Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 8-- The New Kid In (Dial)Town

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 8-- The New Kid in (Dial)Town

Once we were free of those weird mobsters, getting through the rest of the area was a breeze. Since it was practically the middle of the night, not many people were out and about. The only people we passed were either drunk or high off their balls and posed no problem to us. Even if they did, I’m sure Norm would have dealt with them efficiently. 

I noticed the way the shorter, suburban-style houses and shacks slowly morphed into staggeringly tall, urban buildings. Then the area became more recognizable; I spotted the familiar bank and the movie theater that I never went to, though I often found myself curious what movies were like in a world where everybody had phones for heads. I would have gone to see a movie, but the first time I walked in there, the kid working the concessions counter kept calling my head ‘groovy’ and ‘radical’ to the point of it being excessive. Oh, and I got harassed by a vengeful spirit, so that discouraged me from returning. 

The streets were empty, save for the occasional homeless person or rabid raccoon. One of them talked to me once. A raccoon, not a homeless person. It was kind of crazy. I can’t quite remember what he said, but I think it was some kind of cryptic message foretelling the arrival of some ancient God. And no, I had not consumed any nectar… that I knew of. 

“Welcome to Uptown Dialtown, Mr. Allen,” I turned to face Norm, who made a face at the way I referred to him. “Where the air smells like crystal meth, and the crystal meth smells like… actually, nevermind.” I waved my hand dismissively. “I’ve never actually smelled the crystal meth.”

“Damn.” Norm’s Sharpied eyes were wide with what seemed to be awe, scanning his surroundings and taking it all in. “This is Uptown Dialtown? This place has gone t’ shit.”

“Yeah, it does that,” I winced. “I have good news and bad news.”

The cowboy turned to me with a confused expression. He gestured for me to go on. 

“The good news is that Mingus’ office is close by. The bad news is that we’re in Uptown Dialtown. This place sucks ass, and we also might meet God, which is never good.” I looked around skeptically, analyzing our immediately area to see if the dogman I spoke of was nearby. He wasn’t. Thank–... I will not be finishing that statement. Might summon him or something.

Norm scoffed cynically. “I don’t think so, pardner. God lives up there,” he pointed to the darkened sky with the hand that wasn’t holding a revolver. “We won’t be meetin’ him tonight. At least, I hope we won’t be.”

I shrugged. “Alright, Norm. Alright.”

There was a brief pause before Norm spoke once more. “Where to?”

I sucked in a small breath through my teeth. “Probably the subway. I don’t feel like walking the fifteen minutes it takes to get there.” I didn’t allow him the time to object to taking the subway, marching in the direction of the nearest station entrance. 

It didn’t take long to get to the station. We descended the gross concrete stairs to the platform and checked to see if anyone was looking before hopping the turnstile. Our only witness was a stray cat, which I immediately threatened to get it to swear that it wouldn’t tell. It promptly scratched at my phone-face and sprinted away. I’m pretty sure Norm thought I was a psychopath. 

Regardless, we had some time before the train to Downtown Dialtown would arrive. The trains ran 24/7 for some odd reason, but that was none of my business. I just wanted to get out of there before Rat Hour hit. 

We stood in silence for a few moments before Norm broke it. “...Say, (Y/N), I’m not cut out fer this, am I?” 

My metaphorical eyebrows lifted in shock. “Damn, dude, that’s a deep question. And out of nowhere, too. What prompted that?”

He shrugged. “‘m not sure. I s’pose it jus’ dawned on me that I’ve been doin’ literally nothin’ fer th’ several years it’s been since I jumped int’ the future.” He took a breath. I noticed his reluctance to look at me. “I had a life before. I did bricklayin’, joined th’ Airforce, worked fer NASA… I even got int’ the good graces o’ th’ President himself.” A solemn expression crossed his bag-face. “Now look at me. I’ve been hidin’ away in a shack fer years, threatenin’ anyone who came t’ my door.”

I fell silent for a moment, looking down at the grimy tile floor. When I spoke, my voice was quiet and contemplative. “Well… you’re not doing that anymore, are you? Once Mingus is dead, you’ll be able to get back to your life. Minus the wife, of course, but–” I winced. Probably shouldn’t have brought up the dead wife. 

Norm didn’t seem to notice my insensitive mentioning of his late wife. He continued, “‘m not sure I can go about life as I did before. Everythin’s so… different. Everyone’s got phones fer heads, even you.”

I frowned– or I would have, if I didn’t have a phone for a head. “Hey, this wasn’t my choice, I kinda just… spawned in here like this.”

“But still,” Norm interjected, “I won’t be accepted here. That’s jus’ the truth o’ it.” His voice became more intense as he folded his arms in front of his chest. “‘m not sure if I can even go through with this plan o’ ours. Once we do get rid o’ th’ cat, what then? I run off somewhere remote where I won’t be discriminated against? I won’t even be able t’ enjoy the fruits o’ my labor.”

I looked up at him. “Once we’re done murdering Mingus, we need to find a way to get me back home, remember? What you do after that, I’m sure it won’t be too bad.” The words felt foreign from my own speaker. They didn’t feel…right. 

“Look, pardner. I got no idea how we’re gonna find ya a way back to… wherever y’came from. I dunno how long it’ll take us. I jus’ know it won’t be long enough.” That last part was mumbled, but I still caught it. I raised an eyebrow and began to question it, but he kept talking. “Yer one o’ the few people left in this godforsaken town that talks t’me like I’m a human bein’. Maybe it’s cuz ya had a human head once. But I dunno what I’ll do without ya, pardner.”

I felt my stomach flip. He cared about me. I don’t know what it was, but I did feel like I connected to him more than the other NPCs in this universe. I felt allowed to connect with him. Deep down, I knew it was only because we supplied each other something we were deprived of, but I felt lucky to know him. 

“Thanks, Norm,” I borderline whispered. “That means a lot.” 

It was all I could say. I always felt I never said enough in situations like those, but right then, I felt like I had too much to say. But I said none of it. The train was approaching anyway. 

But something had been bothering me. I narrowed my metaphorical eyes at Norm’s American flag cowboy hat before reaching up to lift it from his head. He seemed completely taken aback, even almost offended. I carefully rotated the hat and placed it back on his head. He looked at me like I was completely insane. I shrugged. “It was on backwards.” 

It may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn what little skin I could see of Norm’s neck reddened in embarrassment. 

We boarded the train in content silence. As I expected, the train car was completely empty aside from the occasional rat or cockroach. Standard train protocol, y’know. We didn’t sit down, since neither of us trusted the cleanliness of the seats, but we did hold onto the grab rails for safety’s sake. 

“Hey, uh, hey Norm?” I broke the silence with an inquisitive but mildly amused tone. 

Norm hummed in acknowledgement, turning his head to look at me rather than the roach in the corner. 

I stifled a torrent of snickers that threatened to leave my speakers. “...Is-Is your middle name Gaylord?” 

He immediately became furious, sticky note displaying an aggravated expression. His hands gestured wildly. “My middle name ain’t Gaylord! How many times do I need t’ say this t’ people?!” 

Soon enough, the train began approaching the Downtown Dialtown station. I was relieved– the scent of black mold on that train was becoming atrocious. I turned to Norm once more. “Okay, what’s the plan? We haven’t really come up with how exactly to assassinate Mingus.”

The space cowboy paused to think about my question. “We could always use ya as a distraction while I go ‘n pump ‘er full o’ lead.”

I tensed. I’m not good at distractions– I’m far too awkward for that. I would end up accidentally spilling our whole plan to whoever was guarding the Mayor’s office. It seemed Norm picked up on my hesitation and began proposing a different plan. “How about we break in? Reinforced glass can’t be that difficult ‘t break.”

As I was about to bring up an idea of my own, I noticed the train’s movement become rather rickety. That was odd– Dialtown’s trains were straight ass, but the tracks were fine. At least, they were most of the time. It seemed Norm noticed it too. “Y’feel that?”

I nodded slowly, gripping the rail a little harder. “Probably just some turbulence or something. We’ll be fine, we’re almost–”

There was a distant crashing noise. I froze. Norm froze. My voice became more high-pitched. “Okay, yep, not fine. Get your gun out.”

The cowboy was happy to oblige, retrieving his revolver from its holster and holding it at the ready. I had no weapon, but I brandished my boney fists the best I could. Norm gave me a look. I shrugged. He shook his head. I lowered my fists. 

Not long after Norm pulled his gun from the holster, there was yet another crashing noise, followed by a damn near inhuman screech. When did I sign up to be Doom Guy and conquer the souls of the damned? What the shit?

Before I could even process what had happened, a massive hole opened up in the ceiling of the locomotive right above my head. Dust and pieces of shrapnel went scattering about and I found myself screaming as I saw a silhouetted figure rocketing toward me from the ceiling. Norm damn near tackled me out of the way and pushed me back, shielding me with his body. Alright, okay. Keep it together. 

I peered over Norm’s shoulder to find a person standing at a whopping almost five feet tall, clad in a blue hoodie, neon green basketball shorts, and straight-up twinkle toes. He had a purple phone head and seemed completely unphased by the fact that he just slammed through a train car’s roof unharmed.

…Little Billy. 

“Oh, come the fuck on!” I shouted from behind Norm. I don’t think I’ve ever sounded more pissed off. 

“What’s up, bozos?!” Called Little Billy in his nasally, obnoxious ass voice. I noticed the cowboy in front of me tense. 

“Good Lord, not another one o’ those mobster fellers,” he muttered indignantly. “And it’s a youngin’? Those varmints ‘ave reached a new low.”

I opened my mouth to object, but Little Billy beat me to it. “Nuh-uh! I’m not in the mob! I’m something much worse.” 

When Norm glanced back at me, concerned, I sighed heavily while resting my hand on my dial. “Yeah, he’s worse.”

The cowboy leaned in to whisper to me, “But he’s jus’ a kid.”

Little Billy interjected, somehow hearing Norm despite his whispering. “Yeah! I’m a kid! That means I can get away with all kinds of absolutely diabolical shit!” 

Norm’s sticky-note jaw dropped and he turned to face Little Billy once again. “Who taught y’that kind o’ language?” 

The child jutted a thumb toward his chest. “Me, duh! I came up with most of this ‘language,’ bozo!”

Norm shook his head. “Good Lord, what ‘as this world come t’?”

“But anyway, we got bigger fish to fry!” Billy exclaimed, kicking aside a fallen piece of shrapnel. I flinched as it sailed past Norm and I and slammed into the wall of the train. Speaking of, it was steadily slowing down– just a few more seconds and we could book it. 

I raised my hand and asked “Hey, Little Billy, how did Mingus figure out what we were doing?

Billy shrugged. “Cameras.” The child continued, “I kinda suspected you two would be able to deal with Shooty and Stabby. They’re dumbasses. But me, I have the power to perform an evil monologue.”

As Billy continued yapping, the train finally came to a stop. I nudged Norm. “We have to run. We won’t be able to fight this little shit, not even with a gun. He’s probably rigged this whole car with explosives.” 

Norm looked at me skeptically and mumbled back to me, saying “I believe ya. I ain’t shootin’ a kid anyway.” He slowly holstered his revolver. 

I moved to bolt out of there, but I noticed that the doors hadn’t opened automatically like they were supposed to. I hurriedly turned to Billy and interrupted his villain monologue. “What the fuck did you do to the doors, you little shit?!”

He halted his yapping and sagged. “I glued ‘em together with silly string, bozos! No escape for you!” 

There was a brief moment of awkward silence as Norm retrieved his revolver from its holster, slowly aimed it toward the window on the sliding door, and cocked it. Billy looked at the gun, then at Norm, then at me. I stepped out of the line of fire. 

Norm fired at the window, cracking it enough for me to elbow the hell out of it and shatter it completely. Thank phone-christ for my long sleeves, because I definitely would have had some glass shards in my elbow otherwise. Norm ran up to me and assisted me in climbing out of the window, all while Billy watched in silence. 

Soon enough, we had made it out of the train car and were booking it toward the stairs out of the station. I glanced over my shoulder to find Billy following at a leisurely pace. Why was that more menacing than it would be if he were sprinting after us?! 

“Norm, jesus christ, we gotta find a place to hide or something! It’s only a matter of time until he starts hurling grenades at us!” I cried in a winded voice. 

“Grenades? How did this kid git ‘is ‘ands on grenades?” Norm called back. 

“I dunno, man, it’s Little Billy! He’s an enigma!” 

That was all I said before we reached the stairs, sprinting up them as best as we could. The streets of Downtown Dialtown weren’t as empty as Uptown’s, but still rather barren nonetheless. It was mostly occupied by hookers and homeless people. 

I honestly had no idea where I was going. I did frequent Downtown more than I did Uptown, but my mind was fogged by adrenaline and I wound up turning into a random alley. I skidded to a stop in front of a dumpster, getting an excellent idea. “Norm, get in the dumpster.”

Norm made a disgusted face. “...What?”

I lifted the lid of the dumpster and gestured for him to climb inside. I reasoned in a sing-song voice “Good place to hiiiide.”

Making violently confused gestures with his hands, Norm approached the dumpster and placed his hands on its rim before hoisting himself up and inside. I heard his body thud when it made contact with the bottom of the dumpster and took it as a sign that the container was mostly empty. 

I mimicked his motions, giving the alley a once-over with my optical sensors just to make sure Billy didn’t see us climb inside. Then I pulled myself into the container. Once inside, I knelt and pulled the lid closed. I let out a sigh of relief, mostly unphased by the scent of garbage and other such substances. “Okay. I guess we just hang out in here until we figure he’s gone.”

Norm only nodded. I didn’t know how long we would be here. I noticed a fearful energy filling the air, and it was already becoming stifling.

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 9-- Interlude: 10-80 In Progress

“(Y/N)! (Y/N), shit, dude, what’s goin’ on? You okay?” 

I knelt by my friend’s side, hurriedly placing a hand on their shoulder. They were screaming in agony, clutching the sides of their head and frantically digging their fingernails into their skin. Seeing them like this made me sick to my stomach. But we had to go! The police were practically up our asses at this point! I sucked in a trembling breath and leaned in to speak to (Y/N). “Dude, we gotta skedaddle like, now– the police are outside!” 

When they didn’t respond, I stood to my full height and cursed under my breath. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just leave them here to die, be arrested, or both! But I also didn’t want to be arrested. Then this whole thing would have been for nothing. The sirens were only getting closer. 

I frantically looked around for somewhere to hide, only to find nothing. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest, and in my panic, I reached down to my hip to retrieve my pistol. I had purchased it in a ‘why-not’ moment right before we were supposed to do this break-in. I didn’t think it would actually come in handy. With some quick thinking, I dragged (Y/N) to their feet and wrapped my free arm around their torso, using my pistol-occupied hand to point the firearm at the side of their head. They already seemed to be mostly unconscious, if not entirely knocked out, so they probably wouldn’t mind. 

Then I waited. I heard officers searching the building while I tried to calm my racing heart. The next thing I knew, several officers were charging through the door to the arcade-cabinet-filled room I was in. 

Before the officers could even see me, I took a deep breath and called out in my loudest, most ‘I-mean-business’ voice. “Don’t move a goddamned muscle or I’ll blow their fuckin’ brains out!” 

The officers’ guns immediately trained on me. Three of them. I saw one of them lift their walkie-talkie and mumble “10-32, 136” into it. I took another breath, forcing my expression to be blank. My eyes darted about the space, and I realized that I was relatively close to the window. I just had to get a little closer, and maybe I could jump out. 

But I had to distract the police. I didn’t actually have any intention of shooting (Y/N), but I had to pretend like I did. I opened my mouth to speak, but one of them interrupted me. “Lower your weapon!” He cried, his own aim not even faltering. Oh, how I wanted to point my firearm at him, but then they would certainly shoot me dead. I resisted the urge to commit first-degree murder and continued speaking. “No way I’m gonna put this thing down! You’ll riddle me with bullets if I do!” As I was speaking, I slowly crept closer to the window. 

“You won’t be shot, Violet,” that same officer spoke once more. I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening just slightly. They already knew who I was. Whoever reported a break-in to the police must have recognized me from somewhere. He continued, “We just want to talk with you.”

“Bullshit!” I yelled, causing their grips to tighten on their weapons. “As soon as I lower this gun, you’ll fucking kill me! Either that, or maim me so bad I can’t walk to the squad car!” Just a few more steps…

“You have two choices here,” began the officer, “You can either set the hostage free, or–”

Out of seemingly nowhere, the arcade machine from before lit up and bathed the room in a blue glow. Before I could properly process what happened, (Y/N) was gone, leaving me with no hostage, and no leverage. Well, shit. 

I darted toward the window just as the officers opened fire. They must have had stormtrooper aim or something because I managed to dive through the glass without being shot in the face. It would have been really embarrassing if the glass was reinforced, but thankfully, it wasn’t. The building was ancient. 

The glass shattered upon impact, sending me careening out of the window and plummeting toward the ground below. Maybe I should have thought this through. I was on the third floor!

Thankfully, my fall was broken by the awning covering the door to the museum, which I rolled off of before landing on the concrete below. It softened the blow, but my body was still severely battered and covered in a myriad of tiny glass shards. One officer had been stationed at the entrance to ensure that I didn’t try to escape, but it seemed that my sudden landing caught her off guard enough to allow me time to stand and grab hold of the pistol that I had dropped when I fell. 

In a moment of desperation, I pointed the pistol at the officer with the intent to shoot. My finger was literally pressing on the trigger. One of her hands was drifting near her own holster, the other poised in front of her. She had a wide-eyed, terrified look on her face. I hesitated for a moment– the biggest mistake of my life. She began to speak: “You don’t understand what you’re doing here. Put the firearm down–”

I pressed down on the trigger, clenching my eyes shut. The trigger simply didn’t press down all the way, making a dull clicking sound. I opened my eyes and glanced up at the officer, then back down at the pistol.

…The safety was on. 

I could only yell as she swiftly retrieved her own firearm from its holster and pointed it at me, immediately letting off two rounds in my direction. I bolted to the side and nearly fell over in the process. I cried out in pain upon feeling the skin and muscles in my side tear– I had been shot. Grazed, sure, but I had been shot. 

I darted behind one of the unoccupied squad cards and glanced down at my now actively bleeding bullet wound. It looked pretty nasty, but nothing I couldn’t deal with. I took a few steadying breaths and peered over the top of the car. The female officer was quickly approaching the vehicle, along with a few others who had left the building in pursuit of me. Shit, dude, I was a criminal. I was in too deep to back off now. I checked my pistol and flicked the safety off before aiming it over the roof of the car and letting off a few shots, one bullet lodging itself into the shoulder of an officer. 

Once I had stunned the group of police, I dropped into a half-squat position and frantically yanked on the door handle. It opened. Fuck yeah. 

I hurriedly climbed into the squad car and shut the door, finding the keys still in the ignition. Dumbass cops! At this point, they deserved for their car to be stolen. I turned the key and the engine roared to life. I instantly shifted it into drive and took off, ducking down just in case a stray bullet pierced the window or windshield. I heard gunshots clanking off the exterior of the vehicle and prayed to whoever was listening that it wouldn’t implode. An irrational fear, but a fear nonetheless.

Listen, I was panicking. I understand that stealing a squad car is like, the worst thing to do when fleeing police, but I was terrified! My friend had vanished, and I was alone and running away from the police! I even turned the sirens and lights on like a dumbass. But I must admit, it felt a little rad to just speed through traffic with everyone getting out of my way, though. 

When I finally got out of the range of the officers’ guns, I straightened my back and adjusted the mirrors, my chest heaving with panicked breaths. As I glimpsed myself in the rearview mirror, I noticed how wrecked I looked. My skin was covered in little cuts and spattered with blood, my eyes were wide and frantic, and I noticed an undertone of pure terror in my expression. It took all of my effort to flatten my expression into something neutral– if I was going out, I wasn’t going out scared. I didn’t even know where I was going until I reasoned with myself that I should get out of the city and to somewhere remote. There was an abandoned gas station just outside city limits that I could hide out in for a while.

There were a few moments where all was quiet aside from the loud sound of the sirens and my heavy breathing. I hurriedly buckled my seatbelt with one hand. Safety first, goddammit!

My mind finally processed what just happened– (Y/N) disappeared. Like, full-on vanished right in front of my eyes. Did I hallucinate that? No, I couldn’t have; the officers saw it too. They vanished when the room flashed with that blue light– the same blue light we saw emit from that strange arcade machine earlier. Did that have something to do with it? Was it a haunted machine or something? I shook my head. Be realistic, Violet. You literally stole a police vehicle and they’re bound to start chasing you down anytime soon. 

Just as I thought, I heard a second pair of sirens begin screaming their way toward me. I checked my mirrors and spotted the second squad car tearing down the highway, their lights illuminating the crowds of people walking down the sidewalks of the city. Shit, that’s right. I had to avoid hurting anyone not involved. Even when I was fleeing the police, I had to obey traffic laws the best I could. Christ. 

I cursed and slammed my foot on the gas, coming up to an intersection and veering the wheel to the left. I heard the rubber of the tires squeal as they skidded on the asphalt. I managed to make the turn safely despite the other cars on the road, which felt fucking awesome. 

Unfortunately, the squad car followed me. In my mirror, I noticed the officer in the passenger seat mumbling orders and codes into his walkie-talkie. Shit. I’d watched enough cop shows to know that they were probably anticipating my destination and laying spike mats on the main roads. Good to know– take off-roads!

I wasn’t too familiar with the layout of the city, as I had only lived there for a couple years and most of my time was spent traveling between work and home, but I did know that there were a shit ton of ways to get out of the city. I veered the vehicle to the right to take another turn, then rapidly made a sequence of turns in an attempt to confuse the police or lose them completely. It didn’t work, and I only scared myself. 

I’m not entirely sure how long this went on. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to lose the other squad car, and two more joined them in their pursuit after some time. It was becoming increasingly difficult to evade them as they kept splitting up and taking different roads. I did know that I was getting closer and closer to city limits, though. 

Then, just as I was about to exit the city entirely, I made a sudden left turn to get out of the way of a spike mat and found myself in a crowded street. A gasp fled my throat as I was suddenly tearing down a street toward a crosswalk filled with pedestrians. I had to make a decision– get caught and arrested, or commit vehicular manslaughter?

I glanced to my sides and found that there were buildings on either side. Fuck! There’s a reason I only shot that officer in the shoulder: I couldn’t kill somebody, let alone uninvolved passersby. My thoughts ran rampant, seemingly having thousands in the breadth of less than a second. Maybe if I was able to turn the vehicle all the way around and start heading the way I came, I could backtrack and find another way out. I jolted the wheel all the way to the left, turning the car around as fast as I could. 

My high speed was my downfall. The vehicle was going too fast to control the turn, causing the back wheels to hit the median. I felt a horrible lurching feeling in my stomach as the passenger’s side of the car lifted and began to rotate. In a tiny moment of luck, since I had managed to turn the car around, I didn’t go flying into a building. I also avoided hurting any pedestrians. But the thing is, the car fucking flipped. 

Before I could properly process what was going on, I was upside-down with my seatbelt pinning me to the seat. The roof of the car slammed against the road, which immediately dispensed the airbags. I heard a dull crack sound from somewhere in my chest, followed by what felt like pins and needles in that area. I think the windshield and some of the windows either cracked or shattered completely because there was glass everywhere. Honestly, it’s a complete blur. 

When my adrenaline-numbed mind returned to reality, panic flooded it. I could feel the dulled ache of several fractured or broken bones: definitely my clavicle as a result of the airbags, maybe a couple ribs, and I think something in my pelvis. As soon as the adrenaline wore off, I would be in a fuckton of pain, so I had to act quick before the police got their hands on me. I’m nothing if not committed. 

I reached up and unbuckled my seatbelt, causing my broken, battered body to tumble onto the ceiling of the car. I most certainly hit my head hard enough to leave a bruise, coaxing a pained grunt from my lips. I put all of my mediocre strength into pushing aside the airbag and opening the car door before crawling out of the vehicle, my hands finding the shattered glass that had scattered along the road. It hurt like a bitch, but I gritted my teeth against the pain and hauled myself to my feet. I looked up to find several officers charging in my direction. I cursed and turned, immediately regretting it when my pelvic bone screamed in pain. I winced but ignored it, beginning to run in the opposite direction. 

The police were, obviously, much faster. 

Without even being given the chance to surrender, I felt something hit my back. I grimly realized that it was a person. They took me to the ground, causing my chest to slam onto the glass fragments that littered it. A wheeze was forced out of my body when I hit the ground, and I writhed insistently in an attempt to escape the officer’s grasp, managing to elbow him in the face before he snatched my wrist. 

“You have the right to remain silent– anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,” came a somewhat winded male voice from behind me. Hey, at least he read me my rights. He seized my wrists in one hand and shoved them against my back, pulling a strained groan from between my teeth. I only struggled for one more moment before I noticed another officer wielding a pistol brandishing it above my form. I went limp. There was no use resisting this any further. I felt the cool metal of handcuffs lock around my wrists just as I noticed the pool of my own blood coagulating underneath me. 

I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against the cold, glass-decorated asphalt. My memory ran through the events of the last several minutes and I swiftly tried my best to calculate the possible charges with what little legal knowledge I had: armed robbery, posession of a firearm, wounding an officer, taking somebody hostage with a gun, resisting arrest, posession of stolen law enforcement vehicle, crashing said law enforcement vehicle, endangering passersby– at least five years in prison. God. Fucking. Damn it. 

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 19-- Many For The Few

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” I droned, looming over Vi’s shoulder like a mosquito as she knelt next to that oh-so-familiar arcade machine. She delicately fiddled with it, seeming as inexperienced as she likely was. 

She turned around and pointed her flashlight at my face, wearing an annoyed expression. The light burned my retinas, causing me to hiss uncomfortably. “Dude, ask me that one more time and I’m making sure you never see your weird yeehaw loverboy again,” she said through gritted teeth. 

I groaned loudly. “But why?” I whined. 

“I told you,” she turned back to face the machine, which had been laid on its side on the ground. “Everything I know is here. Sure, I went to prison for a couple years which will likely affect my life more negatively than positively, but… it’s what I have. And I kinda like having a face and nose and such.” 

“But there’s women there! You like those!” I said in a loud, high-pitched voice. 

“There’s also women here, (Y/N). And they have heads. I like when they have heads,” Vi said, and I honestly couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. She continued, “I guess having a phone for a head kind of eliminates half the battle of figuring out if you’re attracted to them physically, but, y’know… can’t kiss girls when you don’t have lips to kiss ‘em with.”

I frowned. She had a point. I was only able to kiss Norm because the system glitched out at the last second and gave me my head back. Even then, I didn’t really get the chance to savor the moment. I kept reliving the memory in my head over and over again, fighting the urge to swoon like an idiot, but it didn’t compare to how it felt in the moment. Which was why I was so desperate to relive it. 

After some time standing in awkward silence, Vi broke it. “So… do you plan on helping me with this, or are you just going to stand there with your arms folded?” She didn’t even look at me. 

I perked up. “Oh, right, um…” My hands awkwardly hung in the air, eyes searching the arcade machine to try and find something to help with. 

“Actually, nevermind, I have a feeling you would somehow break it more if you were to lay a finger on this,” Vi mumbled. 

I pursed my lips. “You say that like I’m some sort of klutz.”

Vi paused to look at me, only pointedly raising an eyebrow before returning to her work in trying to get the machine to turn on again. I frowned, but didn’t say anything more. 

Once again, silence descended over us. I really didn’t like how awkward it was. We both agreed that we were fine with me returning to Dialtown, but there was still tension in the air that was so thick I could cut it with a knife. It felt wrong– this was going to be the last few moments I spent with my best friend, and we were just standing in silence? I didn’t like it. 

But… I had a feeling that if we tried talking to each other like we normally did, one or both of us would end up sobbing. So I kept my dumb mouth shut. 

It didn’t take much longer for Vi to perk up, her spine straightening from its hunched position that resulted from bending over the machine. “Got it! The little boxes started glowing again, so I assume that means they’re working again. Hopefully, your… soul or whatever doesn’t evaporate when you go inside.” She stood and stretched her arms over her head. “Help me lift this back up.”

I did as she asked, assisting her in movng the cabinet so it was once more upright and against the wall. Vi gestured to the machine. “Care to do the honors?”

No. No, I did not care to do the honors. But, oh well. I moved around to the back of the machine and leaned over to pick up the power cord. Then I carefully inserted it into the nearby wall outlet. I heard a brief crackling noise, followed by the low hum of electricity. I reeled back from the outlet for fear of getting myself electrocuted, but that thankfully didn’t happen. I looked back and found the room bathed in the pale blue glow of the screen and sighed in abject relief. It worked. Vi hadn’t permanently broken it.

I straightened and rounded the machine, taking a glance at my friend’s face before looking at the familiar menu screen. I swallowed hard, moving closer. The “load save” option on the menu had been greyed out, signifying that the previous save files were gone. Damn, now I felt bad. If any other people had been sucked into the game like I had… they were gone now. But why didn’t they get yanked out of it like I had? Maybe willpower had something to do with it. Or, because they had been in the code for so long, they just… became apart of it. Would that happen to me if I remained inside the game for long enough? I shook my head. It didn’t matter. That would only matter if Vi did end up finding a way to move in and out of the machine at will. And that didn’t seem very possible. 

With a heavy sigh, I looked back at Vi. “Alright. Well… let’s do this.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “I guess this is goodbye.”

“Yeah,” Vi muttered flatly. “I guess so.” 

We looked at each other for a long time. I wished I could say something meaningful. Literally anything, before I would run away to a video game universe for seemingly the rest of my life. But I couldn’t get any words to exit my lips. Instead, I stepped forward and gave her a hug. It wasn’t anything special– it didn’t feel like the last hug I would ever give her. But I guess that’s just it. There was only one thing we could control in this world, and it was ourselves. And we didn’t want it to feel like the last hug we would give each other. 

So it wasn’t, and so it won’t be. 

Without another word, I turned back toward the arcade cabinet and took hold of the joystick with a shaking hand. The other hovered over the interact button. I flicked the joystick once, twice. Then I pressed the button when it hovered over “New Game.”

My eyes searched the screen, reading as it prompted me to enter my name. I did. The screen flicked back to that solid, pale blue color, and I squinted as the light bathed my skin. I braced myself. 

It didn’t hurt as much this time. Maybe it’s because I had already experienced it once, but the feeling of being psychologically decapitated felt… somewhat numb, I suppose. Maybe fear– rather, my lack of it– played a part in it. I guess that makes sense. Right? Maybe because I knew it was all worth it, the agony was bearable for the few moments it existed before it vanished. 

Ꚛ

I was lost. Well and truly lost. I suppose it was to be expected– I hadn’t been in this forest before. Well, yes I had, but nobody could know that. They couldn’t know that I knew exactly where I was going, exactly where to walk to get to my destination with the least hassle. Exactly how to move to keep the several pounds of phone strapped to my head from taking me to the ground. It wasn’t easy; but then again, it never had been. 

I had been mauled by swans again. It wasn’t because of my stupidity this time. They literally leapt out of a phone-goddamned bush and jumped me like some kind of crminal band. Thankfully, I managed to run away fast enough to avoid lethal injury. I was still pretty banged up, though. Several cuts adorned my skin, actively bleeding and probably infected by now. I was in the middle of the forest, after all. Who knows how many airborne pathogens were floating around?

Regardless, I marched through the foliage with a purpose and eventually located my destination. A small clearing, filled to the brim with uncut grass, weeds, thorn bushes, and cryptic signs plastered over the trunks of trees. And there, in the center of it all, laid a ramshackle shack, more like a shed than a proper home, sporting rotting wood and overgrown weeds growing out of every crack in its foundation. I took a breath. Finally. 

Looking down, I noticed the bear traps. They were rusted and old, and likely been set a while ago. Hell, they might not have even worked. Regardless, I carefully stepped over each of them, being careful not to get myself caught. If I lost a leg… that would make this a lot more difficult. 

I eventually traversed the clearing and made it to the shack’s front porch. I hadn’t noticed how… decorated it was. A rocking chair sat in the far corner, coupled with a small glass table. The glass was fogged up and mysteriously stained, and atop the table rested a worn ashtray, several empty beer bottles, and the occasional empty shotgun shell. I stifled a chuckle. This made sense. On the wall was an official document stating that this was private property, with an additional note scrawled along the bottom that read “I SHOOT ON SIGHT.” How friendly. 

Shaking off my nerves, I took a step closer to the door. From within, I heard the faint sound of a crackling radio playing country music, and smelled the scent of a small fire. I lifted my hand and rapped three times on the door. I heard some scrambling about inside before the music shut off, and there was a couple of loud curses as someone tripped over something and whatever was tripped over went crashing to the ground. Okay, now I couldn’t stifle a metaphorical smile. 

Soon enough, I saw the faint shadow of someone peering through the clouded peephole on the door. A low, muffled voice rang out from behind the tattered wood. “This is private land, pardner.”

I grinned. “Yeah, I know,” I said, voice a bit too high-pitched for my comfort. It was a bit embarrassing. “So?”

“So,” he continued, sounding a bit annoyed. “I suggest you leave ‘fore I decide t’ do what I usually do t’ trespassers.” 

My hands found their way to my pockets, and I rocked back and forth on my feet. I probably should have decided how to go about doing this before I walked up to the shack. I forgot that Norm didn’t know who I was yet. I supposed honesty would be the best way to deal with this. 

“Okay, so,” I began, making a placating gesture with my hands. “I was going to lie to you and tell you that I had been attacked and was lost and stuff, so that you would invite me inside.” I grimaced slightly. “Well, half of that is true, but it doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna be honest. My name is (Y/N), I’m from another universe, we’ve met before but you forgot because my friend broke the arcade machine that you’re encased in. You’re a video game character, by the way. Can I come in?”

There was a period of dead, uncomfortable silence. For a moment, I was convinced that he was going to throw open the door and riddle me with bullets. But he didn’t. Instead, he spoke again, voice considerably less threatening, more confused and tense. “I don’ quite believe ya, pardner–”

I interrupted him. “Your name is Sergeant Norman G. Allen, you did bricklaying as a teen before getting a degree in theoretical astrophysics and joining the air force, then worked with NASA for a while. You were buds with President Callum Crown, and he sent you into a wormhole, where you time traveled and wound up here, leaving your wife and kids behind. You were exiled by Mayor Mingus, so you have a needless vendetta and want her dead. You feel out of place in this world because you don’t have a phone for a head, you wear your stupid American flag hat backwards, don’t know that God is a hobo, and you own a few too many cowboy hats for it not to be a fetish or something. Need I go on?” I folded my arms across my chest. 

“Alright, alright! That’s enough,” Norm loudly cut me off. “I get it. Jeez, y’didn’t ‘ave t’ spill my entire life story. A simple explanation would’ve sufficed.” I decided to omit the fact that we had fallen in love in another universe, because who knows how he might have reacted to that? I heard the clicking of a suspicious amount of locks before the door opened, revealing the familiar sight of a pensive-looking Norm. 

I practically beamed at him, despite having no face. “Hi,” I said giddily. 

The yeehaw man gave me a confused look. “Hi?” He echoed. We stood in silence for a moment as he took in my bloodied, scratched-up appearance. 

I cleared my throat pointedly. “Well, are you gonna invite me inside, or what?”

Norm snapped out of some sort of daze before opening the door wider, gesturing inside of his… house? Hovel? Whatever. “Uh, right. I’ll make some coffee.”

I stopped him with a gesture, extending my palm toward him. “Actually, I think some sort of alcohol would be best. You’re kind of in for a long story.”

As I stepped into the familiar shack, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning– metaphorically, of course. I didn’t think I would be this happy. But, now that I was here, I realized: While we had fallen in love by accident before, now we got to do it all over again. Correctly, this time. 

I was finally going to experience the cartoon romance this game was made for.

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 1-- Private Property

Remember that old movie from the late 90s about those weird film students who wandered into the woods like idiots looking for a witch? And the two guys totally took advantage of that to kill that girl dead? I think it was ‘the blunt witch project’ or something like that. That’s probably not it. That sounds like a sketchy old lady weed dealer. Blunt Witch. Maybe once I finally retire to the middle of bumfuck nowhere and wind up living in an alley somewhere I should start a weed-dealing business and call it Blunt Witch. Man, local businesses should hire me. 

Well, maybe if I wasn’t in the middle of the goddamn woods like those weird film students I would have had a better chance at getting hired for my clearly genius business ideas. It was kinda gross in the woods. I kept getting bitten by mosquitos. It was wet and sticky everywhere I went! Even the bush I dove into after seeing a grasshopper was moist! 

The mosquitos would probably have been less of a problem if it was fall or winter. But no, of course I had to go bigfoot-hunting at the beginning of spring, when the mosquitos were actively making more mosquitos. Don’t ask why I have an in-depth knowledge of when mosquitos fuck, you pick things up over the years. 

Microscopic mating aside, I was in the middle of the woods and I felt like I was going in circles. I kept seeing the same weirdly pink trees everywhere I went. Now that I think about it, why was the foliage around there pink? Maybe because they hadn’t shed their Valentine’s Day decorations yet. Whatever, not my problem. But yeah, I was absolutely going in circles. I know that because someone carved the word ‘crungus’ into a tree and I kept seeing it. Unless Little Billy was following me and carving the word ‘crungus’ into all of the trees while my back was turned. 

…Now that I think about it, that was definitely a possibility. Pint-sized prick. 

I had hardly noticed what time it was. The sun had just begun to set, casting a golden hue onto my surroundings. Once I did notice the time, I heaved an exasperated sigh. I would have to sleep in the woods again. Last time wasn’t fun. I still have the swan bite scars. I can’t believe they found me all the way out there… vengeful bastards. 

But there was no way I was getting back to town before nightfall at this rate. I had already been lost for hours, and it didn’t seem like I was making any progress. So I chose a different direction other than the one I had been walking in for hours straight to see if I could find a suitable clearing to hunker down for the night in. I probably passed like seven suitable clearings, but I was completely spaced out, if I’m being honest.  

The sun had sunk low in the sky before I finally snapped out of my half-conscious haze. There was a brief flicker of yellow in my vision. Civilization! Or a nuclear power plant. It was one of the two. I’d take anything at this point. 

I charged through the thinning trees, and when I finally breached the treeline, I was immensely disappointed. The yellow I saw was nothing more than a caution sign. Several caution signs, actually. Most bearing threatening warnings such as ‘I shoot on sight’ and ‘stay away.’ One was just a mediocre drawing of a piss-yellow shotgun plastered onto a tree. 

But there, amidst the slew of warning signs, was my saving grace. A shack. Hell yeah. The thing was covered in moss and mold and was probably infested with raccoons. It also had menacing, apocalypse-esque scrawlings along the walls and ceilings. One that stood out to me was ‘many eyes, always watching.’ People didn’t have eyes here– c’mon, mysterious sign-writer, get a grip. We have optical sensors here.

I shrugged. Hey, how bad could it be? This shack had probably been abandoned for decades now. There may have even been pre-dialup relics buried in there! I wasn’t gonna pass that up. 

The warning signs and paranoid writing were completely ignored as I approached the shack. The steps up to the porch creaked under my weight. As I closed the distance between myself and the shack’s front door, I could have sworn I heard panicked footsteps coming from inside the building. It’s probably the raccoons. I tried the handle. Locked. I prepared myself before ramming my shoulder full-force into the door. Dull pain echoed throughout my arm, stemming from my certainly now-bruised shoulder. Despite my relatively wimpy stature, I made a sizable dent in the wood. Okay, two more and I would be golden. And covered in splinters, but some sacrifices must be made. 

It was then that I heard something clattering on the floor from beyond the door. I briefly paused but shook off my confusion before slamming into the wood once more. I made a bit more progress but winced when I felt that pain again, pulling back and using my other hand to gently press down on my shoulder in an attempt to soothe it. 

Just as I was about to break down the door, a rather concerning sound made me freeze. Something that sounded awfully like the cocking of a shotgun. 

Oh, shit. 

I yelped as the door flung open with a force strong enough to crack loudly. The next thing I knew, I was staring down the barrel of a shotgun close enough to see the scratch marks on its frame. 

My adrenaline spiked, and I frantically ducked to the side, narrowly avoiding the bullet that fired from the firearm’s barrel. The motion caused me to stumble and bend my ankle, sending me crashing onto the rotting wood of the porch. On pure instinct, I turned my aching body and rolled about a foot to my left. And thank whoever was watching that I decided to do that, since another bullet fired a hole right in the wood where my head was not a second prior. 

As much as I’d like to say that I handled that situation like a badass and kicked my attacker in the nards… Well, that would be a bold-faced lie. Instead of that, I screamed like a complete and utter puss. My voice was muffled in my own sound-processors, and it was then that I noticed the high-pitched ringing. I should have expected that– there were two bullets fired right next to my sound-processors. And I have phone tinnitus.

I didn’t think I could dodge another bullet, so I defaulted to my second instinct: pleading for my life. My voice sounded foreign. It was terrified– animalistic, even. “Wait! Wait-wait! Hang on a second!” I lifted my hands to cover my head, pulling my knees upward in a desperate attempt to get some sort of protection. 

My attacker must have sympathized with my cowardice because they halted their shooting to listen to me. After a moment, I lowered my hands from my head to get a good look at this probably psychopath. 

He was tall. And I’m not just saying that because I was on the ground and looking up. This guy was probably a good few inches above six feet tall. The best thing I could compare his build to was a stereotypical plumber– he had that staple midlife crisis body. Round torso, beefy arms– all beneath an… astronaut training suit? Where the hell did this guy get an astronaut training suit? 

Not only that, but he had a paper bag over his head. With a sticky note plastered onto it. And the sticky note had a face drawn onto it. A pissed-off-looking face. I couldn’t help but question the logistics behind that. Did he always wear this pissy bag-face, or did he put that on when I showed up? 

And why was he wearing a cowboy hat? What was with this guy’s fashion sense? I really did feel like I was looking at a video game character. And he was pointing a shotgun at my head. Phone-gods, what a nightmare. Not phone-gods. Regular gods. This place was getting to me. 

But I had to take this opportunity. I tried not to let my confusion show in my body language and took a deep breath, swallowing the growing lump in my throat. I didn’t notice how much my hands were shaking. “Okay. Listen. I’m sorry for bashing your door in. But it was locked. I had to get in somehow.”

I sucked in a sharp breath when I felt the shotgun’s barrel press just above my dial. Then a slightly muffled, mildly annoyed voice emitted from beyond the paper bag. “This is private property, pardner. O’course the door would be locked.”

And he had a country accent? This guy checked all the boxes for a stereotypical yeehaw-man. I don’t know what I was expecting. 

I swallowed before responding to his clarification. “...Riiiight. Well, how was I supposed to know this was anything but an abandoned shack?” 

The yeehaw-man reached into his pocket, causing me to flinch instinctively when he took one of his hands off of the shotgun. He retrieved a different sticky note, which he used to replace the one that was already plastered onto the paper bag. This one had a different face drawn onto it– one that was less pissed, more annoyed. He used his hand to gesture widely at our surroundings. At the warning signs. At the huge yellow piece of paper pasted to the wall next to us that said in bright black letters ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY.’

I grimaced. 

He returned his attention to me, pressing the shotgun somehow harder above my dial. “Gimme one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot ya dead right ‘ere.” 

I hesitated. Honestly, I could hardly think of anything myself. If I were in his position, I would shoot me too. But I had to say something. “Uhh… because you would have to clean up my remains? And… it would be a waste of good ammunition?” 

The space cowboy froze, tilting his head slightly to the side as if scrutinizing my appearance. When he spoke again, his tone had softened slightly to something more inquisitive than murderous. “Huh. I suppose yer right.” 

I deflated in relief when he lowered his firearm, lifting it so he could hold it close to his chest. I laid there for a moment, still processing what had just happened, before performing a frustrated gesture with my arms. “Well, aren’t you going to help me up?”

His response was quick and straight to the point. “Absolutely not.”

“Alright, fair enough,” I groaned in discomfort as I pushed myself to my feet. Yep, he was definitely well above six feet tall. Scary bastard. We stood in silence for a moment while I brushed off the dirt-stained knees of my pants.

“Are you gon’ tell me why you decided it was a good idea t’ intrude on my private property?” The man before me broke the silence, inflection flat and… almost bored. 

I narrowed my metaphorical eyes at him, although I doubted he could see it, considering he had a bag on his head. Wait, how did he know where to aim with that gun of his? Did he have slits in the bag that I just hadn’t noticed? I shook off that question so I could effectively answer his. “Uh… well, to be honest, I was bigfoot hunting–”

“Bigfoot huntin’? That thing ain’t real, pardner.” His words were insistent. 

If I could frown, I would have at that moment. “You never know. Where do you think the tracks come from?” 

He swapped out his sticky note again for a more confused one. It was an… awkward pause in the conversation. “...Other animals. Maybe an escaped ape from th’ Dialtown zoo.”

“Animals don’t escape from the Dialtown zoo, man. Not since… the incident.” I shuddered. 

“Alright then, we agree. Bigfoot ain’t real. Continue.” His voice carried an air of finality that I didn’t feel like arguing with at the moment, so I simply sighed and moved on. 

“...But yeah, I got lost, and it eventually got too late to get back to town. So I was gonna look around for a nice little clearing to set up for the night in, and whaddya know! A shack.” I shrugged. “You can’t blame me for feeling relieved and wanting to get up in there, right?”

“Relieved ‘nough t’ ignore the signs tellin’ ya that I shoot on sight?” The yeehaw man asked flatly. I shrugged. “Well, yeah. I didn’t want to spend the night in a bush. You’d do the same thing.”

He sighed, removing one hand from his shotgun to lift it to his head, where he dragged his hand down the length of the paper bag. I furrowed my nonexistent brows at that. Normally people around here don’t do that since, well, they have technology for heads. 

“Well, now ya know that I’m not acceptin’ visitors. Or guests. Go on, git.” He returned both hands to his firearm, using it to gesture away from the area. I turned, appalled. “You can’t just kick me to the curb! Or… forest.” I paused before shaking my phone head in disbelief. “I’m desperate here, man. Let me stay here, just for the night.” 

All of a sudden, I was staring down the barrel of a shotgun once more. My optical sensors widened as my gaze flickered between certain death and the man before me. He spoke once more, his voice louder and more insistent. “I told ya t’ git. ‘Less ya feel like eatin’ some lead.” 

I visibly deflated. I had almost resigned myself to sleeping in a tree for the night. Almost. I slowly turned to leave, watching the man do the same, before pausing and turning back around. “Just one quick question.”

He audibly groaned and frustratedly turned back around to face me. “If I answer this question o’ yers, will ya leave me the hell alone?” 

I frantically nodded. I had to learn more about this guy. Maybe if I figured out a good talking point, I could eventually convince him to let me inside. “What’s with the bag?” 

I must have touched a nerve because he immediately tensed, his grip on the shotgun tightening to the point that his knuckles turned white. “And what in tarnation makes ya think I’d answer that question?” 

“...Because I’ll leave if you do?” My voice was quiet and inquiring. I knew I was toeing the line of being alive… and pumped full of lead. 

The cowboy-hat-wearing menace sighed reluctantly before answering in a low, hesitant voice. “I ‘ave a head. A regular head.”

I tilted my own, red rotary head. “Regular…?” 

He made a frustrated, helpless gesture with his hands. “That’s right, clueless trespasser. A regular head. One with a face. And eyes and ears n’ such.” 

What the fuck was he talking about? I hadn’t seen a real flesh-head since… well… a while ago. I didn’t think they existed anymore. I… can’t even remember her face. 

I fell into confused silence. He must have sensed my confusion, because he sighed heavily. “I answered yer question. Now git.” He pointed firmly over my shoulder. 

“Waaaaait…” I drawled, holding up a finger to shut him up. “You’re a normie? Living all the way out here? What for? I would have thought you would be a celebrity in Dialtown.” I paused, leaning forward curiously. “...You are from Dialtown, right?”

The man before me tentatively folded his arms, tucking the shotgun under his arm. “I was,” he mumbled indignantly. I gave an intrigued hum. “I see, I see, well, why don’t you tell me all about it.” I reached out to pat his arm, which he swiftly pulled away from. But he didn’t aim a firearm at my head this time. 

“C’monnn, you gotta be lonely out here, right? A little human interaction never hurt anyone.” I gestured to my scrawny form. “And if we’re being honest with ourselves, what harm can I do?” 

He stared at me. Okay, now I was getting a little nervous. This guy was a little more than threatening; he had the silhouette of a pear. A guy like that can make someone nervous. 

I heard a resigned sigh emanate from behind the bag. “Fine. Y’don’t talk, y’don’t touch anything, and y’ especially don’t touch me. If y’do, I’ll ensure that yer belly get’s chock full o’ lead.”

An excited squeak left my speaker as he turned to gesture toward the still-open door. I practically skipped inside and was… immediately disappointed. I don’t know what I was expecting from a dingy shack in the middle of the woods. It was cluttered, though not dirty, littered with old cigarette butts and crates full of non-perishables. There was a small shelf– if you could call it that– with a small collection of cowboy hats right next to a small, dust-stained cot. Again, what else could I have been expecting? 

The thing that grabbed my attention the most was the dartboard hung on the wall. Honestly, it was quite hilarious. It had a photo of Mayor Mingus taped to it. There were darts stuck in the board, most right on the photo’s face. 

“Man, someone really doesn’t like democratically elected representatives,” I said this knowing that Mingus was absolutely not elected democratically. It was so obvious that she rigged the ballot. But hey, what do I care?

“It’s not that,” the man said as he shut the door behind us, barring it with a long plank of wood that rested beside it. “She’s a goddamned, xenophobic varmint is what she is.” 

There was something about the pure hate in his voice that gave me pause. I turned to face him, folding my arms across my chest while he propped his shotgun up next to the door. “Xenophobic? I’ve heard a lot of things about Mayor Mingus, but that’s a first.” I tilted my head. “Care to explain, Mr…?” I made a vague gesture with my hand toward the man before me, prompting him to give me his name. 

“Sargent Norman G. Allen, pardner,” he shared his name with me after a brief hesitation. 

“That’s a mouthful. Can I call you Norm?” 

He tensed for a moment but ultimately sighed. “Fine.” He pointed an accusatory finger at me, and I leaned back slightly to counteract the movement. “But don’t get too used t’ it. Yer outta here by dawn.” 

“Hey! Don’t you wanna know my name?” I placed my hands on my hips as I watched Norm move across the room and toward a small counter across from me. 

“Not particularly,” he muttered. 

“(Y/N). Good to meet you, Norm.” I told him my name anyway. He had to refer to me somehow, and the whole ‘pardner’ thing was getting old real fast.

“...Right.” I wasn’t sure he had entirely processed what I had said. 

I shrugged, returning to my previous activity of looking around the room. I noticed the small table resting in the center of the room, and I pointed over my shoulder at it with my thumb. “Two chairs? I thought you didn’t accept guests.” I chuckled lightly. “Weren’t you going to tell me about your grudge toward the mayor?”

“It ain’t a–” Norm sighed before gesturing with an open palm toward the table. “It’s best if y’ take a seat. We’re gon’ be here a while.”

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 16-- What Is This, The Notebook?

Before I had the chance to properly react, I was yelling as Mayor Mingus practically shot in the direction of the vent I inhabited with a feral yowl. Her claws latched onto the cover and began to tear it off, and as soon as she managed to rip it from the wall completely, I instinctively reared back and kicked her as hard as I could in her dumb cat face. As she fell back to the floor, she managed to get her paws on my ankle and dig her claws into the skin there. This straight-up yanked me from the vent and took me to the ground with her.

The two of us hit the ground with a dull thud, with Mingus, of course, having sprung from my form and landed on her feet. Though it didn’t seem to matter, as she lunged at me before I could regain my bearings.

Adrenaline numbed my senses in exchange for my pure survival instincts. Everything seemed to turn into a blur of claws, fangs, and screaming for a moment until I managed to push away from the feline and gather some distance. She instantly lunged at me once again in an attempt to gain the upper hand, but I rolled to the side and stumbled to my feet before she managed to tackle me again. 

“(Y/N)?” I heard Norm sputter befuddledly from behind me before his voice transformed into one that sounded far more annoyed, almost indignant. “I thought I told y’not t’ follow me here.”

I paused for a second to calm my breathing before turning over my shoulder, annoyed. My voice was warbling and unsteady when I said “Yeah, well, it’s hard to avoid going to the same place as you when I got kidnapped by God himself!” I placed my shaking hands on my hips and leaned forward. “Thanks for protecting me from that, by the way.”

“Why would I protect someone who sees me as nothin’ more than code?” Norm responded. I noticed that his grip was still firm on his revolver. 

“This nonsense again,” I sighed and rested a hand on my dial. “If you would have let me explain earlier instead of interrupting me every time I tried to speak, you would have heard me explain how I felt. But you didn’t, so now we have this predicam–”

I was cut off by Mingus’s high-pitched voice. “Are you serious right now?! Are you truly, utterly, honestly serious right now?!” I turned to face her and found her standing before me, fingers curled into angry fists. “You two are arguing with each other right in front of me?! Do you have no decorum? No decency?”

  “Decency?” I spat back. “You’re trying to kill us!” 

“I’m aware of that, you reality-hopping parasite!” She cried. “It is so unbelievably rude to interrupt somebody in their attempts to do anything!” 

“Rotary-Christ almighty, I’m starting to realize why you want her dead, Norm,” I glanced back at the cowboy, who was still poised to attack. “She’s a complete and utter bitch.”

“Even ‘f I’m still utterly pissed at ya, I can agree with ya on that.” I heard an ounce of hilarity creep into his voice beyond the bag-face. 

I couldn’t avoid snickering. Mingus must have heard it, because she seemed to become even more tense and frustrated. With a gutteral yowl, she dove forward to tackle me to the ground, but Norm beat her to the punch. He took a step forward and used his non-rifle-bearing arm to push me out of the Mayor’s line of attack. He let off a bullet, briefly deafening me and causing my phone-tinnitus to act up. Though, strangely, Mingus was in too close range to be shot. Norm missed. She still backed off, clutching her ears in pain. 

“Norm, I swear to Phone-Christ, you’re going to deafen me!” I practically screamed at him before throwing up my hands in a confused gesture. “What happened to Mr. ‘I don’t miss?!’” When I quoted his earlier words, I artifically deepened my voice and mimicked his southern drawl. 

“She was two inches from slaughterin’ ya and yer upset that I missed?!” Norm snapped back, which was honestly fair enough. I was panicking, man, I say things that I regret when I panic. 

Mingus regained her bearings and lunged for Norm, and, likely due to my accidental distraction, managed to swipe at him with her claws and slice open the arm of his training suit. I heard no audible reaction come from him, which I found slightly odd, but his free arm did reach over to clutch at the open wound. When he lifted his hand, it came away coated in a fine layer of fresh blood. I couldn’t hold back the anxious gasp that fled my throat– I was instinctively worried about him despite the fact that it was just a surface level wound. 

Norm reared his newly injured arm to the side and swung it forward, cracking the revolver’s barrel against the side of Mingus’ head. I winced at the sight, and Norm backed away to try to get to shooting distance. Mingus stumbled backward, disoriented. But she had returned to her battle-ready state before I got the chance to get at her with my knife. It was a miracle I hadn’t stabbed myself on accident yet– I wasn’t sure how I was going to get an attack in on Mingus without hurting myself. 

Expectedly, Mingus had the reflexes of a particularly vengeful feline, and had dove toward Norm before he got the chance to let off a bullet in her direction. She used the fact that his revolver-wielding arm was injured and grabbed onto the site of the scratch, pulling a sharp intake of breath from Norm and using the momentary distraction the pain brought to shove him back. His heels caught on the edge of the royal purple rug that rested in the center of the room and caused him to trip and fall backward onto the ground, dropping his revolver in the process.  

…Well, shit. 

Mingus stalked over to the dropped firearm and kicked it pretty damn hard across the room, far out of Norm and I’s reach. Shit again. My better instincts kicked in and I took several steps forward to attempt to attack the Mayor with the knife I stole from her kitchen. Maybe if I stole her attention for long enough, Norm could get up and grab his gun before I was torn to shreds. 

I raised the knife to about shoulder level and pushed it in on Mingus’s neck– a poor choice of site to try and stab, but I was really only half-committed to killing her at this point. In response to my poorly-aimed attack, Mingus ducked to the side and lunged forward, wrapping her arms around my torso to take me to the ground with her. On impact, the knife fell from my hands and clattered across the floor. Triple shit. Additionally, I was reminded of what happened with Little Billy earlier when the strange trigger he gifted us launched out of my pocket and skidded along the ground. 

Now that I thought about it, Billy did say that the trigger was a ‘countermeasure’ in case things went wrong with Mingus…

I had to get at that big red button. 

Before Mingus could use her claws to tear me apart, I flung my arm out and grabbed at the trigger. But Mingus was faster, slamming one clawed hand onto my forearm and pinning it to the ground. Her claws dug into my skin, drawing blood. I could only wince as she paused to speak to me, voice mildly winded and filled with pure menace. “That’s one of Little Billy’s ‘toys,’ isn’t it? I should have known better than to place my trust, my confidence, in that little brat!” She leaned in closer, close enough to where I could smell the caviar on her breath. “Once I’m done tearing you to bits, I’m going to hang your remains from this building like they’re Phone-Goddamned Christmas lights, you snivelling, hideous, troglodyctal parasite!” She punctuated each insult with a slice to whatever skin she could find, drawing more blood and creating gratefully numbed markings. 

As my adrenaline levels dropped slightly, my ability to think reasonably returned to me. It never quite sunk in that I could die there, in that world. Time passed and changed people just like in the reality where I was from, and I was not exempt from harm just because I wasn’t originally from there. A question arose in my mind: what exactly would happen if I were to die there? Would I return to my original reality? Or perhaps I would just… cease to exist; a jumble of code deleted from the files. 

A gunshot rang in my sound processors, and relief flooded my senses. Norm got his revolver back while Mingus was distracted attacking me. I felt warm blood spray over my phone-face, and I heard the cat woman let out a strangled gasp. I took the opportunity to reel back and kick Mingus in the chest, sending her tumbling away from me and allowing me to get to my feet. I lifted a hand to wipe the mixture of my own and the Mayor’s blood from my phone-face. My gaze shot downward to find Mingus clutching her bleeding shoulder. 

“Hoooly shit!” I exclaimed, looking up to find Norm, firearm still extended in front of him. He seemed relieved, but there was an unmistakable hesitancy in his body language that was throwing me for a loop. Why didn’t he just shoot her in the head? She wasn’t moving that much. Was he… rethinking his choice to kill her?

Well, shit, I wasn’t going to give up because he was hesitating! I wanted to get the hell out of this place and go home! I looked down at the ground and realized that the knife I had dropped was practically across the room, leaving Little Billy’s trigger closer to me and, therefore, the better option to go with at that moment. I lunged forward and snatched it off the ground before backing far away from the kneeling Mingus, who seemed to be in some form of shock for the moment. As much as she seemed to forget it, she was still mortal, and still very shoot-able. 

After only a brief pause to contemplate my life’s decisions, I practically slammed my thumb against the big red button on the trigger. 

And nothing happened. 

Not at first, anyway. Just as I thought Billy had utterly fucked us over just to get a prank in, I began hearing a distant high-pitched beeping. It seemed to be following a steady rhythm. And I knew immediately what I had done: I had rigged Town Hall to explode. 

“Oh, shit, I fucked up, Norm!” I whirled around to face the space-cowboy, who had become infinitely more tense once I had grabbed the trigger with the intention to press it. “The place is gonna blow! We gotta get out of here!” 

“Y’don’t ‘ave t’ tell me twice, pardner,” Norm hastily responded. I relaxed slightly; he was back to calling me pardner. He must have forgiven me at least a little bit for calling him an NPC. He turned and began to bolt from the entrance hall with me in tow. 

But of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. It was never that easy. When I began to run, I felt something wrap around my wrist. I glanced down and grimly noticed that Mingus had stumbled over to me and snatched my wrist, which she promptly used to sling me to the ground. When I landed, I spotted a flash of metal in her hand, and immediately panicked when I realized that she had picked up the knife I dropped. 

“I don’t think so!” She cried, sounding no less confident in her abilities than earlier. She hurriedly knelt and lifted the knife above her head, then plunged it  downward with the intent to stab me in the chest. With my half-decent reflexes, I managed to grab her wrist and use what strength I had to stop the knife in its course. “You won’t be the death of Paw-paw’s vision! I will absolutely, completely, unquestionably never allow that!” 

Okay, I’m going to be completely honest, because I’m an honest person. I kind of felt sympathy for Mayor Mingus in that moment. She just misinterpreted her grandpa’s intentions with his town, and by Phone-God, she wanted to help his dream come true, even if he had been missing for years. She just didn’t want his labor to be fruitless. The thing is… she was doing it all wrong. And actions have consequences. 

I felt rustling in my breast pocket. I could only guess what it was before my pocket tore open, and a furry blur about the size of my fist was launching from its containment. I then recalled what I had put in that pocket: Spunch. My boy Spunch was trying to save me from being stabbed by a murderous cat lady! The rat latched onto Mingus’ face, causing her to lurch backward, screaming, though she kept her grip on the knife’s handle. I used this opportunity to scramble backward, though wasn’t able to get to my feet before I was deafened by another gunshot, courtesy of Norm, who had stopped and turned to help when Mingus pounced on me. 

I clenched my optical sensors shut and covered my sound-processers, willing their ringing to stop. Literally, my head was ringing. Because it was a phone. When I re-enabled my optical sensors, I was met with the sight of Mingus, blood actively flowing from her lips and a fresh bullet wound right to the heart. She said nothing, only stared blankly ahead, seemingly in shock. I looked around frantically for Spunch, finding that he had landed on the ground. Immediately, I leaned over and picked him up, shoving him back in my pocket while muttering probably unintelligible hogwash about how thankful I was for this rat’s existence. Then I turned and ran. 

This time, I was able to make it out of the building and down the front steps of Town Hall without any problems. My mind was racing; we just killed the Mayor, and now Town Hall was going to explode, immolating her body and everyone left inside. We were straight-up killers. But hey, we had done what we went there to do, and now Norm was going to help me get back home. 

The two of us made it a safe distance away from Town Hall, and I keeled over to catch my breath. Then I was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of tension in the air– painfully awkward tension. I looked up at Norm, who seemed to be in a similar situation. I took a breath in and managed to croak out “Uh… so, we’re alive–”

I was interrupted by an earth-shuddering impact, sending me stumbling and forcing me to grab onto a nearby light pole to prevent falling over completely. I looked up to find that Town Hall had, in fact, exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel and debris flying our way, though thankfully not injuring us any more than we already were. The warmth from the explosion washed over me and I briefly wondered how painful it would be to have my plastic phone-head melted. Were there nerve endings in there? I answered my own question; there were definitely nerve endings in the phone-heads, which opened a whole new can of worms that I didn’t feel like addressing at that moment. 

Silence blanketed the two of us as we mutely watched Town Hall burn to the ground. Strangely enough, I found that I was feeling… regret. Gentle regret, the kind that was barely recognizable until it leaked through the cracks in your mind. I wasn’t entirely sure where it came from– I had already acknowledged the fact that I hardly felt anything toward the NPCs in this world. Though, at that moment, I felt vague sympathy toward those I condemned to a flaming death. 

I swallowed thickly and turned to face Norm, whose sticky note had donned a mildly grim expression. “So… how do you feel? Your arch-enemy is dead, and any paperwork proving your exile is probably completely gone, so you can do whatever you want now.” 

He remained silent. Eerily so. I leaned in closer, tilting my head to the side. “...Norm?” I began in a meek tone. “Are you… okay?” 

I heard him take a breath and let it out slowly. “No,” he mumbled. “No, oddly ‘nough, I don’t feel okay.” He averted his gaze as he holstered his revolver. “I feel like I should be more satisfied now that th’ Mayor’s gone, but…” He turned to look at me, expression numb. “That felt dirty, (Y/N). I can’t help but feel like we made a mistake.”

I felt my stomach sink to my shoes. I thought the bad feeling I was getting was because of existential dread. Had we actually fucked up? That couldn’t be it. I had done what I was directed to do! My gaze fixated on the ground. “You do?” I muttered. 

Norm only nodded solemnly. “I thought getting rid o’ her would make me feel better ‘bout what happened before, but…” He sighed. “I s’pose I was wrong.”

Silence washed over us once again. My head was pounding– I could barely think. I could feel my heart racing. We did all of this for nothing? Norm didn’t even feel slightly better now that Mingus (and likely her entire posse) was dead?

“Well, pardner, I ain’t one t’ go back on my end o’ deals– it don’t matter how I feel about this.” He sank to a seated position on the curb. “I jus’ need t’ think about how t’ get ya back home.” He said it in such a resigned tone that I honestly felt bad for him.

I didn’t respond. He was still concerned with getting me back to my original reality, even if I hadn’t quite fixed his problem. My thoughts returned to that moment in the subway, when he told me, albeit hesitantly, that he cared about me. We were kindred spirits, in a way, both dropped into a time and place that we weren’t familiar with and forced to get used to it. He was the first, and only, NPC from this game that seemed to form a bond with me. And I realized just then that I had a special kind of connection with this ridiculous space cowboy. 

“Norm,” I began, voice contemplative. “What if, and hear me out for a second,” I extended both hands in his direction as if to placate him. “I didn’t go back home.” When he didn’t say anything, only stared at me cynically, I heightened my volume and talking speed. “Okay, listen, I’m probably a wanted criminal back home for reasons you already know, and one of my only friends is probably dead. There’s nothing left for me there.” I said it with an almost broken resignation, one that caused Norm to deflate. “Here, even though it’s not where I’m originally from, I have a decent place to live, no criminal record (which will probably change soon, but still,) and… well, you. And don’t take this the wrong way, but you really need human connection. Ya feel me?” I slowly sat down on the curb next to him. 

The yeehaw-man had stopped looking at me, but turned to face the inferno that was once Town Hall. His expression was one of vague disbelief. A long, tense moment passed while he processed this information. Then he spoke, though his voice was softer this time. “Y’mean that?” 

“You know it,” I assured him. “Even if my head is a phone, I wasn’t a huge fan of my human flesh-face anyway. I’m not missing a ton.” 

“Bullshit,” Norm leaned back slightly, turning to look at me, appalled. “I could jus’ tell y’were gorgeous. Don’t lie t’me.” 

I couldn’t stop the heat from rising to my phone-face. Luckily, that heat didn’t manifest into anything visible. Normally, I would have responded with a joke, but I found myself incapable of thinking of anything humorous. What the hell was happening to me? Why did I suddenly care so much about what he thought of me? Why did everything suddenly feel so… fuzzy?

“Hey, uh… Norm?” I pulled my knees into my chest and wrapped my arms around them anxiously. “By the way, I… wanted to apologize. For what I said earlier. About you being an NPC.” I watched as he visibly tensed, and spoke faster to try and relieve him of it. “Wait, let me explain! Since I got here, nobody has been willing to tolerate my presence for more than, like, a day. Fuckin’ Bigfoot saved my phone-goddamned life and he still runs when he sees me! I thought it was the code or something preventing me from forming bonds with people, but… I know that can’t be true now. Because you’ve stuck with me this long, and I think something might have changed. Inside of me, I mean.”

As I was speaking, I felt like my brain was lagging behind my speaker. The words were just kind of falling out of me, some much to my shock. I didn’t think I could be so genuine. And while I poured my heart out to this video game character, there was something… different in the way I was communicating to him. There was an earnest sound to my voice that I have never heard in it before this. And I realized right then and there, that I had accidentally fallen in love with a fucking fictional cowboy. 

But that didn’t stop me from continuing. As I recognized my own feelings, that earnest energy in my voice only amplified more. “It’s really weird, because I didn’t think I was capable of feeling this way toward anyone here, then you point a fucking shotgun at my face and suddenly I have a consistent companion. You were so willing to hear my story and help me get back home even if I sounded like a phone-goddamned lunatic, and you were always willing to protect me when things got rough. You dealt with my nonsense and tried to understand my perspective on things even if you didn’t agree with them. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is… well, I really appreciate you, Norm. You’re different, y’know? And I didn’t realize just how starved of human companionship I was until you came along and filled the void. So… thank you.”

As soon as the words had left my speaker, I shrunk back in on myself. I didn’t know how he would receive it. He was only staring at me, sticky note devoid of emotion. When he spoke, he sounded completely overwhelmed. “I… I don’t understand, what are y’tryin’ t’ tell me? I’m tryin’ t’ figure out how t’ react.” 

I felt my stomach flip upside down in a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance, which promptly bubbled to the surface. “I’m trying to say that I love you, you fuckin’ dumbass!” I sounded like I was on the verge of tears.

Norm didn’t get the chance to react. Or, more like I didn’t see him react. My heartbeat paused, and my vision swam with iridescent patterns as if I had just been tossed into an oil spill. I made a rather embarrassing noise and clutched the spinning ground beneath me to prevent myself from keeling over. I heard Norm say something along the lines of “What th’ hell is happening?” And that made me realize that it wasn’t just me this time. The ground was lurching beneath us, sending debris tumbling about and the surrounding buildings crumbling. 

My heartbeat resumed its normal pattern and I managed to grab the nearest light pole to use as leverage. I yanked myself to my feet. “What the fuck is happening?” I choked out as Norm rose to his full height, also using a light pole to keep his balance. “Norm, did we break something?” 

“I didn’t do nothin!’” He called out in response, sounding shaken and confused. His free hand rested on his revolver, but even he seemed unsure as to what he was going to do with it. 

The world shook once more and I screamed as a large fragment of black plastic slammed into the ground, threatening to flatten me. I looked up to perhaps discover the source of the shrapnel, and found that a piece of the sky was missing, a strange, shimmering material in its place. The sky was literally falling, Chicken Little style. What. The. Fuck. 

I heard a brief rumbling noise emerging from behind me, and I only managed to glance back before Norm grabbed me, slinging me to the side and out of the way of the falling building that nearly slaughtered me. He handled me with a newfound care that only intensified the burning emotion in my chest. Once the building hit the ground with an ear-shattering impact, the material seemed to explode with pale pixels that scattered about the earth. It had seemingly melted, glitching and falling apart. Something had happened outside of the arcade machine. This world was coming apart at the seams. 

“We ‘ave t’ get outta here,” Norm started, sounding hardly frightened. 

I turned to face him, realizing that he hadn’t removed his hands from my shoulders, and shot back with what little air I could manage “I think the save file is glitching out or something! Where the hell are we gonna go?!”

Norm paused, then shook his head. “I… I don’t know.” 

I felt my heart stop briefly. We didn’t know what to do. This world was going to collapse, and us along with it. And just as I was finally getting used to it! 

“Well, we can’t stay here! Run!” I cried out and began doing just that, charging as fast as I could away from the crumbling buildings. Norm followed closely behind with the intention to use his body to shield me from any stray debris. 

I’m not entirely sure how long we were running. It’s all pretty blurry– my brain had seemingly begun to malfunction along with the world, and I began finding it increasingly difficult to perform basic tasks. Just the action of forcing my legs to move was enough to mentally exhaust me. All I know is that, eventually, we found ourselves in the park. Trees had fallen and melted into the ground, the pond was no longer occupied by swans, and any and all of the park’s occupants had vanished. 

Norm yanked on my arm to stop me, and I whirled around to face him. His expression, try as he might to hide it, betrayed his fear. “(Y/N),” he muttered breathlessly. “We can’t run from this.” 

Once again, I felt my heart lag. If I wasn’t erased with the rest of this world, I would surely die of a heart attack or something. I fell into silence. Oh, well. If I was going to die here, at least I would die alongside the one person that I cared about. We wordlessly stared at our destroyed surroundings for a moment before Norm spoke once again, sounding nonchalant. “Did y’wanna hear my answer?” 

I turned my phone-head to face him. “...What?”

“Y’said ya loved me, right? Did y’wanna hear my response?” 

I began to panic. I meant what I said to him, but now, the fear of death was replaced by the fear of rejection. I swallowed thickly. We were about to die anyway. “...Yeah. I do.”

He didn’t look back at the crumbling world around him. Only at me. I felt my body begin to fall apart to join my mind. “I feel th’ same. I love ya, (Y/N), as much as it confuses me t’ say it, I might as well.” 

I nodded solemnly. “I was worried you’d say that,” I replied, staring down at the ground. “Now I’m going to wonder what life would have been like if we weren’t about to be eradicated. I can’t even kiss you or anything, my head is a phone.” I don’t think I’ve ever said that with as much pure frustration as I did then. 

Though, at that moment, it seemed that the universe finally had some sympathy. My world lurched once again, and suddenly I felt incredibly light. I almost tipped over completely when I turned my head to look back at Norm, whose bag-face now wore an utterly shocked expression. “...What?” 

“Yer… yer head. It’s…” He paused, pointing to my head. I lifted my hands and touched my face, finding… a face. Eyes, lips, a nose. He scoffed. “Knew it.”

My breathing picked up speed as I looked back up at Norm. I didn’t have time to question the perfect timing of this glitch, I just had to do something about it before we died. “Alright, you’ve seen my real face, now it’s your turn.”

He didn’t question what I meant, but he certainly hestitated, though not for long. He nodded, and I took that as permission to lift my arms to the sides of his head, carefully remove his hat, and then lift the paper bag from his face. 

I was not shocked by his appearance. He seemed wholly embarrassed, which I wasn’t expecting, but he certainly looked exactly how I had unconsciously pictured him to. Because he hadn’t exactly had societal expectations about his appearance looming over his head for a couple of years, he wasn’t the most well-groomed, but I literally could not have cared less at that moment. I gently placed his hat back on his head. “Huh,” I grunted, “I dunno what I was expecting. Of course you have five ‘o’ clock shadow.” 

 Norm made a disgruntled face, one that brought a smile to my newly-returned lips. “I don’t know what I was expectin’, neither. Y’look just as tired as I thought you’d look.” 

“Phone-gods, man, we’re about to die, just shut the fuck up already,” I grinned lightheartedly before lifting my hand, grabbing a fistful of his suit, and yanking him down to my height. 

I’m not exactly sure how to describe what happened to me when I kissed him for the first time. I’m not really good with words, you know that already. All I know is that it was a welcome distraction from the voidal white light that was swiftly closing in around the both of us. 

And it was beautiful. 

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 2-- A Hot Cup o' Joe

Before I knew it, I was seated at Norm’s disheveled table, ceramic mug in-hand. The hot liquid inside was quickly heating up the material, making it almost painful to hold. 

“I wasn’t expecting you to have instant coffee on-hand, Norm,” I commented inquisitively. He shrugged, collecting his own mug from the small counter opposite me and leaning up against it. I noticed how he didn’t sit down. “Pays t’ ‘ave somethin’ hot on ya when it gets cold.” He used his free hand to gesture to the miniscule stove against the far wall. “That thing is my only source o’ heat in the winter.” He turned his head to the side in the general direction of the front door. “Got the coffee from some crippled feller who wanted to gimme a ‘housewarmin’ gift.’” He performed air quotes. “Scared ‘im off right quick.”

“Huh. So you’ve been out here for a while, then?” I tilted my head in his direction, choosing to ignore the fact that he presumably pointed a shotgun at a disabled man. And the fact that the disabled man was probably Jerry. Poor guy.

Norm nodded– almost solemnly. “That’s right. Been out ‘ere goin’ on three years.” He lifted his mug to where I assumed his lips were, paused when he remembered the bag on his head, then lowered the mug once more. Ha. Idiot. 

Not like I wanted to drink it myself. Since I got there, I’d hated how the people there absorbed nutrients. Sure, we ate, but I wouldn’t call it ‘eating,’ in the sense of there was a slot in the base of my head that I shoved food into and called it a day. I couldn’t even really taste it. Man, I missed actually tasting things. There was a vague essence of flavor in things, and I could still sense textures, but that was it. 

I hummed in acknowledgement. “I assume that Mayor Mingus has some involvement in you being sequestered in an abandoned shack in the woods.” 

Norm’s grip tightened on his mug. “Ya’d be assumin’ correctly, pardner. That dastardly feline thought it’d be easier t’ exile me than t’ deal with me properly.” 

If I had eyebrows, they would have lifted at that moment. “Mingus exiled you? I didn’t think she did things like that… or that she had the power to do things like that.” I paused to take a steadying breath. “I mean, I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s pretty obvious that she’s one corrupt kitty-cat.”

He scoffed. “Ya can say that again. I swear t’ all the powers that be, once I git my hands on that furry little–”

“Woah!” I interrupted him, holding up a finger. “Don’t finish that sentence. Lemme guess. You’re some kind of ruthless avenger who wants to heal his broken pride and compensate for his lack of action by unnecessarily harming those who have wronged you.” 

He fell into stunned silence. I realized I hit it right on the money and winced. Or I would have, if I had a face. 

Norm cleared his throat. “...I suppose y’ could say that,” he mumbled in a meek voice. 

“Ah, shit, dude, who am I to judge?” I leaned back in my chair and made a wide gesture with my arms. “I can understand why you would want her dead. She’s a corrupt politician who nobody seems to realize is corrupt. Not even that weirdly self-aware guy who lives in a dumpster knows what’s going on with her.” I paused. “Wait… why did Mingus exile you?”

The yeehaw man didn’t answer for a concerningly long time. He only stared at me, as if he were sizing me up. I could feel myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable. 

“Are ya stupid er what?” He finally resumed speaking, causing me to deflate in a mixture of relief and shame. “It’s cuz I ‘ave a head. A normal one, not some…” He pointed with an open palm toward my rotary head. “Plastic box.”

I felt my muscles tense at that comment. I couldn’t blame him for thinking that I have had this thing for a head since I was an infant. But… it still kind of hurt. 

“...Right,” I avoided his gaze for a moment out of discomfort. “So, you’re out here because Mingus doesn’t like people with flesh-heads. That feels almost sort of racist. Classist?... Dial-ist?” I shook my head, hearing the various components rattling about inside. Then I paused. “How do you have a flesh-head in the first place? I thought people around here got their heads replaced when they were babies?”

His sticky note face raised an eyebrow at my phrasing. “It’s a long story,” he didn’t comment on how I was speaking like I was a foreigner in a new country. 

“Well, do I have some good news for you, Mr. Space Cowboy!” I set my mug down on the table, making a soft clattering noise. I leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees. “We quite literally have all night.” 

Norm stared at me for a long, awkward moment, sticky note displaying a reluctant, narrow-eyed stare. I heard him take a breath before sighing “Fine.”

“Yes! Okie-dokie, space-man, what’s the haps?” I leaned forward even further to the point where I was almost falling out of my chair. 

“Never ask me what th’ ‘haps’ are again.” He pointed a finger in my direction. “And quit leanin’ like that. Yer gonn’ git yerself killed.” I did as he said. I wasn’t going to die before I heard this story. 

Norm took a moment to organize his thoughts before taking a few slow, careful steps in my direction. “The long n’ short of it is that I’m a time traveler.”

I nodded eagerly. “Yeah?”

He paused briefly. “Yer not gonn’ question that?” 

I tilted my head at him. “You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve gone through, man. Time travel is one of the more believable things I’ve heard in the last couple of years. What’s the context?”

He blinked at me questioningly before continuing. “I used t’ work for NASA back in the days o’ President Crown’s… presidency. Since I had sum experience in th’ Air Force, they stuck me on a special mission.” What kind of backstory was this? How old was this guy? “They sent me int’ a wormhole.”

“Ahh, this is starting to make sense!” I clapped my hands together. “Lemme try to guess what happens next–”

He cut me off with a firm “No,” and I raised my hands in submission. He continued with his story. “Moseyed on int’ the wormhole, came out the other side, n’ everything had changed. Turned out it had been a good sixty years since I left. I landed on Earth, and everyone jus’ casually had phones fer heads. Mingus didn’t like the fact that I was reluctant to git one o’ my own, so she exiled me.” 

I whistled. “Damn…” 

Norm raised a Sharpied eyebrow before sighing. “Yeah. It’s pretty damn tough. I don’t even know if my wife and kids are still around.” There was a melancholy edge to his voice that gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach. If he were in his late twenties when he left– and that’s being incredibly generous– his wife would be in her late eighties or early nineties. If they were any older (which was likely)… the prospects were not looking good. His kids probably all left Dialtown, as kids often do.

I took a sharp breath through my food hole (gods, it’s so gross) and rested a hand above my dial. “I’m really sorry to hear that, man. If it helps, I understand– we’re in sort of similar boats.” 

He closed the distance between himself and the table I sat at to set down his now-cold mug of coffee. “I don’t think y’do, pardner. I’ll bet money that ya didn’t even know quantum jumpin’ was a real thing until jus’ now.”

I draped my arms over the back of the semi-rotted chair I sat in. “Wanna bet?”

“Bet.” His voice became firmer as he folded his arms across his chest. 

A feeling of relief and triumph rose in my chest. I would finally get to tell somebody about what happened without sounding like a crazy person. I cleared my throat. 

“It all started with a very amateur museum robbery with my best bud…