“Can you guys just fuck off already?” I asked politely. He declined.

  It was the first time I’d heard him speak, and he had the exact type of voice I would’ve expected — deep, monotone, commanding.

  “You have to die,” he said. “Both of you. It’s either you or us. There is no compromise. The Reverend will have you both, and then he will bring this great nation to new heights!”

  “That’s just about the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard in my li—”

  He claimed up another tree and made another canopy of foamy that covered the entire gorge.

  This shit again? Really?

  But he wasn’t concerned with avoiding his partner anymore. The entire canopy closed in on me, curling inward and creating a bubble that I couldn’t escape from. Slowly, it got smaller, smaller. I shot slime through it, but it was so thick that it closed up before I could see any daylight. It kept coming closer, until I couldn’t move, and I could feel bits of foam finding their way into my throat, burning like hot coals.

  And then it went away. The damn thing just disappeared. I could see daylight again.

  I looked up, and Shane had come back to grab the motherfucker out of the tree, and they soared through the air like an eagle and a rat. They ascended higher and higher until they were barely visible, and then Shane stopped moving. Mr. Foam didn’t, however. He fell through the air, shedding foam from his body the whole way down. But he wasn’t fast enough, and the majority of his body made contact with the ground. His face was pulverized beyond recognition and his back split open, spilling out white and yellow fat and amorphous organs.

  The shapeshifter killed him.

  Shane descended back to Earth, landed on the other side of Mr. Foam’s corpse, and popped himself back into the shape of a man.

  “Shit, I figured you were halfway to Mexico by now,” I said.

  “Probably would be if I could, but nobody’s getting out of here anytime soon,” Shane replied. “Where’s Kim?”

  “Who?”

  “The girl with the long hair,”

  “Oh, fuck if I know,” I said. “She’s been hiding in the trees since you dislocated her arms. We should probably get back to Mickey, though. He’s looking pretty rough.”

  “Not as rough as you, Lumpy,” Mickey said behind me. His face was clear, his limbs were mended — he looked like a million bucks.

  “Guess your mark somehow got something out of that fight, even though you did jack shit,” I said.

  “Of course he did,” Shane said with his finger up in the air like some kind of fucking nerd. “Anyone who participates gets a cut of the defeated foe’s soul at the end of the fight.”

  “Their fucking what now?” I asked politely.

  “Their souls. Well, parts of their souls, at least. I can explain more later. We should probably get out of here — I should probably get out of here,” Shane said.

  “We have a couple hundred people under our command. We can’t just fuckin’ skedaddle on out of here,” Mickey said. I nodded in agreement.

  “Shit. You’re gonna need to get rid of them. Kim’s probably long gone, but if you see her, kill her. When everything’s taken care of, Meet me at the old Piggly Wiggly. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Get rid of them? What the fuck do you me—” I tried to ask, but he had already sprouted his skin wings and flapped his way into the air.

  Aside from the corpses on the ground, Mickey and I were alone. He was chipper, zipping around the gorge even faster than he could before. Meanwhile, I itched inside like a motherfucker. My mark wanted to progress two times at once now. A pressure was building in my body and making my limbs tingle.

  “Fuck yourself,” I said to myself.

  “But it would be so useful,” I replied to myself. “And you’ll have to kill some more. If it builds up too much, who knows what will happen.”

  “Good point. Fuck yourself.”

  I didn’t realize that this conversation was taking place out loud until I noticed that Mickey was looking at me like I was a special needs child.

  “You alright, bud?” he asked with an eyebrow raised.

  “Yeah,” I lied, and tried to hide the fact that it felt like I was rotting from the inside and that every movement took ten times the effort it usually did. “Let’s get back to HQ.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Wait,” Mickey said. He ran up to me, popped the shell off of my blister, and pressed it in. “There ya go. You just forgot to press your blister — probably why you were lookin’ like shit.”

  “Fuck!” I shouted. The mark took the liberty of going all the way down my arm. It progressed as much as it could while it was able, not giving me any options. I hate to say that it felt amazing, but it did. It felt pretty good each time, but having so much bullshit built up inside of me and then releasing it all at once — I damn near passed out from the bliss. I fell to my knees, then onto my face. When I got up, I felt like I could bitch slap God and tell him to say sorry.

  Without thinking about it, I held my hands into the air like a goddamn sorcerer. A river of slime flowed through my forearms and out of my fingertips, slowly, clustering together until a big, wet ball hung in the air in front of me. I moved my hands and the slime moved with them until it took the shape of a horse, or some sort of large four-legged animal, at least. I don’t know what to tell you; I’m not a fucking sculptor.

  “Good lord!” Mickey guffawed. “Just what in the Sam Hill is that?”

  “That’s my trusty steed, bitch,” I replied. I knew it looked like shit, but it still felt pretty badass to conjure a creature out of thin air. There were no features on the thing’s face, but it moved its head to look at me anyway, as if to say “Hop on”. So I did.

  Or at least I tried to. Turns out a fucking snot-steed isn’t the sturdiest mount in the world. I jumped up onto its back and sank right through. Of course, Mickey thought that was the funniest shit in the world.

  “Fuck off,” I said as I got up and pulled the slime off of me and back into an amorphous ball. I probably should’ve known that would happen, if I’m being honest, but I was buzzing too hard at the time to think I could make a mistake. I lifted my arms up again, this time sending dark sludge through my arms and out of my hands until a big ball of sticky black shit hovered in front of me. I molded that into a horse-shaped thing too, but it wasn’t much better. The damn thing moved like a damn turtle.

  “Gus, can we get a fuckin’ move on please?” Mickey said.

  “Hold your fuckin’ horses,” I replied, cringing at my choice of words. “I think I got it this time.”

  I held my hands up for a third time, this time a little farther apart, and created a ball of sludge with one hand and a ball of slime with the other. The sludge ball became the top half of the horse so that it could actually hold my ass, and the slime ball was the bottom half so it could actually move my ass. It was perfect. I hopped on the motherfucker and slid off towards the compound, the wind blowing through my greasy hair.

  It took a minute to build up speed, but when it did — holy shit. I probably could’ve entered that bad boy into a drag race. Mickey, lighter on his feet and faster than ever, still got ahead of me, but our top speeds seemed to be about the same. We both got to the compound in less than a minute, and everyone was outside waiting for us.

  Mickey gathered his goons and led them to the back of the plantation house. My crew looked a bit smaller than I remembered, but Mother Dora, Caleb, Gerald, and Clodagh all sat in a group on the front porch with baldies standing around on either side, looking exhausted.

  “How many did we lose?” I asked.

  “Thirteen,” Clodagh said. “Unlucky. We were ripping them to shreds until some fat cunt came bouncing through on her arse saying somethin’ about ‘bombaclot’ or somethin’ like that. She crushed about eight of us before fucking off. The rest were shot in all of the confusion.” The more she spoke, the more pissed she looked. She said something in a language I had never heard before. I didn’t ask what she said, but it was probably something along the lines of “I’ll rip those cunt’s throats out with my teeth,” or something like that.

  “Everyone else is alright though?” I asked, trying to move away from the subject before she hit someone.

  “Yeah,” she said. “There were a few with injuries — gunshots and whatnot — but Gerald’s patched them up. Thank fuck for him.” Gerald beamed a few feet away from her.

  “Some of their wounds looked pretty dicey, but I figured it out. Glad I could save some of my former pupils and keep most of the army intact,” he said.

  “Yeah, thanks for doing your fucking job. I’ll be sure to commission a fucking statue in your honor when this is all done,” I said. “Back to the goddamn point of discussion — we need to get out of here, and we need to split up. We met someone while we were out there. A double agent. He’s marked and he wants to help us. Mickey and I are gonna meet up with him.”

  I called for Mickey to get his ass over here, and he and his goons came back around to the front porch.

  “Mickey, Caleb and I are gonna be heading off now, and we probably won’t see any of you for awhile, or ever again,” I addressed the crowd. “With this double agent’s help, I think we can take these motherfuckers out, one by one, but we need your help. We need you guys to fuck as much shit up as you can, to be thorns in their asses. We’re gonna split you up into three groups, each with seventy-five of Mickey’s men, ten baldies, and led by Clodagh, Mother Dora, and Anita. Now, before you big boys start to bitch and moan about a powerless old lady leading you, just fucking listen. Actually, where is Anita?” I just realized she was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Darius, or Mee Maw, or Bruce, Marv, and their shitlin.

  Everyone looked at each other, expecting someone else to have the answer.

  “Alright, two groups, Mother Dora and Clodagh, now fuck off!” I said and ran into the compound. Caleb followed behind me.

  “They’re not in here,” he shouted. I was already at the secret entrance in the maintenance closet. I ran back towards him.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Mom left,” he said. “She said it was too much. That this was pointless, and that we were all going to die.”

  “A couple of guys roll up and she thinks we’re doomed? Fuck her. I hope she comes back and sees the bodies we left here,” I said.

  “It wasn’t because of the attack today. She said that she was planning to leave anyway, and this just made her do it sooner. This is what made her leave.” He took a folded up sheet of printer paper out of his pocket. I snatched it from him and unfolded it. It was a blurry aerial shot from a drone’s camera that showed hundreds, thousands of clayhounds, dirt golems, and I don’t even fucking know what else, standing together against tanks, airplanes, and little green men shooting at them.

  “These men weren’t Alec’s army,” Caleb said. “That’s Alec’s army.”

  I looked at the picture for a few more seconds. Was Alec really capable of doing all of this? Could he single-handedly conjure an army? And if so, what else was he capable of? The thought made my bowels quiver.

  “Whelp,” I said. “Bye bye Anita. Thanks for the fucking goodbye present, I guess. Let’s get to The Pig and ask our new friend about this goddamn insanity.”