You might not have thought about it, but something slowly making its way towards you can be worse than it just rushing your ass straight outta the gate.

It's the mental factor. Psyches you out, especially when you're not sure what you're dealing with. Hell, even when you are, it can throw you off your game, because how can you know the fucker doesn't have something up its sleeve?

The trick is not letting your fears screw with you. Not channeling my inner Karate Kid, but you absolutely can gimp your chances if you get scared and keep getting more scared.

I'm not even talking about zombies, though, if you're used to slow ones, a fast one jumping you can be a sharp lesson, in the sense of a clawed corpse turning your groin into a new asshole. This goes for everyone. Because, if some bastard is strolling his way to you like you two are walking in the park, or taking his sweet-ass time to swap your balls and your eyes, all smug-like, you start thinking: does he know something I don't (the answer is usually yes when I'm asking)? Why isn't he scared?

And if he walks straight through your spells, bullets, whatever, it gets worse.

Luckily for little ol' me, the douchebags walking towards me with the same urgency with which they rub their brain cells together only thought they were hot shit. I could read their bodies, their auras. The imprints they left in the local metaphysical atmosphere suggested they had no idea who they were dealing with.

Heh. Wonder what conspiracy theories are gonna pop up in their shriveled brains before I pop their skulls open.

As the freakish vamps make their way into the light, I slowly, shakily lower my guns, like I'm boutta piss myself at the sight of 'em, not puke. In fact...

As my guns go past my waist, I let one go, and it clatters to the circus floor with a sound that, while loud as a gunshot to my ears, is probably as quiet as a fly's fart to the audience. Snidely notices, leering in satisfaction, like I've confirmed he is, indeed, too fugly to enter the amateur hideousness contest.

Dumbass. Even if I was scared outta the little mind I had, why in the goddamn Hell would dropping a gun I can teleport to my hand matter?

Just as I'm making a mental note never to become a vampire-blood turns you stupid, clearly, and I don't need my IQ to drop further into the negatives-a leg thick as a tree trunk moves out of the shadows. It's attached to the fattest leech bitch I've seen in my life, a mustache wider than my hand plastered above her curled upper lip. Her fangs look like tusks, probably thicker than my thumbs, and her long hair frames her face like a mask. Her flesh is paisley-colored, like someone sat down to weave together the world's pastiest were-walrus.

The second vamp is even bigger than his girlfriend, which makes me wonder whether their parents are cousins or siblings. Chest as wide as the front of most cars, his body is so packed with muscle, it looks like his skin is about to burst. His arms are thicker than my thighs, almost as thick as my waist. A leopard-print leotard, like that of an old-timey circus strongman's, cut into the side of a thick neck leading to kid's skull.

No, really. I don't mean he's some kind of Franken-vamp, like someone beheaded a kid to stick his noggin on this roid monkey's neck. He looks mutated, beady eyes in a tight face, with a soft chin and a tiny jaw with short, small fangs, like he's apologizing for how hulking he is from the neck down.

The third and four vamps came forward together, one of them dragging his belly on the ground like a seal. His fused legs end in flippers, and he hisses at me, wrinkled jowls swinging. He actually makes me check whether I wasn't right about that bloodsucking cow, and if some are werevamps. There's no therianthropy in his aura. It's all natural, as far as vamps go.

The other is female, a kid-an actual kid, not whatever the musclebound freak is. She crab walks, chest down and hips up, hands raising clouds of sawdust as they thump on the ground. Her schoolgirl outfit makes her misshapen body look even more twisted. Now, had it been just the clothes, I'd have though that, maybe, this vamp just needed a less obvious fetish to go with the chiropractor visit, but her ratty pigtails suggest she'd been turned young-how she'd stay forever.

Lobster girl is rubbing me the wrong way. I have too low an opinion of these chumps to get all outraged at them turning a little girl. no, it gets me thinking about what might have been, if things had gone worse. Can you imagine if I'd died as a dumbass kid? I'd have never grown up to be a dumbass man-child.

Just as I'm thinking crabcakes is the ugliest vamp I'd ever seen, beating babyface out by a smidge, the multiverse sits up. 'Oh, Stark, you're ready to bleach your eyes already? Why the rush?'

The last vamp clomp forward in oversized shoes to match his clown outfit. I remember when I was a little shit and some of the other ankle-biters found clowns funny, or scary. Me, I was always reminded too much of those supernatural beings who try to pass for human and don't fully manage. Uncanny valley, you know? Just inhuman enough to leave you thinking something's wrong. The fact by that time I knew enough magic to blow up any Pennywise wannabe that tried to cross me might've helped.

Krusty here is dressed in a baggy clown costume, too black and yellow to resemble anything funny, as opposed to a wasp. The sleeves are tattered around his clawed hands, which click against each other. The jumpsuit ends in a frilly collar as big and poofy as his cotton candy hair. His face is pale from grease, the corners of his mouth pulled back by hooks attached to wires, resulting in a fanged grimace. His eyes, which look half-filled with blood, are done up in the same way, the hooks that pull the lids open attached to wires pulled taut and stapled over his skull. Instead of one of those squeaky noises, a ball is nailed to his actual nose, as red as the blood trickling down his pasty cheeks.

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Fuckin' clowns...

Doffing his hat, Snidely steps back, bowing with a flourish that makes me wonder how the hell he can still walk while being so pleased with himself. I'd keel over if my ego got any bigger; thank gosh I'm humble. "Allow me,' he says, "to introduce you to my family."

"Golly!" I drop the other gun to, covering my mouth with my hands like jailbait over there probably would if she wasn't half-crab. Though, who knows, maybe she'd be a knuckle-dragger even as a human. I believe in her. I can't let my inner cynic down, what if I turn optimistic? "Your parents are related, to?!" I point at me, than at Top Hat, frantically moving my finger between the two of us while retracting my other hand, revealing a shit-eating grin.

Clearly too bashful too talk about life as a kid of siblings, Snidely sneers instead, stepping backwards as his siblings or kids or cousins thrice-removed rushed me.

Baby Face is the fastest, to my slight surprise. His hands are tiny and misshapen much like everything above his neck, scrabbling for my shoulders with enough force to send a human's arms flying from their sockets. I grin into his kiddy face as my unharmed flesh arm clenches around his throat-as much as I can get a hold of-and he actually yelps when his grubby mitt makes contact with my Kissi arm, which makes me laugh.

Inwardly, I'm curious. Basically everyone who gets a good look at it flinches at least, from vanilla mortals to angels to hellions-except for the Kissi themselves, but even they were kind of rubbed the wrong way by seeing whatever makes them up attached to Nephilim flesh. The limb looks like an insect fucked the Terminator, and is utterly invincible, far as I can tell. I think all my exposure to metaphysical crap is enhancing it, in some way. For one, people who wouldn't be able to understand revulsion with a dictionary find it gross, and I've yet to find anything I can't punch through with it.

As Peanut Brain tries to catch me in a bearhug, his arms fail to close: his knotted chest is too wide, so his arms keep clanging off it and beating against my body. Sharpening my flesh hand's nail with a spell and flexing my Kissi one, I sever his at the wrists. As he stumbles, more in shock at someone as slim as me hurting him than in pain, I catch his hands in mine and start slapping him with them. The first slap shatters the left hand and nearly rips his jaw off. The second finishes the job, leaving him looking flabbergasted. It's fucking hilarious.

Kicking out one, twice, I snap his legs at the knees, so they fold uselessly under him as he falls down. Before he can even look up, I stomp down on his skull, driving the half-pulped mass into his ribcage.

This happens a fraction of a second, so as I pull my leg back, I turn the movement into a spin just in time to catch the bearded bitch coming at me from behind. She's hairier than my asshole and about as pleasant, so my first spell wipes her pumpkin of a skull clean of features, which, aside from making this world a helluva lot prettier, also strips her of most of her senses.

It's only her undeath that keeps her from flopping onto the ground while going into shock, really. As the faceless freak blindly reaches out for me, I turn every bone from the waist down intangible, and she is stopped cold. I step on her flat face as she falls, using it as a trampoline to lightly jump backwards, then, feeling bad for her, I decide to undo the impromptu sensory deprivation session.

Eyes burst all over the butterball's body, but Argus' new sister has no mouth to scream with. Knew I forgot something....

Leaving her to get acquainted with the sawdust, which is rubbing her new peepers raw, I turn to the rest of the family. These vamps are fairly fast, I suppose, by mundane standards. To the audience, we must look like we're just blurring in and outta sight, like the fighters in Candy's anime The sound of their cheering is only starting to reach my ears, slow and layered, like I'm hearing it from underwater.

Lobster girl's blocky fingers begin to brush across my back, and I spin in place, snapping my spine so I can face her. The vamp's mouth turns from triumphant leer to surprise. I blow her a kiss, and to her, I must look like I'm frigging boneless, some sorta human slinky. Oh, this move hurts like a bitch, but I'll heal. As my legs twist to match my torso, I cup crab chick's face with my hands, but I'm not about to kiss her nose. Instead, I push, magic working hand in hand with strength to leave her skull two-dimensional. My hands move to her stomach and the small of her back while the corpse is still flying towards me, and I turn Crustaceain't into life-sized origami as my legs are in their proper place again. I already feel tougher, if not better. My spine still hurts, but I'm sure killing the rest of these chucklefucks is gonna do wonders for the soul everyone says I don't have.

Grabbing lobster girl's flattened remains, I fold 'em a few more times, until I'm holding something thin and sharp, like one of those bendable Indian swords. Sticky with blood and still twitching, but I know just how to break it in, and through Sealboy's face. The makeshift blade splits his head in half as he belatedly reaches me, and, inwardly sighing at the now-jagged edge, I wrap what's left of the sword tighter, making a club.

Not that I wanna keep his hide intact or anything. I just thought it'd be funny since I saw him dragging his ass across the ground.

As I'm grinning my head off, I finally feel the expected cold barrel press against my temple. Deciding that, if this Barnum Bailey cosplayer unironically thinks he sneaked up on me, I might as well see just how much is gullible ass is willing to buy.

I'd say your first time being a sucker is shitty, but he's a vampire.

From the corner of my eye, I can see Bailey has my other pistol at about waist height. He lifts it to the base of my spine and, not bothering to gloat, pulls the triggers.

I'm disappointed by his lack of proper villain etiquette, but I manage to hold in my sigh until I feel flags come out of the pistols, bunching up and flattening against my head and jacket. Then, before he can even twitch in incomprehension, I make the pistols poof out of his hands and into my waiting ones, removing the prank feature and replacing it with ammo.

Guy acting like the Joker? Why not help him go all the way?

I'd make a toy buzzer so I can both char his dick off before I feed it to him, but nah. I thought he'd catch up with the gun ruse while he saw me making him an only child, but I guess he's too dense for that. Or maybe just pissed at me pruning the family tree?

So, I shove both pistols through into his parted mouth, shattering fangs. They dig into the back of his throat, and I leave 'em hanging there as he tries to remove them. Summoning two more in my hands, I take aim at his heart and head, pulling two of the triggers with my fingers, and those of the guns in his mouth with my mind. The Headless Leechman is already dead, but I keep going. More guns appear around and above me, and I keep shooting them, the recoil knocking them backwards just as my power knocks them back into my imagination.

As the tattered, fleshy rag that used to be Snidely begins falling, I hear one of the audience's hearts finish the beat it began when Baby Face tried to crush me.