Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 10-- Breaking And Entering Or Dumpster Diving?

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 10-- Breaking and Entering or Dumpster Diving?

Once I finished assuring Norm that we wouldn’t be in this dumpster for long, I turned around to see if there were any, like… treasures I could fish out of the filth. Maybe if we found some C-4 in this dumpster, we would be able to counter Billy. There were some old banana peels, some burger wrappers, a couple paper cups and–

…There was a man in the corner. 

I immediately began screaming. What else was I supposed to do? There was a man curled up in this dumpster!

Well, I guess I was also technically in the dumpster, but I didn’t know this guy’s intentions. I hardly noticed over my own terror when the unknown man also started screaming. Norm turned around, expression disgruntled, and slammed a hand over my speaker. “‘f you don’t shut the hell up!”

I silenced myself, and the man’s screams died down shortly after. We stared at each other wordlessly for a time. Hang on a second, I recognized this guy! This was the guy I almost witnessed the murder of!... Actually, does it count as murder if it’s a swan? I like to think so. We were in similar boats, him and I. He just dealt with it… far more frequently. I also thought his entire being was funny. Like, he had a bandy-aid on his forehead that read ‘fuckface.’ That’s hilarious! Couldn’t quite remember his name, though. 

Norm immediately pointed his revolver at the man– not quite intending to shoot, but ready to if need be. “Who’re you?” He began.

The fuckface guy lifted his arms in a terrified gesture of submission, pressing himself farther up against the dumpster’s wall. “R-Randy! Randy Jade! Please– Please don’t shoot me!” His flip-phone-head’s screen flickered frantically between various colors, expressing panic. He seemed fucking terrified of Norm, though I could tell it wasn’t just because he had a gun. Now that I got a better look at him, myself and this guy were dressed pretty similarly: hoodie, flannel, some worn jeans– the only difference was the color scheme, of which he wore cooler-toned colors like blue and grey. Fit his overall vibe, honestly. Oh, and the bandages on his hands. Those were pretty wack. 

“Hang on, Randy Jade? The Randy Jade?” I took a step closer to the cowering man. “Like, phone-sex hotline Randy Jade?”

Wow, this was becoming better by the second. I had seen this guy around, but never quite made the connection that he was the same guy with the cheesy-ass introduction on the phone-sex hotline. I never imagined they could be the same person!

Both Norm and our newly-met friend froze. Norm looked at me with his most confused expression yet. “...Y’call phone sex hotlines?”

I paused. “Oh, right, uh,” I waved my hand dismissively. “For funsies. I thought it was funny that there was a phone-sex hotline in a city full of phones. Irony, y’know? I’m a curious person.”

Randy extended a meekly accusatory hand in my direction. “Are…Are you the person that heard my introduction and just… started laughing? Continuously? Until I hung up?”

I snickered at the memory. His introduction was ridiculous! “Yeah, that was me.”

“Oh.” I could practically hear the frown in his voice as his head lowered to look at the floor. “That really hurt my feelings.”

I suddenly felt overwhelming pity for this poor man. But now I was confused– why was he in this dumpster? Oh well, Norm still had a gun pointed at him, I might as well ask. “Say, Randal, what’re you doing in this here dumpster?”

“I live here!” Randy exclaimed, and immediately regretted it. He quieted down. “M-My jobs don’t really pay the bills, so I pay Bunny to let me live in his dumpster.”

Well, he gave us a location, so that was good. Outside Bunny’s Burgers. Christ, I hated that place. The burgers were dry as all hell, and always undercooked. I gestured to Norm to lower his firearm, which he did. “We’re good, Norm, he’s about as dangerous as a cold, wet sock.” Randy did not object to my analysis of his dangerous tendencies. Though, despite Norm having lowered his revolver, the poor man still seemed absolutely petrified of him.

“Does that technically mean we’re breakin’ an’ enterin’?” Norm mumbled to me. 

I paused. I actually wasn’t sure. “Nahhh, I think it just counts as dumpster diving. Not as illegal,” I whispered back to him. I returned my attention to the cold, wet sock of a man before us. “Randy, you’re cool with housing criminals for a little bit, right?”

Randy tensed. “Uh, well, I–”

I cut him off. “Great! We won’t be long.”

I turned to peek out of the little cracks in the dumpster’s walls. I could hardly see anything, but I’m pretty sure there was no Little Billy in the alley. I bit the inside of my cheek in contemplation, trying to think of a way out of this situation. Billy surely knew exactly where we were via some… magical child abilities, probably. We definitely couldn’t fight him, so we had to lose him somehow. 

“Any ideas?” I heard Norm mumble to my right. 

I slowly shook my head. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Well, I got one,” he continued before leaning in closer. He lowered his voice to say “We could always use that destitute feller over there as a distraction. Get ‘im t’ talk t’ the little varmint.”

I paused to contemplate his proposition. I looked at Randy. He did seem like prime Billy bait. If there was one thing I knew about Little Billy, it was that he loved tormenting people with too little self-respect to fight back. I tilted my head. “Huh. That’s not a bad idea,” I commented incredulously. “But how will we get him to do it?”

“I-I’m right here. I can hear you,” a slightly-offended Randy interrupted my thoughts. “What are you guys even running from?”

I didn’t answer his question, only approached to attempt a negotiation. “Randy, buddy,” I laid a hand on his shoulder, probably catching seven different contagious diseases (rabies included) as I did so. I felt the sad, sad man recoil under my touch. “We need you to do us a little favor.” Yes, speaking to him like he was a feral animal was my intention. He probably thought himself as one, anyway. “You like being a good person, right?” 

Randy didn’t notice that I was actually asking him a question until I stared at him expectantly. “Uh… y-yeah, I guess so.” He tried removing my hand from his shoulder, but I only squeezed harder.

“I thought so. Well, now’s your chance. You can actually do something for someone instead of sitting around like a limp, sweaty noodle.” A smile crept into my voice, but not onto my phone-face. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Wh-What are you trying to make me do?” Randy asked. “I’ll do a lot, but there’s certain things I’ve had enough of!” He glanced at Norm. “I’ve dealt with enough cowboys at work that I don’t think phone-hell or heaven will let me in. I think I’ll just be stuck in a wild west style saloon for eternity.” He visibly shuddered. I couldn’t help but briefly question that in my mind, but decided not to talk about it. Norm looked mildly offended.

“We just need you to distract someone, Randy. It shouldn’t be that difficult, just make some crazy noises until we get away. Sound agreeable enough?” I lifted my hand from his shoulder, much to his relief. 

The swan-wrangler fell silent, gaze fixed on his tattered sneakers. “I’m not good at distracting people. I just kind of blend into the background,” he admitted. 

“Not when you’re screaming! You’re good at that, right? You do it a ton.” I lifted my hands in a somewhat motivational gesture, then glanced back at Norm to see if I was doing a good job. Norm only shrugged. 

There was another moment of awkward silence while Randy contemplated my proposition. He was taking a little too long to decide for my tastes, so I gestured to the yeehaw-man behind me. “Oh, and he has a gun. So you kinda have to do what we say.”

That seemed to do it. Randy tensed once more and frantically said “Okay! Okay, I-I’ll do it. Jeez.” I heard him add under his breath, “Why have I had a gun pulled on me thrice this week?” 

I decided not to question that last bit and retracted from Randy’s personal space. “Great! Now we just gotta wait until Billy inevitably shows up–”

“He’s outside,” interjected Norm, his bag pressed against a crack. “Better git on over here, kid.”

I nudged Randy, who hurriedly stood and awkwardly shuffled his way to exterior wall of the container, lifted the lid, and vaulted out. I stooped over to peer through a crack, just as Norm was. We both watched in stunned silence as Randy attempted to strike up a conversation with Billy, who immediately informed him of the grenade he had slipped into his pocket. 

While Randy panicked and fished said grenade from his pocket, Norm lifted the lid of the dumpster, jumped out, and then helped lift me out of it soon after. Thankfully, Randy had used some common sense and gotten Billy to turn his back to us. We began booking it to the end of the alley so we could get the hell out of there. 

Out of seemingly nowhere, Little Billy fucking appeared right in front of us. No, he didn’t like, run up and block our exit, he straight-up apparated. I yelped in shock and skidded to a stop, followed by Norm. 

“Hey, bozos! You should know better!” He vaguely gestured over our shoulders to Randy, who was still holding the grenade (which turned out to still have the pin in it) and seemed just as confused at how Billy blocked our way out. “Guys like him are boring! I need at least some resistance to my torment or it isn’t as fun! That guy doesn’t even have an ounce of self-respect!” I watched as Randy sagged and turned to slink back to his sad-man dumpster. Damn. Poor guy. 

“Jesus Christ, Billy,” I groaned exasperatedly, “Why are you even working for Mingus anyway? Is she even giving you anything?” 

Billy shrugged. “I dunno. Just because.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. Just because? I guess I should have expected that. It was Little Billy, for phone-christ’s sake. He did all kinds of shit for no reason other than he felt like it. I shook my head to clear it of the confused fog that it was filled with. “Can you just, like… kill us already?”

“Nope! Gotsta keep you alive for the Mayor.” He balled his hands into fists and rested them on his hips in a display of ego. “No death for you, bozos.”

“I swear to Christ, I’m gonna wring your little neck!” I snapped and lunged forward to do just that. Little Billy practically cartwheeled out of the way and held up his hand in a pacifying gesture. I stopped. Man, I really was about to strangle a child. Wow. I heard Norm let out a relieved sigh through his teeth from behind me. 

“Y’know what? I like ya, bozo. You got balls,” Billy mused, not acknowledging the fact that I had just threatened to literally strangle him to death. “I think I’ll leave ya alone. Why not?” He paused for a moment, then perked up. I could pretty much smell the impish grin on his dumbass little phone-face as he reached into his pocket and retrieved a rectangular device from it. 

I fully thought he was about to like… shoot us with a bazooka or something, so I lifted my arms in a defensive gesture. He looked at me like I was the dumbest motherfucker on the planet and gestured confusedly in my direction. “Calm down, bozo, it’s not a bazooka. That’s in my other pocket. You should know this by now.”

I pursed my metaphorical lips. I think my concerns were valid. “Then what the hell is it?”

Billy extended the device in our direction, revealing a walkie-talkie-esque shape with an antenna extending from the top and a big red button in the center like a goddamn cartoon. It was clear what it was: a trigger. For what, I wasn’t sure. “A countermeasure,” the little shit stated, sounding like some sort of mentor in a superhero movie. 

“Alright, vague, but I’ll take it, why not?” I shrugged and extended a hand to receive the trigger. I noticed Norm bristle behind me, and gave him a brief look of concern. His expression remained stoic. 

“I’m gonna vanish from the story now, later, bozos!” Billy exclaimed, using two baby-carrot-ass fingers to salute Norm and I before… literally fucking vanishing. No smoke bomb or anything, he just… disappeared. I frantically looked around, trying to locate the little rat child, but finding nothing but shattered hopes and dreams. 

“...Christ,” I mumbled, resting a hand on my phone-face. “That kid is gonna kill me. Probably. Yeah, he’ll definitely be what causes my death.”

Norm spoke up, taking a place at my side, “Which ‘s why we won’t be usin’ that there trigger.”

I looked at him, confused, prompting him to continue. “Why not?”

After a sigh and some hesitation, he elaborated. “Y’said that kid ‘s basically th’ bane o’ everybody’s existence, right? I don’ trust anythin’ he gives us. We ain’t usin’ that. Might as well throw it away.”

I scoffed incredulously. “We shouldn’t throw it away. If it really is a countermeasure just in case our plan to assassinate Mingus fails– which I’m assuming that’s what he meant– we might very well need it.” I glanced around and leaned in closer to Norm. “As much as it confuses me to believe it, I don’t think Billy would lie about this, and this specifically.”

“And what ‘f it kills us ‘f we use it?” Norm’s voice gained a little bit of volume, which gave me pause. Did he really care that much? I recalled his earlier confession in the subway, and reasoned with myself that yes, he did really care that much. 

I hesitated for a moment. Maybe, I thought, I should just agree with him and throw the trigger away. But my instincts didn’t let me. I just had a good feeling about it– it might have ended up being the thing that saved our asses. Even if Billy supplied it to us. Fuckin’ weirdo. 

“I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take, Norm. I’m sorry.” I shoved the trigger into my pocket, being careful not to accidentally press the button in the process. Norm’s expression falled to discontent, and he visibly tensed. I began to worry that I might have pissed him off, but he would just have to deal with it. 

“Fine, you win.” He pointed an accusatory finger in my direction. “But ‘f we die when usin’ that, I’m blamin’ you.”

“You would have blamed me anyway, so I’m alright with that,” I half-joked while turning to face the end of the alley. “Let’s… find the cat, I guess.”

Norm sighed, beginning to follow me once more. “Love seein’ th’ enthusiasm.”

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 14-- Nah, It Doesn't Count As Terrorism

I quickly learned that I was not good at concocting plans. My mind kept wandering to what exactly could have been happening outside of this room– Norm could have already been dead and I wouldn’t have known because I had been unconscious for who knows how long. For some reason, that thought scared me more than anything; the fact that I could have done something about it but I had been stupid enough to confide in God of all people, which got me kidnapped. 

Somehow, I managed to shake off my unfounded paranoia for long enough to make up some sort of idea of what I was going to do. There were plenty of windows in here, and it didn’t seem like an unsurvivable drop to the ground from the second story. I could probably jump out of the window and try to track down Norm to… apologize, save his ass, or both. Actually, probably just the former. I wasn’t sure if I was capable of saving him from anything, let alone Mayor Mingus. But if I couldn’t find him, I would definitely try to go through with our assassination plot. I didn’t come all this way for nothing.

What concerned me was that my blurry vision hadn’t begun to fade. There was still static on the edges of my vision, which made my periphery and depth perception far different than what they usually were. I knew that if I was going to have a chance at saving Norm from an untimely death at the hands of a rabid cat, then I would have to act quick before the glitches got worse. We could figure out their source later.

I took a few breaths to steady my frantically beating heart and approached one of the arched windows along the exterior wall. I never noticed how garish the wallpaper was until now. My hands traced the window’s frame until they found the latch, which I promptly pressed my thumb against to unlock it. Then I lifted the window. I was immediately bombarded with the sounds and smells of Dialtown once again– a strangely welcome sensation. I didn’t look down. I knew that if I did, I would hesitate, and I didn’t have time to hesitate. 

With that in mind, I braced my hands against the window sill and lifted my body from the ground before slinging my legs out of the window. My shoes made contact with the thin, decorative accents that lined the exterior walls of Town Hall, offering me a half-decent foothold to keep myself steady. The wind whipped through my clothes, which made it considerably more difficult to keep balance. 

I made the mistake of looking down to gauge how far I would be falling. The ground seemed a million feet away, infinitely stretching outward despite only being a maximum of fifteen feet up. I did spot a small pile of empty garbage bags that could potentially act as a landing pad, though. My gaze shot back up to stare at the wall ahead of me. Bad idea. I gave myself a brief pep-talk before counting down from five and loosing my grip on the windowsill. 

The fall was over before I even fully realized it was happening. All I felt was a brief sinking feeling in my stomach before my back hit the pile of empty trash bags, forcing a rush of air from my throat. I sat up before I got the chance to relax and stood, only stumbling a little bit before regaining my footing. 

I looked around the area and found that I was behind Town Hall, in an alley between the building and the one behind it. Okay, great. I’m not sure why Mingus didn’t send a guard to ensure I stayed in the office, but hey, I’m not complaining. Her negligence gave me the chance to escape. 

Readjusting my clothes, I approached the corner of the building and peered around it. Thankfully, there was nobody around to see me or take me back to where I was supposed to be. However, there were windows along the side of the wall that I was going to be walking past, so I had to stay low to avoid being seen. I awkwardly crouched down beneath the first-story windowsills and braced one hand on the wall so I wouldn’t trip like an idiot, then began to move. 

As I practically crawled under one of the windows, I got the bright idea to peek inside and see if I could spy anything useful to… maybe use as a weapon? Or I might have been able to overhear some useful information, maybe on the whereabouts of Norm or some sort of weakness of Mingus’s that I could exploit. 

The first window yielded nothing useful. Inside was what seemed to be a lounge or clubroom for groups to rent out. It had obviously not been used or cleaned in ages, evidenced by the cobwebs decorating nearly every surface. The next window proved to be a bit more favorable: a kitchen of sorts, perfectly clean counters and cabinets lining the walls topped by containers filled with cooking utensils and decorative ornaments. It maintained the purple theming of the rest of the building, and many framed photos of the Mayor had been placed around the room. Talk about an ego. 

I silently prayed that I wouldn’t have to break the window, and sure enough, it had been left unlocked. I pushed it upward and climbed inside, shutting the window behind me so my path would be more difficult to track if I was found to no longer be in Mingus’s office. My optical sensors tracked down the largest kitchen knife they could find, which I swiftly grabbed and inspected. It was sharp, which was a good thing, but I was also one of the clumsiest motherfuckers on the planet, so I had to be careful with it. 

I nearly leapt out of my skin when I heard speech emitting from just beyond the wooden door to the kitchen. Straining my sound processors, I made out two voices, both sounding rather familiar. As soon as I was able to make out their words, I gritted my teeth to avoid groaning at the realization that it was the two weapon-headed mobsters that attacked Norm and I before fleeing in the patented Mayor Mingus Chevrolet. I couldn’t quite remember their names, but honestly, I doubted they could remember their own. 

The two mobsters were painfully incompetent, of course, but even with that in mind, I wasn’t confident in my ability to fight both of them off. So if they were coming this way, I had to find somewhere to hide. I looked around the room and found nothing more than a cupboard I would barely fit into, so I began looking up. My gaze landed on a large air vent– the kind that only show up in video games when they are most convenient, and are coincidentally comedically large enough for the player character to fit inside of, even though those kinds of vents would never exist in real life. 

Whatever, I wasn’t one to ignore a fateful coincidence. I darted over to the wall and climbed on top of the closest counter to the vent before hurriedly dislodging its cover and pushing it inside. With some effort, I managed to push myself up and into the vent, turn around, and prop the cover up to make it seem like it hadn’t been disturbed. 

I wasn’t going to stick around to find out if the two mobsters were entering the kitchen. I turned around and began crawling my way through the cramped, dusty-ass ventilation system. There was a constant, dull fear that I was making too much noise and would alert somebody to my presence, but if there was one thing I knew about stealth games, it was that enemies never heard you sneaking around in the vents. 

One thing that I noticed while crawling through the vents was that they were connected to the entire Town Hall. I passed more clubrooms, closets, hallways, hell, even through the bathrooms. I occasionally spotted a familiar character– I even saw Little Billy once. I don’t think I’ve ever been that terrified in my life. I could have sworn he saw me, but if he did, he decided to be merciful and ignore my presence. 

Finally, after turning a corner, I heard a voice I had been listening for this whole time: Norm. His drawl was unmistakable, and while I couldn’t make out a word he was saying, he sounded pissed. I picked up speed, hearing my battered knees and the knife I held in one hand slamming into the steel I was crawling on at an even louder volume. I eventually made it to what I assumed was the entrance hall, and located a vent cover I could look out of. 

And there they were, Norm and Mayor Mingus, engaged in a heated argument. Mingus’s fur was standing on end, her tail flicking back and forth, conveying her bloodlust. Norm had already drawn his revolver from its holster and had its aim trained on the feline. Despite the rest of his body language representing a calm demeanor and sense of control, I noticed something that Mingus hadn’t seemed to: his hands were trembling. Whether it was from fear, anger, nerves, or all three, I wasn’t sure. I watched their argument unfold, Mingus having been in the middle of a statement. 

“--could never understand the hell I’ve been through trying to make Dialtown thrive again!” Her grip tightened on her cane, which she held as if it were a baton. “What I did was necessary! You were a threat to normalcy as a whole, a threat to uniformity! Do you have any idea what your presence could have caused my people to do? What you could have done to my people?!”

Norm scoffed incredulously. “Inspire ‘em t’ be their own people? Pursue their own goals?” He took a mildly threatening step closer. “What a travesty. How dare yer citizens wanna do what makes ‘em happy in life instead o’ what you want ‘em t’ do?” I noticed a crack in his voice. Was he truly that passionate about this? I felt my stomach churn. 

“Don’t you dare make me out to be a villain here!” Mingus cried, pointing accusatorily with her cane. “I know what’s best for this town, believe me! I’m just doing what my paw-paw failed to do– I’m reinstating his vision!” She paused just long enough to take a breath, not allowing Norm to get a word in edgewise. “Aren’t you the patriotic one? Weren’t you the one who believed President Crown knew what was best for his country? I’m only doing what he did!” 

“Don’ compare yerself t’ President Crown. Y’don’t get to do that after what ya’ve done t’ this place.” Norm’s voice was low and… almost menacing. “Ya’ve ruined what makes Dialtown… Dialtown. Its uniqueness, it’s unpredictability. Ya’ve made it a little gray speck on the face of the earth, jus’ like all th’ other cities.” He shook his head. “I remember, back in th’ day, when people would come t’ Dialtown to get a taste o’ what life could be like without expectations. Now, we ‘ave homeless folks floodin’ every corner, corporate slaves, crushed dreams.” Norm glared, a heated stare that, even though I wasn’t its target, seemed to melt my bones. “An’ it all started happenin’ when a certain someone was elected t’ office. Wanna take a wild guess who that was?”

Mingus was seething with anger. I could see her form trembling in barely concealed rage, as if her very soul wanted to attack. Then, without warning, my body lurched forward, my heartbeat lagging behind its usual rhythm. My vision seemed to bleed and melt, and my head swam as if I had just taken the worst psychoactive drug ever. I couldn’t stop the uncomfortable sound that fled my throat from escaping, and once my vision cleared a few seconds later, I realized my mistake. 

The Mayor’s head turned to the side with the speed of a gunshot, her intense eyes burning a hole into what felt like my soul. She wanted to see blood run, and by Phone-God, Mayor Mingus Crown always got what she wanted. 

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 5-- Tunnel of Lové

A startled yelp fled my throat as I frantically ducked under the large disk of metal that threatened to decapitate me. “God almighty, man, be careful with that thing!” I yelled at Norm, who had hurled the manhole cover in my direction either in a botched attempt to murder me or due to lack of spatial awareness. 

He shrugged. “Yer fine. Y’ducked.” 

I threw my hands up at his audacity. “And what if I hadn’t?! I’d be dead!” 

“Y’have a hard head. Ya’d be fine.” He said nonchalantly as he dropped to a knee, gazing down into the darkened tunnel. 

My metaphorical jaw dropped. What. An. Asshole. 

After a moment of simply staring at him, Norm looked up at my astonished form. He tilted his head. “What?” When I didn’t respond, he sighed and pointed at the opening beneath him. “Git in th’ hole.”

All previous transgressions were forgotten immediately for the sake of comedy. I snickered briefly. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I joked in my best ‘seductive’ tone which was, unsurprisingly, not seductive at all. We had been traveling together for an entire day now, so of course I was comfortable with making dirty jokes. We were about to be tunnel buddies, after all!

Norm paused for a moment, obviously clueless, before tensing. He was speechless for a fraction of a second before he pointed at the hole once more, this time more firmly. He was louder. “Git ‘n the damn sewer!” He sounded exasperated; a point of pride for me, honestly.

I jokingly raised my arms in a display of resignation before approaching the manhole. I knelt and began climbing down the rusted, creaking ladder. It was obvious that this hadn’t been used in a long time. The sounds of my boots hitting the metal rungs echoed throughout the expanse of the hallway below. When I hopped off of the ladder, I was immediately met with the cold, uncomfortable feeling of water seeping into my shoes. Wonderful. Love that. I totally wasn’t about to throw up. 

Soon after I landed, the expected stench of the sewers attacked my nostrils. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but that’s likely because I had spent a brief period of time practically living down there. It was probably going to be worse for Norm. 

Speaking of Norm, he followed shortly after me, audibly groaning in discomfort at the atmosphere of the tunnel. “Good gravy, ‘m startin’ t’ regret this.”

I turned to him with a look of disbelief. “...Good gravy?”

He sighed. “Jus’ git movin’.”

My arm lifted so I could give him a painfully inaccurate salute. “Sir, yes, sir!” I turned back around and began marching through the tunnel. “Just imagine it’s one of those shitty tunnel of love things they used to have at carnivals.”

Norm made a disgusted face. “I think ya jus’ made it worse. Thanks.”

“I’ll be here all night, my good sir,” I said flatly. “That’s me job, after all.”

We began our unfortunate trek through Dialtown’s sewers. I don’t remember exactly when Norm pulled the flashlight from his belt, but I do remember him accidentally blinding me with it, so that was fun. How does that even work? I had optical sensors, I didn’t even have retinas! That place confused me to no end.

All was silent for the majority of our journey, save for the occasional creaking of a pipe or dripping of muddy water. There weren’t even any insects or rodents to scare the shit out of us– that I thought was strange. Normally there were rats down there. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were afraid of Norm. He was different, after all; large, imposing, didn’t have tech for a head. I was sympathetic for the rats because I get scared of paper bags sometimes too. 

I snapped back into reality when I noticed a familiar-looking design on the wall. The brick surface had been chipped away at and borderline destroyed. Charred rat carcasses littered the floor. And there, haphazardly written on the wall in glow-in-the-dark red spray paint, was the word ‘CRUNGUS.’

An astonished gasp fled my throat. “Norm! Norm, we’re almost there! This is Billy territory!”

“This is what territory?” His volume had lowered to fit the echoing tunnels, and I noticed how his free hand began to linger near his holstered revolver. 

“Little Billy!” I lifted my arms slightly and turned to face him. “Wait… you don’t know who Little Billy is.” I grinned. “Oh boy, this is gonna be fun.”

The cowboy became visibly more nervous. “Fer some unknown reason, I feel like ‘fun’ in this context‘s not my definition of th’ word.”

I shrugged. “Guess you’ll find out soon enough.” I pointed at the graffiti. “This means we’re somewhere close to the center of Dialtown. Probably. We just need to find another manhole leading out of here.”

“The climb up is gonn’ be tough,” Norm began, prompting me to raise a nonexistent eyebrow in his direction. He elaborated, “D’ya ‘ave any idea how many slopes we’ve gone down? Th’ ladder up is gonn’ be long as an inbred’s nose at this rate.”

I made a phone-face at his comparison, but shook off my confusion in exchange for determination. “Well, we can’t exactly go back now. It doesn’t matter how long the ladder is, we’re climbing it!” I turned to face ahead of me and glanced over my shoulder at the space cowboy. “But you’re going first.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “What fer?”

I snickered briefly and made a vageuly accusatory gesture with my hands. “Look bucko, if you wanna get an eyeful, you’ll have to try harder than that.”

Norm froze and stared at me wordlessly for a good ten seconds before deflating. “Fair ‘nough.”

We continued our destitute march through the sewers, trying our best to ignore the surely biohazardous water making our socks all soggy. Sure, I had lived down there for a time, but that didn’t mean my violent sensory issues had gone away. At one point, I stopped dead in my tracks and slowly lifted a finger to point at a broken pipe. The yeehaw man behind me pursed his lips and began to question me, “What–”

I flailed my hands in his direction to get him to shut the hell up. I whispered in the most quiet, almost reverent voice I could force out of my receiver. “...A rat.”

Sure enough, there was, in fact, a rat sitting atop the pipe. It seemed to be rummaging around for any kind of biohazard it could consider edible. Norm audibly sighed, prompting me to give him a dirty look. I didn’t want him to scare the rat away!

“Yer not gunna do what I think yer gunna do, are ya?” He whispered in his quietest voice which was, unsurprisingly, not very quiet. He was a very loud man. 

“I swear to gosh and golly gee, Norman, it will be mine,” I hissed before beginning to creep my way toward the errant pipe and, thus, the rat. 

At one point, my boot got caught on a stray stone at the base of the sewer water and caused it to make a rippling noise. I froze. The rat jolted and turned as if to run, but stopped as if to make sure what it heard was real. I just needed to get a little closer. And then, my dumbassery proved to be quite useful. 

I dove forward and grabbed onto the rat, squeezing it within my palms. It immediately began squirming and screaming at me, rearing back as if to bite me, but I loosed one of my hands from its body and pinched its jaws closed. I turned to face Norm with a manic look on my phone-face. “He’s mine now, Norman. His name is Spunch.”

Norm only looked at me, bag-face conveying an expression that seemed to be a mixture of disgust, awe, respect, and ‘what-the-fuck.’ 

I hurriedly shoved Spunch into one of the pockets on my hoodie and zipped it most of the way closed, allowing him a small hole to breathe and peek out from. He continued to squirm around inside of the pocket, which was an… interesting experience. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans and metaphorically grinned. “Let’s keep movin’, shall we?”

The space cowboy seemed to be transfixed, staring at the writhing mass through the fabric of my shirt. “Why did–” he began, only for his voice to crack. He paused, embarrassed, before continuing. “What th’ hell did y’do that fer?”

“Friend.” I stated matter-of-factly.

“O-kay…” Norm responded. 

“And attack rat in case of emergencies,” I added. 

He paused once more before laying a hand on his holster. “This is fer emergencies. Not an… ‘attack rat.’”

“But… tactical rat unleashing.” 

He groaned in frustration before shaking his head. “Let’s jus’ go.” 

And so we did. We kept moving, searching for a ladder out of the sewer. It didn’t take too much longer– after rounding a corner, we found what we were looking for: an exceedingly long ladder. I approached the rusted ladder before widely gesturing to it. “Ladies first.” 

Norm frowned but ultimately approached the ladder. At least he didn’t yell at me for calling him a lady. He began climbing up, and I followed soon after. 

We continued climbing the ladder for a while in silence, the only noises being the sounds of our shoes echoing off of the rungs. After some time, Norm spoke. “Y’cut yer story short.”

I blinked, my dial spinning once in confusion. “...What?”

“Yer story. From last night. Y’didn’t tell me what happened after y’left the forest.” I couldn’t see his bag, but I could imagine he was rather flat-faced.  “Oh! Right,” I felt a little flattered. He wanted to hear more about me. “Well, I didn’t think I would make a new friend that day. Nor did I suspect that friend would be so… well, to put it frankly, hairy.”

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. 0-- My Own Personal Dialup

I have to admit, out of all of the places to break into, a museum of vintage technology was possibly the most lame. 

It was late– late enough for the streetlights to be on. I always thought they were ugly. Their yellow hue made the attracted gnats and moths that much more visible, and it cast a gross light onto everything nearby. 

But at the moment, I couldn’t have been more grateful for those ugly lights. If it weren’t for them, I would have had to use a flashlight to disarm the security cameras of this museum. And my partner-in-crime was already becoming antsy and impatient. 

“Seriously, (Y/N)?” The dark-haired girl whined in a hushed tone. “It can’t be that hard to cut a couple wires.” She was bouncing in place, deep brown eyes flitting about the space for movement.

I turned to the younger, taller woman and narrowed my eyes. “Like you’ve ever done this before.” She pointed at the console I was messing with, her voice coming out a bit louder. “Well, if you’re gonna disarm the thing, then get it done already!”

A frustrated sigh left my cold, chapped lips as I turned back to the console. It was a little box attached to a power line pole, and it powered the immediate area. If I could just figure out which button to push, and which wire to cut, the entire museum’s power system would go down, and we could get in and out without a problem. 

“Got it!” I exclaimed, causing the other girl to hurriedly shush me. I shrugged apologetically. There was a brief crackling noise, followed by the sound of several switches flipping inside of the box. The next thing we knew, we were plunged into darkness as all of the streetlights, as well as the few remaining lights left on in the museum, flipped off. 

I stood from my knelt position and squinted, glancing around for any movement. There was nothing aside from my fellow soon-to-be criminal’s anxious shifting. 

“Okay. Let’s get this done and over with.” I whispered, nudging the girl. I could hardly see her, but she nodded hurriedly anyway. We glanced at either side of the empty street before darting across, our dark hoods obscuring us from any curious residents of the nearby apartments from peeking out their windows and seeing us. 

“Violet,” I hissed, grabbing at her shoulder once we had successfully crossed the street. “You scout the perimeter. I’ll get the ladder.” 

Violet only nodded, swallowing her anxiety before rushing to my right. I moved to the left and into an open alley, flipping the lid of a mostly empty dumpster open so I could grab the folded ladder we planted inside. I used what little strength I had to drag it out of the dumpster and onto the ground, where I then pulled it back to the front of the building. 

Just as I was finishing up my business, Violet jogged back around the corner, giving me a thumbs-up. “Help me out with this,” I whispered in her direction. She sped over to help me lift the ladder, propping it up against the museum wall and unfolding it so it reached the second floor. If we were going to have any luck pulling this off, we couldn’t go in through the main entrance. It was padlocked– and if there was one thing I learned from heist movies, it was that breaking a padlock was a surefire way to get found out and arrested. We were going to pry open and jump through a second-story window. I gestured to the ladder with a gloved hand. “After you.” 

My partner-in-crime made a mildly grossed-out face before taking a breath and beginning to climb the ladder. The sound of her heavy boots making contact with the rungs of the ladder made me wince. I really hoped that nobody could hear us. 

She reached the top and slung her legs over one of the rungs, effectively seating herself in a position where she could use her hands. She pulled her backpack off of her shoulders and reached inside, quickly retrieving a crowbar that we had bought from the Home Depot specifically for this. I hate to give Home Depot credit, but they have some nice chandeliers. And crowbars. 

Violet positioned the end of the crowbar at the base of the window to pry it open. Then she paused. She made a panicked, helpless gesture with her free hand before looking down at me on the ground. “It’s caulked shut!” She whisper-yelled. 

“It’s what shut?” I snickered. 

She frowned. I could see her displeased expression, even in this darkness. “I said, it’s caulked shut! Think brick and mortar. There’s no way I can get this open!” 

I placed my hands on my hips, beginning to panic myself. “...Can you try?”

“...Fine,” Violet huffed. She replaced the crowbar where it was before and pressed down on the opposite end, trying to get the caulk to break apart so she could pry open the window. She gave a frustrated grunt of effort, though it didn’t seem that she was making any progress. 

Then, in a moment of weakness, she gritted her teeth and reeled back, swinging the crowbar over her shoulder before slamming it into the glass of the window. It shattered after only one attack, sending glass shards flying into the building and out of the window frame. I watched, slack-jawed, as Violet covered her face with her forearm just in case any stray glass shards came in her direction. 

A moment of silence passed with Violet still seated atop the ladder and my body frozen in place. 

“...I hope nobody heard that,” I mumbled under my breath. Violet anxiously bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah, me too. C’mon, get up here.”

I only hesitated for one more moment before beginning to climb the ladder. Violet slung her legs back over the rung and pulled herself through the broken window, myself doing the same. 

The museum was… nothing short of boring. It was just a bunch of vintage tech displayed. Typewriters, gramophones, rotary phones, radios… and not a single one in a case. That was why we decided to rob a vintage technology museum in the first place– none of it was in a case, and if it were in good enough condition, it would sell for a pretty penny at a pawn shop or antique store. 

I heard Violet huff before reaching into her backpack and pulling out a folded-up duffel bag. “Alrighty. Get grabbin’. Take whatever you think works or looks pretty enough to brag about to your cousins.” 

“...That’s oddly specific,” I muttered, but didn’t say anything more before I began having a look around. “And hurry,” added Violet, turning to kneel in front of a collection of borderline ancient typewriters. 

We spent the next ten minutes or so appraising various techs, from old keyboards to even older monitors. Then the conversation shifted to who would even buy something like this, which ended with us deciding that collectors and people still clinging to the past would buy something like this. 

I eventually got bored looking at the objects on this floor and gestured to the staircase with the hand that wasn’t holding the duffel bag. “Wanna head up?” 

Violet turned her head to look at me, eagerly nodding. Once we got past the initial break-in, it seemed that her easygoing personality re-emerged. She stood and jogged to meet me, and we then moved up the stairs. 

This floor was more my style. It was lined wall-to-wall with practically ancient arcade machines– pac-man, asteroids, space invaders, even the original Mortal Kombat. I couldn’t help but stare in awe. 

“Alright, forget the robbery, we have enough. I wanna take a peek at these,” Violet suggested. I immediately nodded in agreement. 

It was then that Violet and I’s easily-distractible nature got the better of us. What were we supposed to do? Not look at the awesome collection of arcade machines? To be fair, I was carrying around a duffel bag of incredibly heavy vintage technology, but it wasn’t heavy enough for me to let this opportunity go!

Because the power was off, we couldn’t do much with the machines, but we didn’t want to anyway. We were content with just looking at them. That was, until I was immersed in an anecdote that Violet was narrating to me about how she and her older brother would destroy each other at arcade games, and I saw a flicker of light out of the corner of my eye. 

I turned to face the light, immediately causing Violet to pause. “What is it?” She asked flatly. I pointed at what I was looking at, and she froze. 

One of the arcade machines had turned back on. It was the only source of light in the otherwise darkened room, and it illuminated the dingy yellow wallpaper and grey carpet. Man, this place was a dump.

I had never seen this arcade game before. It had quite a nice casing– one half of the machine was baby blue, the other half light pink. Various colorful characters decorated the sides of the case, all with some sort of old technology for heads. There was a vaguely heart-shaped logo on the marquee resembling two rotary phones, and on top of that were two large words in an attention-grabbing font.

“THE DIALUP.”

“Well, shit, who am I to not investigate something like that?” Violet scoffed before patting my shoulder and yanking me toward the machine. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I was getting a little nervous. Well, I was nervous before this, but now I was feeling stomach-churningly nervous. 

Violet stood before the machine, leaning over to look at the characters on the sides of the casing. She chuckled and pointed at one in particular– a rather unfortunate-looking fellow with a phone for a head wearing a blue flannel. “Check out this guy. What a loser,” she chuckled. “Who wears a hoodie and a flannel?”

I gestured to my own clothing, which was largely the same. She shrugged. “I rest my case. You got a quarter?” 

My eyebrow raised before I fished around in my pockets, pulling out my only quarter. I knew it would be used for something. Violet snatched it from my hands and immediately inserted it into the coin slot. 

“Dude, no way you’re actually going to play this,” I snickered in disbelief as the title screen appeared on the monitor, accompanied by playful music. “It looks like some sort of terrible dating sim.” 

Violet moved the joystick upward and pressed one of the two buttons on the console, selecting New Game. A dialogue box popped up that read ‘What is your name?’ “Y’know what, just for that, I’m putting your name in,” she said smugly as she used the joystick to type in ‘(Y/N).’ I groaned. “Alright, whatever, but remember that we need to get out of here. We don’t know if anyone heard that glass break.”

Just then, the monitor went black. Violet frowned. “Damn. What a waste of a quarter.” She frustratedly slapped her hand onto the console. “I didn’t want to drown my loneliness in cartoon romance anyway. How was this thing even on in the first place? Didn’t you cut the power?” 

“You’re asking that now?” I chastised her. She shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m a ‘play mysterious cheesy arcade game now,’ ‘ask questions later’ kind of person.” I threw my hands up in a confused gesture. “It wasn’t even your quarter!”

Violet grinned, pressing the back of her pale hand to her forehead. “Oh, I mourn the loss of your quarter, my friend,” she droned in a dramatic, melancholy voice. I groaned loudly but quickly froze when I heard a distant high-pitched sound. 

My partner-in-crime must have heard it too, because she perked up, eyes widening. “Shit. We gotta go. Now!” She cried out just as I realized it wasn’t the whining of an arcade machine– it was sirens. Someone must have heard that glass break and called the police. 

I made a less-than-brave noise and turned to pick up the duffel bag from where I placed it next to the machine. But something caught my eye. The plug on the machine. It wasn’t attached to the wall. It was unplugged. What the fuck kind of voodoo demon bullshit was this?!

Right as I made to turn and get the hell out of that cursed museum, a high-pitched ringing sound attacked my ears. It wasn’t my tinnitus this time– it felt like it was in my head. Something was on the other line, and it wanted me to pick up.

I dropped the duffel bag and cried out in abject agony, gripping the sides of my head in an attempt to make the ringing stop. Before I clenched my eyes shut, I half-noticed the arcade machine flick back on, casting my shadow onto the carpeted floor with pale blue light. I also saw Violet rushing to my side before gripping my shoulders. 

Amidst the chaos, I could hardly hear anything. But what I did hear was Violet shouting at me, asking me what was wrong, what she could do to help. Then she yelled that the police were outside. I didn’t particularly care at the moment– I was on my knees, feeling like I was about to die. It felt like my entire head was melting off. 

I don’t know how much time passed. But I did hear the slamming of a door, which caused Violet to remove her hands from my shoulders. There was yelling and screaming from multiple voices. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. Heavy, departing footsteps. A distant impact. Glass shattering. Gunfire. 

And then there was silence. I could only guess that I had been beheaded– I was only missing the distant feeling of my head rolling across the floor. I never felt my body make contact with the dingy carpet. The blue light of the arcade machine enveloped my vision… and then it darkened.

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.”