright and silvery sea shining with the light of the sun. On the other, blackness (It was really dark over there). Mike had to think… Would they abandon Lemmy, or would they come back to save them, doing the right thing and personally helping their friend?
Mike ran towards the light. How wonderful light is, when you haven’t seen it for an unspecified amount of time! Pretty good, ngl. And off in the distance, only just visible past the horizon, Mike could just see the spire of the bell tower in Moon City, its bottom obscured (so the moon is round!). Mike got a-runnin’, in the hopes that somewhere in Moon City was a spaceship, or a car or a bus or something, that they could get back to Earth with.
---
The gates were closed, and only a tiny slit was opened when Mike knocked on the door with one of the comically large knockers placed there. A large moontian woman who had two more comically large knockers (replacements for the ones on the door, you see, the old ones were sagging) opened the slit,
“Who are you?”
“Uh-I’m Mike”
“Oh hi Mike.”
The woman closed the slit. Mike knocked again till she opened it again,
“Would you uh-, y’know, let me in?”
“Oh, about that, we’re not letting anyone in”
She closed it again, and Mike had to knock significantly longer till she opened it again.
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“But-But I’ve been through so much! I just came from the dark side of the moon, where it’s dark and obscure, and I was attacked by skeletons and all that.”
Mike tried that thing Puss in Boots does in Shrek. The woman sniffled, touched,
“That’s so sad… I’ll open the door, but don’t tell anyone.”
“That’s amazing.”
---
Lemmy was hanging out in Dracula’s shelf, eyeing the hourglass nervously. Googa could hear their teeth chattering through the glass of the case his skull was in,
“Chiterchaterchiterchater”
Lemmy looked like a cornered cat, down to the curvy posture and the weird eyes. In front of them stood Dracula, listening to Pan!c at the D!sko or whatever, while muttering something about his ‘dark reality’ to Googa’s body, which was taking notes. It was altogether strange, and quite possibly not worth it for that potato, but then again, Lemmy does love potatoes. Honestly not the worst take on food Lemmy has.
Boogle burst into the room,
“B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-boss, their edginess the edgemaster is here, and they say it’s urgent!”
Dracula threw his radio out the window, so that nobody could hear his dark reality.
“What do they want?”
Lemmy was scared of this ‘edgemaster’, it seemed like even the prince of darkness, Vlad Dracula, was afraid of them. Lemmy tried to imagine the edgemaster… They were probably really cool, and probably wore leather jackets and ripped jeans and stuff. Just then, their imagination came to reality, as Andrew burst through the door holding a phone book and trailing a landline behind them.
“So Vlad, I was just thinking I wanted your input about the coronation party, so do you think we should get normal lemonade or pink lemonade? Or maybe both? Arnold Palmer would be cool too-”
“Uh-my lord, I don’t think that lemonade is very, well, fit for an edgemaster coronation”
“Oh right, we need something dark and broody. How’s about sweet tea?”
“That’s not very dark…”
“It’s like brown?”
“I’m sure it will suffice, my liege”
“Oh ok, wait, what’s that?”
Andrew pointed at Lemmy in their skeleton cage, seeming not to recognize them in their degraded position, despite Lemmy always looking just a bit sickly.
“Oh, just some little moontian who tried to storm my fortress, very insignificant.”
Lemmy tried to blink in morse code, to signal to Andrew without angering Dracula, but it didn’t seem to work-
“Why’s it blinking like that? I think it’s broken. Just make sure not to bite on the eye, I don’t want you having pink eye at the coronation.”
“I promise.”
With that, Andrew and Boogle left the room. Dracula followed them to help them out the door. As soon as Dracula was out of earshot, Googa’s body shut the door silently, turned the lock, and pulling a key out from under the carpet, unlocked the case containing his skull. He put it back on his body, but kept his ribcage closed tight. Lemmy was flabberaghast,
“How did you?”
“Dracula isn’t very good at hiding keys. I’ve been able to escape for a while, but I haven’t been able to reach that-”
Googa looked up at the high vaulted ceiling. In between the gothic bricks and the blackened windows there was a small mass of ironwork: The latch to the window.
“It’s too high for me to reach, but I think I could get to it if I stood on your shoulders. So you’re going to promise me that if I open up this ribcage, you won’t scream, and you won’t run away, and you’ll stand over here, and you’ll let me climb up on your shoulders”
“What was the second one again?”
“You get the gist of it”
“Cool cool”
Googa unclasped his ribcage, and Lemmy was released unto the world. They obliged Googa’s request to stand over here, and Googa climbed on top.
Just then, they heard Dracula’s labored footsteps tromping up the spiral stair- Tromp tromp tromp tromp tromp. Aw hell naw
“Hurry up! He’s coming!”
Googa was indignant,
“I’m trying! This latch is rusty as hell”
Dracula grasped the doorknob, and began to turn it, surprised when it didn’t turn all the way. It only took a moment for him to put two and two together,
“Andrzej! Open the door.”
Googa didn’t respond, he was busy with the latch, unlatching.
“Open the door… We can have pizza afterwards…”
Skeletons don’t even like food, not having stomachs and such. Googa was hurt (emotionally).
“I’m not opening the damn door!”
There was silence from the other side, an ominous silence which so chilled Googa’s exposed bones that he stopped fiddling with the latch for a split second, as fear slithered up his back- And then, Dracula didn’t speak, but his hand burst through the door like it was a thin sheet of ice, leaving splinters and chunks of wood flying. And then Dracula spoke,
“Then I’ll do it”
Googa finally broke the latch free of its hinge, and the window slid open, revealing the deep dark abyss in all directions. A strong solar wind was blowing over the craters, and moon dust was slowly sifting into the room. Googa and Lemmy, on the other hand, quickly sifted out, without much of a plan for how to fall safely. What plan do you need, when on the other side of the window is a brooding vampire? Googa didn’t know… Lemmy certainly didn’t know. Lemmy never knows nothing.
---
Mike walked into Moon City, sunlight streaming past the guard towers and reflecting off the pyramid. It was somewhat nice, no matter how many bad memories Mike had found in the city, to see such a familiar place.
There was one unfamiliar thing, though. In front of the pyramid, in the middle of Republic Square, almost as tall as the pyramid, they found a giant wooden statue of themself. Weird.
They strolled down the street, all casually, not whistling though, as they’re not good at it. Strangely, it appeared as if nobody was out, despite it being the middle of the day. An empty trolley, save for the lone driver, screeched to a halt as they waved it down. Mike spoke to the driver,
“Where is everyone?”
“They’re at the parade, don’t ya know”
“DoN’t Ya kNoW”
“Well damn, whatever you have brewing inside don’t take it out on me…”
“Oh- uh- sorry, reflexes. How much for a ride to the parade?”
“On a parade day? Be my guest…”
The trolley wound around the walls of Moon City till it reached the northern tip, where it started heading back towards the square along Copernicus Boulevard. The trolley crept up until it was just barely touching the back of the one in front of it, about twelve trolleys in succession, a crowd cheering all around.
“You didn’t tell me it was a trolley parade-”
“You didn’t ask…”
“Jesus lay off man”
On either side of the trolley line was a marching band, with every kind of moon instrument. It was lit. The trolleys slid along their tracks until reaching Republic Square, where they all clenched their brakes and made that weird hissing sound busses make.
Karolina was standing under the statue, dwarfed by its colossal size, but not left in shadow, because the moontians had prepared spotlights on her.
“My fellow moontians. I am proud to announce that we have received a gift from a far away city on the other side of the sea of rain”
The crowd oohed, and aahed, and one French guy oolalahed.
“This beautiful statue stands firm, as a symbol of our shared commitment with these far away, unnamed friends, to defend ourselves from the skeleton hordes”
A round of applause.
“And now, the main event, Shakira!”
A second round of applause. The moonching band started playing Loca, expecting Shakira to pop out from behind some corner at any point, but they were left hanging.
Karolina looked nervous…
“Look, I was told she would be here, so-”
In that moment the wooden statue burst open, and skeletons started pouring out of the eyeball holes and the mouth and ears and nose head shoulders knees and toes knees and toes holes, though Skeletor was nowhere to be seen. One of the skeletons popped out of the top on some kind of stage elevator, wearing a matted blonde wig and holding a microphone in the air.
“Soy loca con mi tigre- Loca loca loca”
The moontians all started running for cover as skeletons rushed at them with bayonets made of bones (boneanets). ‘Shakira’ egged them on,
“Somos esqueletos barbaros,
Damos miedo al mundo entero.
Somos esqueletos barbaros,
Nuestro jefe es el rey vampiro.”
While trying to hit some non existent high note in vampiro she fell off of the statue and onto an unsuspecting moontian child trying to run away. She ripped his head off, and kept on singing,
“Loca loca loca…”
Mike was a little bit shook by the whole ordeal, but never afraid. They grabbed a loose boneanet and charged at the skeletons like their own personal 20th Maine, but more violent. They bopped one skeleton on the head with a boneanet, and then took its ribcage to trap another skeleton coming up behind them. They ducked under another skeleton and then twisted another’s skull around backwards so that it couldn’t see. Lemmy could never.
Finally, they reached skeleton Shakira, now smattered with the blood of a child like some kind of cultic sacrifice. Right as she was about to croon into Hips Don’t Lie Mike yanked her wig off and whacked her with it.
“Excyuse me?”
“You’re excused”
Mike threw out some ap chaegi (for any of you who aren’t taekwondo experts, that’s a kick), and broke Shakira’s third costal cardia (for any of you who aren’t skeleton experts, that’s a rib).
“You think you can defeat the skeletons? Insolent human!”
“What’s insolent mean?”
“Showing a rude or arrogant lack of respect”
“Oh, ok”
Shakira pulled out her hip bone, and flung it at Mike’s face.
“I’m on tonight you know my hips don’t lie and-”
Mike’s vision slowly faded to black, as they saw little but the floor in front of their eyes after being knocked down. Their blood sat on top of the layer of green moontian blood coating the ground. There was a moontian tooth in front of their face, or was it their tooth? At the thought of it, they passed out.
---
Why did Shakira sing on the moon?
Cause she couldn’t “Hips don’t lie” in its celestial spotlight!
---
Chapter 12: The Return of Count Dracula
Mike woke to the sound of chains rattling against a stone floor. They were surprised to wake up at all, but they didn’t thank their lucky stars yet, as they knew that the skeletons wouldn’t have saved them if not for a lifetime of pain worse than death. But still they had been saved, and the skeletons must have had a medic, because they were remarkably well healed, save for a scar on their knee that wouldn’t heal even with the best of the arcane potions the skeletons had given them.
The rattle slid to a halt, and not a second later the silence was interrupted by the crack of bone, like the sound of an ax being hurled into a tree. But there was no squelch of flesh being torn- It seemed to be a skeleton being axed. Now footsteps, and the footsteps were loud and trompy, and the footsteps were getting closer. Startled, Mike got up slightly, and they were greeted by Lemmy, who was (if only slightly) in better shape than them (strictly in terms of injury, as Mike was more muscular by far), whispering,
“You’re finally awake”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“So I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news, which do you want first?”
“The bad news”
“So the good news is that we’re getting out of here soon!”
“I asked for the bad news”
“Oh sorry. The bad news is that Dracula’s executing us”
“Ja pierdolę”
The steps approached their squalid cell. Their source was a gigantic skeleton, with bones as thick as tree trunks, and an ax resting casually on his shoulder. He spoke, with all the customary gruffness of a butcher like he was, saying,
“Next is… Michael Mar-cow-ski?”
“It’s Michelle”
“Oh, right. Wait, actually it’d be easier to do the shorter one first”
Lemmy was angy,
“Who’re you calling shorter!? I’m not shorter!”
He grabbed Lemmy and shackled them, and led them out of the room. Just like Mike had heard before, the rattle of the chains, though this time interspersed with begging and pleading, and then the ax piercing the skin and hitting the bones. It happened so fast, well too fast, as far as Mike was concerned, because they knew they would be next.
And so they were.
“Any last words for the hero of the moon?”
“I kind of expected this, so I did prepare a speech”
“I’ll write it in the guest book!”
The butcher motioned to a guest book sitting on a lectern spattered with blood and bits of bone. It was gory, but so was everything else in that horrible room. Knowing that that would be the final resting place of Mike’s thoughts, they chose their words carefully.
“It was an early morning yesterday
I was up before the dawn
And I really have enjoyed my stay
But I must be moving on
Like a king without a castle
Like a queen without a throne
I'm an early morning lover
And I must be moving on
And I will go on shining
Shining like brand new
I'll never look behind me
My troubles will be few
Goodbye moon men, it's been nice
Hope you find your paradise
Tried to see your point of view
Hope your dreams will all come true”
“That’s too long to write, so I just drew a picture of you”
“Oh ok”
“Oh wait, before I execute you, the boss told me he wanted to see it happen personally, so give me a sec-”
The executioner chained Mike to a spare railing and ran up the stairs. After what felt like an eternity of staring at the ax that would mark their death, and at Lemmy’s head sitting a foot from their body, broken glasses on the floor, Mike heard tromping coming down the stairwell.
Dracula walked into the room, purple cape floating all on its own, and a trail of glitter behind him. He was draped in the cape, and was holding it above his arm out in front of him, so that Mike couldn’t see any part of him but his bloodshot yellow eyes and his high widow’s peak. His last step was slower, and as soon as he hit the floor Mike was on he revealed that under that cloak he was wearing a silvery glitter jumpsuit, with wings like Elvis.
Mike thought it looked stupid, and they weren’t wrong.
Dracula began to prance around Mike, laughing maniacally as he went.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA! You thought you were enough to defeat the skeletons! The skeletons and their commander!”
“Uh-”
But Mike didn’t have time to think of a way to sass him, as he started sniffing around,
“I smell- Is that- Blood? Human blood!?”
The skeleton guard was visibly concerned to hear that,
“Sorry boss, I really meant to scrub it out but I for-forgot, I know that you told me you didn’t want to be temp-temp-tempted, but-”
But Dracula didn’t seem to mind, as just as quickly as he locked the scent to Lemmy’s rapidly bleeding body cavity he was biting into it and drinking the blood inside. His eyes lit up, and as he finished his meal, he rose from the corpse, casting a dim and dreary shadow over Mike, though his silhouette was sharp and bright-
“Now it’s your turn”
But at that moment, Andrew stumbled down the steep stairwell, and addressed their inferior,
“Vlad! Wassup?”
But they didn’t wait for a response,
“So I was thinking, and I think that pink lemonade actually would be edgy, cause it’s like, sour and stuff”
“Fair enough, my edgelord”
“Hey, who’s that you’re executing? Wait, is that Mike? You can’t execute Mike!”
“My edgelord knows this traitor?”
“Yeah… Do you mind not executing them?”
“Well, they’ve committed treason against the vampire king, prince of darkness,”
His voice picked up louder and louder,
“-COUNT VLAD DRAKULYA, HOST OF EVILS,”
The guard winced, hearing Dracula utter the name he had so frequently warned against saying. Andrew was indifferent,
“Yeah, yeah, you have a lot of names. Look, if not from an edgemaster to an edgelord, just look at it as from a friend to a friend, pleeease let them go?”
“Fine. But they can’t stay on the moon”
“Easy! They don’t even have a moon passport, we’ll just deport them!”
“You can deport people from the moon?”
Apparently they could.
---
DOG RAP BREAKDOWN!
DOG RAP BREAKDOWN!
Yo im a saint bernard
We dawgs dont need a card
When we pull up to the club
They ‘ready know who we are
Sup its the labrador retriever
‘Gainst the wind like bob seger
Be runnin full tilt
So i can catch ducks for my owner
Yo wassup im a corgi
Got more fins than a porgi
When i pull up in my jag
The dawgs all know i be bougy
DOG RAP BREAKDOWN
DOG RAP BREAKDOWN
---
A tiny terrestrial lander plastered with the logo of the “Lunar Immigration and Customs Enforcement” descended onto the Earth’s surface at breakneck speed. In fact, Mike’s neck did hurt, as the lander was somewhat less than certified for landing- It made them wonder why the edgelords didn’t just teleport them down.
As they entered the atmosphere, the temperature inside just rose and rose. When it became unbearable, the driver, a gruff skeleton with a metal leg bone and a mustache reminiscent of Colonel Sanders, turned on the thrusters, and the descent slowed to a halt over the chimney of Lane Tech.
“Tha’s your stop. Get out my damn terrestrial lander”
“Ok Colonel”
“Wha’s you mean colonel?”
But Mike was already gone, and not seeing much of an injury to his pride from the likes of Mike- Traitor as they were-, the skeleton chose to ignore it. The damn terrestrial lander took off into the sky, though halfway before reaching the clouds burst into flames and seemed to explode. Probably just shifting into turbodrive…
Mike crept down the rusty ladder slowly, wincing at every creak it emitted,
“Cree-hee cree-hee”
To make sound was to alert the Lane Tech Stasi, and to do so was to be sent back to the Lane Tech Gulag. To be sent there, after missing it for so long, was certain death.
“Cree-onk cree-onk”
The creaking worsened, but Mike was so close to the ground now- they just kept going.
“Creanky creanky”
Mike’s feet hit the ground. As they slid their hands down the rusted, chipping paint of the ladder, they felt their jaw start to lock up. Probably nothing though. They ran off into the bushes, like a little squirrel or an opossum, but unlike a little, innocent squirrel or opposum, they didn’t run them over like some kind of psychopath. Or maybe a sociopath, to be perfectly medically accurate.
Chapter 13: The Vampire’s Revenge
In the hall of the vampire king, a rustic pipe organ played a Satanic hymnal, its player a moonjackal’s skeleton crudely magicked together, and its listener Dracula, enthroned.
To the left of the throne, towering above it, stood a marble statue of Nero Caesar, arm outstretched towards the other side of the throne, where stood a statue of Bingus f*ck (a very famously evil moontian). The throne was made of stone, and peered out like a stalagmite stabbing upwards from the throne room floor. At Dracula’s feet was a carpet of black stained glass, revealing under it the cavernous hole that was his dungeon.
Though he had no audience save for the moonjackal, he sat on the edge of his seat, his witchy fingers grasping the armrests with a grip all too tight, and that light in his eyes shining just as bright.
---
Lemmy’s body sat on the floor of Dracula’s dungeon, untwitching and dead- But suddenly undead- Their eyes opened, and they slowly reached for their severed head, but upon touching it winced in pain and dropped it again.
After trying, and failing, to reattach it a second time they resolved to carry it with a metal shovel resting against the wall. They walked up the stairs, holding their head in front of them, deciding to do what they hadn’t done in first life- To kill Count Dracula.
---
Dracula kept sitting on the edge of his seat, in anticipation of something only he could see. The moonjackal continued playing the organ, but ran out of Satanic hymns, and so switched to playing a jaunty ragtime medley. Moonjackals love ragtime, so you see.
The moonjackal began playing The Entertainer when Lemmy walked in, brandishing their shovel menacingly, and entering a runner’s readying position,
“Welcome to my court, Lemmy”
Dracula lowered his left hand towards Lemmy, revealing a glittering ring, and beckoning them to kiss it. Lemmy ran towards him, dropping their head on the floor as they held the shovel high above their head. Dracula was fast, though, and with a flick of his wrist the moonjackal’s humeruses flew in front of Lemmy, forming an ‘X’ shaped barrier. The moonjackal looked a little disturbed, but kept playing the piano.
“Now, now, Lemmy, don’t be so callous…”
He looked into Lemmy’s eyes,
“Come, and kiss my ring…”
Lemmy reviled the very thought, but still their body moved, and they did the deed.
“Lemmy, I have given you new life! Like me, you shall feast on the blood of the innocents, and you shall enjoy it! You will be my apprentice, my prince, and I will be your vampire king!”
Lemmy tried with all of their strength to swing the shovel at him, but they couldn’t move their arm. It seemed like their soul was stuck inside of them, and there was nothing left for them to do. After enough time, they would forget to struggle, and just sink into their new cell, but for now, they would writhe inside of themselves for every moment.
“I…”
Lemmy’s voice was raspy, there was no blood in them, and they were as dry as the corpse they had been but a few minutes earlier-
“Hail the vampire king”
---
Lemmy was lying in a satin lined coffin, the outside black marble, the inside as black as the surrounding dark side of the moon save for a slit of light coming from where it was propped open. And through that crevasse was a tube, and in that tube blood was flowing from a little IV bag Dracula had set up to his vampire prince.
As Lemmy lay there, absorbing the vintaged blood that Dracula had collected from over the years- Not any moontian blood, no, high quality earthling blood- They forgot all about their hesitations to serve Dracula, their new king.
---
Down Copernicus boulevard in Moon City a ways from the square sat a statue of the famed astronomer, and behind it a marquee in neon lights. It was a ballroom, and inside there was a ball. A big ball.
Skeletons were swinging from the chandeliers, occasionally knocking each other’s skulls off like golf balls as they swung by. And all the while they sang,
“He’s got big balls!
And she’s got big balls!
But we’ve got the biggest- Balls of them all!”
In the dance floor at the center of the room the skeletons had stomped through the once glass floor, revealing the lightbulbs underneath. The skeletons hated disco, you see, they much preferred metal. Despite this fact, they didn’t know how to dance to metal, so they just did the dance from Saturday Night Fever under the sound of AC/DC. At least they were having fun.
One skeleton came in in a white suit, with platform shoes that sparkled in the ballroom light. Across the way, another skeleton glanced at him, clearly impressed. They danced towards each other, carefully weaving in and out of the other skeletons.
And then they got down. As Thunderstruck blasted out of the speakers, they embraced, and then suddenly dipped, and other things. Look, I’m not a choreographer. Why don’t you ask Abby Lee Miller like Jesus Christ.
---
As the party died down, the skeletons collapsed one by one onto the floor, either too drunk or too exhausted to continue shaking their collective moneymakers. I Feel Safe in New York City was playing overhead, just as loud as earlier. It would seem that nobody bothered to turn it down.
There were two skeletons who were still awake. Recognizing that, they walked towards each other,
“I didn’t know skeletons could dance like that-”
“Most skeletons don’t know how to dance”
“Well how are you supposed to dance to metal?”
“Wait here one second…”
The skeleton ran off to the projection room, and fiddled around with the dials, until the music calmed down. Then he put on another song… Disco ‘Round.
“You can’t play that song! What if the other skeletons hear you?”
“What if?”
The two skeletons danced their disco dances together, surrounded by other skeletons too depleted to notice.
“I like the nightlife,
I’ve got to boogie,
On the disco round, oh yeah”
---
After some hours had passed, and the sun was beginning to rise again, the two skeletons strolled down the boulevard to the canal. What had once been filled with wine, now was filled with moontians- some dead, but many living.
Upon seeing the skeletons the moontians started cowering.
“Hey look, they’re scared of us”
“NyeHAHAHHA”
“NyeHAHAHAH”
---
The sun was high in the sky when Boogle arrived in the city riding a skeletal moonjackal, trying to look edgy all the while, but failing to do so given the moonjackal’s rough ride and lack of saddle.
The two skeletons were surprised to see their superior, and immediately saluted.
“Oh, um, thank you, soldiers-”
The skeletons stayed stood at attention.
“-Couldja tell me where the ballroom is? We’re having a big ball for all the edgelords”
The skeletons both looked at each other, until finally one of them decided to break the silence,
“Follow us…”
---
Boogle was not pleased with the condition of the ballroom, to say the very least. Every skeleton, despite their sickness in waking up, was put to work to clean it- And then they realized they had the moontians, so they just had them do it.
---
When the sun set that day, the skeletons stood outside of the city gates, and they heard hoofbeats come over the horizon. They beheld a pale skeleton horse, and on top of it rode death, and Hades was flowing behind him.
Dracula slowed to a trot at the gate, and began something of a funeral procession towards the ballroom. Every skeleton went behind him in a line, and on either side a skeleton fanned him with a withered leaf of moonplant. As he reached the ballroom’s marquee, where Boogle stood waiting for him in full edgelord masquerade, he dismounted, and the horse collapsed into a pile of bones. He swung open the heavy metal doors like it was a saloon, and approached the ballroom floor.
From the projection room the moonjackal was playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on a tiny Casio keyboard, but it bellowed from every speaker in the ballroom like a true pipe organ.
Dracula walked to the front row, with all ceremonial slowness, and stopped at a seat with a little sign on it,
“Reserved: Edgelord Boogle”
He threw the sign behind him and sat in the seat. The skeletons all filed into the rows behind him, filling up every row except for the front. Boogle decided it would be easier to just stand than to take the seat labeled “Reserved: Vladek”.
Two skeletons carted in President Obamer on a dolly, and sat her in the front row. As the skeletons settled down, Toadette emerged from behind the curtain, holding a scepter twice her height and made from solid gold. I mean, probably, I didn’t test it or anything. The moonjackal abruptly stopped Toccata, and began O Holy Night. Toadette didn’t like the occult, you see, but she was willing to officiate if only as a favor to Andrew.
Funny I mention them, because they went through the doors right then, driving slowly in a black windowless van with a painting of a wolf howling to the moon on one side, and a unicorn with wings shooting lazers out of its horn at a manticore on the other. The spoiler was in the shape of an oriental dragon, and it was so large and shiny that the skeletons wondered how they could see. Smoke was emanating from under the chassis of the van, which the skeletons assumed was a cool effect, but it became apparent when the van abruptly stopped that it was more than just fog machines. Andrew stepped out of the car, and in the brief moments that the door was open the skeletons could hear Panama blaring out of the speakers, but then it was slammed back shut.
The lights dimmed, and a spotlight shone on the stage. Andrew walked up to the stage, and Toadette began the oath of edgemastery,
“Do you, o edgelord, solemnly swear that you will defend edgelords everywhere against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the edge; that you take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of edgemaster, so help you God?”
Andrew was visibly not paying attention. Toadette nudged them with the Bible their right hand rested on,
“Oh, um- I do”
“Hail to thee, Edgemaster Andreas XXXVI!”
The skeletons started to celebrate, but their celebration was short lived- A massive bat was standing in front of the spotlight, casting an ominous shadow over the new edgemaster. Instinctively, Andrew looked towards where Dracula was sitting, but he was still there. He didn’t look quite so shocked as everyone else did, though. The moonjackal returned to the Toccata. One by one, every little light dimmed until they were off, and the room stood in blind, stunned silence, until thunder struck outside, illuminating the silhouette of the bat. And then thunder struck again, and it was a silhouette again, but no bat. It was Lemmy.
“Lemmy?”
“What’s wrong, was I not invited?”
“Actually you were, I mailed you like twenty letters”
“Oh, well I don’t check my mail”
Thunder struck again, and Lemmy appeared to be walking down the aisle now.
“Well I’m glad you came! Wow, you really dressed up for the occasion”
“And what occasion is that?”
“My coronation as edgemaster, Lemmy”
“Please, call me Count Lemmy-”
As if on cue, lightning crashed down again, and it was clear that Lemmy was coming for the stage.
“-And I think you’re confused. This is not your coronation…”
“But I got the pink lemonade and everything!”
“...This is master Dracula’s coronation”
“No-”
But Andrew was interrupted, as Lemmy flew from the aisle to the stage in a split second, and at once was holding Andrew above their head like it was nothing.
“-Actually, fine. All hail Edgemaster Ladislaus Draco!”
“Cool it with the Latin”
“I mean Edgemaster Dracula!”
Thus concluded the shortest reign of any edgemaster.
---
Chapter 14: Skeletons from Outer Space!
Mike was on the run. But maybe run wasn’t the right way to describe it, as Mike wasn’t exactly running, rather, they were leisurely sitting under a crabapple tree with a bottle of Cracklin’ Rosé as companion.
“Ah, Cracklin' Rosie, get on board
We're gonna ride 'til there ain't no more to go
Taking it slow
And Lord, don't you know
I'll have me a time with a poor man's lady”
But their date was so rudely interrupted by the sound of dogs barking in the distance.
“Kurwa”
Mike knew that sound, the classic bark of a bloodhound that knew what it was doing. They would have to keep running. They also heard a Shih Tzu... Maybe one of the Stasi agents brought their pet to work?
---
They ran through the woods, so very quickly. They knew these woods well, you see, Mike walks a mile every day. It would seem that the Stasi agents had let their bloodhounds do the dirty work for them, though, because the bloodhounds were following Mike fast, and there were no officers on the other end of their leashes. Mike knew that they couldn’t outrun a dog (well, maybe a small one, but not a bloodhound), so they changed their plan.
Ahead they could hear some kind of rumbling, a train. They ran for the bridge over the tracks, and just as the dogs opened their mouths in expectation of an escaped prisoner to bite into, Mike jumped from the side of the bridge and onto the train.
Mike was very lucky, as they fell into a car filled with mattresses, while the car in front of them was filled with thumbtacks, and the one behind filled with live rattlesnakes. Mike was especially glad not to fall in the thumbtack car, as they were suddenly thinking a lot about tetanus.
The dogs too, jumped, but they sadly fell into the dog-eater car, and, well, you don’t want to know what happened in the dog-eater car. Mike could hear the dog-eater burp, and shuddered at the very thought.
---
The train rode towards the city, and above the metal lip of their car Mike could see buildings cropping out of the ground like cattails rising from a swampbed. But they could see something else, too. Far above the spires and antennae of the city were dots in the sky, dark and circular, and growing in size. It would seem that they were falling towards the Earth.
As the train slowed into its yard, Mike crept out of their car and ventured downwards towards the city streets, but kept an eye on the sky. The dots grew to circles, and there must have been many thousands of them. Mike decided they would have a better view by the lakefront.
---
Mike was standing next to Buckingham Fountain when they first made out what the mysterious circles were. They could just see the strings of parachutes, and then they followed their slender shape down to the apparent paratroopers…
“Pierdolę”
The paratroopers had no skin- They were skeletons. Mike freaked like the whole hell out,
“Guys! Guys! Everybody! Skeletons are coming to invade the city! They’re going to kill everybody!”
A tall man with sideburns and a bowler hat responded by scoffing,
“How dare you interrupt my perfectly peaceful stroll through the park with this- this-”
A skinny punk rocker who looked vaguely like Betelguese finished his thought,
“co*ckwomble!”
An old woman with curly hair who looked much like her tiny white dog with black tears around its eyes continued,
“If you don’t stop saying these preposterous propositions, I will have to call the Lane Tech Stasi! This is a perfectly peaceful park and-”
But she was interrupted as the skeletons landed.
“We are malicious skeletons,
We serve the vampire king!
We are malicious skeletons,
And this is what we sing!
We are bony skeletons,
And we’re invading Earth!
We are bony skeletons,
We have such a skeleton girth!
We are murdering skeletons,
And this is our skeleton verse!
We are murdering skeletons,
You’re going to go in a hearse!”
With that, the skeletons started beating people to death with their skeleton bones.
---
The skeletons knew how to party, at least. They had emptied the auto show (by throwing the cars out of the window and into the lake), and were proceeding to destroy McCormick Place with their skeleton antics. But Mike was one step ahead, or, above- Mike was in the air ducts.
And it was uncomfortable, not just from the head, but because the skeletons were blasting Welcome to the Jungle so loud that the air vents were shaking, and Mike is easily shook. Through the vents they could see skeletons with what must have been real human mullets that they had pulled off of heads, skin and all. Their bony fingers were contorted into the rock and roll salute. Mike thought it disgusting. Luckily, they had time to save their family from that fate. Behind them were crawling Mike’s mom and Other Mike, each less comfortable than the latter to be in an air duct. Mike had put their cousins all into an empty shipping container on the side of Manheim, knowing that they could fend for themselves. Probably.
Other Mike was still criticizing though,
“Brah, JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS THAT?”
“A skin wig”
“Uh-huh… Can we leave now? You know how much dust and human skin cells probably end up in this duct?”
“Well no broski”
“Well bro, it’s a whole lot!”
“Did you want to go in that shipping container too?!”
“No, it stunk in there, like literally…”
“Well I did use it as a bathroom once while I was running from the Stasi”
Other Mike was too nauseous to speak. Kinda lame ngl.
“Bruh, what’s even your plan here?”
“Plan? I thought you were the smart one! You were supposed to make a plan!”
“I didn’t even know skeletons were real until a few hours ago!”
“You didn’t know skeletons were real? Where did you think bones came from?”
“That’s not even what I meant!”
“So what did you mean?”
“Goddammit, you better have a plan!”
“I’LL THINK OF A PLAN!”
The skeletons all looked up at the ceiling ducts… There was a record scratch.
“Shut the f*ck up Other Mike”
“It wasn’t even me!”
The skeletons resumed their party.
Mike and their family crawled until they reached the end of the duct, and out of a slit Mike saw something. Two skeletons, standing in the cold dark alleyway outside of the McCormick Place, disco dancing.
Mike quietly unhinged the grate, and then dropped down in front of the pair like a screaming banshee, and really screaming, because Mike remembered they are afraid of heights as they fell.
“Please don’t tell the other skeletons!”
“What?”
“Don’t tell the other skeletons we were listening to disco!”
Mike yelled up to their brother, still in the vent,
“I gotted a plan!”
“About f*cking time-”
---
A sudden rain fell upon the city, and clouds shrouded the full moon, leaving the already deserted streets as dark and cursed as they could ever seem- And what is an accursed street without a curse? The curse was perched above the tallest antenna on the Sears Tower, lighting all around them, and the curse’s name was Lemmy.
A flash of lightning rained onto the antenna, and Lemmy was gone, descending as a bat onto the streets below to feed on their prey. And they spotted it, someone lost in the street, appearing frightened by what had more than likely been the deaths of everyone they ever knew at the hands of skeleton mauradors. Easy prey.
Lemmy swooped down in front of them,
“I want to suck your blood!”
But they were surprised when the victim responded,
“Lemmy?”
It was their own brother. But Lemmy never talks to their brother anyway, so they sucked the blood right out of his neck without an ounce of remorse.
---
Mike was sitting in the vents, watching over the skeletons as they celebrated their macabre invasion. They peered through the slits in the vent down at the dancefloor, where they saw the disco skeletons walk up, each wearing glittery outfits. Mike was sweating profusely, and the skeletons would have been too, if they had sweat glands, of course.
The disco skeletons began their disco dance, and it was magnificent. As gracefully as a swan beats its wings on a wintry lake, the disco skeletons did the hustle on that floor. The beauty with which they danced hid their pained expressions from the scrutiny of their peers, and slowly a crowd gathered around the floor, each skeleton wanting to watch the show.
Mike started to smile, maybe a little sad*stically, to see that their plan was working. Their vision turned to red and the Ironside theme materialized in their ears. Down below the disco skeletons were throwing glitter in the air for extra pizzazz, but then they heard Mike give the order over a radio-
“Now”
The disco skeletons stumbled for a moment, but then they threw out another round of glitter- But it wasn’t glitter, it was fulminate of mercury, a high explosive.
The other skeletons were taken aback by the blast, literally, they were knocked onto their back[bone]s. A confused skeleton angrily yelled at the disco skeletons,
“That’s not meth!”
“Nobody ever said it was meth!”
“Fair”
Through the radio, Mike beckoned the disco skeletons,
“On with it! Slowasses!”
The disco skeletons addressed the crowd,
“That was just 1 gram! We have a whole pound of the stuff in our bag, and we’re prepared to blow this place to bits if you don’t do what we ask!-”
The crowd gasped.
“-Everybody, we’re going to need you to just um… follow us!”
The skeletons marched in a line, each following the disco skeletons nervously. Mike followed them as well, though stealthily, as they didn’t want the skeletons to turn on them. But they had a feeling they wouldn’t, because they had been warned,
“If you try to mess this up, I’ll tell everybody you listen to disco!”
---
It was twilight when they reached the Luccodome outside of Tfatty Fresh Man Academy. The morning star was just barely shining. Mike sat on top of the Luccodome, trying not to be blinded by its shining glow as the disco skeletons were herding the others inside.
When they were finished, Mike slid down the side, taking significantly longer than at first expected,
“Are we free to go now?”
“Yeah… About that-”
“What do you mean about that? We did everything you asked of us!”
“I was just joking! You skeletons are so sensitive for people with no skin…”
The disco skeletons ran off.
“Hey, give me back my fulminate of mercury!”
“Catch!”
The skeleton motioned to throw it at Mike, which scared them more than half to death.
“I was just kidding!”
“Kurwa”
The skeleton handed Mike their fulminate of mercury, and then ran off towards Eli’s.
---
Mike walked into the doorway of the dome, careful to show the skeletons that they were holding the fulminate of mercury. They tried to stay collected as they greeted the skeletons,
“SKELETONS! You have said that you are spooky skeletons, and that you serve the vampire king! Is this correct!?”
The skeletons nodded their heads, all at once, and it made a horrible xylophonic noise.
“Stop it! Ok, I get it. So you serve the same vampire king who KILLED MY MILDLY LIKABLE ACQUAINTANCE LEMMY!?”
The skeletons were slower to nod their heads now, but they remained honest, and eventually the xylophonic sound reappeared.
But then the skeletons froze, and thunder cracked through the air. Rain fell immediately after, and behind Mike they saw Lemmy, holding a black parasol,
“Mike- I’m not dead”
Mike didn’t care. Mike barely even noticed. Some dust did get in their eyes though. Y’know, allergies. Sometimes their eyes just got a little sweaty too, so.
“Hi, Lemmy, um, really rainy today, huh, I’m getting water on my face, it’s crazy, y’know…Heh-heh”
Lightning crashed down again,
“Mike, what are you doing with all those skeletons?”
“I was just going to blow them up, cause I thought they killed you, but-”
Mike coughed awkwardly.
“-You’re alive”
“Mike, give me the fulminate of mercury”
“Look at you, you know your chemistry. I didn’t think you even watched Breaking Bad…’Cause it’s so inappropriate and we can’t have your perfectly pristine mind tainted…”
Reluctantly, they handed it over.
“Mike, Dracula was just kidding about killing me. It was just a funny haha joke. Do you understand now? I mean, I don’t get it exactly, it must be vampire humor”
“I guess so…”
“Why don’t you come with me to meet him? He’s a really nice guy once you get to know him”
“Well, I don’t know…”
Lemmy tried to do that puss in boots thing, but it just ended up looking like a frog.
“Jesus, fine, if you’ll stop doing that!”
Mike handed Lemmy their fulminate of mercury, and not half an instant later Lemmy held it above their head threateningly,
“Mike, I hate to tell you this, but you’re under arrest”
“For what?!”
“For treason against my master… The vampire king”
The skeletons all started to encircle Mike,
“We are backstabbing skeletons,
Now we have the upper hand!
We are backstabbing skeletons,
We hope you understand.
We are bone filled skeletons,
And we are made of bones.
We are bone filled skeletons,
We like to eat calzones!
We are wicked skeletons,
With nefarious intent.
We are wicked skeletons,
Now to the king you will be sent!”
---
Chapter 15: To Thine Moon Self Be True
Wherever Lemmy went, there seemed to be a storm. It seemed that Dracula had been worried about his new recruit burning up in the sun, but maybe he had overdone it, as it was very impractical, and parasols are cheaper. Lightning was crashing on either side of the lunar lander they were riding in, and the windows were so thoroughly being pelted with rain that they couldn’t see out of them. Lemmy did prefer visual flight rules, but if they were ever to fulfill their lifelong dream of being drafted by the Air Force and bombing the middle east they would need some practice with instrument flying…
Mike did not welcome it. But Mike didn’t really have much of a choice, that is to say, they had as much of a choice as any other prisoner of war tied to a steel support and guarded by three skeletons with skeleton Glocks- Which isn’t really much.
The rain kept falling, though Lemmy didn’t exactly understand how rain fell in outer space, they would have to accept it. They continued their flight.
But then lightning hit the ship, sharply, like a tiny explosion that tore through the clouds and nearly through the windshield too, scaring Lemmy half to death and scarring the hull of the ship with a charcoal luster,
“Guys that was crazy!”
Mike mouthed under their breath, mockingly,
“That’s crazy”
The skeletons just nodded in agreement, maybe hoping that Lemmy would return their focus to steering them back to the moon, but their wish was not granted.
“Like that was just a bolt of lightning that hit the ship, and it went ‘boom’ and everything”
The skeletons kept nodding, but then they were swept off their feet when a second bolt of lightning pelted the ship’s already blistered hull,
“Yikes!”
But as Lemmy said that, turning around for a third time (and we were surprised they got a D on their traffic), another bolt of lightning slammed against the ship. But that wasn’t what shocked Lemmy… What shocked Lemmy was the pair of glowing white eyes they saw ahead of them- Square in shape.
“M-m-m-m-Minecraft in real life?!”
Mike responded, smugly,
“Confirmed”
---
Herobrine boarded the ship at his own behest, surrounded on either side by Lemmy’s armed guards. He looked to Lemmy to initiate the conversation, but they were to bewildered to see that he was alive, so he started,
“Funny seeing you here…”
Mike responded,
“Aren’t you dead?!”
“Well, I died, it’s true, but I respawned. Unfortunately I never slept in a bed here in your dimension, so I respawned at the center of the universe”
“What’s there at the center of the universe?”
“An advanced alien civilization, luckily after I earned some gleeborks (what they call money) I was able to take a space liner back to this sector”
One of the skeletons scoffed,
“Pffft, there’s no such thing as aliens”
Herobrine continued,
“So Mike, what’s up with you?”
Mike responded at a breakneck pace,
“My friend Lemmy stowed away in our boat and then now for some reason they turned into a vampire and I’m really scared and go kill ‘em Hero, go boy, go!”
Herobrine was adamant,
“There must be some reasonable explanation for this”
But as Mike and Herobrine argued, Lemmy slowly crept away from them, creeping towards a big red button in a glass case. Lemmy regretted what they did even while they were doing it, but they knew that this regret was something they could handle and live to tell the long and harrowing tale of, but that failing their master would be certain death- So they did it. They cracked the glass case with one whack of their enhanced vampire strength (trust me, they would have been too weak otherwise). Before they hit the button, they did something they would regret more than the action itself, they mocked Mike and Herobrine, saying,
“Jusqu'à ce que la vue, baby”
---
That button was labeled ‘Gondork norp”, which is of course moonglish for ‘self destruct’. As Lemmy flew through threw the cold and dark expanse of outer space, little tiny pieces of space dust pelting their skin and making tiny little holes, they did not look back at the brilliant ball of red fire that they had wrought, rather, they kept their eyes on the moon, where they would happily relate the news of Mike’s fate to the vampire king. Although, happily may have been an overstatement- Lemmy certainly felt relief in their mission being completed, and hopefully thusly in Dracula no longer feeling the need to threaten them with decapitation every couple of minutes, but they were now mourning the loss of a friend.
But when did Lemmy’s melodramatic vampire emotions ever matter anyway? Mike was in a much more perilous situation, as the fire engulfed the bridge of Lemmy’s ship and swallowed every last breath of oxygen they had to spare. The fire was scalding, sure, but it wasn’t the scalding that Mike noticed in their adrenaline fueled, hazy eyed, tunnel visioned stupor- It was the choking. Oxygen is a finite resource in the many vacuous fathoms of outer space, and fire breathes too.
Luckily for Mike, in that second to last moment they felt a biting but familiar pain, the fire went from a scalding on the outside of their skin to the inside of their soul, and they slept.
---
Lemmy glided over the moon’s dusty surface like a bat, and by that I mean as a bat, because all vampires are in some way a furry. They fluttered their wings to slow themselves until they reached a halt, and perched on the stone railing of Dracula’s throne room balcony on the dark side of the moon. Dracula was busy dictating his memoirs, but he could tell from miles away that Lemmy had come from the rain and thunder falling around them, and he was quick to hide his secret books.
After Lemmy had landed they transitioned (gay?) into their human, or should I say, vampire, form. They slipped off the railing and fell onto the floor.
“So, Lemmy, where is the prisoner? Where is your ship? What be goin on?”
“Your unholy majesty, o edgemaster, the prisoner is dead and the ship is exploded”
“Oh cool”
Lemmy groveled weakly,
“My edgiest thanks, o lord”
---
Mike was in a deep dream, and a constant pain. They couldn’t move their arms or legs, couldn’t open their mouth to scream or even open their eyes, but they could still see. What they did see was dim and ill defined, but shadows raced around them like demons circling their mortal prey. They were in some kind of a crimson cloud, but it wasn’t soft, and it was blowing through the air rapidly. They winced constantly, not knowing how to stop, or even why they were doing it in the first place, and they looked like a raccoon having a seizure.
---
They woke up from this state slowly; at first it was their mouth, finally opening and offering some release; then it was their arms and legs, though in their state they weren’t much use anyway. Finally Mike’s eyes opened, and they were fully back to life, but something about the world looked different. They were laying on a red bed on the beach, and outside of the window they could see the sun rising on a new day, but it wasn’t their sun- It was a square.
“Mike: Kurwa co to jest!?”
But Mike wasn’t answered, as there was nobody there. They were in a small wooden house, surrounded on all sides by a forest with no leaves. There was a painting on the wall, though pixelated, they could make out a plant with red flowers sitting on a windowsill next to the sea. There was a furnace next to the door, and upon looking inside they found some mutton, which they ravenously ate. It seemed that however long they had been out, they had worked up quite an appetite.
They sat on the bed, chomping on cooked mutton, and staring out the window for any sign of life other than their own, for ten minutes, until the sun again sank below the horizon and the moon rose in its place. Mike checked, and it too was square. They put a disk in the jukebox, Rich Niebaum’s Little Tantrums on CD.
---
It was the next morning when Herobrine arrived, immediately placing an entire stack of pork into the furnace upon entry, and then collapsing onto the bed, but not sleeping, as it was daytime, and you can only sleep at night.
“Herobrine: You’re awake?”
“Mike: I’ve been awake for a day now”
“Herobrine: Oh cool cool”
“Mike: How long was I out?”
“Herobrine: About a Minecraft week”
“Mike: That’s crazy”
“Herobrine: You should get us some coal, if you’re up for it”
“Mike: Okee”
Mike wandered off into a cave, still chomping on their cooked mutton,
“Mike: Mmmmmm cooked mutton”
“Herobrine: You know I can read the chat even when you’re down there, right?”
“Mike:...”
---
Mike returned to the surface with ten coals, three iron ores, three stacks of andesite, and sixteen stacks of cobblestone. Herobrine was someone disappointed to see the lack of coal, but with the iron they made a bucket and used some lava to cook the remaining pork. Mike decided to upgrade the house, adding a layer of concrete two meters thick around the walls, for some reason. Herobrine seemed distant though, like something was weighing down on his mind. As Mike was running through the woods outside the house, chasing a pig with an ax, Herobrine finally divulged what was wrong,
“Herobrine: Mike?”
“Mike: Hol up Im busy”
“Herobrine” Mike, I need to talk to you. Trust me, we have enough pork already”
“Mike: 1 sec”
Mike delivered the death blow to the pig, and collected the little green balls that popped out of it, but not the pork itself.
“Mike: What?”
“Herobrine: Mike, you seem well enough now to return to the moon”
“Mike: Oh yeah… The moon. I guess somebody has to defeat Dracula, and if it has to be me-”
“Herobrine: Do you remember your promise!?”
“Mike: Oh yeah, that- I mean- Yes, of course I do!”
“Herobrine: Mike, I want to show you something”
Herobrine pulled a small book from his inventory. It was glittering and shining like an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and it had a distinctly purple tint. Herobrine opened the book, and Mike saw that it was a kind of scrapbook, with pictures plastered on every page, under each one was a small inscription written in moontian cursive.
𝔤𝔩𝔢𝔢𝔟 𝔤𝔩𝔬𝔟
𝔤𝔩𝔦𝔟𝔟𝔩𝔢 𝔷𝔬𝔯𝔟
𝔢𝔢𝔤𝔬𝔬 𝔡𝔢𝔢𝔤𝔬𝔬
Mike was intrigued,
“Mike: Who are those people?”
“Herobrine: That’s me and Dracula”
“Mike: Wow… You two really had a lot of looks… That’s crazy”
“Herobrine: It is crazy”
“Mike: So what happened?”
“Herobrine: I went off to Moon Men University, near the Sea of Muscovy, and had to leave Dracula at home. He didn’t take it well, though…”
“Mike: I walked across the whole dark side of the moon and I didn’t even see one university!”
“Herobrine:...Dracula was so mad when I left, that he- he- he destroyed Moon Men Town!”
“Mike:...”
“Herobrine: After what Dracula did, I had to escape to Minecraft… And that’s where I’ve stayed, ever since”
Herobrine looked down at the floor, though not really at it, but through it. Mike could see in every dimension, but they still couldn’t see what Herobrine was really looking at- And maybe he didn’t know either.
“Herobrine: I think that something about being an edgelord, it corrupted Vladek… He wasn’t the same person, but I knew he could be rescued”
“Mike: Let’s hope so”
“Herobrine: I’m serious!”
“Mike: I made you a promise- And I won’t break my promises. Never”
“Herobrine: I’m trusting you”
As Herobrine chomped into his cooked pork, he typed one last message into the chat,
“Herobrine:/tp @Mike Dracula’s House”
---
Mike appeared instantly somewhere in the human dimension, but they weren’t sure exactly where. Their eyes adjusted to the shadows where they found themselves slowly, but soon enough they could just see the outline of a square frame, and they could feel rumbling underfoot. They were surrounded by cardboard boxes, and they seemed to be on a pallet. Mike crept slowly and quietly to the supposed back of this truck they seemed to be in, and peeked under the crack in the door. They could see nothing but the headlights of the truck behind them… They must have arrived on the dark side of the moon.
The trucks rambled down the rocky, meteorite laden road for hours, leaving Mike, who could not eat their Minecraft food with their now human digestive system, hungry and tired. The trucks slowed to a halt, and Mike could hear the characteristic nasally voice of a skeleton speak,
“State your name. State your business”
“Skelly T. Bones, I’m shipping blood to edgemaster Dracula”
“Moontian or human?”
“I’m a skeleton”
“No, is it moontian blood or human blood”
“It’s human. Fresh from New York City”
“You mean New Dracula City?”
“Yeah”
“I never understood all the name changes, but who am I to judge…”
“Look, I don’t have time to diddle-daddle-fiddle-faddle-blacksheep-blacksheep-have-you-any-wool”
“You’re transporting wool? You have to declare that on the imports form-”
“I’m not transporting wool! Let me in”
“My pleasure”
Mike heard a screechy scroochy sound as the gate’s arm lifted, and then the truck continued moving, and all Mike could think was ‘Pierdolę!’ as they realized in real time that the skeletons would soon open the truck and discover their hiding spot.
---
Skelly T. Bones pulled his old rusted box truck into one of Dracula’s loading bays, and closed the garage door behind him. He trudged out of the truck at a pace so slow it made Mike’s heart, which was already racing with anticipation, skip a few beats. Probably not healthy.
Skelly unlatched the latch and began to hoist the heavy metal door above his head when he saw in the shadows a figure, posed threateningly above him,
“I have a gun”
“Silly human! A gun cannot hurt a skeleton! I’m already dead!”
“It’s an anti-skeleton gun. It kills skeletons”
“Oh-I-I’m sorry”
“You’re going to unload this blood, and then drive away, like none of this ever happened”
Mike was trying to look scary, but it wasn’t really working. The threat of being shot with an anti-skeleton gun however, that did work. Mike slipped out of the truck, and still facing Skelly the whole time, backed out of the garage and into a hallway.
The hallway was dank, and lit with buzzing fluorescent lights, and Mike could hear the sound of trucks being unloaded all around them. There must have been dozens of doors in that hallway, and Mike was taken aback by just how many trucks there were delivering Dracula his blood… Just how many people must have been drained…
But Mike didn’t have much time to dwell on that morbid thought, as one by one the doors started to open, and skeletons shuffled out, each pushing a flatbed cart with a pallet, and on each pallet sat a pile of pitchers, and in each pitcher 0.264172 gallons of blood.
Mike ducked into a closet at breakneck speed, and shut the door behind them. They propped an old moonwooden chair up against the door handle and pulled the chain of the little incandescent light that clung to the ceiling loosely.
But what could Mike use? There was little in the closet, a mop, some road salt, a Swiffer, a duster, some black shoe polish, and a box of white chalk. Mike thought long and hard about it… For about twenty seconds, and then they got to work covering their exposed skin with the road salt. It burned, and it probably wasn’t healthy, but there was literally nothing else in that closet that they could use to make themselves whiter. When they were through they looked nearly as pale and vitamin-D deficient as Lemmy on a good day. But they were missing something- the dark black bags under the eyes. But what could they possibly use that was black? And would it be racist to do so? Mike wasn’t sure, but they knew that they would need the bags for a true Lemmy impression. They looked down to see if they missed anything sitting on the cold concrete floor, but then they saw something- their nails. They had painted onto their nails the perfect, living, breathing images of the cast of the upcoming Minecraft movie starring Jason Mamoa, Jack Black, and Chris Pratt as Steve. They smudged their thumbnail onto their face, smearing the deep black of the ender dragon under their eyes. Now they looked like they belonged on the dark side of the moon.
They stepped out of the closet (hom*osexual confirme?), and were immediately accosted by a skeleton in a golf visor,
“What’re you doing in the closet!?”
“Excuse me, I am Lemmy, a vampire, raaah”
“You are way too short to be Lemmy. Get to work, skeleton, or I’ll have your bones!”
The one thing that Mike couldn’t change- Their height. Of course, they could go full Vincent Freemoon Gattaca Mulligan Biology on themself, but that looked like it hurt, and they didn’t think they could navigate traffic without their glasses.
They walked down to the end of that dingy hallway, and slipped out the door and up the stairs, hoping at some point to find Dracula.
---
Chapter 16: Moscow
Lemmy was standing, or really, hunched over trying to stand, while holding a large chaise lounge in their hands. Dracula was holding the other end with one of his hands, while with the other he held its matching end table,
“Thanks for helping me move, Lemmy, it’s really helping me out-”
“No problem, master Dracula”
“I mean, my old room was nice, but I think I just want the mahogany floor from the east room, right?”
“Right, master Dracula”
“I would’ve hired a moving company, but they don’t come all the way out here, so…”
“I understand, master Dracula. I was thinking, now that you’re moving to the other side of the castle, can I have your old room? It’s just getting so hard to keep my coffin in the cellar, and the rats-”
“Actually, I was thinking that maybe this rain was a little too annoying…”
“You’re getting rid of my rain?! Thank you-”
“No, no Lemmy, that spell was really hard to cast. I think you should move out”
“But where will I live?”
Dracula didn’t respond, he just stared at Lemmy, judgily, as they tried to walk backwards down a spiral staircase while holding the couch.
“Oh, I mean where will I live, master Dracula?”
“I found a nice spot for you, right on the Sea of Muscovy here on the dark side of the moon”
“Thank you, master”
---
It was not, in fact, a nice place. It was an abandoned city, with moonrats climbing on the browned moonvines of rotting moonplants that themselves climbed the bombed out husks of old moonbrick buildings, broken glass littering the pavement, where there was pavement, and all of this destruction was only visible in the volatile light of Lemmy’s torch, which kept extinguishing in the eternal thunderstorm that Dracula had cursed them with.
Lemmy did not want to know what had happened here, but they could not help but to see the signs of it everywhere around them, from the baguettric cars overturned in the street, to the clear outlines of bodies in the ash left by some long forgotten explosion… Though the skeletons should’ve been there… Strange.
Lemmy curled up under a large metal sign that had evidently been thrown across the landscape so that it now straddled the ravaged second floors of two buildings, and on it they read,
MOON MEN UNIVERSITY
“Putting moon men in crippling debt since 1750”
---
Mike didn’t understand how Count Dracula put up with all the stairs, there were a truly ridiculous amount, and by the time Mike reached anywhere near the summit their knees were inflamed and their bones were quaking. They were shivering in their boots, not from fear, but from not having the strength to keep straight (gay?). On top of that, it was hot as balls in there, hotter than even fazballs, and Mike was drenched in sweat, like that lady from Flashdance. Irene Cara? Click clack click clack. Yeah her. Or was I thinking of Footloose? Take you right intoooooo the danger zone-No it was Flashdance. Jesus that word count is not going to go up itself is it. I am going to stop using contractions. Maybe that will increase my word count.
What was happening again?
Oh yeah so Mike was going up the stairs and then they got to the top of the stairs after a little bit of while.
At the top of the stairs they expected to see the sight they had been deading, the sight they had seen once before, the sight of Count Dracula’s pale skin and deep widows peak, which had wrought death on Lemmy and worse- Brought them back to a thin veneer of life.
But that’s not what they saw as they summited the last stone stair before reaching the cavernous throne room, rather, they saw some statues, an empty throne, and a skeletal Moonjackal playing Honky Tonk Man on its honky tonk piano with a dead expression on its face,
“Do you know where Count Dracula is?”
The moonjackal, being a wild animal, could not talk, because talking animals would be scientifically inaccurate, and this fic goes for full scientific accuracy always. It struggled out a reply,
“Bark bark”
Idk what sound a jackal makes ngl.
“You can’t talk…que tristeza”
The moonjackal may not have been able to talk, but it could understand spoken Spanish, because of its time in Spain, which is where Mr. Park lives, but the ‘S’ faded away along with his health and sanity when he started his all Cheeto diet.
The moonjackal’s ears perked up, and it tilted its head.
“Dónde es-”
The moonjackal kept playing the piano,
“Sorry, I mean dónde está el señor Drácula?”
The moonjackal was confused at first, but then it realized that Mike meant ‘el conde’, and it hopped off of its piano stool. It walked off towards a hallway, and Mike followed it.
---
Lemmy was getting a widdle owouwu angwy. Now I’m not talking about your everyday, run of the mill, Mike keeps trying to steal my stuff angy, this was sewious- It was owouwu angwy.
They were cold, and they were eepy, and they didn’t know and why they were. But then they realized, they solved the eternal question that lies at the heart of this universe: What is the meaning of life? And why he eepy?
Lemmy screamed it out into the cold dark abyss they were stuck in, barely audible above the constant pattering of raindrops and intermittent rumbles of ferocious thunder-
“HE EEPY BECAUSE DRACULA IS A BICTHE!”
Nobody responded but Lemmy’s echo.
---
Dracula decided to save the most embarrassing secrets in his memoir to write himself, so that no dictator would need hear it. There he sat, clickyclacking away so many clickyclacks, and why. It took so f*cking long to type his memoirs, and he was only on word 23,134 of his goal of 29,220. He thought about his memoir while he was sleeping. It was literally all he did. He was so ready to be over with it but no, he needed to write 6 thousand more words to be a literature-bichote like Mike. He was so tired. If you’re still reading at this point comment a carrot so that I know who the real ones are.
Literally me rn kill me
Anyway, he was typing there on his little ancient-ahhh typewriter when he heard a knock on the door. He hated knock knock jokes, because he was psychotic, but also because Andrew had already told him so many before. Luckily for him Andrew had voluntarily decided to leave the moon for a vacation around Uranus, the bulbous gas giant that smells of sulfur, so that they could enjoy their retirement after so voluntarily giving up the position of edgemaster,
“Why don’t you just come in!? Why’s it always knock knock this and little old lady that- And by the way, what’s the deal with airplane food?”
Mike stepped in halfway and then stopped themself, amounting to an awkward shuffle into Dracula’s new room rather than a full step.
“Hello, Count Dracula”
“Hello little skeleton? Look, would you get to work already? I’ve got a lot of blood coming in and that sausage won’t make itself-”
“You countyness, I’m not a skeleton”
With their left hand still concealed behind the edge of the doorway, Mike brushed off the road salt from their face, revealing a frankly disturbing amount of blisters, but also that they weren’t a skeleton-
“Oh Lemmy, you’ve gotten shorter? You really look quite Irish today, I see you’re honoring your culture-”
“I’M MIKE!”
“Oh-um, en garde”
The vampire jumped to his feet and produced a bright shining rapier from an umbrella stand next to his desk, but he was interrupted-
“WAIT- I have a silver bullet!”
“Well do you have a gun with it?”
“Yes!”
“Where is it?”
“In my left hand”
“Can I see it?”
“No”
“Liar!”
Dracula rushed at Mike, and in their fear and their desperation- In their brain that was evolved to fight off attacking predators (y’know, if you believe in that evolution sheisse)- They did the one think that they had promised not to do- They laid a hand on Dracula, and in doing so they sealed their fate… The fate of a pinky-promise breaker.
---
Chapter 17: The Moon Also Rises
A flash of light erupted from the one of Mike’s fingers that touched Dracula (it was the ring finger)- The light enveloped Mike, and then they appeared in that pose, locked in their guilty stance with their hands red handed redly, in some kind of an Arab garden. It was hot, and only made hotter by the glare of the judge sitting on the bench in front of them. Mike was only slightly delirious, which is why they asked the judge,
“Hey babygirl, so why am I here?”
A weasely looking man behind them kicked them (gently), and then told them under their breath,
“It’s not babygirl, it’s Miss judge!”
“Are you my lawyer?”
“No, I’m your uncle Hector- Of course I’m your lawyer, stupid! Dumdum! No brain in there!”
“Lay off man”
“Insolent fool! Hollow headed son of a bi-”
Mike’s voice dropped an octave, and they did their patented Mike face,
“Woah there buddy”
“Sorry, look, I’ll do the talking”
The judge banged her gavel on its little gavel circle thing a few times,
“Shut up! I mean- Order!”
Mike’s lawyer walked up to be in front of the bench, and leaned back and forth on his heels,
“Yer honor- My client is guilty”
“Well we can agree on that”
Mike was absolutely losing their yoinkety sploinkity rn,
“I can’t!”
“Order!”
“Mike, I’m trying to fight for you here!”
Indignantly, Mike shat up.
“Yer honor, my client is guilty, and that’s a known fact, but what your honor didn’t know is that my client is not of sound mind!”
“They look fine to my honor…”
“Yer honor, my client has been known to call themselves Gorb. They read ‘Jesse, We Need to Yiff'' multiple times. They are on the Furry registry. They single handedly invented the yoinkety sploinkety, and they have a crippling Minecraft addiction”
“Is this all true?”
“Yer honor, I’m afraid it is. My client doesn’t have the mental capacity in that tiny little birdbrain widdle itty bitty stupid-ahhhh gorb brain to understand the magnitude of their crimes”
“If that is so, then my honor has my verdict. Mike, I was initially going to sentence you to one year in Spain without the S for breaking your pinky promise-”
Mike interrupted,
“OOOOH so that’s what this is for-”
“-But I will be commuting your sentence to one day, and from then on you will have to take pinky-promise-magnitude classes every week for three years. Do you understand?”
Mike nodded like real fast.
---
Mike was expecting some pain, given that Spain without the s spells pain, or maybe I forgot how to spell again, but we’ll see. Mike was happily surprised when they were let out of the Arab garden they were in and were greeted by a sign that read as follows,
BIENVENIDOS A ESPAÑA
WELCOME TO SPAIN
¡Que tengas una buena visita!
Standing next to the sign was the one Panish person they knew- Mr. Park. Mike decided to test out their espagnole,
“Hola senior Park!!!”
“Yeah I don’t speak Panish”
“But you live in Pain”
“Truer words have never been spoken…”
“...”
“Well, I was just going to my house to go sleep on my kitchen table… I don’t exactly have the energy to climb up the stairs to my bed right now…”
“Were you playing a lot of CSGO last night?”
“No, no, I think I’m just sick with something…”
Mr Park sneezed some blood into his elbow. Well, at least he covered his sneeze.
“Cool cool…”
“Oh sh*t- I have a concert in like ten minutes-”
Mr. Park ran off down the brick street into a bar. Mike followed him, but was wholly unable to match his incredible speed. As Mike finally reached the bar, they saw Mr Park singing with his guitar,
“Anyway, here’s wonderwall-”
It was honestly the most mid cover of Wonderwall Mike had ever heard, but they cheered it on regardless, until they got escorted out of the bar.
---
It was about two in the morning when Mr Park’s set had finished. It is normal to stay up all night when you’re living in Pain (given the siestas), but Mike was a bit eepy. They were sitting next to a bush when Mr Park exited,
“And why you eepy?”
“How do you live like this?”
“Pain… Is a way of life”
“That’s deep”
“Do you need a ride?”
“Well…I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight…”
“You can sleep in my car!”
“Woah dude let’s see what OSP has to say about this-”
“Okok you can do what you want”
“Please let me sleep in your car it is so cold”
Mike and Mr Park walked to his car. It was a bit of a carcacha, but he assured Mike that it could race through stop lights like a speed demon. Mike decided it was better not to think about that.
“Why is there a table in your car?”
“That’s my kitchen table I was telling you about!”
“And where’s your bed?”
“The roof is my bed!”
“But… Don’t you have a wife? Where’s she?”
“In the trunk!”
Mike began to look back to the trunk, but Mr Park was adamant,
“DO NOT LOOK IN THE TRUNK!”
“Okee dokee…”
“I know a great place out by Toledo where we can park and nobody will break in…”
Mr Park began driving at a very high rate of speed down the E-5, blowing through at least a stoplight a minute. Mike just balled up into a fetus position and rocked back and forth,
“Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts”
A newly roadkilled coyote blew across the windshield.
---
Andrew was driving at half the speed limit down the E-5 in Jesus’ 2001 Honda Civic, stopping at every stop sign, speed bump, curve in the road, or intersection. Dway Dway the Rock Johnson was angry,
“Hurry the f*ck up lil’ dude! I could run faster than this!”
Dr. Mike responded,
“Woooooooah! You do not talk to Andrew like that!”
“You wanna bet?”
Mike (the doctor) and the Rock started staring at each other like boxers do before they beat each other up, but it always ends up looking like an awkward kiss. Jesus butted in,
“Andrew, why don’t you just let me drive”
“Fine… Jesus. Take the wheel”
Jesus took the wheel, and Deez began driving at a high speed.
---
Mr Park was still zoomzooming down the road. Mike read the signs in horror,
TOLEDO
200
TOLEDO
180
TOLEDO
160
“Are we really going 20 miles per second?! That’s like…”
Mike thought for a moment…
“7200 miles per hour! … I mean 72000 miles per hour!”
“Well actually it’s kilometers per hour, cause we’re in Pain”
“We’re going to be in a lot more pain if you don’t slow the FAZBALLS down!”
“Hey Mike, look at this-”
Mr Park showed Mike his phone, where the most basic millennial webcomic meme was on it,
“KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD! PIERDOLĘ FOR REAL THIS TIME!!!”
Mr Park wasn’t listening though, as he was peering into his side view mirror,
“Mike… I think somebody’s following us”
“Oh damn it’s the cops! I can’t get a moving violation!”
“Relax, you’re not driving, and it’s not the cops… It’s…Jesus?”
Jesus was nearly at Mr Park’s speed, weaving in and out of traffic with Godly precision.
“Jesus what?... Oh wait I know Him”
“You mean Nutz”
“Oh, right”
Deez honked on the horn, and motioned for Mr Park to pull over. Reluctantly, he agreed, and after a shocking stopping distance of one hundred miles, he got out of the car, as did Mike, who broke the silence,
“Andrew? I thought you were on a voluntary vacation to Uranus, the bulbous gas giant?”
“Don’t speak that way about my an-”
Dr. Mike kicked Andrew stealthily, and continued,
“That’s what Dracula thought, but they were really gathering us to go take back their rightful position as edgemaster”
“Omg that’s crazy”
Dwayne the Rock Johnson added,
“Come to the moon with us! We need to rescue Lemmy too!”
Mike responded,
“I’ll come… But we need to bring Mr Park… And nobody hurt Dracula, k?”
Andrew responded,
“K cool”
---
Chapter 18: Do You Hear the Moontians Sing?
Lemmy was tired, and they were cold, and they were wet, and they kept getting struck by lightning- It was making their hair stand up straight. They had decided they would go speak to Dracula, and ask him kindly and sincerely for a new place to live… Or at least a skeleton battalion to help them build a house.
So they flew, in furry bat form, across the lovely lunar landscape, with no illumination but their echolocation to guide them.
They weren’t all that trained in the use of their newly acquired echolocation though, and they were flying through a rainstorm, so they kept accidentally flying up into space and nearly suffocating or flying down and hitting a crater. It was weird, wild stuff. Eventually they landed in some kind of building and… sh*t, it was where they started. Ever the giver upper, Lemmy gave up.
---
Jesus’ 2001 Honda Civic Tokyo drifted into a perfect parallel parking job outside of Dracula’s castle. Mr Park was impressed,
“Where’d you learn to drive like that?!”
“Bethesda… 20 AD”
“That’s crazy”
Mike was mad,
“That’s my catchphrase!”
“Ok gorb”
The… hol up let me count… six clambered out of the car, and banged on the wide metal doors of the fortress. A nasally weasel-ass skeleton answered them,
“Nobody’s here!”
“I got this”, Dwayne assured the group.
He picked up a large moonrock that had been sitting on the ground and began spinning around in a circle while holding it on his rock-hard shoulders, and then he flung it at the door, where it bounced off and hit him in the rock-solid abs, and then bounced off of those onto the door, breaking it off of its many, many hinges.
“G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-Go right ahead!” Said the skeleton.
The sextet filed in, looking like a really weird episode of the power rangers. They had only been walking for a few seconds when they heard the low and eerie drone of an air raid siren humming over the building. Andrew was scared,
“Oh sh*t there’s an air raid!’
But Mike assured them,
“No, it’s just us”
“OOOOOH I GET IT”
The siren wasn’t all they heard, though. Like the sound of a waterfall sputtering down a little rocky cliff, or like dropping literally everything on your bag down the stairs on Quickstart of freshman year, not that I know what that sounds like, the sextet heard hundreds of footsteps coming down the stairs-
But they weren’t ordinary footsteps-
And they were getting closer-
Clippy cloppy clippy cloppy-
“We are hundreds of skeletons,
And we come from outer space.
We are hundreds of skeletons,
You had better get out of this place!
We are incorrigible skeletons,
It’s for killing that we exist.
We are incorrigible skeletons,
And we will kill you six!
We are an army of skeletons,
And we’re coming down the stairs.
We are an army of skeletons,
We will make you very scared!”
The skeletons reached the bottom of the staircase and ran towards the sextet, brandishing bones and axes and sh*t. They filled the entire hallway quickly, like a liquid traveling up the walls of a cup as it falls into place, until they finally reached Mike and the others.
Who fired the first shot? Hell if I know, but then they were straight up brawlin’.
Mike tried to kick a skeleton in the shins, but then they got their foot stuck in its leg bone- The skeleton just stood there biting and screaming until Dwane pulled it off of Mike, and then threw it down the hallway like a bowling ball,
“Hmmm… Skeleton bowling”
Truer words have never been spoken- Skeleton bowling commenced. Mike, using their excessive amounts of strength, picked up a skeleton and rolled it down the hallway, but then it landed in a gutter at the side of the hallway. Dr Mike tried next, saying,
“Heh- Gutterball. Watch the Varshavski in action-”
He rolled a perfect strike, knocking out a few dozen skeletons on the way. Jesus was up next, and Deez was packing heat- A spare.
Andrew was not particularly good at bowling. They rolled a single. Still better than Mike,
“Look Mike! I did better than you!”
It was Mr Park’s turn. He was no fun,
“Oh… I don’t want to… Wah wah…”
Finally, he tried to bowl. And lo and/or behold, he was a master bowler. He got a super-deluxe-extra-mega-strike, which is like a strike but better.
---
After all of the skeletons had been relentlessly thrown against each other, the sextet began climbing the spiral expanse of Dracula’s stupid stairs. Mike complained,
“These f*cking stairs. If Andrew makes me climb them one more time-”
“Why are you blaming me?”
“You’re writing this, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean writing this?”
“You know what you’re doing”
“Geef”
---
They reached the final stair, and just as they had before, they fell at their feet at the summit- But this time there was no floor, but just a net, which Mike fell into hook line and sinker, pole too,
“What the- Guys! Help me! Pleeeeease! Please!”
Mr Park was hesitant, but after seeing the rest of the six hop down into the net, he gently slid down the wall into it too.
“Damn Mr Park no love for Gorb ey?”
“Erm…”
---
The net slowly descended to the darkened depths of the castle, down into the dungeons, where it landed on a conveyor belt. From there it was conveyed for what felt like a mile, until they reached a gate, and outside of the gate they were left in the cold, dark, driftless plain of the dark side of the moon. From the darkness which surrounded them on all sides, Dracula emerged, holding a tiny candle in his hands that he probably got from his local Dollar and Twenty-five Cents Tree,
“So… You six have tried to plot against me… The king of vampires, and vampire of kings!”
“That doesn’t even make sense-” Dwayne blurted out-
“SILENCE! And Andrew, I thought that you were voluntarily choosing to voluntarily take a voluntary trip to Uranus… But you betrayed me! You little bicthe! And Mike… You should have never survived our last encounter! If it was not for that little deus ex machina, you would’ve never escaped! Wait, speaking of deus ex machina, where is Jesus?”
The six- Or rather, the five- Hadn’t noticed that Jesus left. Mike chose to respond, being the firmest in spirit,
“Um… I don’t know, where is Jesus?”
“You IDIOT! You lost Jesus?! Well I’m sure we’ll find Deez soon!”
Andrew butted in,
“Jesus is everywhere!”
“SHUT UP!”
Mike continued,
“Wh-wh-what are you going to do to us?”
“I’m leaving you here today to be fed to my pets! The royal vampire bats!”
He opened his long black cloak, and dozens of bats popped out, screeching all the way.
“Jesus Christ Dracula, there’s children here! Keep your clothes on!” Dr Mike hyelped.
“Oh f*ck off!”
The bats encircled the net like a tornado made of bats encircling a net,
“Squee squee squee! We’re bats!”
“Shut up Mike, nobody likes your bat impression”
“Oh… Sorry”
Dracula cackled,
“It’s time! Say your goodbyes!”
Each of the five said goodbye to each other. Mike said goodbye to Dr Mike, then Mike said goodbye to Andrew, then Mike said goodbye to the Rock, then Mike said goodbye to Mr Park, then Dr. Mike said goodbye to Andrew, then Dr. Mike said goodbye to Mr Park, then Dr Mike said goodbye to the Rock, then Mr. Park said goodbye to the Rock, and then vice versa.
“Fly, my pretties! AHAHAHAHAHA!”
Mike was blushing,
“Is he talking about us?”
“I think he’s talking about the vampire bats” Mr Park replied.
“Have more self esteem!”
“Why bother… It will only lead to disappointment”
“Broski you ok?”
“No-”
The vampire bats descended on the net, practically ripping it to pieces with their sharp and pinchy tooths, and by practically I mean literally, I was just being modest because I’m from the midwest. The bats scratched at Mike, and then started ripping at their brilliant pink hair,
“Ahhh-dayumn- f*cking bats- Wait- owowoowow”
Dwayne held in his screams for a long while, but when the bats bit his nipple, he was screaming like a little girl.
Dr. Mike tried his best to box the bats, knocking a few of them out of the sky, but there were too many, and they were biting below the belt.
Andrew didn’t even care because the bats were scared of their cool spikes on their MCR shirt so there.
Mr. Park was rolling around in the fetal position like a Goron or Sonic the Hedgehog, but he must’ve dropped all his rings, because he was screaming in pain and bleeding from every orifice.
But then, out of the misty shroud of darkness that surrounded them, dim yellow headlights pierced, or really, because it was less like a throwing knife hurtling through the air and more like a slab of melted butter sliding down a shallow incline, seeped through. Dracula was unpleased,
“Wait, is that? Jesus?”
Jesus was driving in Deez’s 2001 Honda Civic with holy precision, making a beeline for the net and the swarm of vampire bats. Deez stopped right in front of the net, and parked nonchalantly. Mr. Park was screaming,
“JeSUS! sAVE uS!”
“Ye of little faith-”
Mike interjected,
“CUT THE SPIEL AND FREE US!”
“Yeah ok”
The bats flew away into the clouds, and the sextet, now reunited, faced Dracula, except for Mike and Andrew,
“Don’t you have eye lazers?!” Mike asked,
“Yeah?”
“Why didn’t you use them?”
“Against animals? First it’s running over squirrels, now it’s shooting the wildlife, on gosh Mike, on actual gosh”
“Jesus…”
“Yes?”, Jesus responded,
“No, not you”
“Oh ok”
The sextet once again faced Dracula,
“What!? What!? My precious vampire bats!? What!? Mike, please, please don’t hurt me!”
“Why wouldn’t I hurt yo- OHHHHH… Guys, don’t hurt him”
Dwayne looked disappointed. Mr. Park looked relieved.
“I made a solemn pinky promise… Some of you may not know it, but pinky promises are sacred. I can’t let any of you hurt him”
“So what will you do to me? 🥺”
“Ew don’t say it like that…Creep ass old man…”
Mike checked their phone rapidly…
“I have a plan. Dwayne, Mike (The Doctor not the me), take Dracula to the highest room of the tallest tower-”
“Like in Shrek!”, Mr. Park added,
“Yeah… Millennials… And put him on the balcony. Don’t throw him off, ok?”
Dwayne winked,
“Yeah, don’t throw him off”
“No, like actually don’t throw him off!”
“Oh actually?”
“f*ck off”
Jesus was displeased,
“Mike, be nice”
“TAKE HIM AWAY!”
---
Dracula was standing on the balcony of the highest room of the tallest tower, a black gothic tower made of lunar brimstone that pierced through the charcoal sky like a bat’s canine piercing through Mr. Park’s skin. It was a very peaceful room despite its eerie surroundings- Long lavender drapes with complex moontian stitching from a long time ago concealed a gaslit drawing room… But today nobody was drawing. Dr. Mike and Dwayne the Rock Johnson were standing on either side of the wide doorway, and in between them stood Jesus, Andrew, Mike, and Mr. Park. Mike was on their phone, looking at something,
“So according to my calculations… We just have to wait a few more seconds…”
“For what?”, Dwayne the Rock Johnson asked,
Mike ignored him,
“Count Vlad Dracula… You have terrorized the moon- And Earth for centuries, and now you will face your end-”
Dracula smiled, a cold and chilling smile that creeped up his face like a worm,
“That’s what you think…”
With vampiric speed he pulled a secret saber from his long draping cloak, and held it in the air,
“EN GARDE!”
Mike was ready though- They squinted their eyes and planted their feet like they had been taught in Taekwondo long before, hands of handiness handily raised in front of them,
“¡OLÉ!”
Dracula swung at them, and they deflected every attack with their hands, slicing and dicing them like carrots on a Cybertruck door,
“I’ll get you yet, Mike!”
“Five…”
“Why are you counting?”
Mike kept pushing, repelling Dracula back towards the balcony,
“Four… Three… Two…”
With one heavy swing, Dracula lobbed off Mike’s middle fingers. Mr. Park threw up. Andrew was holding in laughter.
“One!”
But nothing happened.
“You silly goose of a human being! You think you can tri-”
But then something did happen. For the first time in 7 years, a bright and shining light rose from the clouds of the dark side of the moon… It was the sun, in all of its blazing crimson glory,
“The- The sun?”
Dracula did not look at it, but straight ahead, not at Mike, but through them, and a long way past. His back lit on fire first, and then it spread throughout his hopeless body… A waxy puddle formed on the floor, and he sunk into it like a candle being worn through. The smoke was noxious, and singed the very air that surrounded it. He sunk further, until all that remained was a bubbling green soup, a bloodstained saber, and two vampire teeth.
---
A solar eclipse is a once in a lifetime event, made all the better when viewed on the dark side of the moon.
Mike picked up the saber, dripping with their own blood, and then took the teeth with their other hand,
“Let’s burn these teeth…”
“What about the sword?”, Mr. Park asked,
“Erm actually it’s a saber and I’m keeping it”
“But it’s probably cursed!”
“Nah it’s fine”
---
Mike was talking to Lemmy on Flart. It seemed that they had finally come around to the fact that Dracula was a beast more than a man, and that Lemmy had been duped. It did help, of course, to hear that he was finally dead, and that his teeth that had once pierced Lemmy’s neck now sat docile in Mike’s tiny, tiny hands.
The 2001 Honda Civic rolled slowly down the glass sprinkled streets of some wrecked and ruined city, slowing before reaching a pair of tall brick buildings that were straddled by an old metal sign. Hanging from the sign was a bat, wearing a pair of serial killer looking glasses, and hidden away in the sign’s shadow.
Mike stepped out of the 2001 Honda Civic, glass crunching underfoot, and sinking into the muddy puddles that abounded. The eclipse was wearing off, and the sun was starting to fall to the horizon, but Jesus had turned on the high beams, so Mike felt safe enough…
“Lemmy! Where are you!?”
The bat flew away, screeching, and Mike was left with silence as their response.
“Lemmy?”
Mike was met with more silence, and answered by only their echo, until Lemmy came walking from one of the brick buildings on either side of them,
“Oh, Lemmy, there you are!”
“Yeah dumbass I was right here!”
“Why’d you take so long?”
“I was just um… Taking a shower”
Mike peered into the battered building behind them. It looked like no place to live, let alone shower- But Lemmy’s hair was still wet. Mike decided not to ask questions…
“Are you like… Okay bro?”
“I’m fine” Lemmy lied.
They piled into the 2001 Honda Civic, and as they rumbled across the rapidly darkening lunar landscape Jesus turned the radio up…
“You’re listening to 93.7…”
The moontian on the other end took a breath in, to properly bellow out the next word…”
“FM”
He continued,
“Moon City’s rock and roll McDonalds, and we’ve got good news to share- The skeletons have crawled into their graves- It really is a sight to see. In other news, Gordon Ramsey has been arrested on charges of kidnapping, Obamer has won the presidency for a fortieth straight win, the knee gnasher was drawn, quartered, and shot, and the people of the US appear to be bouncing back from the skeleton invasion by mailing all of the bones to Pain… Those poor Panish people… Well now that we’re out of the canals I think it’s time for a classic song from the good old days… Them days of yore… Do you remember?”
“Damn these DJs never shut up…” Lemmy said.
“That’s right! You do remember… The trans rat rap”
Hey, I’m Mista Cheese, and do you ladies know where we’re going?
The Cheesecake Factory!
Rest in peace Biggie Cheese… This one’s for the real ones out there… You know who you are…Unh! Unh!
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Why she lookin like that
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Yo she lookin kinda phat (uh)
Yo miss rat (hey) you lookin so pretty (uh)
I wanna take you downtown to rat New York City (right)
Gonna take this gorgeous rat to the fanciest diner
Buy her all the fancy cheese I’m gonna wine and dine her (yo)
Trans Rat Trans rat
Yo you know I love you right
Trans Rat Trans rat
Getting down on one knee tonight (I do)
Trans rat Trans rat
Yo I’ll show you I ain’t no clown
Trans Rat Trans rat
I respect your f*ckin pronouns
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Wanna revamp your whole closet
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Well let’s go shopping, here’s my wallet
Trans Rat trans Rat
Gonna buy you what you deserve
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Yeah we’re going to the mall, gurl
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Yeah you’re looking so adorable
Trans Rat Trans Rat
But gurl that jumpsuit kinda horrible
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Yo having healthy disagreements
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Is key to relationship achievements
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Growing out of our old feelings
Trans Rat Trans rat
Yo Personal growth is appealing
Trans Rat Trans rat
Now you’re filing for divorce
Trans Rat Trans rat
Yeah you get the house, of course
Trans Rat Trans rat
Going our separate ways
Trans Rat Trans rat
Wouldn’t be the woman I am today (w/out you)
Trans Rat Trans rat
Gurl you know I’ll always care
Trans Rat Trans rat
Gurl I’ll always be right here
Trans Rat Trans rat
Finna wish you all the best
Trans Rat Trans rat
Hope your new fresh start is blessed
Trans Rat Trans rat
Now ur giving back the ring
Trans Rat Trans rat
Wouldn’t change a goddam thing
Yo let’s break it down
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Yo the years go by and we both grow older
Reconnect with social media cause we’re both feeling bolder
Yo you’re glowing like a queen You’ve been taking your hormones
Yeah a couple wrinkles here and there but you’re beautiful just so you know
And we talk and we laugh like the way it used to be
Turns out I miss you and you miss me
Yeah we lie alone in separate beds every morning, every night
And we swallow down our feelings cause we both know it just don’t feel right
Yeah we had a few lovers, a girlfriend or too
But they just ain’t me, and they just ain’t you
Cause it’s your rat face I’m thinking of when I turn out the lights
And it’s me you wanna eat cheese with and share the first bite
We’ve both been going to therapy (same therapist, yo)
And we’re working out some tough feelings (trauma, gurl, woah)
Turns out you felt stifled by my over-affection
Turns out I was traumatized by childhood
Neglection
So we take a chance to try again, be vulnerable and soft
And just like that we realize exactly what we lost
So I swallow my pride, and you swallow yours
And pretty soon we’re remembering what we longed for
Can’t live without you rat gf, I need you in my life
Let’s renew our rodent vows, become my new rat-wife
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Falling in love all over again
Trans Rat Trans Rat
So glad I let you in
Trans Rat Trans Rat
(Uh) I’m sorry for the pain of the past
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Let’s move on cause pain can’t last
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Wanna grow old with you
Trans Rat Trans Rat
Trans Rat wife, “I Do.”
(Hey, let me take it from the top)
Yo your trauma can only hurt you if you face it all alone
People aren’t meant to be like that, no need to take it solo
Build a support network, go to therapy
You will soon discover what was lying underneath
The real you, chained up by the trauma you endured
Set free by your healing will, and you go on to conquer
Learn new healthy habits, learn to fall in love
Learn to put yourself first, rather than get smothered
Strength lies not in what you lift or who you push aside
The strongest souls can face their demons and move on with pride
So love your friends and love yourself there’s only one of you
If even one of you is lost, that’s more than we can lose
You’re worthy and you’re valuable, from the weakest to the strong
Life is but an instrument, it’s up to you to play the song”
---
A grave in the cemetery of moon city sat crumbling and damp, having been pissed on by a passing moontian… On its side it was etched as follows-
Herzog Vlad Drakulya
Havasalföldi Vajda
And in clear, newly etched letters, as sharp as the Lance of Longinus that was being thrust into Dracula’s gentle little side in hell at that very moment…
1428-2024
Chapter 19: The Moon Abideth Forever
Mike and Lemmy sat together on the assembly line at the Lane Tech gulag. Andrew wasn’t there because Dr. Mike had excused their absences. They were making chlorine for pools, but it kept getting in their eyes and lungs. Mike coughed out a sentence,
“This cough place cough sucks!”
“I’ve seen cough worse…”, Lemmy replied.
“Well cough cough, at least I’m not a wheeze vampire!”
“I’m not a cough cough cough vampire anymore!”
“Likely cough cough story!”
“Well Jesus said I was cough cough cured!”
“Well cough cough lah dee cough dah!”
They kept working on their batch of chlorine, grinding in some road salt that was stuck on Mike’s skin for good measure.
---
As night fell and darkness covered the city, though not so fully as on the dark side of the moon, the guards let the pair out, and they shuffled over to the bus, tired from their day of backbreaking penal labor. Mike went on quickly, but Lemmy lagged behind,
“Hurry up dumbass! Slow! Slow!”
“Erm, actually, I left my violin unlocked! I need to go lock it”
“Well I’m not waiting for you! Loser!”
Mike ran off towards the back of the bus, cackling at Lemmy’s big L, not looking out the window as Lemmy walked in the opposite direction of Lane, and into a dark alleyway next to Number 1 Chop Suey. They stayed there, hunched over behind a dumpster (although they really didn’t have to hunch, being so short and all), until they saw the bus roar past. Now alone they stood up, and knowing Mike would never enter Number One Chop Suey for as long as they live, they tried the back door handle. Locked. They pulled on the handle with some kind of arm strength that couldn’t’ve been natural from them, and it snapped off like peanut brittle. Mmmm peanut brittle.
They walked into the kitchen silently, like an owl at wing, and left the cover of the streetlights into the darkness within.
A wooden door sent a creaking sound out the doorway and into the alleyway, but nobody heard. A woman screamed, but it was muffled quickly.
Lemmy drifted out of the shadowy door frame, wiping blood from their chin, and stepping out into the pale moonlight that streamed down on the alleyway. Nobody saw them… And nobody would believe it if they saw- The two little bite marks punched through the woman’s neck.
THE END
BONUS
