Stories

/✄✄✄✄/ – Heath Ison

You peak out the blinds of your home. The moon is bright like a god’s flashlight emitting an unprecedented omnipresence in which even the dead would awake from their most decaying vessels of post-earth.

Stepping back from the blinds, you sit down on your couch. The microwave clock reads 11:53 PM. Seven more minutes… it will begin in seven more minutes…

You tell yourself you are not aware of what is about to happen to expand the splendor and suspense of what you signed up for.

Screwdriver…

Wine bottle…

Baseball bat…

Toilet lid…

Stop that!

You remember—you must forget. This isn’t suppose to happen.

Distraction. That’s what you need. You pick up the TV remote and turn it on. A sitcom about a super americanized nutritious family is on. You turn up the volume.

Not enough distraction. This is the Age of Distraction, I can do better than this.

You grab your phone that sits on the couch cushion to your right. Scrolling through possible virtual lovers, you feel a lack of attraction illuminating off your screen, so you hit the ARTIFICIAL RANDOMIZATION button in hopes of better results. This is futile as you do this up to five minutes.

A sound can be heard from the front door. Clicking and sliding of metal. Click, slide, click, slide. You decide to get up and look out the peep hole. You see no one outside but open the door regardless. The night chill hits your face to an absence of the source of the sound. That’s enough. There’s nobody there. Begins to close the door.

“DIE MOTHERFUCKER!” screams a man leaping into your apartment before you can shut the door completely. You jump back in “terror” as he comes at you with a knife (the Michael Myers variant).

EQUIPPED: SCREWDRIVER

You grab the screwdriver that rests on the top of the air conditioning unit attached to the wall by the right of the door. The most common super proletariat item in your inventory. The most utile object that “reminds” you that you are home.

You dodge his blade as the home invader lunges at you, leaving you room to execute a side-step maneuver which leaves you an opening to your attacker. Gripping the screwdriver tightly, you plunge it into the side of his neck and pull it back out.

The unknown invader grabs his fresh wound. He begins to glitch out, neon red pixels projectiling from his neck. He makes loud, painful moans that become compressed and distorted. He falls to the ground with his body blinking in and out until he disappears completely.

Ok…

There is no time to rest or process what has just occurred as two more masked intruders come through the front door armed with knives.

“What do you want from me?! You will take nothing! I plan to kill you all! To soak your blood on my hard-earned possessions! You megalomaniacal sons-of-bitches!” This is what you yell.

With screwdriver still in hand you perform another evasive maneuver and penetrate one of the invader’s eye sockets. Blood ejaculates like a porn star on cocaine as he falls to the ground. This gives the other invader an opportunity to tackle you, bringing the chaos to the kitchen as he is on top of you.

EQUIPPED: WINE BOTTLE

You headbutt the assailant before he can stab you. You stretch out your arm to the kitchen counter, taking ahold of the wine bottle. You then smash the wine bottle on the hard kitchen floor, creating a glass shard which you grip tightly, painlessly, and stab the side of your attacker’s torso.

“Bills to be paid!” you scream.

Pixelated blood spurts. You knee him to the balls either for fun or just because. He groans as you push him off of you. You stand up out of breath, “health” still stable and scream, “I am the god of my home!”

There is not enough for a victory pose as the other invader, screwdriver still impaled into his skull, stands up and comes after you. You are weaponless as the glass shard no longer exists.

As you barrel roll pass your screw-drived impaled attacker and into the bedroom, you grab ahold of the aluminum baseball bat that is up against the wall next to the bedroom door.

EQUIPPED: BASEBALL BAT

Your next defensive attack is the common All-American swing. You take aim but all is a transparent blur of undefined pandemonium so you miss the masked invader and hit the bedroom door panel which sends numb vibrations through your hands, forcing you to drop the bat.

Oh fuck!

The raged out invader is just a few feet away and comes charging at you. You think that this is the end—life over—but you remember the most menacing weapon of all: the toilet lid. The bedroom bathroom is right there, no more games. You swiftly go into the bathroom, swipe off the toilet paper and glass bowl of marbles that sits on top, and pull off the top lid of the toilet.

EQUIPPED: TOILET LID

This is all too easy. Maybe too easy…

Full force. Bring lid over top of head like sledgehammer. Bashes opponent’s skull. You can hear a crack of doom.

The masked attacker, invader, psychopath—whatever you want to call him —falls to his demise and his body disappears into the virtual domain of the damned.

SIMULATION COMPLETE

CONGRATULATIONS

                            YOU HAVE UPGRADED TO
                 SUPER PROLETARIAT HOME DEFENDER CLASS C