Seth flicked his wrist in approval while he and Coltrane shared a Twizzler. After they did a little smooching, he said to me, "Jesus, I didn't know you had such sweetness in you. Maybe I should eat you up." He giggled into his hands: "Hee-hee-hee."

Coltrane nodded. "That was a pretty sick story, bro." He fingered his washboard abs, then proceeded to wash his shirt with them.

I got up and stood near the waterfall. God allowed me to see through it, out into the hellish world we'd left behind. We were in the wilderness, safe and sound. But back in the smouldering city: people weren't so lucky.

We'd been swindled, fooled—well, some of us had. The majority of us had thought Trump, aka DJ Drumpf—now known by his new self-given title: Satan—was a bit of a clown, but his supporters had thought he was going to be their Messiah and "drain the swamp," as they said. It turned out he was the polar opposite: a darkness-worshipping, baby-eating, goat-shagging, establishment Republican on steroids and meth, literally. The first time he appeared and spoke to the people as their President, he ripped off his suit and revealed his chiselled, shining Adonis body, coated in liquid gold he'd stolen from poor Indonesian miners. He whipped out a meth pipe, fired it up, shrieked, raved and ranted about building his wall out of toothpicks and dental floss, then grabbed Barack Obama by the nipples and somehow squeezed him so hard the man's head popped off.

Satan did the same to Hillary Clinton. Anyone who cried sexism had a bag thrown over their heads and were hauled off to an extermination camp for processing.

Now when Trump gave speeches, he brandished a gold pike with the severed heads of Obama and Clinton smushed down on top. Rumour had it he wanted to add Bernie Sanders to his collection. If he could find Sanders, of course. Rumour had it Sanders was hiding out in the North Pole, working for Santa, the ultimate socialist. Those legends that Santa = Satan died quickly after that.

In the city, the Trumpolice—black uniforms, with matching T-emblazoned red armbands—goose-stepped through the streets, heiling Herr Trump, waving their assault rifles and bazookas at anyone who wasn't doing what they were told.

People were being killed for who they were. That's why ninety percent of our group were gay Jewish writers from Mississippi with magicians for parents. But it wasn't just us special snowflakes being targeted, oh no. Lynchings in the street were commonplace now. White sheets and paper cones had never been more popular. NASCAR was the national sport, a bag of Fritos and some nacho-cheese dip was considered fine dining, and Budweiser was now preferred over bovine milk in weaning babies off the tit.

I sighed and asked God what we should do.

Keep telling Happily-Ever-After stories, Jesus. They will be the tales to lead humanity out of this age of darkness.

"That's right," I said to myself, feeling a renewed sense of purpose, then rejoined the gang.

"Alright, who's next?" I asked them. "Maybe something that'll get us laughing, eh? We could all use some laughter, what with this world now being controlled by a maniac with the scalp of a little blond boy sewn onto his skull."

"I got a story, Jesus," Coltrane said, finished washing his own shirt and now working on Seth's. "To be fair, it's a little dirty. Like this here shirt I'm washing. This is a little something I like to call

THE PERFECT WEDNESDAY by AngusEcrivain

So apparently life isn't a fairy tale.

But if there was any truth to that statement, then surely Dick would not have been standing there on the street, in the pissing rain, wearing a dress that would have looked more at home in a Disney porn spoof.

The worst thing about it was, of course, that he really rather liked it. He caught his reflection in a rain-spattered puddle—because that kind of thing happens when one is telling a story that borders on the potentially romantic—and he would have been lying had he said the sight did not excite him just a little bit.

And then he awoke, though he did so before his alarm—well come on, did you really expect me to make use of that particular cliché?—and instantly realised that he had, of course, been dreaming.

He was not standing outside in the pouring rain—though it has to be said: it was raining outside—nor was he wearing a dress that would have looked more at home housing an obnoxiously large bosom and a cooch so loose a P&O ferry could have moored within, even at low tide, thus giving its passengers several hours to explore the many tourist attractions said cooch had to offer.

His name was not even Dick; it was John.

Sometimes, dreams were f*cked up.

With a heavy sigh, he rolled out of bed, planting his feet equally as heavily upon the once-thick rug that protruded from beneath his bed. He then quickly took care of the three S's, towel-dried his hair, pulled on a pair of jeans and his least-stained T-shirt, and made his way to the door, pausing to plant a kiss upon his Buffy the Vampire Slayer poster (that really hot one from season three—you know, so don't pretend like you don't—where she looks all broody and sultry and sexy and shit...) and locked the door behind him.

Several hours later he was in the pub. It was still early doors but he was already getting on very well indeed with his fourth pint of snakebite and black. He had spent all morning at the Jobcentre, though, which is exactly how he spent every single Wednesday morning, and—having spent so much time with society's best and brightest—he really needed to let his hair down and get absolutely shitfaced.

"Fancy a joint and a bj out the back, John?"

"Sure," he replied without so much as glancing up. There was no need, though, for he knew Sarah's voice like he knew the back of his own hand, and besides, she was the only bartender on duty in an otherwise empty Winchester Arms. "Give us your gear and I'll skin up."

***

Now, I'm not going to go into any details, but suffice it to say Sarah smiled as John zipped his jeans and she got to her feet, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she did so, and headed back inside.

"Same time next week?" John asked, chuckling as he watched her rather nice derriere disappear through the fire exit.

"Forsooth," she replied, her voice raised loud enough that he might hear, despite her continued progress back towards the bar. "Same time every week, John."

He smiled and made to leave the Winchester's backyard—for want of a better phrase—in fact, the very tips of his fingers were touching the Sun-warmed steel of the latch, situated as it was some two-thirds of the way up the seven-foot gate, when he heard something that sounded very much like a gunshot from within the Winchester Arms.

Now, it should be noted at this point in the story that there are three very, very different reactions to hearing a gunshot.

One: You freeze. You find yourself completely rooted to the spot and unable to move, despite the fact that your brain is undoubtedly (or should be, if you have any sense at all) telling you to get the f*ck out of there.

Two: You run towards the gunshot. Your fight reflexes kick in and you think, most likely erroneously, that it's time for you to play the Big F*cking Hero.

Three: You run. Your flight reflex takes over and you get out of there as fast as your little legs will carry you.

It should also be noted that there is no real "right thing" to do. Should you find yourself in such a situation no one will ever think any less of you if you run for the hills like a big biddy baby. And of course there are no guarantees that by running you will be, in fact, safe, for who is to say there is no second gunman (or gun-woman; that's right, girls can play with guns, too), and by running for your very life you will not find yourself staring down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun the very moment you open the gate?

I bring up the latter point because that was, in point of fact, exactly what happened to John.

The man ran, as any sane man would—though, of course, this is not entirely accurate for, as I'm absolutely certain you'll recall with no small element of clarity, he already had his fingers upon the latch—and exited the gate, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a very large sawed-off shotgun.

He had no real frame of reference, of course. He had never seen a sawed-off shotgun in real life. It did, though, to John, appear to be incredibly large.

And it was wielded by a woman.

And she did not look for a single second as though she was going to let John pass her, a point proven some seven seconds later—the longest seven seconds of John's life; and, it has to be said, the final seven seconds of John's life—when she fired the shotgun at as close to point blank range as makes no difference, straight into his face, and continued chewing loudly with her mouth open, as if she were some kind of heathen who had been dragged up on a council estate in northern England—which, though it makes little difference to the story, she had—upon her blue-raspberry-flavoured Hubba Bubba.

"Messy," said a male voice.

"Meh," she replied, shrugging as she turned. "F*cker probably had it coming. I saw his eyes, man... I'm ninety-seven point two-five percent sure he was a demon but knew nothing about it. I reckon if we check out his flat, or whatever, we'll find evidence."

"No need," replied the man. "You know we don't get involved in that shit. The Order'll come in and clean up our mess. We're just here to kill the f*ck outta those that go bump in the night, or day, or whenthefuckever."

"The girl?"

"Succubus, definitely," he said, nodding. "Now come on... Killing shit makes me hungry and I'm in the mood for a burrito."

***

A few days later, at the local funeral home...

"What do you mean, the bodies are gone?" Weatherspoon Inglebucket—because sometimes people have funny names—the funeral director, asked of his subordinate who at that very moment had hastily entered the office whilst Weatherspoon was right in the middle of a meeting with the family of a recently deceased traffic warden. "Bodies don't just get up and go, Fripton, my friend. This is not a Romero film. It's Henley-on-Thames."

"Well they have, Mister Inglebucket," Fripton replied, in the most matter-of-fact manner of matter-of-fact manners. "Those caskets are empty and they weren't three days ago, 'cos I checked!"

"You'd better find some bricks, then, Fripton," said Inglebucket. Contrary to the assurances he always gave grieving families, this was not the first occasion upon which a body or, indeed, bodies, had gone missing. "And no one can ever, ever know..."

***

Although neither Inglebucket nor Fripton knew it, their missing bodies were, at that very moment, seeking revenge, or rather the owners of those missing bodies were. Bodies rarely do anything on their own, at least nothing big and certainly nothing that could be classed as emotional or vengeful.

"That's him, John," said Sarah, nudging John in the ribs as she spoke. "Right there in the window, eating a damn burrito with some skanky hoe."

"That skanky hoe is the bitch who shot me in the face," replied John, whose face had fully healed—if one discounted the scarring and discolouration around his nose, at any rate.

For three days the two risen victims had been searching for the duo who killed them, and for three days Sarah had been attempting to help John with the revelation that he was, in fact, an Incubus.

As soon as the pair had risen, their "relationship" made complete and total sense to her. The reason she was unable to resist fellating him and yet had not even thought about proffering access to her lady garden when she had always, since her mid-teens, been ready to jump the bones— or bone, as it were—of any individual, willing or otherwise, was simply that they were one and the same. The attraction was there and always would be, but their collective subconscious knew that should they mate, other than for purposes of procreation, the results would undoubtedly be disastrous for both of them.

"How do you want to deal with them?"

"Well," John replied, thoughtfully. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not end up doing time for murder. This is pretty public and the chances of us not being seen, were we to kill them where they sit, are slim at best."

"But if we didn't actually kill them ourselves..." Sarah mused, stroking an imaginary beard that was attached to her very real chin. "You won't have done anything like this yet, but we do have a very particular, unique power."

"I've watched Lost Girl on Netflix," he replied. "So I'm pretty sure I know where this is going."

"Right, then," said Sarah, smiling. "I'll find a guy, you find a girl, and we'll have them do our bidding."

***

It was less than an hour later that John and Sarah met up once again, both sitting upon a council-supplied bench on the side of the road opposite to that of the coffee shop.

"I'm not giving any details," said John, pausing as he struck a match and put it to the tip of the joint. "All I'll say is that barista is one dirty, dirty girl."

"I didn't ask," Sarah replied, chuckling, pointing excitedly across the road as she did so. "Look, they're about to..."

"Ooooh, ouch..."

"Yeah, that's gotta hurt," Sarah said in agreement as she and John watched their pair of conquests repeatedly smash the heads of their assailants with fire extinguishers. It was really rather messy and it was not at all long before the once-clean window was a mass of blood, brain matter and burrito.

"Well I don't know about you but I think we should probably take our leave."

"Forsooth," replied Sarah, getting to her feet as, across the street, patrons of the coffee shop were in various stages of running and screaming. "Tomorrow's Wednesday so I'll see you at the Winchester, early doors for a joint and a blowy?"

"You know what, that sounds perfect," John replied, smiling as he, too, lifted his buttocks from the bench and got to his feet. "There really is nothing I'd like more, Sarah."

And all of that goes to show that even if life isn't a fairy tale, sometimes things work out all right in the end.

Fin.