I stormed down the dark halls of Matu’s castle, bee-lining for the throne room. Mariana got lost somewhere along the way but I was not worried. It took about a butterfly to obliterate her attention span, and she always found the way to reach me with the sole purpose of asking for food. I opened the oversized doors to the throne room. Beyond them, I witnessed the horror.

“Damn, Sabrina, there are other ways of adding zinc to your diet,” was my only comment before closing the door again.

A few noises echoed in the throne chamber and resonated on the wood of the doors. Noises of people breathing heavily, of a zipper closing up, of something crawling in the vents.

I went in again. This time, the situation was considerably less disturbing: Sabrina was showing her dad some notes. Her feathers, of course, were still unkempt.

“I saw worse things on the net, worry not,” I decided to break the tension. “I was told you want to destroy this world, Mateo,” I added in a conversational tone as I advanced through the ample space and began to ascend the stairs.

He stood from the throne with a severe expression, snapped his fingers and a bunch of elite, level 300 and some pit bulls swarmed to his aid, surrounding their lord and master.

“I am not here to stop you. Nor to convince you to not do it. Nor to blackmail you. Well, if you had no pit bulls maybe I would blackmail you, but don’t take it personal.”

He left himself fall back into the throne.

“Then what do you want, Walter. Yes, I will destroy this place to send us back. I never told you, because doing so is acceptance of the mortal sin we must commit to return to Earth; not because I wished to hide it from you.”

“I thoroughly support him on his search,” said Sabrina.

“Men are talking, pasteurization tank.”

“Go away before I murder him, Sabri my dear.”

Head down, she obliged and shuffled downstairs. I started ascending when Mateo gestured me to stop.

“What. Do. You. Want. Now, Walter!”

“I want to know what is there in Earth for you. I am a loser; I have no friends nor family here—”

“No friends?” he said, taking a hand to his chest.

“You are from Earth, you don’t count, just like Mariana.”

A resounding telepathic signal came from the vents.

“I can count! One two, three, four, five, sex, sever, weight…”

“Why is Mariana in the vents?” he asked with a tired expression.

“You must think we tried to ambush you, but the truth is she is just being Mariana.”

“I caught the butterfly!”

Stolen story; please report.

With another snap of his fingers, Mateo dismissed his dogs. They flowed around me on their way downstairs, barely addressing my existence as they passed by.

“I have a wife and a three-year-old daughter. I want to go back to them—”

I mimicked the gesture of marking on a phone and then taking it to my ear.

“I am calling child protection services.”

“My daughter is a human, not a… a…” he gradually trailed off into a mumble, and then silence. He broke down and briefly covered his face with both hands. “I used to be a good, Christian drug dealer, Walter! I worked for the best bidder, I refined their cocaine. And one day they paid me with a bullet to the stomach. Do you know how many times I imagined Micaela —my wife— crying at home and trying to shake off little Cielo’s questions, not knowing where I am, thinking I worked for the legal chemical industry or whatever, while my remains rot in a ditch covered by grass and cattails?”

“I try not to imagine my parents at my funeral. But there would be none if we go back, right, we will somehow… avoid death, right?” I pleaded, trying to talk about my mother and father without evoking their image.

“That’s the theory, yes. We will avoid lethal injuries and, at worst, be knocked out. If it works. But, if it doesn’t, I trust our good Lord would not let our immortal souls perish with this purgatory.” One could almost see a ray of hope illuminating his face.

I am agnostic. Or at least I was before going to the other world and seeing godlike entities exist. But, in those moments, I admired Mateo and his hypocritical belief in God.

I climbed the remaining steps and hugged him. I wanted to go back, I wanted to leave this world of pretend behind, and by embracing the elf-fucker, I was embracing not his deviations, but the desire born out of nostalgia we both shared. I wanted Mariana to shut up and be a normal dog again. I wanted to call my mother and talk to her about my supposed job as a writer of scientific articles and ghostwriter of papers (In truth, most of my income came from selling Sexy Plant Male x Average Human Female smut on Amazon. Porked by the Pothos had financed my gaming rig. I missed my gaming rig.)

He pushed me apart and stood from the throne.

“Walter, have you read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas?” he said while looking into the ample, nearly empty room behind his throne.

“Yes, nice short story by Le Guin. Oh, she died in the latter 2010’s.”

“Shame, she was a good one. What do you think of the child?”

“The flute one or the tortured one?”

“Tortured one.”

I cleared my throat, looked up and sighed. Here we were going again…

“I always considered it unrealistic.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t bullied enough.”

Mateo opened his eyes wide and sat on his throne. He dedicated me an inquisitive stare with a raised eyebrow.

“Beg your pardon?” he finally said.

“People in Omelas could have a booming economy by making a sort of tortured child zoo. The terms of the pact stated in the story allow for it: The child cannot be saved without destroying Omelas, but many other things are fair game. So the best course of action its exploiting him or her to the maximum to make the city even more prosperous.” I hastily explained my faultless position on the issue.

He shrugged and threw his hands in the air due to frustration. “I was going to say that, in this universe, we are the child who has to suffer away from the real world so everyone else lives happily. And ask if what we are doing is truly moral. I mean, I fabricated drugs, I wasn’t one of those trigger happy, out-in-the-field narcos. But you see a moral dilemma with no right answer and…” his hand described circles in the air while he searched for the right words, “…strive to make it worse.”

Mariana entered in scene like a bag of potatoes falling from a tenth floor. She crashed in the rightmost flight of stairs, and then rolled sideways until falling to the bottom. Once her fall ended, she shook the dust off. She was unharmed.

The bitch made her way to my side without commenting anything, which was almost concerning.

“So, will you guys keep on helping me, now that you know the tragic truth behind my plans?”

“I want to go back too. If there is no other or no simpler way, yes, let’s destroy the world.”

He shook my hand without any effusiveness. It was a deal, yes, but nobody is happy while scheduling a funeral.

“Let’s destroy the world,” he added with a severe tone.

“Let’s… wait, it includes no fireworks, right?” Asked mariana, her eyes big and innocent.

“Not unless you want some,” Mateo said, patting her on the head.

“Let’s destroy the world then! Hurray!” she celebrated like a dog would.