Real Las Vegas buildings lay below us, very hard and unwelcoming glass and steel buildings, casinos, statuary, office buildings...we'd either hit them or concrete. Only by extreme luck would we ever hope to hit a swimming pool or a fountain, and even that would probably break our bones, due to the surface tension.

"What happened?" I cried as the elevator tumbled. "Did I break another law of Cool World by sleeping with the master of the baby farms?"

My sex partner shrugged. "Cupcake says no, but I guess anything's possible. I mean, you're obviously still a human..."

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know." The half human bird leaned back on my lap, staring out the glass. "Die, I guess. I mean, we're not going to hit a pile of mattresses or a rubber awning or a big cartoon elephant, are we?"

"I don't see how that would be probable...unless everything reverts back to normal and it's Cool World again."

The PA speaker now played Knocking on Heaven's Door by Guns N' Roses, due to Cool World irony or real life radio interference I couldn't tell.

"Surely there's something you can do!"

"You're the bird queen!" she shouted in Jessica's voice. "Think of something!"

I answered, "You were the bird queen first! You have Cupcake's mind! You tell me!"

She shook her head.

"It's been nice knowing you," I said. "And I don't just mean in a biblical sense."

The bird rolled her eyes. "Well, Drew. There's another fine mess you've gotten us into."

"Me!" I protested, annoyed at how my body turned my angry frustration into arousal. "You're the one that thought it was such a good idea to go into Cool World in the first place! Did you know I almost got nabbed by hotel security? They wanted to take me to jail for trashing their building!"

"It's not my fault that Sneezer blew up a couple walls!...are you getting hard?"

She hadn't exactly gotten off my lap, and this was a kind of failure. "No," I stammered.

Her beak curled into a grin. "You are."

"No I'm not!"

"Drew, I have all the evidence right between my legs."

"It happens when I'm frustrated. I don't have any control over it, all right! The point is, you're the one who screwed up my life! If you hadn't run off into Cool World, and hopped in bed with the first doodle you met-"

"...You would have had your wallet and already been home because you would have slept with me instead of your sister. Got it."

"Wait! How did you-"

"Drew, I'm stuck in bird brain's brain. I know what you told Sneezer. I actually heard it from his own mouth when I was kissing it...Gosh, you're all ready for another go, aren't you? Being a doodle must have given you stamina."

I reddened, but the color drained from my face the moment I looked down. "I'd love to discuss why you would presume to know anything about my stamina, but we're going to die pretty soon..."

Jessica dismounted from me, searching the compartment.

I sat up. "What are you thinking? Maybe a backup rocket or something?"

"Maybe. Dunno."

As she opened a wall panel, I ran a hand down one of her feathery wings. "Do these actually work?"

She turned around, frowning at me. "I...don't know. We're talking real physics, Drew."

"Humor me. Spread your wings."

She did what I asked, and it was rather impressive...and kind of sexy. Even as a hyper-real Clive Barker's Nightbreed looking mutant, she had a nice body.

She caught me gawking, glanced between my legs. "Enjoying the view?"

"Sorry," I stammered.

Little pieces of paper with drawings of birds on them fell out of her lab coat pockets, the birds soundlessly crying for help as they beat against the foreground, attempting to escape into the three dimensional world. I saw Extra among them, but I had no clothing to carry him in.

Jessi-Cake picked the birds up, buttoning them into a pocket for safekeeping.

She folded and unfolded her wings. "You don't seriously...?"

"Fly? No. Glide, maybe."

She frowned. "So, what? I'm your personal hang glider now?"

"You got a better idea?"

Jessica, as you already know, is very impulsive. After pressing Emergency Stop and all the buttons, she attempted to pry the door open with her fingers. It didn't work. "Now what?"

"Is Cupcake still in there?" I asked.

"Yeah, but we made a deal. She's taking a back seat now. Turns out your tender little flower can't cope in the real world. `Help me, Jessica! I don't know how to do anything!'"

"And that includes our current predicament."

"Bingo."

I sighed.

Below the elevator buttons, next to the phone, I saw a little box that read, `In case of emergency, break glass.' I did, but only found a hammer inside. I handed it to Jessica. "Ideas?"

"Actually, yes."

I thought she would use the claw to pry open the door, but instead she just bashed a hole in one of the walls, knocking out the loose pieces. "If this doesn't work, Drew, I'm going to kill you."

"We'd be dead," I muttered. "So..."

Jessica rolled her eyes. "God, this is so embarrassing."

She put her bra back on and stepped behind me. "Drew, do you trust me?"

I swallowed. Cupcake's evil twin had asked me the same thing before flying me out of the Ewes Bank office. I thought about those robin's egg colored panties and got a little hard.

That's not quite the same thing as trust. "Uh, not really-"

Before I could finish my sentence, she shoved me through the hole, and I fell screaming through the air.

Bitch! I thought. And then, Oh my God, I'm going to die.

A second later, I felt her warm body wrapping around mine, and my descent slowed.

"I just slept with you," she said in my ear. "At least give me some credit!"

"God, Jessica," I gasped. "You scared the shit out of me!"

She giggled.

I didn't know which was scarier, the flight, or showing the whole world my naked body, the cold air blasting every inch of my bare skin. "What! What's so damn funny!"

"I was just imagining some BMW snob explaining that to the car wash attendant. `Gee, I don't know where that human feces came from!'"

"It was a figure of speech!"

"Darn. I would have paid good money to see that!"

Jessica had surprising skill with hang gliding, but I guess it made sense, being that she shared brains with the bird queen.

"You know, Cupcake actually did what you asked the first time she tried to sleep with you. She scrubbed her blue ass. I guess you approved."

"Uh, yeah. You've got a cute ass."

We drifted over a skyscraper, the naked-and-airborne experience strangely reminding me of Maurice Sendak's Night Kitchen. "You're going to destroy the world, aren't you? I mean, now that you're in control of Cupcake?"

"Do you want me to drop you? Because I'd be glad to do it."

"Sorry. I...just...what do you intend to do, I mean, if we don't die?"

"Save Cool World, that's what. I'm not the heartless bitch you think I am. Being in Cupcake's mind changed me. I even care for your damned birdies now. Seriously, this will never become a movie."

"You know, I may not have minded so much about touching your patches earlier...or bumping up against your beaver patch."

"I know," she chuckled. "I was sitting on your boxers, remember?"

We came to a gentle landing atop a slick metal roof of a towering Sheraton hotel.

"I never got to mention this before," I said. "But thanks for helping me defeat Flo earlier. I couldn't have gotten anywhere without your help." I swallowed. "I love you."

"You'd better. After all, you slept with me."

"That's rude!"

She gave me a slight smirk. "All right, all right! I love you too! (Even though you did hit me in the head with a staff!) Happy?"

My heart pounded. "Yes."

Jessica marched to its far end, searching for a way down.

She stopped, put her hands on her hips. "You lied and said we slept together. Earlier, I mean."

I blushed. "What? When did I do that?"

"After you saved the birdies and Cupcake was trying to get in your pants."

"Yeah, well if you saw that memory, you also saw she didn't buy it either."

She laughed.

I turned a deeper shade of red. "Now what? Something else embarrassing? I'm already bare assed naked in front of the entire world, but I'm sure you can think of something!"

"One time I...actually saw Miss Muffet sitting on Pinocchio's face. She kept ordering him to tell a lie then the truth. It kind of reminds me of your...frustration problem."

I smirked. "Wasn't that on Family Guy?"

"I...don't think so."

"It was. I swear I saw that episode."

After a harrowing walk to a narrow ladder, we climbed down to a gravel pitch roof.

"You...told Cupcake about diaper fetishes," I said. "Why."

"She seemed a little uptight. I kinda figured she hadn't gotten laid in awhile, maybe never. So I thought, `Hey, baby farm, adult babies, whatever floats your boat.'"

"Does it float your boat?"

"It didn't use to, but, well, after being stuck in her head..."

"Gross."

"Oh don't give me gross. It didn't stop you from banging me did it ?"

"Uh..."

"That's what I thought."

I swallowed. "Still, I preferred it when she came out of the shower in that furry lingerie. That was hot. Especially when I was making out with her in dad's house."

She looked disgusted. "You just made it creepy. The part about daddy's house, I mean."

"Oh, like Ms. Poopy Pants is suddenly not obsessed with Cool World comic books anymore."

Jessi-Cake quickly buttoned up her panties and lab coat, making herself presentable. I, on the other hand, had no clothing.

"Uh...Jessica?"

She marched up to the entrance to a maintenance stairwell. "What."

"I'm naked."

"I know. On a scale from one to ten, I'd give you...a five."

I flushed red with anger. "You're saying I'm average?" I rubbed my face in frustration. "Never mind. Get me some clothing, okay?"

She glanced back at me, raised an eyebrow.

"Please," I begged. "A sheet, a towel, anything. Hell, I'll even wear a diaper. If someone catches me like this, I'm going to wind up in jail."

"Sounds like a personal problem."

"I thought you said I could trust you!"

"I only asked if you trusted me. You're safe, you're alive. My work here is done."

She pulled a pin out of her lab coat, picking the lock on the staircase door.

Not wanting to be trapped on the roof, I rushed down after her. "What do you think happened to Cool World?"

She shrugged, marched down the stairwell. "You slept with the most powerful doodle in the universe. Maybe that had something to do with it. Either that, or it was you buying that Cadillac."

"I guess that's sort of plausible, but they don't seem like great reasons."

"What about Dane and Master Blaster? They're still in the real world, right? Maybe they messed with the spikes."

"No, that would make everything doodle-fied." She buttoned her lab coat.

"Not if they found some way to contain it..."

We connected to a fire stairway. Jessica kept going down.

"Wait. Where are you going?"

"Where do you go when you want to go to Cool World?"

I knew she was talking about the Union Plaza. "All right. Would you mind stopping for a moment? I need to find a laundry cart or something..."

She kept going.

"At least give me your lab coat."

"And walk around in my undies? No way!"

"Fine," I groaned.

I pushed open the nearest fire door, looking down the hall for coverings. When I failed to find a cart, I hurried down another floor.

What followed seemed like a bad dream.

A supply cart loaded with towels and toilet paper stood about five yards away. When I ran toward it, a fat bespectacled African American staff lady stepped out of one of the rooms, stuffing her mouth with Starburst candies and texting on her phone. She caught sight of me before I could reach the cart.

"Can I borrow a towel?" I said. "I...got locked out of my room."

With anyone else, the lie would have worked, but I recognized her.

Her name was Michelle. I met her on Okcupid.

I swear, I don't know what it is about that damn website. Girls seem friendly enough to me in the real world, but when I go to Okcupid, the only females that answer my messages are fat chicks with mental problems.

We had one date and she called it off because I didn't hug her affectionately enough. Some crap about the `Languages of Love' book.

Okay, to be honest, I didn't hug her affectionately because I don't dig fat chicks. You don't care about exercise, and you overeat, and I'm supposed to get all hot and bothered when you show up in your frumpy clothes?

But I digress.

"Andrew?" she cried.

A second later, she was hurling a towel at me like it contained a dead rat.

Once I had myself properly covered, she stared at my chest, not looking at my face, a strange reaction, considering the towel throwing.

I should have fled right then and there, but I hesitated.

"Wait..." She marched closer. "I never saw you check in."

"I just arrived a few minutes ago," I lied.

She closed the gap. "You got undressed awful quick."

"I was tired. I like sleeping in the nude, okay?"

"It's only six o' clock."

"I went out drinking with my girlfriend. I took a dip in the pool."

She now stood in front of me. She definitely wants the towel off, I thought. "I don't smell any alcohol."

"Breath mints."

"Yeah? I don't smell that either. You are such a bad liar. `Drinking with your girlfriend,' or `a girlfriend'...You know what I think? I think you don't actually have a room. I think you had a bipolar episode and thought it would be funny to stalk me down at work and flash me."

You know how girls in TV shows always tell guys, in general, to `be themselves' in order to win them? They only say that so they can weed out the creeps.

I didn't notice she had a taser until she had it pressed live to my chest, knocking me to the floor.

I woke up in the back of a police cruiser.

Not the greatest feeling in the world, sitting bare assed naked on a car seat that smelled funny and probably had dried up saliva and blood and just about everything else unsanitary caked onto it, especially when people could see right through the windows, and the only clothing available to you were kid's sized D.A.R.E. shirts and a towel you couldn't move to a decent or comfortable spot on account of the handcuffs.

A couple thickset officers in Kevlar and an excessive amount of police accouterments held me captive, a black guy at the wheel, a shorter white guy on the passenger side.

"I can say one thing," the guy on the right side commented. "We didn't need to pat you down for weapons."

"There's a joke in there," the driver said. "But I'm not touching it."

"I wouldn't want to touch it either."

The two laughed.

I'd been thrown into a Ford Explorer, with the standard `mobile crimelab' computer and a radio that constantly gave number and alphabet soup jargon in between long static filled silences.

"Where are your clothes?" one asked me.

"They're...in another hotel," I told the cops through the mesh screen. Not exactly a lie. "I was sleepwalking. Swear to God. Like I said, I blacked out."

"Right," said the stocky cop in the passenger seat. "You just walked, naked as a jaybird, all the way up to a hotel you never registered with, then climbed ten stories to flash your ex-girlfriend...in your sleep."

"Remember that incident a few years back with the LSD in the water supply?"

"Yeah," the driver laughed. "Like we haven't heard that one before!"

"So, what, you're saying someone in their right mind would actually walk all the way across town to the upper floor of a hotel to flash a fat girl he dated once and didn't even like?"

"You know how many times I get insanity pleas from the perps I catch? Let's just say it's a lot."

"Especially from rapists," said the other cop, implying that was my intent.

"I don't know. I'm pretty sure I'd have to be insane to want to hit that. Michelle couldn't give a Great Dane a boner."

"Yeah? Well think about Charles Manson. The man was clearly insane, yet we put him behind bars, not in a mental institution."

"So now you're comparing me to Manson."

The driver smirked. "I don't know...you killed anybody?"

Unlike in Cool World, the view outside the windows actually changed, but the officers weren't in a hurry to get anywhere, so it didn't change fast. As you should be very well aware, the only thing a cop does fast is write speeding tickets, and it appeared they were on lunch...or maybe they decided to go on lunch to humiliate me. They stopped, got sub sandwiches. People pointed and laughed at me.

"This kind of stuff didn't happen as much before Reagan," the driver said to his companion as they ate. "After they disbanded all the mental asylums, they let all the lunatics wander free in the streets."

"Are you saying you believe him now?"

"Have you seen the woman he flashed?"

"Technically, it wasn't a flash. She got the whole show."

"Still..."

The policeman in the driver's side had been consulting his cop computer this whole time. "Looks like this guy's wanted for more than just a misdemeanor public indecency charge. We've got a destruction of private property, assault and battery and attempted murder charges."

I sank back in the grungy cushions. "Shit."

That's it, I thought. I'm never getting out of jail, and I came dressed for gang rape. "So the guy's alive, right? The guy I supposedly...assaulted?"

"I don't see actual murder on your sheet..." the cop agreed.

"Is the guy okay? Mr. Kanifkey, I mean? His legs didn't get broken or something, did they?"

"It says here you blew him through a wall with some kind of charged explosive. It also says you've been subpoenaed by his wife. Civil court."

"Does it say what for?"

"No. I only see what's on the reports."

"You're saying you don't have Google on that thing."

The man silently searched for a few moments. "Wait. The Union Plaza...wasn't that the same place as that terror attack a few days ago?"

The other cop snapped his fingers. "The airborne hallucinogen!"

They both craned their thick necks around to stare at me, which is hard to do with all that equipment. They had to kind of wiggle around in their armor.

"Moving up in the world," said the driver. "Big time felonies!"

"You're just full of surprises, Mr. Deebes!"

"God," I muttered. "Could this day get any worse?"

And then another troubling thought crossed my mind. "Hey, did you two, uh, happen to hear anything about a glass elevator falling out of the sky somewhere?"

"Will you get a load of this guy? Now he thinks he's Willie Wonka!"

"More like Wally Wanker! He must have breathed in while he was spraying the town!"

"Who knows? Maybe the Oompa Loompas will come break him out of jail!"

Both men had a good laugh at that.

They didn't find it so funny when said elevator came crashing down on the yellow center lines a couple feet from the car.