The corn dogs. THE CORN DOGS. They were everywhere. He didn't know how they got there but there they were.

Professor Kiosk picked up a particularly sugar-covered one and lifted it to his nose. Just as he thought: fake. Fake as the day was long.

Who would do such a thing? Corn dogs were sacred. Corn dogs would never hurt a fly. Why would someone besmirch their good name by putting fake ones out into the world? This was a mystery that needed solving. But first, Professor Kiosk had to have a real corn dog to set his mental wheels into motion.

Just as he pulled up to the Dog Haus a thunderstorm began to rumble in the distance. He got out of his beat up Toyota Yaris and looked around for any ne'er-do-wells that might have followed him on his quest. Fortunately there was nothing but a light drizzle that had begun to wet his collar. He quickly fled inside the restaurant to seek his sustenance.

He stepped up to the counter and the woman behind it looked at him with cold, dead eyes. "Welcome to Dog Haus, home of the Haus Dog. What can I get you?"

"I'll take one of your finest corn dogs, please. Oh, and make it plant-based sausage." Professor Kiosk ate vegan meals most of the time for reasons that shall remain unspoken lest they alienate his core audience of corn dog lovers.

"Coming right up. You want a drink with that?"

"Two, in fact. One for me and one for my corn dog."

The woman behind the counter looked at him strangely and rolled her eyes. "Whatever, sir. Take a number."

Professor Kiosk took his number and sat at the counter waiting for his food to arrive. When it was delivered to his seat he picked it up and admired its crispy exterior. Just as he was about to take a bite, a man burst through the glass doors to the restaurant, shattering the glass and laughing. "WHERE IS PROFESSOR KIOSK!?" he shouted at the customers.

Kiosk leapt into action. He fashioned the end of his corn dog's stick into a shiv (just don't ask how). He threw it at the man and it pierced his right lung, causing him to fall to the floor.

"NO! I was just here to tell you your lifetime supply of corn dogs was delivered to your address," the man said struggling to breathe.

"Then why did you come running through the glass like that?" Professor Kiosk inquired.

"Sorry, I just got excited. Corn dogs are serious business, you know." And with that, he died.

As Kiosk turned around, he saw the woman behind the counter smiling. She began to slow clap.

"Kiosk you fool," she said, pulling off a mask to reveal a dark-haired man underneath. "It was I who littered the town with fake corn dogs. Now you've murdered an innocent man and will be put away for good!"

"NOOOOOOOOOO!" Kiosk couldn't believe what he was hearing. Fake corn dogs everywhere AND he didn't get to enjoy his real corn dog before having to deal with this shit? The world was conspiring against him and he didn't like it one bit.

"Your days of tyranny are over, Mr. Fakey-Fake!" he yelled. "I'll make sure you can never fool anyone with your faux dogs ever again!"

"You'll have to catch me first," the dark-haired man said, throwing a smoke bomb on the ground in front of him. Laughing the cloud of smoke enveloped him and Kiosk had a sinking feeling that he would have to pay for this trickery.

As the smoke cleared, the dark-haired man was still there, looking a bit confused. "WHAT is going on!? I paid good money to that ninja!"

Kiosk took his opportunity and threw one of his drinks in the dark-haired man's face while sipping at the other one. It was then that the dark-haired man began to melt.

Just as Kiosk had suspected: this man was made of synthetic additives. That was why he had made the faux corn dogs: so that he wouldn't be the only fake thing in existence that was shaped like meat. Never mind all of the chew toys for dogs that are shaped like steaks. Those don't count for the purposes of this story.

"I'm melting! What a world, what a world!" Kiosk sneered. Couldn't even come up with his own original lines, the faker.

When the cops showed up they let Kiosk off with a warning, understanding that corn dogs were indeed serious business. "Just don't let it happen again," they said. "You know how families get when their loved ones are mistakenly murdered over fake corn dogs. They go crazy. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world."

"Stay safe," Kiosk told them. And off into the sunset he did ride, on a horse with no name that had suddenly appeared because he felt like that would make a good ending to the story.

He raised his fist as the horse trotted away: "CORN DOGS FOREVER!!!"