Ryan ducked as a crystalline dinner plate shattered against the wall of the Dust Bowl Promenade on the Rand-Alpha Asteroid. He wasn’t worried about the flying shards; he was worried about the high-C vibrato vibrating his ribcage.
A canister of Lyrical Leak from the Bed Bath and Way Beyond backstock had ruptured, flooding the ventilation system with concentrated musical theater pheromones.
“Step away from the kiosk,” Ryan commanded, but the words left his throat in a perfectly pitched baritone melody.
Dover, currently in his compressed accordion-walk mode, groaned in a soulful minor key. “My life is a downward escalator of despair,” he crooned, his metal railings clinking like a percussion section. “We are trapped in a three-act structure of misery.”
Nebula Norris skated over from the El Pluto Loco, her third arm waving a taco like a conductor’s baton. She hit a whistle note that cracked the nearby display windows at Abercrombie and Droid. “Ryannnnn,” she belted out, the chorus behind her provided by a group of terrified six-eyed toddlers, “I think the gas is making the mannequins start a dance troupe!”
Behind them, twenty plastic figures in neon hoodies began a synchronized jazz-hand routine. Mr. Meankinder burst from his office, his three heads harmonizing in a barbershop trio. “You’re fired! You’re hired! I’m confused!” they sang in terrifying unison.
Ryan realized the only way to neutralize the gas was to hit a note so sour it would break the spell. He grabbed his security megaphone, dialed it to maximum feedback, and thought of his middle school recorder recital. As the mall reached a crescendo of cosmic choreography, Ryan inhaled deeply.
He didn’t sing. He didn’t hum. He unleashed a tone-deaf, gravelly screech that sounded like a garbage disposal eating a bag of wrenches. The musical pheromones curdled instantly. The dancing mannequins collapsed, Dover stopped sobbing in operatic verse, and the silence that followed was heavy with the smell of scorched glitter.
“That was terrible,” Nebula gasped, wiping stage makeup from her green forehead.
Mr. Mean stepped forward, his angry head vibrating with post-musical rage. “That performance was a disaster!” he screamed. “We missed the standing ovation from the corporate overlords!”
“Wait,” Ryan said, pointing at the security monitors. “The overlords are still clapping.”
On the screen, five eldritch horrors from the Twelfth Dimension were throwing roses at their screens, demanding an encore of the screech.
(This story created by an Earthquake on July 14, 2026, in Coso Junction, CA, magnitude 2.7.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci40655106/executive
