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Troy carefully combed his goatee. The care and maintenance of the goatee had become part of his daily grooming ritual. Abed had pointed out early on that the best villains were always good looking.
From the other side of the apartment he could hear screams from Annie’s room. She had moved in after the mental hospital let her out. They thought she’d embraced sanity. Really she’d just quietly embraced carefully controlled evil. Despite that she refused to grow a goatee. But she did start wearing thigh high, spiked heeled, boots and miniskirts. She also started bringing men home, doing things that made them scream, then throwing them out into the hall, sometimes with their clothes sometimes without. Unless they were really smart. Then she threw them into the Lab. Before everything had gone wrong it had been the Imaginarium but now it was the lab where men who were too terrified, or lust filled, to say no to Annie tried to figure out how to break down the wall between universes.
There was the buzz of someone at the intercom. The screaming continued. Troy went to answer it since Annie was obviously busy.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me,” came a board, dejected voice.
Troy buzzed Jeff into the building and a minute later opened the door.
“Annie’s got a friend over?” was Jeff’s first comment as he headed straight to the kitchen to pour himself a drink. Abed and Troy had both decided that part of being evil meant rejecting their religions. Troy got himself a birthday cake. Abed got himself alcohol. Lots of it.
“Less friend, more play thing.”
“Poor bastard. I’ve seen the way Annie breaks her toys.” Jeff tipped back his drink and poured himself another one. “So, any luck destroying the laws of physics yet?”
Troy pulled out a candy cigarette. He’d tried real ones but quickly found he didn’t react so well around fire anymore. “Abed and Annie were all excited about something the other day but then they started talking about money.”
Jeff snorted. “You do know there are men who would pay like a thousand bucks an hour to have Annie make them scream?”
“Really? Does Annie know that?”
“I doubt it but I’m not going to be the one stupid enough to suggest it.” Jeff finished a second drink and poured a third but that one he just held. Troy waited for Jeff to keep talking but he just stared into his drink.
“Is there something you wanted, Jeff?”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Jeff said quietly.
“What wouldn’t matter?”
“Even if you and Abed and Annie somehow ripped your way through the universe my arm would still be missing. I could kill every Jeff in every universe and it wouldn’t grow my arm back.”
“You could graft on a new one.”
Troy turned around. He hadn’t heard Abed come in over the screaming from Annie’s room, which seemed to be reaching some sort of climax.
“You could take an arm from another Jeff and have it surgically reattached. It would be a perfect match and you could take however much you needed to get all the nerves and muscles and stuff right.”
That thought made Troy a little nauseous. When Abed had decided to be evil he’d thrown himself into it. His goatee was awesome. He stopped slouching. But he’d also gotten into the habit of talking about really gross things.
Jeff tipped back his drink. “Technically, you are not wrong.”
Abed stepped closer. “So is this it, Jeff? Are you going to embrace what you know to be true? Are you going to understand that we must be the evil twins and take back the lives that should be ours?”
“Abed, I was a high priced defense lawyer. I defended serial drunk drivers. I defended guys who sold bad coke to their secretaries. Hell, I defended Duncan. I’d embraced evil by the time I was ten.”
“But, have you truly committed to it?”
Jeff stared at Abed for a long time. “I’m not growing a goatee. I tried it when I was twenty and it looked like crap. You on the other hand look like a Bond villain.”
“I was going more for Spock in the original series Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror since it is a prime example of evil parallel dimensions, but I’ll take Bond villain for now.”
Jeff looked down at the empty sleeve of his suit. The apartment had gone quiet. “Do you know how hard it is to style your hair one handed?”
“I’ll take a guess and say, very.”
“Yeah, very. Okay, what do I need to do?” Abed opened his mouth. “Aside from growing a goatee. And just so you know I don’t think you can actually break through to another dimension but right now I really need a hobby.”
“Well, we need money for our research.”
Jeff snorted. “Just tell Annie to put an ad in a free paper.”
“She did.”
“What?” Jeff said his eyes going wide.
“What?” Troy repeated. He hadn’t known about that.
“What did you think that screaming was all about?”
Everyone looked to Annie’s door. Right on cue it opened. Annie walked out, fully clothed in tight black leather and not a hair out of place. Behind her scurried a pudgy, balding man, holding most of his clothes. The too much skin that Troy could see was red and looked about to bleed. Annie cleared her throat. The man dug into the pockets of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. Annie took it and peeked inside. The man got down and kissed her boots before scurrying out the door still half dressed.
Annie strolled over to them and dropped the cash on the kitchen counter. It was a pretty thick envelope.
“Jeff has decided to join us,” Abed announced before picking up the envelope.
Annie grinned. For a second it was the old Annie, well not the old old Annie. Old old Annie had bad skin and took too much Adderall. The smile was from the new old Annie, who was different from the new new Annie.
She clapped her hands. “Goodie! You can help me find more men to hurt.”
“What?” Jeff’s face went slack again.
“Well you’ve got all your rich lawyer friends and I talked to some of them at that party and I bet a few of them would love to become regulars.”
“I’m not going to be your pimp, Annie.”
“Who said anything about being a pimp. Think of yourself more like an agent. I’ll even let you have 10%. And…” Annie dragged out the word. “Since there’s no actual sex taking place I’m not doing anything wrong.” Annie gave a little giggle.
“You’re just making men strip down to their underwear and having them do things that make them scream?”
“Yep. It’s like being a personal trainer but with better clothes.”
Jeff’s expression was thoughtfully amused. “I am so using that as your defense when you get dragged up in front of a judge.”
“So.” Abed rubbed his hands together in standard super villain form. “That makes four of us. Now we just need Britta and Shirley and we’ll have the Super Evil Study Group complete.”
“You’ll never get Shirley,” Troy said. He didn’t talk nearly as much these days and saved it for when he knew he had something important to say. “As soon as she sobers up she’ll find Jesus again and while she’s drinking she’s really drinking.”
“You are correct,” Abed agreed. “One of our next goals should be to lead Shirley to a balanced place where she is functional but still has the capacity to be evil. Put it on the board.”
The board was a large whiteboard stolen from Greendale in a late night raid. On it was a list of evil plans and objectives. Troy wrote ‘Balance Shirley’ in large red letters right under a line that read ‘Britta - ?’
“That’s what you can do, Jeff, bring Britta to us.”
“You want me to lure Britta to the Dark Side? The girl who thinks that putting a blue streak in her hair qualifies as dark?”
Annie leaned towards Jeff showing off substantial cleavage. “I’m sure you can do it Jeff, put all those naughty, evil, lawyer skills to work.”
Jeff pointed to Annie’s boobs. Not the monkey, just her boobs. “I am now immune to those mainly because I am currently afraid of what they’re attached to. Though I’ll talk with Britta. God knows what I’ll say, or what she’ll do around here.”
Abed clapped Jeff on his more intact shoulder. “She will have her place. We will all have our place. And when we regain the lives that should have been ours she can go back to being not evil if she wishes, though I myself will be keeping the goatee.”
“And I’m taking my new wardrobe through with me,” Annie added, stamping her foot hard enough that other parts of her body jiggled.
Jeff grabbed a bottle, “I will drink to your wardrobe Annie.”
The intercom buzzed. Annie looked at the clock. “That would be my 4 o’clock.” She shook her head. “He knows he gets punished if he’s early.” She stomped off to let her next victim in.
Jeff raised his bottle first to Troy then to Abed. “Here’s to being evil.”