I looked at Cookie’s cleaver and lifted it into the air before Glory. She looked ill. “Or would you prefer knives?” Now she looked really ill. “Just think of it as really intense surgery. The procedure is head amputation.” Okay, that got a little crooked smile.

“Blackjack, how can you crack jokes like this?” She shouted, then reached out to take the cleaver between her hooves, looking both upset and a little amused despite herself.

“What? I should be scared?” I said as I looked around the kitchen, grinning as if it were nothing at all. I couldn’t help it! “Why…

“When I was a little filly and the lights would turn down looo-o-ow.
The darkness and the shadows would make my fear grooo-o-ow.
I’d hide under my bed from what I thought I saw
But Gin Rummy said that wasn’t the way to deal with threats at all!”

“You’re… singing?” Glory murmured in shock as I strode out into the hall, calling out like a bucket of rusty nails and drawing every hungry bastard in earshot. “How can you be singing?!” Unfazed I continued:

“She’d say: Blackjack, you need to stand strong,
Lower your center of maaa-a-ass
You’ll see that they can’t hurt you
If you cut them off with a paaa-a-ass!

The ghouls that spilled out after us met each swing of my rusty chopper, heads and legs parting under its heavy, jagged blade. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” I laughed out with each sucking ‘thock’ of the blade into the monsters in the hall as we advanced. If I didn’t get one, Glory finished it off behind me, watching me with astonished eyes. “Soooo…

Chop up all the ghosties!
Tear up all the grossly!
Glare up at the creepy!
Smash up any weepy!
Kick out at the kooky!
Slice up all the spookie!

A final surge of ghouls charged as I spread my legs wide in the hall, bracing myself and swinging the chopper as I shouted. “And cut that big dumb scary face and kick him hard in the throat if he won’t leave you alone and if he comes at you again then he’s got another thing coming and the very idea if him hurting you just wanna… hee HAHAHAHAHA!” I laughed wildly as I lunged forward, the jagged chopper tearing the ghouls into piles of parts as I finished with one horrid buzzing note “Chooooooooooooooop!” With my last swing, the head of the last ghoul arching over my back to land at Glory’s hooves.