Francis Mooky Duke Williams -

Mooky finally put down the harmonica. “I broke it? Lady, I haven’t even had my morning grits.”

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.

“Depends,” Mooky said, not looking up. “Are you here about the harmonica solo or the unpaid parking tickets in Daytona?”

All was right with the universe—until Thursday, when Mooky planned to try a new note on his morning toast. francis mooky duke williams

“Does that come with dental?” Mooky asked.

And so, Mooky strapped on his harmonica, grabbed his bucket of cold fried chicken (for luck), and drove his lawnmower—a converted 1972 John Deere with rocket boosters made from old propane tanks—straight toward the Piggly Wiggly. The townsfolk gathered, thinking it was the annual Mulberry Opossum Festival. No one corrected them.

On the roof, under a sky bleeding purple and orange, Mooky took a deep breath. He raised the harmonica. He yodeled. Mooky finally put down the harmonica

It began on a Tuesday, which Mooky always considered the most suspicious day of the week. He was tuning his harmonica—an heirloom said to have been licked once by Robert Johnson’s ghost—when a shimmering tear ripped open the air above his toaster. Out stepped a three-foot-tall creature made entirely of wet newspapers and indignation.

The seventeen Dollys merged into one. The Elvis dimension became a small, harmless pickle jar on Mooky’s counter. And the hedge fund from Dimension 404 evaporated into bad credit.

The Memetic Auditor explained the stakes: unless Mooky could perform the “Reverse Shriek of Temporal Rectification” from the roof of the Piggly Wiggly during the next solar flare, reality would fold into a pretzel. Worse, that pretzel would be owned by a sentient hedge fund from Dimension 404, which planned to sell it back to humanity in installments. By trade, Mooky was an unlicensed interdimensional handyman

“I am Prittle, a Memetic Auditor from the Bureau of Probability Stabilization,” the creature said. “And you, sir, have broken reality.”

Prittle sighed. “Fine. But hurry. The Dollys are starting to harmonize, and when they do, the whole multiverse might just break into song and never stop.”

Francis Mooky Duke Williams—known to most as “Mooky,” to his mother as Francis, and to the IRS as a delightful headache—was a man who believed that any problem could be solved with a bucket of fried chicken, a harmonica in the key of C, and a complete disregard for the laws of physics.