Once upon a time in the year 3086 there was a planet called Sifillis, and on this planet there was a continent called Pus, and on this continent was a country called Bonertania, and in this country there was a city called Schmegma, and in this city was a huge structure called Videotape Palace, and in this structure dwelt the Flatulenz Fairy Tremorroid Titiana, ruler of all of Bonertania.

  At least that’s where she usually dwelt, for on this morning Titiana was missing. She had completely disappeared. Vanished. Not one of her friends knew what had become of her.

  It was her super best friend Montana Shingles who first discovered it. Years ago Titiana had asked Toosh Islander Montana- or “Mono” to her friends- to move into the palace, just because Titiana loved Mono and wanted to hang out with her as much as possible, and Montana said yes. Mono’s job was being Vice-Tremorroid of all of Bonertania.

  Lately Titi and Mono had been hanging out a lot with Soda Olheiser and Pucas. The two were younger but were interesting hang-outs and adventure comrades, and the duo knew almost as much as them about horror movies.

  One morning in Titi and Mono’s home theater in their top-floor apartment in Videotape Palace, Soda proposed the friends make a journey into Schling Quadrant- or “Schlingquad”- which was one of the four great quadrants of Bonertania. Soda grew up living in Schlingquad at a desolate drive-in theater called the Schmahoning, but now she lived with her uncle and some friends not far away from Schmegma City in the bustlingly busy Schmahoning II.

  “I heard they just opened this great all-horror mom and pop video store in Schling next to Ray-Nor’s Lanes in the Yickytow District. We could do a deep dive into their inventory and then go roll a few frames at the bowling alley,” Soda said. Soda had black hair and eyes and purple lips and eyelids and ivory white skin and wore all black clothes- hoodie, T-shirt (today with a white Zymolytic Capybara icon on the front), trousers, socks, underpants and sneakers. Her black-framed glasses were slightly too big for her face.

  "I'd like to go," said the rotund, very blonde Mono. She loved horror movies and bowling. Mono was wearing a jumpsuit from her extensive jumpsuit collection, today’s was brown with an orange stripe down the right side.

  “Me too,” said Pucas, who was a three-foot-tall, mauve, felt-skinned puppet-class yokai with a terd-shaped head (terds were what they called eggs on Sifillis). His head had no features save a wide, unsmiling mouth; to see he wore thick thaumaturgic glasses with black-dot eyes in the white lenses. He wore the exact same outfit as Soda except his T-shirt was dark blue with a black Sal Ammoniac icon on it.

  "All right," said Mono. "I'll go and see if Titi wants to go with us.”

  The night before Titiana had excused herself early and gone to bed after the first movie they watched (“A View to a Gill”) because she was having a heavy period. Mono, Soda, and Pucas then watched two more movies (“Smelta Force”, “Berettacuda”), all three falling asleep before the end of the last one. They all slept where they sat or lay- Mono and Soda in recliners, Pucas on a couch- so Mono hadn’t been to the bedroom she shared with Titiana yet that day. As soon as Mono, Soda, and Pucas had woke-up they buzzed the galley for some interns to bring them up breakfast. Then they put on another movie (“Next of Fin”), during which Soda proposed her video-store-and-bowling-alley-outing.

  “You don’t have to pause the movie, I’ve seen it a million times” said Mono as she jumped up and walked to the bedroom she and Titi shared, expecting to find her SBF moaning about cramps and bloating. But while the bed had clearly been slept in, of Titiana not a trace was to be found. The only occupant of the bed was Mono’s brown-and-white antennaed half-Jack Russel/Half-Shih Tzu puppy-dog-shaped yokai pal Vira. Vira yipped and then jumped up off the bed and ran up to Mono, the eager pet standing on her hind legs for some attention.

  Very much surprised, yet still with no fear that anything amiss or untoward had happened to Titi, Mono picked up Vira and returned through the boudoir to search the other rooms of the suite, starting with the rumpus room. But Titiana was nowhere to be found in any place in the apartment.

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  Mono went out into the hallway to the next door over: Flackfizer Jodo’s apartment. The Flackfizer and the Spork Armadillo sat in the open doorway. As flackfizer, the rotund, chocolate-complexioned Jodo was third in command at Videotape Palace after Titi and Mono. Some mornings when she had nothing on her schedule Jodo liked to sit in her doorway, listening to a movie play on her 100 inch TV set while she sewed a new outfit, sketched a new comic strip, or read a book. That way she could chat with any other tenants who walked by. Several of their friends who kept apartments on the top floor- including Pucas, Rumplemuss, Denny “Nutzo” Nutz, and the Ratsack Golem- were wanderers by trade and came and went randomly, so one were never sure who would appear walking down the hall.

  Jodo was at that moment knitting a sweater for the Spork Armadillo, who sat at her feet- at least, where her feet would’ve been: Jodo’s legs had been unfortunately, thaumaturgically severed above the knee. The vice-tremorroid greeted the flackfizer and the armadillo and then told them of the tremorroid’s disappearance. "She isn't in our apartment now, so she must have gone out."

  "I don't understand how she could do that without us seeing her," said Jodo. “We’ve been here all morning.” Behind her in the living room a Quirkian musical about an underwater mafia (“Codfellas”) played on Jodo’s 100 inch TV set.

  "Unless she made herself invisible,” said the Spork Armadillo. The armadillo was a golem sculpted out of Spork- a popular tinned meat-flavored product- and lived with Soda Olheiser at the Schmahoning II Drive-In Theater.

  "She isn't there, anyhow," declared Mono, putting Vira down. Vira trotted happily over to her pal the Spork Armadillo and yipped a greeting. Once Vira had been trained not to eat the presumably-tasty golem they had become good friends. As always Vira tried to sniff the armadillo’s butthole but the Spork golem didn’t have one.

  "Let’s go look for Titi," suggested Flackfizer Jodo, who appeared to be a little uneasy. The friends went into the music room, the videotape vault, the galley, the gallery, the workshop, the rumpus rooms, the meditation chambers, the chambers of the south tower, all the rooms with toilets, the cafeteria, the locker rooms, the creature shop, the ball pit, and the two great auditoriums on the ground floor, the Throne Room and Screening Room # 1. In none of these places could Mono, Jodo, Vira, or the Spork Armadillo find Titiana.

  They exited the screening room and Mono almost bumped into a golem who was made of the mismatched pieces of dozens of humanoids and yokai, held together by black stitches and golden staples.

  “Have you seen Titiana today?” asked Mono.

  “Piddily-Cum-A-Zur, no I haven’t seen her,” replied Chunks in a sing-songy voice, shaking her head so that her multi-color-beaded braids shook and clattered against one another. Chunks lived at the Schmahoning II with Soda Olheiser and the Spork Armadillo but was spending the week working on a screenplay with Gashmouth the Chainsaw Raccoon, a fleshwood golem who lived in an apartment behind the palace. Chunks had come over to see what Soda and the gang were up to, as Gash had left early that morning to go on a breakfast date (even though he was a golem and didn’t eat).

  "I'm going to keep searching for Titi," Mono, "for she isn't in our apartment and I want to ask her a question."

  "I'll go with you," said Chunks.

  Together our friends searched to the farthest limits of the mini golf and croquet course and the entire hedge maze but nowhere could they find a trace of Tremorroid Titiana. She was gone and none had seen her go. Mono, Jodo, Vira, the Spork Armadillo and Chunks had met and questioned Agent Fissure, Cockadoody the Cocky Cockfightin’ Cockadoodoo, Rumplemuss the Dirty Wanderer, Big Gary the Green Jackalope, Crassgass the Sassy Gassy Jackass, Kenny the Kharismatic Khameleon, Bruce the Retiring Ocelot, Jo the Prolific Rhino, Smacktown Johnny, and all the employees of Videotape Palace including the son of the robotic emperor of Mukus quadrant, who was there doing an unpaid internship.

  By this point the movie Soda and Pucas had been watching had ended and they were looking for Mono. They met up in the foyer next to the mounted Humpty Hump Head (who also hadn’t seen Titiana) and joined the search. Their next stop was the palace’s alchemistic laboratory (in the north tower) and there they found the devastatingly handsome Zanghi Zygote, a sixty-nine year old trickster with long silver hair and a silver beard. The kind-eyed Zanghi was the Assistant Royal Thaumaturge (or “A.R.T.”) of Bonertania. Up until recently former novelty item peddler Zanghi had been living as a tapeworm, transformed by an explosion of untamed thaumaturgic energy during the epic Videotape Palace Siege of ‘82. Nobgoblin, empress of Quirkquad and Bonertania’s Royal Thaumaturge, had finally figured out how to restore him to his humanoid form and hired him as her assistant, slowly passing on to him all her thaumaturgic and alchemistic knowledge. He lived at the palace in the high-up lab.

  Mono, Jodo, Soda, Chunks, Pucas, Vira, and the Spork Armadillo were crowded around the unmade bed where Zanghi sat.

  “I haven’t seen Titiana since the afternoon before,” said Zanghi glumly. "She didn't say anything yesterday about going anywhere, did she?”

  "No, and that's the strange part of it," replied Mono. "Usually Titiana lets me know of everything she does."

  "Check the PC?" suggested Pucas.

  "Of course!" cried Mono. "Why didn't I think of that before? There may be an update about what she’s doing or where she is!" At once the friends hurried away to Titiana and Montana’s apartment, where the PC always sat in their living room.

  This wonderful thaumaturgic PC, a gift from Nobgoblin, was one of Tremorroid Titiana's greatest treasures. It gave random updates, sometimes with pictures, of the goings-on around Pus Continent. No one else on Sifillis had a PC like that (except for Nobgoblin, of course). The friends rushed into the living room and stared in amazement, while the Spork Armadillo and Chunks uttered expletives of disappointment.

  The thaumaturgic PC was gone!

  ***

  In the 1990s self-proclaimed "World's #1 Sifillitic" B. Manus Shunkwiler produced 286 issues of "Sifillitica Psychotica", an obsessive fanzine dedicated to the Sifillis franchise. There's a zine page at the end of each chapter of every Sifillis Story.