The 2007 Toyota Corolla, pulled over to the side of Mulholland Drive on a balmy Saturday night, reeked of stale Hot Pockets, old rotted pizzas, and Mountain Dew, which Darius Necko frequently referred to as his “gamer fuel.” All 6’3” and 310 pounds of Darius were crammed into the passenger seat, which was reclined all the way back so he could stretch his chunky, milk-white legs up onto the dashboard.
“Ahh, yeah,” Darius moaned. “That’s more like it.” As he mindlessly swiped through Tinder profiles on his phone — swiping right on everyone, of course — he discovered that he had gotten a rare match. The girl wasn’t exactly up to his lofty beauty standards, but she was cute enough. He sent her an opening message: “K-konichiwa m’lady *nervously pushes fingers together* w-would you care to make my acquaintance qt pie? tips fedora.” He was a big fan of the asterisk roleplay.
After about ten minutes of watching gaming videos, there was still no response from the girl. A wave of unbridled anger surged through Darius. She was just like all the other ones. He began furiously typing a follow-up message: “fuck u ur an ugly bitch anyway,” then hit “send.”
Within moments, there was a response: “Wow dude. I was actually going to give you a chance, but now you showed your true colors. Bye.” Before he knew it, the girl was gone from his messages forever, having unmatched him. Darius grunted in disgust and slammed his phone down on the driver’s seat.
“All these fucking females are the same,” he muttered. Needing to drown his sorrows somehow, he pulled up the Twitch app and held it in front of his face, navigating to the live stream of his favorite content creator.
Darius was coming up on his 30th birthday, but looked to be closer to 40. He didn’t hold down a regular job, instead subsisting on the allowance afforded to him by his wealthy parents, and his hobbies included watching anime, moderating various subreddits, and donating to Twitch streamers. His wardrobe on this day consisted of a beige trench coat with a stained Dragon Ball Z T-shirt underneath, old ripped khakis, and a black fedora sitting atop his melon-shaped head.
Darius didn’t comb his scraggly brown hair or clean his glasses very often, and he carried a lot of extra weight around his middle — and for that matter, most parts of his body. He didn’t like to shower much, causing him to give off a distinct body odor. His most defining physical trait was the unkempt black beard that adorned the front of his flabby neck, the majority of his facial hair residing there rather than on his face.
Darius had spent the majority of his life in suburban Ohio, but had recently moved to Los Angeles for a very specific reason. If you asked him, he would say it was for his girlfriend. He had given her a lot of money, time, and attention over the years, and now it was time to take their relationship to the next level. The Tinder girls were just to keep him entertained on the side, but he had moved to L.A. to be with her, and she was the one that mattered. The only problem was, his “girlfriend” didn’t know about any of this yet. In fact, she was only ever so slightly aware of his very existence.
His “girlfriend” was Fiona Flame, a 22-year-old Twitch streamer and one of the most renowned e-girls in the world. Fiona had made herself a fortune as one of the savviest and sexiest gamers on the Internet, live-streaming her virtual exploits daily while consistently wearing next to nothing. She had built her fortune in large part by gathering an army of “simps,” pathetic men who frequently sent her sizable donations in exchange for the slight hope that she would give them any semblance of attention.
Darius was the grand master supreme of the simp army. Over the years, he had donated tens of thousands — sometimes hundreds of thousands — of dollars to her annually. The donations had started when Fiona first went live about four years ago, on her 18th birthday, when Darius was still living in his parents’ basement. He already had his rotation of sexy babes that he liked to pleasure himself to while dishing out dollars, but Fiona captivated him on a different level and became his obsession. He tuned in to every single one of her streams and left comments such as “wow babe so sexyyyy *gulps and shivers in admiration of your radiant beauty * w-will you l-let me chow down on your pussycat?”
When Fiona began selling her used bath water to lowly men for extra income, Darius was her first customer. He slid into her DMs on multiple social media platforms, only to be repeatedly left on read. While Darius appreciated the time he had with Fiona, not being noticed was getting old, and he was determined to do something about it. Knowing Fiona lived in L.A. but not knowing exactly where, Darius thought for a while and came to a rational conclusion: he was going to quit his part-time job at GameStop and scavenge southern California until he got his hands on the sexy young thing.
“Someday, she will notice me,” Darius said to no one in his nasal voice. “I swear to … something, because God doesn’t exist.” He glued his eyes intensely to Fiona’s current stream and locked in, leaving his usual array of comments and donations. He thought about some of the different subreddits he had been browsing recently, full of lost, lonely young men and their increasingly radical ideas. Then, he got horny and couldn’t resist the urge to release his pent-up sexual energy. A few cars and tour buses gave him funny looks as they drove by, but Darius didn’t care. Before long, there was even more of a mess in the front seat.
About a block away from Darius, Fiona Fleming — better known on the Internet as Fiona Flame — sat in the gaming cave of her three-story pink mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The house on Mulholland Drive had an immaculate view of the hills, not far from the edge of a cliff, and featured a multi-level fountain in the front yard. It sat directly between the mansions of acting legend Chad Steele and film director Aldo DeCocco. A 22-year-old model-skinny brunette, Fiona often wore hipster glasses on stream despite having 20/20 vision. She had grown up in Santa Monica before making it big on Twitch, at which point her parents kicked her out of the house. This only gave Fiona the freedom she needed, having saved up enough of her earnings to splurge on the mansion. On her current live stream, she was playing Fortnite while wearing only a skimpy pink bikini and white Hello Kitty cat-ear headphones.
“Ohmygod, where’s the big pot, you guys?” Fiona asked her followers in her high-pitched, cutesy voice. “I’m almost out of bandies, I’m totally about to get sent to the shadow realm.”
“On yur left beutafil,” wrote one of her faithful supporters in the chat, ever so eloquently.
“Is it?” Fiona pondered. “Oh, you’re right. Chat, you’re right. Thank you so much, chat!” She navigated to grab the rare shield potion to her left, then went to work. After blasting away at several more enemies, Fiona took out the final player in her way to lock down the win.
“And that’s a dub-ski!” she squealed. “Couldn’t have done it without you guys.”
“That’s what that noob gets for camping in the bushes,” read a chat message.
“I agree, chat,” Fiona said. “That was a bitch-made move, and you know what happens to bitches. They get lit up by Fiona Flame. Anyway, that’s enough gaming for tonight, and thank you guys so much for the generous donations as always. Uh, I’m getting pretty hungry. What do you guys say I cook something?”
The chat emphatically agreed, eager to watch her cook in her tiny outfit. As she stood up from her luxurious gaming chair to reveal her G-string, comments such as “booty too thicc” and “she flossin” started to flow in. Watching intently from the front seat of his car, Darius commented, “when u gettin naked for us.”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Fiona said coquettishly, twirling around as she carried the camera stand to her kitchen. In reality, she had no intention of ever getting fully naked on stream. Her plan was to string these simps along as far as possible, wringing their wallets as dry as she could without completely selling herself out. She had an OnlyFans account where she charged her fans a pretty penny for “premium” content, but this content consisted only of more of the same. From his car, Darius writhed in both admiration and frustration.
“Chat, we’re going to be making some mozzie sticks today,” Fiona announced into the camera from her massive, state-of-the-art kitchen, putting a frying pan down on the stove.
“Gurl kno how to cook,” read one comment in the chat.
“You are very gorgeous. Will you be my wife?” read another, this one from a middle-aged divorcee.
“Okay, how do I do this? I don’t know anything about cooking,” Fiona admitted. “Just gonna put some oil down on here …” She turned away from the camera to apply the oil, prompting more comments about her backside, then returned to the table facing the camera, prompting comments about her breasts. Along with the admirers came the inevitable slut-shamers.
“Wow, your father must be proud,” one self-righteous comment read.
“What r u gonna do with ur life in 10 years,” said another. “Looks r temporary.”
“Uh, not my looks,” Fiona asserted. “I don’t know if I’ve told you guys this, but I’m never going to age. My friend makes this anti-aging cream and it’s, like, revolutionary. So I’m going to stay hot and sexy for you guys forever, and I’m going to be doing this until I’m 100 years old. At least. I might never even die.”
“Girl living in a fantasy world” and “Hahahaha delulu” were among some of the skeptical comments, but Fiona ignored them and pushed forward.
“What do I need for this?” She began rummaging through her refrigerator. “Bread crumbs, eggs, salt … oh, yay! I have marinara. W in the chat!”
As Fiona was celebrating her monumental success, smoke started to emanate from the greased-up pan. It only took a few seconds for the smoke to spark up into a bright orange flame. Comments poured in, attempting to rush to her rescue, but Fiona still didn’t notice as she got her ingredients together. A few more seconds later, she shrieked in horror.
“OHMYGOD, it’s on fire!” Fiona cried. “What do I do? What do I do?”
“Put water on it,” one genius simp advised.
“Fiona Flame taking her name a little too literally,” a wise guy cracked.
“Okay, I’ll turn the sink on,” Fiona stammered. She grabbed the pan, took it over to the sink, and ran water on it, the worst thing she could have done. The flame erupted further, doubling in height and width and threatening to take over the entire kitchen.
“OH, NOOOOO!!!” Fiona wailed. “Guys, chat, I’m gonna die. I have to get out of here, now!”
“Go to the store and get a fire extinguisher,” one commenter suggested.
“That’s a great idea,” Fiona said, frazzled. “I’m gonna go to the store now.” Not bothering to put on any clothes, she left the camera on and exited the front door of the mansion into the L.A. night. The flames continued to engulf the kitchen, all of it being broadcast for the world to see.
As she hustled out the door in a panic, Fiona at least had the presence of mind to grab the keys to her pink Mercedes Benz. Too bad there was no place in her bikini to put them. Before she could make it to the car, however, she smelled an unusual odor, something between rotten eggs and old Subway sandwiches. She then located the source of the aroma, being accosted by an odd-looking, burly older man. Her first thought was to ask him for help.
“Hey, do you know where I can buy a fire extinguisher around here?” she asked desperately. “My kitchen’s on fire, I’m freaking out.”
“Aww, that’s too bad, honey,” the man said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Looking to be about 40, he was around 6’3” and 310 pounds with scraggly brown hair and a severe neckbeard. He wore a beige trench coat over a stained Dragon Ball Z T-shirt, old ripped khakis, and a black fedora. Yup, that’s about my average fan, Fiona thought. He removed the fedora, tipping it to her before getting down on one knee and holding to his chest.
“It is most wondrous to finally make your acquaintance, m’lady,” the gentlesir professed. “You can call me Mr. Necko. My fancy is most tickled by your willingness to venture into the world in such minimal attire. Not to mention, my sexual desires.” He giggled menacingly to himself as a shiver went down Fiona's spine.
“Okay, can you tell me where the fire extinguisher store is or what?” Fiona’s patience was wearing thinner than her clothing.
“Oh, if only it were that easy,” Mr. Necko continued. “You see, there’s something I want. I’ve wanted it for years, deep down, and yet no one has ever given it to me. You have it, Fiona. You have exactly what I need. The power to make my wildest dreams come true. And yet I know you won’t do it.” His voice cracked and his eyes started to tear up. “I know you won’t.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, dude?” Fiona asked, looking at him blankly. “My house is on fire, I gotta go.” She made a move toward the Mercedes before the neckbeard made one right back.
“Wait!” Mr. Necko held up a hand to stop her, then started fumbling around in his trench coat as she looked on in annoyance. “I'm the devil, and I came to do the devil's business.”
Before Fiona could react, Mr. Necko pulled out a large silver katana — decorated with some of his favorite anime characters — and started swinging it around haphazardly. Fiona quickly darted out of the way, with Mr. Necko stumbling and nearly falling on his face.
“Jesus, what the fuck!” Fiona cried as she finally turned the key, opened the car door, and took shelter. Before she could pull out of the driveway, however, Mr. Necko was able to recover. Abandoning the katana, he pulled another weapon out of his trench coat, this one even more large and threatening. It was a gray M2 flamethrower.
Feeling like she was in a fever dream, Fiona turned the key in the ignition. Before she could pull out of the driveway, however, Mr. Necko unleashed a torrent of bright orange flame from his weapon of choice, instantly setting the hood of the Benz ablaze. Fiona’s screams would be the final sounds out of her mouth. She soon turned silent as the fire roared through her body and the entirety of the car, incinerating everything. Within a matter of 30 seconds, Fiona Flame and her prized vehicle were reduced to nothing but ashes.
Mr. Necko snickered silently to himself, taking a moment to admire his morbid handiwork. Meanwhile, thousands of viewers still had their eyes glued to the slain e-girl’s live stream, where the screen was now almost completely orange with flames. The stream finally cut out as Fiona’s camera was engulfed in flames, and the blaze raged on to the front door and outside. Eventually, the two fires merged paths and erupted into an even bigger blaze that took over the entire mansion and front yard. For all his bravado, Mr. Necko now knew he was in over his head. He let out a high-pitched squeal and began backing away skittishly.
The last little bit of Mr. Necko’s nerve went out the window when he saw a hulking, Adonis-like man emerge from the mansion next door to Fiona’s. This was the actor Chad Steele, a 45-year-old leading man of blockbuster films such as Infinite Impact, Hellcat City, and Chaos in Columbus. Steele was a longtime hero of drama and action films as well as a sex symbol of the industry, standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 250 pounds of solid muscle with a glorious head of bushy black hair and the squarest jaw line in Hollywood. His evening leisure time had been rudely interrupted by the fiery events taking place next door, and he had decided to take matters into his own hands. Living in this part of California required preparation for these scenarios, so Steele had just what was needed on hand. He had burst through the front door in a black bathrobe, wielding a bright red fire extinguisher.
“What the hell is going on out here?!” Steele bellowed in a rage, his eyes wide in a concerned but still confidently macho expression. His eyes locked on to Mr. Necko, who quickly made a move to evacuate the premises as the fire continued to spread across the lawn. After hastily shoving the katana and flamethrower back in his trench coat, Mr. Necko tripped over his feet and fell on his face a couple of times — somehow not stabbing himself — but managed to escape the front yard and continue his penguin-like waddle down the street. Rather than pursue him, Steele opted to deal with the more pressing issue at hand.
“Yeah, get out of here, neckbeard boy! You better run!” Steele shouted after the intruder. “What’d you do with Fiona?! Fiona, sweetie? Where you at?!”
He began spraying at the flames with the extinguisher as hard as he could, managing to put out the front lawn, but the inferno of the mansion still raged. As Steele doused the house with only moderate success at quelling the flames, he pulled out his phone and made a move to call the fire department. Before he could dial, however, his neighbor and colleague on the other side of Fiona’s house came outside.
“Holy shit, Chad! What the fuck happened?!” asked Aldo DeCocco, acclaimed Hollywood director and one of Steele’s best friends. DeCocco was a diminutive, eccentric man in his mid-50s, well known for films such as Echoes of Empire, Shattered Reflections, and Death to the Third Reich, as well as his many collaborations with Steele. The auteur wore a backward Dodgers cap over his salt-and-pepper hair, along with hipster glasses, a Hawaiian shirt, and ripped jeans. A California veteran like Steele, he was prepared for the situation and came strapped with a fire extinguisher.
“Aldo, here, come help me spray this shit!” Steele beckoned for DeCocco to join him, and the two men joined forces in frantically spraying at the fire. As they did this, the actor filled the director in on the situation.
“I heard the girl shrieking out here, I think she’s no longer with us,” Steele said solemnly. “Only other person I saw was some neckbeardy-looking-ass dude with a fedora, and he dipped out in a hurry. The kind that spends too much time on the Internet, you know?”
“Oh, I know, Donnie was like that for a while,” DeCocco replied. Donnie was his 18-year-old son. “Terminally online. A lot of Reddit and way too much Fortnite. Thank God he grew out of it. What, was he mad Fiona wouldn’t screw him or something?”
“That would be my guess,” Steele said. “Well, we can keep tryin’ to be heroes all we want, but this doesn’t appear to be a two-man job. Let’s call the squad.”
“Yeah, good call,” DeCocco said as he took his phone out, but there was no need for a call. The Los Angeles Fire Department had already arrived, and a bevy of firefighters emerged from their big red truck and sprinted toward the house.
“Hey, Bill!” Steele greeted the fire chief. “Yeah, we got a situation here.”
"We heard, we heard,” Bill replied. “And we’re gonna take care of this before it gets to your house or Aldo’s. Let’s go, boys!”
The fire team made its way to the mansion and went to work. After several anxiety-filled minutes, with a team of seasoned professionals giving it everything they had, the squad was able to put out the blaze just before it reached Steele’s and DeCocco’s mansions.
“Hey there, gents, I’m Officer Mark Salmon of the LAPD.”
“Oh, hi Mark!”
“And I’m Officer Maggie Salmon. No relation. Everyone safe here?”
“Yes ma’am, now we are,” Steele replied. “Unfortunately Fiona, the young lady who lived here, she seems to have passed on to a better place.”
“Oh, it was quite the blaze of glory,” DeCocco put in. “You should have seen it, reminded me of when the world was ending in Blazepocalypse. You know, that cheap exploitation flick from the ‘70s starring Dick Bolton and Roxy Halberstein.”
No sooner had the LAFD left the mansion than the LAPD arrived, with hordes of cop cars completely blocking off Mulholland Drive to investigate the tragedy. The Salmons were the first officers to begin questioning the two stars. Officer Mark was a gruff bald man who had moved to Hollywood after serving on the force in New Mexico, while Officer Maggie sported blonde curls and Midwestern charm stemming from her Iowa roots. They were both seasoned veteran cops, having served over 20 years apiece in the force, and close colleagues, having bonded over the coincidence of their last name.
“Hmm, never heard of it,” Officer Mark said, raising an eyebrow at DeCocco as the auteur chuckled slightly.
“An underrated masterpiece,” DeCocco said.
“I’m sure,” Officer Mark said. “Anyway, we have business to get down to here. Obviously, something horrific has happened here tonight. You two are well-known and … relatively mentally stable individuals. This wasn’t either of your doing now, was it?”
“Oh, you know me better than that, Mark,” Steele said.
“No, I may be crazy, but I’m not ARSON crazy,” DeCocco said. “I’m a pyromaniac in my movies, not in real life.”
“That’s good, Aldo,” Officer Maggie said. “Did you see or hear anything or anyone that could have caused this?”
“There was a young chubby guy out here earlier, I chased him away,” Steele said. “Had a fedora, glasses, big fuckin’ trench coat. Looked like a real creep. Smelled like shit too.”
“I see, I see,” Officer Maggie mused. “Did he have any weapons on him?”
“I saw him from my window, looked like he had a flamethrower or some shit?” DeCocco speculated. “Kind of like the one I had Chad use when he torched the bad guys in Inferno Vendetta. Only real, not a prop.”
“That was quite a unique film,” Officer Mark remembered. “Really well-done scene. Anything else that you guys saw?”
“A katana,” Steele said with confidence. “Fucker had a cheap-ass-looking sword with some kind of anime doodles on it. Not the authentic shit they make in Japan, the fake American shit.”
“Cheap-ass American katana,” Officer Maggie said to herself, writing down the description in her notes. “All right, boys, well I think we have a lot to work with here. This has been very helpful.”
“Thank you guys for helping out,” Officer Mark said. “We’ll be on the lookout for the next movie. Aldo, I’m sure you have something memorable in the works.”
“Oh, I've always got something cooking up in the ol’ noodle,” DeCocco laughed.
As the cops began walking back to their vehicles, Steele and DeCocco stood together for a second in front of the ashes of Fiona Flame’s house, taking it all in.
“Hey man, you want a joint?” DeCocco said, offering his actor the one rolled up in his hand. “I was smoking some of this before I came out here. Real good shit.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Steele replied with a chuckle, grabbing the J and taking a puff. “Man, this is fuckin’ wild. We’ve been through this kind of shit before in the movies so many times, but when it comes up in real life, it’s like, damn. This shit really happens.”
“You’re telling me about it, man,” DeCocco said. “I feel like I’m in my next movie right now. Getting a ton of inspiration, as fucked up as it is. Oh shit, they’re coming back!”
Weed may have been legal in California, but the old-timers Steele and DeCocco had been conditioned to hide their goods from the cops. DeCocco flicked the joint to the ground, and thankfully, it died out on the grass.
“Hey, one more thing!” Officer Maggie asked as the Salmons returned. “Either of you guys got a security camera on your house?”
About an hour after the flames had finished tearing through Fiona’s car, house, and body, Darius Necko was fast asleep in the backseat of his Corolla, snoring like a freight train while using an old Pizza Hut box as a pillow. He had driven a short distance down through the Hollywood Hills before he started to feel sleepy and decided to pull over. The Corolla was now parked in a lower area of the hills, near the houses of pop singer Mia Moonbeam and rapper Big Phil. Darius’s slumber was rudely interrupted when he heard a tapping on the glass of the back window.
“LAPD! Open up!”
In a panic, Darius scrambled to push the rear driver side door open. With too much momentum, he tumbled face-first out the door and landed on the concrete, right at the feet of Officer Mark Salmon. Mark and Maggie looked at each other and nodded.
“Sir, I’m going to need to see your license and registration,” Officer Mark barked. Darius lurched to his feet and waddled around the car to reach the glove compartment.
“Can I ask what I did?” he said with the sassiness of a spoiled child.
“Well, first of all, you’re not allowed to park here,” Officer Maggie informed him. “And second, I don’t know if you’re aware, but there was a disturbance just a couple minutes away from here at a very well-known streamer’s house?”
“Oh, really?” Darius asked groggily, handing Officer Mark his registration and wallet containing his license.
“Yes, really.”
“Yeah, there was a pretty big fire actually,” Officer Mark said, rifling through the wallet. “Burned down the house of a famous Internet celebrity. We don’t think she made it. You ever heard of Fiona Flame?”
Darius was silent, trying to process the situation. “Uhh … no,” he lied.
“Is that true?” Officer Mark asked. “Then what’s this?” He held up a photo of Fiona that he had found in the wallet. Darius had written on it in Sharpie, “M’lady, Fiona Flame.”
“I don’t know how that got there,” Darius said in mock astonishment.
“And I don’t know if I’m buying your story here, sir,” Officer Maggie said. “What are you doing in the area? Kind of an odd place for a nap in the ol’ car.”
“I-I was v-visiting a friend,” Darius stuttered. “He lives over there” — he pointed back uphill toward the mansions — “but he works down there.” He pointed down the street in front of him toward Rodeo Drive.
“So you have a friend who lives in celebrity housing and works in the hippest fashion district in America? I find that hard to believe,” Officer Mark said. “And where are you from? Next you’re gonna tell me you live around here.”
“Oh, I’m from Ohio,” Darius admitted. “Drove out here to see him. Got a little tired, needed a place to knock out. Was supposed to be a few minutes, ended up being a few hours. Here we are.” He shrugged.
“That’s a very interesting story there, uh … Darius,” Officer Maggie said, craning her neck to see the name on the license. “Well, surely you must be exhausted after driving 33 hours across the country. The reason we’re here right now is, we spoke to some witnesses who live in the area. Pretty well-known witnesses, actually. And they saw someone outside your dear Fiona’s house who fit your description … pretty well.”
“Huh? Wh-what do you mean? How’s that possible?” Darius started spouting in a panic.
“Well, our guy looked about 40 and had a neckbeard, much like yourself,” Officer Mark explained. “As well as a fedora, glasses, trench coat, and some kind of cartoons on his shirt. And he apparently didn’t smell all too fragrant. So the details are leading us to believe that you were at Fiona’s, and you were up to absolutely no good this evening.”
“W-with all due respect, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Darius choked out. “I’ve just been here sleeping the whole time.”
“Oh, really?” Officer Maggie said. “Well, if you were here sleeping, then who’s this?”
She pulled out her police iPad, which showed footage pulled from Chad Steele’s home security camera. The video showed an obese, fedora-clad man with glasses and a neckbeard slashing a katana at Fiona, missing and stumbling, then pulling out the flamethrower and incinerating the Mercedes with her in it.
“That’s not me,” Darius said. The man in the video matched him perfectly.
“Darius, clearly that is you, man,” Officer Mark said.
“No, it’s not, really!” Darius blubbered. “It’s my twin brother … uh … Nefarius Necko. I swear!”
“Oh, of course,” Officer Maggie said. “So we’re meant to believe your twin brother — who looks and dresses exactly like you — just happened to be here tonight, commit an arson and murder TWO MINUTES away from you, while you are also here?”
“Yes,” Darius said weakly.
“Sounds like a likely story, my guy,” Officer Mark said. “Only question is, the weapons. Let me speak with my associate here.” He pulled Officer Maggie aside for a private talk.
“So he must have gotten rid of the … fuckin’ katana and the flamethrower or whatever somewhere, right?” Mark whispered.
“Clearly,” Maggie agreed. “He’s absolutely full of shit. There’s no way another human being could possibly look like that.”
“Exactly what I’m thinking, they’ve gotta be around here,” Mark said. “Didn’t see anything in the car. Oh wait, what’s that in the bushes there?”
Sticking out of some green bushes off to the side of the road, no more than ten feet away from the vehicle, was part of a shiny, sharp-looking object. As Officer Mark walked over and pulled the mystery item out of the bushes, he saw that it was decorated with various anime characters.
“Hey, yo, Darius,” Officer Mark said as he held up the large silver katana. “Does this weapon belong to you?”
“Uh … no, I’ve never seen that in, like, my whole life,” Darius said. “It does look really cool, though! Whoever owns that has great taste.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Officer Maggie said, nodding slowly. Her eyes wandered over to Darius’s backseat, where she caught a glimpse of something she hadn’t spotted previously. Blending in to the gray color of the seat was a gray M2 flamethrower.
“Sir, what is this item right here?” she asked, pointing to the weapon. Darius paused as he scrunched up his face and scratched his head thoughtfully.
“I’ve never seen that in my life either,” he said in a confused tone. “I genuinely don’t even know … how that got there.”
“Okay, can you just cut the crap, man?” Officer Mark barked, having had enough. “We all know you set this poor girl's house and car on fire. These are the last pieces of evidence we need. Sure, we gotta take it through the court and you get a trial and all of that. But I think we know exactly what happened here. Right, Maggie?”
“Absolutely,” Officer Maggie said. “And I think I know the reasoning behind it, too. You wanted to get it on, have your way with this little sex kitten streamer girl. But you knew she wasn’t going to want anything to do with you, so you had to exact your revenge somehow. Not just on her, but on society and the world and all that shit. I’ve seen your type before, and I don’t like any of you. Not one bit. Mark, let’s book him.”
“Hands behind your back!” Officer Mark grunted.
Tears streamed down Darius’s red, puffy face as Officer Mark slapped the handcuffs on his wrists.
“Look, I know the evidence is overwhelming,” he tried to argue. “But I promise you, on my mother’s grave, I didn’t do anything. It must have been my twin brother. Uh, Nefarius. I swear to Goku, because God doesn’t exist, that that is the truth.”
“Save the argument for the judge, buster,” Officer Mark said. “And you better have a damn good one.” Darius was stuffed into the back of the police car and dragged off to the West Hollywood Jail.
Meanwhile, a beefy 29-year-old man cackled maniacally to himself as his 2008 Toyota Corolla hurtled at warp speed through SoCal down toward the Mexican border. He no longer had his weapons on him, but he felt good that he had successfully exonerated himself from the horrific acts he had committed. More importantly, he had completed his mission and made the point he had been trying to make. The young man was Darius’s twin brother, Nefarius Necko.
Nefarius was also a 6’3”, 310-pound, neckbeard who looked 40, sporting a fedora, trench coat, and Dragon Ball Z shirt underneath. He and Darius had quite the tumultuous relationship growing up in central Ohio, with friendly sibling rivalry quickly devolving into hatred for each other as they both became social pariahs in high school and beyond. The “neckbeard twins,” as they were commonly called, were known for almost never showering, doing the Naruto run down the school hallways, and sexually harassing every woman who gave them the time of day. While Darius went on to live a fairly mundane — if increasingly depressing — life after high school, Nefarius had recently begun down an even darker path.
Darius was mostly just horny. He chatted with his favorite e-girls, sent them endless donations, and had finally decided to leave for California on his Fiona Flame mission. Nefarius, however, had ventured out west for a very different reason. From his ample time spent browsing various Reddit and 4chan threads, he had developed some extreme views on celebrity culture and the wealthy in general. The 1% owned the world, and the only way around this was to fight back by taking out one entitled rich person at a time. Nefarius saw his brother in the basement all the time, pissing their parents’ hard-earned money away on some broad who he knew wouldn’t allow Darius within ten feet of her. What had Fiona done to earn that money, anyway? Taken her clothes off and played video games while acting somewhat quirky? Nefarius had had enough. He didn’t respect actors or musicians either. What had they done to deserve being rich? Pretended to be someone else or made some arbitrary sounds with their voice or an instrument? It was all such bullshit. Someone needed to take action and take the power back.
When Nefarius first heard about his brother’s pilgrimage out west, the gears in his brains started turning and cooking up a diabolical master plan. Darius was the perfect target to frame for the atrocities he wanted to accomplish. Nefarius trailed his twin all the way from Columbus to L.A., then took a Hollywood Hills tour to gauge the locations of celebrity homes. It was tempting to take down the likes of Aldo DeCocco or Chad Steele, but Nefarius knew Fiona Flame was the perfect target, the easiest victim to pin on his brother. After locating Darius’s car in the vicinity of her mansion, Nefarius made his way there and was surprised to find her outside. He couldn’t resist making some cringey horny comments, like he knew Darius would have. Then, he went on a rambling spiel about how she had the kind of money he had wanted his whole life, the kind his parents would never give him as an allowance. All the entitled Hollywood elites had the ability to make the bourgeois’s dreams come true, but they would never do it. Therefore, they deserved to be set on fire. Nefarius then quoted a member of the Manson family because it sounded cool.
When Nefarius failed at slashing Fiona with his prized Japanese sword, he resorted to the backup weapon in his trench coat and successfully reduced the influencer to her namesake. What he hadn’t anticipated was the kitchen fire having already set her mansion ablaze, leading to a much higher-profile arson than he had hoped for. He knew he had to bolt as soon as Steele arrived.
Nefarius bustled his corpulent frame down Mulholland Drive, got back in the ‘08 Corolla, and located his brother’s ‘07 Corolla, parked conveniently right down the street. He flung the katana into the bushes, making sure to leave the handle sticking out. Conveniently, the big dumbass had left his car door unlocked while taking his slumber, allowing his brother to throw the flamethrower inside. Nefarius returned to the car and floored it, passport in tow, not planning to stop until he had crossed the border into Mexico.
He knew he would have to lie low down there for a while, and eventually he would have to figure out a way to make some money. But it was all worth it to him. Maybe someday he would attempt to re-enter the U.S. and find a way to bust the big doofus out of prison, where he would surely be serving a life sentence. Right now, though, Nefarius was experiencing nothing but the psychotic, unhinged, sweet taste of victory.
THE END
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