It was the seventh day of the post-apocalypse, but to an outsider, it might have looked like the thirtieth day or even the seventh month.

A menagerie of floating, misshapen objects rolled against a TV static sky, and below that layer of miscellany was a layer of floating islands, cracked pieces of the world that had once been superimposed over the depressing parallel realm but was now indistinguishable from it. Towards what had once been the town center, the sounds of fisticuffs echoed outwards 24/7. People- well, the residents of this world, who called themselves people- smashed, burned, and fought each other because they could- this was the apocalypse, it was what any sensible society ought to do in the event of an apocalypse! It was their right.

Traditional currency had been ousted and replaced by gold, only for gold to be ousted two days later via mob vote and replaced by anything. Businesses that refused to accept trade deals faced the wraths of the townsfolk, and businesses that accepted trade deals also faced the wrath of the townsfolk. Wrath was difficult to avoid. The lonely dimension, which had seemed like a dark and cold place to the only one who remembered it from before the collapse, was now up in flames, some literal, some emotional.

On the fifth day of the apocalypse, the-one-who-remembered-it realized he was starting to get hungry.

The junkyard was far enough from the town center to ensure he could avoid the angry atmosphere. That was for the better. This hadn't even begun to blow over. If he were to confront his former students- no! his former classmates- now, surely there would be fresh wounds to deal with. It was tempting, more tempting than he wanted to admit, to put on a smug face, walk right into the middle of a riot at what used to be the middle school, and say, "I told you so." What would they do? What could they do? They couldn't get their precious lives back! They had squandered them! But they could beat him up, and in fact they did beat him up for much less only seven days earlier. And so he stayed in the warehouse in what was left of the junkyard and scraped the bottom of his last can of beans with a piece of metal that was almost spoon-shaped if he squinted. He didn't even like beans. He had bought them to feel like a real prepper the day he saw all this coming for the first time.

"Oh, well," he thought. "Here goes nothing, I guess."

He let out an angsty sigh, crushed the can beneath his foot- which was, to his momentary annoyance, a lot harder than it looked on TV- and got up, heading across the desolate landscape towards the distant scent of fire and chaos.

Somebody had vandalized the town's welcome sign, which now hung from just one of its tether points and read,

"Welcome to NO-more

Population EVERYBODY"

Had there been some sort of agreement to change the town's name from Elmore to No More while he was away, or was the change simply a stroke of genius by the one who had messed with the sign? Either way, he found himself almost- but not quite- smiling at it. It was the sort of reaction you would have to the fourth repost of a meme you liked a decent amount the first time. It wasn't funny enough to be funny, and yet part of him wanted to laugh.

He tossed a rock at the sign, trying to knock it to the ground in an act of rebellion fueled by aimless rage, but he rather anti-climactically missed. One short survey later to make sure nobody saw his shame, he turned on his heel and headed for the smoldering wreckage of the local shopping mall, where rock music blared and an announcer whose voice he recognized as the local news anchor- Kip something?- called out the hastily-conceived epithets of fighters as they entered the ring.

"Next up, it's, well, it's that guy-"

The blue triangular guy at the edge of the makeshift wrestling ring made a garbled noise that, unfortunately for the audience, had no subtitles. He seemed angry. For just a moment, the-one-who-remembered-it (it being the TV static dimension before it combined with Elmore proper, of course, though now that topic had come and gone) found himself mentally kicking himself for paying more attention to the fight than to his purpose here. His eye fell upon the audience, darting from one person to another until he caught sight of a green, blocky-looking man in a business suit and horned motorcycle helmet chewing on some sort of unfamiliar- but still mouthwatering- drumstick. He pushed aside a few people (which was probably fine in the apocalypse, right?) and stood next to him, trying to put up a pretense of watching the fight. A minute or so later of waiting for the triangle's opponent to show up, he turned to the man.

"Hey," he said in his first social interaction since everything he knew collapsed.

"Hmm? What?" replied the man over the cacophony.

The-one-who-remembered-it inhaled sharply.

"Hey, where'd you get that, uh-"

"This helmet? I glued the horns from a halloween headband to my-"

"No!" The-one-who- no, Rob, his name was Rob- snatched the drumstick away and brandished it in his face. "This! Where would I get one of these?"

"F-from me!" stuttered the green guy.

"WHERE DID YOU GET YOURS?"

"Give it back!"

"Tell me and I'll give it back, alright?"

"Parking garage, second floor, can't miss it," said the green guy as he grabbed his lunch back from a frustrated Rob.

"Thanks. Was that so hard?"

"Come again?"

"Never mind."

Rob let out a labored breath as he hopped over the gap between the island most of the mall was on and the island the car park was on. It was quieter out here and Rob's internal monologue no longer had to scream for him to hear himself think. Second floor, huh?

He noticed that one of the elevators was on fire and the other one had its doors stuck open on what looked like a sheer drop into darkness. Neither of them would do, and so he heeded the age old prophecy: "IN CASE OF FIRE, USE STAIRS". The stairs themselves were, as it turned out, crumbling behind a squeaky door, and he suspected that perhaps the structural instability wasn't even the fault of the apocalypse. Even so, he walked up under flickering fluorescent lights that must have been so dedicated to their jobs that they kept working without electricity and found himself on the second storey, overlooking abandoned cars and trucks alike, wondering for a moment whether he was missing the supposedly-unmissable. And then he saw it: a red van- no, the red van- illuminated poetically by the only light in the room that was still at full power! He ran to it like an old friend and the window of the driver's seat slid down, a pair of glowing eyes peering out.

"Good evening, young one. How may our humble shop assist-"

"Drop the act, dude! You got food in there, right?"

"...Yes. But it will cost you."

Right, there was no way he'd get anything for free.

"Okay, okay. How much?"

"That depends entirely on how much food you want."

"How much would, say, a drumstick cost?"

"We're all out. My apologies."

"All out. Can I see what it is you do have in there?"

There was a rustling noise and a shadowy hand held out something that looked like the cloven-hoofed leg of some unknown animal.

"This is all we have."

"I-"

Rob tried to think over the idea of eating that thing and found he liked the idea of starving considerably better at the moment.

"That'll be 50 bucks."

Rob choked on his own spit.

"No way that thing is worth 50 bucks, old man!"

"We also accept trade deals. And gold!"

"C'mon," said Rob, clasping his hands together and speaking in the best friendly tone he could muster. "You and I go way back. Couldn't you do a guy a solid? It's the end of the world."

"You think we're friends? You stole from me when we first met!"

"I could not let that thing into the wrong hands!"

"YOUR hands were the wrong hands, considering you destroyed our merchandise without paying for it."

"Oh, you have no idea." Rob chuckled, rage boiling just behind his attempt at being amiable. The shadowy shopkeeper raised an eyebrow.

"Your plan didn't work, I gather?"

"No. They didn't listen to me."

"I warned you of the dangers of hubris when you bought those machines."

"It wasn't even my hubris, was it? It was theirs!"

"I never said whose hubris it was going to be."

Rob made an exasperated noise.

"If you want the machines back, they're over at the school in one of the admin offices," Rob offered, hoping that the office in question hadn't caved in yet. "Take 'em back and we'll be even, considering the seventy thirty-five I paid. Then you could use the extra money to give me a free whatever-that-is."

"Do you genuinely want this thing?" asked the shopkeeper with a wave of the mystery meat.

"No. Well, not right now, but one of these days I'm going to get really hungry. Cyclopes eat people," he added, as if trying to psych the shopkeeper out. "Who knows what i might resort to?"

"No offense, but, young man, you seem like the sort of guy who wouldn't eat a grilled fish if it had the head still on."

Rob huffed and turned around, hands on his hips, unable to deny the accusation without falling into the bad graces of his one current shot at getting a meal. After several calming breaths he faced back to the shopkeeper, was immediately met with the urge to throttle him, and took a step back to prevent the unfortunate altercation from coming to pass.

"I'll give you a bear trap and a crowbar in exchange for that leg thing."

"Two bear traps."

"I- I don't have two bear traps!"

"No deal, then."

"AUGH-! Let me in there! I want to take a look at your cheaper merchandise!"

The van doors slid open and Rob found himself in the familiar, unsettling atmosphere of the curio shop on wheels once again. He looked over a glowing skull with gemstones for eyes, an issue of a magazine called "TIME of your death", a washing machine that looked deceptively normal, a pedestal that held an impossible triangle.

"Five minutes 'til closing time," said the driver.

"Since when does this place have a closing time?"

"Since we started having to go stock and restock food."

"Oh, that makes-"

Rob's eye widened. The word 'sense' never left his mouth, because he realized it didn't make sense. Where could the driver possibly be going? Where was the food he was selling coming from? Where did any of his artifacts come from? Well, that last question wasn't as important at the moment.

"That makes?"

"Where exactly do you find this food?"

The driver grumbled.

"Far from here."

"Be less vague or I'll kill you again!"

He reached into his backpack and moments later brandished his crowbar in the shopkeeper's face with shaky hands.

"Again?"

"No, no, don't worry about that. We were talking about where you get your food."

"Far from-"

Rob swung and missed, the shopkeeper darting out of the way just in time.

"No! No more cryptic answers! Tell me where!"

He almost saw a bead of sweat run down the shadow man's face. Was it just a trick of the light, or had Rob actually managed to intimidate him? Of course he had, he thought! He was an intimidating guy. Rob found himself full of new confidence and would have pumped his fists if he wasn't in a tense stare-off with the mysterious pair of eyes in front of him.

"Fine, kid, from other universes."

"Like the real world?"

"No, no, I don't go to the real world all willy-nilly. That's something I would only ever do for a hefty sum. Other fake universes."

Rob lowered the crowbar.

"Take me with you," he said. "I'll never bother you ever again. You can leave me in another universe. Just- please, man. Please, I can't stay here!"

"Twenty bucks," deadpanned the shopkeeper with a biting glare.

"Fifteen bucks and a bear trap."

"Fifteen bucks and two bear traps."

"Fifteen bucks, a bear trap, and a crowbar."

"Is it a cursed crowbar?"

Rob almost considered lying and saying yes, but he shook his head, forlorn, the seed of a new idea growing in his head.

"No deal, young man. If you'll excuse me, it's closing time."

Rob sighed and smiled and stepped out of the van.

"Thanks anyways."

"For what?"

"For giving me the time of day."

"Don't mention it."

The van doors closed. Rob's face was placid, and as far as the shopkeeper was concerned his spirit was broken. Why else would anyone accept their fate so calmly? He had pepper spray at the ready in case the boy had put up a fight, but he hated the idea of using it on someone who could be a paying customer (albeit not a well-paying one, right now, in this economy). It was all the better that he had gone willingly and, presumably, thought to himself, 'it was worth a try'. That was why he was smiling, right? If the boy had some sort of other plan, it wasn't immediately obvious to him what that could be, and so he put the idea out of his head, setting his GPS to a coordinate elsewhere in the multiverse and starting the engines.

As far as Rob was concerned, he was about to do the opposite of accepting his fate. In fact, he would cheat it yet again. That was his specialty.

The van wasn't even moving fast yet! It would be a cinch! This time he could get a good grip!

As it started to pull away, he cracked his knuckles and took one last look out the car park window at the static sky. He stuck out his tongue at no one in particular. If the universe could see him, it would surely be seething.

"Goodbye," he said to the same no-one-in-particular, and then he ran and he clung to life for the second time.