Wake me... when Svetlana comes home.

I awoke again in my serpent body, and again, my scales itched and my skull throbbed. I wiped at my long nose with a claw, a difficult operation with my long neck. I again cursed my new body, and while I was at it, I cursed the sodden whore beside me. I rolled from the bed, reeling from my nightmare. My claw had come away crimson, and it seemed my runny nose was a bloody nose.

I crawled in agony to the bathtub, that I kept filled. My tail ached from constantly walking on it rather than using to swim as God intended. Washing my face in the tub, I listened to Water whispering to me and thought of God. Water spoke to me of gentle tide, crushing waves, life, death, infinity. It was clarity and madness and as much as I loved it, I hated it all the more. She was driving me mad.

"Zee? Are you ok?"

Her voice came in an echo, I couldn't look at her. Weeks she had been at my side, in my bed, and I couldn't recall her name. I crawled to my bedside, seeking comfort in the chemicals I had become accustomed to, sweet berry whiskey and fairy dust purchased from a suspicious gobulin in a dirty alleyway. I made two lines with the straight edge of my badge, and snorted them, the dust sticking to my wet snout. Forsaking the glass in favor of the bottle, I took two long swigs, coughing.

"Zee, I'm not going to do this anymore."

"I don't care. I'm leaving." Gathering my scattered thoughts and things, I put my gun in my belt and my trenchcoat over my shoulders. I looked at my rosary and thought of God again. I knew what I had to do.

The Sisters were giving a speech in the gardens. I pushed through the crowd to where they stood by the fountain.

"Zeeslang? Where have you been?" Luna, moonsister. Why had she done this to me? Was it my fault?

I pointed an accusing claw at her royal visage. "You! You are no God of mine!"

She stepped toward me, eyes full of concern. "Are you drunk?"

I drew my gun and the crowd gasped as I pointed it right at her. As I sighted her down the barrel, I thought of God. Maybe He would forgive me.

I tore my cross from my neck, throwing it to the ground. Then I put the gun in my mouth, deep down my throat, and pulled the trigger. I watched from outside as my body flopped into the fountain, gushing blood, soaking my father's trenchcoat.

I was dead, and in Heaven. The Creator of All Things stood beside me, passing His Judgement, which was apathy. I looked down on all of the universe with God. "Can I ask a question, My Lord?"

He laughed. "You just did."

"Can I ask a few more, then, Lord?"

"You just did!" He laughed again, then sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, scratching His Holy Junk through His Holy Gym Shorts. "Yeah sure, I have all the time in the universe. Just stop with all the 'Lord' nonsense. Royals wasn't even that good. Call me "Daddy"."

All of this made perfect sense to me. Of course He on his Golden Throne would sit in complete comfort.

"How come I'm not in Hell?"

God inhaled through his teeth, "See, about that, I actually don't have a lot of space up here. I got rid of Heaven and Hell because I needed room for my entertainment center and my computer desk. I recycle souls now, environmentally conscious and stuff. I've got Jesus back there and I might have a Gandhi if I looked somewhere but I mostly let you ask me a few questions and send you back."

"Why is there pain in the world, Daddy?"

"Because it's funny, and kinda sad sometimes. I mean, think about it; Kids dying in Africa? Hilarious, to this day."

This also made sense to me. God had a sense of humor. It was the only way He could do it all.

"Was there a point to any of this?"

"I don't think there was. I mean, you had a cool backstory and everything, but everything got pretty cringey when you switched worlds. I mean, you were like a cool, super secret, cyborg spy, and you gave that all up to be a gay snake in a kids cartoon show. I do like this ending though, I love the rejected-prophecy arc, instead of fulfilling all of this stupid bullshit you joined local theatre and then poked a hole in your brain in a drunken stupor. Brilliance, sheer brilliance.

I had one final question.

"What in the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Honestly, I get that one a lot, and more than anything I blame my parents. I don't wanna get into it. Is that it?"

"I guess so."

"Well, alright, don't let the door hit you on the way out."

I awoke again, with all of my memories, and to my surprise, in my own body. Hands, feet, a face, even my genitals, all intact and unscaled.

My friend John sat at the foot of my hospital bed. He was on his phone, texting probably.

My throat was as dry as a desert. "Water," I begged him.

He jumped as if he'd seen a ghost, leaping to my side and offering me a water bottle. I drank greedily, finding to my joy that the liquid was silent and dead. "Jesus Christ, Seb!"

"Jesus Christ is right, my friend. I have seen Daddy, and he's given me a second chance."

John gave me a funny look. "Well, you've been in a coma for a week, so I'm gonna go tell somebody that you're awake, all right?"

"Yes, thank you, John." I clutched my cross and thanked God for my salvation.

. . .

The crowd was silent, shocked. A reknowned public figure had just shot himself on national television. The newly unveiled Memorial Fountain was now circulating his bright serpent blood. Celestia leaned over her sister, speaking low. "We need to get the body out of here. There are children."

Luna couldn't believe it. This was her fault. She had done this. She stared in shock for a moment, then averted her eyes. "Yes, you're right. We need to get him out of here."

Then, she heard a sound that she wouldn't have expected in all of her long life. Applause.

Zee had gotten involved in local theatre and it seemed the crowd thought this was some kind of publicity stunt. She dared a look into the bloodied fountain, only to find Zeeslang climbing from the pink water, shaking liquid from his mane. She ran to him, but when she looked into his eyes, they weren't the eyes of her champion, but the eyes of a stranger. Zee's suicide had been very, terribly real.

He spoke, in an entirely different accent, "My goodness, Your Highness, my apologies for interrupting your proceedings, but I seem to find myself rather lost in unfamiliar territory."

Celestia took charge, as Luna was still reeling. "Your apology is accepted, if you'll give us the grace of your name, stranger."

"I am Nylle Blacktyde, of the Ottoma Crescent, infamous swashbuckler, privateer, and gentledrake when it suits me. I was on a quest to see my grandfather for his four-hundred and fifty-fifth birthday, when I had a nasty run-in with a gang of Kappa. My last memory is of their leader making a heavy helping of my entrails, but it seems I must have fought them off somehow. What are these absolutely drab rags that I'm wearing?" He reached into his mouth and removed the gun that had killed him moments ago. "And what in the ocean is this?"

Celestia quickly wrapped up the proceeding, and they whisked the serpent away, Luna trailing numbly. Blacktyde had discarded the brown coat that Zee had treasured so greatly. He was gazing somberly at the pistol in his hands. "I didn't fight off those Kappas, did I? I died on that riverbank, and then... I died again?"

Celestia looked at her sister. "Luna, I believe you owe Nylle an explanation."

Luna tried her best to put her motives into words that didn't sound utterly moronic. "Three weeks ago, I reanimated your body to serve as a vessel for a soul from another dimension. I intended to use this person as a pawn in a rather complicated conflict with other god-like entities and their own pawns. Supposedly this conflict was going to decide the fate of the universe, but everybody kind of just got bored of it and moved on."

Nylle wrinkled his magnificent blonde eyebrows. "If you'd forgive me, I would hate to question the motives of a princess, but why would you do something like that? Don't you have armies, knights, people whose jobs it is to fight for you? Why go through the trouble? Are you saying that my body has been running around higgledy-piggledy, controlled some codger from another universe, causing all kinds of havok and nonsense? I mean, thanks for bringing me back to life and all, but why didn't you just do that and not pull the whole soul-shuffling stunt? Somebody from this universe would have probably been better in almost every way in that situation. The whole thing just sounds profoundly stupid."

The princesses looked at each other and sighed, because they knew it was true. Nylle Blacktyde holstered the pistol in a motion that may or may not have been new to him. "I apologise, but I'm just trying to be frank. You wouldn't happen to know if Steven Magnet of Magneton still lives? As well as where I could procure some new garments? "

"He does, by chance. Follow me, Sir Blacktyde, and we'll see to your needs. I think my sister and I have both learned a rather hard lesson today." The elder celestial sister led the rather unfazed serpent away, while the younger picked up the sodden coat in her mouth, and flew back to her chambers. She washed Zeeslang's blood and brains off of it, and hung it to dry. When it did, she folded it and put it in a cedar box in her closet, and from then on for years afterward she would take it out on occasion to remind herself to not be retarded.

Fin

Author's Note

"The Checkers Game of the Gods was a mistake."
-Rusty Fishhook, author of Ther Berlled erff Echer therr Dermund Derg