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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So it wasn’t, and so it won’t be. 

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

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

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

Ꚛ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 0-- My Own Personal Dialup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s what shut?” I snickered. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“THE DIALUP.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…Well, shit. 

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

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

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

I had to get at that big red button. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

And nothing happened. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it was beautiful. 

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 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. 12-- Interlude: Parole

If there was one thing I had always prided myself on, it was my attitude and behavior. Unless I was with someone I was comfortable with, I never talked back, never raised my voice, and always did what I was told. It got me a lot of special treatment when I was in school: I could cheat on assignments and never get caught, forge my parents’ signature on things and never be questioned, and generally get away with a lot of shit I wouldn’t have gotten away with if I were as outspoken as some of the popular kids.

My good behavior got me nowhere in prison. It got me walked all over by other prisoners, beaten up on by COs, and taken advantage of by all kinds of ilk. It wasn’t fun, but I stuck to it. I was a good person at heart, despite having, y’know… robbed a museum and shot an officer. I was going to be nice, damn it. And I was. And it sucked. 

Looking back on it now, being a selfish asshole likely would have made prison a lot easier to deal with. But I’m one stubborn bastard, and I did not want to leave that place any more of an asshole than I was before I stepped foot through those doors, coated in my own blood and the blood of a police officer, riddled with glass shards, and with several broken bones. 

Though I suppose being nice got me one thing: out of prison. I was sentenced to six years– rather light for what I did, I know, but I got an incredibly generous judge and a damn good lawyer. Two years in, and whaddya know, I got out on parole for good behavior. I wasn’t allowed to use any controlled substances, own firearms, or leave the state, but I was out. See, being nice does help out sometimes! 

The first thing I did when I got out of there was look in a mirror. It was the sun-visor mirror in my mom’s car, but it did its job. I had looked in a mirror that very morning, but I could never get too close to it for fear of seeing something I didn’t want to see. The mirrors were also far too occupied at any given time, and I didn’t want to be jumped for looking at my own reflection. I swear, people would get jumped for literally any reason in there. 

I immediately noticed something different: my eyes. While, yes, they were the same color, and the same shape, and overall the same eyes, the light in them had dimmed. I was still me, but I had been changed. I wasn’t sure if I could ever go back to what I was before, but I would sure as hell try. 

Getting therapy was the easy part. Some turned me away for my new status as a former prisoner of the state, but I eventually found one who was willing to take me. Her name was Linda– she was a tall, skinny black lady in her forties with the kindest eyes and the brightest smile. I remember loving Linda with all my heart. She listened, and she understood me despite my glaring flaws and the inherent traumas that came with having lived in a constantly hostile environment for two years. 

Once I felt I was safe in my own bed again, I had something bigger I had to deal with. I had to find (Y/N). They had completely vanished the night I was arrested, right after they had been screaming in abject agony and clutching their head as if it were about to fall off. The moment had been haunting me every waking moment for two years. I didn’t know if they were dead, but I did know that they were considered missing, as well as a wanted criminal. 

I had to go back to that museum. As much as I really didn’t want to, as it reminded me of times that I would have rather forgotten about, I had to do something. Guilt was swiftly eating away at my body, and if I didn’t track down at least something that aided in the search for my friend, I feared it would swallow me whole. 

Much to my dulled shock, the museum had closed. Completely shut down. Although, I suppose I should have expected that. It was the lamest tourist attraction in the city. Its brick structure had begun to crumble, and the bright red awning that I remembered falling off had been torn apart many hurricanes ago. Most of the windows were shattered, but I still recalled the exact one I dove out of. Good times. Not really, actually. Not good times. 

The door had been barred with wooden planks that had been haphazardly nailed to its surface, so I had to climb inside through a first-story window. I was immediately met with the sight of the dilapidated interior; worn, questionably-stained yellow carpet, a ticket counter that had been taken by the termites ages ago, torn-apart vintage paintings lining the walls and barely visible vegetation growing from the cracks in the foundation. It was a sight straight out of a movie set. 

I didn’t want to waste any time. For all I knew, my parole officer was right around the corner waiting to arrest me for trespassing. I found my way to the stairs and carefully climbed them, grasping onto the handrails to ensure I didn’t fucking die if they were to give out on me. I did give myself a splinter, though, so… fun. 

I quickly traversed the second floor, briefly admiring the intact nature of all of the abandoned vintage tech, and made my way up to the third floor. I was immediately overwhelmed by the scent of warm dust that only ancient arcade cabinets could emit. I spotted the bag of abandoned goods that (Y/N) had dropped and winced, knowing that it was probably worth nothing now. I also spotted that old cabinet, seeming just as intact as it was when I first saw it. 

I took a deep, steadying breath, surely inhaling a shit ton of airborne pathogens as I did, before approaching the machine. The screen was pitch black, as I expected– the power to this building had been shut off years ago. But that didn’t seem to matter last time. I knew it had to have something to do with the disappearance of my friend– I had done a lot of thinking on this while incarcerated, and while it seemed impossible and wholly unrealistic, I had always had an overactive imagination. I leaned over to get a look at the sides of the machine– the same, low-resolution character art was plastered onto the sides. The one with the blue flannel, the one with the fez, the printer-headed lady, even the stereotypical cowboy. But there was a new one– a somewhat higher-resolution character in a tan-colored flannel and hoodie with a red rotary phone for a head. That was strange– I couldn’t quite remember this one. I shook off my confusion. I didn’t have the best memory in the first place.

Cautiously, as not to accidentally break it somehow, I knelt next to the machine and located the power cord. I peeked into the gap between the back of the machine and the wall, then carefully plugged it into an outlet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much dust in my life. 

The machine immediately jumped to life, causing me to take a step back in awe. That same pale blue glow illuminated my already-pale skin, and the high-pitched humming of machinery filled the air. The marquee lit up with those same words, though the light had dulled a bit. I tried to calm my racing heart as I stood and peered at the screen. It prompted me to insert a quarter. I hastily retrieved my wallet and pulled my only quarter from it, shoving it into the coin slot. The title screen menu appeared onscreen. The ‘continue’ button was highlighted, and I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if I pressed it.

So I did. I pressed the interaction button and the screen lagged for but a moment before a menu appeared. Several saved games had been logged into the machine, and it was prompting me to choose one. I only used the joystick to scroll downward, looking through the save files. All of them displayed different names and character avatars, as well as the members of their parties. An RPG, then. Strange. 

I scrolled all the way to the bottom, looking for any potential clues as to where my friend could be. When I reached the final save file, the most recent one, I took a good look at the play time. The play time was actively ticking upwards, which confused me to no end. I hadn’t opened this save. At that moment, it read ‘21974: 29: 04’. Was that… hours, minutes, and seconds? It seemed to be. This save file had been open for… just over two and a half years. 

My heart dropped into my stomach when I noticed the avatars and their respective names. A rat– bearing an empty can for a head– with a nametag that read ‘Spunch.’ The stereotypical cowboy fellow on the side of the cabinet with a nametag that read ‘Norm.’ And finally, that character I didn’t recognize from before, bearing the nametag ‘(Y/N).’ 

I took a step back from the machine, swallowing the bile that rose in my throat. What. The. Fuck. 

My borderline crazed, ridiculous mind whispered in my ears “What if they were sucked into the machine?” And I couldn’t help but entertain the thought. 

I shook my head. No way. No way that’s what happened. But it seemed to make the most sense! The light that enveloped (Y/N) before they disappeared, the character that mysteriously appeared on the side of the cabinet, the save file having their name attached to it, it all made too much sense. I rested a hand on my forehead, incredulously laughing. The sound echoed off of the walls of the empty museum. Why them? If my memory served me correctly, I was the one that was messing with the machine. I closed my eyes and recalled the events of the night. I remembered struggling to lift most of the shit we were stealing, finding the cabinet, then stealing (Y/N)’s last quarter. Then I selected new game, and…

I put their name into the console. Not mine. That’s why. I’m such a dumbass. 

I had to get out of there. If there was one thing I knew, it was that abandoned places were dangerous at night. They were havens for those who had none– typically wielding knives and other weapons. I didn’t have a weapon on me; I didn’t think I was legally allowed to. I definitely wasn’t allowed to own a gun anymore. Not only that, but my parole officer checked up on me every night. If I wasn’t at home by… twenty minutes from then, I would probably be instantly arrested. I’d have to come back earlier in the day. I frantically got down on my knee so I could reach behind the machine and unplug it. The screen immediately went black. 

Now that I thought about it, this was definitely some sort of magic bullshit. It worked when the power was out. So either they had forgotten to shut the power off in this building, which made no sense, or twelve-year-old me was right when she insisted magic was real, and everyone else was just too dumb to see it. I was more inclined to believe the latter. 

I stood and began my exit from the building, eyes filled with hope. I knew what happened to my best friend, and magic was real. Now I just had to figure out a way to set them free. 

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.”