So there I was, standing onstage without a body to call my own anymore, suddenly surrounded by six-hundred eighty-two freshly-risen undead.

You’re no doubt expecting zombies. Well that’s not what Hawijimi did. Oh no, no; the Cacophony requires an audience with a little more sophistication than brainless shamblers, you dig?

Plus, he was required to strike an equivalent exchange with the influence Rivulon the Unraveler had already exerted upon Earth. That’s just how it worked with god powers, they couldn’t be completely countered; only nudged off-course.

So what did Hawijimi do? He went and made all those self-mutilated, rich, weirdos into fucking vampires. Bloodsucking billionaire assholes – a little on the nose for my taste but shit man it’s Hawijimi’s show so he calls the shots.

And whoa, my admiration for the Emperor was growing by leaps and bounds. Rivulon’s whole gimmick was unraveling reality. Sort of adjacent to that was unraveling minds. That’s what made Hawijimi’s solution so elegant.

First off, you gotta understand a couple of Vampire Rules:

The most common way to be turned is for a vampire to bite you, drain out a pint or two of your blood, and then fill you back up with their own. Super horny stuff; highly suggestive.

The other method of becoming a vampire is just to have some mega-powerful mage alter the rules of reality so that bam! you’re a vampire. This is what all the rich weirdos in the audience had experienced a few moments ago.

The major difference between the two methods is obvious, right? It’s the involvement of vampire blood.

We’re talking about some seriously potent shit; newb-pires made the old-fashioned way legit have their biological clocks rewound to the time in their life when they were the most physically fit and attractive. Yeah it’s some real Benjamin Button voodoo and no, I have not seen that movie.

Regardless, Hawijimi hadn’t done that. He’d simply made them immortal and thirsty for blood without any of the glow-up. We’re talking about a concert-hall filled with self-mutilated vampire freaks that made Nosferatu look totally bangable.

But wait, there was more! Vampirism always came with an unavoidable obsession with appearances. Like check out this list of super-vane monsters I just made using Handsome Alex’s party interface:

The 5 Monsters Most Likely to be Horny for Themselves:

5) Frankensteins***

4) Beholders

3) Basically Anything With Multiple Heads

2) Astral Kings

1) Motherfuckin’ Vampires

***Frankensteins get in on a technicality because sometimes when you’re making flesh golems out of multiple dismembered corpses it’s impossible to keep them all straight—

—you know what? Long story, short: it’s not your fault, Frankenstein.

I know what you’re thinking, too. You’re all like: Kirby, bud, you need a hobby. But maybe this is it, did you ever think of that? Maybe during the off-season I methodically catalogue Frankenstein mating habits.

Anyway these vampires were sadder than shit! Hawijimi had managed to keep his audience intelligent enough to continue watching the show while still allowing Rivulon to drive them a teensy bit insane in the funniest way imaginable. I was super hyped now for the rest of the tour. We just needed to find me a new vessel before the next stop.

The announcer from earlier, the dude with the bubble-farting boots, had kamikazed himself into the floor when I started singing and his face was all flattened like he’d been hit with a shovel in a cartoon. Now that he was a vampire he was bubble-farting around and bitching with his voice still magically-enhanced so that everyone in attendance could hear it:

“Welcome to hell, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to hell. An eternity to be reminded of how beautiful we once were.” He brayed into the air like a sad donkey pushing out a fat, hard turd. He produced a silk hankie(from his pocket) and blew his nose as he floated around aimlessly. His wake of bubbles drifted down onto the miserable crowd. “Anyway, I’ve been informed that the show must go on or whatever. Grouping Three has been decided and the Superbus team will be eliminated in a shocking upset. Whoopty-fucking-doo.”

Sure enough, the Drix dorks were still deader than shit. Their knowledge of how to quickly build as well as dismantle a clone came back to haunt them in the end.

Meanwhile, the members of Long John and the Donut Holes who had been killed during the skew-off were all brought back as vampires. I legit think Hawijimi was just having some fun with them.

Long John was clearly super-bummed about having torn off his own penis. But he’d probably get over it, and vampirism actually made their skew a lot more interesting in the greater context of the competition. We might have been done needing to worry about Superbus, but I had a feeling we’d be crossing swords again with Long John and his blood-thirsty Holes further down the line.

For now? We’d done the damn job and won the gig. You bet your ass I was ready for the afterparty.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Grouping Four will be onstage in sixty seconds,” the saddest vampire announced from on high. “You don’t want to miss it or something. Hey! Where do you all think you’re going?” He paused; someone was talking to him in his earpiece. “Seriously? How did they manage to convert an aircraft carrier into a plastic surgery hospital so fast? Tell them to save Tommy Thunder a gurney!” And with that he farted off after half the audience, who were already making for the doors.

While the audience began to file out of the hall some roadies went about collecting Mina, Lady Gates, and Rivulon. They were still all three unconscious and in various states of fucked-upness; Lady Gates’s lady-body was a total loss and she would just be a bird now; Rivulon was inside the Kirby vessel which was explosively mutilated from about mid-chest up; like imagine someone sticking a tiny firecracker in an unpeeled banana and that was kind of the same aesthetic, except replace made from human viscera rather than a banana; not even remotely recognizable as human, regardless.

And Mina was still a total babe, but if we were going to keep her in the skew after this she would require an entirely new narrative ready the moment she woke up.

The roadies loaded all three of our skewmates onto a cart and then passed it off to Handsome Alex. I kept riding along inside his head somehow as he wheeled the whole mess back to our cabin.

Handsome Alex: We’re going to require an extreme number of base essences in order to reconstruct the Kirby vessel; blood, bone, and tissue.

The Alchemist Formerly Known as Kirbdawg: You think that’s the best play? We could just find a fresh vessel to stuff Rivulon into real quick, couldn’t we?

Handsome Alex: No. He is too powerful to attempt a transfer. Now change your handle to something shorter, and do not make me ask twice. I need you to focus, Ossick. The coming hours are pivotal to our ultimate success and I shall require much of you.

Something Shorter: Alright, alright. I’ve got my game face on.

Handsome Alex: I suppose I have only myself to blame.

Something Shorter: So what’s the plan?

Handsome Alex: Eventually we will requisition new vessels for you and the Lady Gates, but first we must rebuild the Kirby vessel or I fear Rivulon’s narrative will, for lack of a better term, unravel. In fact, until the vessel is returned to its proper configuration I think it best that I remain in the cabin with him alone, wherein I shall continue to bolster and expand the narrative, safeguarding it against untimely collapse.

Something Shorter: And what about Mina’s busted narrative? Don’t we need to jump on fixing that ASAP?

Handsome Alex: Not if we simply suppress her soul for a time….

Something Shorter: What’s with the dot-dot-dots? Oh you don’t expect me to inhabit her, do you? Is that where you’re going with all this?

Handsome Alex: Indeed, that is the plan. You will inhabit the vessel of Mina Diamond just long enough to harvest the bone and blood and tissue essences we require to rebuild the Kirby vessel, while at the same time suppressing her consciousness as a tactic to delay the need for a new narrative implant. In this way, we will feed two birds with one scone.

Something Shorter: What? Don’t you mean ‘kill two birds with one stone?’

Handsome Alex: I believe we should consider adopting a more sensitive attitude toward avians, in light of the recent transition of our skewmate Lady Gates.

I couldn’t leave the chat because I was technically in Handsome Alex’s soul sanctuary or whatever. But I would have; fuck birds.

*****

Compared to the Geo-Metro-on-a-flat-tire that was Kirby Dufresne, driving the Mina Diamond vessel was like climbing behind the wheel of one of those supercars that’d only be legal in Dubai. I seriously considered murdering Handsome Alex so that I could simply ditch the train at the next stop and continue being Mina forever.

“Before you leave,” he said as I was about to go hunt us up some base essences. I paused in the doorway, my sleek black hair swinging so cool. “Go forward with the knowledge that the minds of those with whom I have shared a compelling narrative remain open to me forever after.”

“Which includes the mind of Mina Diamond.” I tapped me and Mina’s temple. “Look Bud, you know you’d fuck me up in a fight, and even more than that, you had to know I was going to react like this to a…. to such a…. I mean, come on!” I gestured up and down my borrowed body like a gameshow hostess presenting herself as the grand prize. “Anyway, it was just a fleeting murder fantasy; nothing personal.”

“I did not take it personally. I simply wish to avoid hearing too many of your lurid fantasies. Please keep such thoughts to a minimum.”

“Fair enough, but you’re missing out!” I did a little shimmy as I exited and I won’t kid you; it made me feel real fucking gross. The girl had been my fake niece for the past few days. I determined right there and then to play it cool for as long as I needed to drive the Mina vessel.

And I’d only need to keep her suppressed until I could scare up some dead bodies and reap them. Obviously I headed to the morgue, first, but I could no longer smell any corpses through the wall without the Kirby vessel’s canine-enhanced nosebuds. And I couldn’t actually risk breaking in again anyway because I got shot at last time.

I couldn’t risk letting Mina’s vessel get hurt at all, really. If she came back into control of her soul and found her body suffering with a gunshot wound or a broken leg or whatever it would make it impossible for Alex to come up with a new narrative. The process worked best when the target was distracted, but not to that extent.

Anyway, it quickly became apparent that I was going to need to kill some people. Problem was, most everyone onboard was now a vampire. Killing them was a ton of work and dangerous, to boot.

I needed to find some normie humans, but it was starting to look like the only passengers who weren’t vampires either worked for Hawijimi—who I was not looking to fuck with just then—or were members of the surviving skews from Groupings One and Two.

If we were going to win this thing, it meant every other skew had to die eventually.

I stood outside a cabin door that had tinfoil plastered over the window so no one could see inside. It belonged to a skew called Bad Dickfor. They had been one of the surviving skews from Grouping One, I knew because there were updated results posted every minute on the Emperor Hawijimi’s Sonic Gauntlet for the Reward of Great Fortune and the Infinite Adoration of the Glorious People of Hawijimi and Her Colonies app.

“Two birds,” I whispered, raising Mina Diamond’s fist to knock. “One stone.”

And that’s when Lady Gates the Raven glided in and jabbed her beak right in my ear.