Disclaimer: This entire story is a thinly undisguised retelling of events in my own life that may or may not be actually happening at this very moment, in past moments, or in future moments. I do not own The Patriot, Warhammer 40,000, Pirates of the Caribbean, Team Fortress 2, Aristotle, Rome, Labyrinth, Firefly, Ziggy Stardust, Watchmen, Elvis, Discworld, The Physical Incarnation of David Bowie's Coke Problem, The Doors, Peter Elbow, David Bartholomae, Lady Gaga, the University of Northern Colorado English Department, That Kid I Stalked in High School, The Clown's Den Gentleman's Club, P.T.'s Showclub, The Hunt Club, Doctor Who, Twilight, Harry Potter, or pantyhose. Send me ten dollars by and I'll stop writing this story entirely, or remove an article of clothing. I will leave it to your imagination which article of clothing I remove, and when.

I woke up to the sensation of blue food coloring dissolving my stomach lining and the sound of knocking at my door. It was probably mid-morning, judging by the stage of my hangover and the what-am-I-doing-with-my-life malaise saturating the air in my apartment.

"Keep your pants on!" I shouted at the door as the rapping grew louder and less patient. I needed pants myself…which, of course, were in the living room. With my bra, and my tank top, and no Josh. Of course there was no Josh. Josh has to be at home with his kid. A real, live…

I'd mentioned the what-am-I-doing-with-my-life malaise in the apartment, right? Well, it's really bad for narrative. But bear with me—this scene's almost over.

Anyway, every so often I'd yell at whoever was at the door when I was getting dressed. For some reason, a steady stream of knocking didn't seem consistent with the behaviorizin' of a cop or a landlord. Now, those of you who've chosen not to live lives of petty crime and ill-advised sexual liaisons might think this to be a good thing, but it isn't. In fact, it typically presages the kind of meeting where I'm talking a whole lot of shit because I don't actually want to see what happens if I hit some asshole in the head with a golf club (1). That's not to say I am not most certainly prepared to hit some asshole in the head with a golf club; it's just that I wasn't quite in the murdering mood as I opened the door that morning.

"Are you E____ N_____, alias Fraulein Chacha?" The lady speaking to me looked…familiar. And by "familiar", I don't mean "I was sticking dollar bills down your C-string last night wasn't I" familiar. Oh, no. That kind of familiar usually leads to a much more concordant situation for all parties involved. This kind of familiar is the kind that usually leads to frantic attempts not to get my ass kicked by someone's crazy girlfriend. Bitches and hos, y'know?

"Do I owe you money?" I hazarded, grabbing the golf club with the hand that wasn't holding the door open a wee crack. I don't know any short, blonde, space-military looking girls with one leg, and I didn't really care to.

"What you owe the Imperium cannot be measured so easily," the lady said.

"Fuckin' Christ, are you with the Inquisition?" I asked, dropping the golf club. Last I heard, the Inquisition from Warhammer's got shit can flay your goddamned mind. I was gonna need at least a buck knife or a shotgun or something, because goddamn.

The lady held her hand up and flashed me her ID flashy tattoo science fiction thingy. I'm sure it is way scarier in whatever universe she came from, because at the moment it just made me realize that I was standing at my doorway, in my own home, allowing a fictional character to terrorize me.

I tried to slam the door in her face but she stuck her crazy-ass prosthetic leg thing in there. "I'm afraid Inquisitor Kuryakin himself remains in orbit," she said. "I am Acolyte Norrington, and it is my…"

"Ah, ah, ah," I said, waggling a finger. "Inquisitor Kuryakin was only briefly mentioned in Warhammer canon, and thus has no power here. You're a badly-written OC, and I'm not coming with you."

"I'm your badly-written OC, actually." The lady went from 'looking at me weird' to 'staring my ass down' and I proceeded to have several major mental malfunctions at once. "Surely you remember…"

"Tig and Jenna," I said. I picked up the golf club so I could drop it again in shock. "Oh, my god…where's Jenna?"

Tig nodded and one of those creepy servo-skull things whizzed up behind her. "She serves Him eternally."

Now, I'm trying to quit smoking—really, I am—but you've got to admit that the sight of your beloved character's reanimated and computerized skull levitating in front of you would make you need a sit-down and a cancer stick real bad. I hurried inside, grabbed my pack of reds off the table, and went back out to my Smokan Chair with Servo-Jenna tailgaiting my head the whole way.

"You know," I said as I sat down and lit up, "That is the creepiest goddamn thing I have ever seen."

"Prepare yourself for worse," Tig said, leaning against the railing. "Inquisitor Kuryakin has faced true horrors in the undoing of your mistakes."

"Wait a second." I blinked. "You said your last name's Norrington?"

"My late husband was what you would call an old-fashioned sort of man." Tig gave me one of those fuck-you smiles. "I thought I'd keep his name since the Dark Powers took his body."

"Shiiiiiiiit." I took a long drag of my cigarette and started shivering as I realized that yes, I was outside in January in a tank top. I shortly thereafter stopped shivering as I realized that no, I was not going to escape unscathed from this. I narrowed my eyes at Tig. "What mistakes of mine are we undoing, now?"

"Well, they're extensive, so it's going to take a while," she said. "But I think we'll start with the most egregious. Are you aware of the prevalence of Chaos Cults in the Southeastern United States?"

"Uhmm…" I slowly shook my head. "Nope."

"And if you had made better writing choices regarding the canon of The Patriot, I wouldn't be aware of them either." Tig's eyes widened, and she looked a little bit more enthused about the prospect of eating me. It took me a little bit to see that she was holding up a garden gnome that didn't match the ones in the window. I remembered that garden gnome. It's the one that takes you to different universes without indoor plumbing or condoms.

"Uh…" I looked around, sucking my cigarette down with all the speed I could muster. "Can I grab my weed before we go? And we've gotta drop the rent off at the landlord's. And, uh, I need to tell Senor Fluffy that I can't hang out today. And I'm going to need more cigarettes."

"I will assist you," Tig said. "But bear in mind that we do not have much time."

NOTES

1. Named Svetlana. Made of recycled Russian Nuclear missile parts. Kept by door in case of home invasion.