Disclaimer-- In retrospect, I don't know why the hell I wrote this. It started out with a single line--the first one--and then more or less wrote itself. But I like it, and I haven't changed or edited anything. I think there are a few people who may appreciate some of the stuff in here.)

The Legendary Heroes’ Club

“ L’etat cest moi!” King Louis screamed. “ L’etat cest moi! L’etat cest moi!”

“ Alright you crazy son of a bitch!” I roared. “ I heard you the first time. Shut your goddamn mouth.”

Doc Holiday leaned over the card table, his eyes watching me carefully. “ Alright kid. Hold ‘em or fold ‘em, but make a move.”

I glanced at my dwindling stack of chips, then at his mountain of money. I couldn’t afford the loss right now.

King Louis appeared beside me, suddenly. He cocked his head. “ L’etat cest moi?”

“ I call!” I shouted, and then I threw down my hand. Top two pairs.

“ Oh, shit,” said Gandhi. “ I think he’s got you, Doc.”

“ Like hell,” said Holiday. He flipped over a full house, and my jaw dropped straight to the floor.

“ Ohhhhh!!” yelled George Washington.

“ Ohhhhh!!” yelled Gandhi.

“ Ohhhhh!!” yelled Prince Metternich.

“ L’etat cest moi?” asked King Louis.

I sprang up from the table, angry as usual. I shook Holiday’s hand, very gentlemen-like, even though I wanted to punch out his booze-guzzling lights. You gotta be a fair sport, right?

“ Good game,” I muttered. “ You’re still the champ.”

Doc Holiday let out a hearty laugh. It kind of sounded like this: “ Heee,heee,huck,heee.” Then he slapped the card table hard enough for everyone in the saloon to look over. And everyone did, even General Cornwallis, who was kind of an asshole.

“ Doesn’t that just suck, kid?” said Doc Holiday. “ This is your dream, and I just kicked your ass at cards.”

“ Yeah,” I mumbled. “ Really sucks.”

“ Listen, friend,” said George Washington. “ There’s always tomorrow night, isn’t there? Come on, let’s have a drink.” He smiled with encouragement, even though there was nothing very encouraging about his wooden teeth.

“ Thanks George,” I said, “ but I thought you didn’t drink? They said that you were a real gentleman, and you never touched a drop of liquor.”

He cocked an eyebrow, way up there on his tall head. “ Who told you that?”

“ Mr. Harris,” I said. “ He was my eighth grade history teacher, and he idolized you. He was really a cool teacher, though.”

“ Well,” said Washington. “ Since this is your dream, I will spoil myself for one night. Rum and coke?”

Ugh.

“ Yeah, sure,” I said, not wanting to hurt his feelings. “ Whatever you’re drinking, I’ll have.”

So we went over to the bar, the two of us, and there wasn’t a lot of room because King Henry VIII was hogging up three stools with his humongous ass.

“ Hey, King Henry, move your fat ass!” I yelled. I wasn’t a big fan of him because he had been married like three hundred times and broken away with the Church and founded his own religion, which was really a conceited and arrogant thing to do. I knew a couple of guys at my school who probably would have done the same thing, though.

Henry didn’t move. He just kind of glared at me, and said, “ Ye be tainted, boy.”

Whatever the hell that meant.

Washington was all ready to pick a fight though, because he’s a hard-ass. He grabbed Henry in a full-nelson and yanked his huge ass back off those barstools. You shoulda heard the sound the ground made when King Henry hit the deck. It was like a train had slammed into the building.

Henry just kind of laid there, quietly, sweating like a pig and letting loose the most horrendous stink. We ignored him and sat down.

“ Hey, barkeep, grab us two rum and cokes!” Washington yelled down the way.

The bartender lumbered over. He was a fat man with glasses and a bushy handlebar moustache. He looked like Mario, the little red plumber from those Nintendo games.

The reason he looked this way was because he was my vice principal, Mr. Mario, who a lot of the students didn’t like very much. He was always lumbering around and checking hall passes and being generally useless to the education business. The only thing this guy was good for was shooting down all of our creative ideas, like when we wanted to premiere our summer movie in the high school auditorium, and he said no.

Mr. Mario gave me a cold stare—a really cold stare—and asked in his ambiguously gay voice, very breathy, “ Excusse me, child, but aren’t you too young to be drinking? Mmmmmm? Can I see some, oh! Identification?”

“ Like hell you can,” I said. “ This is my dream, asshole. Pour me the drink.”

He pressed a finger against his lips and giggled. “ Oh! BAD!” And then he waddled off to get our drinks.

“ Hey, Washington, you slut!”

We looked around to see who was calling. The voice belonged to General Cornwallis, who was sitting drunkenly in the corner of the room.

“ Hey, Wasssssshhington,” he slurred. “ I fucked yer wife last night. Maaartha, Martha, mmmmm.”

This fired up old George, who was very noble and had an overwhelming amount of respect for his wife. Glowering, he stood up from the bar, but I held out a hand to catch him.

“ It ain’t worth it, George,” I said. “ Let it go, man. He’s just bitter about…you know…”

I didn’t need to spell it out for Washington. Everyone in the saloon knew that Cornwallis was a bitter man because of the war. He’d been in command of the finest army in the world, and they’d gotten their asses kicked by a ragtag bunch of roughneck militiamen. That happened because of men like George Washington, who knew how to stomp Redcoats and take down names.

“ Maaarrrrtha,” Cornwallis wailed. “ Oh yeah, baby, just like that! Just…like…that!”

Washington roared, “ I’m gonna kill you, you tea-sipping, crumpet-munching little virgin piece of-”

But the others had come to the rescue. Doc Holiday and Prince Metternich had grabbed Washington and held him down. Gandhi was there, always the peacemaker, whispering advice into George’s ear.

“ Let it go,” we told him.

Cornwallis looked a little disappointed; he had wanted a fight, and I kind of wish I had let Washington put him in his place. But the British had suffered enough defeat, I thought to myself.

Besides, Mr. Mario had stepped into the fray. After laying down our rum and cokes, he pursed his lips at General Cornwallis.

“ Mmmmm. Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave, please,” Mr. Mario said. “ You’re being, oh! Bad!’

“ Fuck yer mother,” Cornwallis snapped at Mario, and then he staggered out of the bar, everyone making room for him to leave.

Mr. Mario put his hand on his heart and fluttered his eyes like he was going to cry. He looked speechless, and all he could do was whisper, “ Oh, my!”

With Cornwallis gone, there was a minute of awkward silence. I was hoping that things would resume comfortably—you know, the billiard balls would start clicking, and the piano would start up again, and the cards would begin shuffling—but they didn’t. The whole room was kind of sitting around brain-dead. Like one of my church services.

Then I heard King Louis scream, at the top of his lungs, “ L’etat cest moi! L’etat cest moi! L’ETAT CEST MOI!”

Someone slugged him, knocked him out cold, and shouted, “ Jesus Christ, shut your goddamn mouth, you French fruitcake!”

I think it was the Apostle Peter. He’s pretty chill.

And then everything returned back to normal. There was laughter and gaiety and such. Well, not so much gaiety, but there was definitely laughter and good times to be had.

I had a problem, though, because someone had kicked Billy Joel off the piano. I mean, we were in a bar, and he had been playing Piano Man, and if there’s anything more appropriately classy than that, I have yet to hear it.

The new bitch at the keys was Regina Spektor. She was this independent Russian musician who had a really quirky style of music that a few of my friends liked. It consisted of pounding out the most unharmonious chords known to Man, while screaming in Russian at the top of her lungs. Hell, it might have been in English, I don’t even know. She sucked pretty hard.

I tried to cope with it for a while, but I just couldn’t.

“ Hey!” I yelled across the room. “ That bitch kicked Billy Joel off the piano so she could strangle a cat or something? My ears are bleeding! Get her the hell out of here!”

“ Mmmma, okay, no,” said Mr. Mario. “ Firsst of all, you do not make the decisions. I say when-”

“ The kid’s right,” yelled Jesus. “ I’d rather be back on the cross than listen to her.”

“ Yeah!” shouted little Ann Frank. “ I’d take life in the camps over this. Anytime.”

“ Rahhhh!” hollered Helen Keller. “ Rahhhhh!”

“ Oh my God,” someone yelled. “ Helen Keller is going bat-shit crazy, and she can’t even hear!”
The whole bar was in open mutiny. Mr. Mario was trying to restore order, but his opinion was like baseball to us.

Regina had changed her tune, picked up one of her most infamous songs, and was trying to mesmerize us with what she believed to be “true music.” It sounded like this: “ Goddamnit, goddamnit, goooooddddaamnit, godamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit, god-damnit, am I being cute, or what?”

And then it was over. Leon Trotsky grabbed her and poured an entire bottle of vodka over her frizzy hair. Then he let her run all the way across the room, screaming, before he flicked a match at her. The match ignited in mid air and hit her smack in the forehead. It was the sweetest trick I’d ever seen.

Regina’s head burst into flames, but she was still singing. I mean, she may have been screeching in bloodcurdling pain, but who can really tell the difference with her?

Anyway, we let her run around with her head on fire for a bit. Then Smokey the Bear busted through the doors, and he shouted:

“ I smell fire, mother fuckers!”

He put out Regina’s flame by blowing a cloud of smoke over her, which suffocated the flames.

Then he grabbed her, and ate her.

Because he’s a fuckin bear.

“ Trotsky, you are the man!” I shouted, and we formed a ring around the Revolutionary. We lifted him up onto our shoulders, and Billy Joel started playing “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and we let all the British guys, like Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, sing the lyrics, because that song always sounds better when the English do it.

Then things calmed down, and Billy mellowed out with Vienna Waits for You, and we all became nostalgic. We gathered around Trotsky, and he began to explain the principles of the Revolution to us, and how he was struggling to unite the Reds against the Whites.

He was a persuasive son of a bitch, that Trotsky. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t an avid Bolshevik by the time he was done.

Anyway, the night was winding down, and I knew that I would be waking up soon, which kind of sucked. I didn’t want to leave the bar, which, incidentally, was named The Legendary Heroes’ Club. I didn’t want to leave all of my imaginary friends. It’s not that I don’t like my real friends, you see, but…how can they even compare? The sweetest thing I’ve ever done with my real friends was when we played Shit Dollar at Wal-Mart, which consisted of someone crapping on a dollar bill and leaving it in the parking lot and watching to see who would pick it up. (Sometimes the money-grabber would sniff his fingers, because he knew, he knew, that there was something shady about that dollar.)

So the night was ending, and we were all pretty drunk now. Mr. Mario kept asking us for our money, but we told him to go fuck one of the goombas.

Then at one point, Humphrey Bogart staggered to the top of the card table and shouted right at me, for the whole bar to hear, with his glass in his hand, “ Here’s to you, kid!” which wasn’t the exact line from the movie, but he was drunk, and it was pretty damn close, and I was flattered as all hell.

“ Alright, boysss,” said Mr. Mario. “ Let’s call it a night, mmmm, okay? Oh!”

Just as he said that, the doors to the saloon burst open, and in marched the biggest group of assholes I’ve ever seen in my life.

First was Cornwallis, all haughty and sober and powdered up, with his grey wig and his rosy cheeks. He was flanked by Colonel Tarleton, who is indisputably the greatest asshole to grace the world of cinema. I’m talking about the Patriot, in case you don’t follow. He’s the guy who burned down a church full of innocent people, and then he slaughtered Mel Gibson’s whole family, smirking the whole time.

Next to Colonel Tarleton was Hitler, and then Thoreau (the Transcendentalist), and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote The Scarlet Letter. And then there was Satan, and beside him was Erik Le’Duche, who’s this kid from school that I really hate.

“ Oh my God,” whispered Washington. “ There’s just…so much douche.”

“ Beg for mercy, my versatile acquaintances,” said Erik Le’Duche. “ Or you shall surely meet your demise. This is the waterloo of your dreamscape, Trifan!”
He was talking to me, by the way. That’s my name.

“ Erik, you are such an asshole,” I said. “ Why are you hanging out with Hitler, and Satan, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, for God’s sake?”

“ These are my companions,” he said, and all three clefts of his chin swept from left to right. “ We played football together, and throughout that experience, we formed the unbreakable chains of friendship. We all think we’re better than you, because we played football, and we made it to the district championship.”

“ But you lost the championship,” I pointed out.

“ So be it!” he shouted. I could tell that I hit a tender spot.

Erik looked at his minions and said, “ Leave none alive!”

And then all hell broke loose. Billy Joel broke out into the heroic chorus of Goodnight Saigon, and Satan set the whole bar on fire, and Mr. Mario vanished below the counter, and Doc Holiday got into it with Colonel Tarleton, and Washington was beating the living shit out of Cornwallis, and Smoky the Bear was mauling Nathanial Hawthorne, and Trotsky was angrily debating Thoreau, and Adolf Hitler was chasing after Ann Frank, and then Jesus was tackling Satan, and bolts of supernatural energy were flying in every direction, and the ground was shaking, and glasses were shattering all over the bar, and card tables were being overturned, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles was getting raped, and all the James Bonds were shouting in their fine British voices, and Regina Spektor’s headless corpse was twitching on the floor, and Peter the Apostle was shattering Michael Jackson’s face with the biggest Bible I’ve ever seen, and Angelina Jolie was trying to catch all of her adopted African children, and Bruce Wallis was screaming “Yippee Ki-Ay, mother fucker!”

Erik Le’Duche had found me, and he had drawn the ruby-encrusted saber that he always had at his side.

“ Trifan, so impetuous and volatile,” he sneered.

“ Quit talking like a douche,” I shot back.

I had my own sword drawn, and now I was going to put to use all those gym lessons in fencing. Thrusting and parrying and all that shit.

“ This is the end!” yelled Le’Duche, and he threw himself at me.

I tried to fend off his douchy attacks, but I found myself quickly overwhelmed. Erik was just too fat to hold off. He was hauling all that weight against me, and I was backing up, tripping over bodies. I was fighting to the rear.

Eventually, my back was pressed up against the bar, and sparks were flying from our sabers. Le’Duche was swinging in wild arcs, trying to get in those really powerful blows. My arms were getting tired, but the douchy expression on his face was really firing me up.

For no good reason, he said, “ Trifan, I want you to know that I’m better than you. At everything. I’m awesome. And you have a big nose.”

What a prick.

“ Dude,” I said. “ I wouldn’t be talking. Your ass is mountainous.”

I was so angry that I managed to score a hit—I sliced the top of his right arm. A mixture of whale blubber and douche immediately began to pour of his wound.

“ Grah!”

With superhuman effort, I whipped the saber out of his hands, launched it clear across the room. I was tired as all hell, but I needed to finish this.

“ So, what?” he smirked at me. “ Are you going to kill me now, Trifan, eh? Are you so completely out of control that you’re going to kill me?”

My sword quivered, and then dropped. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t murder the kid. I didn’t hate him that much.

Just then, Erik did something very douchy, albeit completely expected. He pulled a gun out of his shirt and leveled it at me.
“ What the hell?” I said.

“ The game’s over, Trifan,” he told me. “ All those days we spent playing Goldeneye. All those times you beat me in the Facility with those cheap tricks of yours. All that dodging and body armour—yes, armour, with the British spelling—all that crap you tried to pull. What are you gonna do now, Trifan? You wearing body armour? You gonna dodge this?”

“ Are you going to kill me?” I asked sarcastically.

He thought about it. Just for a second. “ Yes.”

“ Oh, shit,” I said.

He raised the gun, aimed it straight at my head. Then, with that irritating little smirk still on his face, he said, “ Goodbye, Trifan.”

I heard the gun cock, and I closed my eyes. Any minute now I expected to…well, to wake up.

“ Gahhh,” Erik gasped.

I cracked open my eyes, and I saw him standing there, staring down in disbelief at the tip of the sword that was jutting out the front of his chest. Blood was trickling down his shirt. He glared at me, mockingly, before he fell to his knees. He opened his mouth to say something really douchy, but nothing came out, and he was speechless, and he fell over and died.

And so Erik Robert Le’Douche IV was dead.

Standing behind him, breathing heavily in his French petticoat, was King Louis. He wiped the sweat off his brow and whispered, “ L’etat cest moi.”

At that exact moment, everyone else finished their duel. All the bad guys had been massacred—and I mean massacred—which was a good thing, because I hated them anyway.

The rest of us gathered near the center of the room, standing ankle-deep in heap and rubbish. Mr. Mario appeared slowly from below the bar, shaking from head to toe, his glasses slightly skewed. All he could say was, “ Oh. Oh! Ohhhh, BAD!”

“ Well, boys,” said Doc Holiday. “ We’ve done well.”

“ Yes,” said Washington. “ Yes, we have.”

I stood up tall. “ Thanks for the help, folks. I guess this is where I take my leave from The Legendary Heroes’ Club.”

“ I guess so,” said Trotsky.

A woman was crying, and as she approached, I recognized Angelina Jolie—not the anorexic skeleton from real life, but the golden-haired goddess from Alexander and the hot babe from Tomb Raider. Diane Kruger was with her—and Diane was the smoking hot Helen of Troy, in case you’re wondering.

“ Please stay,” Diane begged. “ And let’s have sex.”

“ Okay,” I said. “ I’ll stay.”

Unfortunately, my dream had been reached its limit of sweetness and ass-kicking. God, or the Sandman, or my circadian rhythm decided it was time for me to wake my ass up for school.

The alarm was brutal, but I was not discouraged. I knew that some day, I may return to The Legendary Heroes’ Club. After all, it was only one vicodin and four ibuprofens away.