Rolling Back Merghast

Adver Blyth, the editor of Orbital Anvil Drop Station, is asking me a question. Only, I'm distracted by the man standing in a ring of ethereal green fire down on the street.

"What...?" I say dumbly as I watch a street performance of Dragon Ball Z.

"Does that guy you know really have powers?"

He's talking about the new guy that looks like a homeless wizard, Merghast the Unbindable.

You know him as well as I do, I think.

Is that really Merghast down there? He was floating now, or at least his cloak was whipping around in this crazy rage wind so much it looked like he was floating.

"Do you know why he's doing that?" Adver asks, both of us standing side by side.

No, but I think the police are coming.

The green flames breathed in and out but seemed to be contained in some predetermined radius. The light blazed onto Merghast's face ghoulishly, and the distance between us took some of the surreality away from it all, strangely.

"I SAID, 'WHAT'S GOING ON?'!" Atta now, coming back from lunch. How long had she been standing there?

"Merghast is having some sort of fit," Adver says.

"That crabby wizard actually has powers?" Atta asks.

"I guess so," I say, to no one in particular.

"Oh my god," Atta whispers, "are those heads?"

Three bulbous shapes started swirling around Merghast, electrons to his nucleus. Slowly he brings an arm up and from the folds of a sleeve an impossibly white hand slides out, pointing at one of the passing spheres.

"What's he doing. I can't watch." She's the only one.

Adver and I hold our breath as something Merghast does makes the corpulent sack explode, milk and eggs and bread raining down at Merghast's feet as he readies his aim again.

"Bags," I say.

"They're grocery bags," Adver elaborates. "Why would he be...exploding his groceries?" The second bag novas.

"There's our answer," I say, my index finger pressed against the glass. A glossy white van had turned the corner and was rocketing down the street.

"Who are they?" Atta asks.

When the van gets closer we can see the huge yellow, winking, smiling face emblazoned on the side. It wasn't the police I thought were coming after all.

"I'll be damned," Adver says as the third bag vomits its contents onto the street. Olives?

The van skids to a stop in front of Merghast, the crazy ass wizard, and the PA booms:  DEAR VALUED CUSTOMER, WE ARE HERE TO ADDRESS THE CONCERNS YOU EXPRESSED AS A RESULT OF YOUR LAST SHOPPING EXPERIENCE WITH-the green flames suddenly flicker out and my ears pop as the Wal-Mart Customer Service Tactical Van is force-pushed about ten feet backwards, Mergahst's rage torrent finally finding the outlet it had been seeking.

"I think we should get away from the windows," Adver says, as the glass started to do the weird shimmer thing they did when the wind blew too hard.

The van's personel looked like they were desperately trying to claw themselves out of their plastic and steel tomb as the sides began to buckle in upon them, Merghast slowly advancing. The winking smiley face taking on a distorted, perverse quality as what was once nearly convex was becoming concave.

That was the last I saw as I backed away from the window, but Atta stayed, pressing her face against the glass, "No way I'm missing this-," she says.

"I hate those fuckers."