FaceFic

Damn. They’re close. It’s now or never. I’m out of here. And that’s fine, except… It’s my writing I care about. All this gorgeous stuff I’ve written, all the words I’ve got in me, if only I didn’t have to hide. So I picked you. I need a stand-in. I write it, you sell it. Keep my name out of it, Will. Say it’s yours. Who cares if you can hardly spell your own name? It’s a gravy train. Do it for your old pal Marlowe!

While visiting family in Hell,
I followed a hideous smell,
And found on a rack,
With a knife in his back,
A member of their personnel:
A demon who’d wandered the Earth
Who told me his sin without mirth:
Of a lass he’d surprised
In his angel disguise,
Resulting in virginal birth.
The son she produced, you may know,
A couple of eons ago,
Was the source of the game
That is mainly to blame
For the bad overcrowding below!

With the “girl reporter” safe now on a rooftop, the Hero was about to leap skyward, so she said, “Stop.” Ever courteous, he stopped. “Don’t you think,” she began, “we should stop playing silly games? You must know I want you, and if I’m reading that bulge in your red shorts correctly, the feeling’s mutual.” The alien smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry, Miss. I only look human. The bulge? It’s my secondary kidney.” And away.

It started as a whim. He had found this limit, and it rankled. He knew which numbers made sense and which were just pulled out of thin air, and this was clearly the latter. But still, with chaos comes potential: what could he do with this? Another whim gave the idea a place to live. Soon he found he was not alone. What could come of this? He made room in his bankbook just in case he got filthy rich, then: back to it.

When Jesus returned, he gave a press conference on the White House lawn. The Reverend Ted Pheltcher was there, with “Jesus Hates Queers” placards, his family in tow. Jesus manifested a Walther PPK and placed a bullet between his eyes. The President was aghast: “What about God’s infinite forgiveness?” “Yeah,” said the Son of Man. “We didn’t anticipate ol’ Ted when We decided that. How are you with otherwise infinite?”

This next patient was a mess. Burns over sixty percent of his body, armless, maimed. I’m a gambling man; I figured if anyone would think of a different first question, it would be him! I explained the rejuvenation process: nanomachines, DNA-led reconstruction, a total rebuild. Of course we could make some adjustments. His eyes flicked to his lap. “How about… a little extra down there?” Damn — another twenty bucks.

A story set in the universe of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and inspired by my daughter who asked a question one day.

When Dream of the Endless disappeared, Earth’s sorcerers were left to pick up the slack. Item one: the children. Nightmares were now ascendant. Theodore Zatara proposed the solution: mighty carnivores, appointed to sit at each child’s side and guard their dreams. Harmless by day, by night tearing at the nightmares with tooth and claw. An elegant solution! The sorcerors named the bears after their inventor, naturally.

The party at Bacchus’ flat was a riot. Elvis gettin’ his groove on with four Naiads at once. Thor and Buddha doing competitive tequila slammers. Athena and both Dianas (goddess, Princess) singing truly awful karaoke. They all looked so young! “You haven’t a care in the world!” I told Horus. Satan looked up from correcting exams, foreboding. “Always the eternal enemy,” Horus whispered. Silently he mouthed it: boredom!

The vile creature raised its tentacle toward the red button on the console. “Destroy your universe, I shall!” it rasped. “I shall! I shall!” I yawned. Outside the alien ship’s hull the blackness of space went on for a quadrillion kilometres in every direction. There was barely half a hydrogen atom in every cubic metre, forever. “I wouldn’t bother, my slimy chum,” I told it. “It’s pretty clear someone beat you to it.”

I was twelve when I first realised that nobody else was real. Oh sure, they thought they were, and they got so huffy when I mentioned (casually, in passing) that I was the only real person in the world. But I knew. I could tell, because none of them knew how to slorf. Do you know how to slorf? Well then, you’re not real either, obviously! And slorfing is so simple, it’s — hmmm, that’s odd. I’m sure I used to know…