“Get a cheeseburger and chop it into them or something,” Steve said, taking a bite out of his chicken parmesan sandwich. Immediately, his mouth twisted in a sour cringe of disappointment. “Man, best sandwich in St. Louis my left foot.”

   “You don’t have to keep eating it,” Dawn advised, munching on her fish and chips.

   Steve wiped some sadly-mild-in-flavor marinara sauce from his face with the back of his hand. “What else am I going to order?”

   “Cheesy fries with beef,” Gore threatened. Again, that being his only possible method of communication. No one at the table was sure, however, if he was threatening anyone in particular, or the cheesy fries themselves.

   “Man, even the parmesan is stale. Is it so much to ask that half the named ingredients in a sandwich be at least decent?”

   “You should order the fish and chips,” Dawn suggested.

   “Are they any good?”

   “Meh, they’re alright.”

   “It’s okay, no problem. Fine,” Steve consoled himself, swallowing and chewing at the same time. He was unsure which was the least unpleasant sensation in consuming the dull sandwich, the stale bread or the cheese. “At least I have a sandwich, and Gore hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

   “Cheesy. Fries. With. Beef,” Gore threatened.

   “Eat your cheese fries, Gore. If I can deal with this sandwich you can deal with not having beef.”

   “Mutual dissatisfaction is the door to Utopia,” Dawn said. “Ooh, now that I like.” Dawn reached into a hidden pocket sewn to the inside of her gray robe and pulled out a moleskin notebook and pen, jotting down what she’d said, mumbling as she wrote. Of course, she did not realize that her pen had run out of ink, and she was therefore doing nothing more than scratching the pages that were already covered with other incomplete and incoherent works.

   “Can I borrow your pen?” Dawn asked Steve after realizing she’d written nothing.

   “Sure,” Steve said, handing Dawn a pen with the words Purity Advertising emblazoned on its plastic surface. “Keep it. They give us tons of those. Lord knows I go through a lot. New copy writing campaign is all about selling dehydrogenated soybean paste. Need a truckload of pens to make that work.”

   “What is it exactly?”

   “I don’t know. I can’t get over why you would even hydrogenate soybean paste in the first place. Why would you need to dehydrogenate it?”

   “Always room at the hemp necklace stand.”

   “Yeah, no thanks.”

   “Or there’s that whole ‘you’re supposed to be watching over the apocalypse’ thing.”

   “Nah.” Steve took a bite of his sandwich, again pondering if he should just drop the meal and go find better food. Still thinking, he took a few more bites.

   “Don’t you want a better job, Steve?” Dawn asked.

   “Probably.”

   “Don’t you want a better restaurant to go to?”

   “Definitely.”

   “Good. So where’s that?”

   “I don’t know. Stop trying to look too much into me. Judging people isn’t what a Judge is supposed to do.”

   “I judge that to be incorrect.”

   “You can deal with selling hemp and mocking people. Burney can deal with just trying to find ways to not be on fire.”

   Burney screamed a response.

   “No, Burney, it’s never going to happen,” Steve noted. “But even that Quixotic effort is at least a visible goal. And Gore…”

   “Look at this French Fry. It bears cheese, but no beef,” Gore said, shoving a cheesy fry at Burney till it smoldered into ash. “Where is that waitress? I demand recompense!”

   “Gore wants beef on his cheesy fries,” Dawn said.

   “A clear and visible goal. But I’m not wanting something so… I don’t know,” Steve said, dropping the remaining parts of his sandwich onto his plate.

   “Writing copy for dehydrogenated soybean paste ads and summoning the end times not lofty enough goals?”

   “I guess I’m…” Steve looked down at his sandwich, trying to organize his thoughts enough to generate an answer to even this simple statement. Sure, he had the power to leave and seek another career. But where would he go? Advertising might not be the most glamorous job, but it was a job, and it wasn’t like he could think of a job where he’d be happier. And wasn’t like working hand in hand with the spawn of Satan to usher in the coming Revelation would make him happy either.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

   “You’re what?” Dawn asked, still prodding.

   “I’m getting my cheesy fries with beef!” Gore said, and stood up. “Do you hear me, deliverers of utilitarian cuisine! Soul-wrenching despair awaits you for neglecting to place processed bovine carcasses upon my cheesy fries!”

   “Sit down, Gore,” Steve said.

   Instead of sitting down, Gore unsheathed his black-bladed sword, bathing the table and all around it in darkness. “My wrath is hastening to demanding—”

   “Gore, if you’re going to cause a scene, do it without the sword,” Dawn suggested, grabbing Gore’s arm before he could charge blade-first toward the kitchen doors.

   Gore grunted, and twisted his arm free. Steve could almost see Gore contemplate how many souls he’d send to their graves before his anger was satisfied. But instead of unleashing fiery vengeance for the lack of beef on his cheesy fries, Gore plunged his sword into the now-cooling plate of French fries, piercing it so that it rested on the blade like a cheese-dripping laurel.

   “I shall ask them to put beef upon this plate, and shall return with cheesy fries covered in beef,” Gore proclaimed.

   Burney screamed.

   “And a milkshake,” Gore added. He then let out a war cry and charged the kitchen door.

   “I feel like I should be stopping this,” Steve said, watching Gore burst into the kitchen.

   “Probably,” Dawn agreed as she bit a chip in half and leaned back in her chair.

   Steve sighed and stood. “Gore, Gore! I know they use processed chicken in their sandwiches, but that’s no excuse to get us kicked out of another restaurant!”

   Only a strange purple glow and the hideous screams of those who’d for the first time come to grips with their own mortality answered Steve’s call for calm.

   “Sorry about this, folks,” Steve apologized to the agape patrons watching from the other tables. Those sitting at the front of the restaurant, far enough away to be capable of paying more attention to their cellphones than the sounds of despair around them, didn’t seem to notice the commotion. Those who were looking at Steve’s table were staring at Dawn nuzzling an armful of bunnies.

   A crash, followed by Gore’s shout of, “Does it look like I care if it’s medium rare or well done!” accompanied Steve’s smiling pleas.

   “He has a very sensitive diet. It’s like vegan, only opposite,” Steve said.

   While Steve tried to placate Gore from the other side of the howling kitchen door, and Dawn made half a dozen bunnies line up to dance the Macarena, Burney decided that he had never had a chicken parmesan sandwich of any quality, and didn’t think Steve would be coming back to finish his meal.

   Uttering a muffled scream as he scanned the area, Burney realized everyone was quite distracted. He smiled, pulled Steve’s chair away from the table, and sat down with a pleased little scream. Then he rubbed his hands together in anticipation, which shed a few droplets of flame from his burning skin, and grabbed hold of the chicken parmesan sandwich. Moments after being touched, however, the sandwich burst into flames and became a blackened chunk of charred meat and evaporated marinara sauce. Had he continued his attempt to eat the sandwich, Burney might have discovered that this had improved its quality. However, it was at that moment that Burney realized that the chair he sat upon had also burst into flames.

   As he stood up to get out of the burning chair, Burney forgot to push away from the table and tripped on top of it, setting it ablaze as well.

   “Hey, my fish and chips,” Dawn said, and grabbed her basketed meal before it was completely burnt. The bunnies, however, were not as quick, and were immediately consumed in the fire. Dawn had to summon twice as many more to make up for this loss.

   Burney screamed in apology as he backed away from the burning table, straight into the now-evacuated table behind him. Attempts to put out the new fire by tossing the contents of the glasses occupying the burning table only resulted in burnt plastic and some light hissing sounds of evaporating water.

   Burney thought himself smart for not grabbing the glass of whiskey near at hand and using it in a tragic attempt to douse the flames. Unfortunately, when Burney picked up the bottle, his emblazed hand set the contents of the bottle to a boil. In seconds, the pressurized whiskey burst from the shattered, red-hot bottle, and sprayed all over Burney.

   Had the whiskey stayed on Burney’s skin, it might have done little more than change the overall color of his fire-laden body. Instead, the burning liquid splashed against several nearby tables and load-bearing walls and one purse-hidden Chihuahua that in all honestly probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but nonetheless did not deserve to be set on fire.

   “Gore, let me in!” Steve continued to shout from the kitchen door. “Gore, get out of there right… Did you light the restaurant on fire too?”

   At that moment, Steve saw Burney struggling with a horrified woman over a purse that was currently occupied by a progressively more panicking Chihuahua. Try as he might, Burney could not convince the woman, or the dog, that he was really just trying to help. The burning ceiling tiles did not aid his status of attempted paragon either.

   “Oh. Right. Of course,” Steve said as fire alarms blared into annoyed life.

   A few moments later, the restaurant burning and the patrons fleeing the quickly collapsing restaurant set the backdrop to Steve and his friends walking away as casually as possible. Steve wiped the collected ash from his hat with a few brushes of his hand, allowing the twin horns protruding from his scalp to glow a moment in the inferno of the Lindbergh’s Family Eatery and Pub.

   Dawn walked beside Steve, dropping bunnies as they went, with Burney hanging his head in shame just behind. At Dawn’s right walked the Dark Lord Gore, munching loudly on a freshly-claimed and only partially-singed plate of cheesy fries with beef.

   “I’m starting to wonder why people even let us inside restaurants anymore,” Steve noted.

   “Don’t worry. They’re insured,” Dawn said.

   “At least there’s that. Maybe they’ll learn how to make a decent sandwich, which, as bad as it was, I didn’t get to finish.”

   Burney screamed.

   “No, Burney, we’re not going for ice cream,” Steve answered.

   “What about frozen custard?” Dawn asked.

   “Maybe frozen custard.”

   As Steve and his friends went in search of frozen custard, they left the shattered remains of a restaurant in their wake, and a company of bunnies as the only consolation to the frightened patrons. Thankfully, the Chihuahua survived with the help of an all-night pet emergency room that doubled as a frozen custard emporium. All patrons and workers of the restaurant also survived. Steve’s chicken parmesan sandwich, however, was completely destroyed.