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• Evil John Lennon and Sinister Paul McCartney go triple platinum after writing hit banger, “Got to Get You Into My Strife.”

• Mark David Chapman demonstrates how a practical joke that seems like a harmless lark can quickly turn deadly.

• Chapman sprays them with silly string, which is fun, until an exposed candle ignites the pile of string.

• The pop duo embraces, creating a single flame.

• What happens next will leave you horrified!

CLASS I BORDERLESS NATION — My table top is lit by some makeshift candlelight. It’s black. A pile of burning what is certainly wax. It’s so I can write. Unrolling my papers, my scattered pages fall to the floor. These are my documents. The candle suffocates me with its black smoke, but it conceals the light.

A screeching interrupts my thoughts. It’s them.

This is where I am. God help us everyone. What’s happened to our world? Here is how I think we got here. This scorched hellscape. This nothing zone where plants no longer grow, and them: In Their Satanic Majesty, they soar in wicked dominion.

---

Here is what happened.

Evil John Lennon, man as he was, stood upright, never smoked at all, and has a proclivity for being exceptionally kind to his women and wives.

Sinister Paul. Now here was a man with his shit together. Tattooed and ugly, the “Badboy of Great Britain” Paul McCartney drank it, shot it, snorted it or worse. On his free time, he savagely tortures good souls in Hell.

Together with Rude Ringo and George “Rotten Crotch” Harrison, they wrote the number-one charting hit masterpiece “Got To Get You Into My Strife.” A fun jingle about pulling others into their dark underworld, when played backwards, its psychedelic harmonies become nightmarish spells that when heard, turned rabid fans tame, at the band’s command.

They used this to gain control of the Western Territories, decimating it as they claimed more, until so little of the nations remained, borders all but became meaningless.

Ringo said, “I should get paid for all the time I stand around, slapping my hips and my thighs, like I’m playing the drums, innit.”

John, exhaling cleaner air than what he breathed in, took off his sunglasses, and he turned to me, done signing my book.

“Next,” John said.

Even today, I crave the dismissal. I looked back at John one last time, knowing he was the Devil himself.

Paul, too. The son of a bitch that swooped down from the sky, and with his talons spread open wide swooped down, and scooped out my eyes.

---

I must have unlocked their powers. No, it certainly happened then. As I “sought revenge” for my ego bruising, I burst and hoped to surprise them. Hoped to catch them unawares in a playful bit of fun, just to let them know, I’m down with the Devil, and I really like their hateful style. I stopped by the party store, and picked up two cans of Silly String. What a gag!

I met them at a candlelit ritual, held every full moon. The town gathered here. As I struck out alone, deep in the forest is where first I saw it: Two flat pink ribbons, rippling in the night, sailed over me like some twirling owl.

As I got closer, the din of voices carried. Familiar voices. I crept in closer. I heard the voices of a teller, a teacher, my wife and a preacher. Not sure what that was about, it will come to me later. There! Ringo was dancing. Paul played the lute, and Linda, still missing that leg, danced. What a hoot.

I sensed an owl watching me as I approached closer, and closer to John, locked arm-in-arm with his band-mate Evil Paul, at an unbridled Satanic ritual pentagram dance. Around the candlelit center they’d go. The owl’s gaze turned, next, to them. All at once, the chanting stopped, everyone turned suddenly and they all looked at me. Heck, I like the Devil.

Surprise! I yelled, and I jumped out from a shadow. I hosed those Brits down with my silly string, blasting both at one time. Everyone turned to me, dumbfounded.

Ain’t I a stinka?

A familiar voice, the airy, nasally, unmistakable voice of John Lennon spoke to me.

“Mark David Chapman?” John asked.

I froze.

“You know me?” I said.

“Of course,” John replied. “I remember everybody I dismiss from my presence. Come here you old brute.”

He tried to pull me in for a hug, but I back away, not wanting to get silly string on my expensive 19th Century peacoat.

Being good-natured as he was, Evil John took it well enough in stride, that is until he took one step backward and – unable to see – stepped on a candle. His clothing ignited and in an instant, his entire body, including the face, was fully engulfed in flames. The fire clung to the string, and melted on his skin like a bubbling napalm jelly.

That is when Paul must have felt the calling. John turned to his songwriting partner and, burning calmly, opened his arms. They hugged. One laughed to the other, as they embraced and both started to burn.

The owl flew away.

Just like that, the party exploded into dance, and as the bodies were writhing, and as the devils came entranced, the fires of old Hell itself seemed to be rising, climbing through the dirt. A beast cried out, demonstrating the true source of thunder.

---

Now as I lay here suffering, waiting for the night creatures to take me, or the windstorm of bloodsands to weather down my flesh, the scene plays out, over and over again in my head. My instincts drag me to life. Meanwhile, I pray Death may snatch me from this living nightmare, cast like projections from the eyes of the Devil himself, burned onto film of the ritual fires, and rolling into me like four blurry waterfalls, peeking over the ridge.

They are still out there. I still hear their wings beating on the horizon.

They know where I am.

They hunt.

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