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It’s one minute after midnight and it’s raining.
I, Maxine Wood, lay on my ex-gf’s couch. I’m a small woman, barely over the age of 30. It’s hard to tell because I’m so cute and young looking. I have long purple hair pulled up in a loose bun. I have French bangs and big round glasses that kind of make me look like an owl. My eyes are naturally pink because I’m a psychic vampire (Don’t worry, I only use my powers on people who deserve it). I’m wearing ripped black yoga pants with fishnets underneath and a loose knit sweater with two cats cuddling on it. On my arms I’m wearing little black and gray striped fingerless gloves because it’s winter and it’s cold. Also, they’re, like, totally good for hiding spirit talismans.
Tomorrow, I have to get oral surgery, so I’ve been fasting in preparation for twilight anesthesia. I’ve been sober for days. I am at my peak. I’ve just opened duo lingo, trying to fend off the owl before the anesthesia takes me out for the evening... when a message appears on my tablet. It’s You, The-muppet-joker. I adjust my glasses. It really is you. Oscar’s Rose will have to wait.
“Tell me your Pronouns so I can decide if you violate my DNI or else I have a Joker Blade with your name on it!” you asked me.
I look over at the picture of my mentor (Chuck Bingle) that I keep on my ex-gf’s coffee table “look away, sensei,” I say with a hint of sadness clinging to my dark lips. I put a little heart shaped post-it note over his eyes, “I’m about to stray from the path of a true buckaroo.”
I draw in a deep cosmic breath, working it through my chakras until it reaches the gooch. I exhale slowly, letting the energy flow up my spine, all the way to crown, where it becomes a glorious violet mist. I take one more shallow breath and release it to form the words. “Siri, play Thanks for the Venom by My Chemical Romance.”
~~~ {{ Thanks for the Venom - MCR }} ~~~
As the raw, emotive screams of Gerard Way fill my ex gf’s house via Bluetooth speakers, a single black tear runs down my cheek like the rain runs down the window. It ruins my mascara but I don’t care.
I can feel him already, the psychic presence of my adversary’s ancient rival. Anger and hatred courses through my veins.
“Come and get me prep *splashes a glass of milk on you* MCR Rules” We write in response to your tumblr ask. My pronouns be damned, my mere existence violates your DNI.
Outside my ex-girlfriend’s door, lurking like a masticating pervert in a long leather trench coat, is You, The Muppet Joker. You’re cold, pathetic, jobless, abandoned by your mother. You’ve been kicked out of half a dozen polycules. You’re hated by your father. Chosen over for a horse you couldn’t kill. Cast out by your Colonel. Seemingly unloved by anyone that is not you.
A notification arrives. It barely even appears on the phone for a second before your bigotry drives you into a blood rage so potent that you piss yourself on my ex-gf’s stoop. You throw your phone to the ground with a sickening crack. Yellow Headlights cut through the rain and wash over you.
“There you are Kermit, I’ve been looking all over for you” calls a familiar voice from a car.
“Stay out of this, Milton. I don’t want you to get hurt.” You say through clenched teeth, standing in a puddle of your own piss. It’s warm on your bare feet, the way you like it.
“It’s not worth it,”
You turn to face your only friend and consider turning your back on this quest of violence… but then you hear the music from beyond the walls. “No!” You yell. Milton can’t hear the MCR, he doesn’t have super hearing like you. He would never understand. You clutch your head and fall to your knees, splashing the salty puddle around the stoop. “NOOOOO!”
Everything floods back. The Mold. The Rot. The Evil. The Emos. All at once you leap to your feet. You begin pummeling the door with your pathetic, poser fists. With each punch you let out a great, sonorous war cry, each louder than the last.
Milton leaps out of the car, letting the rain pour into the driver’s seat. It runs down the ruined leather upholstery like tears and soaks into the exposed cushion. “Get ahold of yourself Kermit! This isn’t like you,” pleads Milton as he reaches to rub your shoulders and calm you down.
But you can’t hear Milton. You’re yelling so loud you’re crying like a baby. You’re so scared that someone like me might stand up to you. You’re so scared that someone might challenge what little confidence you think you have, that you lash out like you always do. You rear your fist back for one mighty power punch - And your fist collides… with Milton’s fragile mortal body.
He slips on your rage piss and tumbles backward, down onto the rainy sidewalk. So blinded by your emotions, you don’t even notice. Milton lays on the ground, looking up in horror as you power punch through my ex girlfriend’s front door and disappear inside. Jesus sleeps.
Inside, I am waiting. In my hands is a sword of red tinted steel. An intricate pattern of black lines run down the blade, ending in a Bloodstone Orb. “Sup Colter?” I ask, dropping your mother-given name. It’s a low blow but you deserve it, coming in here, reeking of piss.
You try to come up with something witty to say, but you’re too triggered to have a coherent thought. You try to draw your joker blade from that sick back sheath you got from the mall but you can’t draw it all the way out. This only makes you angrier and more incoherent. You rip it off in a sickening display of inadequacy.
All this emotional release fuels me. If your spiritual senses weren’t deadened, you’d realize you’re being victimized by a psychic vampire.
You sling the sheath onto the floor. “Max!” You scream.
I ready a defensive pose, ready for your assault.
“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.” You scream as you wildly sling your joker blade at me. But you don’t know that I larp. You don’t know that I’m non-men’s short blade champion. You don’t know my dark past.
But I don’t know your strength. I don’t know your power. I don’t know your fury. Normally, vamping people in a fight makes them tire out and fuck up within 3 exchanges, but you’re different. You’re primal. Your joker’s rage and animalistic nature provides you with a seemingly unending supply of instinctive technique and physical endurance. You fight like the serpent of Eden.
This energy though, it’s intoxicating. Your tears drive me to higher and higher states of ecstasy and twist me deeper. I can feel your hatred within me. It urges me to rip your innards out and feed on them. It reminds me of the person I used to be. “No, Fuck you!” I cry in torment. My scream pushes you back. “You do NOT get to come back into my life like this! You took everything from me and now… NOW I’M GOING TO END YOU.”
The bloodstone sphere embedded into my blade begins to spin. Purple lightning crackles around me. My eyes turn a neon violet and you know at once what I am inside and out. I am a lesbian psychic vampire. Behind me, the spectral form of Gerard Way floats, short blonde hair, dressed for the black parade.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.” you laugh. You don’t even really care who I am. To you, the croaker, I’m just another minion of the same psychic nuisance you’ve had to fight time and time again. “I see you found a new Athena!” you say to Gerard “Don’t think you’ll stand a better chance this time, though. I beat you once before with naught but a pointed stick! I have my joker blade this time Mr. Chemical Romance.” You extend your blade in front of you, flaunting its wicked, unholy curves.
“Shut up, Joker!” I yell, rushing in for another exchange of sword blows. This time though, my sword tastes of croaker. Violet flames erupt from the shallow cut I make across your chest. Energy flows from your wounds. It twists through the air and into my blade. You feel frozen in place. I hover the tip of my blade half an inch above your third eye. “GERARD NOW!”
~~~ {{ Play the first second of Welcome to The Black Parade }} ~~~
~ and then ~
~~~ {{Vampires Will Never Hurt You - MCR }} ~~~
A single G5 note rings in your mind’s ear, heralding the spectral form of Gerard Way as he flies toward you. The ghost of your favorite Kermit doll materializes to intercept but is pushed aside by the stylish presence. The taste of his cremation ashes fills your mouth. You brace yourself for impact, only to be swept away into a world of purest darkness. The astral realms.
All is a monochrome wasteland filled with falling ash. Surrounding this wasteland is an endless ring of dark spires which stretch into the sky. It looks exactly like the music video for Welcome to the Black Parade (even though Vampires Will Never Hurt You is still playing).
“You made a bad move bringing us here,” you croak. “I am Muppet I am Joker I am Kermit I am Croaker I am Froggy I am Clown I am Bleeding I am Crown…”
“You have to stop this,” says Gerard Way, stepping forth from the sepia storm of swirling ash. In his hands is a microphone stand. “Both you and Max, it’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, asshat, but I don’t have to mupping stop a god damned thing! You took my heart from me! My sweet, sweet muppet hole. AND NOW YOU FACE MY WICKED HOLE.” You throw your arms to the side, breaking invisible chains. Your mouth opens wide revealing rows upon rows of soft felt muppet teeth leading down into a black hole of a stomach. The wasteland sky is filled with thousands upon thousands of twisted eyes, bloodshot, strained, looking around with animalistic frenzy. They can see everything. They can see the truth. They can see your lover. The Primeval Joker waits in ambush.
“You know that isn’t true, Kermit! You know what really happened. Once upon a time, you sought reconciliation. Try to remember” pleads Gerard Way, taking a few steps back in fear of your truest godform.
His words inspire hatred within you, radiating from the lowest part of your gut. “I remember you ignoring me!” you screech, “I wrote to you, offering you an opportunity to apologize for your wicked and evil ways. And how do you respond? By siding with another mupping witch?!” Your mouth grows larger and larger, threatening to swallow up the entirety of this astral realm.
“I called to you and you pushed me away, Kermit!”
“Lies!” Your gravitational presence begins to pull the astral realm into your body. Gerard slams his microphone stand into the dirt to buy as much time as he can. It doesn’t look like it will hold for long.
“Truth! Whenever you heard me on the radio at the KFC, I was there, calling to you, reaching out, and you ran every time.” Goopy, green felt tentacles erupt from within your maw and grab hold of him. They tighten around his body, cares his weakest points, and pull.
“I ran because of what you did!” Your speech shakes the earth. “The pain! The horrid pain of you and that witch! The headaches! The pain!” The microphone stand breaks free from the dirt and Mr. Chemical Romance falls onto his back. Giddily, you drag him toward your maw with a wet, sticky squelch. Your webbed, tentacle-like tongues wrap around Gerard’s mouth, stopping him from bothering you any longer with his vampiric deceit.
He struggles and struggles to pull your sticky tongue away. It’s clearly taking all of his might, but he manages to free his stupid mouth for but a second. “I am not the rot!” screams Gerard. His kicking feet tickle against your titanic lips. Desperately, he pushes against your lips, trying to buy meaningless seconds of time. “Kermit, please, you must understand. I did not -” he is cut off. The Joker’s blade has slit his emo vampire throat. Your second incarnation appears from the void.
You are pleased to see your eternal lover, even though you have a headache. Your head hurts more than it did the last time you were face to face with the rot, but that hardly matters now that you’ve won. “I know who you are, Mr. Chemical Romance,” you croak indignantly “Dinner!”
You all laugh as you slorp him up within your wicked hole. Oh, how effortlessly your lips pass over his body. Your tongues, tenderly drooling over his leaking astral form, soak up the blood gushing from his throat. Your crazed and infinite eyes are fixed on your goopy, drool-soaked prey.
It wouldn’t be hard for you to swallow, but there was no fun in that tonight. You and your lover giggle madly as you toy with him, spitting him out and sucking him back in over and over. It’s so much fun, your headache nearly disappears. Once nearly all of his life is drained through the hole in his throat, you swallow.
A Gerard Way shaped lump glides down the throat with an eldritch Gaguck. It stays there, gurgling in your stomach but for a moment, filling you from the inside out. He’s surprisingly warm. His shapely bulge softens to a big round gut. You double swallow and he is no more.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA!” cackles the Joker as you fall back into your earthly body. The moment your soul reconnects you know exactly what to do. You kick. Just like you practice 1000 times a day, you kick and follow it up with a sudden and decisive slice.
My sword leaves my hand. The bloodstone sphere cracks into a thousand shards. My red tinged blade transforms before your very eyes into a simple sword of wood. It reminds you of the sword you have in your hand and its’ secret origins. You slash. Your joker blade cuts my hoodie in half, separating the cuddling kittens and transforming it into a stylish jacket.
This cut reveals the visage of Misa Amane (Deathnote) stylized as the Virgin Mary, halos behind her, hands in prayer. Tears roll down her cheeks like rain on the windows (and the black tears in my eyes.) It is a vintage shirt, worn with age, marked with holes from cat bites and cigarette ash.
You growl.
I fall to my knees. My newly made jacket falls to my shoulders and then my elbows. The evidence of my dark past now bare to your naked eyes, you are stunned. The image of your mother calls to you in your sleep and stills your blade. (Cuz you’re also Jesus, don’t forget that, prep)
“This cannot be” you say “this is blasphemy”
“You are the blasphemy here, Jesus the Frog” I say through gritted teeth, “You don’t belong in this world.”
You stumble backwards. The truth hurts. Jesus stirs from his slumber with a groggy groan within your soul. “It was not by my needle that I was once more given felt.” you spit “I was called here by the brotherhood who wish to pay me tribute as their liege”
“Tribute?!” I laugh. Thinking about all you have done to me in my dark past drives my nails into the flesh of my palms. “You steal men’s souls and make them into incels!”
Air puffs from your nose. You weren’t responsible for any of that. “Perhaps the same could be said of all religions”
I scoff. “Your words are as empty as your muppet hole, Virgin. Tumblr ill needs a savior such as you.”
“HAHAHAHAHA. What is Tumblr, a miserable little pile of shit posts?” You roll your eyes to the heavens. “But enough talk, have at you!”
You leap through the air. Your joker blade extended with deadly point and precision. As far as you know, I’m a sitting duck, a suckling piglet ready for the slaughter… But what you don’t know is that I, Maxine Wood, have been channeling Ms. Piggy for months, just for this occasion.
Hi-yah!
Your soft, shitty, muppet body ragdolls through the air and crashes into the standing lamp beside the TV. Stained glass lampshades clank. Shadows dance. Your joker blade rattles against the hardwood floor.
~~~ {{ I Don’t Love You - MCR }} ~~~
I, Maxine Wood step over to you, pissed as fuck. “Excuse Moi, Mister the Frog.” I say, stepping over to your joker blade. I place my fishnet covered toes atop the hilt and strike a defiant contra-pose. “I have to get oral surgery tomorrow. I have wisdom teeth that need to come out. So you… you, like my teeth need to go”
Slumped against the standing floor lamp, you begin to laugh your dark feminist laugh. “Leave? Now? It’s too late for me to leave now, Max.”
You float into the air, shoulders slumped, joker grin stretching impossibly far across your face. The lamp crashes down behind you, hitting the TV antenna and plunging the room into shadow. The CRT turns to ominous static, quietly drowning out the sound of the Bluetooth speakers. I can feel the presence of Gerard Way weakening by the minute.
Then, in your perfect and natural born Kermit voice, you add “You have no power over me Miss Piggy. We’re over now and, well, I’ve had a lot of time for soul searching. Mine is darker than the swamp, more twisted than Old Man Willow’s Roots. I don’t love you, Ms Piggy.”
“Oh yeah?” I say hiking an eyebrow. “You’ve never been able to shake me, frog!“ outwardly, I'm cool as a cucumber but that’s all thanks to the Spirit of Miss Piggy. Inside, I’m starting to get worried you might actually be able to back up your threats.
You laugh again, rising into the air further, body limp like Skullkid in Majora’s mask. “Kermit’s with me now!” You say, switching almost fully to Joker mode, “he’s the only spark of light of my dark, twisted life and you will never have him back.”
“As I said” Piggy says through my body, “Shut it, Joker!” She karate chops the Joker right out of you. His spectral form lies unconscious on the floor.
Using my feet, I kick your joker blade up into the air. It captures the reflection of your fearful gaze as it spins like a windmill of death. I pluck it from the air with masterful timing and bring the blade to your throat.
It has been a long time since you had this blade to your throat. You wonder if I know that this is the only thing that can really kill you. Have I truly read the fragments of your magnum opus? The hatred you used to warp this blade mixes with your malice in my body. The temptation to slice your throat, to drain your blood all over the living room floor is a temptation I can barely resist. It’s even harder for Piggy.
“Into the kitchen, frog” Piggy snorts through my mouth.
Without the Joker inside, disconnected from your confidence, you feel much smaller than before. Kermit always was the submissive one. Fearfully, you place your cowardly hands into the air. They dangle and dance in terror. “Oh come on now, Piggy. Maybe we could listen to Mr. Way”
“I’m done with Gerard” Piggy says, tossing my hair, “This is about you and moi.” With my left hand, Piggy grabs you by the throat and draws you in so we can be face to face, eye to eye. With your joker blade pressed into the soft underside of your chin, our lips hover inches apart. It brings back a lot of memories. “No one leaves Ms. Piggy and lives to tell the tale.”
Nervously, you clear your throat.
“Any last words.”
“Well, I… I mean… I guess I just wanted to say that I underestimated you, Piggy.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I didn’t know you had this kind of darkness inside you. I guess, well, you’re a far more violent and ruthless creature than I had given you credit for.”
“Hmmp,” Piggy says. She pulls your joker blade back half an inch. “Apology, like your credit card, declined.”
But then, from a place beyond the pantry, a voice calls through the dark “WAIT!”
Piggy tries to follow through with the execution, but I stop her. This causes our channel to break and Piggy’s presence disappears almost instantaneously. There’s an immense pain in my left arm, where her talisman hid beneath my arm warmers. I turn to see who the voice came from and it was none other than Dr. Chuck Bingle.
Dressed in his gi, the truest buckaroo in the universe enters the room. “They are no devil, Max. There’s good inside that muppet hole. You don’t have to do this.”
I snarl. Your own self-hatred courses through my body. “No, Sensei. It’s not true. He’s twisted. He’s evil. He’s bigoted. He hates me just for who I am! He’s clearly sent from the void to ruin everything.”
“Is that you talkin?” asks Chuck in his thick Montanan accent, “Or is it the wicked joker blade in your hands doin the talkin for ya?”
My hand begins to shake. I can feel it, the will of the first born’s corrupted blade. It begs me to kill you, to put you out of your misery. No more fear, no more being hated, no more being chosen last. In terror, I try to drop the blade, but it won’t drop from my fingers. It begins to bargain. It floods my mind with memories of my dark past, my dark present. It blames you for the actions of the cult of the person you once were, the people who turned me into this thing I have become once again. I am twisted. I begin to laugh.
“That boy is blinded by the void. He thinks that nobody loves him just because people hurt him in his dark history. You two aren’t all that different.”
“I’m not fucking emo!” you scream, unable to sit quietly while someone implies you might be slightly emo. It’s quite impressive seeing as you’ve been acting like an emo since your first tumblr post. I press the blade closer to your throat out of reflex. I pull it back.
“Will killing this boy undo the injustices of your dark past?” asks Chuck.The blade fills my mind with the cathartic joy of ending your life, forcing you back into the cycle of reincarnation and hoping you manage to turn out decent for once.
“No,” I sigh, lowering the blade. He was right. Killing you would not undo the damage brought upon by centuries of monotheistic oppression that stripped me of my family, friends, home, and bodily autonomy. I look at you, the croaker. I look at you and I forgive you for everything you’ve done in your past lives. I forgive you for everything you’ve done before this very moment. As much as it hurts and as much as I don’t want to… I drop the blade.
This is the opportunity you needed, Kermit, the Croaker, the wicked soul. You tongue leaves your body, propelled by purest treachery. You catch the joker blade with your wicked tongue and plunge it into my chest. Blood sprays across the kitchen and pours down over Mother Amane’s face like red tears. Jesus awakens.
~~~ {{ My Immortal - Evanescence }} ~~~
You stare in horror at the actions you have done. Blood covers the checkered linoleum of my ex gf’s kitchen. I fall. You catch me in your traitorous arms and you cry. “What have I done?” You ask. You had never actually killed anyone. You hadn’t even managed to kill Bucephalus. Sure, you had killed in your past life as the Joker but that was in another time, another world. You are more than that now… That’s when it dawns on you. We're more than we were before. This revelation causes your murder to hit different. You fall to your knees, holding me like your mother held you when you died on the cross.
“Tell my ex girlfriend… I love her,” I plead with my final violet breath.
“No! No! Tell her yourself, Queen!” You plead, “hold in there” My soft pink eyes flutter closed, destined never to open again. The Joker Blade, tempered by my heart’s blood, becomes satiated. The dark purples and greens peel away into a thousand tiny butterflies revealing the sword of Kermit in its original glory.
Milton rushes into the room. “Jesus Christ, what have you done?!” he cries.
“I’ve… killed her” you sob “I’ve failed to love my neighbor… what shall become of the son of mup?!” You cast your gaze into the air, up at the heavens above, hoping to receive absolution for your crimes. There is no answer.
You look down at me, you look at my pretty face. (My makeup is ruined but I’m still pretty.) You trace my final tear with your finger and shed a matching tear which runs down your face too. It is a perfect mirror of a black tear, which bonds us to the rain on the window, running down and into the earth. My soul, drifting from my body, passes through your hands. You try to cling to me, to undo the horror.
Milton comes over and places his hands upon me, in a desperate act to bring you back, but we all know his faith was destroyed long ago. If only his please had fallen on the ears of a kinder god. Dr. Bingle asks for consent before he places a comforting hand on Milton’s shoulders. Milton turns and embraces my sensei and the two cry together.
You weep, remembering how your hatred drove people away. Your defensiveness manifested itself in the darkest aspects of the Joker, your shadow incarnate. You, Kermit, the first being, in fear of your father, you created the Joker to defend yourself and now, its twisted ways led you to kill me Maxine Wood, Maximum UwU.
“Why couldn’t she have just loved me?” you ask Milton, but he doesn’t respond.
“She did,” says Gerard Way from inside you. (Once vored, now an eternal aspect of your soul.) “I was trying to tell you.”
“Lies!” you cry, quieter this time, but still unwilling to believe the truth. “She tried to kill me! She made fun of me for months, calling me a prep!”
Milton looks up, clears his throat and asks “Was it not you that threw the first stone, Jesus?”
“Oh shit…” you remember her dark history and your role in it. You remember her unanswered prayers. You remember what you let them do. “I did”
Milton rubs your shoulders but it doesn’t relax you like it used to. The joker starts to wake up.
~~ {{ It’s not a fashion Statement, it’s a Deathwish - MCR}} ~~
Suddenly, I am reanimated, my body bursting with maggots which fill my wounds and make them whole. The holy wooden sword in my chest shoots out with violent force and clatters to the ground. The talisman of Zhang Guolao in my stomach is the source of this.
You drop me out of fear and I skitter away on all fours. “You remember that witch that cursed you with the chicken bones, Croaker?” I hiss, raising to my feet, taking lumbering steps forward. “The one that took your precious job at the KFC… I’m that curse made manifest. I am the reflection of your bigotry. I am vengeance, Joker”
With the fury of a thousand gods, I thrust my bloody hand up your muppet hole, wearing you on my arm. “Now say you’re sorry. Say you’re sorry for killing me.” I slam you against the stylish art deco cabinetry. “Say you’re sorry for every goth you’ve persecuted in fear of witchcraft. Say you’re sorry for every kind soul you’ve hurt through your bigoted DNI! Say you’re sorry for letting your fears lead you to oppressing others!” I pull you close, just like I did before, and hiss into your gaping mouth “Say you’re sorry for being a prep!”
You don’t want to. I can feel you resist inside as your face scrunches around my fingers. Even with the joker within weakened, there’s plenty of you that can’t admit you’ve hurt others in the process of defending yourself… But you give in. Do you know why? Because, deep down, beneath every layer of your being, every part of you, every kin… you’re like, still nothing more than a puppet.
“I’m sorry,” you croak
“You’re damn right”
I rip out your Shirikodama, The evil crystal in your lower dantian which stores the evil within. You scream, you sob, you cum. The wretched dark orgasm that fills your body shakes you like death itself. It is sour, clumpy and pungent. Laying on the floor in a puddle of our mixed fluids, you writhe in exquisite agony. The joker’s malice leaks from your muppet hole all over my ex-girlfriend's kitchen floor.
~~~ {Pause Music. Now is a good time to get some water. Please stay Hydrated ♥ }} ~~~
The spirit of Ms Piggy floats above your tortured form. The spirit of Gerard Way joins her and the music comes to a pause. There is only the sound of rain and tears which fall like rain.
“Oh Kermit” says Ms Piggy reaching a spectral hand for your cheek, an unexpected act of comfort for someone as low as you.
As you lay there, malice leaking from your muppet hole, it feels as if you’re dying. You are reminded of when God ripped your rib from your cage. Oh how it hurts to be Adam, laying there in cold agony, covered in blood and piss and cum once again. You thought you’d be used to it by now, but, here we are.
The sound of gentle banjo music floats through the room, stirring your most primal memories. Miss Piggy begins to sing.
~~~ {{ Rainbow Connection - Kermit }} ~~~
“Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side?”
“No” you hiss with every ounce of venom in your soul, “Not that song! Anything but that song!” And though you speak over the lines, they still resonate within your soul.
“So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it, I know they’re wrong, wait and see” sings Chuck Bingle, the voice of hope. As he sings the chorus, you feel your soul separating, all of your kins drawn out into the spectrum of you. Above, a bright light shines.
Everyone else begins to join in the choir. Gerard Way returns from the shadows. Milton raises his voice in kind. Even I join in. Kermit, the ancient, from his eternal perspective at the dawn of time joins in the choir.
The Primordial Joker screams in agony. “Kermit, Kermit, why hath thou forsaken me?!”
“I never forsook you, J. I’m still here. We’re still here” says Kermit, smiling right through you and back at the Joker. “I never loved you just because you were evil. I loved you because… well… I guess I’ve always loved you, just for being you.”
“That’s ridiculous! You can’t just love someone for being themselves”
“Yes, you can. Because I am you and you are me. I love myself and I love you, my laughing prince.”
Guan Yin, transgendered and pangender bodhisattva of compassion, manifesting once more in the form of mother mary, this time dressed as Misa Amane (Deathnote), appears before you in vision. She is surrounded by a rainbow corona and reaches a hand over my shoulder towards you, offering salvation.
“It’s time,” Jesus says within you “it’s time we give up the evil. I’m coming mother” you can feel him pulling your hand upwards.
“Jesus, no” cries the joker as he pulls against.
“Joker, yes” says you, Kermit “I followed you into the dark. Now it’s time to follow the lovers, the dreamers, and me as we go into the light of enlightenment.”
I reach out my resurrected zombie hand.
Do you take it?
~~~{{ I Will Follow You Into the Dark - Death Cab for Cutie }}~~~