Free Demon Lord 4: White Jade Reaper by Morgan Blayde

a milk chocolate bunny.”
    “I don’t want to go,” Ghost Girl said.  “My killer needs to be punished first.”
    A deep voice said, Oooooooh!  Tukka ghost now.
    I wheeled back, sweeping the auto-shotgun up to fire.  A murky translucent version of the fu dog was hovering above his body.  Tukka wore a wet, brown sheet, with eye holes cut out so he could see.  My heightened sense of smell caught an unpleasant odor.  I used a hand to cover my mouth.  “Unholy crap!”  He smelled like he’d bathed in excrement.  
    Tukka looked at himself.  Tukka chocolate!
    Not really.
    The fu dog’s head moved under the sheet, down and to the side.  I heard the chomp of oversized teeth and saw broken fragments of brown drop to the floor.  There was a loud swallowing sound, then another chomp.  Like the great snake Ouroboros which eats its tail in an ever diminishing circle, the ghost of Tukka consumed himself, becoming rapidly smaller.
    Gagging, I turned away.
    In time to see a headless Grace strong-arming Ghost Girl into the golden light.
    “Let go of me!” Ghost Girl demanded.
    I squeezed off a round that separated one of Grace’s arms into two pieces. 
    “Shoot and golly!” she whispered.
    But I was too late; stumbling, off balance, Ghost Girl fell into the light and was gone. 
    Leaving the shop, I plunged into the light, ready to kick down the Gates of Paradise and bring the little girl back to Earth, but the light collapsed as I hit it, and I fell for a long time.  If Bill and Ted showed up on this bogus journey, I planned to frag their asses.  The darkness thinned to midnight purple, and I seemed to slow down.  Eventually, I sprawled across the grassy mound of a grave.  The pastel glow of pink and blue toads on the nearby trees illuminated a small graveyard.  I looked up at the closest headstone.  It said: Ϭ Ͽ ϴ ⱺ ꜛ ♫ ♠ ≈ ∑ Ω ^.
    Weird.  A secret code?  Oh, yeah, I’m asleep.  The reading side of my brain is dormant. 
    I drew my limbs in and pushed at the ground.  A wavelike motion returned me to my feet as I straightened.  Looking over the headstone, I saw myself, a mirror image in a cage of black iron.  I held the bars, staring back with a look of utter boredom.  I needed a shave.
    “What are you doing in there?” I asked.
    He held up a hand and a Rock Star energy drink magically appeared.  He opened it and took a long pull, sighing with satisfaction.  I would have expected something alcoholic, but then, this was a dream with its own logic.  “I’m keeping myself under wraps, after all, I am the most valuable thing I own.”
    A tiny voice shrieked from the ground beside him.  “Let me outta here!”
    I moved around the headstone to where I could see.  Inside his cage sat a second, tiny cage, this one gold, holding a miniature golden dragon.  I said, “That’s supposed to be my inner dragon, I take it.”
    “You can’t take it,” the Rock-Star me said.  “He’s mine.  Mine!  Mine!”
    I looked at the sports drink in his hand.  “Dude, how many of those have you had?”
    The tiny dragon said, “Yeah, well, I got a cage of my own.”
    I stared down at the feet of the dragon.   He had a two-inch cage there made of grass and twigs. 
    Inside was an inch-tall version of me.  “Who’s got who?” the tiny dragon shrilled.  He spit and a yellow jag of electric fire shot into the turf and extinguished itself.
    Damn.  I’m getting a headache.
    The big copy of me with the sports drink grinned in what was supposed to be a friendly fashion.  It was a little scary to watch.  He said, “Look here, this nice guy stuff ain’t going to work.  It ain’t me.  I’m all chaos and murder with a little fucking thrown in.”
    I looked at him.
    “Okay,” he said, “with a lot of fucking thrown in.  That’s who I am, what I do.  I know Old Man wants us to develop a less aggressive leadership style, but we’ve always got by just fine by clubbing down all