Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 2:38 P.M. HAST} Detonated!

Gentle Tweeter,

As you can imagine, a dense crowd of people expelling pent-up intestinal gas in the presence of an open flame, surrounded by ostentatious, highly flammable architecture, this is a not-happy turn of events. In a flash, the mountaintop cathedral is wildly ablaze. Toga-clad, sandal-shod Boorites run pell-mell in every direction with their extremities exuberantly on fire. The heat softens the underlying peak, and ominous bubbling landslides of molten plastic begin to ooze down the flanks of the precipice.

Smoke blots out the setting sun, plunging this once-pristine world into a darkness illuminated by only the raging orange inferno. On the plains far below jagged fissures crack open, and the ocean begins to seep upward. Even as it burns, the entire continent of Madlantis is slowly sinking. It’s the fall of Pompeii. It’s the destruction of Sodom. The searing updrafts of wind carry gobs of smoldering, spitting ash, depositing them amid distant artificial forests and combustible palaces, until the world appears to be igniting in every direction.

Blinded and terrified, the Boorites stampede over one another. They stumble and topple into pools of boiling slime. Their screams fall silent only when superheated gases sear their lungs.

Mr. K’s emaciated corpus is fully dead, fully involved in flame, and I find myself evicted. Again, I’m a me-shaped bubble of blue ectoplasm. The filthy blue chambray shirt and frayed Beagle book must not be wholly of the physical world, because I find my ghost hands still holding them.

Observing the Ctrl+Alt+Chaos, angel Festus comes to my side. He grips the edge of my ghost ear in his golden fingers and says sarcastically, “Excellent work.”

For my part, Gentle Tweeter, I’m searching the hectic scene, trying to locate my parents. I’m terrified that my folks are going to be killed, and despite the fact that they’re nonviolent, peace-loving, Pentagon-levitating progressives, they’re going to give me a centuries-long time-out. We’ll be estranged forever.

These theoretical punishments choke my ghost mind when a familiar voice says, “Golly, Sponge Cake, ain’t this an awful pickle?”

I turn and see… my Nana Minnie. Holding a ghost cigarette in her ghost hand, she leans over to light it off the flaming pigtail of Mr. K’s burning corpse. As if this fiery Armageddon couldn’t get any worse, beside her is, ye gods, my Papadaddy Ben.