king cobra

short story

Mar 24, 2026

Been dying to share this for months…

Thanks to readers who’ve been with me from the start. Welcome to many new ones getting a post for the first time — they’ll be rare and always free.

You might honestly be shocked by this one.

While I’m developing several horror projects as a producer and many tell me you find my stories “unnerving” and “unsettling” — there’s never been a Max Winter story like this.

Thanks to woman-of-the-people witchycowboy for tipping me off to a very real world: Niche online creators with hardcore cult followings and surreal, parasocial relationships with fans.

While partly inspired by a live-streamer who went by “King Cobra” (RIP Cobes!) this story is obviously fiction. Any similarities to real people (or trolls) is entirely coincidental.

You’re about to read a depraved story that’s also, surprisingly, influenced by The Virgin Suicides.

Please drop me a comment and let me know what you think!

1. PUFF

Trigger warning:

This story contains “adult themes.”

Crude, explicit, offensive, and outdated language.

Culturally insensitive depictions of neurodiversity and mental illness.

Alcohol abuse. Drug abuse. Tobacco abuse.

Sexually suggestive dialogue. “Sexual situations.”

Domestic violence.

Occult themes that may be offensive to some religious readers.

Sequences of flashing lights that may cause seizures in the photosensitive.

(Epileptics, you’ve been warned!)

And, as with many sick, twisted, degenerate horror stories… (think: serial killers) ours starts with animal cruelty.

BTW, we’ll probably beat the word “degenerate” to death today. But really, there’s no better word in the English language to describe all that touches his domain.

We’re talkin’ about King Cobra.

Some of us call him The Boglim.

No clue what that actually means, but it suits him.

(He’s kind of a discombobulated goblin.)

Many of us first clicked onto an image of King Cobra sitting on his throne in black light. Chipped black nail polish. Smeared black eyeliner. Black wife beater. Black rotten teeth.

That black thing on his head, somewhere between a cowboy hat and whatever the fuck the Aussies wear in the Outback.

Black leather spiked dog collar from PetCo — always causing the skin on his neck to break out.

Skull on a chain necklace.

Pentagram rings. Snake rings. Snake tattoos.

He’s not fully crossed-eyed, but his eyes do seem to wander in different directions behind wire-framed Medicaid specials. Tiny oval “seein’ glasses” too small for his face.

Yeah, The Boglim is a vibe. Maybe that’s how he hooked so many subscribers in the first place.

BTW, it’s not really a throne.

It’s a rancid, disgusting recliner.

Like an off-brand La-Z Boy that probably smells worse IRL than anybody online can imagine. It actually belonged to his childhood dog. After the dog was put down and Cobes started to grow his YouTube following — after he became King Cobra – it made sense to call it his “throne.”

At that time, Cobes had this bearded dragon named Puff, right?

We could see Puff’s enclosure in his videos and we’d comment:

“You need to take better care of Puff!”

“You need to clean his tank!”

“This is animal abuse! Somebody call PETA!”

Cobes ignored all of us. He’d take Puff out and put him on his throne.

He’d sit there livestreaming about Ozzy. Satan. The occult. “The Dark Arts.” Doritos Locos Tacos. He’d wave one of the wands he sold at the Cobra Craft store on Etsy for 24 bucks.

(He carved the wands from sticks he found in the woods, wrapped them in black electric tape, securing some crappy plastic “crystal” to the end of them. He’d “prove” they wielded actual magic by pointing them out the window during a thunderstorm and “conjuring” lightning, or pointing them at a red light — commanding it to turn green. A lot of us bought them. They were his source of income for a while. He constantly accused other YouTubers of “stealing his idea” with the wands. Then, a scandal broke out where buyers complained in the comments that the wands had his stringy hairs taped into them. Cobes denied this vehemently in hourlong rants.)

Anyway, Puff would sit there by his side. Like his fucking “Mini-Me.” His sidekick on the arm of the throne.

You know bearded dragons, right? They have that thing on their necks that flares out. Puffs out. That’s where the name comes from. Two hours into a livestream, Cobes would climax. He’d reach peak rant and Puff’s beard would puff out.

The now infamous Puff Saga started one day when Cobes took Puff outside.

Took him on a “walk.”

He was carrying him around “naked.” (In his own words.) Right on his shoulder.

That’s when Puff jumped off and scurried into the forest.

For a very, very long time after that, Cobes kept telling us: “I’m waiting to see if Puff comes back.”

That was the first time the idea of a Go Fund Me came up. Some of us Cobra Angels wanted to fly out to Casper and run a Search Party for Puff.

But the Cobra Demons were like: “Bro, Puff’s a goner.”

When Cobes lost him, it was fall — in Casper fucking Wyoming.

“If a critter doesn’t get Puff first, winter’s *sure as shit* gonna get him.”

Cobes was like: “Well, I think Puff is hibernating for the winter. So, I’m waiting to see if he comes back in the spring.”

We’re like: “You abused Puff!”

“You neglected Puff!”

“You took Puff outside in an irresponsible way!”

“Puff ran away for the hope of freedom… like a slave!”

“Puff’s better off dead!”

“Death’s a better outcome than living with your filthy degenerate ass!”

So, there was no Puff Search Party.

Nobody flew out to Casper for Puff.

Nobody thought things would ever escalate to the point where we would fly out to Wyoming.

But now pigs have flown.

‘Cuz here we are.

Technically, not all of us are flying into the dinky Casper-Natrona airport. Some of us — the ones from really far away — are coming into Denver International. Then, it’s about a five hour drive up to Cobes’ apartment complex.

But you get the point.

None of us had any idea this would ever actually happen.

And none of us knew how terrifying this shit could get.

2. THE COBRA ANGELS AND COBRA DEMONS

Why are we obsessed with King Cobra?

We all have our reasons.

A lot of us pride ourselves on being OGs.

Early adopters.

Some of us discovered Cobes almost ten years ago. Some even earlier. When he only had a hundred subscribers.

In high school, maybe even middle school, Cobes invented The Cobra Religion.

That’s where his name comes from.

He’s like: “They’re ancient. Unchanged for millions of years. Appear in Asian, African, and Egyptian myth. They’re ceremonial. Ritualistic. They symbolize power, royalty, dominance, precision, and control. They’re sovereign. They don’t hide. They stand up for themselves!”

Cobes paints himself as some kind of Cobra Messiah.

The Jesus of the Cobra Religion.

Spreading the Cobra Gospel.

But please don’t think any of us actually believes in his religion.

It’s not like that.

We Cobra Angels and Cobra Demons aren’t cult members.

Let’s not get it twisted.

Fuck no.

(Well, maybe there are one or two basement-dwelling weirdos out there somewhere who believe that shit.)

But snakes and lizards are just one of Cobes’ “special areas of interest.”

The truth is, Cobes is autistic as fuck.

Autists always have “special areas of interest.”

Cobes is obsessed with cobras.

He’s obsessed with Ozzy Osborne.

He hates the Christians. (We wouldn’t call him Satanic, really — but whatever. He thinks the Christians are insufferable, hypocritical pedos and we mostly agree.)

Cobes is obsessed with guitar.

We wouldn’t call him good at guitar. But he has some licks. He literally makes his own music and puts it out — which’s more than most people can say. We admire him for that. It’s one of the main reasons he’s on the internet to begin with — to “promote his music.”

Of course. Cobes wants to be a rock star. He loves rock n’ roll.

But the content continues to evolve.

One of his big things is “food hacks.”

He gets fast food from different places and then mixes it up in a Frankenstein’s monster creation of calories and calls it a “food hack.”

Like: “I’m gonna take this Taco Bell five-layer burrito and I’m gonna stuff this chalupa inside it — then drown it in every hot sauce they have!”

A lot of our time is spent watching Cobes eat. Ever hear of mukbangin’?

The internet phenomenon, started in Korea, where people livestream themselves eating massive quantities of food? It’s an ASMR thing. Chewing. Slurping. What have you. Does it make any fucking sense? We don’t know. But a lot of us are lonely AF, okay? So we eat our meals with Cobes.

Cobra food hacks evolved into making mead.

We get constant Mead Updates!

He’s always trying to make the most insane concoction.

“I’m gonna do a cordial cherry chocolate mead — just stuff chocolate bars and maraschino cherries into a bottle with honey and yeast!”

When he does lives showing how he makes this shit, everybody’s like:

“Jesus Christ! You’re making that wrong!”

“You’re not even fermenting it right!”

“That’s definitely full of botulism.”

He never measures the yeast. There’s no real fermentation process.

He filters it — but filters it through his rotting teeth.

His disgusting, blackened rotten teeth!

Now his whole kitchen cabinet is filled with like… biomass.

But we’re not saying he doesn’t sometimes hit the mark — and successfully makes it alcoholic — which is what we want.

‘Cause he’ll get fucked the fuck up on his mead.

Then he’ll do lives for six hours straight.

Fucking wasted out of his gourd.

And we’ll all be commenting: “UH-OH!”

“UH-OH!!!”

“Cobes, you drunk cross-eyed fuck!”

And he’ll be yelling at us: “You fucking trolls!”

He says his trolls “have no life” — which’s why we troll him.

He tells us “get a life.”

It’s beautiful.

We all set alerts for when he goes live.

Sometimes it’s thousands of people watching at once. Tens of thousand subscribers total.

Wherever we are in the world, in whatever time zone?

None of us wants to miss a minute of it.

Sure, a lot of our friends, or our husbands and wives and whatnot (for those of us who actually have that kind of shit…) — well, they don’t get it.

Are we watching a mentally ill degenerate get plastered on homemade alcohol for our own entertainment?

Fuck yeah we are.

So what?

Just as much as anybody else who’s wasting their life watching the fucking Kardashians.

We watch Cobes.

We’d rather watch Cobes than anything really.

TV shows. Movies.

Every single one of us would rather watch Cobes than four fucking hours of The Brutalist. We’d watch Cobes any day of the week rather than having to watch The Brutalist for thirty goddamn seconds!

Part of it is generational thing, you know?

We literally grew up on the Wild West of the internet as little kids. Snuff videos. Funky Town — which is a cartel beheading video. Two Girls, One Cup. Mr. Hands. Footage from the Iraq War.

Creepy men hitting us up on MySpace when we were nine.

Shit like that.

You do get desensitized. You grow up with this debaucherous world all around you. Look at who’s fucking President, alright?

So, not only do we watch Cobes get wasted on mead, but we also know he huffs duster.

Yeah, that means he sniffs the air from keyboard cleaner.

Doesn’t talk about it. And doesn’t do it on his lives or videos. (Well, maybe one time he slipped and did it on video!) But we can always hear it off screen!

We know he’s huffing duster!

At one point, we had a man on the inside.

We got to a neighbor.

He said: “Yeah, I know exactly who the fuck you’re talking about. That guy’s a menace!”

We’re like: Perfect.

We got the guy to take pics of all the packages outside of Cobes’ front door. Posted them to our Reddit.

There was a shit ton of duster!

One of the Cobra Angels or Cobra Demons probably just Uber Eats’d him fucking five cans of duster from Staples or wherever.

Plus: cases of Peach Schnapps. Cobes loves some brand of seasonal Peach liqueur that you can only get certain months of the year. Easter maybe? Whatever the fuck. We keep him good and stocked on that. Year round.

Of course. Of course outsiders to our little world…?

…you civilians?

Probably judge the fuck outta us.

Yeah, okay. We’re a group of online trolls literally delivering cases of keyboard duster right to this autistic maniac’s door — so the fucker can huff duster!

We get it.

—but we also feed our boy.

He’ll say: “I’m hungry!” and BAM!

Someone Postmates him a sandwich from Subway — only there’s nothing but bread and sauces.

Then there’s the cat food.

Once, someone sent him a 20 pound can of cat food.

That started an absolute trend.

Sometimes he’ll go all Good Samaritan and donate it to the local animal shelter, but we’re like: “No, dirty piggy! Eat the cat food!”

And sometimes he does!

Solid content.

Fucking degenerate weirdo.

But please understand. We’re not all monsters.

We’re the Cobra Demons and Cobra Angels, right?

Some of us worry.

The Angels worry.

We worry Cobes’ll completely fry his brain into oblivion on duster, you know?

Some of us are more quote unquote “responsible” trolls.

Like in the middle of a multi-hour live? When Cobes just passes out for hours at a time?

Sometime’s we’re seriously like: “Is he dead?”

And we feel compelled to do something.

Even when he’s awake sometimes, some of us call for a “Welfare Check.”

He fucking hates that!

He’s like: “I’m fine! I don’t need a fucking Welfare Check you fucking trolls!”

But we just want to make sure he’s not gonna kill himself.

Gotta look out for our boy!

So, yeah, we’ve sent cops to his house like a dozen times.

People online love swatting, okay?

But this is sincere, we swear. It’s out of concern for Cobes.

Most of the time.

(Sometimes it is just for shits and gigs.)

These days Cobes knows all the cops in Casper. And they know him.

Hell, we even know the cops! We see ‘em on his lives, standing in the hallway. Saying they’re investigating a “disturbance” or whatever.

But it’s never a “Full SWAT.”

You know, when you tell the cops someone’s a terrorist building a bomb? Or is gonna shoot up some school? Then the actual SWAT Team busts down doors, guns blazing.

We have more restraint than that.

Ours are more like soft swats.

BTW, we’ve also gotten to know Cobes’ Dad.

Someone got Clint’s cell and we call him over to do Welfare Checks sometimes.

When we aren’t just trolling!

Tellin’ him he’s gotta “get a handle” on his son.

That Cobes needs to be in a mental institution.

That he’s retarded.

(Yes, you little bitch. We use that word.)

The reality is?

Cobes is *not* a functioning adult.

He can’t hold down a job.

Even at a pizza chain!

Sometimes it’s his fault, sometimes it’s ours.

Some Cobra Demon’ll get his boss’ number, call him up, and say shit like: “You know he huffs duster, right!?!”

Fuck jobs, even. Cobes can barely hold down an apartment! Even if Clint pays! He’s always getting eviction warnings for smoking inside (not to mention the soft swats.)

The reality is: Cobes needs us.

He can’t make money off of YouTube ads — his content is way too degenerate for that. There was this one soap company. This weird “manly man” soap company, that would send him “pheromone” soaps. We think maybe he had an affiliate link with them.

Didn’t last.

The Boglim doesn’t bathe much anyway!

So now, basically, the fans slash trolls feed him. We sometimes send him money right to his CashApp when he really needs something.

But it’s more than that.

The Cobra Angels?

We’re his found family.

It doesn’t matter if he’s fighting with his Dad. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t gotten laid in seven years. It doesn’t matter if he can’t fucking spell and he’s literally mentally incapacitated. It doesn’t matter if his teeth are rotting out of his skull and he hasn’t showered in two months. Or that he’s wearing jeans that he pissed himself in on camera. We accept him. We can see how interesting he is. When everyone else in the world has thrown him away and he’s been bullied and trolled his whole life. We know part of it’s unhealthy… of course. But what else is he supposed to do with his life? He’s literally not functional! He’s gonna be an alcoholic anyways. He’s gonna be huffing duster anyways. He likes drinking. He likes huffing duster, you know? He likes listening to Ozzy. He was bullied a lot growing up. His dad replaced him with a family that wasn’t autistic and didn’t have problems. He’s fucking lonely, at the end of the day. So are we! So, we keep him going ‘cuz he doesn’t have anything else. And he’s not a bad guy, really.

All he really wants in life is to have his “Clock Tower Dreamhouse” someday.

With a moat — ‘Cuz, of course, he has enemies.

He may be deep into the occult. “The Dark Arts.” Whatever.

But he’s not malicious.

At least we don’t think so.

That’s why we’re all landing right now at that dinky local airport and at Denver International.

That’s why we’re getting in various Enterprise, Alamo, Hertz and Avis cars and driving as fast as we can to his shitty apartment complex.

We know Cobes has never been in this kind of danger.

Clint’s not answering. (Probably got a new phone after being doxxed so many times!)

And we can’t call the cops either.

Because this time?

What’s happening is entirely our fault.

3. QUEEN COBRA

This whole psychotic, murderous fiasco started with “The Dry Spell.”

Cobes is about 34-years-old. (We think.)

For as long as any of us has known him online, his hobby horse, his other area of special interest, has been “The Dry Spell.”

Basically, our boy hasn’t been laid in over seven years — at least that’s what he’s been willing to admit to us online.

Hard to imagine him ever getting laid, really.

But our boy’s life has definitely gone downhill.

We’ve watched as he’s become more and more of an alcoholic.

More and more derelict.

Compounded by not being able to keep a normal person job.

Huffing keyboard cleaner left and right.

Teeth rotting from homemade mead.

He has no friends.

Just hundreds — maybe thousands — of trolls.

Doxxing his Dad.

Soft-swatting his house.

Sending him cases of Peach Schnapps.

None of these are the ideal conditions that lead to someone getting laid exactly, right?

Well, it is the Year of our Lord 2026.

So, progress!

There is the YouTube algorithm.

And the algorithm is good at pairing you with content creators that it thinks you’re similar to.

Like attracts like!

We’re not sure who commented — or who subscribed to who — first.

But at some point: there she was. In all her inglory.

Melissa.

AKA Methelissa

‘Cuz this crazy bitch?

Most certainly does meth.

Do we have evidence of that?

Well…

Just look at her.

She has that meth look, let’s just say.

Meth mouth. Teeth worse than Cobes!

Scratches all over her arms.

Mysterious sores.

Her face is totally fucked.

Her body is fucked.

Her brain is fucked.

She’s way older than Cobes. (Like 41 or something!)

She lives in her parents’ basement. We think in Jersey. (Sounds about right, right?)

She’s a LOLcow, okay? Look it up.

She posts these crazy, horrible, unedited, poorly lit, meth-fueled, alcohol-fueled videos from her parents’ basement.

She’s definitely mentally ill too. We wouldn’t say autistic, but there’s definitely something wrong with that bitch. And it isn’t just the meth! She was born that way. She came out and somebody hit her on the head with a stick.

She was a prostitute at some point. Or camgirling at least.

Who the fuck’s paying to see that? Well, sometimes it’s not a sexual thing. More like a freak show.

We know her YouTube account was banned multiple times.

Flashing her titties.

Masturbating on camera.

That kind of thing.

This bitch is just a total fucking freak.

So, Methelissa ends up in Cobes’ comments during his lives.

And he recognizes her. Calls her out!

“Oh, look! It’s Melissa!”

(This is how they flirt.)

What a fucking shitshow.

Cobes’ teeth are rotting out of his skull!

He’s fat. He’s bald — but the kind of bald with stringy hair coming down the sides.

He’s obviously not “a catch” by any means!

He’s repulsive!

But next thing we know he ends up in her comments. On her lives.

Her meth-fueled basement rants.

A lot of us end up subscribing to her too, to watch the sparks fucking fly.

A modern day romcom. A real meet cute.

We’re not sure whose idea the Go Fund Me is. Probably the same dumbass Cobra Angel who floated the ill-conceived Puff Search Party back in the day.

Probably somebody in the comments says: “Melissa! You should fly out to see Cobes!”

And she’s probably like: “I have no money! If you guys wanna give me the money…”

‘Cuz she’s a weird beggar kind of streamer. You know the type? Always ‘I need money! I need money! I need money!”

And here’s the thing: it’s not just that we wanted the entertainment. That we needed to luxuriate in the train wreck that was bound to go down. It’s that so many of us, for so many years, have heard Cobes go on and on, over and over and over, nonstop about “The Dry Spell.”

If he’s ever gonna get laid, this is his chance!

We raise the money almost instantly.

Methelissa’s CashApp blows up.

She gets an all-expense-paid trip from Newark to Casper.

On us.

(Not just plane tickets. You gotta keep in mind, there’s enough money left over to fuel their drug and booze and duster-filled fuck fest!)

It’s a big historic moment for our community.

Nobody’s missing a fuckin’ live alert now!

We got the popcorn out. Glued to our screens.

And we aren’t disappointed.

Far from it.

Gets off to a great start!

Methelissa sitting in Cobes’ lap on the throne, and he’s feeling her up on camera.

She’s like: “Oh well, you know he wasn’t complaining with the four times I gave it to him last night!”

And he’s like: “She hand-washed my delicate papusas!”

And does his dastardly Cobes chuckle.

And we’re like: This is disgusting!

They’re both so repulsive, they’re obviously not really attracted to each other, right? They’re in it for the LOLz, for the likes.

They’re doing it ‘cuz there’s literally nobody else on Earth that would fuck them.

Of course, we go right at Cobes in the comments:

“Why the fuck are you banging this old meth hag, Cobes!”

“Jerking off is way better than this!”

“This age gap is *problematic*!”

“She’s taking advantage of our boy!”

But there’s no denying Cobes is happy…

…at first.

During an all-day live, they disappear into the bedroom for hours.

“Retire to the boudoir” so-to-speak. For hours at a time!

We’re like: EWWW!!! Gross!!!

But some of us feel like we’re doing our good deed for the day.

We made it happen for Cobes! We ended “The Dry Spell!”

Which, frankly, was an atrocity. Bigger than the Holocaust in the history of King Cobra.

It’s like we liberated Auschwitz!

But of course, everything quickly fucking devolves.

Everything trends toward entropy, right?

Science.

Especially on the internet.

Keep in mind: they’ve never met in person before and Methelissa just moves in with him!

(Probably with a shit ton of meth!)

She’s supposed to be there for a couple of weeks tops — just visiting — but it ends up being a couple of months.

The longer it goes on, the longer the fans/trolls are like: “How much do you wanna bet she’s not leaving?”

“She’s digging in her heels!”

“She’s like a cuckoo in the nest!”

And what’s worse?

She’s coming onto his livestreams and overtaking them!

At some point she even changes her YouTube handle to “Queen Cobra”!

When that happens? We’re like: “YUCK!!!”

“RUN, COBES RUN!!!”

But she completely takes over.

It’s The Methelissa Show!

And we’re like: “Fuck you, Melissa! We wanna hear Cobes!”

“You dumb bitch!”

“You whore!”

“You dirty, nasty slut!”

“Fuck you, bitch!”

(Even though, technically, we sent her there.)

She’s embedding herself like a tick!

She’s like fucking Lyme’s disease!

And of course, they get drunk — or who knows what else — and they SCREAM at each other.

Nonstop.

They’re up at all hours on completely whacked-out sleep schedules because neither has a normal person job and we’re paying for constant Schnapps and cans of duster delivered straight to the apartment.

They never leave the room.

They barely ever go off live.

The neighbors are complaining to the building management about all the nonstop screaming.

It’s literally insane.

In the comments, we’re like:

“Cobes, you *have* to get rid of her!”

“No diseased vag is worth *this*!”

“This is gonna end *bad!*”

But he won’t listen to us. At all. It’s like she’s brainwashing him.

Pussy-whippin’ our boy!

He’s down bad.

Totally simp-brained.

It’s like they bond against us.

Romeo & fucking Juliet versus the trolls!

What a fucking disaster.

Things escalate even worse when his lifelong hero Ozzy suddenly dies, leaving poor Cobes traumatized and vulnerable.

Crying and mopey.

At some point, we definitely hear her smack him off cam.

A livestream’s going on and they’re standing just off to the side.

And: SMACK!!!

What a huge red flag!

She’s a violent, crazy bitch, right?

And probably blowing clouds!

But then also, at the same time, it’s Cobes, right? He’s just so repulsive. He’s being so antagonistic toward her. And he’s got that thing, a punchable face? How can you not want to just kill him, you know?

Sometimes they mute the mic. But they’re screaming at each other.

And we’re like:

Obviously *we can tell* you’re screaming at each other!

And the next thing we know, they’re fighting and he’s screaming at her:

“You’re a fucking vampire! Venomous! A demoness! A succubus! A barbarian! A cannibal! A supernatural entity! Draining my life force. My precious bodily fluids! You’re evil, Melissa. Sinister. Insidious. Malignant. Maleficent! There’s something seriously wrong with you! It’s like you’re metamorphisizing into a creature. You’re outta control.”

And suddenly the mic gets muted again.

Then, Methelissa tapes up a piece of paper over the webcam!

Now all we see is shadows!

Blurry wrestling?

Worse.

Its ugly.

And then silence.

They’ve been up on live for 20 hours now.

And we can’t tell what’s going on.

We can’t get in touch with Clint.

We can’t even reach the neighbor who took the pics for our Reddit.

And we definitely can’t call the cops.

Not even the Demons want Cobes to go to jail for drugs.

What would we watch then?

Plus, some of us point out, *we* technically *bought* all the drugs!

We caused this entire fucking nightmare.

So here we are. Speeding in our Dollar Cars and Thrifty Cars and Budget Car rentals.

Descending on Casper, Wyoming.

Like locusts.

We need to get there and see for ourselves what the hell’s going on.

So, now we’re gonna pull up in front of Cobes’ shitty apartment complex for real.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR

We don’t know how many of us are here total.

It’s like a flash mob of freaks.

Neckbeards. Shitposters. Edgelords. Cave creatures. Appearing out of nowhere.

None of us have ever met IRL.

None of us even have profile pics on YouTube.

We’re all just fucking lurkers!

Anonymous fucking trolls.

One of the most outspoken of us is known for having a deranged 90s-era Ronald McDonald face.

Other profiles are totally blank.

There’s no leader.

No hierarchy.

This isn’t fucking glee club, or bowling league, or whatever.

No surprise, but our immediate impression:

A lot of us are weirdos.

Some are definitely autistic — maybe that’s why we related to Cobes so much in the first place.

Some of us look about as beat-up, basement-dwelling and degenerate as King Cobra himself.

(None of us look as rough as Methelissa, though. Let’s set that record straight…)

What’s surprising is not that we’re all age brackets or socioeconomic backgrounds or whatever.

We’re not The United Colors of Fucking Benetton.

We’re mostly white.

Mostly poor, to be honest.

(Not sure how some of us even paid to fly here. But, you know: priorities.)

Still, we’re not all the same.

Some of us flew on international flights to be here.

AKA not from around here.

A North Macedonian. Senegalese. Luxembourgian.

Whatever. Welcome to America!

And it must be said: at least one of us is *hotter* than anyone watching food hacks and homemade mead videos has any call to be.

To be clear, we’re all still trolls at the end of the day.

But those of us who’ve made the journey probably fall in the Cobra Angels category more than Demons. We’re the Ride or Die who care the most about our boy.

And maybe we feel a tiny, tiny… smidgeon bit guilty…

So, we all kind of nod to each other, but again, there’s no fucking leadership.

It’s pure chaos.

Somebody gets through to the “lobby.”

But banging on Cobes’ apartment door for an hour yields nada.

Some of us try and search for a neighbor or landlord to key us in.

But that’s fucking fruitless.

The complex is a super low-rent dump. No security. Carpet stains everywhere. Half the shitty florescent lights in the hall? Buzzing or busted. There’s no landlord office or maintenance office. If anybody like that even exists, they’re are far off-site.

Neighbors have either totally cleared out, or barricaded themselves in their apartments, wanting nothing to do with this psychodrama circus.

Some may even be watching the livestream, but probably not — nobody’s called the cops.

Other than us, it feels deserted.

It’s the dead of winter.

The middle of the night.

Who knows what time? (We’ve all been so focused on poor Cobes, we lost track.)

One guy brings a giant sledgehammer out of his rental truck. Says he picked it up at the Home Depot near the Denver airport. We’re all impressed by his preparedness — but Cobra’s door is like a nuclear fucking bunker.

Even the two biggest of us swinging it around can’t make a dent in that thing.

“I got an idea!” the Hot Girl says. “Let’s get a microwave, plug it in the hallway, put it by the door, toss in some gunpowder — then set it to Popcorn Mode!”

Some of us actually consider this brain-rotted plan.

It might work, but she’s also just insanely hot — so maybe our brains are the ones malfunctioning.

(A lot of us obviously don’t get out much. Never seen a girl this hot — outside of porn.)

A group goes outside to case the place. Despite the freezing fucking cold, we manage to Kumbaya and work together. We strip down a few layers and tie our coats and jackets into a makeshift rope to reach the fire escape. (We can’t believe a dump like this even has a working fire escape!) But we manage to pull the ladder down with a rusty creak.

The bravest of us climb up, one-by-one, to the second floor.

We know this is Cobes’ floor.

The wind howls.

We press our face up against the window, but our breath fogs it up.

Doesn’t matter — it’s too dark to see anyway.

We look at each other.

What are we supposed to do now?

One of us pulls off a Timblerand boot, right off the foot.

He takes the heel and smashes the window.

Shards of glass rain down on some of us, exploding at our feet.

“What the fuck? A warning woulda been nice!”

But the brave ones are already jumping inside.

It’s pitch black.

We pad around the walls looking for a light switch.

Somebody knocks over a bucket full of long wood rods, smashes down to the floor.

King Cobra’s Wands.

We’re in his bedroom. We’ve seen this a million times on his lives!

Somebody remembers where the light switch is and flips it on.

It’s a weird, emo, BDSM-dungeon, burlesque-whore-house red light.

—and strobing like a bad headache.

Of course, Ozzy memorabilia all over the walls.

A giant bowl of cigarette butts and roaches.

That’s when we see him: slumped over on the floor in a pile of duster cans.

Someone turns him over.

Cans clink.

But it’s *not* Cobes.

It’s his Dad, Clint.

Slumped over a kitchen knife.

(The kind we’ve all watched Cobes use to carefully open up five-layer burritos to shove a Doritos Locos tacos inside as part of a “food hack.”)

Now it’s clear: blood shining the floor.

It’s black, but glints wet in the strobing red light.

Clint’s dead.

Before we open the bedroom door, we distribute the wands amongst ourselves. They’re fucking ridiculous, but it’s better than rollin’ out of here naked. (We’re all shocked there’s no better weapons in Cobes’ room. He seems like the kind of guy who collects ninja stars at least. Something.)

But no, the truth is, Cobes is a giant fucking dork. We basically have Harry Potter wands.

Except one guy: he grabs the bloody murder weapon. (Obviously not a genius.)

Shaking our heads, we crack open the door and quietly slip down the hall.

Sure, we might be trying to act like an organized military operation on reconnaissance, but who the fuck are we kidding?

We’re a bunch of internet gargoyles clinging to magic wands.

Well, at least the mystery doesn’t last that long.

Methelissa definitely has meth!

We see glass pipes with blackened bulbs all over the place.

Oil burners.

Piles of cheap, busted lighters. Zip-lock baggies torn to shreds.

Broken glass, melted plastic, foil scraps everywhere. Burn marks on tables, floors, ceilings.

Disassembled electronics with the guts spilled out. Melted down copper wires. Garbage bags full of fuck knows what.

In the middle of this demented horror house there he sits:

King Cobra. On his throne.

Alive.

But obviously not well.

He’s got one of his own filthy, disgusting brown socks stuffed in his mouth, wrapped in black electric tape. Hands tied.

By now, the sledgehammer guys amongst us have taken down the front door.

So, we’re all reunited. Formed like Voltron.

It’s the Hot Girl who manages to get to Cobes first.

Un-peels the black tape. Pulls out the brown sock.

“Wait, who are you?” Cobes says.

The Hot Girl smiles. “You might recognize me as Ronald McDonald!”

His eyes bulge.

“You’re one of my trolls???” He looks around and is so fucking moved for a second it looks like he’s about to cry black eyeliner tears. “You all came for me?”

“Of course we did,” we say. “We’re the Cobra Angels.”

He flinches at the word “cobra.”

“Fuck!” he says. “That bitch let my cobra out!”

He motions to the enclosure that used to house Puff. It’s wide open. The little cage door swinging.

“You have a fucking *cobra* and we didn’t know about it?” we all murmur.

“You think I want PETA up my ass? Fucking ASPCA?” he says. “There’s a lot you fucking trolls don’t know.”

We’re dubious about that.

We pride ourselves on knowing everything.

But we’re all leaning in now, hoping for an info dump from our boy.

“Melissa’s pregnant…” he whispers.

“Get the fuck out of here!” we say.

A Little Prince Cobra’s on the way.

Some of us marvel: we brought life into the world! We did that! If that doesn’t give you a God Complex, then what does?

“One more thing…” Cobes adds, pulling tape off his arms. “He bit her. My cobra bit her.”

Is he fucking serious?

“Turned her fucking rabid. Violent. Insane.”

“You sure it’s not just the meth!?!” one of us says.

Cobes shakes his head. “I swear. It’s almost… supernatural.”

We can see from his beady eyes, behind his too-small Medicaid glasses, that he believes this. He believes in demonic possession. Evil entities. He always has. Ranted about it online for decades.

“So, she’s like an actual Cobra Demon?” one of us says.

“What is it with you trolls! Not everything’s a fucking joke.”

That’s when we hear something:

The kitchen door swinging open.

We finally see her in silhouette. In all her inglory.

She could be pregnant — or just fat. Who knows?

She’s chugging a giant vat of mead. Botulism. Biomass.

The cobra slithers up her shoulder, coils around her scratched-up arm.

She tosses the mead with a clank and lifts one of King Cobra’s swords in the air. She clasps a handful ninja stars in a bloody fist.

Then she roars.

She actually fucking roars.

Queen fucking Cobra.

“I told you,” Cobes shudders. “This is as real as your dumbass lives will ever get!”

At that moment, a ninja star goes SPELUNK into the chest of the biggest of us.

He drops with his sledgehammer to the floor.

That’s when the Hot Girl says something out loud that we’ve seen her type hundreds of times into the comments as “Demented Ronald McDonald.”

Like any good troll, her timing’s perfect.

She looks at Melissa and says:

“UH OH!”

Max Winter

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