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

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. 4-- Pardners in Crime

“Waaaaiiitt…” I droned, stopping at a seemingly random point in my story. “Since we’re in such similar boats, maybe we can help each other.”

Norm, who had taken a seat opposite me and clearly just snapped out of some kind of immersed haze, straightened. “Help?” He scoffed. “I don’ need yer help. I can handle my own business.” 

“But that’s the thing, Norm,” I leaned forward so I could place my elbows on my knees. The recently-lit candle’s light glinted off of my plastic phone head. “You can’t. If you could, you would have done something about your exile by now. Mingus would be dead by now.”

He tensed. I got the feeling that I was on the verge of having a shotgun aimed at my head again. I continued, “I can help you get rid of the mayor. And afterwards, you can help me get back to my original timeline. If I got here in the first place, there’s gotta be a way back, right?”

I didn’t care about the lives of anyone here. I knew they were all just characters in an arcade game. So killing the mayor wouldn’t be a problem– it would be like a mission in a Hitman game. 

To be honest, I gave up on my mission to get back to my original timeline after two years of being stuck in that arcade machine universe. I thought if I just tried to forget it, I would get used to living like this and everything would turn out fine. But my thoughts constantly drifted to home– to my family, my friends, the life that I had before. Sure, I was likely a wanted criminal, but it was still home. 

I was about to say exactly that to Norm when he held up a hand. “Care t’ tell me exactly how you would plan on helpin’ me take out the mayor of Dialtown ‘erself?” 

“...I dunno. I didn’t think I’d get this far,” I mumbled, feeling a little embarrassed. “I concocted a plan to rob a museum, but not only was that with a friend, but it all went terribly wrong just because there was a caulked window that wasn’t accounted for.” I sighed audibly. “Surely we can just improvise.”

“Improvise?” The cowboy stood from his seat, appalled. “We can’t jus’ improvise while killin’ a political figure! She has bodyguards, traps, hell, she probably has an entire army at ‘er disposal.”

I chuckled. “I think an army is a little much–”

Norm cut me off once more. “We can’t improvise. It’s too risky.”

A realization emerged through my fog cloud of racing thoughts. “...So you’re saying you’d be cool with me helping you? And in exchange, you’d help me figure out a way to get back to my timeline?”

He fell into deliberative silence, bagged gaze fixed on the wooden floor. I held my breath. Having someone that used to work for NASA– not just that, but traveled through time– helping me find a way to jump timelines would make my job so much easier. A tiny speck of hope flickered on in my mind; an emotion that I hadn’t felt in two years. 

“How d’ya plan on sneakin’ me back int’ town?” Norm’s voice was low and contemplative. “Last time I checked, there’s a bunch o’ posters put up ‘round th’ perimeter of the city with my mug plastered on ‘em. Any passerby would report us instantly.”

I paused for a moment to think about that. I knew almost everyone in Dialtown, but not well enough to get them to smuggle a 6’3” space cowboy into the city in a wooden crate. 

“...We could dig a tunnel? Or… Or put you in a disguise?” I answered his question in an unsure, high-pitched voice. 

He shook his head. “Tunnel t’ where?” 

“Straight to the Mayor’s office, of course!” I was a little louder, more confident this time around. “Or I could threaten the fuckface guy to help us smuggle you into town in a crate. He’s done a lot of embarrassing shit. I’m pretty sure he pissed himself when a pigeon got a little too close–”

“No, an’ no. Fer one, like I said, the Mayor has guards.” I opened my mouth and took a breath to respond, but he continued with “an’ ‘er office is on the second floor,” making me shut my mouth. “An’ fer the sake o’ my dignity, I ain’t squeezin’ int’ a crate.”

“Dignity doesn’t matter here, Norm!” I launched up from my chair. “This is a revolution!” 

He shot me a look that spoke of death, and I slowly sat back down. 

“...A disguise, then?” I proposed meekly. I then looked around the room for a potential disguise before pointing at the dartboard with Mingus’ face taped to it. “You could use that. Better yet, tear your stove from the pipes and stick it on your head.”

Norm fell into another long silence, but this time it was out of annoyance rather than contemplation. I took it as a rejection.

I awkwardly cleared my throat. Okay, maybe my ideas were a little stupid. Actually, a lot stupid. Then something smart surfaced in my phone-equivalent of a brain. CPU? Is that it? Whatever.

“The sewers!” I leapt out of my seat. Norm froze. “...Sewers?” He repeated. I nodded enthusiastically. “Surely there’s a manhole somewhere outside of the city that leads into town! If we hop in there in the middle of the night, we can wander around like idiots until we find another manhole that connects to either the subway or Uptown Dialtown.” 

“So, if I’m hearing ya correctly,” Norm folded his arms across his chest. “Ya wanna wade through sewer water like blind rats until we find what we’re lookin’ fer.”

I nodded enthusiastically. “That’s exactly it! I’ve spent a lot of time in those sewers, I’ve probably developed a sixth sense to navigate them. Or I could just take some wild guesses and pray that works.”

Norm lifted his hand to his face so he could exasperatedly drag it down the length of the bag. As he did so, he heaved a sigh. “What ‘ave I got t’ lose?”

When I heard his response, I practically jumped in excitement. I was finally going to do something in this accursed place. I’ve spent the last two years learning everything about the characters that lived in Dialtown, and they were becoming boring. I could never quite keep a friendship with them– it was like I wasn’t meant to know them. It was an ironic existence, considering the fact that this arcade machine was supposed to be a weird RPG dating sim. But no matter how hard I tried, I was always alone. 

Okay, that created a few questions. Who the hell was the POV character for this arcade dating sim, where would I find them, and did they have a personality, or were they meant to be a blank self-insert for the player?

I shook off those questions for the moment. “Alrighty, let’s get crackin’!” I interlaced my fingers so I could crack my knuckles. “Norm, you’re the brains. I’m the braw– actually, you’re the brawn too. I’m the moral support.”

“Wonderful. Jus’ what I needed, another incessant voice yellin’ at me.” Norm muttered under his breath. I… honestly couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Even after spending two years in this universe, the lack of facial expressions made it somehow harder for me to read social situations. 

Instead of trying to do that, I just flopped back into my chair. “Let’s do this. What’s the plan?”

Ꚛ

Dawn’s light filtered through the foggy windows of Norm’s shack. I was pacing back and forth across the room, running through our handy-dandy three-step plan in my head while the yeehaw man gathered a slew of items and haphazardly shoved them into a burlap sack. Neither of us had slept, either due to paranoia, not trusting the other, insomnia, or all three. So my vision was slightly blurred, and my body felt heavy. 

“I can’t believe I’m teamin’ up wit’ the likes o’ you.” I heard Norm mumble under his breath. “Y’could be tryin’ t’kill me. Y’could be an assassin er somethin’.” 

I halted my pacing to shoot him an incredulous look. “Norm, I promise, you’re not that important. You were exiled three years ago and haven’t been causing any problems since. Nobody wants you dead.” I flashed a cheeky grin. “...That’ll change soon.”

He froze in the middle of shoving a box of revolver ammunition into his burlap sack and gave me a confused look. 

“We’re trying to kill the mayor. She’s bound to find out and send hitmen after us. It’s basic common sense.” Plus, this is a video game. It’s never that easy, I thought. 

Norm nodded absentmindedly as he tied up the bag. I wasn’t entirely convinced that he was listening to me, but I didn’t particularly care at that point. I just wanted to get out of that dingy shack and get the mayor to die somehow so I could have some chance at getting home. 

Before I knew it, we had left the man’s sorry excuse for a house and ventured out into the great unknown– aka the woods that I knew very well at this point. The trees were still oddly tinted pink, and morning dew saturated the grass. Now that I was looking at the surrounding area from the porch, I spotted the many beartraps that had been placed in the grass. How did I not step in one of those?

I looked at Norm like he was a lunatic. He looked at me in the same way. He must have guessed what I was thinking about because he defensively raised his arms. “Defends against intruders.” When I only continued staring at him, his voice raised in pitch. “I can’t shoot everyone that wanders up t’ my doorstep.”

“Oh, but you had no problem firing at me? Twice?” I folded my arms. 

“No! I didn’t! ‘Cause I thought ya were dangerous!” 

I looked down at my body, then back up at him. 

“... Past tense,” he mumbled. 

Satisfied with his explanation, I nodded and hopped down the rickety steps and into the grass below. I paused before turning in a confused, awkward circle. “Uhhhh… town is…” I looked over at the rising sun. “East… west… um… west!” I pointed in the direction I initially came from. 

Norm slowly nodded, glancing in the direction I was pointing. “Good job. ‘S not like there’s very visible buildins’ that way.”

I ignored him, despite him being right. I lowered my arm and began marching toward the city. Norm followed a good ten paces behind, revolver in-hand. Paranoid weirdo.

Ꚛ

It had been… hours. And Norm hadn’t said a single word to me or anything else. My sound processors were buzzing from the silence. It was to the point where I was grateful for the random forest noises that filled the emptiness. I would have tried to strike up a conversation, but every time I said something, he either pointed the revolver at me or didn’t answer me. It was really awkward.

I had just about given up on having any sort of friendly relationship with this guy when he said something. “Y’said yer from some sort o’ parallel universe, right?” 

I glanced back at him, folding my arms across my chest. Despite my defensive stature, I was incredibly relieved for the distraction. “Uh… yeah? Why?”

He turned his head to the side, remaining vigilant despite holding a conversation with me. “What’s it like?” 

There was a moment of tense silence as I recalled what my life was like before. “Well… nobody had phones for heads, for one. That wasn’t even an idea that anyone had. We, uh… we had phone stores. Like, handheld phone stores. There were phone booths everywhere, since nobody could call people from their heads. People were relatively normal, aside from the occasional crackhead or kiddie-strangler. They didn’t go mugging people on the subway–”

“No muggins’?” Norm nudged a plant aside with the barrel of his gun. 

“That’s not what I said. There were definitely muggings, robberies, murders, shootings– their guns just always had bullets in them. Seriously, who mugs somebody with no bullets in their gun? Depending on the ammo, they’re like fifty cents a pop!” I threw my hands up in disbelief when I recalled how I was mugged on the subway. I had told the knife-headed fellow to just shoot me, and then he told me that he didn’t actually have any ammo. I remembered that I then stared at him in dumbfounded awe until he scampered away. 

“But yeah, that stuff sucked..” My gaze found the forest floor, watching how my boots kicked at piles of dead leaves. “But there were also good things. I remember how I used to hate seeing couples sucking face in the street, but now I honestly kind of miss it. People can’t exactly suck face when there’s no face to suck. I remember how my buddies and I would go into photo booths and make dumb faces, because we had those, then put the photos up on our bedroom walls to decorate them.” I sucked in a trembling breath and decided to change the topic to something that wouldn’t make me cry. “And God himself didn’t walk among us. It was still a religion based on faith, not fact–”

Norm held up a hand to stop me. “Hol’ on. God don’t walk among us, pardner.” 

I slowly turned to meet his bag-shrouded eyes. “You sweet, summer child. God is a shoeless, mostly-shirtless, basketball shorts-wearing hobo with a tv for a head that only displays a dog with a waffle in its mouth. And he knows all. We had a beer together. Which I paid for, obviously.” 

“Pardner, I am a God-fearin’ American; y’won’t trick me with this rabble. Y’did not have a beer with God.” His hand found his heart, and I could have sworn I heard an eagle screech somewhere in the distance. I blinked. Or I would have, if I had eyes. 

I turned ominously, facing away from him. 

“You shall see, Norman. You shall see…” I paused. “Probably. I feel like he always shows up where he’s not wanted.” Norm lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, but he realized once again that he couldn’t do that with a bag over his head. “This is gonna be a looooong walk.”

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. 6-- [Rapidly Approaching Monkey Noises]

I was still grappling with my current situation as I began following the stream toward who knows where. My strides were long and unsteady, and I occasionally had to grab onto a nearby tree to keep myself from tipping over and smashing my newly phone-head open on the ground. 

My thoughts continued to run rampant. Was I really conscious? Was I in a coma? Why did I hear gunshots right before I blacked out? Did Violet get gunned down along with me, and I was reincarnated in the arcade machine? If so, is she in here with me? Maybe it was just an act of divine intervention. Actually, no, that was stupid. 

The sounds of the brook thankfully muted most of my less sane thoughts, but they couldn’t silence my worries about what I was going to do when night fell. For all I knew, there could be monsters that come out at night in this strange reality I have found myself in. Or worse, some eldritch creatures or shadow clouds. I made a vague plan that involved maybe climbing a tree and tying myself to a branch to prevent falling out of it– Hunger Games style. At least then I would be safe from most predators. 

Speaking of the Hunger Games, I was beginning to get a little peckish. Hauling my own head around on my shoulders had proven to be quite the workout, and that along with hiking through the forest had caused me to begin working up an appetite. But I don’t eat a ton, so it shouldn’t have been hard to track something down. 

…It was, in fact, hard to track something down. I only wound up finding a small bush of red berries. I couldn’t tell if they were poison berries or not, but I decided to have a go at eating them anyway. I know, stupid. But I came across a problem: I had no mouth. I didn’t even know if I could eat. If I could eat, then I didn’t know how. I supposed I would have to go hungry until I figured out how to eat things with a phone for a head. I shoved the berries into my pocket for safekeeping. Yes, gross. 

Eventually, the sun completely disappeared below the horizon, and I felt my anxiety spike. I really didn’t like the dark– I had like six different night lights in my bedroom back home. Oh, how I longed for the sight of my delicious night lights. I debated starting a fire, but if there was one thing I’ve learned from horror movies and games with forest settings, it’s that fires attract bad guys. So I supposed I was stuck with my crippling terror of the dark for the night. 

I glanced around, squinting as best as I could to adjust my eyes– optical sensors?-- to the darkness and approached one of the strangely pink-tinted trees. I felt around for any handholds before carefully climbing the length of the tree. It was significantly more difficult to do so than it was back home– mainly because of the several pounds of phone strapped to my head! 

I made it to a rather sturdy branch and slung my leg over it, effectively seating myself and leaning my back against the trunk. I sighed in a mixture of relief and exasperation while I processed the day’s events. My head was a phone, I probably died in a museum robbery, and now I was in a seemingly alternate universe with no friendly faces or society in sight. On top of that, I was probably about to die in these pink-tinted woods! That was somehow worse than dying in regular-tinted woods. 

Even worse, I was bored. I didn’t have any sketchbooks or pencils with me, nor did I have my phone– my cell phone– so I couldn’t lose myself in Flappy Bird for hours until I felt tired enough to somehow doze off in this tree. I supposed I would just have to use my thoughts to entertain myself until I was tired. It was too dark and I didn’t know enough about the area to keep traveling at night. 

I’m not sure exactly how much time passed. It could have been hours, minutes, maybe only a few seconds. The moon didn’t tell me much. I was just grateful for the fact that there even was a moon in this universe. Regardless, after an indeterminate amount of time, I began hearing noises. What sounded like several sets of footsteps and… squawking? Like… of birds. Hey, at least I knew birds existed. Maybe I could hunt them down for, like… makeshift wings or something. 

I glanced over the side of the branch I rested on, using what little light the moon provided to see if I could find the source of the squawking. It sounded pretty close, so I assumed that I could. I was met with the sight of a pack of three birds– white ones, waddling along and honking as they went. Honestly, they looked so unbelievably stupid. But here’s the thing: they had fucking paper shredders for heads. What the fuck?!

Based on my limited knowledge of birds, without seeing their heads, I assumed they were either geese or swans. I couldn’t quite tell from this height. That confused me– didn’t those birds hang out at ponds? What were they doing in the middle of a forest? Maybe there was a pond nearby. Hey, maybe that meant I was close to a park or something! I felt a glimmer of hope surface in my phone-head. I still couldn’t get over that, man. 

My only issue was these birds. If they were geese, I could probably walk right past them as long as I didn’t get too close. If they were swans, though… I had a problem. Swans are mean little bastards. They’ll break your legs for looking at them wrong. But hey, I still wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, so I thought I might as well take a gamble. 

I leaned over the edge of the branch and cupped a hand around my lips before making a gentle honking noise. Don’t look at me like that, it seemed like a good idea at the time. You gotta see it from my point of view– if I honked at the birds, and they were geese, they would probably just look at me funny and move on. If they were swans, they would instantly rip me to shreds, no pun intended, and I would be free of this phone-hell. It was a win-win!

I could have sworn I heard these birds’ necks snap as they turned to look up at me. I froze. They froze. They honked in perfect unison. 

Then they were practically screaming, making terribly aggressive noises as they instantly took off and fuckin’ ascended into the tree just so they could violently begin attacking me. Okay, they were swans! Great! Fuck! 

I’m not even sure what happened– it was a complete blur of screaming, flailing, and feathers that I hardly noticed when I fell out of the tree. It was kinda rad, honestly. That was, until the swans followed me and continued attacking me. Now that I thought about it, dying from being torn apart by swans was not how I wanted to go. So I began fighting back! I think I hit them once or twice. My memory was too blurred by adrenaline to properly retain any of this. 

Then, just as I thought my tombstone would say “Herein lies (Y/N), mauled by avian pond dinosaurs, RIP in pieces” I heard a distant crashing sound. The swans halted their ripping and tearing and looked up, only to squawk threateningly before scattering and waddling away. 

I literally thought I died there. But when I opened my (metaphorical?) eyes, expecting to see either a white void or a very handsome man welcoming me to Hell, I wasn’t expecting to see a goddamn gorilla. Well, kind of a gorilla. It had a handheld camera for a head. It looked vaguely curious as it looked down at my bloodied and battered form. 

Okay, be honest, what else could I do here but scream? It was a monkey! Monkeys are mean! They kill people just for funsies! I wished the swans would have just finished me off. 

Startled, the gorilla creature made a grunting noise before jolting back a few feet. I scrambled to a seated position, still screaming, before my back hit the trunk of the tree that I just fell out of. It’s a miracle my spine didn’t break or something. 

After a moment, my screaming died down, and the gorilla and I only looked at each other. Hang on, why was this gorilla bipedal? And why did it have a semi-human body? Two things could be happening here. Either this was just how gorillas were in this reality, or I had just become a bigfoot truther. I hoped it was the latter. 

I swallowed a mixture of saliva and blood before carefully pushing myself to my feet, phone-head components rattling about as I did. The gorilla posted up, seeming tense and… almost frightened. We stared at each other wordlessly for a moment before I lifted a hand to wave at the creature. “Um… hello.”

The monkey gave a startled grunt before darting backward another few feet, as if to run. I extended both hands in a somewhat calming gesture. “Hang on, hang on!” I frantically attempted to soothe the creature. If it wasn’t trying to kill me to death, then maybe I could try taming it. Maybe I could get a monkey mount. 

It halted its movement, tilting its camera-head confusedly for a moment. I then remembered the berries in my pocket and slowly reached inside to retrieve them. I don’t know what I was thinking– if they were poisonous, then I might have either killed the gorilla or made myself its enemy. But I wasn’t quite thinking right– I was bleeding out and recovering from a swan attack. 

It took a few good moments of coaxing, but I managed to get the creature close enough to extend my hand to it. It leaned forward, sniffed the berries, and instantly devoured them by shoving them into a hole at the base of its head. I thought it ate my hand along with the berries at first, but it didn’t. Once it finished literally decimating those berries, it looked at me expectantly for more. I shrugged. “No more. No more berries. I think.” I checked my pockets. “Nope. No berries.” 

The creature deflated disappointedly. I winced. “Yeah, I know, it sucks. At least now I know they weren’t poisoned… and that there’s a– hang on,” I tilted my chin upward and felt along the base of my head and, sure enough, there was a small slot there. I assumed it was for food. Gross. 

I was shocked that this monkey thing was sticking around. If it was friendly, then… maybe I could get a tactical monkey companion. But I had to figure out exactly what it was first. It seemed to have some form of linguistic ability, so I cleared my throat and gestured to myself. “Me, (Y/N),” I nodded enthusiastically, watching as it matched my movement. I pointed at it. “You, gorilla?” 

It shook its head insistently. Christ, what was I getting myself into? I swallowed and tried again. “You… big…foot?” 

This creature immediately nodded aggressively, pounding on its chest with enough force to shake the ground beneath my feet. Holy shit. I was interacting with bigfoot, a literal cryptid, and he had saved me from being mauled to death by savage pond dinosaurs! Good lord, maybe this arcade machine wasn’t so bad after all. 

I laughed incredulously, the high-pitched sound causing Bigfoot to jolt slightly. “No fuckin’ way, dude,” I began, resting a hand on where my forehead would be. “Okay, Bigfoot, can you point me toward society? People, perchance?” 

Bigfoot tilted his head for a moment before I gestured to myself. “More like me. People. Humans.”

He nodded and pointed vaguely to the east, and I enthusiastically gripped his free hand to shake it. Christ, I was shaking hands with Bigfoot. He tensed. “Thank you, Bigfoot! You don’t understand how rough I’ve had it, man, it’s been insane–”

Without warning, Bigfoot made a frightened noise and yanked his hand away from mine before turning and booking it further into the woods. I didn’t chase him, because I knew he could rip me apart if he chose to, but a part of me couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I met Bigfoot, he gave me directions, and then he ran away. Oh, well. I had my directions. I turned and began marching to the east, my wounds still actively bleeding and my head still actively a phone. 

I was still afraid of the dark, though. Fuck. 

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.”

drinking movie theater butter straight from the teat