Real question. If your girlfriend never really existed. Not her, or the psychotic version of her that liked to stab people. And if you were having sex with said girlfriend. Is it a wet dream, or masturbation? I’m leaning towards wet dream.

I know that's a crude start to the third and final installment of my tale, but life hasn’t been great these last few months. You’d think reality would be easier because of getting a ring that let me create objects, but all it’s done is make my daily dose of nonsense even more annoying. Or maybe it’s because my goals have shifted now that there are more options so the relative difficulty of existence increased.

Right now, I’m on one side of a children’s park that mysteriously, sort-of-emptied out minutes ago. On the other side stands a towering meat wall. Said meat wall, an angry Viking dude, holds a two-handed mallet the size of a park bench. If I had six arms and enough muscles to make them work, I still couldn’t lift that monstrous meat masher like the Norse asshole across the way.

Wait. Are Norse and Vikings the same? I can’t keep it straight anymore.

“Come at me bro!” he bellowed drunkenly.

Okay, he didn’t shout “come at me”. He might have been sober but Norse people all look drunk when they’re angry. What he said was some long winding speech about how it’s all my fault. I think he also accused me of something to spread doom to his family’s new homeland. Then he rambled about how a dozen higher realms were shattering and his parents had been turned into statues. So, naturally, I had to die to set things right.

His long-winded speech is way more boring than “come at me bro”. I only even say that because he looked like he’d come straight from a frat party, complete with the red ballcap and grey shirt. The only reason I’d even know he was a hero is because of the stupidly large weapon, a majestically out of place beard, and him not trying to murder the women and children nearby.

He was also the third person to accuse me of cause dimensional havoc this week. Two days ago, I’d been chased by a horde of mini were-cats around the forest until I plied them with a million squeak toys and something that might have been dried catnip on steroids. Before that, angry birds, mostly the fat ones that exploded.

“Die slave of Hel!” He hefted his maul of overly spikey doom and roared. His long-braided bro-beard swayed in the wind as he ran across the playground at me

That gave me about ten seconds to give a shit about the outcome of our scuffle. If I did nothing, I’d probably end up unconscious. Death may be theoretically impossible because of my powers but even an iota of unawareness would ruin my plans. There were things that needed to be done, magical items to steal, dimensions to collapse into nothingness.

So, yeah. It was my fault. Sue me, if Jade lets you. The bottom line is that I cared enough to fight this idiot.

I shouted, “No! I have too much television to watch!” and lifted my equally large blow up doll that sort of looked like Alice then bellowed back. The plastic nipples didn’t scare him at all. My foe continued his charge, vaulting heroically over a seesaw and two slides in a single bound. I threw the doll. It turned into seventy, because my inflatable sex toy knew multiplication.

They bounced off him. A dozen more landed on the ground. His spiked maul collected a handful of blow-up doll remains as it swung out defensively. He brushed past a handful then slipped on the ground-based ones. They popped then deflated. I pointed my hand into the sky and used the ring to summon forth the heaviest item in my arsenal.

A Purple Prose started to form. It was a giant submarine that had been retrofitted with purple spewing thrusters so it could fly through space. Or space through space. I still hadn’t asked how you could fly through space when there was no air.

That didn’t matter. The ship’s forward half snapped off while the back end continued to form. I turned and ran, because distance made ginormous falling objects less dangerous. Purple Prose bits slammed onto the drunken, frat-boy god. Blow up dolls went flying by me. They replicated into dozens more. One landed perfectly on a swing and started doing the thing that swings do. I managed not to slip on my own mess and kept on running, up a grass covered hill.

The top of the hill should be a portal. I’d driven myself in a Stingray, much like the one Ted had, all the way to Washington state. Which involved a dozen detours and crashing the car every other hour because driving on a highway without cops getting upset still proved difficult. Idaho still hated me and my detour through Canada had gone about as well as could be expected. My status as a “no-go” was rapidly becoming useless.

Anyway, the goal had been this city. Olympia. Not Olympus, but they were close enough that a lot of powered people who thought they were gods got confused. Especially American ones who had no idea where Olympus was on a map. Which is also why the minute I hit this park, drunken frat boy got in my way and demanded a fight. Then he’d chased me, and I’d run, because being knocked out would be bad.

My blow-up doll snares and dropped-ship combo couldn’t keep him down. Muscled idiots never stayed down. They got up and fought for shallow unthought out concepts like “honor” and “justice”. Ever tried to fight for those? It’s stupid. They’re words printed on the side of cereal boxes and mean about as much as “for spoon” and “no new taxes”.

I kept running up the hill.

Pillars lined a well-worn pathway. The ones at the bottom where I’d been stopped by the Thor wanna-be were broken and old. They got fancier as I bolted upwards. The grass grew wilder with each step, seemingly sprouting up out of the ground with each second. If the Stingray hadn’t crashed a mile away after an awkward police chase, I could have driven up the top of the hill. Sadly, I hadn’t figured out how to create an escalator. They were more complicated than expected and probably could be used by my probably-not-dead foe.

Metal got torn into shreds behind me. I refused to look back and hummed over the piercing shrike. I think the song was the Great Escape.

I needed more distractions between me and mallet man. A half dozen bad ideas passed through my brain before I settled on statues. Ambiguous statues that might have been other Greek gods.

Up came the ring. I stared at the silver band and pretended the colors bolting along under its mirror-like surface weren’t scary. Or the fact that it had been cosmically superglued to my hand. Or that Alice gave me this after tearing Flux apart. I thrust out my arm, continued running, and thought of statues. Endless statues.

Rays bolted out across the landscape. Dozens of statues formed in seconds. I wove between two and kept right on running up the hill.

Screeching filled the air. A huge piece of the Purple Prose’s hull went flying over my head. It landed then rolled up the hill a few feet before flopping back down. A dozen freshly crushed statues were left in its wake.

A bead of sweat dripped down my head. This would be bad.

“Mother?” the man behind me shouted.

See? He drunkenly slurred because the statues were meant to look vaguely like his parents. Which mean I had to go all in on my wild plan.

“Stupid Ass-guardian!”

I had no clue if he was an Asgardian. I didn’t even know his name.

“Villain!” He sloshed at me. “What sorcery is this?”

“I’ve summoned statues!” Sort of true. Not technically accurate, but he didn’t seem like the kind of hero that could detect lies. “One of these is your mother! Perhaps you’ve already squished her with your oafish strength!”

He looked around. His hair fluttered about in shampoo worthy strands. My eye twitched and I took a few steps backward, up the hill. Something line mild panic and a thundering weapon with black lightning bolts shimmering off it couldn’t stop me. No sir.

“Impossible!”

Ted’s advice here? Ham it up. Hands on hips. Throw my head back and let out a laugh that accurately reflected the panic and drug induced madness that had ahold of me.

“Wrong fool! It’s very possible! I am The Fiasco. World’s leading disaster magnate. Of course, I could do something as simple as summoning your mother’s lifeless, statue to torment you with.”

“No!” he denied.

“You have no idea of the powers at my command!”

I had no idea of the powers at my command. So, he wasn’t alone.

“Fiend!”

My stupid plan had worked.

He leapt into the air, sailing over the heads of the statue garden. I kept on backing up, then turned and ran.

Here’s a downside of the promise ring Alice had gifted me. It doesn’t put objects in motion. It does however put them, still, where I wanted. I looked back while huffing. The Norse whatever had his hammer high in the sky as he caught enough air to make General proud. I pointed the ring at him and thought frantically about a net to catch him.

It formed. He flew into it, tumbled and rolled into a few more statues. His face turned to pure anguish and I couldn’t bring myself to care since none of them were really his mom. I mean obviously I’d never met her. I added insult to injury by creating banana peels and other garbage above his head. That mess proceeded to pile on top of his abruptly ground bound form.

I kept on running while feeling mildly proud of myself. A few months ago this would have ended in seconds, when the muscle bounded defender of “just us” punched me and I passed out. Now, I could fight back.

Which brings us to an important lesson for those students of mine, if they’re still out there and watching. When you can’t beat the enemy, turn them into a joke. Slapstick causes super serious people to get angry. Most angry heroes make mistakes. Especially if they’re panicking over a loved one.

Secondary to that lesson, you may be asking yourself about my callous behavior regarding his mental torture. You might go “Adam, you’ve always been kind of a dick, but the villain, really?”

To which I get to say “I dunno man. It seems like it all works out for them”. Plus I knew that the hero would probably just get angrier in a bit, and try even harder to turn me into mush. Then my original power would kick in and give me an out. I also knew that talking him down while trying to steal a treasure from Olympus couldn’t possibly work out in my favor.

The rows of pillars had continued to grow more impressive. My statue garden thinned out but a few were posed nicely against nearly complete columns. They s had reached about halfway up to a full two-story ceiling. I turned and got ready to drop another bomb on the still flailing hero.

I mean, no, I couldn’t for a bomb. I’d tried to do explosives but so far, I had zero luck. Teddy bears. Replicating blow up dolls. But nothing that went “boom”. Somehow the ring lent itself to the same sort of comical relief that Flux.

We weren’t alone on the hill. Down at the bottom milled the standard crowd of moms and their armies of children. All of them bounced then pointed toward the sky as I brought forth another replica of the Purple Prose. This one had more time to complete than the first one.

Flux hovered boringly off to the side. It didn’t beep at me anymore. For a moment I forgot about the impending gravity powered projectile and mourned the loss of my vaguely entertaining toaster-humper.

I stared at it, watching the dimmed red eyeball stare blankly at me. “She broke you,” I observed for the umpteenth time in the last few months.

A manly bellow, the kind that sounds like it comes from a giant’s anus, rippled through the landscape. Children fell. Mothers resumed screaming and finally decided to get further away from the fight. I clapped then tried to figure out what else to throw at my enemy.

Nothing great came to mind other than my still-forming tonnage. He pulled himself up out of the wreckage. Filth dripped from his clothes. Scratches lined his face but nothing noticeable. He kicked the last of my netting and trash off and puckered his lips in a way that promised me a good spanking. Or whatever heroes did to people when they were mad but couldn’t kill their foe.

“I hate durable heroes,” I mumbled.

“You’ll fool me no more with your false idols.” He glared at me with a disquieting calmness. His mallet came out and smashed the remaining portion of an untouched statue.

“Okay,” I responded calmly while backing. “Maybe ones of your dad? Does he have a beard too?” I pointed at my sadly bare chin. Three weeks without shaving and all I had were whiskers.

He closed his eyes, shook his head, and pulled off his ballcap. A few swipes through the air knocked off most of the dirt. He put it back on, bill facing backwards. Herclu-bore sucked in a lung full of air causing his shirt to tear. Before I could hate his well-defined physique, he let out a second insane bellow that should have made me pee myself. I didn’t. I swung my arm down and let the forming copy loose from the air.

The fresh sun in his eyes got blocked by another victimized by gravity version Purple Prose. Bellow met ship hull. It rattled violently. Pieces flew about. An untouched blow-up doll popped. None of that stopped my giant fifty-ton monster from heading toward the ground.

I rather liked watching the space faring submarine crash to the ground. Especially if it squished muscle-brained heroes. Even more when it was the second time and simply proved how little brains they had. If I knew a damn thing about how to fly it, I’d have a lot more options.

That irksome thought distracted me from running. I should have turned and hauled ass back up the hill but stared blankly to watch my latest destructive nightmare and bemoan my lack of submarine piloting skills.

“Morpheus!” he shouted from behind the fresh ship.

“Dammit,” I responded. Clearly, he’d avoided the falling metal.

“Now!” he ordered.

A shiver raced down my neck. I turned and pointed the ring. Endless copies of the user’s manual fluttered in the air. They caught nothing.

Another godling had to be around here somewhere. I looked up, then down. Morpheus rang a bell. Something about dreams. I had a vague image of a man in an interview. He’d worn a long robe that drug through the dirt and he just didn’t care because the man fell asleep in the middle of a question.

I turned back to hammer-bro. A figure faded into view two feet away from me. The man with the robe stood there, half ethereal. Here’s where I tried to figure out if it was a visual illusion or some ghost like cheat.

Summoning a blow-up doll that vaguely resembled Alice only took half a second. Don’t ask why.

I swung my newly spun prop through Morpheus. It squeaked, or moaned mechanically, and hit nothing. The second guy didn’t even bad an eye.

“Sleep him!”

“No, sleep. My greatest weakness!” I threw up my hands then backed away.

There had to be a solid way out of this. My bag of tricks had a lot of possibilities and I still hadn’t figured out the best way to use them. Alice would have summoned and endless supply of axs and swords then chased people around madly. I couldn’t bring myself to do the same.

Bowling ball? No. His ghost like body would make physical attacks pointless. Carve away the ground? No. He could float. I remembered it from the stupid interview. The only thing that they hadn’t shown on the television was the raggedy top hat.

“Yes! We’ve found the world killers weakness.”

“The what?”

The muscled idiot continued as if I hadn’t asked an obvious question, “The oracle was right once again!”

“Let yourself slumber foul destroyer,” the guy with his ugly top hat said. He reached out for me.

Sleep wasn’t really my greatest weakness. Television was. Luckily, I think most of the world has the same problem with exhaustion that I do. The reason simply varies. For normal people like you, it’s the day job, kids, and life. Plus all of these other existing and breathing our air. I just don’t have any kids and the asshole to air ratio is skewed heavily in the wrong direction. My local atmosphere is made entirely of farticles.

So, back to these two farticle spewing heroes and their dastardly plan to save the world from me. Me, most of the way up the hill. Sleepy behind me. Grumpy in front of me. Two broken version of the Purple Prose down the hill. Flux’s user manual pages everywhere. Stick figures drawings of myself spiraled along, carried by the beautiful Sunday wind.

Morphoues’s hand moved slowly. He blinked once then started snoring while his outstretched hand hovered inches away from my face.

Which means I get to point out that I still had ways to escape. Step one. A long, long sheet of thick plastic. Step two, a lot of lube. Since I couldn’t use water. Step three, as Morpheus woke up and reached out again, dive onto the makeshift slippery slide and hurdle back down the hill toward safety. With the blow-up doll. Because reasons.

I went sliding down the hill, past both heroes. I zapped statues and bits of the Purple Prose out of existence. Seconds later I made it to the bottom and fumbled my way to my feet and threw up my hands then posed. I swear to you some child cheered.

The wind blew intensely and knocked me over. That kid’s parent cheered.

I stood up and stared at the two. Turned out they were closer than I thought, and possibly stupier than average to be hovering at the edge of this fight. Imagine, two ships from nothing and statue bits everywhere. These idiots didn’t care.

“Look mom, he’s all slimy and has a girl with a funny face!”

“Practice safe sex,” I told the kid. Because clearly his mother was too stupid to be trusted with such an important lesson. What kind of idiot hangs out with her child and watches a hero fight?

I threw the doll at him, ignored their outraged cries, and turned back toward the mess above me. As an afterthought I built a quick brick wall between me and the woman. Maybe if she couldn’t see the fight, she’d be smart enough to drag her kid away.

The heroes up top were too busy slipping and sliding all over the ground. I don’t know who trained them, but they sucked at their job. General would have flown over. Ice Princess would have frozen everything, including myself. This guy had an oversized mallet and two brain cells. His companion was vertically narcoleptic.

“More lube,” I said calmly, and poured it out in droves. This seemed like a perfect way to incapacitate someone with no brains. Just gel them up so much that someone could ram a baseball bat up their ass and not feel an ounce of friction.

He tumbled down the hill. With each spin his mace gouged out another huge divot. I had maybe half a minute tops before he got his feet under him or the lubricant faded.

And if you’re asking how I stood up calmly and didn’t have any problems, then the answer’s easy. Selective deletion. Most of the time the ring worked great. Summon object, survive, move on. I didn’t have an overwhelming desire to simply murder heroes so the more violent options weren’t really my first thought.

I’d failed this attempt to get up the hill, break into Olympus, and progress in my daylight robbery. That brought me back to plan A. Drive a Stingray through the portal. I’d queue up some great chase music and blast it at full volume.

Cars were more complex than the messes I’d been making. I had no clue why the purple prose took so little worked, but the Stingray spun into existence for over twenty seconds before being fully formed. Muscleman slid around the mess I’d left him in. Morpheus slowly drifted towards me. The idiot mother screamed at me over the brick wall.

I had no illusions about running up the hill after them. Not when I could press a gas pedal. My engagement ring spun out the rest of the car and formed a badly made road that went straight up the hill. I dove into the seat, prayed I knew how to keep the wheel straight, then slammed on the gas.

The ramp formed. I shifted the end path to the left slightly and caught my muscled foe on the hood of the car. He slipped, the wheels spun, I lifted my ring and deleted another portion of lube.

He reached for my face. His other hand swung the two-handed weapon over my head. I ducked and powered us up the hill.

“Over my dead body!” he shouted. A gob of goo slapped onto the windshield. I wished for wipers but this model didn’t have any. Safety regulations were for suckers.

“This is a party now!” I added.

The engine screamed in protest at the uphill climb with so much extra weight. I didn’t care, we were moving faster than my running speed. Pillars grew in height and complexity. Morpheus got left in the dust. My spine tingled in happiness as something went right today.

I hit the apex of the hill. Everything around me shifted wildly. Clouds went from dull grey to flowery. A sunset formed in the distance. Other peaks shot up out of nowhere to frame a city in the distance.

I liked to imagine making a greeting card of this moment. Me busting into Olympus, from a portal in Olympia, driving a Stingray, with Thor or whatever on the hood dripping with lube and a few dozen blowup dolls in the backseat. On the back of my card it’d say “Wish you were here”. I’d send one to Ted. Maybe with an arrow pointing to the musclebound hero.

We continued up. The ground dripped away from me and wound a path along the mountain’s edge toward the city. I took my foot off the gas but the car didn’t stop going in the air. We also weren’t going to be landing on that path.

“Fuck,” I said.

I’d forgotten airbags. And my seatbelt. And a landing pad. Let’s be honest, memory isn’t my strong suit.

There’s this magical spot in an arc where gravity reasserts itself. The upward flight became a downward trip into faceplant land. Any sensible person would stay in the car and hope the extra mass protects them from the impending crash. I had a hero on my fender so that option sucked. Plus, maybe pile driving him off a cliff would help me continue the grand plan.

I jumped at the sweet spot of my arc.

Here’s the calm version of the thoughts going through my head. If I didn’t want my powers to send me some random ass solution, I needed to form my own. That meant securing my fall from the sky with something safer than solid earth.

What actually happened is that my arms flailed madly.

“Fuck! I’m an idiot,” I chanted it over and over. The ring started copying me a net. Two poles finished before I slammed into the thin mesh. It tangled around me and slowed the fall while sending me spinning off in a new direction.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

My stomach heaved. Two more nets formed but I missed both. Morpheus went flying into one. It wrapped snugly around his body. I turned and wasted a few seconds of my barely controlled fall to flip him off.

I had no clue where he’d even come from. It didn’t matter. My ears hurt. My knee screamed at me. I felt the need to barf but couldn’t figure out which way to do it. The ground continued to dip away despite me descending toward it.

My fall veered off the mountain’s path. I’d end up tumbling into the fog shrouded chasm to one side. I put out the ring and created another mess of items. A hastily spun cushion slowed me down. My face protested. I bounced into two more then spun off to the side again.

My body slammed into the ice-covered mountain to the path’s left. I had no clue how I’d gotten far enough to hit it, but a brief second, right before I started rolling violently, I felt joy. Joy that I’d actually hit what I aimed for. Mostly, I regretted eating hotdogs with all the trimmings as a lunch.

I tumbled a few more times. The same scene passed by again and again, framed by increasing amounts of snow. Pit with fog. Path. Mountain’s snow-covered edges. Sky. Repeat. I felt sicker then landed with a thud.

Everything hurt, but that simply meant I’d stopped long enough to register pain. The world spun violently but my body stayed in one place. I crawled away and wondered why I hadn’t made a sea of marshmallows to land on. Something without surface tension. The net had been stupid.

Next time would go even better. This time however, I still had a chance to get away.

I rolled onto my back and looked at the sky. Thor or whatever his name was, roared. He soared through the air on unexpected downward path. Snow from the mountain tumbled down, gaining mass like a second wave of pain looming behind the first. He held the two-handed mallet above him, ready to swing downward and test my durability until failure. And no, I don’t know how he could leap, be midair, whirl that damn thing around, and not break his back. Superpowers have been boning logic without foreplay for generations. Case and point, me summoning gallons of lubrication.

And if all you’re hearing is that I missed Alice for more than a few reasons, you’d be spot on. If hadn’t zipped off to whatever land after proposing to me in delightfully insane Alice fashion, then I wouldn’t be out and about collapsing pocket dimensions and stealing artifacts.

My arm moved too slow. The ring formed something but my brain couldn’t figure out what. Muscle-brain came closer. His arc wouldn’t land right on top of me but it wouldn’t matter. The shockwave would be enough. I turned and tried to crawl further away. My leg bunched din agony.

The world vibrated. I bit my cheek and tongue. That hurt more than my legs. My brain reset and I tried to figure out what item to summon. Pain killers seemed like an ideal choice. But that nothing else came to mind. All I knew is that footsteps were growing closer, along with a deep huffing body. Whatever happened next would absolutely ruin my current plan, which had been to steal a chalice that could raise the dead.

Sleepiness pulled at my eyelids again. I shook my head and pointed the ring hand out, intent on creating a pitfall for someone. My body got flipped over. I managed to lift my other arm and flip off the idiot. He raised another object over his head then swung.

I briefly registered it as the steering wheel from my fifth demolished Stingray. It connected and the pain simply piled on top of already existing agony. My head bounced off the ground. Blackness came for me once again.

“Fuck me,” I stuttered.

Dozens of pictures of myself fluttered down from the sky. Each one drew me in crayon and a stupid smile. They landed neatly as my vision swam with darkness. A final squeak woke jolted me to brief awareness, and I saw a final blowup doll plop into the pile of papers. Goo splattered everywhere.

Then I was gone. So, while we’re here. Me being unconscious is a good time to shift gears.

I’ve come to realize that in order to effectively tell you how this all ends, I need to fully explain where it all began. For those of you that hate flashbacks, get over it. Next up, without the half assed recaps, I’ll tell you how my first real adventure into the powered world went. Now, every teenager in the world may feel this way, but I mean this from the bottom of my twisted heart. The root of all my problems; existence, Alice, the world in general, all of it starts in my bedroom.

Which means I started as a typical teenager.

***

Adams Notes on Stupid Things

Gods. Srsly. WTF.

Gods are the weirdest damn concept in the superhero world. I sometimes imagine a world without powers and full of just stories. Stories like the Bible. Which is all it’s nonsense because in a world without superpowers, miracles can't possibly be true. Here in my world, there’s Jesus the Returned rolling around downtown New New New York handing out wafers and saying they’re the body of Christ the first.

In reality, where I’m forced to exist, Gods are the upper management of our powered world. They’re tough. Nearly impossible to kill or stop. They have powers that go up to eleven. Then when one trips himself and falls into an epic pile of shit, the rest of the gods show up to judge and secretly help their fecal covered pantheon member.

Linking these two points together. Gods have been doing a shit job of managing the last few thousand years. Humanity doesn’t better or worse, it keeps on being the same percentage of asshole and saint as ever. Maybe if they had more impressive powers, like popping idiots out of existence, but no. Some of them aren’t even that impressive. And yes, I’m stuck on the wafers. I mean, if he could at least multiply living fish instead of only dead ones then he’d be useful.

However, I don’t take them seriously because they’re only upper managers. CEOs are much scarier.