Dateline: NEW YORK CITY—Jimmy Fallon, host of The Tonight Show, played softball with his guests while a serial killer crept through the studio, killing the members of the live audience one by one as they applauded the antics of the family-friendly host and comedian.
Grinning ear to ear, Mr. Fallon greeted his first guest, actress Skinny Diva, by licking her feet as she walked to her chair. Living up to his reputation for being a toady, he then squatted atop his desk, listening intently as she sadly related that she was feeling under the weather.
“But when you sneeze,” Mr. Fallon replied, “I’ll bet the snot that flies out of your nose is just stupendous! It must be the slimiest, greenest mucus on the eastern seaboard. Can we get a close-up of her nostrils? Sneeze once for us, Skinny!”
Mr. Fallon giggled as she obliged, spraying his face with thick, chunky phlegm. Fallon shuddered with pleasure and said, “I love your mucus.”
He then handed her a kid’s baseball glove and lobbed a softball into her lap.
“Even when she doesn’t catch the ball,” he said to the audience, “she’s a national treasure. Did you see how the ball just bounced off her thigh and came to rest in her lap? Just wonderful! That’s the best coming to rest of a softball I’ve ever seen. And I say that having played softball with each and every one of my guests. Give her another hand, ladies and gentlemen! I don’t think she feels special enough.”
Hidden cameras later revealed that while the pair gently tossed the softball back and forth, a notorious serial killer, dressed in black, stalked the audience members as he crawled between the rows of seated young men and women while they were transfixed by Mr. Fallon’s comedy stylings.
One by one, the victims’ heads slumped forward as the killer hacked and slashed the audience members to death, their screams lost in the raucous applause and laughter filling the studio.
The second guest, actress Cutesy Starlet, presented Fallon with a small, plain rock.
“My God,” he said as he examined the rock, “I love this, I absolutely love it. And I love your nail polish and the skin crease in your armpit and the shadow your body casts on the chair. This rock, though, is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, because it’s what you brought to my show.”
“I found it in my backyard,” she replied. “And that’s all I want to say tonight.”
Mr. Fallon beamed with glee as he held the rock to his chest. “This is the greatest day of my life,” he said. “I’m so happy right now. I’ve never been this happy before,” he assured his audience, “unless you count a moment ago or a few moments before that moment.
“Isn’t she the greatest human being alive?” he asked the audience, many of whom were by that point bloody corpses. “She’s actually giving me this common rock. Can you believe what a hero she is?”
His grin briefly faltered when he apparently thought he might be alienating his audience, but he reassured them by saying, “But isn’t she also perfectly normal and just like all you viewers at home? Isn’t she just average and unthreatening and not at all one of the richest one percent like me? Give her another round of applause!”
“I didn’t say I’m giving you the rock,” she pointed out. “I just brought it for everyone to look at.”
Mr. Fallon broke out the softball to liven up the five minutes during which he and his guest stared joyfully at the rock on his desk.
Meanwhile, the killer slew the remaining fans in the audience before escaping through a back door.
At a press conference held the next day, Jimmy Fallon invited the killer to be a guest on his show.
“From what I saw of your handiwork from the hidden camera footage,” he said in an open statement to the killer, “I can tell you’re highly skilled with a blade. I love the way you sawed off those limbs. I’d just beg you to lay your knife on my desk so I could drool over it. I’m already peeing a little from anticipation.”