The foam cloud was huge, several times wider than the tree I was perched in, so I had no choice but to jump down and meet Jamaican Paula Dean and the news anchor looking asshole head on. The long haired girl hid behind a tree. Shane must have known that rendering her arms useless would render her useless. Still, even with that advantage, it looked like we were fucked. He shot another stream of foam at me with more force. It was still plenty slow enough to dodge, but it lingered in the air, taking up space in an already cramped arena.

  “Come with us. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” the man said.

  “Suck our asses, fuckhole,” replied Mickey. I pretty much agreed with his sentiment on that one. Mickey lunged at the man and poked him in his exposed neck, and he burst instantly.

  But he wasn’t dead. His blood and organs didn’t fly into the air. He burst into a thin cloud of foam, filling up half of the grove with dense fog, and completely engulfing Mickey. Mickey fell to his knees in a fit of coughing. The coughs alternated between sharp and wet, and reminded me of the time he tried to smoke crystal out of an old lightbulb. It didn’t sound good.

  It wouldn’t be long before he suffocated, that much was clear. I had to get him out of there. The only thing I could think to do was make a bubble of sludge around my head. There was one problem with that, however — I couldn’t see shit. I probably looked like a shit lollipop, stumbling around with a fucking sludge balloon covering my head. I tried to move in the direction of the coughing and waved my arms wildly until I felt a douchebag. The coughs grew louder, and eventually I felt the crooked bridge of Mickey’s nose. I grabbed him and ran.

  The inside of my helmet was getting sweaty and the air was going stale. I needed to move quickly. I figured I’d just turn around and run the way that I came and I’d be out of the cloud, no problem. But when you can’t see a single shit, it turns out it’s pretty damn easy to lose your sense of direction. Was “back the way I came” directly behind me? Was it a little more to the right of me? A little to the left? I had no fucking idea, and I didn’t have time to find out. I just turned and ran, holding Mickey in my arms like he was Shaggy and I was Scooby-Doo.

  The air was getting real thin in there. I felt like I’d somehow forgotten how to breathe. No matter how many breaths I took, it felt like it wasn’t enough. My lungs started to scream for air. I didn’t know where I was or if I’d made it out of the cloud just yet, but I wasn’t thinking rationally anymore. All I knew was that I wanted that fucking helmet off of my head.

  So I took it off.

  And took a breath.

  Holy shit, it felt amazing. I was several yards clear of the cloud, which was already moving back into itself, condensing back into the form of a man. I took in a long draw of cool, crisp air, and it was like a bump of fucking Percocet in my nose — it felt so good. I put Mickey on the ground. He was still coughing, and his face was so red that it was almost purple. He wasn’t going to be any help for a while. It was two against one, if I was lucky — who knows when that long-haired girl would figure out how to put her arms back in their sockets and come out of the trees to fuck me up.

  Jamaican Paula Dean stood to my left, laughing her jolly ass off. Mr. Foamy stood to my right, completely reconstituted, looking at me with stoic contempt.

  I’ll admit, I was scared for a second or two. Mickey was fucked up. How much of that foam could I inhale before I was taken out too? And how long could I avoid it with a crazy old lady bouncing at me?

  I guess I was going to find out.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I shot a stream of slime out of my left hand and a stream of sludge out of my right. Mr. Foam dodged the sludge with ease — but that was ok with me, I just wanted to keep him moving. Jamaican Paula Dean wasn’t so fast, and the slime slapped against her gut and pushed her back. She wasn’t easy to knock over, though. She kept her feet firmly planted in the ground and dug up dirt as she was pushed back into a tree. After a few seconds, she was a rosy-cheeked, white-haired booger, completely covered in slime, but she didn’t give up. I continued to shoot off sludge at Mr. Foam to keep him from shooting off more than a few suds at once, and moved the slime up towards Jamaican Paula Dean’s face. The slime went directly into her mouth and up her nose, but she still didn’t fall to the ground. She didn’t even try to move her head out of the way. The crazy bitch opened her mouth and started drinking the slime with loud gulps. She made it sound positively goddamn refreshing.

  I’d gotten nowhere with these people.

  “Dat di best yuh got? Mi dead wit laugh!” Slimy Jamaican Paula Dean put her hand in front of her face and shouted. Then, with the form of an Olympic swimmer, she kicked off of the tree and slid at me. I had no choice but to stop shooting and get the fuck out of the way — but that wasn’t the end of that. She kept going until she hit a tree behind me and bounced right off of it like goddamn pinball and hurtled back in my direction. I dodged it again, and she hit another tree. Her momentum seemed to increase with each ricochet until she was slimy, laughing blur shooting across the grove in random directions. I dodged her one more time and picked Mickey up and threw him, still coughing wildly, into the woods before she could crush him. It was all I could do to avoid her, which was a big fucking problem when Mr. Foam was up in a tree and creating an overcast over foam clouds. I looked up at the blanket of death floating above me and a column of foam came down towards my face.

  Fuck.

  Now I had two assholes to dodge. It was clear he was trying to be careful and not hit his partner, so he waited until I dodged her and then sent down a pillar of foam. It sounds predictable, but this wasn’t a video game boss. Their timing would change; sometimes Jamaican Paula Dean would take two or three bounces before heading my way, and sometimes Mr. Foam would send down multiple pillars and in multiple directions. It was pure fucking chaos, and I had to make my way through it unscathed.

  I tried to make my way towards the edge of the grove, towards a tree that I could get on to get the fuck away from this elastic asshole, but Mr. Foam would block my way each time. It was frustrating — beyond frustrating. The stalemate really started to piss me off, so I said fuck it — break my legs if you can, you white southern-looking Jamaican asshole.

  I dug my feet into the dirt and shrouded myself as much sludge as I could muster in a half-second. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the collision, but it didn’t come. I opened up an eye slit to see what was happening, and the bouncing had stopped. So had the foam. Both of them were running towards the tree line — towards Mickey. I had done exactly what they wanted me to do.

  Mickey crawled away from them, but it was pointless. They each picked up a leg and snapped it. I never thought I’d hear such a pained howl come from Mickey ever again, but they were strong, and they were ruthless. Within seconds, they had beat Mickey to within an inch of his life. I moved as fast as I could and got behind Mr. Foam in a second and wrapped sludge around his stupid fucking face. He was taken by surprise and struggled to breathe. Foam shot off of every part of his body, but evidently, he couldn’t evaporate nearly as quickly by himself as he could when Mickey popped him. He slowly floated away in the wind as a stream of foam while clutching the helmet and trying to pry it open at the same time.

  Jamaican Paula Dean didn’t pay me or Mr. Foam any mind and continued to wail on Mickey. It seemed like the only thing she wanted in this world was to kill him. I know the feeling, and I could see it in her. But why did she hate him so much? How could she hate someone she didn’t even know more than I hated him? Was it pure loyalty to Alec? Was it her mark egging her on, shouting at her to kill, to nourish it with Mickey’s life force?

  I guess we’ll never know.

  I jumped on her back and attached myself to her with patches of sludge on my thighs. Then I put my hands over her ears and sludged with all of my might, filling up her ears, then her head, until it started to extrude through her nose, her mouth, and from under her eyes. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t scream. She fell to the ground, mouth still agape, waiting to suffocate.

  Mickey looked like a plate of puked-up spaghetti, but he was alive. I would’ve loved to feel relief at that moment, but Mr. Foam was done solidifying, and stood behind me.