It was a dark and stormy night when I woke to the unpleasant screeching of my telephone. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, pondering who might be calling me at this ungodly hour. Ever since my retirement from the Register Forum, I’d been living a quiet life—cartoon watching and cereal eating filled up most of my time.

“Hello?” I offered.

A familiar voice, one that still haunted my darkest nightmares, answered.

“There aren’t enough humor articles. I need you.” I shrank into my blankets. It was the new humor editor. She had left a ruinous criticism on my last article; it had taken me weeks to recover.

“I’m an old-timer,” I pleaded, hoping I sounded whiny. “I have no more stories to tell.”

“One last job. Please.”

I was retired, and happily so. Still, it was nice to feel needed, and I had undeniably missed the rush of writing an enjoyable piece of humor. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll write an article about”—my eyes flicked to the cartoon I had haphazardly left on the TV—“Adventure Time.”

“First drafts are due Thursday at three.” Click.

For the next few days, I scoured the depths of my mind in hopes of finding a hot headline—perhaps one that would finally award one of my articles the honor of the front page. I finally settled on “Why Finn the Human Is Better Than Your Favorite Rapper.” Then, I watched Adventure Time until my eyes bled.

When Jake unexpectedly dropped wisdom such as “laws ain’t made to help earthly cats like us,” I burst into tears. When Finn built a tower to space to punch his negligent dad and steal his arm, I set off to build a similar tower and punch my own dad. I eventually stopped after I discovered my fear of heights.

When the RF militia showed up at my apartment and demanded my article a week later, I had nothing to show them. But when they cuffed me and marched me out the door, a dark magenta portal opened and two familiar stretchy yellow hands grabbed me.

“Yo Finn, check the fly zip, man!” Thank Glob! It was none other than my crime rap associate, Jake the Dog! “I used the Enchiridion so I could save you from your universe!” He started pulling me into his world, where I could see the Candy Kingdom and the Ice Kingdom in the distance.

“Stop!” A pink-haired girl wearing a gold tiara ran towards Jake, frantically waving her arms. A flying vampire lady followed her. “If Finn doesn’t write the article about Adventure Time, we will cease to exist! The space-time continuum will be fractured, and both of our shards of the multiverse will be annihilated!”

“You can’t do this, dude.” The vampire half-stated, half-sang. “Running away from your problems isn’t good for you.”

I grumbled, stomped my foot, and threw a fit. But I told Jake to let me go, and allowed my captors to haul me off to the RF dungeon. With great reluctance, I wrote my promised Register Forum article.

This piece also appears in our June 2022 print edition.