Coda: Punk Is Dead

19th DECEMBER, 2017

Across New England, as the news reached them all, every punk-owned business and record store raised a flag so they could lower it to half-mast.

It had been a year since she'd been home. It used to be that she'd go every summer and Thanksgiving, but she'd saved up to go backpacking around the world with Jane as the Lawndale High Survivors, "here to see if anything is as bad as Lawndale High". Everywhere she went, there'd be a local who'd heard of Lawndale High and felt very sorry for them. After a truly terrible accident with their GPS ("why did you get the Vin Diesel voice, Jane? Not even Vin can decipher it." "I thought it would be funny and I admit I was wrong."), they ended up in the middle of a running gun-battle in Kurdistan and a fighter bandaging his missing arm had gone "Lawndale High? Fuck, I'm so sorry."

For Thanskgiving, everyone had gone to Aunt Amy's beach house and her parents had decided the local Surf Nazi gang needed to die. So that had been almost like being at home.

Lawndale had changed. It was ringed on all sides by police stations that looked like a World War Three bunker, each one called Precinct 13 and each one too stubborn to change the name despite all the admin problems & cars going to the wrong place. Each station, covered with graffiti on the Lawndale-fronting side ("SMASH THE SYSTEM", "REMEMBER THE ZON", "I DIDN'T LIKE WONDER WOMAN THAT MUCH"), blared Taylor Swift and Katy Perry into the town as an act of defiance. Behind the bunkers were glittering office towers, like kids standing behind the bully going "YEAH!". Capital flight from Lawndale had been short-haul. More like a capital ambling.

Inside the town boundaries, there were a few new tower blocks rising like a middle finger. Most buildings were the same two-story affair but every third one had lurid murals and studiously misspelt swearing; washing lines were full of leather, ripped denim, and waistcoasts with gears stuck on from the steampunk people who'd really misunderstood; old burned-out police cars had brass signs about the historic battle of five years ago. Someone had erected a statue of Johnny Rotten, then someone else had knocked it down for Johnny Ramone, and after months of plaster everywhere there'd been a compromise and a statue built of both Johnny's having a fight. The church was playing a gospel cover of Fear's Strangulation with the words changed to be about the loaves and the fishes.

Daria looked at it all out of the car window without really seeing.

Now girls, I know you're being stuck in another of the Man's gulags and that's always going to be tough, but your ma and I want you to know that we'll back you to the hilt if those totalitarian pigs try anything.

"That's good, I can try arson," she muttered under her breath.

"That's odd," said Alex, shaking her out of the funk.

"Can you be more specific?"

"There's a fat man dressed as Cupid and another man dressed as a leprechaun—"

"It's the school holidays on their school holidays from the school of holidays. Don't talk to them, they need to learn to sort their own problems for a change. You know what happened when they asked our old quarterback Kevin to save St Swithin's Day?"

"What's that?" There was the great and terrible pause akin to a tsunami coming before Alex tried to make a joke. "He should have done something with Krampus. Because Krampus is a holiday figure about football." The day of safety before the aftershock. "And he's a quarterback. A football thing."

"That'll do, Alex. Don't break anything."

Alex's soul was where comedy went to die. After a string of friends and partners with sharp wits, cutting remarks, and edgy jokes, finding someone whose response to CK Louis' 'women are afraid they'll be raped on dates' skit was – in its entirety – "yes that's precisely a thing I worried about, this man is correct" in a broad drone, well. That was sexy. When Daria had been disappointed to hear CK Louis had been jerking off in front of women, Alex had comforted her with: "Women are afraid they'll be raped because CK Louis has taken his penis out. I am playing off the joke he made, using a thing he has also done." Daria had laughed and regretted it every time Alex, unaware it was the context that made it funny, tried to tell other people it.

Her dad had liked Alex. Her dad liked everyone, even the ones he wasn't supposed to. She'd seen him once hug a man "from Goldman Sachs" and tell him he was so sorry that man's dad had the same name as the bank. Deep down she'd been worried about what would happen when her family heard she was bi and god bless her dad for hearing "my girlfriend Alex is studying to be a mortician" and saying "well, don't be disappointed how it turns out kiddo, Angelica Houston is a tough one to top."

Last Christmas, Lawndale's punks had been engaged in a brief and violent war over whether Little Drummer Boy or God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen was the best carol. Daria had needed to get through the riot cop barricade by hijacking a helicopter and parachuting in, and found her dad headbutting one side in a fight and then the other because he couldn't decide which song was best. He looked at her with a face full of blood and said, "Hey everyone, Daria's back! And she's learned to teleport or something!", and the fight abruptly stopped as both sides went over to shake her hand and ask how Stilwater University was. He'd got her Pride and Prejudice, which she already had a copy of, because he assumed it was a gay rights story.

"You're more allied than the Yalta Conference," she'd told him.

"Oh, kiddo, I'm sorry but I don't think Russian businessmen like gay people much. They're just lying to sell dolls."

She made a few jokes about Russian dolls and learned he thought the Bratz were Russian, and her mother complained later he'd had nightmares of the Bratz being sewn up into larger Bratz by Putin himself.

His Christmas present was in the car. He'd really been looking forward to the Scooby Doo Meets Black Flag cartoon. He'd be buried with it.

"The whole ride I was thinking: when I get here, he'll be out in the front of the house, ready to see me. As long as I'm not back home, he's still alive."

The house was before them. The garden was covered in wreaths and pavement covered in beers that had been poured out. A ceremonial bin was on fire and would be until he was buried. There was no Jake "the Snake" Morgendorffer.

"I don't believe in Heaven."

Alex turned to her, concerned. "Do you want to wait before we go in?"

"What would be the point?"

In the days since Jake had died, 'Hellion Wheels' had been immaculate in her punk gear. With the full leather, chains, dye-and-spike hair, and a new fist tattoo – "HELL" and "ION!" – she was every 70s thru 90s Batman comic mugger in one. (In the first day, when few would see, she was a wreck) A figure that full-on answering the door, tired and red-eyed, was unsettling.

Daria hugged her, awkwardly. "Is Quinn back yet?"

"She got in last night. She's at the Zon now."

"It's open?"

"It's permanently open 'in memory' until your father's buried."

Unnoticed, a convoy of beer trucks drove by.

"Sorry for your loss," said Alex, her hand patting Helen on the back like its own sentient thing. "Um."

"Thank you, Alex. And how is university?"

Alex thought of any story from Stilwater U that wasn't about corpses. "I've been having sex with your daughter."

"That's good."

Daria drifted over to the cards and the letters on the table, all arranged with martial neatness. There were dozens of them, from all the people Jake had known. Cards from old clients who he'd helped keep open. Messages and photos from old friends and her distant cousins. People from abroad, spanning seven nations. Official missives from scene legends who'd heard. Some of the mail was marked with tears and shaky handwriting.

Desperately, Daria went for the less tragic of them: "Dame Vivienne Westwood wrote to ask you if there could be a truce now. You still doing those prank calls?"

"Only when we're drunk," said Helen, which meant nightly and sometimes daily and one time, just as the sun was about to set. They'd timed it. "Sellouts suck, Daria."

"You told me that when I asked for Astronaut Barbie. I was six."

"This letter is an anonymous threat from Donald Trump," said Alex, picking it up. "I know it's from him because he went to all the trouble of cutting out magazines to spell 'Ha Ha Ha I'm Glad He's Dead' but he used a Trump Organisation letterhead. And then he underlined the word 'Trump' with a gold marker pen."

Helen smiled. A proud smile, a sad smile. "I'm getting that framed. Something to remember Jake by."

"Dad was the 'unknown punk' who mooned Trump at his second rally," said Daria, "and then also shat on the ground and said, quote, hey Donnie I'm doing your economic policy bitch unquote. Of course, he voted for Bumbag."

The election of 2016 had been a four-way contest between Clinton, McMullin for the Continuity Republicans, Trump for the Magapublicans, and Ratface Bumbag the Second (born Nigel Dollar-Sterling) of the No Future Party. Bumbag came third so now the news actually had to let him on, the party had somehow made inroads in Alabama, and Senator Scum was trying to get support for a new banking reform bill. It was a brave new world unless you didn't like punk music, and then it was a hellish nightmare that would only end in death which is why the country club suicide rate had gone up by a shocking 200%.

"One of these letters is from Dad."

"After the first heart attack, he wrote a letter to 'Future Snake' so when he died, he'd have a reminder from the past telling him he did everything great. I told him he wouldn't be able to read it because he'd be dead but he said his ghost would—" Helen's voice cracked and she turned from her daughter. "I'm fine. It's silly."

Daria froze for a few seconds too long, trying to work out if it was best to hug her mother or if she needed to let her pretend she was fine, and would feel bitter she'd made the wrong choice. If she had made the other choice, she would still have felt it was the wrong one.

Luckily everyone was distracted when Killer Quinn crashed through the kitchen window on a motorcycle which was also on fire.

"I AM NOT DRUNK AND I'M NOT SAD EITHER" she proclaimed, "I'M GONNA PUT THIS FIRE OUT" and then puked on it before also puking on Daria and then falling over.

"And I worried grief would change her."

The memorial for Jake raged on at the Zon. The club was a trashed mess and covered with sweaty, half-drunk arseholes and the toilets had clogged up days ago, and as well as the normal day-to-day running it was hosting a memorial for Jake. You will believe a punk can cry because you could see fifty at a time crying and headbutting the wall in grief. One headbutted the memorial photo of Jake, screaming "YOU BASTARD" at him for leaving.

When Daria entered, she could see Joe Biden with his arm around his pal Worm, both soaked in whisky, and Biden crying: "I'll never forget what Jake did for me!"

One punk leaned in Daria's face and snarled "OI YOU LET'S FIGHT!".

"Spike, that wall insulted your mum."

"AAAAAA" he roared and broke his fist trying to teach the wall a lesson.

She approached the bar – now with barbed wire separating the staff from the customers – and said: "How much did Killer Quinn drink?"

"About, uh, a 0.8 on the Winston Churchill scale."

"Jesus. If she comes back, no more."

At her hardest, Quinn had never exceeded 0.6 on the scale (the level at which you could be convinced teaching sex ed to high school boys would be a life-affirming experience). Every time Daria had called her sister to see how she was, she'd had to deal with a front that told her how she was fine and superpunk, and she'd known that under that over-the-top shell was a core of grief. She'd known it was bad. This was beyond what she'd expected.

On her way out of the Zon, Biden was announcing that if he'd run in 2016, he'd have made Jake "Secretary of State for Partying Hard".

Outside was a once-expensive car that had been keyed, tagged, pissed on, and battered with hammers. The license plate said "1MR1CH" but someone had lovingly nailed a piece of cardboard with "EAT THE" over the "1M". Daria knocked on the door and asked: "How long did you leave the car unattended, Tom?"

Sitting in the driver's seat in the best hand-me-down thrift slobber that money could buy, Tom Sloane gave off waves of 'I'm rich so I don't have to dress right'. Only a few years ago, it had been 'I'm rich but nice, please like me' but time, freedom, and the mind-altering experience of being stuck on the wrong side of the Riot of '12 had honed him. In case this is making him sound impressive, know he was picking his nose.

"This is actually my Lawndale car," he said. "I drive around in this baby, nobody notices me. I paid a few punks to crust my ride and voila, instant anonymity."

"Did Mum send you to shadow me or is this you on your own?"

"Jane sent me, actually. She'd have come herself but, ah, she had to find Trent and the band. As in they're pretty sure they're in Lawndale but not what house they're in." Tom's phone buzzed when he in mid-flow; he checked the message now. "So it turned out they were in Trent's bedroom the whole time."

It was a short drive to the Lane's and an eon of silence. The car radio filled the void with songs nobody would remember later.

Before journey's end, Tom finally said: "You can tell me if it's bad."

"My sex life isn't relevant to this discussion."

"Once you go Sloane, the rest can go home."

"You were acceptable for your time, like Kipling poems."

"I like to think I'm going to be rediscovered and enjoyed ironically, like Birth of a Nation."

"You're more League of Nations."

They parked outside the Lane place, both knowing Daria had deflected. Where Quinn had oblivion, she had faux-nihilism, the old standby. You laughed and laughed as it got too close to the bone.

Dotted across the Lane lawn were ri-art statues in wood and rust, raised fists and bludgeons, other statues shattered at their feet. The wall was a vast surrealist painting of high schoolers stumbling about and pushing around each other, with Principal Li – a Bosch style demon grimly out of place in the rest of the painting – looming over them, the famous-to-art-snobs Spirit of Lawndale High. And also there was a bin that someone had drawn a willy on, which may or may not have also been Jane.

"I met a guy at the country club who asked me if I knew the famous Jane Lane," said Tom. "He told me to tell her she was a hippy."

"I helped her put on a gallery exhibition in Stilwater," said Daria. "Two rivals gangs tried to steal the paintings and shot at each other, but it worked out in the end. I didn't get shot."

"You really are wasted at that university."

"You know I said back in 2012, after the great riots, that I'd do whatever the hell I wanted next? Well, when you've been involved in great riots and come from Lawndale High and have the reputation I had oh-so-carefully built, whatever the hell you want precludes 'going to a university that isn't in Stab Town'." Daria shrugged the loss off. "The stand-up scene is pretty good and a PhD is still a PhD wherever it's from. A few people owe me a few favours in adult life."

"You ever wish you'd kept your head down and had a better chance?"

Daria looked again at the painting of Li. "No."

Having talked as much as she could stand, she went and knocked on Jane's door. "This is the police," she called through the letter box. "We've had noise complaints."

"You only hate Spiral because you don't understand it!" came a cry back.

"Correlation is not causation."

"Oooooh, listen to Miss College!"

Jane opened up and grabbed Daria in a hug, too quick for any protests of being fine, and then released her. "You really don't want to come in," said Jane, as if nothing had happened. "The Spiral are discussing their next concept album. Currently, they're discussing if it should be a homage to baking because one of them was really baked and they spent five minutes discussing the delights of how 'baked' means both cooking and drugs."

Without a word, Daria walked into the house, found the room Mystik Spiral were in, said "also they say 'cooking' for both food and meth", and left the house: "Now we can go."

Night life had greatly increased in Lawndale since 2010, as long as your standards for night life were punks wandering around drunk and puking on each other. If you wanted culture and fine cuisine, the late and unlamented high school was now a strip club called School of Hard Knockers and the local cinema was playing both art films and Trans4ormers: Age of Extinction on constant loop because the projector broke & art films weren't paying for maintenance. A neighbourhood watch of volunteers with paintball guns and goggle-eyed gas masks made a lonely vigil, looking for any petty crime that wasn't considered "Cool" under the town charter.

The watch briefly held up the group, suspicious of Tom – "there's not even one piercing, who sent you?" –before Daria and Jane vouched for him.

"So where's a girl to go if she doesn't want to think about crushing sadness?" asked Daria.

"It's really just the strip club or the cinema's showing a Lars Von Trier marathon."

"Well, I'm not going to anything that promotes misogyny," she said, so they went to the strip club.

Time seemed to slip away as Daria saw the familiar hulk of Steve, the school's old security guard, at the gates. Even the pervert in the raincoat going in didn't cause a problem because she'd spent two years in the same corridors as Upchuck. As closer range, she saw Steve's hair was starting to go grey.

"Changed your mind?" asked Jane, mistaking why Daria had stopped.

"Thinking I need an excuse for if Alex asks where I've been," she lied. "We'll tell her I was in a corner reading and not talking to anyone. She'll definitely buy that."

"So this is what happened to Lawndale, but have they done anything about Fielding's crater?" asked Tom.

After Lawndale had fully gone punk, the rich alumni at Fielding had all clubbed together and paid for the school to be physically lifted out of the ground & flown a mile down the road to Eagleton. The fact it landed on some low-income housing was an accident but also a metaphor.

"It's been turned into a collective farm in case the state government tries a siege again," said Jane. "Nobody wants another Dorito Winter."

Steve nodded to the trio as they approached as if time had not passed. "I can't be bothered to get up, so just don't bring any weapons or drugs in. By entering this building, you agree we can beat you up real bad if you bother the talent."

"Define 'real bad'."

"You can't. It's great."

What had once been O'Neill's classroom was now a small stripshow room and even the Pope would admit this was a better use of the space. Miss Spanxtastic was slowly disrobing from her Sexy Librarian costume and, before the show, Spanxtastic's secret identity Miss Mavis Penge had hissed angrily, "no fucking snark during the show alright? I got a late gas bill" to Daria and Jane. The three friends sat at the back, eating hog wings.

"Can Spiral play the funeral?" Daria asked. "Dad's first clients in Lawndale and everything."

"Hell, you don't have to ask that. They've got a five-piece set of grunge covers of all the death-related hymns and a really bad rewrite of Tomorrow Wendy called Yesterday Jakey."

"Ask them not to do Abide With Me."

It had been a song her dad had sung when Grandma had died. He would have loved hearing Trent cover the piece – would have genuinely, unironically said it was great – but she could not have handled it.

"I saw him only two days before," said Jane quietly. "Not any big thing, we were both at the same shop. I was shopping, he was at work advising them of how to best place their band posters. And this was a baker's shop, I should point out, it used to be called Loafing Around before your dad convinced them to rebrand as Fuck You Buy Bread Here. 'Direct marketing', he called it. Anyway, he said to put all the 'coolest' posters near the more expensive products to draw people in. While I was there, I saw a guy storm in whooping because he'd seen the best bootleg Misfits poster and then decided to buy a whole cake because of it. I don't know how your dad did it.

"Because he was busy working, I didn't chat for long. Something about the new Ducktales show. Your dad was very clear that Glomgold is a cunt." Jane rubbed her eyes quickly, to forestall anything. "I dunno, maybe that's a fitting last word from him. He'd want to die saying that."

Daria studiously watched the dancer as she spoke. "I spoke to both of them the day he died. The usual keep-up-with-the-parents-so-they-know-you're-alive thing, between classes. Dad had been in the bathroom with, as Mum said, 'intensely bad shits', and I assumed I'd have to call him later but he asked for the phone to be passed in so he could talk to me while shitting. It was intense. At one point it wasn't coming out easily so he started singing the chorus of Guns of Brixton to psyche himself up. It was quite embarrassing. And that's the last I'll ever hear from him alive.

"I do feel cheated. If he'd known he was going to die, if he'd even had warning it was possible, there'd be something more meaningful. The last conversation of any import was on election night, before it was clear Clinton was in. He said if Trump did win, if everything had gone wrong and he did somehow win, Dad said if that happened he'd trust me to tell him what to do because I was the most strategically astute hellraiser he knew. He said 'strategistly' but I knew what he meant."

She'd started crying. When had she started crying? Jane put a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off.

"Another show?" asked Jane. "We could see the boys next. There's a Cowboy Ranch room and Big Hoss takes off his trousers in synch with Cotton Eyed Joe."

"Which version?"

"All of them. He's an artist."

"That sounds appallingly bad, so sure. We'll just have to snark in writing."

Five shows later, the trio left the building and into what would be the quiet night if not for punks. A hijacked garbage truck was driving around with a giant fake Mohawk stuck to the cab, and a fight had broken out among spectators for another fight who'd disagreed on who was winning.

"The town the Morgendorffers built," said Jane.

"Forget it, China," said Tom. "It's Jaketown."

"It's like that nightmare I once had," said Daria, honestly.

Daria left a night full of punks to enter a house full of punks. You may think there are only two but the smell of puke was akin to an entire squat of crust punks on its own.

"I don't know how this is possible," said a doctor, leaving the house with a thousand-mile stare. "How is she not dead."

Quinn threw a beer can at the departing doctor with a great cry of "PUSS-PUSS" and then fell over. "I'm still not sad, Aunt Amy!"

"Daria."

"Quinn, Aunt Amy. C'mon, you've known us twenty fucking years."

"Aha. And are you sure you're not sad, Quinn? You can tell me because I'm not Daria at all and she can't ever think you're a wuss."

"Why would I be sad?! Dad's up there with Darby Crash, Joe Strummer, and Dee Dee, Johnny, and Joey, and even Jeff Kennedy!" Quinn had greatly misunderstood the Dead Kennedy's name and still thought JR Ewing had shot 'Jeff' for being too punk. "He's having a great time! And all those other cool dead people like, uh, Joan of Arc and Casper and fucking Crowley are up there partying with him and they're playing, fuck, uh, that one song that goes—"

She tried to 'DUH DUH' out the tune of both 'Oh Bondage! Up Yours!'and Scooby Doo Where Are Youat the same time.

"Why'd I be sad?! Fuck you! NO FUTURE! NO FUTURE! OH FUCK DAD'S DEAD THERE'S NO FUTURE AUNT AMY IS THERE A FUCKING HEAVEN I DON'T KNOW DARIA SAYS NOT AND SHE'S SMART AND AND AND I'D JUST GOT HIM A CHRISTMAS PRESENT AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT AND AND—"

The dam had shattered. It took Quinn a while to stumble over to Daria and when she had, she fell down with her face wet and body shaking, and it was seven minutes before it stopped. Quinn looked up, nose running with snot and eyes redder than the end, and said: "Daria, where'd Aunt Amy go?"

"I think it's time you went to bed," said Daria, trying to keep her voice stable. "We have a long day tomorrow."

"Is sleeping before a long day punk?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Oh, that's good. I was tired."

Quinn stumbled to the couch and into sleep, while Daria walked up the stairs into darkness. Had her mother heard all of that? God, she hoped not. The abyss that her mother must currently be in was far too fathomable for Daria – she remembered facing a man with a gun and Jane's life in the balance, the sheer horror of this one bright spark in your life, your rock, being lost. And this must be worse, when her dad had been around for most of her her life. When you had no warning.

No, she couldn't hear Quinn and she couldn't hear Daria. This was the minimum of what she could do for the woman.

Alex was already in Daria's old bed, reading with the intensity of someone who had definitely overheard. "Hello."

"It turned out the secret to helping people with their emotional problems was to say and do nothing. This is a good discovery."

"Do you need a hug?"

"I don't know." There was a long pause and Daria filled it with: "Christmas is going to be fun. 'A time for family but whoops not that member.' 'I played my funeral dirge, parapumpumpum.' 'Spirit, whose name is written on this grave oh fuck it's me.' And don't get me started on how depressing Nightmare Before Christmas is."

"I think you need a hug?" Alex made space on the bad and stuck her arms out like a plea.

"What the hell."

Helen had heard everything.

Day brought with it Aunt Amy and Erin Chambers with tired eyes and tired faces. Amy and Helen embraced like they hadn't seen each other in an age, and Daria took an instinctive step back when Erin tried to do the same with her.

"I can only take so much human emotion."

"Okay. Whatever you need, Daria." Erin breathed out hard. "Aunt Amy said she'd been here the day Uncle Jake died. Then she didn't say much else. She might need a hug if you can."

"Pa Barksdale, of course." The patriarch had died of his own heart attack when Amy had been young. "I think we should all marry women just to make sure the curse skips a generation."

"I heard something about marriage," called out Amy, coming over with her usual swagger, ha-ha-no-problems-here-yo. "Don't do it, Daria, it's a trap! Single forever!"

"Hear, hear!" roared Erin, pounding the table. "What did I just put my hand in?"

"Quinn tried drinking brew for breakfast with her Cocoa Puffs."

"This is better than I thought then."

"That reminds me, Helen and your dad did once shit on a table," Amy told Daria. "It was at one of Ma's country clubs. Your parents had to put on normal clothes and behave for a few minutes, but they wanted to go see a Bad Brains concert and thought behaving was taking too long. So they did the one thing they felt would surely get them kicked out of a country club and then when saying Monopoly was a crap game didn't work, they tried shitting."

"Why didn't they just walk out?" asked Erin, confused.

"Two years living in this house and you still don't understand what's punk," said Daria.

Before Aunt Amy could start a new topic of conversation, Daria took the risk and briefly, quickly, awkwardly hugged her. Her aunt giggled like a nervous man in turbulence and then silence descended.

"I tripped and fell," said Daria.

Aunt Eve came later. Once, Jake's sister had been a mousy, quiet woman in a loveless depressing marriage but now she was a mousy, quiet woman who was single with a fancy new hairstyle. Well, she thought it was fancy. Quinn, waking up on the sofa, looked at her and said: "Oh no, it's windy out?" Eve was polite and pretended she didn't get it.

"I've been telling our niece to never get married," said Amy.

"Tell her marriage sucks," said Erin.

Eve shrugged and in a quiet voice said: "Sucks like Ed Sheeran."

"I like Ed Sheeran," said Erin, hurt.

"Oh. I'm sorry. Sucks like…"

"Selling out!" cried Quinn. "What are we talking about that sucks?"

"The loving bond between two human beings as codified in law and ritual," said Daria.

Quinn's brain focused on 'law'. "That does suck! Nazi Punks Fuck Off! YEAH! "

From there the conversation rapidly descended into three separate conversations about the trickier parts of marriage and conjugal relations, the need to resist fascistic incursion into punk scenes, and what the new Jumanji film meant for someone's fanfic fanon.

One hour before the funeral procession, and Helen had become a fury of activity, sending people this way and that and handing the new update – in triplicate – of the ceremony and angrily telling Quinn "why are you hungover, GET MORE DRUNK for fuck's sake, it's a FUNERAL", before cornering Alex and spraypainting her hair green.

"It'll have to do on short notice. Daria, do you want green or red?"

When Daria came in, her hair was sloppily spiked and lazily bleached.

"Oh." Helen looked away quickly. "Your dad would have – Thank you, Daria."

After she'd gone, Alex said: "You told me you weren't going to do that."

"I changed my mind."

"It looks hot," said Alex, as vocally sincere as Lil' Nixon saying he didn't steal that candy from his baby brother, but at least she was trying. "Um. Oh, what about the other thing you had planned?"

"Already made the call."

President Clinton made the guttural sound of every student told they needed to listen in Maths class. "Do I really have to do this?" she asked her ATF director. "It seems a waste of time."

"We owed Daria Morgendorffer three favours after the X5 affair and for staying quiet. It's a bit stranger than her first request, I'll grant you." Daria got drunk at college and asked if the US Army could airdrop pizzas for everyone on campus, a request the Joint Chiefs had duly considered 'cool'. "Still, under the circumstances…"

"Well, let's not make this a total loss, cut half of my allotted call with the Italian premier to make room for this." The President was getting mightily sick of the premier's Rick & Morty impressions. "It's fucking Jerry, not Gary."

Clinton looked back over the demand. 'Please hold a press conference stating Jake the Snake Morgendorffer sent photocopies of his butt to the entire cabinet and you want an apology.' Enclosed was a photocopy of a man's butt, 'For illustrative purposes.' Presumably it was Mr Snake because it had the words 'JAKE' and 'SNAKE' on the two cheeks.

"Where did this come from?"

"Uh, I think Miss Morgendorffer said it was her parent's Christmas card for 2013."

Jake had made a few specific demands in his will for his funeral procession:

1) A cardboard coffin so that he could easily break out of it "in case I've just been sleeping really heavily"
2) The corpse needed to have five dollars in its hand "to pay Charon and have some change after"
3) While a normal hearse was requested, it had to be blaring 'Die Die My Darling' out the window at full blast "because it has the word Die in it"

In addition, the family had ordered a funeral wreath of flowers in the shape of a human hand flipping the middle finger to a flower-man in a flower-suit; Axl had organised friends of Jake's into a outrider convoy of motorcycles flying the black flag, but one guy had got confused and brought a Black Panther Party flag; in the procession was a row of cars where an utter fool had allowed Trent to put the Tank in front, and its engine was already smoking despite not being on. The procession promised to be as solemn and dignified as a fart in a strip club.

Jane and Tom did not comment on Daria's punk hair, and she offered no explanation.

"Hey Trent, that punk looks a lot like Daria," said Jesse Moreno. "That's weird."

Turnout here was the closest of friends, old and new, and the family, and a heavily armed cop who'd been instructed to keep an eye on things. Tom's dad Angier had arrived in a suit that was worth only one thousand pounds, to fit in. One couple, Daria didn't recognise too well – the Gonzalez's had moved to Lawndale when she'd gone to college and were discussing with the McKenzies' "that time Snake told a pimp he bet he loved Funky Phantom more than Scooby Doo and then hit him", an event she did not remember but sounded plausible. Time had marched on, even if it wouldn't any more.

Daria felt an uncomfortable sweaty feeling in her left hand, which was Alex taking hold of it to be supportive. "You can emotionally rely on me."

"Good for you."

However quiet her mother had been in the house, she'd come out with her head held high and fire in her eyes and her knuckles swinging. Quinn, not to be outdone, was carrying a large stick in one hand and an even larger one in the other, while Aunt Amy, holding Helen's hand, was dressed in late-80s alt-chick gear. Eve and Erin wore normal mourning black like weirdos.

"EVERYONE READY TO BURY A DEAD PERSON!" yelled Helen, getting a roar of approval. "I CAN'T FUCKING HEAR YOU!"

Daria's phone rang – the special ring tone only for messages from the ATF. (The chorus of "Smokin' In The Boys Room") It simply said 'Done' and a link.

"Before we go," she called out, "there's something you need to see."

The assembled punks gathered round their phones to watch the clip of the President of the United States holding a photo of a bum up, declaring in clenched-teeth tones that Jake the Snake had "remotely mooned me" and she wanted an apology.

"Well you can't fucking have one because he's DEAD!" Quinn told her phone in triumph.

"Way to moon, Jake!"

"Even dead, he's a total punk!"

This delayed the funeral procession by a few more minutes as everyone continued to cheer and then Aunt Amy, wanting to see what would happen, told everyone they should moon each other as "it's what he would've wanted". Everyone agreed. Everyone except Daria, who took the opportunity to get into the car and take up the seat she knew Quinn wanted.

Eventually, the procession set off. Within a minute, the Tank slowed down to walking speed and was spurting worrying flames out of the exhaust pipe, so the hearse began to leave everyone else behind. Helen, sticking her head out the window, called for everyone else to just drive down the pavement instead, which caused a problem for the assembled masses of punks who'd gathered down the route to watch the coffin pass. Most got out of the way except for the few who decided those cars were trying to start something and tried to attack moving slabs of metal with their hands.

One particularly aggressive punk charged the main car, punched straight through the windscreen, and then yelled a fearsome cry of rage, defiance, and utter pain because he'd sliced his arm open. He passed out before he could withdraw the arm.

"Oh well," said Helen, who just kept driving with the body still there. "Quinn, be a dear and tell me where I'm driving?"

"You're about to hit some bins."

Helen sped up the car.

"Yeah, you fucking got 'em! Hey, hey, there's two men carrying a sheet of glass across the road real slowly!"

Daria looked at Alex and gave the barest of shrugs – 'what can you do?'

Eventually the procession reached the church, twenty minutes behind the coffin, two of their number missing, five more somehow having joined, and Mystik Spiral riding horses that they'd somehow found and which were also punks.

"I hate living here," said the priest.

"We have gathered here not to mourn Jake Morgendorffer but to celebrate the life of—"

"No we're not, we're at a funeral!"

"You shut the fuck up, John," said the priest. "To celebrate the life of the husband, father, friend, and brother. He has touched the lives of everyone here and many beyond these walls, not least his daughters, Daria and Quinn. Jake said that they were the two things he was proudest of in his life, with the third…" He sighed. "The third being that time he asked Henry Rollins if he'd like to just chill and watch cartoons while getting drunk, and Henry said yes."

"YEAH I DID!"

The priest looked over his notes. There was a lot like this before the first song. "We shall now do the first song," he said, realising too late he'd made a grave mistake, "The Day Thou Gavest Lord Is Ended, done in alterno-grunge-punk style by Mystik Spiral."

"The day thou gavest, Lord, is ending!"
"OH NO!"

"The darkness falls at Thy behest!"
"NO, BRO!"

"To Thee our morning hymns ascended!"
"SLOW GO!"

"Thy praise shall sanctify our rest!"
"YOLO!"

"When I met Jake…" Helen found herself smiling. "When I first met Jake, he'd escaped from military school with a friend. I headbutted him. He asked me out and I thought he was fronting, so I headbutted him again and then he tried to headbutt me but on the butt, saying, and I won't forget this, 'Jakey gonna headbutt your butt with his head!'. So I said yes and we went to see a show at this filthy reeking dive bar called the Condemned Site Do Not Enter, and you were killing the house, Sandra!"

"YEAH!" screamed a punk in the back row.

"Jake didn't know how to dress or dance or anything, I had to lend him my clothes in the end, but he had… he had the soul of it. He dived into the men's bathroom thinking it was the pit, to be fair the bathroom was a literal pit by the stage, and when I saw him playing stop-hitting-yourself with a man twice his size while covered with shit, I knew. I knew then.

"My parents thought this would all be a phase but not once I had Jake."

"I watch the sunrise lighting the sky and it's casting its shadows near!"
"DARKNESS AND MISERYYYY!"

"This morning may be bright I feel those shadow nears me—"
"NO ESCAPE!"

"But you are also close to me, following all my ways!"
"HOMEBOY!"

Quinn took to the stand, shuffled her paper, coughed, read it again, took a deep breath.

"Dad was badass."

Her old gang cheered as she left the stand.

"Yeah, this flesh and hear shall fail, and mortal life shall cease – but I'll possess within the veil, a life of joy and peace – if you just call me back, Grace!"
"CALL ME BACK CALL ME BACK"
"Don't let our love dissolve like snow"

In the time when she most needed to, Daria couldn't think of a thing to say.

"So, Dad. Well then. What can we say about Dad? A lot. Yes, and I definitely needed to know about that time he and the Yeagers went to a country club to set fire to it and make it look like Reagan did it by writing 'I AM REAGAN I DID THIS' to start a 'rich person civil war' – no, don't cheer, Mr Yeager, I was being sarcastic.

"My oldest memory is him telling me that the Man killed the dinosaurs. I can't remember the context. Throughout my life, Dad was this irrepressible force of cheer and confusion, refusing to make sense or stop or, often, arrange sentences in accordance with the English language. He was the punk he wanted to be and he wanted everyone else to be the punk they could be as well, even – especially – people who were not actually punks. The Jehovah's Witnesses abandoned Highland when I was seven. They declared it 'abandoned by God' and 'stalked by an emissary of the Beast'. He made the Scientologists flee the year after that, the ones who didn't become punks and walk around singing very bad songs about Xenu.

"I used to worry I would never be what he wanted. Then I didn't care whether I was or not, and then I realised that in not caring what someone else thought I should be, I was exactly what he'd wanted. In my first year in Lawndale, I came very close to forgetting this but when I came back around, Dad was there as if nothing had happened.

"He was irritating and obnoxious and destructive and – no, that wasn't my point, stop cheering. Thank you. He was all of those things but I always knew he'd have my back. You always knew Dad would have your back, if he decided you were family or friend or even just the slightest bit punk. He'd give you the badges off his jacket.

"I don't really have anywhere this is going. I thought I did. I wish I could talk to him even one last time, even though I'd just say something sarcastic."

Daria stepped down off the stand and nodded to the priest.

"We shall now have a traditional recital of a hymn chosen by Daria Morgendorrfer."

Abide with me, fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou who changest not, abide with me

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness
Where is death's sting?
Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee
In life, in death, o Lord, abide with me
Abide with me, abide with me

Jake had asked for a Viking burial at sea but getting the corpse to the bay was impractical, so the mourners had rented a large paddling pool and set the burning coffin on that.

The wake was an open air punk-party with three beer trucks on tap, live bands, a pit with a sign saying "NO RULES BEYOND THIS POINT", and an array of valuable objects to be destroyed in the Breakable Zone (actually they were all cheap knockoffs but that would spoil the magic). Painted on a nearby building was a vast mural of Jake headbutting the Devil. Within thirteen minutes of the wake, someone drunkenly decided to steal a beer truck and drive that into the pit so they'd "win", but somehow they got the truck completely on its back and on fire in violation of all laws of physics.

The Porta-Potty toilets were clogged up with human waste from the first second, despite nobody entering them. This was the punkest thing of all.

As Daria watched, the Maleficent Eleven were alternately hugging Quinn and raising drinks. Most of them looked just as Daria remembered them. The three exceptions were Jackie "Slutty Girl" Wentworth, now dressed to the nines as School of Hard Knockers owner Jackie "Slutty Entrepreneur" Wentworth (a business suit that had subtle shortenings and angles so you felt aroused without knowing why); Rob, who'd lost an eye in the epic Third Brawl of '14, caused when some thugs from out of town strode into the Zon and loudly insulted The Lego Movie; and Andrea, who wasn't there due to finding Mammon and becoming the CEO of Hot Topic. Officially the "Ghost of Andrea's Soul" was a member, even if that made little sense as a concept.

Elsewhere, Ms Barch was beating up every man in the pit because of course she was, having dived head first into punkdom when she'd lost her job. Tommy Sherman had already gone down, blood on his "FUCK OAKDALE" shirt. Steve was at the other end of the pit, beating up everyone for the sheer delight of it, and both would soon meet. At the edge of things, in the shadows, the legend that was Ted DeWitt-Clinton was waiting for them to collide so he could triumphantly return to Lanwdale by beating both of them up.

Angier Sloane was getting drunk and trying to remember Fear lyrics ("gonna something a thingummy!") while Tom had somehow lost all of his clothes and had a dazed look on his face and what would be a dazed look down below on okay no Daria was going to look away at that part. Sadly, looking away meant seeing Kevin. Kevin had got confused and come down painted in Lawndale Lions colours and had a redneck beer hat on and was cheering "SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS!"

Curious, Daria shuffled down to Kevin and asked what he was doing.

"Well it's a party, Daria!"

"It's nothing to do with football, Kevin."

"Now Daria, c'mon. It's a party."

And that was her cue to head back to the fringes, where a highly drunk Amy was telling an amazed Jane and a bemused Alex about her latest work: "so what I thought was, where's Area 52?"

The whole of it was slightly removed, just as it had been in school. Like how it usually was in Stilwater too, come to that. As always, that sense of being to the side and nudging the little figures around the board when the players didn't see, but not in the game proper. Usually this was where she wanted to be.

But hell with it. This was the last day her father was in Lawndale, the last day before he was truly a memory that would fade with age.

"Hey, Aunt Amy?"

"What's up, sprat?"

"Can I have a beer?"

"You don't drink," said Alex. "Or take drugs. You were very clear to the Sons of Samedi you were a straight edge and if they didn't stop pushing around you that you would ensure their place in Shivington would burn down – oh, I'm not supposed to tell people about that. Daria did not say in advance of the fire that she'd do it."

"Alex, such a sense of humour. But I just want to loosen up a bit."

Amy smiled. "You always do. Here, take a sip of this."

Daria raised it to her lips…

When she woke up, the corporate towers were still burning in the evening and what remained of an Army Rangers unit had punked their hair with their own blood and mucus. All her clothes except the jacket and boots had gone, and somehow, she had a pair of glasses over her glasses. Somewhere, a bell tolled and shots sounded.

"Ah."

She checked her phone. The screen had cracked but still said it was two days after the funeral, and her phone service was "NO FUTURE".

"Are we still at war with Ruritania?" asked a soldier, who had somehow put safety pins through his rifle.

"They surrendered unconditionally. Which way is Lawndale?"

"About fifty miles back that way," he said, pointing to a trail of smoke.

Daria got back to Lawndale at the same time as the UN Lawndale Border Mission force and their helicopter gunships, feeling a hangover that was like an army of Quinns headbutting her head. It took another hour to reach her mother's house as every punk in town wanted to slap her on the back ("Great party, Dee!"). When she got there, her mother turned out to be wearing a riot copper's uniform that she'd painted 'PUUNK' on.

"Okay, that was a bit punk, I guess," said Quinn.

It would soon be Christmas. Then it would be time for everyone to go back to their usual lives, for Daria to head back to her PhD and the lazy apathetic nights with her girlfriend and the usual surfing on chaos, her emotions always one step removed. They were all adults, Lawndale High was gone, and time marched on.

But there was still Christmas to come.

Daria and her family put up the decorations and the punk tree (a dead one that smelt of pee because it had been peed on multiple times), and put out the presents. Only two days to go. The first Christmas without him and you'd just smile and carry on and nod to the gaping hole without dwelling on it. After this, it would be easier.

She hoped.

When it was just her and her mother alone, Daria said: "What do you think would have happened if we'd never moved from Highland?"

"Oh, god, that's a fucking question. Highland was a shithole and you were only ever so happy there, so you'd still be only so happy. Quinn wouldn't have had Steve to help her find a path. Your dad and I, well, we'd be making Highland money and doing Highland work, just enough to get by but nothing like we had here. Jane, Trent, your cousin Erin, Tom, they'd all be different. I don't think they'd be happier.

"I don't think your father would have lived as long as he did, after that heart attack, if we'd stayed in Highland. I don't just mean that the hospital wasn't as good. In Highland, if he'd been that ill, with less work and people to work with, I think he would have retired. He wouldn't have felt as driven. And then what would he be? A man with nothing to do and nowhere to go, worried about his health, right to worry – no, that wouldn't be Jake.

"Why do you ask?"

"I think the same as you, but I just wanted someone else to say it." Daria looked out into space and said quietly: "I had a dream a few times. I dreamed you and dad weren't punks anymore, maybe never had been. We were upper-middle class, you both had professional jobs, we did make it to Lawndale but it was all so much quieter. And I didn't feel anyone had my back. I didn't feel you'd back me up. I meet Jane but it's in that self-esteem class you got me out of. I want to make you suffer for it. And then I wake up.

"Maybe there's a finer world than this, but I know there's worse. Even though Dad's gone, I think he left us with a damn good world to live in."

Helen smiled, a proud smile, a sad smile. "Always so serious. I'm glad we made you but sometimes I don't know how."

On Boxing Day, Daria and Alex would return to Stilwater and Quinn would leave for her own life. Helen "Hellion Wheels" Morgendorffer cried in an empty house and kissed the photo of Jake at their wedding.

Halfway to Stilwater, Daria suddenly broke down crying.

On New Year's Eve, the scattered Morgendorffers received an email: Jake had arranged for a message to be sent to them on the first New Year of his death, a message he'd secretly re-recorded every few months. It held his last words, the last thing he would ever speak, his final statement to his family.

"Awww, damn it, I lost the whole message! Why are you blinking at me, you stupid camera?! WHY ISN'T THIS GAHDAMN WORKING AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH [end]"

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Five years after finishing Esteem, I finished it again. This had been in my head for years – in earlier plans, Jake was going to have a second, fatal heart attack in "season 5" of GSTE. I knew the story would open with Jake dead, inspired by Only Fools And Horses killing off Granddad Trotter between episodes and opening with his funeral wreath. When Esteem ended earlier than I first thought, Jake lived but every so often, I'd think of returning to show his demise, always with that opening in mind. Writing this in (initially) December of 2017 meant that itch has, finally, been scratched.

The America of 2017 is not in real-world continuity but is in continuity with the future history give in Combat Rock. You're welcome.

Daria's girlfriend Alex is available, as with all Esteem original cast, to be used if you want it. She was another itch I'm scratching: "okay, fandom, but what if Daria was bi but her girlfriend was this incredibly sexless, boring, dirge of a person because Daria dates weirdo morbid loser people?" And thus, scratched. Writing weirdos is fun.

While I'm an atheist, Abide With Me is just too beautiful a song to not have.

It was a blast to revisit these old friends and get to cut loose on the absurdity, mood whiplash, and that aggressive use of British slang and ideas while everywhere's meant to be America. Once again, thanks to everyone who ever read this far and gave the story a thumbs-up.