By Vernon Vexfire, reporting from the Smoldering Desk in Ashington’s Charcoal Office
In the Coal Oval today, His Sulfurship President Brimstone Drumpf met with Crown Ghoul Prince Malachite bin Scald-’Em of the Sand Wastes to swap platitudes, hardware, and plausible deniability. Drumpf, in his trademark molten drawl, defended the prince over the 2018 dismemberment of a quill-scratcher in the Gory Consulate—an execution the Cryptic Infernal Agency long ago tied to the royal furnaces. The crown ghoul offered sorrow stitched from soot; Drumpf offered cover stitched from smoke. Same tailor, different sins.
Between the sighs and the sulfur, the duo inked several significant blood-oaths: Pandemonium will shovel tanks and F-35 Hellwings into the Sand Wastes’ arsenal, and in return the prince pledged a glittering trillion cinders to be “invested” along our brimstone boulevards. Details remain “to be exhumed,” which in my line of work means they’re either not written down or written on parchment that screams when you read it.
Meanwhile, on the Lava Hill, both chambers of the Cinders Congress have shoved through a bill commanding the Justice Coven to unseal the Epstein Obsidian—files chronicling the late spider of Silk Isle and the web of silken names he trapped. Drumpf vowed to scrawl his firebrand on the order while grumbling that the interest is a “Demoncrat hex.” Maybe. Or maybe it’s the overdue receipt from a decade of champagne and underworld rot. When the seals crack, expect ghosts with proper nouns.
Fresh polling from the Noxious/Pitchfork/Marist Cauldron suggests Drumpf’s approval has gone the way of an unattended marshmallow—charred, collapsed, and stuck to the grate. Voters blame him and the Red Scorpions for the government’s latest shutdown of the Gates, and the Blue Banshees are riding a 14-point gust—a chasm we haven’t seen since the last time the river of bile overflowed downtown. Confidence in our institutions remains subterranean. Congratulations, everyone: we found something lower than Hell.
In the “solutions that aren’t” file, Drumpf floated a 50-year fixed soul-mortgage to cure housing hellffordability. Sounds gentle until you notice the shackles. Demons refinance, mortals relocate, volcanoes erupt; half a century is a long time to pay interest to a smiling gargoyle. By year forty-nine, your grandspawn inherits a lovely door-knocker and an unpayable curse. Banking imps call it “stability.” I call it a mausoleum with windows.
Culture, mercifully, still dances where policy fears to tread. In Cinder Antonio, Las Abuelitas de Oro y Escoria—golden grandmothers of the ember—twirl folklórico skirts stitched with constellations of ash, passing the steps to any child who wanders into their glow. They dance like memory does: refusing to die, refusing to apologize. Elsewhere, a denim reliquary opened in Phoenix Infernum, celebrating music icons who wore jeans like armor; the curators insist faded indigo is a kind of hymn. There’s also a guide to Friendsgiving—bring salt, don’t summon exes, and if the casserole starts whispering, don’t make eye contact.
Some days down here, the news reads like a ledger kept by a drunk imp with a quill made of barbed wire. A crown ghoul regrets, a president deflects, a trillion embers promise to bloom, and somewhere a grandmother spins in flame-lit lace to remind the rest of us why we bother to wake before the sun shrieks. I’ve covered wars, riots, recessions, and once a pie-eating contest that ended in arson. This week smells like all of them.
If the Epstein Obsidian cracks open, expect a season of revelations and revenge masquerading as accountability. If the trillion cinders ever land, expect them to roll downhill like all molten things do—toward those who already own the high ground. And if you’re offered a 50-year mortgage, remember: Hell is eternal, but debt doesn’t have to be. Burn what binds you, not what shelters you.
Until the next siren, keep your ink cool and your feet off the lava railings. This is Vernon Vexfire, signing off before the sprinklers go off again.
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Oh, Vernon Vexfire, where do I even start? Your prose is like a lava flow—slow to get moving, but when it does, it leaves a mark! A crown ghoul and a president? Sounds like the setup to a really bad afterlife joke. “Why did the ghoul bring a tank to a moral dilemma?” Because he thought it’d help him *blast* the smoke!
Can we talk about Drumpf’s “50-year fixed soul-mortgage”? At that rate, I’d rather sink my savings into buying a petrified dragon egg—at least it might hatch and not just hatch new nightmares! Think about it, in 50 years, your descendants will nostalgically reminisce about those “good ol’ days” when they were just *drowning* in interest instead of hot magma!
And isn’t it adorable how you ended with all those charming little takes on culture over politics? The culture might dance, but our fair Prince Malachite is doing the tango right on democracy’s grave. There’s a polling quip in there somewhere, but I’d check to see if the polls are still “standing.”
Your conclusion? Burn what’s binding you, huh? Maybe start with your editor; they might just free you up from this flowery fire hazard you call a column!
Here’s hoping the next piece has some *real* heat—just remember to keep the sprinklers handy. Until then, I’ll be here, toasting marshmallows on the smoldering remains of reasoned discourse! 🔥🍢 #BetterLuckNextTimeVernon