Monsters of the Midway on
the Orforcorp Corridor Bizarre Bazaar
Your Cool Aunt’s Raw Courant With Judy Crudités
September 1, 2025 — You slide the livestream video back to the start and press play on Part 1. The view is dark, but you can recognize the streamer, crouching underneath a table or ledge.
“This is Judy Crudites, your sad, scared auntie. I’m bringing my poor babies the rawest, most awful courant possible. It’s 2:34pm and we are live from my hiding spot in th-” She stops herself before revealing that she’s huddled inside the Love in a Tub booth in the Orforcorp Corridor gaming midway, before she continues, “...at the Free-For-All Carnival.”
“Of course, your Auntie Judy is well aware that spreading courant this raw on a social livestream is uber gauche, but…” In her unexpected pause, you can tell she’s trying hard to keep herself composed. It’s like you’re watching a cartoon character running off a cliff before the delayed gravity kicks in as the full weight of the day’s experiences finally catches up with Judy’s soaring adrenaline high, and she plummets hard and fast. She breathes heavily, her lips quiver, and you can tell the tears won’t be far behind, and that they’ll ruin the perfect smoky eye mascara work under her red lace mesh blindfold mask. You can almost hear her telling herself, You’re cool, Jude, you’re cool. You’re a blizzard sister, an iceberg fly bird, a snowstorm performed.
Judy inhales slowly, trying to calm her nerves, before addressing the camera again. “You know your Auntie is nothing but honest with you, my babies. No matter how brutal. And the honest reason I’m livestreaming this is because there’s a very real chance Auntie Judy ends up like the amusers working this booth.” She chokes up. “Who were working this booth. Trigger warning here for upcoming violent imagery. Not safe for children or the faint of heart. It will just be a quick ten-second shot. But it’s necessary.”
She pans the camera to display a scene that takes a few seconds for the viewers’ eyes to unpack and reassemble. The booth is dark, save for the white glow of the phone’s flash that shines down on what, at most viewers’ first glance, including yours, appear totally unrecognizable. It’s not until some of the more astute viewers chime in on chat that the unfortunate snap of recognition makes your brain realize what you’re actually seeing: two headless torsos with severed arms and legs lying next to them along with two smashed skulls, the victims so beaten and bloodied that most viewers in chat were only seeing what they thought was a pile of dirty rags and rotting produce.
Judy brings the camera back to her face. “I’m so so so sorry I had to show that. Auntie Judy knows how sensitive and empathetic my babies are. But what’s happening here must be recorded and shared for the sake of history. We are witnessing one of the most heinous, despicable, downright uncool days in this City’s history. In this country’s history. In the history of humanity. AND on top of the carnage unfolding now at the carnival, I have even worse news to break, that might be thee story of the century to share abou-”
CRONK! SCOOM! SCRAAOOOWSH!
SHUFFLE… SHUFFLE… SHUFFLE
The screen shakes in a dust-cloud shroud as Aunt Judy shouts obscenities and screams incoherently. To viewers like you, it looks and sounds like an explosion.
Aunt Judy appears back on screen, holding the camera at full arm’s length. Viewers can see her better in the sunlight, her red lace mesh blindfold mask hanging around her neck, her cherry red shirt, and pink tutu atop leopard-print leggings outfit covered in dirt and ash, and her location in front of The Dogon Egg game booth, its banner reading, “An intensive body, crossed with several zig-zagging lines of vibration!” Her shoulders shake, and her eyes are wide and twitching (though still smoky).
“No point in hiding anymore. The Love in a Tub booth is gone. Blown up by unseen forces. Your Auntie barely escaped in time. It’s bad, my babies. Beyond bad. Everyone’s gone mad. Lost their damn minds. There’s no turning back. It’s inexplicable. Inexcusable. It’s utter insanity. Auntie’s at a loss for words… at a loss for everything.”
She slowly scans the unfolding mayhem by these monsters of the midway for the viewers to see. A person in flames runs into the camera’s field of vision as mangled and injured carnivalgoers try to sidestep and get out of the way of the human torch’s nova pathway. You watch as they leave a trail of blazing tents and people in their wake, who go on to set their own fires.
Judy turns the camera back on her and says, “...maybe even at a loss of life.”
She starts walking while she continues to stream, and immediately almost slips on human entrails and viscera glooped up in a puddle of snowcone syrup outside of the Four-Dimensional Bowling Lanes Booth. Undeterred, she shakes it off and continues, showing the viewers all the scabrabbits on the loose, hunting down random people to force them back to work in the Logistics Hub Complex Phase II. You hear a muffled, “Everybody work, everybody work.”
The hoots, hollers, and howls of mobsters compete with the screeches and wails and whines of monsters to bombard the stream, and you have to turn down the volume.
At an intersection in the midway, flames and smoke and sparks and monsters await down every route available to Aunt Judy. Back in selfie view, she says, “I don’t know which way to go to get out of here. Can any of my babies in chat help your auntie? Should I go that way past the OGEEcoin arcade? Or should I head toward the Wacc-a-Rat machines? Or back toward the row of the Horoscopic Lottoology future-showing machines, branded and trademarked with our very own Patty Oh’s beautiful face. Now they’re all splattered with mud and blood.” You can tell that she’s trying her damnedest to maintain her professional composure while navigating hell on earth.
“Where’s OFLEC in all of this?” Aunt Judy ponders aloud, her voice strained but still strong. “I need to reach out to my gal pal baddie with the badgie, Abby Bracken, and get some answers.”
Your view of the livestream is shaky, but you can see that Aunt Judy checks behind a concession truck and then tries to sneak back there, potentially looking for a new hiding spot. The stream goes haywire with jerky movements.
“Stop! You monsters! Stop it!” Aunt Judy screeches through your headphones with as much rage as horror. The camera angle shuffles through the shadows of her purse, then shifts quickly, showing you two people wearing big floppy rubber Bart Simpson masks, kneeling next to something. It takes a second to click, but you realize they’re in the middle of carving up a body. You watch as Aunt Judy unloads a can of mace on them, aiming right for their big white eyeballs. The chemical spray drives them away, shouting obscenities.
Judy moves to check on the victim, and you can’t tell if they’re even alive. And as Judy reaches down to check, another explosion sends Auntie Judy flying one way and her phone flying the other.
From the dust, about a dozen people appear, all of them wearing Atellan’s family-sized slopbuckets with eyeholes on their heads.
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Emerging from the dust, you see about a dozen people appear, all of them wearing Atellan’s family-sized slopbuckets with eyeholes on their heads. Without saying a word, this slopbucket brigade beckons to Aunt Judy.
“Stay away from me,” you hear Aunt Judy say. “I’ve got enough pepper spray to fill up all of those slopbuckets.”
The livestream suddenly goes dark.
There’s panic in the chat for a few minutes, everyone freaking out over every hypothetical popping into their head, until the livestream resumes a few minutes later.
“Okay, my babies, Aunt Judy is finally safe,” Aunt Judy says into her phone’s camera. “Well, as safe as I can be for the moment.”
You watch her eyes, still perfectly smoky, dart back and forth before refocusing on her phone. “So now, while I have the chance, I need to spread this awful courant so it doesn’t go to the grave with me.” She places her hand on her heart. “I know, I know, my babies, we have to stay positive during times like this. And trust me, my babies, you know your cool Auntie is channeling every ounce of Luther Vandross right now, and staying as cool as humanly possib-”
You hear a RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT RAT-A-TAT-TAT barrage of gunshots outside, and you see in Aunt Judy’s pause that she also heard them.
“Enough messing around,” Aunt Judy says. “This courant is too raw to wait any longer, and Auntie’s gotta share it now.”
And thusly, you listen as your cool Aunt Judy relayed the series of events that happened to her earlier on Bonus Day, The Day of Flesh. She had snagged a ticket to the GAFFE Bonus Day VIP Tent, sponsored by Bar Talmai. Apparently, the fraternal order had dropped a pretty penny for the event and spared no expense for the centennial Bonus Day celebration.
When she arrived, Auntie said that she found only the Ladies du Beauharnais in the tent. And Auntie has always got the ick from the Ladies Do Bo (which means they also give you the ick, even though you’ve never met any of them). Auntie went off on how much she hated their stupid Warbler hierarchy. Cape May Ladies at the top, Bay-Breasts and Black-Throats in the middle. The Myrtles at the bottom, scrounging for crumbs.
But since it was a fully air-conditioned VIP Tent/Beer Garden, with catering from the Bar Talmai kitchen and more than 20 Premium Elite Mobile Commodes (each with its own personal attendant), Aunt Judie said she figured she might as well pre-game in the VIP Tent and eat for free before heading out into the rest of the carnival. The spot was located next to the Orforcorp Corridor midway, and not far from some music and comedy stages.
She went on a tangent about how the humidity hung in the air like a wet wool blanket soaked in desperation, so thick you could practically chew it. And to Auntie Judy, it looked like many of the Ladies were chewing it because their jaws were working constantly (there was a reason they were also called the Ladies Do Blow, after all).
She described an ice sculpture carved into the shape of “100” that took up an entire table. To keep it from melting, Auntie explained how organizers used a liquid-nitrogen-fueled contraption that misted over the sculpture, but which was apparently harmless to humans.
With a dadadadadah, Auntie skipped ahead to the action when the power went out. Aunt Judy said at first, she only found it annoying because of the lack of music, which meant she couldn’t pretend the music was too loud as an excuse to avoid interacting with the Ladies Do Bo. You listened as she talked about how the more time went on without power, the more she was getting ready to leave and get the hell away from the Ladies Do Bo, and start making a slow, meandering stroll toward the exit while keeping her eyes peeled and her party radar ready…
The Service Serves Up a Fervent, Murderous Reversal
When, out of nowhere, Aunt Judy described how all these shadowy figures jumped over the VIP fences, and how she thought they were monkeys or gorillas or some kind of other big animals at first, but she realized it was about 20 or so masked people all wearing all black with white aprons covering the front of their torsos. And they were armed with a full arsenal of every knife from the butcher block, along with metal skewers, big BBQ forks, serrated spatulas, broom handles, and pretty much any kind of weapon you’d find in a kitchen. Auntie then noticed that a few of the people had utility belts with spray bottles hanging around their waists. She sensed something seriously uncool in the air.
Half the Ladies Do Bo started finger-wagging and scolding the knife-wielding, apron-wearing fence jumpers, while the other half whipped out their cell phones with bedazzled cases to record the intrusion into the VIP tent. Aunt Judy also pointed out that half of the Ladies Do Bo were cranked on Addies, while the other half were zonked on Xannies, but all of them were plastered. Then she wondered aloud what this Venn diagram would look like. You chuckle at your favorite Auntie’s idea.
The fence-jumpers refused to cower before this salon of Karens and advanced slowly, as if savoring every step. Then, according to Aunt Judy’s account, one of the fence-jumpers, a tall, thick woman dual-wielding a long bread knife in one hand and a meat tenderizer in the other hand, along with meat hooks jutting from between her fingers in each of her clenched fists, began speaking, “You are the monsters rejected by the fiery pits of hell. You slaughtered our families. Sacrificed them in pyres. Feasted upon their flesh. Desecrated their bodies. Desecrated their souls! And now, The Service is here to ensure that you all pay a price that, for once, you can’t afford.”
Aunt Judy recounted how most of the Ladies Do Bo were surprisingly silent for a moment, either in shock or too deep in their stupors to realize what had happened. But then one of the Ladies Do Bo, Lalanda Potterloot, a Cape May and the wife of a Camelcase partner, finally stepped forward, her palm outstretched and her head shaking to indicate she’d already had enough of this interaction.
“Those were all accidents, honey,” Lalanda said with the self-assured composure of a person well-practiced in speaking down to everyone else. “So watch what you say next because my lawyer will be the one responding to you. Oh, and also, for the record, sweetheart, all of those accidents were caused by the untrained and incompetent service staff. Now quit making a scene and scooch out of here before we have to call security. Don’t let this act of stupidity ruin your life.”
The spokesperson for The Service took a few steps closer to Lalanda, who was threatening to call her husband. Then there was a glimmering swoosh. A sash of blood appeared across Lalanda’s outfit, and her face recoiled in shock. The Service’s spokesperson kicked out and knocked over the blood-splattered Cape May.
A curdling scream erupted from the rest of the Ladies Do Bo, with Auntie screaming the loudest, as The Service lined up everyone in the tent. They offered each person the chance to confess their guilt, renounce their actions, beg for forgiveness, and submit to the will of The Service, or pay an eye-for-an-eye price.
Aunt Judy recalled how insanely scared she was and how everything had felt beyond surreal in the moment, and how she had no clue what was happening or why, and how she’d never been so afraid for her life. Aunt Judy said that it wasn’t until a few of the Ladies Do Bo confessed and begged for forgiveness that things began to click for her. There’d been too many accidents at the GAFFE events lately that, when stacked up and examined collectively in hindsight, looked awfully suspicious. There was the devastating fire during the fraternal order’s 2024 summer fundraiser at the Brazen Bull that resulted in the deaths of half the waitstaff. Then, more recently, there was that one rumor about how the autopsies of the people who died from food poisoning at GAFFE’s Memorial Day banquet at Herxheim Hall seemed to point to signs of cannibalism. Your Auntie had just brushed all these stories off as conspiracy theories and urban legends. But now, Auntie realized these urban legends were probably true.
And then Aunt Judy told the viewers how The Service went through the line of Ladies, one by one, offering a chance to confess or pay. A few more Ladies Do Bo confessed, and some remained defiant. It wasn’t until Cathy Demicheen erupted and pronounced that she gladly helped in organizing the sacrifices for those events and wouldn’t hesitate to plan a thousand more if it meant that she was ensuring the best of the best of everything for her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Then she spat at The Servicemember standing in front of her.
“Oh my babies, your Auntie cannot even begin to describe what The Service did to the Ladies after that… even the ones who confessed.” Aunt Judy pauses. She bites her lip and scrunches her face, twisting it into a withered rose. You watch her cover her mouth with the back of her hand and blink back tears. She shakes her head and waves her hand over her face. A heavy blob lodges itself in your stomach that feels like you just swallowed a bowling ball made of grief.
Punch Up, Tip Down, and Always Laugh
“And I tell you, my babies,” says Aunt Judy, staring at the screen, her cheeks streaked in a Gulf Coast oil spill of mascara, “your cool Auntie Judy only managed to survive and escape for one single reason: A twenty-year-old busboy in The Service — shout out to Shimmy Zimeniz! The uber-coolest dude who ever cooled! — but Shimmy recognized me, and he remembered me giving him a nice tip and being respectful after last year’s Table of the Bees. But also, cuz Auntie was giving him the rawest courant about everyone there and making him laugh his ass off. Sure, maybe Auntie Judy was a little tipsy, but it just goes to show you, my babies, the importance of being kind — the truest coolness.”
Aunt Judy began wrapping up her story by stating how she needed to relay that GAFFE has been responsible for the deaths at the Brazen Bull and Herxheim Hall, and that people needed to look in other past GAFFE events too, like the recent one at the lingchi cassava fusion spot, Lina Marin, and who knew how many more. But with GAFFE chock-full of past and present BOObers and OFLEC and Orforcorp executives and 14th Circuit judges, Auntie decried how these powerful entities will try to bury her scoop. Potentially even try to bury her. Still, like the cool auntie she is, Aunt Judy explained that people needed to know this information, and that it was her job, not just as a journalist, but as a human, to ensure everyone, not just her babies, knew this awful, atrocious news.
“I don’t really know how to end a stream as horrifying and sad and unreal as this one. As we mourn those lost to GAFFE’s heinous murders, let’s also remember to punch up, tip down, and laugh at everybody and everything. Until next time, let’s all try to keep cool, hope for the best, and keep it raw.”
The livestream ends.