The triumphant return of Hijack's weird veins. Support Hijack's weird veins on Patreon! Thanks for reading!

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[Transcript]

        Sophie Sybil, Ace Freelance Reporter, was surrounded on all sides by the undead.

        “Braaaiinss!” groaned one, sagging ominously closer.

        “I’m gonna need to see some I.D.,” said the other. He held out a fleshless hand.

        “I.D.? W-we’re a shadowy axis of evil, silly! We don’t have I.D.” Sophie giggled nervously. She pointed at her mask, the one she donned as Sister Mouse. “Look, I’m in the cult! I’ve got a skull and everything!”

        “We all do, sweetheart,” droned the skeleton accosting her, tapping his police baton against exposed phalanges. “You ain’t special. And only special people get to come back here, capeesh? Only the boss! The brass! The big cheese!”

        “Big cheese? Well now you gotta let me in,” joked Sister Mouse. “Squeak, squeak! Ha ha. Lemme at ’em!” Sophie tried to strut past the palatial hallway’s sentries. She squeaked for real as meatless digits tugged her hood to stop her short.

        “Oh-ho, you got your funny bone, too, huh, toots?” the skeleton scoffed misogynistically. “What a collection!” He elbowed the zombie with whom he was sharing guard duty. “Whaddaya think, Lurch? She got anything I don’t?”

        “Braaiinss...”

        “Whoa! Zing!” laughed the skeleton. “Sheesh, even Lurch is lobbin’ ribs my way now! You sure you got the backbone to throw your weight around like that, pal? Think about your structural integrity!”

        Sophie forced herself to chuckle along with her captor as he dragged her back to the wall where she’d been cornered... until he let his truncheon fall an inch beside her head.

        “Well, there you have it, sweetheart,” the skeleton sneered. “It’s bigwigs only past this point—and there ain’t a standout bone in your body if a spineless slouch like Lurch here’s got your number plus spare ribs!” His weapon scraped its way to Sophie’s neck. “...Unless you wanna BREAK A LEG before you head onstage, huh? Split the difference? That’s where you were sneakin’ when we caught ya, WASN’T it... trespasser?”

        Sophie sniveled in frustration. Her journalism degree hadn’t prepared her for this. Davy Jones and his coterie of bloodsucking Mayview elites hadn’t shown up on camera; her exposé, so far, looked like a window display at the mall. She’d done her best to take clandestine photos of as many Death Cult members as she could, but most had stayed masked, or had just sipped punch and played Kinect. Sophie needed a scoop. She didn’t need a puff piece that the PTA could bury.

        There had still been hope, though. Something juicy was backstage—Sophie had been sure of it. She’d seen Jones head there, and Razor Rex, too, and a little boy dressed like a guy from The Matrix. A quick tarot reading had confirmed her hunch, as had a second tarot app and a magic 8 ball widget Sophie kept pinned on her home screen. Security had been tight. Still, she’d found its weakest point, the long way around through the Academy’s winding corridors. She’d been as careful and as quiet as her cult fursona’s namesake... and even still... and even still—!

        “Braainns?”

        “Huh?” The skeleton’s sockets left Sophie to stare down the hallway. “For the love of Razor Rex—the party’s in the BALLROOM, people!”

        Sophie squinted. Staggering down the hallway in less-than-top form was none other than Mayview’s pale excuse for a mayor, Bill Spender himself. He seemed an even paler excuse than usual, in fact, and easily three times as sweaty. It was a bizarre sight. Politicians, in Sophie’s experience, normally endeavored to put their best foot forward for nakedly corrupt soirees like tonight’s PTA’s meeting. Though Mayor Spender seemed to be trying his best, and it certainly seemed to be quite an endeavor, each foot he threw ahead of him was inevitably followed by the rest of the moves in the Hokey Pokey’s choreography, and getting him nowhere efficiently. He was muttering strangely to himself, too, as he swayed closer, as if arguing both sides of some bizarre internal conflict.

        “Yikes! Looks like the mayor’s had a few too many sips of somethin’, huh, Lurch?” the skeleton said with a chuckle. “Or maybe someone’s had a few too many sips of him. Hyuck hyuck.”

        “Brraaaiiinss,” the zombie added, pointing and groaning at the Mayor. Once again he’d lucked his way into a truthful observation.

        The skeleton sighed.

        “...Just once I wish you’d contribute something ORIGINAL to the conversation, Lurch.”

        “Whaat’s youur prroblem, mann?” the zombie shot back. “Youu’ve been, liiike, shorrt with mee all niight.”

        Before anybody had a chance to figure out what his problem was, the mayor suddenly lunged at the guards with incredible, if lopsided, speed. His left hand, swelling with creepy veins, struck each of the skeleton’s weakest points in a logical order, descending by importance to survival. The leg bone disconnected from the knee bone. The knee bone disconnected from the thigh bone. The thigh bone disconnected from the hip bone, and so on and so forth, all in a matter of milliseconds. Mayor Spender’s right side, meanwhile, had locked the zombie in a furious half-nelson—the most nelson he could manage at the moment. An unfazed goldfish dangled blithely in his hand, for some dang reason.

        Sophie shrieked. In just a few chaotic seconds, the mayor’s flailing had laid both guards to rest in countless pieces.

        “This is just like Castlevania,” Mayor Spender panted from the right side of his mouth.

        “Indubitably,” he agreed with himself, dusting bone shards from his blazer.

        One eye drooped down to Sophie, who had fallen to her knees. The other followed suit some moments later.

        “...I’m allowed to do that,” said the Mayor with some effort, pointing to the carnage at his feet. “In a national emergency.”

        Sophie nodded and decided not to vote for him.