"Aargh! Oww. I’m sorry, you’re making me wet and it hurts like hell. I have to go.”

“Mmm, all I’m saying is that between those buns and that chest meat, I’m about ready to steal you right now, and you know what I mean,” said the Hamburglar, but it was too late. The Wicked Witch had taken her leave and Hamburglar found himself sitting alone. When he saw her through the window taking off on her broom (and she seemed to ride that okay!), he left their table and made his way to the bar, taking a seat next to James Bond.

But no, it wasn’t Bond. Although all the elegance and charm was there, there was something extra: sweat and an XXL ruffled shirt—trademark Meatloaf. The Hamburglar asked it outright, as so many had before him. “What was it that you wouldn’t do for love, Meatloaf?”

“Actually,” the Meat responded, with vocal chords made from the sinews of Jesus, “there are a lot of things. I didn’t really think that one through. Lately though, transsexuals have been near the top of the list, particularly Xena. The Warrior Princess has been chasing me down since Fight Club—can’t seem to mark fiction from reality.” Hamburglar, weeping from hearing Meatloaf’s voice (so, that was what the horns at Jericho sounded like…), was plainly too emotional to carry on the conversation. So Meatloaf took his leave, commenting, “What a softy of a super hero.”

Years ago, after the fallout in McDonaldland, Hamburglar actually had thought of being a superhero. He had even gone so far as to put on his best cape and most dastardly face mask to go enjoy a snifter with Batman and Batman’s arch-enemy, the Joker, in hopes of being brought into the biz. The meeting was an obvious success; Batman may have held a business-like stone face but the Joker gave it away, grinning the whole time. Then, things went cold fish for months. He figured Ronald must have gotten to the Joker at a meeting of the “I Bleached Myself in Acid Guild.” Reject-branded from marketing and super heroism, the Hamburglar hadn’t found a niche since.

When he shook himself from a state of near-divine rapture several hours later, the Hamburglar left the bar and walked around the corner towards his apartment. A huge orange mass lay collapsed on his doorstep—Cheesasaurus Rex! Hamburglar ran up to Cheese Rex’s side and was greeted by a snort. Despite a staple diet of macaroni and cheese and Colombian gold, the dinosaur had blimped out in recent years. His arms lay detached in small pools of blood on either side of him, suggesting that they had snapped off while attempting a push-up. “Hamburglar,” he gurgled, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? What happened?”

“Birdie…I sold her a quarter ounce of Charlie, and I swear I didn’t know, but it was cut with Alka-Seltzer and last night, her insides hemorrhaged! She’s dead.”

“Who did the blow come from?”

“From Juan. Juan Valdez.”

Hamburglar put his hands on one of Rex’s dorsal plates, swung both legs over, walked into his house, and shut the door. Things were adding up quick. Birdie had been on the verge of publishing her memoir. It included a section detailing how Ronald, after being confronted with cashing Grimace’s paychecks, had showboated everyone else out of McMarketing until there was only room for him in McDonaldland. And the Babysitter’s Club®. Some nights there was room for them, too. Then, Ronald had spent years plastering his name all over charities (the Ronald McDonald House!?) to bullshit the world into believing he was a philanthropist! The memoir would bring his world crashing down, and McDonald’s had outsourced their coffee production to Juan and his donkey last year. That was means and motive. Hamburglar would have to call in some favors.

Around midnight Hamburglar whistled as, from eight stories up, he watched Ronald’s stretch clown car pulled onto the street. In response, Moby Dick flip-flopped his way out of an alley and lay blocking off the entire street. The clown car came to a halt inches from the white whale. From the side door emerged Chuck Norris, Ronald’s bodyguard. From the opposite end of the street rolled an ice cream truck covered in human skulls as Bill Brasky (who once ate an entire cake before the Hamburglar could tell him there was a stripper inside of it) stepped out of it and onto the street, maybe the only man capable of keeping Chuck Norris occupied. Chuck Norris gave Bill Brasky (who hated ninjas! And he was half ninja! And he hated irony!) a roundhouse kick that would have made lesser men cease to have ever existed. But Bill Brasky, a two-ton man-mountain capable of palming a medicine ball, absorbed the kick in his forest of chest hair. This was exactly what Hamburglar had hoped for. Atop a building overlooking the scene he prepared himself, sans superhero certification, to jump, he turned and nodded to Hadji, who was standing behind him, and leapt off the building.

“Sim sim sala bim!” yelled Hadji, using his Indian magic to levitate Hamburglar down to the streets below.

The Hamburglar swung into the moon roof of the stretch clown car, where Ronald was laying with several members of the Babysitter’s Club®, whispering to one, “Why don’t you show me how drunk you are.” His nose was cherry red, maybe from Juan’s cocaine. Hamburglar, after years of professional thieving, remained undetected while his eyes scanned for any sight of Birdie’s manuscript. Suddenly, (yes!) he stepped out of the shadows and stood face to face for a moment in front of Ronald and briefly considered becoming the Hammurderer. Then, he grabbed the manuscript tucked under Ronald’s arm and sprung out the moon roof as he, Bill Brasky, and Moby Dick beat their retreats into the night.

Ronald’s head emerged from the moon roof to rage at the empty street. “Hamburglar!! Is this your struggle against the void that consumes you? I bought her manuscript at auction, but I had nothing to do with Birdie’s death. Even if my public destruction creates a lackluster pseudo-justice that brings you some sense of validation, the purpose fulfilled is derived from a self-constructed meaning, a byproduct of a bitter and unfulfilled life that I caused in struggling against my own void of injustice and uncertainty. I imposed it on you as you have now chosen to impose yours onto me, and in doing so you and I act from equally selfish motivations. But I changed, and when you stole that from me tonight you also stole what delineated yourself from monstrosity. So, while tonight we are the same, in being so we are alone!”

Screams tore through the night sky: “ROBBLE, ROBBLE, ROBBLE!!!”