Duke Williams: Francis Mooky

The note was not beautiful. It was ancient. It sounded like a screen door slamming in a haunted mansion. It smelled like ozone and burnt sugar. The solar flare hit. For one terrible, glorious second, every pigeon in Georgia turned into a tiny abacus. Then—pop—reality snapped back into place.

He lived in a rusted Airstream trailer parked on the outskirts of Mulberry, Georgia, a town so small that the water tower had a stutter. By trade, Mooky was an unlicensed interdimensional handyman. By passion, he was a competitive yodeler. By accident, he had just saved the world. francis mooky duke williams

“I am Prittle, a Memetic Auditor from the Bureau of Probability Stabilization,” the creature said. “And you, sir, have broken reality.” The note was not beautiful

Prittle unfolded a scroll that stretched across the trailer and curled out the window. “Last Thursday, at 3:17 PM, you successfully yodeled a note so pure it un-caused the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then, on Saturday, you used that same harmonic frequency to reheat a meatball sub, which accidentally merged your local timeline with a dimension where Elvis became a botanist. As a result, there are now seventeen versions of Dolly Parton, and all of them are arguing about crop rotation.” It smelled like ozone and burnt sugar

Mooky scratched his chin. “Huh. And here I thought my sinuses were just acting up.”