Intro

Okay, folks. Next part is live, live, live.

Don’t forget, the first part is right here — “Part One: The Squeaking Tower Of Shadow.”

Part Two

The sledgehammer, its head as big as a phone booth, swung in a wide arc out of the light of the late-day sun and punched Codpiece dead in the chest. He felt his breastbone shudder and crackle, and before he knew what was happening, his lion-faced horse—the mighty Humbaba—kept on galloping and spitting fire as he dropped to the asphalt in the middle of a suburban cul-de-sac. His gun, the Bender Stratoblaster, tumbled away. The Humbaba kept on galloping until he was gone.

He lay looking up at the sky. A plane crossed between two clouds.

Birds circled.

Two green alligator-leather construction boots landed on each side of Codpiece’s dizzied head: the peacock feathers jutting from each boot tickled the wind.

Codpiece’s attacker looked down, snaked a sluggy tongue over a mouth of gold and silver teeth. He tilted his bright yellow hard-hat and winked.

“Douche Hammer,” Codpiece grumbled.

The man looked wounded. Emotionally. “Douche—? You dumb shit. I told you. It’s Deuce. Deuce Hammer.” He dropped the monstrous hammer of myth and let it rest on its prodigious head. In a lower register, he added: “Deuce. Not Douche.”

Codpiece shrugged. “Whenever you speak, I smell vinegar and water.”

The man’s wounded air turned swiftly to a storm of rage. He grabbed Codpiece by the lapel of his stone-washed denim and hoisted him high.

“Hymenbreaker said you’d show,” Hammer said, snarling.

“If I were to throw you into a lake, you know what sound it’d make?”

Hammer cocked an eyebrow, not sure where this was going.

“Dooooooooooooosh,” Codpiece said, then chuckled. His laugh sounded like a tumbler full of lung pebbles. Hammer headbutted Codpiece in the face with the top of his shiny hardhat, then chucked him into a parked Hyundai. The car alarm wailed and honked.

This wasn’t the first time they’d met on the field of battle. Hardly. The first was on the Plains of Megiddo during the Seventy-Seventh War Of Heaven, as angel fought angel in a skirmish concocted by the ever-manipulative Doktor Hymenbreaker. The last was beneath a waterfall of fire—a rippling firefall—on a distant Pacific island as giggling Menehune, those tiny Samoan goblin bastards, threw seashells and pebbles and dead fish at the two men battling (and, if Codpiece remembered correctly, a handful of those little weirdos were also pleasuring themselves as the combat raged—such dirty freaks, those mythical midgets). Between those two instances, their clashes were too numerous to count.

This time, Codpiece heard that his old buddy Douche Hammer would be here in this sleepy city suburb serving some certainly sinister purpose. Hell, it didn’t matter what ol’ Douchey was doing. He could’ve been delivering cookies to a school of grandmothers, and Codpiece still would’ve shown up and caused a ruckus. It’s what he did. He found evil and put one fist up its ass and another down its throat so he could shake his own hand somewhere in the middle. Like, around the duodenum, maybe. Or the spleen.

Codpiece groaned and leaned back into the Hyundai, the crumpled metal now forming what essentially looked like a makeshift recliner. He leaned back, arms behind his head, and watched as Hammer paced the cul-de-sac.

By now, faces were appearing at windows.

“So,” Codpiece said. “What’s your play here, Douche? What’ve you got going on in this nice neighborhood?”

Hammer sneered, grabbed his golden suspenders and snapped them tight against his oiled chest. His pacing turned from a predatory stalk to a kind of leaning thug walk. Codpiece couldn’t help but notice the guy looked like a pimped-out construction worker.

“I brought a trailer with me. Did you see?”

“Sure,” he lied.

“Do you know what’s in that trailer?”

“Yup,” he lied again.

“You’re lying. You couldn’t know.”

“I’m not lying,” he said, clearly lying. “I know all kinds of cool shit.”

Hammer’s gaze narrowed. “What is it, then? Tell me, Oh Wise One, what’s in my trailer?”

Codpiece, sharp as a tack with a cork on the end, tried to think of a good answer. He came up shy. He just cleared his throat and said: “Poop.”

Hammer’s brow wrinkled. “Poop? No. Not poop.”

“Jizz.”

“What? No.”

“Poopjizz? Jizzpoop?” Hammer just looked flustered. Codpiece sighed. “Dude, I got nothing.” By now, people had actually come out of their homes. The owner of the Hyundai—the one in which Codpiece was presently reclining—was peeking out over the top of a hedge, his lip quivering. Codpiece waved him off. “Get the hell outta here, citizen. Go fuck some scones or whatever it is you suburban mouthbreathers do.”

“I’ll give you three guesses.”

“Sweet niblets, I already had two, and I guessed jizz and poop. Which were apparently wrong? I’m ready for a fuckin’ nap. If you don’t stop dragging this out I’m going to grab my lion-headed hell-pony and leave.”

Hammer laughed, rubbed his leather begloved hands together.

“Clowns,” he finally said with little fanfare. You make a declaration like that, well, Codpiece figured it should come with a balloon release, some fireworks, maybe some streamers and shit. But this? Nothing. The word came out and just laid there. Smashed flat like a roadkilled turtle.

Codpiece cocked an eyebrow, then wrenched himself free from the Hyundai. Hammer wasn’t really the evil mastermind kind of dude—no, instead he was the angry errand boy of the evil mastermind kind of dude, so that meant whatever was going on was all one of Hymenbreaker’s sinister schemes.

But clowns? Really?

“I’m going home,” Codpiece said, dusting himself off and walking away.

“Wait! Are not,” Hammer seethed.

“Totally am.”

“Are not.”

With that assertion, the head of the hammer came out of nowhere, careening toward Codpiece’s head. This time, he wasn’t going to get punked. He crouched, leaped up, the air tickling the fringe of his denim jacket…

…then landed on the hammer-head as it passed beneath, connecting with nothing, unbalancing its wielder — Douche Hammer’s one foot skidded out, and the fool dropped hard, right on his assbone. His sledge flung far and wide, but Codpiece had already abandoned his makeshift ride, hitting the ground and rolling to a stop next to his own mighty weapon, the Stratoblaster.

Ch-chak.

As Ol’ Douchey was scrabbling to stand, Codpiece pulled the trigger—foomp!— and sent a razor-honed mini-guitar spiraling forth from the wide-mouthed barrel. It hit the poor bastard right in the teeth. Enamel shattered. Gold and silver fillings shot into the back of his throat, causing him to gag and sputter.

But Deuce managed to hawk the fillings free in a fat glob of spit, and as he did so, he laughed. “You think you can waylay me with a gimmick?” He shook his head, gleefully incredulous. “Don’t count on it, Johnson.”

“You forget, Douche. I ain’t alone.”

Deuce gave him a quizzical look.

Then Hammer was flung up in the air, screaming like a tickled girl scout.

Behind where he stood only seconds before, Codpiece’s lion-headed horse, Humbaba, roared. With a jerk of his head, Humbaba could crack down doors, knock over barrels, or even launch some dude up into the air—of course, gravity still did its thing, and Hammer came back down to earth flat on his back. The air launched out of his lungs. He gasped like a fish on the dock.

Humbaba put a black charred hoof down on the man’s chest, then breathed two plumes of flame and smoke from its leonine nostrils.

Codpiece took his time walking over. He whistled. He walked a slow serpentine.

He kicked a stone.

He itched his balls.

Finally, he got there. Planted two feet on each side of Hammer’s head and said, “Hell, Douche. The only clown I see here is you.”

“Just wait,” Hammer coughed.

“Just wait what? I’m waiting. Ain’t nothing happening.”

“Hold on.” Deuce started rooting around in his pants.

“I’m tired of holding on. Ew, what are you doing?”

“No, no, you’ll see–”

“–get your damn hand out of your pants. Christ. People are watching.”

“One more second.” Suddenly, Hammer withdrew a tiny black box with a comical red button on the end of it. “There we go.”

“Yeah. I still don’t get it.”

“Let me demonstrate.” Deuce stabbed a finger on the button. It made a gleeful honking sound as it did so. “You want clowns? Your wish, Codpiece Johnson, is my motherfucking command.”