Delusionville
The warehouse on the edge of Delusionville smelled like rust, motor oil, and secrets.
Joey Marquez stood inside a circle of flickering floodlights, gun in hand, staring down crates stamped with symbols he didn’t understand—spirals inside cubes, triangles made of eyes, fractals folding into themselves. Don Vesperelli strolled between them like a priest preparing for mass. His white suit glowed under the buzzing lamps, and his gold rings flashed as he tapped each crate like a conductor hitting notes on a piano.
“You hear that, Joey-boy?” the Don said, tilting his head. “They’re singing.”
Joey frowned. “Crates don’t sing, Don. They sit there and collect dust.”
The Don smiled, wolfish. “That’s because you haven’t inhaled the hymn yet.”
He pulled a vial from his jacket—glass glowing like liquid electricity. Inside swirled smoke the color of ultraviolet lightning. DMT, pure and angry.
Before Joey could protest, Vesperelli smashed the vial at his feet. Smoke erupted, filling the warehouse with neon clouds that twisted like living things. Joey coughed once, twice, and then the world shattered.
The Arrival
The floodlights elongated into pillars, stretching higher than the sky, bending until they formed a cathedral of impossible geometry. The crates broke apart into crystalline machines, gears spinning in patterns Joey’s brain screamed against. His gun melted in his hands, reshaping into a staff of spirals.
And then he saw them.
The Machine Elves.
They slid from the smoke in swarms, beings of chrome and fractal flesh, each one humming in tones that weren’t sound but thought. Their eyes blinked in every direction at once. Their hands had too many fingers, all moving in mathematical dances.
One elf leaned forward, voice splitting inside Joey’s skull:
“WELCOME TO THE BACKSTAGE, HUMAN.”
Joey stumbled back, heart pounding. “Don—what the hell is this?!”
Vesperelli laughed like he’d been waiting years for this moment. “The partners, Joey-boy. The real owners of Delusionville.”
The Jesters
The elves stepped aside, and from the neon haze erupted something worse: the Jesters.
Tall, spindly, painted in impossible colors that shimmered and shifted like oil on water. Their hats jingled though no bells hung from them. Their teeth were too sharp for smiles, but they smiled anyway, wide and unending.
One cartwheeled forward, nose elongating into a horn, voice booming in circus rhythm:
“WELCOME TO THE PLAYGROUND OF THE DEAD AND THE LIVING!”
Another bent backward until its spine cracked, then sprang upright and shoved a lollipop into Joey’s mouth. It tasted like static and ancient laughter.
Joey gagged. His tongue went numb. The warehouse dissolved further until only patterns remained—spirals inside spirals, jesters juggling galaxies, machine elves building scaffolds from pure math.
“Stop this!” Joey shouted, staff shaking in his grip.
But Vesperelli only raised his arms to the ceiling, letting the Jesters crawl over him like children swarming Santa Claus.
“They’re not here to stop us,” the Don said. “They’re here to crown us.”
The Coronation
The elves surrounded Joey, humming louder until the warehouse vibrated like a jet engine. Their hands drew sacred geometry in the air, lines of light weaving into a crown.
The Jesters knelt—mockingly, theatrically, but with a reverence that sent shivers down Joey’s spine. One reached out and painted a spiral on his forehead with a finger dipped in glowing black ink.
“HE WEARS THE MARK,” it sang.
Joey collapsed to his knees. Visions tore through his skull—Delusionville as it was, Delusionville as it would be. Streets bending into Möbius strips. Casinos filled with machines gambling against themselves. Blood flowing into sacred rivers that fed an altar no man had ever seen.
“You’re chosen,” Vesperelli whispered, crouching beside him. “You think this is crime? No. This is religion. The elves, the Jesters—they’re the architects. And we… we’re their high priests.”
Joey tried to spit the lollipop out but found it fused to his tongue. His chest burned with symbols, his heartbeat syncing to the elves’ hum.
“No,” Joey croaked. “I’m not part of this.”
Vesperelli smiled wider. “Too late. You inhaled the hymn. The city owns you now.”
The Rift
The Jesters erupted into chaotic laughter, slamming drums that weren’t there, spinning cartwheels into nothingness. One snapped its fingers, and the warehouse floor ripped open into a yawning black rift.
From below came screams—human screams. Joey leaned forward, horrified. He saw men in suits, hookers with smeared makeup, gangsters in chains, all tumbling through a whirlpool of light into realms too bright for eyes. They weren’t dying. They were being processed.
The elves pointed. The jesters chanted.
“THROW HIM IN! THROW HIM IN!”
Joey felt hands grab him—too many hands, some mechanical, some clownish. He fought, swinging the spiral staff, but each strike only created more patterns, more laughter. He was inches from the rift when Vesperelli raised a hand.
“Not yet,” the Don barked. “He’s mine.”
The elves froze. The Jesters hissed, disappointed.
Vesperelli leaned close, his breath hot and laced with smoke. “You’ve got work to do first, Joey-boy. This city isn’t going to baptize itself.”
Return
The visions folded in on themselves. The cathedral of light collapsed. The elves dissolved into gears. The Jesters flipped backward into the haze, winking as they vanished.
And suddenly, Joey was back in the warehouse. The crates sat silent. His gun was a gun again. But his forehead still burned where the Jester had marked him. And deep in his ears, he could still hear the hum of the elves.
He dropped the pistol and staggered back. “Don… what the hell did you just make me part of?”
Vesperelli lit a cigar, unshaken, calm as a god among mortals. “The only thing that matters, Joey-boy. The future.”
The Don blew smoke rings that twisted into sacred geometry before fading into the rafters.
“Delusionville isn’t just a city,” he said softly. “It’s a portal. And now? You’re holding the key.”