17
Rick Wickerman raced through the city, pumping his legs despite the burn he felt in them. It'd been years since he'd ran like that, and the sick feeling he'd woken up with certainly wasn't helping. But, shit. Phil was alive, or so Lord WattPad had claimed, and there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell he'd miss the opportunity to finally see him again. He wondered how it would go down—would he see him behind double-sided glass, or something? Or would he be able to see his brother up close? Touch him, share a smile, share a laugh, see the crinkle in his eyes when he was amused by something...
So many years missed without Phil by his side. So many things experienced alone. So many questions left unasked that you could only ask an older brother. So many memories never made and forever unremembered.
Following an internal map of the city, Rick's muscles did all the thinking, his legs planned the route. He didn't—couldn't—think of anything else except the first thing he'd say to Phil. Maybe "Hey, bro, long time, huh?" He smiled and felt his eyes well up with tears at the thought.
Dodging in-ground fountains, he sprinted across Yonge-Dundas Square, towards the building topped with the massive Wattpad W. If it were nighttime, that sign would be glowing like no tomorrow. Section B-3 was somewhere off to one of the sides. Rick couldn't remember if it was on the left side or the right. Looking back and forth, back and forth, he took a wild guess and headed left.
Utterly winded, he slowed down when he hit the left-side parking lot. Caught his breath with his hands on his knees.
And then, about twenty metres away, Phil walked out the side entrance with an old-school boombox on his shoulder. He was a bit heavier than he'd been ten years ago, had lost a lot more hair, and he looked like he hadn't shaved in a week, but it was definitely him. Rick would recognize him anywhere.
"Phil!" he shouted, waving his hand high.
Phil stopped, seemed confused for a second, then looked at Rick. He grinned slowly and waved, started walking over to Rick.
And the white van screeched as it turned into the parking lot, engine roaring. It skidded to a stop, careening left. The door slid open and a man with a machine-gun appeared.
"Phil! Run!"
The machine-gun fired, littering Phil with bullets. The man was lifted off his feet as the shots hit him, poofs of blood misting behind. The boombox exploded and pieces went every which way, clattering on the pavement. One of the bullets hit him in the forehead and blew half his skull off.
Phil hit the pavement with his brains spilled out of his head like canned spaghetti.
Rick went to his knees, crying, shouting, screaming incoherent obscenities, asking, "Why? Why, God, why? Why? Phil! Why?"
"Because you touch yourself at night, peasant," Lord WattPad said nonchalantly, freshly manicured hands in his pockets. "Now get in the van or I'll get Ree to put a bullet in your rectum. Don't worry. He's super-good at taking them out. Learned that from experience."
18
They arrived at WattTower after a mostly silent drive. Lord WattPad had insisted on tunelessly humming one of 2Fresh4U's recent hits, "Play U Like a Gameboy, Girl-Thang," and had even suddenly, and quite passionately, belted out the chorus—"STICK MY GAME INTO UR SLOT, HIT THE POWER SWITCH, OUCH HOT, GONNA DRAIN MY BATTERY ALL UP INSIDE U, GONNA PLAY U LIKE A GAMEBOY, GIRL-THANG, GIRL-THAAAANG!"—waving his arms around, like he was performing for an audience of millions instead of just Rick and Ree and the visibly disgusted driver.
"Welcome to my humble abode, peasant," Lord WattPad said as Ree shoved Rick out of the van with a gun jammed into the small of his back.
They walked into the building and Lord WattPad pointed out all the amenities available. "Foosball table is down the hall and the first door on your right. Olympic-sized pool is to the left. The movie theatre, which only shows Adam Sandler movies from 2003 until 2073 is just past that. And the movie theatre that shows Dane Cook specials—he's my favourite comedian, by the way; classic, biting, highly original material—is three doors down from there. Handjob salon, eighth door on the right. Blowjobs, on the left. Pretzels can be given for free from the room just past that. And you can get salt for the pretzels in the next room..."
It just went on and on and on. Rick tuned most of it out. By the end of the grand tour they were on the seventy-fifth floor and Lord WattPad had just showed him the "nothing room," where one could go and do nothing, not even stare at a wall, because the room had no lights or windows to see anything by.
"Why are you showing me all this?" Rick wanted to know.
Lord WattPad kicked at the ground with his platform shoes. "Well, gee, I dunno, mister... because you're awesome!"
Rick stared with his mouth open. Said nothing.
"I dunno, Rickoffer—can I call you Rickoffer? You just seemed kinda like my kind of dude, y'know, and it gets pretty lonely here in my palace sometimes, what with me being the one and only Lord, and I was thinking, I dunno, I need a friend and maybe you need a friend and maybe we can both need a friend together and be friends, or something, y'know? Nobody's ever stood up to me the way you do, and it kind of turns me on in a weird way—a friendship way." He started crying and put on a pair of shuttered sunglasses to hide his tears.
"Uh, what about The Chosen One? He stood up to you more than I do and you had him killed."
Lord WattPad waved it off. "That was business."
"Uh, okay. Buddy." Rick would play along. For now. Maybe he could get the drop on the bastard and kill him. For Phil. For everyone else. "Can you get rid of the goon with the gun?" he asked, nodding at Ree, who looked positively robotic with his expressionless face and Matrix sunglasses.
"Ree! Go take a walk! Maybe find a stray dog to give a colonoscopy to."
"Ressir," Ree said, saluting before he left.
"C'mon, Rickoffer, I want to show you something cool. It's downstairs. In the basement."
19
"You like dead bodies?" Lord WattPad asked as they descended in the elevator.
"Not particularly, no," answered Rick from the corner, as far as he could get from the bastard.
"How about bodies that should be dead but aren't?"
"You mean, still-living people? Yeah, I do find myself preferring them. Oddly enough."
The doors opened to the basement level and Lord WattPad led the way out into the sterile-looking grey-blue hall. "You're gonna love this shitake mushroom, then, Rickoffer! HahaheheHEHHEH heh! Remember Spy Kids?"
"I try not to."
"Classic movie. But not quite as good as Jack and Jill. Here we are." Lord WattPad shoved open a door labelled STORAGE.
Much to Rick's chagrin, there were only two things in the basement storage room—neither of which were small or light enough to use as a weapon. Lord WattPad immediately went to the one not covered in dust and cobwebs. It was a large, sleek white chamber with a glass top, evidently frosty from the chill within as Rick saw a temperature readout on the side: -250°C.
"This is Allen, the original sack of shit who created Wattpad." Lord WattPad breathed on the glass over the cryo-preserved man's face and drew a crudely constructed phallus. "Sometimes I like to defrost him and take a hot whiz all over his big, dumb face."
"Why?"
"I dunno. It's fun. Wanna pee on him? We can cross streams."
"No," Rick said, and went over to the other thing in the room, what looked to be a giant technological cabinet. He pulled away some of the cobwebs hanging from it and saw the letters TK bevelled into the metal. "What's this?"
"Oh, that's just some stupid old German supercomputer. Supposed to be so intelligent it learns and could serve as our master and solve all our problems. I wasn't having any of that, so I loaded it up with gay porn and threw it down here, heheheheHEH, lulz."
"Does it still work?" Rick asked, getting ideas. If he could power it up, reformat the hard drive, maybe it would know how to stop Lord WattPad.
"Dunno. Don't really care. Besides, I took a piss in the disk drive one time." Lord WattPad sighed. "C'mon, let's go upstairs. All this talk of history is giving me a gut ache. I've got something you should read. Maybe it'll convince you things are better now."
Frowning, Rick followed Lord WattPad out of the room. He kept his eyes on the German supercomputer until the door was shut. He couldn't help but think TK—whatever that meant—was the answer to all of his problems.
20
Across the city, @OutrageousOllo came to a halt beside @MadMikeMarsbergen's mutilated corpse. She fought back the tears, booted away some seagulls pecking at his eyeballs and severed wang, and hunkered down beside him. Ripping open her jean jacket, she readied the first—of about fifty—FAME-containing syringes.
After pricking him with each and every one, she waited.
She worried she was too late. If you didn't get the juice in their veins fast enough, they'd just stay dead and you'd be out of FAME. A total waste. What if he was dead? Her soul-mate would be gone. And you only get one of those. Once they go, that's it, you're done, no more.
Looking over at @MadMikeMarsbergen, he was still quite dead. She sighed and started sobbing into her crossed arms.
A sneeze, a cough, a fart.
She turned and saw him sit up, take the dick out of his mouth and stare in horror.
Squealing with delight, she lunged at him, hugged him, kissed him, and then slapped him. "How dare you go and get yourself killed!"
"What? You were killed, too," he reminded her. "Your head was blown to smithereens and everything. I didn't slap you..."
"That was different," she told him. "I wasn't The Chosen One. We need to find Rick."
"And I need revenge on Lord WattPad." @MadMikeMarsbergen keeled over and groaned. "Oooh... AH! AH! OH SHIT WOW HOLY!" He stared down at a bulge, bigger than his old one, running down the leg of his tights. Looked at his old dick, gave a proud pat to his new dick, and tossed the old one in the trash. "Where's my mask?" He looked around. "Oh well, not like nobody there knows who I am. C'mon, let's go kill Lord WattPad."
@OutrageousOllo bounced up and down, then jumped on her reanimated husband's back.
They took off into the sky.
"Can I shove my foot up his ass?" she asked him.
"Olive, as far as I'm concerned, you can drive a minivan with a family of four up his ass."
21
They were back at the top of the tower, standing in Lord WattPad's enormous office. The window, which had been broken not too long ago, was now replaced. The glass shards had been picked up. Any damage done had been repaired. Lord WattPad's hairy assistant stood near the desk, staring solely up at the wall as if letting his eyes linger meant certain punishment would follow.
Ree watched Rick from the corner, licking his lips and running a finger up and down his trusty black colonoscope. It gave him the creeps, but what was even freakier was when Ree used the colonoscope as a makeshift whip, throwing it over each shoulder to lash his rear. Ree would make little squeaking noises when the scope made contact.
Lord WattPad powered up his laptop. "This used to belong to 'The Chosen One.' Psh. Chosen One. I'm the real Chosen One. I'm a god."
Mike's laptop, eh? The one supposedly with the bug that can change the whole world? Rick had a new idea, then. First, he would direct attention away from the subject. "Can I get a glass of water, or something? My throat's a bit itchy."
"Ape, go. Chop-chop."
The one called "ape" lumbered out of the room, grunting something under his breath.
Lord WattPad logged in. Decorating the background was a picture of him spreading his scrotum like it was a pair of wings for his little dink. "One of my favourite poses." He took off his "STALIN WAS GOIN' PLACES" top hat and set it down on the desk. His heat-straightened hair made him look like the frontman for a 2000s post-hardcore/metalcore/pop-punk band.
Next, Rick would bring the topic back to the laptop. Stifling a shudder at the background photo, and acting like he didn't know a thing about the laptop, he asked nonchalantly, "The Chosen One's laptop? Anything special about it?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, Rickoffer... HeheheHEHHA HAAAAA! It's got special powers. Occasionally I use 'em. Don't really need to now, though. Mostly I just use it to create new porn that didn't exist before. Like, have you ever heard of Siberian Elbow porn? It's where you get frostbite in your elbow, drill a hole through it and then let someone jam their—"
"Your water, sir," the assistant said, cutting in.
Rick accepted the glass, took a sip and set it down.
Making a few clicks, Lord WattPad handed the laptop away. "Read this, Rick. Tell me what you think. I greatly value your opinion, because you are my brother, and brothers stick together, right? It's about the times before I became your Glorious Leader, Lord, and Saviour."
Rick accepted it, resisting the urge to punch Lord WattPad in the nose for mentioning brothers, and read the title on the screen. "In the STARz," he said. "By @Emmalee_Sky..."
"Had her type it up for me before I, y'know—" Lord WattPad ran his finger across his throat, then whistled, then made machine-gun sounds with his mouth. He sprayed spit in Rick's face. "For historic record."
Rick nodded, frowning. Wiped his face with a sleeve. He returned to the story.