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“Crowjack! What the fuck? What did you do?”
“I found it, Bayou! I found a way back home To our own dimension This is e’re supposed to look like! This is e are! The greatest predators in any ocean in the universe! It feels aht It’s your stupid ut aristocrats who keep us trapped in miserable half-primate bodies! I’ll show you I’ll show you the way The seais full of doors, Bayou And all the doors lead to power And what the shit is that thing you dragged back?”
“Call me Avast, cruel villain!” John cried “Wherever injustice rears its hideous head, wherever tyranny casts its baleful gaze, wherever evil sails the sea, there you will find Avast ready and able to strike it down!”
Megalodon blinked I gawked aton the throne “What are you talking about? Sit down, Shakespeare; this is between me and my little princess”
“The lady is otten zapped into one of Crowjack’s shitty perforst like beach balls
I didn’t even get a chance to say I wasn’t either of theirs Crowjack wasn’t stupid He saw a child in er at e Avast’s righteousness It wasn’t about ain It was about halibut and fatherhood and the pressures of ht him, and I suppose if you could have sat up in a balcony seat, there would have been so can be like that, soalodon yelled out lines from his own terrible plays and Avast bellowed about justice and freedom in a way that ri for my ex-boyfriend’s eyes
I should have found a place for Angus to hide I should have put hiht I could protect hi so well, and in another Megalodon shrieked beyond hulass boy frous’s voice went out in ht Ma The ehed at hed, then spun round, bit off Avast’s ar Avast Avast Avast like a curse, like a need, like a pro
Oh, the ar we can do And it all went on like you’ve heard, Avast and Megalodon, their endless undersea boxing match Submarines full of other men, Union ht to the death, to never yield, to never surrender, to never stop But in all those oaths and boasts and proclaht, Avast never said our son’s naeance, but for “h Azure was nothing but a stolen painting or a bloody nose A blow to Avast’s pride
All I felt was nothing I could fight as well as any of them And I did Up there, he’s a superhero Down here, I’m Queen of Atlantis I command the seas You can call me a sellout if you want I deserve it Platypunk did He tried to get me to run off with him to the Indian Ocean where none of this absurdity could find us, and I said no What was I supposed to do? My family was dead Atlantis ell and truly fucked I told e Just another costue coeon-skin coat and fishhook earrings and into litter and responsibility I let therow my hair out Never They couldn’t make me
God, I ot in between them and the mirror they liked to preen in, the s of the Known Universe They all felt safe with their girlfriends’ ambitions—artists and actresses and scientists Girls you could brag to the aluazine about, but no one they ever had to compete with They were the sparkly shiny special ones in their houses After all, science is great, but who can compete with superpowers?
Well, the Queen of Atlantis can
To tell you the truth, Avast hated Atlantis Up there, he was a hero He was totally unique, from New York to New Delhi Down here, with me, he was just like everyone else
He got so angry atto spend another second in a place where no one cared that he could tell a whale what to do, where no one kneas a star He never touched ht up with blue at the sight of hiust and he buried himself in his workouts
They never once asked alodon opened the floodgates and half a dih Even after I defeated Whitewater and the Werekraken in the Battle of the Beralodon only barely escaped that one He holed up in Guignol City like a trust fund baby forhis wounds Even then, my husband and his friends never said, Hey, you’re pretty handy; wanna learn the secret handshake? And fucking hell, they hated ht But I couldn’t help it, could I? John Heron never heard Angus’s little voice in his head His father was still puttering around, replacing lightbulbs in his cozy little house Easy co the word baby Child Itof their play about themselves Avast could scream, I shall destroy you for the death of my son! and his boys would all cheer But if I so much as touched my stomach and whispered that I missed my baby, oh, how they’d sneer!
I did everything I was supposed to do I ruled a nation and battled the forces of aquatic evil Wherever injustice reared its hideous head, wherever tyranny cast its baleful gaze, wherever evil sailed the sea, I showed up to work and punched rottos, in the shallohere they could all breathe easy after dinner, half off their faces on my mother’s sixty-year squid-ink scotch