Ah, the rush of being dropped headfirst into the deep end, living life deliberately in the thick of it. This shit here is my sweet spot, what gets me out of the wrong side of my bed every morning.
The more bullets that whiz by my skull, the more fearless I become. The Good Guys are shooting at the Bad Guys. The Bad Guys are firing back with no regard for all the screaming civilians running about. And me? I’m not Good or Bad. I’m the thing in the middle that neither side likes to acknowledge exists.
I wonder what caused everybody to start shooting at each other. I have a smarting suspicion it’s something I did. I mean, I was hobnobbing with both sides hot and heavy all afternoon. If someone told someone that I said a certain something to someone else, it could lead to entire echelons of Eden and Evil engaging in wholesale elimination of enemy factions. All over a misunderstanding! Ain’t that bureaucracy for you?
Either way, this party is deep-fried fucked now. Time to blast my way out of here before the Good Guys or Bad Guys figure out that I’m the one to blame for this whole clusterfuckabug. It’s not like I wanted things to get so dramatic. Although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see it coming. That’s like saying you didn’t know what to expect when you light a cigarette before peering into a can of gasoline. Good Guys + Bad Guys multiplied by Little Old Me = KA-fucking-BOOMEE-O. Hard to argue with Einsteinian math like that. Me = mc screwed.
A woman runs by to my immediate left, popping into sight from my blind spot. She doesn’t seem scared enough to be a civvy, so I shoot her in the skull with a double-tap of my pistol, her brains shooting from the once-safe home of her cranium in twin crimson fireworks.
I want to howl like a wolf with the thrill of the fight upon me, but know it would be the equivalent of drawing a big red target on my back. Fuck that noise. That’s a one-way invitation to Swiss Cheese Town, and my body is too pretty for heavy ventilation.
This might sound crazy, given my penchant for spilling plasma, but the other day, I finally gave that movie The Exorcist a shot, and I think it really messed with my mind. I had always heard of people having strong reactions to it, but I figured that was the ravings of the weakwilled. Still, I was curious. So, I’m watching it, and, instead of scary, this movie is corny as shit. I mean, these are some of the cheesiest effects I’ve ever seen. And yet. Yet. Fuck. Anyways, there’s a scene where they send this crazy little possessed girl to the hospital, thinking whatever is wrong with their poor child is medical in nature rather than supernatural. While she is at her checkup, the doctors draw copious amounts of blood from her tender neck. And then... Fingers fell upon my shoulder. Head went cold, brain icicles. All black. Woke up on floor. Beer spilled everywhere.
Bang! Die, bitch!
A mountain of bodies is steadily piling up around me as the war rages on. Soon, people on both sides will realize I’m hiding in the middle and jacking up all their blokes. It’s time to find a fresh hideyhole before I get Anne Frank’d.
Music blares in my skull as I pop from my spot, some epic pock-rock anthem to soundtrack my action movie sprinting scene. I can’t tell who is supposed to be Good or Bad, I just pop every poor sucker unlucky enough to be in my way. Every second is a death lottery, a million chances for the wheel of bullets to land on my name as I navigate the field of battle.
All around me is red mist, blood practically pooling midair in precipitous clouds. One of my bullets enters someones eye, bounces around inside their skull for a dozen or so ricochets, then leaves them puking up the paste of their brain matter as it pours down into their throat and mouth. A slug through the back of someone’s skull leaves their teeth exploding outward, shooting like stars across the room before embedding themselves as shrapnel in a Bad Guy’s neck. I plug lead in someone’s jugular and watch blood explode out in ribbons, the hymen of their circulatory system thoroughly popped.
This. Is. Living.
I see a man on his way out an EXIT door and gun him down as he is halfway through it. He collapses in the frame, keeping it propped open. This saves me the effort of having to work a doorknob while also shooting down all the Goodies and Baddies on my ass.
Freedom!
I dart out the door, leaving yet another mess behind for some poor shlubs to clean up. I find myself in a dark hall. Wish there was some light so I knew how far it went. I’m running, but every step has me worried I’ll collide head-first with a wall and shatter every bone in my handsome face.
And then.
Fingers fall upon my shoulder, spinning me around. How somebody was able to sneak up on me while I was running is flabbergasting. And yet, here I am, caught in the steel grip of some unseen enemy.
I fire my gun into the darkness but, if I hit my assailant, it only caused their thick fingers to dig deeper into my flesh. A scream wells up inside me from a cavern I never knew existed, some sense-memory buried deep down under a hundred-thousand generations of human evolution kicking back into gear after a long dormancy. Every pore in my body is wrenched open, sweat bubbling forth to wash the splattered layer of blood from my skin.
My consciousness is a rollercoaster. I can’t stand much longer. Dizzy.
And, in spite of my current situation, I find my mind suddenly flashing back to that damned movie. I rewatch the entire film in my mind in the fraction of a second. But how? I never even saw the ending, I fainted and then was too nervous to actually finish it.
The fingers on my shoulder dig into my neck, piercing flesh, shredding muscles beneath their pressure. My body becomes a burst fire hydrant, my inside juices exploding out through its burst pipes.
How can I tell if I’m blacking out when this corridor is already midnight dark? Everything is swimming. I could be in the deepest recesses of space for all I know, that fabled place where no sun’s rays lick for quadrillions of light years across, a nightmare realm where some sinister sable entity cultivates itself at its center, growing darker by the decade, waiting to explode in what Those In The Know call the Big Negative-Bang, the equivalent of a trillion trillion trillion trillion nuclear bombs of uncreation firing off to coat all corners of existence.
No one ever said living was easy. Or, if they did, they should be shot.