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

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. 11-- God Among Men

Once Norm and I had left the alley, it all seemed to be smooth sailing. Every once in a while, I heard him grumble about my decision to keep the trigger, saying how it was dangerous and we didn’t know what it did and blah blah blah yeehaw blah blah. I was pretty out of it at that point and just wanted to go home. I’m pretty sure we hadn’t slept in like, a day, and I needed my naps, man. I was a sleepy human being.

The streets of Downtown Dialtown seemed less real by the second. I never quite saw this world as being real, because it wasn’t– it was a bunch of code inside of an arcade cabinet. But as I continued to live in it, I found myself becoming attached to it– the way it looked, its funky characters, even my own appearance, I started to not mind it. As much as it upset me that the game’s code didn’t allow me to get too close to the NPCs, I had tried to make it home. But right then, as I walked those empty streets with Norm, it suddenly appeared as it did to me when I first arrived here: flat. A screen. 

I felt a sudden presence to my right as Norm picked up his speed so he could walk at my side. His grip remained firm on his revolver. “Yer walkin’ slower. What’s rattlin’ ya?”

I couldn’t help but hesitate. Even if he knew he was a video game character, he never seemed to mind that. I assumed he took our realities as separate universes, not that he was a smaller being who only existed in a digital space. He had always taken it well. But the thing is, I didn’t want him to feel as if his world weren’t even real to me. I didn’t want him to know that I thought of him as only a character in a video game. 

I thought of how he spilled his thoughts to me back in the subway, and I no longer hesitated. It was unfair of me to keep secrets from him when he so readily told me his. “Nothing here means anything to me, Norm,” I began. “To me, it’s nothing but a bunch of code. Sure, it may feel solid, but it’s just… flat. I know nothing here is actually real, and it really messes with me. I can’t form meaningful relationships with anything.” I looked down at the ground, watching my sneakers as I walked. “Not even with you. I understand that you care about me, and it feels really nice to know that, but… my brain knows that you aren’t real.”

There was a long bout of silence. I didn’t look up at him– I couldn’t. If I did, I might have cried. And I didn’t want to leak any kind of fluid from my phone-head right then. 

Norm finally said something to break the tense silence, his voice taking on a tone I had never heard before from him. It was quiet and heavy, like a dense fog. I couldn’t quite tell if it was sad, angry, or an attempt at maintaining his stoic appearance. “That’s all I am t’ya?”

I immediately stopped dead in my tracks, turning to face him and looking up at his bag-face. His expression was blank. “No, no! I-I just…” I paused, trying to figure out what I should say next. “You’re… you’re… have you ever– uh…” I shook my head to clear it of fog. “Like a pet! You know how like… you love a pet as much as anyone else, but you know it’s gonna die, like, way before you, and you know it’s not as sentient as you, and–”

“I’m like a pet now?” Norm interjected. Now he sounded mildly upset. “That’s how ya think o’ me? Somethin’ t’ be coddled an’ taken care of? ‘Cause I ain’t capable o’ takin’ care o’ myself, right?” 

I frantically shook my head, hearing a panicked edge creep into my voice. “No! You-you don’t understand, Norm, you’re–”

“Because I’m not real, huh?” He interrupted me once more, taking an almost aggressive step forward. I countered it with a step backward. I could hear something new in his voice as it became louder: hurt.  “I ain’t capable o’ feelin’ real emotion. That’s it, right? That’s what ya think? ‘Cause I’m code, huh?” He leaned into my face, practically hissing his next words, “Well, I’ll tell ya what this lump o’ code ‘s feelin’ right now. I’m feelin’ pretty goddamn betrayed.”

His words rang in the air like a funeral toll. My heart sank to my shoes, and I looked down at them as if to try and find it. Norm straightened his back and returned to his full height. Silence blanketed us. 

“I’ll show ya what some NPC is capable of, since y’think yer so special. I’m goin’ after Mingus myself,” Norm spat before turning away from me. “Don’t follow me.” I noticed how hard he was holding his revolver– his knuckles had turned white. I extended a hand to try to get him to wait, but he was moving before I could grab him. 

“Norm, wait, please just let me explain–” I found that my voice had dampened to barely a whisper, and it trailed off before I could even try to say anything else. My feet felt as if they were made of lead. I could only watch him go, my vision blurring with the saline water built into my head that functioned as tears. 

Just as I was about to curl up into a ball right there in the middle of the sidewalk, I heard a high-pitched whistle from directly behind me. I whirled around, trembling, only to find fucking God. “Maaaan, that was rooooughhh,” he slurred.

“Damn it, why can’t I catch a break?!” I cried out, voice cracking with emotion. 

“‘Ey, calm down, I’m just a transfixed audience member,” he said, pulling on the edges of his open shirt as if they were suspenders. “I dunno what soap opera you guys were rehearsing, but that was good.”

“It wasn’t a soap opera, you fuckin’ dick! That was real!” I yelled at him, taking a step closer. I covered my phone-face with one hand, trying to wipe away the makeshift tears. 

The tv-screened man only stared at me for a moment, dumbfounded expression on the dog on the screen’s face before speaking again. “...Ohhhhh! Well, sucks to be you.” He made to leave, only for me to stop him. I had nobody else to talk to. I needed advice. 

“Hey, homeless man, I… really need help,” I mumbled reluctantly. 

He looked at me, confused, for just a moment before turning back around to face me completely. “That’s new, but okay, I guess. I can eat garbage at a later date, if my calendar allows.”

I didn’t question his garbage-eating, only looked down at the ground so I wouldn’t have to look at him while I spoke. “That yeehaw-man, I don’t know how to feel about him. I’m kind of, like, from another universe where this is a video game, so none of you feel real to me. I don’t even know why I’m allowed to get so emotionally close with him.”

God nodded along, humming thoughtfully as if he were listening. I knew he definitely wasn’t. “So you’re from one of those parallel realities, hmm, I see.”

I looked at him weird for a moment before continuing. “Right. Well, I told him this, and he kinda… freaked out. We were gonna murder Mayor Mingus, but now he’s gonna go try to do it alone, which will probably get him killed.”

The homeless man looked at me, dumbfounded once again, only to slap himself in the face. “Oh, you two are the ones I’m supposed to bring to Mingus alive!” He scoffed. “Whoopsie.”

“Come the fuck on, man, why is everyone in this damn city hunting me down?!” I shouted in pure, abject frustration. 

“Yo, broski, I’m not gonna getcha just yet. I think I have a solution to your little dilemma.” God made a face that communicated to me that he was absolutely, soul-crushingly high on something. Probably nectar. “Y’just gotta be there at the right time and the right place, preferably with a lil’ kiss. Lil’ kisses make everything better.”

I paused, looking at him like he was an idiot. “...A lil’ kiss? Really? I don’t even have lips! You didn’t give us lips, God!” 

“You’re ignoring the first part, homeslice.” He restated his previous advice, holding one of his calloused, mysteriously-stained fingers in the air. “Be at the right place at the right time.”

“What does that even mean? You’re just confusing me even more!” I complained. 

“Ahhhh, you’ll get it eventually.” He cracked his knuckles. “Anyway, I’m gonna snatch you up now.”

“...What?”

And just like an arcade machine being unplugged, everything went black.

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.

drinking movie theater butter straight from the teat

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 17-- Wireless

It was bright– agonizingly bright. But it wasn’t blue this time, rather a beautiful, blinding ivory. White light enveloped all I could see, hear, and feel. It was warm and numbing, and it made me forget what having a form felt like. I was just… energy in a void. And, quite honestly, it wasn’t all that bad. 

Sensation returned when I felt something shatter against my skin, followed by my body being dumped onto some sort of surface. Thankfully, I managed to remain conscious, but I still had no idea where I was. I opened my eyes–

…Wait, eyes?

I hadn’t gone crazy. And I hadn’t been dreaming. I lifted my hands to my face and found skin, eyes, lips– all mine and all very real. I felt myself begin to hyperventilate, my chest heaving as I processed my surroundings. I was in a somewhat cramped room, ugly wallpaper decorating the walls and horribly complimenting the oddly moist yellow carpet that had begun to mold and deteriorate. Dusty, ancient arcade cabinets lined the walls, yearning to be plugged in one last time.  

…Holy fuck. I was back in that vintage tech museum. The last place I existed in my original universe, before I was taken into that machine. I somehow managed to get out. 

“...(Y/N)?” I heard a familiar stunned voice emit from behind me.

I turned my head and regretted it when my vision swirled uncomfortably. But there, next to a battered arcade cabinet, wielding a wrench as if it were a baseball bat, was a tall, dark-haired woman. Vi. I silently stared at her for a long, awkward moment before gathering the courage to speak with my human mouth. “Am… Am I alive?” 

Vi sighed in pure, abject relief and closed the distance between us before kneeling and yanking me into a hug. “Dude, holy shit, I thought you were dead! I thought I had gone crazy while messing with the arcade machine, I didn’t think it would actually work!” 

Once she was done squeezing all of the air out of my lungs, Vi pulled away, eyes wet with tears. They didn’t spill over, though. Looking at her, I realized how much she had changed. Time hadn’t stopped while I was in that machine. Her skin had become somehow paler, even sickly, her hair less neatly trimmed, and there was an unmistakable dullness to her gaze that confused me to no end. Additionally, there was a long, thin scar that stretched across the length of her throat. Weird. 

Countless questions swirled in my mind, but I somehow managed to settle on the most basic one. “Vi, what… happened?” 

The dark-haired girl managed to catch her breath and sit back on her heels to respond to me. “I-I’m not entirely sure, I put your name into the game, and I think it was like, cursed or something, so it sucked you up.” She reached out to grip my shoulders. “I’m so sorry I left you in there for so long, I–... I kind of got into a high-speed, life-endagering police chase that didn’t end well. I’ve been in prison for like, two years.” 

I could hardly process what she was saying. It was all too much. What had happened to Dialtown? What… What had happened to Norm? “...Prison? Really?” 

Vi frowned. “Well, I wasn’t exactly equipped to run away from like three squad cars without killing somebody. I almost killed myself, dude, it was… honestly pretty rad.” She deflated with a sigh. “But yeah, prison sucked. I couldn’t really figure out what had happened to you while I was in a nine-by-five cell with a crazy lady named Rootin’ Tootin’ Rosemary.” I saw her visibly shudder, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she was being serious. She had a tendency to make things up on the spot like that, regardless of whether or not they were true. 

Okay. Wow. Um. I lifted a hand to press against my sweaty forehead. “No, no, I get it, I– I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything to help you out, but… yeah, you were right. I was inside of the arcade machine.” I stared at the battered cabinet over her shoulder. “I would tell you about the details, but I feel like my head is about to explode. Can you, like, take me to a hospital? I want to make sure I don’t have any malevolent tumors.”

She paused, gaze contemplative, before wincing. “About that…” She droned, guilt encompassing her expression. “You’re kind of a wanted criminal. And legally considered missing. If I were to take you to any kind of government facility, you would… probably be arrested instantly. Then I would be arrested for associating with you.” Her expression hardened. “And I don’t want to go anywhere near a correctional facility again.” 

I couldn’t help but laugh incredulously. This whole situation was completely ridiculous. I was legally missing, a wanted criminal, and probably about to keel over and die of shock. “I don’t know why I’m not surprised,” I muttered. “Instead, can you take me… anywhere but here? I want to get as far away from that machine as possible.”

“You got it,” Vi pushed herself to her feet and extended a hand to help me up, which I gratefully took. The shift of my weight caused me to stumble, but I somehow kept my balance even though my head felt light as a feather. I used Vi’s arm to stabilize myself and we carefully made our way out of the seemingly abandoned museum to her car. 

Ꚛ

I wasn’t hearing anything Vi was saying. Her words, along with the ambient sounds of her apartment, seemed completely muffled. All I could do was stare down at the glass of water I held in my trembling hands, knuckles white. 

I had somehow managed to make it back to my original universe. Making it back home had been my only wish for two years, so why did I feel so… empty? Incomplete? It felt like a part of me was missing– like I had just completed a puzzle and found that one piece had been removed from the box. That saturated disappointment mixed with a little bit of rage–

“(Y/N)?” Vi’s voice jolted me back to my senses. “Are you okay?” 

My gaze shot up from my glass, finding that Vi had ceased her anxious busywork to look at me with a worried expression on her face. My mouth hung agape for a moment before I assured her “Yeah, yeah, I’m listening.” I was still getting used to using my mouth to speak, rather than just… willing sound to come out of a speaker. 

I watched as Vi tilted her head and made a face that told me of her disbelief. She then continued her busywork, which consisted of wiping down her kitchen counters that had already been wiped four times. “But, yeah, I was saying, we might be able to get our hands on a fake ID and get you out of the state before…”

Her words faded into the background once again. I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened with Norm. Hell, I was still processing the fact that I had fallen in love with a fucking space cowboy from a video game. What if it was all a dream? Or… Or I was in a coma or something? That wouldn’t explain how two years passed without anyone finding my body, I was literally inside of the arcade cabinet! I kept trying to rationalize the impossible. It all felt so… real. It couldn’t have just been a dream! 

…Maybe I didn’t want it to have been a dream. 

“Okay, dude, you look like you’re on the verge of throwing up, curling into a ball and weeping, or both.” Across the room, Vi folded her arms across her chest. “You never told me what happened while you were in there. Are you, like… traumatized or something? If you are, I know a really good therapist who probably won’t tattle on us–”

I interrupted her. “No, no, I’m not… traumatized, I’m just still, y’know, trying to process the fact that I’m here.” I added under my breath “And that I’m alive.” I didn’t say it aloud, but I was also wondering what happened to the rest of the people– I mean, NPCs– in Dialtown. Did they die? Did everything reset once I got out? Why was I suddenly feeling homesick for a place that wasn’t my home?

Vi let out a harsh breath before approaching me. She took a seat next to me on her shitty leather couch and leaned back against the cushions. She gave me the same look that my mom used to give me before we had a serious talk– a look that immediately made me worry about what she was going to say. “Listen, (Y/N), I don’t know what happened to you in there. All I know is that you’re here now, and I have to get you somewhere where you won’t be arrested and rot in prison.” Her voice lowered to something vulnerable that I wasn’t used to hearing from her. “It’s been lonely as shit out here since you disappeared. I can’t lose you again, man.”

My heart sank. While I certainly missed my friends and family while I was in that machine, I never quite processed that they might have missed me as well. Suddenly, the homesickness I felt for Dialtown felt bitter– wrong. I only silently stared at Vi for a moment before looking down at my lap. At my worn jeans that I had apparently ben wearing for two years and some change. Maybe changing clothes was a good idea. “Hey, Vi?” I began, causing her to tilt her head in acknowledgement. I leaned forward so I could set my still-full glass of water on the battered coffee table that rested in front of us. “I think it’s best that I tell you what went down in there.” 

Ꚛ

It had been an hour. An hour spent yapping to Vi about what my life had been like for the two years we hadn’t seen each other. Of course, I omitted some information, but I simply had to tell her about Norm. We basically told each other everything, I wasn’t going to leave out the fact that I wound up kissin’ a fictional space cowboy and then instantly died. 

She made a mildly disgusted face. “Dude, I didn’t need to hear about the smoochin’. Normally I would love to hear about your love life, but… Im still a little confused about the whole ‘shooting a cat dead’ thing.” 

I shrugged nonchalantly, trying to act like I wasn’t still overwhelmed by it myself. “It’s important to the story.” 

“Yeah, alright, I believe you,” she waved a hand dismissively before pressing her hand against her forehead. “Christ. All of that happened while you were in there? I feel like I just listened to an audiobook. That is to say I barely processed any of it other than the very end. And the parts about the manic imp-child.” 

“Yeah, all of that happened. I know, it’s… absolutely fuckin’ insane, but I’m pretty sure we’ve both had the revelation that anything related to that cabinet is insane,” I muttered, gesturing leisurely with my hands as if I were talking about something completely normal and not a seemingly magical arcade cabinet that I had been stuck inside of for two years. 

Vi only nodded solemnly before lifting a hand to pat my shoulder a bit too firmly for comfort. “Thanks for telling me all this. I’m not sure I can ever really understand how you felt about that world and the people in it, but I can try to make you feel better about leaving them behind, right?” She retracted her hand and shoved it into her pocket, heaving a sigh. “I know you’re probably still grappling with the fact that the world you lived in for two whole years is gone–”

“Wait,” I interrupted her, holding up a hand to shut her up. “Gone?” 

She furrowed her eyebrows at me, likely annoyed at the fact that I interrupted her. “Yeah, gone. I beat up the machine with a wrench– it was the only way I found to get you out of there. I hit some weird boxes, and they wound up corrupting the save files.” When I only stared at her, she threw up her hands in confusion. “...What? I’m not good with computers, especially not ancient ones that look like they’ll explode if I look at ‘em wrong.”

My gaze trailed downward to stare at the ground. She corrupted my save file. That meant that… all of the work I had done to learn about the people and places in Dialtown, murdering the Mayor, bonding with Norm… it was all gone. Everything I had accomplished, destroyed in an instant. 

It was odd. I had been telling myself for years that I didn’t care about that dumb arcade game universe. It wasn’t my original reality, so why should I have cared about it if I wasn’t going to be there for long? Nobody in it was real, they were all just code that was programmed to act a certain way. But when Vi told me that it was all gone… I felt a strange, almost guilty twisting in my stomach. Like my entire being sagged. None of it meant anything in the end. I might as well have been in a coma this whole time.

Vi snapped me out of my dazed stupor. She had stopped talking, and when I looked over at her, I recognized sheer guilt flooding her features. “(Y/N)?” She began meekly. “Did I fuck up?”

“Can I be honest?” I leaned forward to rest my chin on my hands. She nodded, and I let out a long exhale. “...Yeah. You kinda did.” 

She laughed nervously, eyes darting back and forth. “Well, shit. Your dumb ass got attached to that place, didn’t you? And I destroyed everything that you did.” She sighed and pressed her hands against her face. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry, (Y/N). I was so selfish–...”

As she continued to apologize profusely, I continued staring down at the floor. I’m back at home, with my best friend– it’s all I’ve wanted ever since I got sucked into that machine. But it all felt completely wrong. Did I really get so attached to that other universe that being back home felt completely foreign? What in the hell happened to me? 

…Was this really where I wanted to be?

Now that I thought about it, when I was speaking with Norm after murdering the Mayor, he seemed somewhat reluctant to help me return to my home universe. And in that moment, I was ready to stay there– in Dialtown– with him. If I was able to offer that to him without remorse, then… 

I swallowed and looked up at Vi, causing her to cease her anxious rambling. “Vi, just… shut up for a second.” I took a breath and leaned toward her, expression flat and as serious as I could make it. “You’re my friend, right?”

“What kind of question is that?” She raised an eyebrow. “No, I hate your guts– of course I’m your friend.” 

“So, purely hypothetically, if I were to want to go back inside of the arcade machine… would you be okay with it?” I glanced to the side and winced. “Even after all the time you spent trying to get me out of it?” I waved my hands dismissively. “Purely hypothetically, of course.” 

Vi frowned. “That depends.”

“Hypothetically, if I were to miss somebody in there, and wanted to keep spending time with them…” I trailed off. 

She fell silent. I watched as her contemplative gaze fixed on the shitty rug in the middle of her living room. When she finally spoke again, she didn’t look at me. “...Hypothetically, if it was what you were sure you wanted, I would want you to do what would make you happy. I wouldn’t force you to stay somewhere you felt unhappy.” She paused. “Hypothetically.” 

I nodded. “And… in this hypothetical scenario, would you help me get back there?” 

“Alright, this is stupid,” Vi threw her hands up in the air. “Yes, I’ll help you get back there. If it’s what you really want, then I want you to be happy and feel like you belong somewhere. If this universe isn’t where you belong… then yes, I’ll help you.”

“Oh, thank Phone-God, I was worried you actually thought I was being hypothetical.” I sighed in relief, pressing a hand against my chest. “Do you actually not mind all your work going to waste?” 

“Dude, I don’t think you understand how little I care,” Vi muttered exasperatedly. “Go ahead and kiss a space cowboy or whatever. I won’t judge.” She furrowed her eyebrows. “Actually, I’ll definitely judge, but not out loud.” 

I shot up from my seated position on the couch, stretching my arms above my head. “Okay, then let’s get started!” 

“Right now?” She made a face. “You’re not gonna, like… relax or something? Enjoy having a face?”

“No time like the present– I’ll reimburse you for the gas money.” I grinned with my human mouth, prompting Vi to sigh. 

“Whatever,” she stood achingly slowly, then paused to look at me. “Also, Phone-God? Really?” 

I realized that I had, in fact, said ‘Phone-God,’ then cringed at myself. “Sorry, that’s how they referred to it.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “They really got to me, didn’t they?”

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 3-- Manufacturing

When I finally regained my senses, I felt… very heavy. Like there was a two-ton weight attached to my head. And it was too bright. It wasn’t the same pale blue light of the arcade machine that had enveloped me before I fell unconscious– this was sunlight. I had a pounding headache. 

…What the hell happened? Wasn’t I just in a dark museum with Violet? Maybe we got arrested and I was waking up in a prison yard or something. 

I groaned as I opened my eyes. My vision was fixed on a blue sky with several puffy clouds gently coasting along the horizon. I could see the tips of pine trees on the edges of my periphery. I lifted my hands to rub the sleep from them. However, when I did, I couldn’t find my head. For a moment, I believed that I was just delirious or dreaming.

Beneath my fingers was hard, cool plastic. As I glided my hands around its shape, I noticed that it was vaguely rectangular, with indents and outcroppings of various shapes. One in particular was a circle about the size of my palm where my face would have been. Had someone put a box over my head or something? 

Panicked, I tried turning over so I could push my aching body to its feet. I found that it took much more effort than it usually would. When I finally did turn over and pull myself to a seated position in the grass, my vision spun and swirled like I had just gotten off a bad trip. I closed my eyes to combat the vertigo. It was then that I noticed how strange my eyes felt. Like I was looking through a camera lens rather than… well, my eyes. 

I turned my heavy head around, surveying my surroundings. Like I suspected, a forest. A pine forest to be specific. There was a pile of rotting wood a good fifty feet away, and I noticed that the grass was oddly tinted brown– a similar color to my flannel. 

Why the figgledy fuck was I in the middle of a clearing in the forest? Was I hallucinating?

I hurriedly reached one hand toward my forearm so I could pinch it hard. All that did was make my body hurt in nine places instead of eight. I sighed. 

Okay, time to try to stand. I placed my palms flat on the ground, sucking in a sharp breath when I felt a dull ache shoot through my head. Gods, it felt like legos were rattling around inside my skull. I pushed aside the pain for a moment so I could pull my legs underneath me, rise to my full height… and immediately topple back over. Why was my head so damn heavy?

Alright, new strategy. I looked around and spotted a good enough tree trunk that I could use as support. Slowly and carefully, I crawled over to the fallen tree trunk. Then I placed my hands on it so I could push myself to my feet. 

I almost fell over again like an idiot but managed to catch myself before I whacked my head on the trunk and knocked myself out again. It took several long minutes for me to get used to the feeling of having thousands of pounds tied to my head, but once I did, I immediately screamed for help. 

What else was I supposed to do? I woke up in the middle of the woods after what felt like being beheaded, my friend was gone, and I didn’t think I was capable of finding civilization, let alone walking to it. 

But I received no response to my cries for help. So I would have to figure something out on my own. 

I didn’t know how far into the woods I was, and I watched a lot of video essays about how to survive in the wilderness, so I knew the best first step to take would be to find water. Sounded easy enough. I looked down, stumbling due to the shift of my weight, and found damp leaves. Thank the gods for that. That meant water was nearby… at least, if those video essays were to be trusted. 

I turned around and noticed that the damp leaves stopped about ten feet from me, so that meant water was to my right. Probably. I’m too stupid for this shit. Whatever, I just started walking in that direction and prayed. 

Walking was… an ordeal. It felt like I had a bucket of water taped to my head that was constantly sloshing and slinging me around. But I got the hang of it after around fifteen minutes of walking. At least, I think it was fifteen minutes. It could have been longer. Or shorter. I didn’t even know if I was conscious, to be frank. 

I was thinking about the possibility of lucid dreaming when I finally heard the sound of running water. I practically jumped out of my skin before following the sound. Maybe if I followed the water, I would find civilization. It was a stretch, but it gave me hope. 

After a few more minutes, I finally found a brook. I have never been that relieved to see a body of water in my entire life. Perhaps if I waterboarded myself enough, I would wake up and get out of this forest backrooms level. 

Just as I was about to do just that, though, I panicked. There was a reflection in the water that wasn’t mine. It was distorted, but it was there. I turned around only to find nothing. Then I leaned in closer. 

It was definitely me. That much was certain. But it didn’t have my face. It didn’t have a head. Where my head would have been, there was a… phone. A red rotary phone to be specific. The pale dial didn’t have numbers on it, though, but obscure symbols that looked like pure nonsense. 

I lifted a hand and waved it in front of my face. Sure enough, the reflection matched my movements. 

Yep. That explained the heaviness.

Oh, and, uh.

What the fuck?!

I immediately screamed at the top of my lungs. It was not my proudest moment. My hands clutched at the sides of my head, which was apparently now a phone. I stumbled back and fell straight on my ass like an idiot. I was now completely certain that not only was I awake and aware, but that I was in hell or something like that. 

My screams of terror as a result of my seemingly permanent mutilation eventually died down. It wasn’t necessarily out of self-preservation, but a lack of energy. I didn’t particularly care if some rabid/mutant animal emerged from the trees and devoured me on the spot. I had a phone. For a head. 

What a nightmare. 

I spent a long time seated on the cold forest floor, hands absently toying with the wet leaves scattered around my feet. I don’t know how long I was sitting there, but it was long enough for the sun to dip low in the sky, and long enough for my stomach to begin twisting in hunger. A disconnected tone emitted from my head’s speaker. That didn’t make my situation feel any better. 

Once I returned to full consciousness, my mind raced with questions. How did I get here? Why was I here? How do I get back home? Where was I in the first place? 

Two of my questions were answered out of pure assumption. It was insane, but an idea became clear in my thoughts. Those characters on the arcade machine casing; they had technology for heads, a lot of them having phones for heads. 

Maybe, just maybe… 

No fucking way I got isekai’d into the arcade machine. Just… no way. 

Despite my internal protestations, that seemed to be the case. I didn’t think that was possible. Then again, not many isekai protagonists think their situations are real at first. 

I slowly stood, using a tree as support. I had to find somewhere to sleep. Maybe if I went to sleep, I would wake back up in that museum. I would be arrested for sure, but it would be better than this. I hardly noticed the oddly monkey-paw-shaped tracks in the mud. 

I began to move, following the stream. It was my only hope.