The gathered crowd talked amongst themselves, most of them nodding their heads in hesitant agreement.
“Of course, if I were to be President, there would have to be some changes to your Constitution, seeing as how I’m not a natural-born citizen and all. But maybe Congress would be willing to do something like that for someone of my unique qualifications?” He meant, of course, that he would incept them all to do it. “Ya think?”
Someone in the crowd began to clap, the rest followed.
Zoth-Avarex bathed in the glory until the applause died down.
“In the meantime, I have another idea. I’m going to hold a competition for all the women, royal or not, who are interested in being by my side as I rule this wor—um, go through this process. The competition will be filmed, ya know, like one of your reality TV shows. Any ladies who are interested can line up at the Space Needle this coming Saturday at, say, five o’clock p.m.”
America’s Next Top Princess
“Welcome to America’s Next Top Princess,” an over-tanned male host said to the TV camera. “The show in which the mighty Zoth-Avarex will choose his next female companion from a throng of thirsty hopefuls. We’re coming to you live from the top of the Space Needle. The line of women hoping to get a chance with our dragon is reportedly around the block.” The host turned to Zoth-Avarex. “So, Zoth, what is it that you are looking for, today?”
“I’m looking for two things, really. Beauty and a willingness to be here with me. Of course royal blood is a big bonus, but not a necessity.”
“You had a princess before, right?”
“Yes.” The dragon hung his head.
“I gotta ask: what happened?”
“Things just didn’t work out between us. She had no aspirations of power, and maybe that’s what I liked most about her, but in the end, she just didn’t want to be here with me. And I’m not gonna lie, that hurt. But I intend to distract myself from that pain by finding another ridiculously hot princess. And if the one who got away happens to see it all on TV. . . well . . . whatever.”
“Okay! Let’s get to filling that pesky hole in your soul. The first princess is here!”
A tall blonde woman with enhanced breasts and impossibly enticing curves strutted up the red carpet that had been laid out across the roof of the observation deck. Her features were angelic, classically beautiful, and perfectly symmetrical. A hopeful smile, with just a tinge of fear, was spread across her pretty face.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Jolene. I’m from Chicago, but my grandparents were immigrants to this country. They came from Luxembourg, and were a part of the royal family there. A misunderstanding forced them out of the royal court and out of the country. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but I tell you all of this just to say that I do have royal blood in my veins, and I would love to be your princess.” She smiled at the camera, then the dragon.
“Competition over!” Zoth-Avarex declared.
“Really?” Jolene squealed.
“But we have ten episodes to shoot, still!” the host said.
“I don’t give a shit about all that. I’ve found my Princess. Now piss off.”
From the safety and comfort of her apartment, Silvia Flores rolled her eyes so hard that she literally sprained an eye muscle. She had to go to the eye doctor to get it checked out and everything. It was a real inconvenience in her life, but still a hell of a lot better than being stuck with Zoth-Avarex.
The Campaign
The first debate of the presidential election was held at the NFL stadium in New Jersey so that Zoth-Avarex could fit inside. The ticket had been set. A white man, Senator John Fusty, was the Republican candidate, and another white man, Governor Paul Pinko, was the Democrat, and Zoth-Avarex ran as an Independent.
“Welcome to the debate, gentlemen,” the white-haired debate moderator said. “Shall we get right to it?”
With nods from all of the candidates, the moderator launched into his questions.
“To start, you’ll all be allowed a thirty-second opening statement. Senator Fusty will go first, Governor Pinko second, and we’ll save the best for last.”
The two human candidates looked at one another, eyebrows raised.
The Senator approached the podium.
“I stand here today to ask for your vote for the Presidency of these United States,” the Senator said. “This is not something I take lightly. America has a storied history of many great accomplishments. I intend to keep this tradition going, and to achieve even greater things. I have served this country as an elected official for fifty proud years. I have lived on planet Earth for seventy-one years. I am not some recent immigrant from an alternate dimension who has no idea about what being an Earthling, or more importantly, an American, really means. Thank you.”
The crowd applauded and the Senator nodded.
“You really pushed that thirty second time limit to the edge,” the moderator said. “Governor Pinko, hopefully you can keep it a bit shorter.”
“My fellow Americans,” the Governor said, “I am a simple man, and I want simple things. The only thing I want is for our amazing country to prosper, and right now, we’re not prospering. But if you look back at our history, you’ll find many places where we have stumbled. And like a great fighter, we’ve always stood back up. Our progressive spirit has led the world for centuries. This, and many other subtle realities cannot possibly be comprehended by someone who has only just arrived here in our great country. Thank you.”
“Whoa!” Zoth-Avarex said. “Shots fired.” He looked to the moderator. “Can I go, now?”
“Of course, sir.”
“All right. It’s true that I haven’t been here all that long, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be as good of a president as either of these two, does it? You’ve all heard my easy-to-implement, common-sense plans. Aren’t they the important things, here? I mean, I do have the knowledge of countless worlds in my head, but that doesn’t make me completely ignorant of your world. I know American history. I know about the epic rap battles in George Washington’s cabinet between Jefferson and Hamilton. And just like that guy on the ten-dollar bill, I am not throwing away my shot to cure what is ailing this country.”
“Well said!” the moderator fawned, although he seemed slightly confused.
“Thank you.”
The moderator turned to the Senator. “Senator Fusty, my first question is for you. Given the wonderful solutions to most, if not all, of our problems that the candidate to your left, Mr. Avarex, has suggested to us, what makes you think that anyone in their right mind would vote for you?”
“First off, I am a man,” the Senator said. “A descendant of Adam whom God made in His own image. With all due respect to Mr. Avarex, he is not. He is a dragon, a red dragon I might add.” The Senator looked up nervously at Zoth-Avarex. “Do we not have mention of a red dragon in the Book of Revelation?”
“So you’re inciting racism, then?” the dragon said. “That’s how we’re gonna start this whole thing?”
“Mr. Avarex, please wait your turn,” the moderator said with an almost imperceptible wink.
“Sorry, sir.” The dragon bowed gracefully.
“Governor Pinko, my next question is for you. Are you going to be able to use magic and raw, unstoppable power as leverage in your negotiations with foreign governments?”
“Obviously not. But the might of the United States Armed Forces has spoken for itself for hundreds of years. And I think you’re way off base with your line of questioning. The real issue we’re facing, if I can pick only one, is the devastating wealth inequality in this country. Mr. Avarex has already shown through nearly every action he has taken on our soil that he is here to accumulate his own wealth. He doesn’t care about any of us and he has proven that time and again.”
“Relax, guy,” the dragon said. “I can change.”
“Okay, Mr. Avarex, it’s your turn now,” the moderator said with a warm smile. “It seems to me that A, you’re not evil incarnate, like Satan himself or anything, and B, you haven’t had a perfect past. But who among us has? It seems you’re willing to put in the work to push past all of that, though. Am I right?”
“You hit the nail on the head. I am definitely not the devil. And although I was all, money, money, money, before, I’ve pivoted and refocused on what I can do for this country. I’ve already laid out my answers to all of this country’s problems. All I ask is that you, the voters, allow me to actually implement my plans and fix these problems once and for all. Let’s not let the politics of religious nuts or commies persuade us that dragons are inherently bad. Let’s do what’s right for America.”
The moderator stood up and started a slow-clap. The crowd followed his lead.
“Now wait a minute, here,” Senator Fusty said. “This is obvious collusion. This moderator, who is clearly being mind-controlled by this magical creature, is—”
“How dare you, sir!” Zoth-Avarex said. “Calling me a creature, in almost every definition of the word, is akin to calling me less-than.” The dragon shook his massive head in disapproval. “I didn’t want to have to go here, but you’ve left me little choice.” He waved his claws in a perfect circle.
A giant crystal ball appeared in the air over the fifty-yard line, shimmering with a bluish glow. In the ball was a video of sorts which depicted Senator Fusty and Governor Pinko sitting together backstage.
“This guy is too damn good,” the Senator said in the video.
“I know,” the Governor replied. “He’s the best.”
“He’s really got us pegged, too, curse him.”
“How could we ever hope to beat him?”
“We’ll have to do what we always do.”
“You’re right. We’ll definitely have to cheat.”
“How are we gonna do it, though? Any ideas?”
“We could steal his ideas?”
“Well, that goes without saying. I mean, they’re brilliant.”
“Yeah. . . . We could find that woman he had up on the Space Needle with him, what was her name, Silvia Flores? We could pay her to lie about the way he treated her. We could get her to say that the dragon abused her, or worse?”
“That could work.” The Senator rubbed his chin.
“But—and I hate to say this—but wouldn’t America be better off with Zoth-Avarex as president? We could bow out for the good of the country, couldn’t we?”
The two men looked at each other in silence for a moment before bursting out in laughter.
“That was a good one!”
“I know.” The Governor wiped away tears of laughter. “Don’t tell any of the boys I said that, please?”
“Oh, I won’t.” The Senator held up his little finger. “So it’s lying and cheating and the usual, then?”
“Indeed.”
“How else are we going to keep the peasants fighting amongst themselves over the issues we choose? We can’t go around actually fixing those issues. It makes no sense.”
“Exactly.”
The Senator looked around suspiciously before making a gesture with both hands like some kind of gang sign. “Screw the average American, long live the Gray Skulls.”
The Governor now checked around the area. “Screw the average American, long live the Gray Skulls.” He too threw up the sign, which looked rather cleverly like the top part of a human skull. The two men shook hands before standing up and walking off screen, as it were.
The crowd in the stadium erupted in boos.
“This is an outrage!” Governor Pinko said from the stage, slamming his fist on the podium. “I do stand with my Republican contemporary, but this video is patently fake and false! I don’t know what evil magic was used in the making of this farce, but I do know this lying newcomer to our world must be driven out! I’ve never even heard of the Gray Skulls. This is a complete fabrication!”
“I whole-heartedly agree!” the Senator said.
“This is not how we do things in this country,” Governor Pinko shouted, staring up in defiance at Zoth-Avarex.
“It’s not?” The dragon looked at the news cameras, deadpan.
“I demand that you drop out of this race! Your candidacy is a mockery of our hallowed system of government!”
“You demand what, now?” The dragon’s eyes flashed, the spikes stood up straight on the back of his neck, and his throat began to glow orange.
The Governor stared up at the dragon for several breaths before hanging his head and walking off the stage.
“What about you?” the dragon said to the Senator. “Do you have any demands?”
“Nope.” The Senator left the stage, as well.
“Well done, Mr. Avarex,” the moderator said.
“Thank you, sir. And I’m sorry I had to spring that video on ya, but the truth cannot be hidden.”
“I understand.”
“Well, since we seem to have some extra time, I’d like to bring out someone to say ‘Hi,’” Zoth-Avarex said. “My beautiful Princess Jolene is here with me.” Jolene walked out on stage like a model on a runway.
Several cat-calls rang out from the stadium.
“When Zoth does for this country what he has already done for me, we’ll all be living the good life,” she said, holding up ten fingers decked out in diamond rings.
“I am happy to announce that Jolene will be running with me as my Vice President!”
The audience applauded.
Dragon and princess waved to the adoring crowd.
Oops (2.0)
Oops
That was the last-ever headline printed by the New York Times before its building was burned to the ground by the new President of the United States.
The article detailed Zoth-Avarex’s busy first day in office. It described how his first order of business was to shut down the Site, a place in Washington State where magic had been discovered and hidden since 1943. He also used ancient magic to close the inter-dimensional wormhole that had opened up in that location. He then ordered nearly all Site employees to be rounded up and executed.
He commissioned a “Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pool” to be built on the White House lawn and filled with every bit of gold owned by the United States government. He ordered jewelers, museums, and banks to turn over all jewelry and valuables to the government on threat of being charged with treason.
The new dragon president declared war on Luxembourg for an apparent wrong done to the new vice president’s family back in the early twentieth century. He also declared war on Uzbekistan, home of the world’s largest gold mine.
Then, in his last act of a busy day, he commissioned a statue—”at least as tall as the Statue of Liberty”—to be built in Washington, DC. The statue was to depict himself and his princess/vice president. He was to be wearing boots in the depiction, one of which was to be, as he said, “Stamping on a human face—forever.”
Three years later, the New York Times—now clandestine, underground, and really more of a pamphlet—printed the following article:
Three Years of Hell
Life Under the Dragon’s Thumb
Chalices 1st, 3
Who could have imagined that things would ever be this bad? In the year 3 A.Z., America finds itself on the verge of collapse. Some would argue that the collapse has already happened.
Certainly the economy is in ruins. The stock market crash of Gold 27th, 2 made the crash of 91 B.Z. (1929 on the old calendars) look like a minor bump in the road.
Anarchy is now the rule on America’s streets. Our president shifts between bouts of apathy and anger over this fact. The anger comes from the spiraling GDP and the nation’s inability to create more wealth for him to amass, physically, on the
White House lawn. Not only the Executive Swimming Pool, but all 18 acres of the grounds are now covered in at least three feet of “treasures.”
To make matters worse, the zombie apocalypse seems to be upon us. White House Press Secretary—the role’s continued existence is baffling, considering that the press has been outlawed—Bill Gulley denies the Avarex Administration had anything to do with it. In an official statement, he said, “This administration is very concerned about the recent outbreak of a virus which turns people into mindless, brain-eating zombies. Despite rumors and lies from the lying, illegal media, this administration did not intentionally release this virus. President Avarex maintains his commitment to the American people, and will do his absolute best to keep the important ones safe from the zombie hordes.”
However, many believe that the presence of the super-goats known as skienoxes, which are the president’s main food source, could potentially be the cause of the zombie virus. Their fear secretions are being studied in secret laboratories in order to hopefully reverse-engineer a cure.
Like usual, we’re going to have to keep this pamphlet short due to the near-constant raids on our temporary print operations.
Vive la Résistance!
Alternate Epilogue
Lightning flashed just overhead. The crack of thunder shook Chris’s entire body.
“Could you possibly tame this storm a bit, Sarah?” Jake said. “I don’t really like the idea of getting zapped, here, and this sword is like a lightning rod.”
“I can try,” said Sarah Stormtamer.
She chanted an incantation while directing her hands to the darkened sky.
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “I guess I can’t. Sorry.”
The Conjuring of Zoth-Avarex Page 20