The monster hunter entered the saloon. Ignoring the evil stares of the patrons and the bartender’s stunned look, he strode to the bar and bounded up onto it. His spurs chimed. He kicked a glass to the floor. A hush fell. A hundred pairs of eyes narrowed in hostility. Lips curled, fur bristled, tendrils tensed.
         The hunter spoke in a voice loud enough to be heard by everybody:
         Hark, you hicks! You yokels, you rubes, you dummies, you fools, you clowns, you donuts, you donkeys, you fucking douchebags, you patsies, dopes and dupes, you dips and dicks, you rotten-ass shits, you worm-hearted dumbfucks, you flops, you failures, you fuckups, you flopdicks, knuckleheads, know-nothings and no-accounts, mindless morons, punchdrunk bumblefucks, you drainpipes, you cockroaches, you stumblebum sump pumps, you sewer flushes, you stagnant pools, you craphearts. Harken well, you sawdust-scalped, tinhorn boobs, lunks, lumps and lamebrains, oafs and airheads, nits and ninnies, dolts and meatwads. Clean the wax out of your skullcunts and pay attention.
         Everyone paid attention. Claws extended and retracted. Fang-venom dripped and burned holes in the floor. The bartender reached for his shotgun, but a cold look from the hunter stopped him. The piano player slipped out the back.
         I hate you and you hate the fuck out of me, he went on. And if you ever catch me and eat me I will give you fucking bowel cancer. But I have a goddamn proposition for you.
         A silence fell. Outside, the sun was setting. Eventually, a voice from the back of the room hissed: What isssssssss it?
         I’m glad you fucking asked, said the hunter, pulling out his list.
         Later, when every billionaire on earth had been sliced, skewered, disemboweled, burned, scorched, scalded, defenestrated, nose-raped, clawed, gnawed, sawed, strangled, skinned and deboned, acid-bathed and diarrhea-drowned, ripped open, sewn up again the wrong way round, trepanned and scooped, hooked and hanged, heart-stomped and unstrung, melted, boiled, poisoned and pierced, razored, gutbusted, gnawed and gnashed, when every last one of the toad-tongued motherfuckers had been invasively and fatally tentacled, and the dusty earth was a foot deep in bloody mud, the monster hunter, from what had become his conventional perch on the bar, raised a final toast:
         I couldn’t’ve done it alone, and that’s the God’s cunting truth, so I goddamn fucking salute you all sincerely, you pieces of shit. That’s one of the advantages of being a bunch of fucking monsters.
         From a hundred hideous throats, a roar of approval shook the windows and vibrated the piano strings.
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