I woke up to her aggressive paws exploring my cheeks. The ass ones. She was kneading on my butt to try and tenderize it, so it would fulfill the role of an adequate pillow. Compared to the concentration-crushing hangover that had comfortably installed itself on my head, Mariana’s pestering was a minor problem. I knew what had happened, there wasn’t an Iota of confusion in my being. There were, however, endless questions and criticism of the Demiurge’s story.

“Hey, let’s practice. Hey. Hey. Hey,” Insisted my dear punishment for humanity’s sins against the heavens (AKA doujins).

Despite the haziness, despite the negative of Mariana’s head imprinted on the fallen door, I forced myself to stand. My stomach protested. Killing gods spurs one’s hunger, it seems.

I made my way to the kitchen, where I had left the empanada priest in the care of several nanny dogs.

There was only one pit bull alive in the kitchen now. Resting atop mangled and decapitated equals, the little priest slept like an angel, making cute puppy sounds, barking in his sleep as his body sank in the gore.

I snorted loudly. “The people from bromatologic control aren’t going to like this.” I turned on my heels and snapped my fingers. In a puff of aroma and condiments, a knife-cut meat empanada manifested on my hand. “You are the real GOAT, Empanada priest.”

“Baaa,” bleated the Empanada Priest.

The empanada was hastily consumed by a Walter that thought passive voice was all the rage as Florencia’s room was headed to by him.

Reaching Flor’s door, I knocked on it twice.

“Who calls?”

“Mariana’s maid. Is her dress ready?”

The door opened slightly and an entity of green fabric lunged to my face. It smelled like clothes softener.

I took the dress of my face and crumpled it below my arm. It was not like Mar would mind a few wrinkles.

“Why did you wash it? How? Where the hell is the laundry room here?”

“In the basement,” she answered, revealing only her head in the narrow gap she had left between door and wall.

“I have been using the Newfoundland all this time for my underwear…” I mumbled, my voice cracking due to the sudden realization of my self-imposed disgrace.

“You could ask the maidbulls to wash your clothes.”

I shrugged and scratched my chin. “They kind of ate half of whatever I gave them to wash.”

“I told Sab the dress would be done this morning. She told me she was busy. She sounded exhausted behind the door. Dad was there, too. Scolding her, I think. Probably messed up the artifact and they got into a fight,” she said with Mariana-like innocence.

“Sounds harsh. She probably got a spanking, too.”

She got pensive and hummed a few seconds “Dad never hit me as a child though. I don’t think—”

“No you don’t. Thanks for the dress, bye.” I violently grabbed the door’s handle and pulled, shutting it in her face, almost catching her fingers with the frame.

Like always, Sabrina’s room was a mess. The scrap in the floor was organizing in new exciting ways that, were the atmosphere not so oxidizing, would give rise to a brand new, steel-based lifeform. I could imagine them, bolts and nuts forming compounds out of sheer luck, slowly agglutinating due to electromagnetic forces. If Planet had a couple more million years to spare, who knows, maybe we could deoxify the atmosphere due to a Mariana-fuck-up and Sabrina would become the progenitor of this new, non-inbred race.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“So, what do you want now?”

I handed her the dress. Then, by grabbing Mar by the neck’s skin, I handed her too.

“System so she can use ears to move the dress.”

“Easy as cake, can be done by tonight. Anything else you need?”

After a few seconds of thinking, I answered.

“Yes. Somebody tell Flor how babies are made, for the love of God.”

Sabrina shook her head hopelessly. “Dad wants her to remain a good Christian girl because the rest of us are… not.” She struggled to keep the dead weight that was a calm Mariana from falling from her arms. “How can something so fluffy weight so much.”

Drool fell uncontrollably from Mar’s snout.

“She learned a spell to compact food so she can eat more.”

“I am surprised she still breathes,” she said, and placed Mariana carefully on the least-cluttered spot on the floor.

“I’m still alive,” came Mariana’s voice, like a dense slurry of sound.

“We know Mar, we know.”

I followed Sabrina to her work table, took a seat beside her and watched how she extended the dress and started taking measures with a tape. Now and then I turned and watched Mariana, drooling in the floor, in a state that could be compared to drunkenness, but I recognized as her being overstuffed.

“Mariana, has your stomach twisted?” I asked out of genuine concern.

“No, I am not dying. Just… too much… food.”

Angelical choirs began singing. A divine spotlight illuminated Mariana. A man dressed like the very Gauchito Gil descended from the heavens to pet her.

“Sir, this is considered unlawful entry. Burglary, if you take away Mariana’s hair on your robes,” I merely let him know.

The holy man scoffed at me, unpetted Mariana, and got abducted by the sacred light as the angelical choir played in reverse.

“I should not be used to this, but I am. Woe is me,” I lamented.

Sabrina patted me on the shoulder. “You could leave Mariana here and go talk with dad; he wants to see you. I will teach her to use the dress so I can test and refine it.”

“Is he in the throne room?”

“No, he is in the garden.”

Swallowing saliva, I left Mariana there and headed to the garden. It had certainly low chances of being pretty.

Massacre received me when I came out of the staircase. Faint mist waltzed between the corpses of vegetables and flowers. No trace of the demiurge could be seen, just Mateo sitting on a wicker chair, cleaning a single pair of shades with a handkerchief.

“I was expecting you.”

“If for execution, make it swift.”

He opened his hands and gestured around. “Do you see any pit bulls?”

“They could come out of the woodwork any moment now. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You are impossible. Listen,” he took a notepad and a pencil out of his jacket “Phaela sees our every move, we need an encryption method. It has to be something we both know, and it cannot be Spanish, given she could be in company of an Escapist able to translate in real time.”

I took a seat on the wicker chair across him and remained in silence a while. We hummed, we a’d, raised fingers just to then lower them again. Then, I had an idea.

“I’ve got one that could work for a period. You get me, chemist?”

“Go on. Don’t clue me in with gestures, she can see those too,” he held a dead stare that resembled the one of an uninterested person.

“It’s elemental. This method can totally be atomized. You don’t even have to keep tables.”

His palm naturally orbited towards his face, probably out of its own volition.

“Why are you like this? I mean, it could work, do we use Z?”

“I was thinking about the symbols. Cobalt Nitrogen Carbon Hydrogen Uranium… shit we lack this one, Oxygen,” I said. Once more, man was cucked by the elements.

“Galio Yttrium,” he attacked without mercy.

We laughed.

“You don’t have any table drawn, do you?” I asked out of caution.

“Not currently, I only drew one in chalk when teaching Sabrina the basics. She has a good memory.”

I exploded in laughter. How did it take me so long to realize?

“What’s so funny?” he inquired, raising an eyebrow.

“Passing thought: Phaela has seen every… quest you ever gave Sabrina.”

He raised his hand in front of me and prepared his fingers to snap.

“Walter, my dear friend, you have six…”

“Yes, I know I am pretty immature sometimes and—“

“Five…”

I opened my eyes wide and threw a glance at the stairs.

“Four…”

“You wouldn’t dare—”

Then he jumped me and we got into rolling on the floor like a pair of lovers during a honeymoon. I was definitively taking the role of the wife, because I was about to receive a beating for my misbehavior.

We rolled over dirt and wet, rotting fruit alike. My elbows found his ribs and his rough, manly fists became intimate with my delicate eyes. I bit his hirsute arm and, after getting me to release my grasp by pushing, he jumped back. Then, he rushed to a standing position and stepped on my groin. I reflectively raised my hands in signal of forfeiture.

“Something to say before I make mashed balls?” He increased the pressure, sending the first shots of pain through my abdomen.

I moaned. “Harder daddy.”

I took advantage of his confusion to scurry away, giggling like a little girl. I had broken Mateo’s will to go on, and that was an achievement on its own.

“Walter!” he beckoned.

I turned my ghoulish figure, still hunched, my fingers still fidgeting, my left eye now probably black. “What?”

“You forgot about deuterium.”

And so he ascended to be the man who cucked the elements.