This is one of my favorite things we have ever done on this blog. I love these stories and the tales of death in each and every option.
If you're just tuning in, our goal is to write our own Choose Your Own Adventure where every choice is twofold, with one leading to further adventure and the other to a gruesome death. Last week featured:
It’s another boring day at your stupid office. You spent most of the morning catching up on all the Internet you missed while sleeping and now you’re behind. Your stomach is growling because the banana you bought had a weird brown lump on it. You know you should get back to work, but you also know that you’re hungry and don’t care about your job at all.
What do you do?
- SEARCH FOR FOOD in the drawer that you haven’t used since you started here 2 years ago.
- CHECK EMAIL to see if your boss sent any super-long emails you can read to pass the time.
We chose:
SEARCH FOR FOOD in the drawer that you haven’t used since you started here 2 years ago.
You open your desk drawer and, underneath a stack of sexual harassment zero-toleration handbooks and porn magazines, find a bag of beef jerky. The brand name is “Jack’s Links” …which doesn’t sound quite right, buy hey, beggars can’t be choosers and you need something to lay down on top of that scary-looking banana you ate earlier. You rip open the bag and dig in. Hey, this stuff isn’t half bad! Kind of an odd color for beef jerky, but it’s really quite delicious. You get through about two thirds of the bag when you pull out a piece that’s got a tattoo of a heart and anchor on it.Do you:
A. Scream and run away in horror, or
B. Shrug and continue eating.
All of the entries were great, you should do yourself a favor and read through them if you haven't already. But I'm going with borntobealoser's suggestion, so here's what would happen with each of the choices:
A: Scream and run away in horror:
“OH LAWD!” you scream, as your body bolts upright, and pieces of Jack’s Links fly in every direction. Before anybody can even ask you what’s wrong, you’re running around like a headless chicken. Just ahead of you is Jimmy, the boss’ annoying little brat. In your panic you randomly remember that it’s “bring your son to work day” here at the office. You decide that this piece of information isn’t very useful to you at a time like this, and continue your mad dash. Unfortunately, nobody told Jimmy that it wasn’t “bring your skateboard to work day”, and you end up putting your foot onto Jimmy’s discarded skateboard. Down the flight of stairs you fly, grinding down the hand railing. If you didn’t still have the taste of human in your mouth, this would be pretty cool. You end up in the main entrance to the building, and due to lack of control, you burst through the front doors. Out on the street, construction workers are laying down cement. “Huh, roadworks. I wish the boss had warned me, I’ve just had my car detailed.” you think to yourself as you continue speeding on Jimmy’s skateboard. Unable to stop, you speed past the barriers the workers have erected, and skid into the quick drying cement, and instantly become encased in rock. From the floor above, you can see that Jimmy has been filming the whole thing. It gets hard to breath, and in your dying breath, you sincerely hope he uploads the footage to Youtube. Your life, and adventure, end here.
B: Shrug and continue eating:
Meh. Whoever this guy was, he didn’t have a great taste in tattoos, but he did have a GREAT TASTE. You finish the bag off, and lick you fingers. You scrumple up the Jack’s Links packet into a ball, and proceed to throw it into the waste paper bin on the other side of the office. It runs along the ridge of the paper bin twice before finally falling in. Hey, this is great! You think you’ve just invented the latest sport: waste paper golf. You’re surprised nobody has ever done this before. God, you’re an absolute genius. You’re about to scrumple all of your important legal documents into balls to continue your newfound sport, when Angeline walks into the room and sits in her cubicle. You know Angeline is like, really into you, because she was totally checking you out at the last Christmas shindig. Well, either you, or the tall, handsome guy standing next to you. Nah, it was definitely you.
You’re now conflicted. Do you:
A: Continue honing your paper ball throwing skills.
OR
B: Walk over to Angeline, and give her your best pick up line.
Now it's your turn! Write up the results of Choice A (paper ball throwing skills) and Choice B (try your pickup line on Angeline), with one ending in death and the other presenting us with two options from which to choose. I can't wait to see what you come up with!
A: Continue honing your paper ball holding skills
You toss another wadded up expense report into the bin. Then another, and another. Hey! You’re getting pretty good at this. You try some trick shots. Behind the back! Blindfolded! Perched on your desk like a glorious eagle! During this last shot, you look over and realize that Leonard from accounts and Gary from media are staring dumbfoundedly at you. You assume they’re going to chastise you but suddenly they throw their fists in the air in celebration at your paper-ball accuracy. The game spills out of your cubicle and pretty soon you have three entire departments watching you score basket after basket. Now for the money shot. The room grows quiet. You notice Angeline looking intently at you. Nice. This one has to be amazing. A flick of the wrist the paper projectile goes soaring, bounces off the dividing wall of your cubicle, up into the air past the vent, blows into the ceiling fan which knocks it over to the left, bounces off of the bobble-head Chihuaha that Maria Fernanda keeps on her desk and into the precisely placed waste-basket. A cheer roars out! You turn to greet your adoring crowd and notice they all have the same nervous expression on their faces. You turn around and… the District Manager! He does not look happy. Is your resume up to date?
A- Blame it all on Gary from accounts.
B- Try to pass it off as a team-building exercise.
B: Walk over to Angeline, and give her your best pickup line.
You turn your monitor off so you can quickly fix your hair. Or should you muss it up a little? Didn’t you hear that girls like that bed-head kind of look? Maybe a little of both. Anyway, you strut out with your half-combed, half-messy hair striding confidently to Angeline’s cubicle. You lean against the dividing wall and clear your throat. She doesn’t look up. You clear your throat. Louder. Again she fails to notice your existence. Finally you give a polite, “Excuse me.” Angeline tilts her head and stares at you icily. “What?” The response comes out cold, unfeeling. You’re a little taken back but decide to stick with the plan. “Um… You see… I was wondering…” Confidence! You can do this! You steel yourself and deliver a killer smile “Do you have a BandAid? I just scraped my knee falling for you.” Angeline remains expressionless. Her eyes move up and down your body in a robotic calculating manner. “Yes.” The response takes you off guard. “Oh… uh.. thanks?” “Yes. I will mate with you.” That response takes you off guard and soaring into the stratosphere. “What? I mean. Sure! Do you want to go out for dinner first or maybe catch a mov-” She bolts out of her seat. “Now.” She drags you by the tie to the nearest janitor’s closet. As you fumble with your shoes you turn around and Angeline is already down to her skivvies. Suddenly you’re a bit more nervous than you were five minutes ago. “Uh… Maybe we shouldn’t… um… I mean… I want to… but we could…” She places a finger on your lips and delivers a seductive “Shh.” You relax. Until you notice her eyes rolling into the back of your head and a weird seam appearing in the middle of her face. The last thing you remember is both halves of her face exploding outward, revealing a horrifying set of compound eyes and fanged mandibles. Something sharp pierces your arm and you pass out. When you wake up you’re slumped against the wall of the closet, the shredded remains of your clothes piled neatly next to you. You feel a little numb… Angeline is buttoning the last button on her shirt, looking as immaculately dressed as when you started. Did you just? What was with the face? You try to speak, but the only thing you manage to get out is “Was… it good… for you?” Angeline stares coldly down at you. “You were adequate. Gestation is nearly complete. Thank you for your services.” She steps swiftly out of the door. Gestation? It’s only then that you notice your stomach has expanded to resemble that of a woman nine months pregnant with octuplets. You feel something squirming inside of you. Then pain. Before you black out, never to awake again, you can take solace in the fact that before you gave violent and explosive (Meaning fatal. Sorry.) birth to the first wave of a vicious insectoid invasion force, you presumably hooked up with Angeline from across the hall. Thus ends your office adventure. I’m off to Costco to buy an several palettes of Raid™.
A: Continue honing your paper ball throwing skills
Reasoning that you’ll better be able to impress her when you’ve mastered your skills, you decide to leave hitting on the beautiful redhead for another day. You seize all the documents on your small desk and wad them into approximately spherical shape. Let the training begin! After about an hour of successful shots you’re sure you can hear the theme to “Rocky” playing in the background. You’re so pleased with your newfound talent that you don’t notice the myriad of little paper cuts you’ve accumulated during training. None of them are deep enough to draw blood, which is probably why you haven’t noticed. As you cross the office to gather up the paper balls for round two, you trip on one of those plastic cable ports. You instinctively catch yourself, but the force of the fall bursts each and every cut, and embeds contagion from the filthy dirty floor firmly into your bloodstream. Your office-mates help you up, asking if you’re okay. You say you’re fine, but in reality YOU ARE NOT. About two hours later the blood poisoning is fully underway, and you collapse during the very first tournament of waste paper golf. As your vision fades, and your teammates worried faces bob up over you, you realize that you are the very first casualty of the great office time-waster that you invented. Your life and office adventure are sadly over, but you are later hailed as a martyr to the sport of waste paper golf, so at least there’s that.
B: Walk over to Angeline, and give her your best pick up line
You smile to yourself at the thought of your nice-smelling co-worker. Oh yeah, she’s way better than anything in those magazines you’ve got stashed away, or at least you hope so. After a moment’s consternation over which of your lines would be best (you can’t use both, as you know from painful experience) you settle on one, suck in your stomach, and sidle over. You stop just inside her cubicle. Man, she fills that sweater nicely. Unfortunately, you aren’t aware of a few critical details until too late. Firstly, you said that last part out loud, unconsciously making “feely” gestures as you do so and secondly that Angeline has one of those small mirrors attached to her monitor so she’s seen, and heard, everything. It’s only when Angeline suddenly turns around, giving you the Look of Slow Horrible Death that you realize these important little details. Your libido is instantly gone, and the future looks to be full of legal action. Do you:
A: Flee the righteous legal wrath of Angeline, or,
B: Press on anyway in hopes of salvaging the situation
A. Waste paper golf. Starting up, you made a list of great names. You thought of a good one every ten throws or so. As you throw your next to the last wad, you realize the list is gone. What? It was on a Post-It . . . must’ve been a few throws ago. Oh well. Your last one! May have to get a ream of paper from the supply room . . . here’s the pitch–
An odd twinge in your shoulder changes to horrible pain in your back. The pitch goes wild, lodging oddly in the fire alarm pull. The pain, having caused dizziness, gets suddenly worse. You fall over your office chair, launching it sideways. In a freakish twist, as you land, draped over the mini-filing cabinet, the chair bounces into the fire alarm pull and breaks it. An odd sparking noise occurs as your back spasms, wrapping you around the cold steel, head hanging down. Your right arm is between the filing cabinet and the cubicle wall, and your left arm is twisted under you, possibly dislocated. The sprinkler system starts spraying. Your nose fills up with water, and the surprise starts you choking. It takes about 3 minutes to lose consciousness completely, just time enough to get a great view of Angeline with a soaked top and from behind exiting the floor, shivering. The head count, as you recall, is done in the parking lot–is this what a heart attack feels li–
B. Angeline is so cute that getting a ‘hell, no’ from her might look beautiful. You stand up, walk right to her in the cubicle, and promptly forget EVERY LINE YOU’VE EVER HEARD. Then, of course, she turns around and says, expectantly, “Yes?” Great. Well, some people like honesty. “I have nothing clever to say right now, nothing useful to do–at least not that I care about, and no excuse to leave my desk. But I’d really like to follow you out that door.” You point. “And go anywhere and do just about anything you’d like to do.” She looks completely shocked.
“Wow,” she says. And pauses. You have what feels like an hour before her next breath. “Early lunch, then?” Why not? It’s 10:00 am, and the boss will be mad, but lunch with Angeline?” You say:
A. “Hell, yes. Where would you like to go?”
B. “There are three places we could walk to without getting tired. Or would you rather one of us drive?”
A. Continue honing your paper ball throwing skills.
As another wadded up paper ball bounces off the rim of the waste paper basket, you get the distinct feeling that someone is watching you. You shrug it off, however, and continue to crumple up your “important” meeting notes and show-off your skills to whomever is watching. Hopefully, it’s Angeline.
This time, the ball goes in! “Yes!” You shout while pumping your fist into the air, “200 points.”
“That’s the first one I’ve seen you sink,” Jimmy, the boss’s kid says.
Startled, you try to compose yourself. In your excitement, you had forgotten someone had been watching you. “Well,” you reply snarkily, “Maybe each basket is worth 200 points.”
“I’m telling my dad,” he retorts. Then runs off to your boss’s office.
Oh crap! This could ruin your day…well, more than your day. What if you got fired? What if you got fired! There’s always unemployment…
Do you…
A. Chase after Jimmy
or
B. Let Jimmy report you to his father?
B. Walk over to Angeline and give her your best pick-up line.
Plucking up your courage, you stand, wipe your sweaty palms on your pants, and walk over to Angeline’s cubicle. Leaning over the top, you swallow nervously and try to remember the line you memorized as you were walking over.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
You wipe the sweat off your hands again and swallow hard. “Are you tired? Because you’ve been running through my mind all day.”
“Seriously?” she asks.
You shrug.
“It’s not enough that I work harder than everyone else here, but now I’ve got to listen to lame pick-up lines from the loser in the cubicle across from me?”
You frown at the floor. Embarrassed, you feel your cheeks and the tips of your ears grow warm.
“Is there a problem?” a man asks.
Turning around, you see the tall, handsome guy from the Christmas party. What was his name?
“This guy was just leaving, Chris,” Angeline tells him with a pointed glare in your direction.
Chris! Of course! He’s a lot bigger than you remember. Is he Angeline’s boyfriend? Oh crap! Better beat a hasty retreat.
Turning away from Angeline’s cubicle, you sprint down the hall. Unable to turn away, you slam into the window, but it doesn’t break. With a groan, you fall to the floor. Blood trickles from your nose.
Getting shakily to your feet, you stumble toward the stairwell. Stubbing your toe as you open the door, you reach out your hand to grasp the handrail, but miss. You watch in slow motion as your hand passes the rail. Your face hits the second stair, then your feet tumble over your head. You begin to wonder if fate would have been kinder had you used your other favorite line, “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven.”
You fall down the stairs and crumple into a heap at the landing.
Unfortunately, you have broken your neck. Your office escapades end here.
The End.
A. Continue honing your paper ball throwing skills
It’s decided! You’re going to keep throwing paper balls until you become the grand master of it. Is there a grand master position to Waste Paper Golf? Who cares? There is now. You start grabbing sheets of useless documents, wadding them up, and throwing them from further and further distances from the waste basket, getting your form down. By the time noon rolls around, you’ve managed to back your office chair up into Eugene from Accounting’s cubicle across the office. You chuck the tightly wadded ball of paper, and a few seconds later, Simon, the guy in the cubicle across from you yells out, “nailed it!”
“That’s some fine Waste Paper Basketball you’re shooting,” Eugene says.
“Nope, I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” you reply. “It’s Waste Paper Golf. Just invented it.”
Eugene pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid not. It’s Waste Paper Basketball. I just started a league online, with its own set of codified rules. You’re welcome to join the league, if you want.”
“Waste Paper Golf!” you reply, and to punctuate your claim, you flick a paper ball off of Eugene’s computer monitor, and the rebound hits his glasses askew off his face.
Eugene’s face twists into an ugly scowl. “It’s Waste Paper Basketball.” He pushes his glasses up his nose again.
“Nah, I don’t think so, Eugene. Waste Paper Golf. Fore!” You launch another ball of paper off the back wall of his cubicle, and bouncing it into the back of his head, knocking his glasses off his face and onto his desk.
Glowering with anger, Eugene grabs his glasses off the desk and repositions them on his nose. “I’ve had about enough of your crap. Parking lot in five minutes!”
What do you do?
A. C’mon, Eugene’s a dorky accountant, and you can definitely take him in a fight. It is on like Donkey Kong!
B. Wait up, you might have gone too far. Stop Eugene while he’s logging off his computer, apologize for being a jerk, and ask if he still wants to show you his Waste Paper Basketball League.
B. Walk over to Angeline, and give her your best pick-up line.
Feeling the high of inventing a new office sport, and showing some skill at it, you’ve decided to ride your wave of confidence, and try to hit on the office hottie, Angeline. Just think, if you can pull this off, you won’t have to spend every night eating pork and beans right out of the can, watching Wheel of Fortune in your underwear. Some nights, you’ll actually have someone to go out with!
You swagger up to Angeline’s cubicle, nonchalantly lean on the entrance, and fire off with, “Hey, is that a mirror in your pocket? Because I can totally see myself in your pants.”
Are you serious? That’s not going to get you a date. That will probably get you some sexual harassment training. Why don’t you pack it in and call off sick? Maybe Angeline will think you had a fever, and had no idea what an ass you were just making of yourself.
Angeline looks up into your eyes, and pulls out the earbuds to her iPod. “I’m sorry, did you just say something?”
Yes! You can salvage this situation. She didn’t hear your stupid pick-up line. You might be able to salvage this situation if you can come up with something else.
“Umm…I just lost my phone number. Because you’re the only ten I see.”
What. The. Hell. You just screwed up two pick-up lines by mashing them incomprehensibly together. And both of them are lame!
Angeline gets a perplexed look on her face. “Is this some kind of office prank. Should I expect to see Simon putting this up on YouTube later?”
The blood starts rushing to your face as you stammer, trying to think of a way to pull out of this without crashing and burning entirely. Hey, I told you how to do it. You need to feign being sick, and hope that…
“I like….shorts,” you suddenly say.
Really? I like shorts? That’s the best you got? Right now, the shattered remains of any hope of getting a social life has metaphorically snapped itself from life-support and started slapping you in the face, hoping that you get your crap together. It’s at that point that you feel a pop inside your head, and unbeknownst to you, the blush response has sent so much blood to your head that an artery just burst, giving you an aneurism.
“Are you feeling alright?” Angeline asks. “You don’t look so good.”
“I am the Great Goomagazoo,” you mumble out of one side of your mouth, feeling another pop in your head, as another artery gives up the fight to keep you from bleeding directly into your brain.
“Someone get some help!” Angeline shouts out. “I think this guy is having a stroke!” She grabs her phone and hits three numbers, but at this point, you couldn’t possibly comprehend that she’s just phoned 911. No, you get a glimpse of her cleavage, mumble out “Boobies!” and then after a series of pops in your head turns your brain to mush, you fall into a coma before you even hit the floor.
Congratulations! Even though the term has been used countless times before, you actually became the first person to literally die of embarrassment.
The End.