An average, every-day sort of guy walks into a coffee shop with the intention of getting a cup of joe, opening his laptop, and writing a perfectly normal story. No ninjas. No (cough of feigned disgust) pirates. Just a regular story about a regular person, completely realistic. Avoiding all the clichés: dead mother, abusive father, rape, murder, etc. Establish a setting, establish a character, rising action, climax, conclusion. Simple. For the love of Jesus, just make it fucking simple.

He goes up to the counter, asks the nice girl if she wouldn’t mind terribly making him a coffee, regular coffee, medium, one cream, no sugar. She picks up an eyeball from the counter, puts it back in her eyesocket, drools, moans, allows black ichor to ooze from an open wound, makes his coffee. The average guy pays, selects a table, wipes it free of broken glass from the window that had been smashed in by the flying car an hour earlier. Sets up his laptop. Sits down and stares at the screen while the laptop boots.

A wizard in black silk, covered in tarantulas, holding a staff made from the spinal column of a space alien, shouts his name, sets fire to the ceiling, a green, oily fire. The guy gets up from the table, grabs his coffee, takes a sip: damn it, too hot. His own fault. He knows better. They always make it too hot. Sits back down.

The laptop is fully booted, a word processor started, cursor winking at him. Where to begin? Better to not think about it. Just start—rewrite the beginning after establishing some momentum. It’s okay if its awkward at first. Don’t let your ignorance be a hindrance! His father had always said, from his throne, a shifting mass of jellied eels and beheaded mermaids. So he just starts typing:

Kelly wasn’t like the other girls. Kelly had a secret. Kelly could read minds.

No! No, no no. No mind reading, no ESP, no telekinesis. He frantically stabs the backspace key. The long neck of a bronze dragon glides through the broken window, acidic green smoke wafting from its enormous nostrils. The guy tries to ignore it.

Kelly wasn’t like the other girls. Kelly was dressed in a simple white blouse, a chaste brown skirt. Her hair up in pigtails. Fire danced in her eyes as she muttered the incantation for a resurrection spell.

God damn it! He wishes he had a typewriter, an honest-to-God typewriter, so he could rip the paper out with a resounding ZING! and grumble under his breath as he inserts a fresh page. Instead, he pushes a finger into the backspace key, watching the cursor dance backwards, erasing, the moon of his fingernail turning white. A samurai and a Mark7 nanobot-swarm shaped like a cowboy arm wrestle at the table next to him, snarling in ancient Japanese and buzzing in a stereotypical drawl, their eyes locked on one another, glaring. He would say “do you mind?” but he knows it would do no good, and he only has himself to blame.

Okay, he thinks to himself. Calmly. You are the master. You are in charge. Start again. Kelly wasn’t like the other girls. Kelly could read minds. Or at least she thought she could. A belief as strong as her faith in gravity. I know what you’re thinking, she would tell people, and then glare at them until they believed it too.

There, see? Lemons, say hello to lemonade. Back in school, they’d made fun of him. Only the two legs, the one head, never eaten human flesh, never so much as infiltrated a Russian spy ring and had sex with sexy Russian spies! Loser! But he knew, stills knows, he’s destined for better things. He’s a writer, god damn it! He smiles at the barista, who smiles back, eye popping out of its socket, landing in a bowl of Sweet-n-Low packets.

But one day, Kelly met her match. It was a Wednesday, a boring day like any other day. Kelly sat in the coffee shop, munching a scone, flipping through a gossip rag, bored, when he walked in. James. James the Zombie.

Careful…

Dressed in a five-year-old letter jacket, blue jeans, hair in a greasy coif. James ignored Kelly utterly, walked up to the counter, ordered a beer.

A what?

Ordered a mocha.

Oh, come on.

Kelly sat at the end of bar, waiting for her shift to end. Another dead day at the Buck n’ Run tavern. And then he walked in. James, in a five-year-old letter jacket, blue jeans, hair in a greasy coif. James the zombie. At least that’s what everyone called him—brain melted on booze, cheap cigarettes, and car fumes.

A hundred naked women in knee socks and berets thunder past, screaming. A large gorilla gives chase. The guy ignores them.

Kelly got up, went around behind the bar. “What’llyahave, mac,” she said, knowing the answer already. Beer, of course. She could read minds, afterall.

“Whiskey,” James said, not even looking at her, seeming to ignore her utterly, like the word whiskey was his mantra and saying it in a bar was just a coincidence.

Kelly blinked, frowned, reached for the cheapest rotgut they had. Maybe he was a zombie. Can’t read a mind that isn’t there. She started to pour, then stopped. “You sure you don’t want a beer?”

What the hell? His coffee is cold already. Caked in ice, Freon leaking from an ice-devil hanging from a ceiling beam, snacking on the pickled remains of a fat stray cat. Screw it. He’s not going to let cold coffee stop him now.

Finally, he looked at her. His eyes were dead, flat. “Whiskey,” he said again, enunciating it.

But Kelly shook her head. “You just don’t look like a whiskey guy to me. I think you’re thinking beer.”

James narrowed his eyes, didn’t say anything for a second. Fished a cigarette out of a packet.

The guy looks up from his laptop, thinking. Are cigarettes too cliché? Sure, they’re in the movies all the time. A man covered in beetles walks into the coffee shop, approaches the counter. The beetles skitter on and around him, some on the floor, but always back onto the man. One of them runs off the man’s arm when he places a hand on the counter, races up the barista’s arm, into her empty eye socket. The average every-day sort of guy is momentarily distracted. That’s pretty gross.

Aw, who cares. Cigarette stays. James fished a cigarette out of a pack, placed it between his lips, not bothering to light it, just staring at her. “Let me ask you a question,” he said.

“Sure.” Her eyes bored into his, trying to figure out what he was going to say.

“You ever kill a man?”

She tries not to smirk. “Of course not.”

“Me neither. Never even wanted to. How about a cat. You ever kill a cat?”

Now Kelly frowns. This was starting to get personal. And Kelly didn’t like personal “No.”

“Me neither,” James says, finally lighting his cigarette. “But I almost did, just now, driving over here. Little fucker ran right in front of my motorcycle,” backspace backspace backspace,” right in front of my car. Freaked my shit out. Now gimme that whiskey.”

The guy’s cell phone rings. Seriously? He checks it—it’s his mom. Oh dear god. “Hello, mother.”

“There’s a horde of skeletons at the door.”

“Yes? And?”

“They’re trying to get in! I think they want the Bundt cake I made for dinner.”

“Well, mother, call an exterminator. I’m in the middle of something right now.”

“I said skeletons, you idiot, not ants!”

The guy sighs heavily. “Look in the yellow pages, mother, under necromancy services. Okay? I have to go.”

“Necrom—oh, is that how you pronounce it? I always said it necro-mancy, like rhymes with deco-nancy.”

“No, necromancy, like the cadence of economy.”

“You always were such a smart boy. Where are you?”

“Coffee shop, doing some writing. I’ll be home in time for dinner, mother.”

“Okay dear. Kiss kiss.”

“Love you too.” He hangs up the phone. That woman! Now, where was he. Oh yeah. Kelly was meeting her match! Kelly looked at James as his gaze wandered off again, her hand still holding the rotgut. “What kind,” she asked.

“GTO, six banger, glass pack and a souped-up hemi.”

Kelly sighed. “No, idiot, what kind of cat.”

James gave her his full attention. The wall behind the barista starts to glow, then shimmer, then melts into a pool of sub-etha particles ripped out of their quantum states and left positironless. Cosmosoldiers from Ryjal 13 rush through the hole, and immediately surround the samurai and the nano-swarm, melt-pistols aimed and set on stun. The samurai throws up his hands in surrender while the swarm disperses, curling for a moment around the guy. James took a deep drag on his a cigarette and then exhaled slowly, one eye closed against the smoke. “Listen, you want to know the truth? I’ve never had a drink before, never in my life. And these things? I smoke, maybe, one or two per week. I know what people say about me. James the Undead. James the Vampire.”

“Actually,” Kelly started to say.

The cosmosoldiers slap handcuffs on the samurai and haul him away, while the wizards tries another fiery burst at the icedemon on the ceiling. The barista takes the beetleman’s credit card, asks him if he wants a receipt, which he declines. James continued, interrupting. “Whatever. But that’s just talk. People like to talk. I work on my car, I listen to the radio, I don’t bother nobody. I keep my nose clean. Then some fucking cat tries to commit suicide under my tires. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Maybe it don’t mean nothing. Maybe it does. But for right now, I don’t care. And I don’t know what kinda of cat it was. Brown or some shit. Now gimme that whiskey.”

Kelly, despite herself, was moved. She looked him in the eye for a few more seconds, started to pour the whiskey. She set it front of him. The wizards fire misses the icedemon, who cackles, dropping bits of half-eaten pickled cat all over the place. The bronze dragon belches a cloud of fiery acid at it, killing it instantly, the body crashing to the floor in an icky, stinky mess. The wizard gives the dragon a wave of thanks, and the dragon’s head retreats.

The average, every-day sort of guy wipes ice-demon guts from his screen, doesn’t seem to notice. His fingers are still dancing across the keyboard, but slowing down, enjoying the last few sentences. The ape walks back in from the rear, arms draped casually over the shoulders of two of the nude women in knee socks and berets, the rest following, cracking jokes, smiling.

Kelly watched as James picked up the glass, sniffed the contents, and shot the entire mess, wincing. The look on his face was genuine—he had clearly never drunk whiskey before. Kelly grabbed a mug, pulled a tap and poured a beer. “Here you go, then.” She said, smiling. “You’ll want to chase that with this.”