by guest contributer Sian Kelly

Jayziz woke.

He instantly knew deep down in his bones that this had been a rush job, a sloppy, half-assed, and downright ugly bit of business. There was no gradual dawning of awareness, no subtle shift to consciousness.

Jayziz felt like he had been kicked out of bed by an Amazonian giantess with Sasquatch feet and had landed in a concrete tub with maybe eight inches of freezing water at the bottom- banging his head in the process- while a heart shaped nuclear reactor pumped molten lava through his veins.

Yeah, his everything hurt.

He leapt to his feet, teetered sideways, crashed to the floor. He leapt up again, only slightly more stable the second time and stared at the six robed and hooded figures standing in a circle around him.

“Awww, hell naw! Which one of you misguided motherfuckers had the nerve and unmitigated gall to resurrect me?”

The six ruling members of the mages guild glanced about uncertainly, nervously wondering who would speak for the group. Jayziz threw up both his hands in frustration. His right hand and forearm broke off and landed somewhere on the other side of the mausoleum.

“Well that’s not good.” he muttered beneath his breath. He rubbed the tattered flesh of his face with his remaining hand.

“Alright, if my elbow has already rotted out then I’m guessing I’ve been dead longer than the standard 1,001 days. That means I’ve got roughly four minutes to lay back down or this back-to-life shit is gonna be permanent, so somebody better explain quick or I’m gonna Kamehameha all of you petty, pathetic, piss-poor parlor-trick magic users!”

Cowed by his tirade, the robed mages hesitated again.

“Oh? So you sons of witches think this is a game,” Jayziz said, “Ya’ll think I’m playing, huh?”

He waved his arm and his nub around in a complex, intricate pattern and shimmering waves of angry energy crackled into existence around him. He growled the word that would end them all,

“Kaamehaa-“

“Wait!” a blue robed mage said hurriedly, stepping forward, “We all worked together to resurrect you. We had no choice, Master!”

“No choice, Saulomon? Really?” Jayziz said through clenched teeth as he wrestled with the energy. “There’s always a choice!”

“No, Master, because the freaking red robes brought the apocalypse down on all of us.”

“It wasn’t my fault! Ass-rael and the greens are just as guilty, they planted the suggestion!”

“I don’t give a flying fuck whose fault it is!” Jayziz screamed in exasperation. He flung the energy to the side, blowing a horse-sized chunk out of the mausoleum wall.

“Energy not focused is energy waster. Now give me the really short version, Saul. Talk to me quick but don’t talk to me slick.”

“Eduardo here tried to pull off a McDisney’s Rapier,” Saulomon said, indicating the red-robbed mage by pointing an incriminating finger. “Instead, he bifurcated all of reality, and in the process he managed to leave one time-stream looped and the other stream just kinda sorta convex.”

Jayziz glared at Ed the Red, “You stoopid fuck.” Jayziz waved his elbow joint and with an inverted thump the red mages atoms were scattered to the far corners of the universe.

“Okay, so did he channel somatic energy the right way or did he take the material component shortcut?”

“The shortcut, of course.” Said a gaunt woman in yellow robes.

“Did he use basilisk blood or cobras venom?”

“With basilisk blood retailing at six hundred grand for a quarter ounce? You have to ask? El cheapo used cobra’s venom.”

“Well there’s your problem: Ed the Red didn’t know his asp from a hole in the ground, nahmeen? All you got do is ride the looped time-stream back to when he first began casting the spell,” Jayziz said, “Replace his snake venom with basilisk blood. Then use a Gregorovich shunt to unconvex the one time-stream, do a south Dallas crowbar to unloop the other stream, and meld them back together by performing a bilateral agreement. Easy-peasy!”

“Master, you’re a genius! That should put things back, make it like it was before!” Saulomon said.

“Yes, so once errythang is fixed back make sure you blow Ed the Red to smithereens again, just for me.”

“My pleasure Master.” Saulomon glanced at this watch. “Sixty seconds before you get stuck like that. Anything else?”

“Tell my beeyotch ex-wife I said wish you were here.” Jayziz climbed back into his casket.

“Saul, old buddy, you aren’t too shabby for a mage. Kelby, you either.”

The woman in yellow inclined her had in acknowledgement.

“The rest of you can all eat a dick. And one of you get that wall fixed. I don’t need critters gnawing on me. And the color in here sucks. Who decorated? Granite? Really? Wow, how original. Have it redone. Rose marble or some fly shit like that.”

Jayziz stretched out and yawned. Darkness was already closing in on him.

“And next time one of you brainiacs manages to destroy life, the universe and everything- even if it’s an accident- you’re just gonna be shit out of luck. Don’t come fucking with me, because I ain’t getting back up again.”

A skeletal hand shot up and flipped them the bird.

Jayziz slept.