“They’re surrounding us!”

Indeed, they were, these Coyotes, these half-men, half-molted scavengers, coming out of bushes and the dark alleys between houses, creeping up on tip toe, giggles burbling under their rotten, growled breath. The sky was green from the pollutants the Mussolinis shot into the sky on a daily basis, purportedly to wipe out the infidel, which sounded disturbingly like the same rhetoric their mideastern equivalents spouted, only the Mussolinis used spreading the faith or bringing freedom instead of fatwa or jihad.

The Coyotes tightened their fetid noose, their beady, inhuman eyes locked on the retreating trio. rotated and circled, padded along with slavering lips and yellow teeth. Jeff, Dmitri and Anja backed into each other and stood in a protective triangle, facing out at their aggressors.

“What do we do?” cried Dmitri.

“I don’t know!” replied Jeff.

“All is lost!” Anja shouted, and they considered the current state of affairs. By any measure, it was bleak; the Pope Over The Mountain had declared himself grand ruler of any nation where there might exist a Christian, this, despite espousing mostly the opposite of the teachings of Christ. The Coyotes were ground troops, street thugs, the regressive dregs of society mutated by the Pope Over The Mountain. Bloodthirsty guns raised on specious lies and bold declarations of unreality. The Mussolinis were the middle tier, the information tier, the money tier, squatting over glowing phones and burning rants and digital money that made no sense, and financed only the worst of humanity. The sky burned; the oceans bled green with corruption. A tweet went out: THEY’RE CRAZY! LUNATICS! EVERYTHING IS THE BEST IT’S EVER BEEN! ONLY I CAN SAVE US! WE’RE TOTALLY WINNING! IT’S A GOLDEN AGE! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION–

But everything was not the best it had ever been. It was decidedly not a golden age. The world was an orgy of sickness and violence, venal minds and sadistic pleasure, air that choked to breathe, water that killed to drink, and everywhere, unseen hands dipped into the pockets of the damned and stole their contents away into off-shore accounts and untouchable island strongholds where the ultra-rich treated children as playthings. Those who dared stand out from the masses were gunned down in the streets.

“They’re gunning us down in the streets!” screamed a nearby activist. There was no need to know which group they belonged to – it was all the same. Everywhere, people were cancelled, written out of jobs and life and existence, and many and more of those written out of society joined the Coyotes in vengeance, as a way to slake their horrible thirst and cancel those who would cancel them, or at least, those who had a hair colour or running shoes that weren’t the right shade of beige. They cancelled politicians and musicians, actors and bake shop owners, ancient icons and teen hearthrobs. They were definitely going to cancel a few books, while they were at it, and probably some of those illegal immigrants.

“You’re wearing green shoes!” screamed an activist. “You’re not being inclusive of blue, pink and orange! Cancelled!”

“They’re being nice to each other!” screamed one from the other side. “Plus, one’s a girl! Kill ’em!”

“What do we do, Jeff?” Anja clutched Jeff’s arm. “We’re cancelled from both sides.”

“It’s not exactly equivalent, is it?” yelled a third activist. “At least, we didn’t threaten to kill you.”

“You called them names!” screamed the activist from the other side. “Suggested they hate white shoes! That’s just as bad!”

“We did not! And you’re trying to kill them! It’s not the same!”

“You’re too sensitive!”

“You’re not sensitive enough!” they screamed back.

“Bite me!”

“Cancelled!”

“Killed!”

“See? Not the same! False equivalence! Change your shoes!”

“They’re coming!” Dmitri screamed, as the Coyotes, vicious eaters of the dead, vicious makers of the dead, charged in.

And through the midst of them drove a Toyota Corolla, just below the speed limit, with its headlights on, in the middle of the day.

“Look!” Jeff cried.

The Corolla put on its blinker and pulled to a slow and safe stop along the curb.

“It’s Ultra Mundane!” cried Anja. “We’re saved!”

Iindeed, it was Ultra Mundane, who checked his driver’s side mirror before exiting, to avoid potential oncoming traffic. He rounded the front of his car and moved to the sidewalk, so as not to jaywalk.

“One moment, children,” he said, his voice calm and reassuring. “Safety first.”

He walked to the street corner, past the Coyotes, who watched him with confused awe. He was plainly dressed, casual in a breathable golf shirt and khaki pants. He had on a baseball cap. A wristwatch. Several Coyotes started toward him, but the others warned them off.

“He doesn’t look so tough,” said some of the Coyotes. “He can’t take a Coyote, right?”

Their claws snapped in and and out. The older Coyotes shook their heads.

“Can he?”

“We’re tougher than wolves,” one blustered.

From behind a mailbox, an activist cried: “You’re being racist against wolves!”

“And bunnies!” cried another, this one looking out from a sewer, where radioactivitely charged rats and alligators fought for dominance.
“How bunnies?” the Coyotes asked.

“There are bunnies who wish to be wolves, you know!”

“And wolves that wish to be bunnies!”

Ultra Mundane paused at the street corner, looked left and right and crossed. He came down the sidewalk on the other side and stopped in front of what was almost certainly his house. The children exchanged glances, since there was no such house there before. It was an average-sized house, with an average-sized porch, an average-sized lawn and a plain looking garden with a hedge and some flowers on either side of some wooden stairs leading up to the porch.

“Hmm,” said Ultra Mundane. “Looks like it’s time for a trim.”

He turned to the children. The Coyotes exchanged confused looks.

“How would you kids like to help me do some yardwork? We can have iced tea, after.”

“Would we!” cried the children, and rushed toward this hero for the modern age.

Ultra Mundane retrieved some gardening gloves and soft pads for the childrens’ knees and ushered them toward the garden along the front porch. He set a bucket near them.

“I’ll cut the grass while you work on those weeds. Man!” he said, and looked up, holding his hand over his eyes to shade them. “What nice weather we’re having.”

The children set to plucking out thistles and stray dandelions and common burdock, while Ultra Mundane skimmed back and forth across the lawn with a push mower. He hummed to himself, a jaunty but meaningless tune, and every once in a while, dabbed the sweat from his brow with a hankerchief. He’d remark on the good work the children were doing, and the temperature.

“Boy!” he’d say. “Sure nice out. Great work, kids.”

The Coyotes set their sights on other people around them, eating activists, as activists screamed about injustice, as ballistic missiles streaked across the sky, as ground troops invaded the Middle East, and champagne executives popped their tops over oil. Somewhere, the Pope Over The Mountain sent a new tweet: YOU PEOPLE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE ME! EVERYONE WHO DOESN’T LIKE ME IS A LUNATIC! WE’RE DOING GREAT WORK IN THE FIELD OF CORRUPTION AND IGNORANCE! IF EVERYONE COULD BE A LITTLE STUPIDER AND HATE EACH OTHER MORE, THAT’D BE WONDERFUL. EVERYTHING IS GREAT. BEST NATION ON EARTH! I’LL MAKE US GREAT AGAIN! IGNORE THE CONTRADICTION. GOLDEN AGE! EVERYONE KISS MY BEHIND! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! WINNING!

The Mussolinis took this for a free-for-all and shot some activists in the head for no reason, then sent tweets of their own about how those scantily-clad activists were asking for it. A popular actress asserted that she would no longer wear low cut dresses, and the Mussolinis got distracted and demanded that she immediately wear nothing at all, because she owed them. Everyone owed them; they were Mussolinis. The nature of their existence granted them unfettered access to the nudity of others. And to shooting people in the head. But mostly, seeing beautiful people naked. An activist chimed in: “Hey, you have to look at us naked too! Just because we used to be men, or are men who used to be women, or just men, or non-beautiful women, doesn’t mean we should be excluded from your viewing pleasure! Bigots! Cancelled!”

The Mussolinis didn’t care for that, and so they sicced the Coyotes on them. Everyone scattered. No one was shot in the head.

“There, a nice big pitcher of iced tea,” Ultra Mundane poured out four glasses with ice and handed them out. They settled into rockers and Muskoka chairs and enjoyed the sun on their faces.

“Refreshing,” he said.

“Sure is,” the children echoed.

The missiles in the sky slowed, and the Coyotes stopped in their consumption of radical activists, who were really just people trying to live, and not actually all that radical. The Mussolinis continued to tweet: somewhere, someone had written a book insulting the Pope Over The Mountain, amazingly, eighty years before the Pope was born. They frothed at the mouth to ban such subversive material, and made plans to exhume the body of its author and do terrible things to it.

“Yessirree. Refreshing,” Ultra Mundane sipped his iced tea and flipped through an old copy of National Geographic.

The Mussolinis stopped their twittering and looked up.

“Hey, what happened to the ballistic missiles in the sky?” they wondered. “And why doesn’t the air burn my throat?”

“Perhaps later, we can watch that old sitcom,” suggested Ultra Mundane. “I sure do like when that one guy calls the other guy Meathead.”

“This water is drinkable,” said an activist. “Am I, am I supposed to like that? It’s not racist, is it?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s phobic,” said another. “ Most things are.”

“Yeah, but…” started the first activist, and he was quickly cancelled. You never but an activist.

“Look, kids. The sun is setting,” Ultra Mundane pointed at the western horizon. Indeed, the first vestiges of pinks and purples, oranges and reds stretched their soft quills up into the sky and painted lines across the horizon in brilliant hue. Some of the Coyotes found themselves looking up, and suddenly, they were no longer all that hungry. Or angry. Several of the Mussolinis put down their phones.

Over The Mountain, the Pope screamed to pick their phones back up, and be more racist. And sexist. And most definitely, phobic.

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO BE BIGOTS. PLEASE DO NOT PAY ATTENTION WHILE I ROB YOU BLIND. I WAS NEVER ON THAT PLANE. I’VE NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG. I’M THE POPE. THAT’S BETTER THAN JESUS, PROBABLY. I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO AN ISLAND WITH THE ULTRA-RICH AND THEIR CHILD-SLAVES. THANK YOU FOR YOUR–

Indeed, he had been to the island of the ultra-rich and their child-slaves and the Mussolinis discussed amongst themselves that maybe that was actually probably true, and the activists said things like “told you” and “uh-duh” and the Coyotes decided to take a nap.

“What a nice night,” Ultra Mundane smiled at the autumn-hued sky.

“A very nice night,” echoed the children.

“Peaceful. I could do this every day.”

“You do do this every day, Ultra Mundane,” said Anja.

Ultra Mundane patted her shoulder and said, “Sure do, kid. Sure do.”

He rose from his seat and picked up the empty pitcher of iced tea and said, “Let’s go inside,” and they did. They washed the glasses, ate a grilled cheese sandwich apiece for dinner and then had a good chuckle at that one guy calling that other guy Meathead.

“But, what we do if we’re not mad anymore?” an activist said glumly out on the sidewalk.

The Coyote that stood beside him shrugged. “Be friends?”

“I guess we could do that.”

“Nice sunset.”

“Yeah.”

And they stood quietly, watching the majestic sky paint colours across their eyeballs.

“This isn’t homophobic, is it?” asked a Coyote.

“I don’t think so,” chirped a Mussolini Pope.

“Best to assume it is,” said a radical activist. “Everything’s phobic all around, really.”
“Huh,” said the original activist, and then walked away. She didn’t see much point in getting upset about it. After all, what was to get upset about? Microaggressions? Tiny little baby aggressions? Wouldn’t it be better to relax and chill out and be nice to each other? To have conversations like adults, instead of all this screaming and violence over big things and small?

“I’m pretty sure it’s still phobic,” muttered an activist.

“Okay, I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Have a nice night.”

“Okay, see ya,” said a Coyote, kind of confused. It was weird how things were kind of good when you couldn’t hear from over the mountain.

–NEVER ON THE ISLAND. NEVER DID NOTHIGN WRO–

The Mussolinis shut off their phones and went home to bed.

“I gotta get up early.”

“Yeah, I gotta drive my kids to school in the morning.”

One by one, they drifted off into the night, the Coyotes, the activists, the Mussolinis, back to TV dinners and jigsaw puzzles and movies on the couch with their kids. The stars appeared in imperceptible stages, accompanying them from a sky free of pollution, to replace the fading rainbow of a falling sun.

Inside, the children gathered up their shoes and their backpacks, and headed out into the street. Ultra Mundane’s house became just another house, and the children gathered up their bicycles and waved good night. Ultra Mundane walked down the front steps and waved good night back to them.. He went to the corner, looked both ways before crossing and rounded the block to his car, being careful not to step out into oncoming traffic as he did.

The children watched as he drove away, just below the speed limit, sure to use his blinkers, and to always come to a complete stop.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1486 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Comics: Gen 13 v2 2-5
Music: 1989, Taylor Swift (I have great memories of garage dance parties with my niece to Shake It Off, so don't be haters - I love that kid, and she's the reason my algorithm skews to Swift, Rodrigo and Eilish)