Savior with Expiration Date

Corpse oil was seeping down from the tip of the pyramid as Luna sealed the snitch's heart with the 397th empty jar.

"This is your shrine." She plunges the scalpel into Maya's collarbone, "The liar's blood will make the foundation stronger."

The young girl's cervical dilator is stuck in the crack of a can, a "donation" from last week's execution of her pediatrician. The pyramid base is engraved with the names of all the devoured, written in the fluorescent bodily fluids of radiated cockroaches - and when Maya's menstrual blood drips over the name "Beth," the entire structure begins to smell sweetly like corpse flowers.

Rule #61: Each brick must be lubricated with the organs of a betrayer.

Construction begins at Bloody Dawn. When the first snitch is left skeletonized by a vole, Luna comes to the realization that empty cans are a better way to build power than corpses. She smeared men's prostate fluids on the inside of bean cans, burned girls' mammary fat to make adhesive, and used 200 molars donated by a dentist as rivets.

By now the pyramid is touching the roof of the warehouse, casting cobwebby shadows over the vents.Maya is hanging upside down from the west side of the pyramid, Cole's dog tags attached to her ankles, her bulging belly showing that she's at least five months pregnant-the name of the fetus's father is etched into the can next to her, the same twelve-year-old boy executed three days earlier for stealing tomato juice.

"He told a secret before he died." Maya's amniotic fluid ran down the pyramid lines, "About that can of SPAM you kiss every night..."

Luna's taser stabbed into the young girl's cervix. As Maya's screams resonate with the sirens, the center of the pyramid bursts open and 47 half-rotten corpses burst out like ripe pomegranate seeds. These are the "voluntary" devotees who swallowed the locator chips before they died so that their bodies could serve as the pyramid's load-bearing pillars.

"Rule number 62." She shoved Maya's right eyeball into the gaping hole, "When the building starts to breathe, it means you're not using enough living people."

A swarm of drones cut through the night sky.

Drop boxes from the convenience store headquarters smashed through the east wing of the warehouse, pouring out not supplies but flying radiation mites. They landed on the pyramid's surface, using their mouthparts to modify snitches' names into barcodes.Luna lifted her flamethrower to find the flames refracting her mother's face on the pyramid's surface-her lips sewn shut with steel staples, her eyelids glued shut with convenience-store cash register strips.

"Mom?" The flames engulf the 88th level of the canister, revealing the huddled glass man embryo inside.

Maya takes the opportunity to break free, her belly grazing the sharp edge of the pyramid of cans. As she fell into the pile, the polygraph she was carrying suddenly played a recording - Luna's late-night gasps as she masturbated into the SPAM can, mixed with the dying moans of her "brothers."

"You're the biggest snitch of all!" Maya ripped open her belly, removing the unformed fetus and slamming it into the altar, "You're betraying everyone to HQ..."

The automatic defense system activated.

The laser grid slices the fetus into sushi-like slices, each piece landing precisely on the cracks in the pyramid. When Luna picks up the left hand stump of the fetus, she finds that the palm lines are identical to the cloned imprint of the convenience store president.

A torrential rain of corpse oil pours down.

As the pyramid began to spin clockwise and the cans clashed like skeletal teeth chattering, Luna's eardrums seeped blood from the ultra-low-frequency vibrations, and she saw each layer of cans showing a different image: Cole molesting her as a teenager in the basement of the convenience store, Jax making canned goods with the grease from her mother's breasts, and her father signing her "license to breed" in the President's office...

"This is... My memories?" She plucked at her eyeballs and pressed them to the surface of the pyramid, and her retina suddenly replayed images from when she was three years old: her mother stuffing her into a canning pot and saying through the glass, "Be the perfect product."

Maya's maniacal laughter comes from deep within the pile of corpses. The young girl beats her skull with her ribcage as a drumstick and sings an adapted version of the convenience store sales chant, "Buy two, get one free! Buy two get one free on your uterus!"

As the quake peaks, the SPAM can at the top of the pyramid suddenly pops open. Instead of meat, Luna's tonsils, which were removed when she was six years old, roll out - soaked in formalin and strung together as a "birthday necklace" from Cole.

"Rules... Rules..." She tried to reach for the manual in her pocket, only to find that the pages had long since been dissolved into mincemeat by the corpse oil.

Radiant clouds cracked with purple lightning.

When the first lightning struck the pyramid, all the canisters exploded in synchronization. Four thousand pieces of metal shards form a convenience store logo in the air, turning into a forest of tombstones the moment they plunge into the ground.Luna digs frantically through the rubble until her fingernails peel off to find a half of a SPAM can label-the back of which reads in menstrual blood:

"You're my most successful advent product."

Maya's mangled body suddenly convulses. Hundreds of transparent slugs crawled out of her disemboweled uterus, miniature convenience store models suspended inside each. When Luna stomped on the ninety-ninth one, the pus splattered into a pattern that was the exact floor plan of the president's office.

"Rule number 63." She crushes Maya's skull into powder and mixes it with her own menstrual blood to make new bricks:

"When the altar collapses, build yourself in."

A baby cries from outside the warehouse.

She dug up a metal capsule in the center of the pyramid wreckage, and inside it curled a clone with the same tattoos as the fetus's left hand. As the dagger pierced its heart, the clone opened its eyes and spoke a message encrypted by the president's voiceprint:

"Daughter, it is time to inspect your canned womb."

The moonlight suddenly turns the scarlet color of a convenience store neon sign.

Luna strips off her clothes and steps into the cooling pool, letting the corpse oil solidify into armor on her skin. A swarm of drones lowered steel cables to hoist her up and project a holographic maternity ward at the original site of the pyramid. As her menstrual blood dripped into the console, all the tombstones began to produce breast milk.

"Mom," she raised her clone stump to the blood moon, "I finally learned how to create shelf life."

In the distance, a new batch of snitches were escorting their victims towards the ruins. A fluorescent sign that generated electricity from anal heat was suspended above their heads:

"Snitching is the highest form of piety."