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:
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?
We had five really fun entries, many thanks to Myro, Shookman, Gero, HerrD, and Renxin. I decided to go with The Shookman's take, partly because I think it lends itself well to the supernatural twist I'm asking for. First, here's how we would have died:
B – Let Jimmy report you to his father: So you were throwing some mildly important documents at a trash can to pass the time. Big deal, right? Screw that little devil spawn, you’re hungry again, and you would rather chase a burger with a soda than chase a brat with an attitude.
You sneak away to the kitchen, ready to eat something that will finally satisfy. You pop open the fridge. Sweet! Left over Chinese food! The note says, “PAUL’S. DO NOT EAT.” Ppphhhh, as if that ever stopped you any other time. Paul has a good taste in food, and if you don’t eat it, how are you going to make sure it doesn’t go to waste?
Following your half-assed logic, you start to chow down. You see Paul in the distance, who is clearly making his way towards you. Oh wow. He looks pissed. Well, no point in stopping now, right? You begin to shovel the food down as fast as possible, when you suddenly realize you’ve stopped breathing, which is odd, because Paul isn’t close enough to choke you yet. Panic sets in as you realize it’s the food, and the only person in the office certified to do CPR is… Paul.
He walks away, muttering how you deserve it, as you choke to death, alone, in the kitchen of the office. Just like your mom always said you would.
Your office adventure ends here.
Bummer! But goodness knows, I've wanted exactly that fate to befall a coworker before who helped himself to my lunch. And now, here's the continuation of our adventure:
A – Chase after Jimmy: Oh, you’re going to tell daddy over my dead body! You spring into action, grabbing a handful of those cheap office pens, just in case you need to throw stuff at him. You begin to notice your age as you pant towards the brat, but you’ll be damned if that stops you! You whip a pen at him, missing completely (unless you were actually aiming at Sue with the lazy eye from accounting, but you know you weren’t).
He looks back to see if that was you, makes an obscene gesture, and picks up the pace. If you don’t do something soon, you’ll have to listen to your boss lecture you for 15 minutes about conducting yourself in the office! 15 friggin minutes!!! You take every pen in hand, and throw them with all your might. Nailed him!
He turns around again, probably to make some stupid remark, when he runs right past his dad’s office, and down a stairwell. You hear him make a large amount of shrieks and shrills, as any annoying child is prone to do when they’re making a big deal out of some broken bones. Oh wait, this is bad! Now he’s going to tell his dad you made him fall! Unless he broke his mouth. Can you break a mouth? You’re not sure, but you bet that kid just found out.
Do you:
A – Check on the poor boy with the possibly broken mouth?
B – Beat him to his dad, and make up a story about him screwing around?
Now it’s your turn, but with a twist: I want something "fantastical" to happen this week. You can introduce magic or spaceships or zombies or talking rabbits, but something not of this normal reality should appear in both your choices. With that in mind, write up the results of Choice A (“Check on the poor boy with the possibly broken mouth”) and Choice B (“Beat him to his dad, and make up a story about him screwing around?”), 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.)Check on the boy with a possibly broken mouth)(This is my first time doin’ one of these but,) You check to see if Jimmy is OK. Blood is EVERYWHERE.You think in the back of you mind.”Good God.His dad is gonna KILL me.”You mumble under your breath “Uh uh uh uh Dga! Just a little blood right? Nothing to worry about .You turn him over to see his face. He looks at you. You see his nose twisted all to hell.You scream.then you say to him “Sorry kid, but you got what you deserved,”in a squeamish tone. Suddenly a hand grabs your shoulder,and you think “I’m dead” but no one is there. Like lightning you go flying into the sky and you start to bleed under all the pressure. You here in an eerie voice”Just a little blood right?” You go deaf and your face turns red . Your days end here.
A – Check on the poor boy with the possibly broken mouth?
You carefully make your way down the stairs and to the crumpled body of Jimmy. He looks okay, if you count lying in a heap with his right arm bent back at the elbow as being in tip top shape. Okay, so maybe this is a bigger problem that the time you put dish soap in his soda. At least no one was able to pin that on you. This will be a lot harder to hide. You can’t just sneak off to the bathroom and hope no one noticed the loud crash or you looming over the scene like some psycho.
After a few deep breaths, you manage to stop rubbing your hands together and giggling, to lessen the whole psycho persona you’re trying to keep to a minimum. You kneel down next to Jimmy and tap him on the shoulder and say, “You okay, kid?”
Jimmy turns his head around, and by turn his head around, it literary turns towards the back of his neck, like an owl. His broken arms extends way past its original length and grabs you by the shoulder.
“Okay?” he asks, his voice suddenly deeper than normal and echoing like a cheap sound effect. “What the hell do you think, you damn moron? I fell down the stairs!”
His eyes start to glow red and little black horns sprout on his forehead from what you always assumed to be two evenly placed zits. He opens his mouth, wider than you ever thought possible and pulls you towards row after row of razor sharp teeth.
Everything goes dark as he closes his mouth around your head and your ears rush with the sound of your own screams and the crunch of your own flesh and bones and Jimmy bites your head off. Guess his mouth wasn’t broken after all.
B – Beat him to his dad, and make up a story about him screwing around?
You ignore Jimmy’s cries and head over to your boss’s office. Mr. Sanders never really leaves his office, except during the annual Christmas party, where he stands by the spiked punch and gets smashed, then starts speaking in strange tongues draws pentagrams in the cheese dip with his fingers.
Any other time, you have to go to him. If you want to make a suggestion, you have to go to his office. If he wants to chew you out, you have to go to his office. If his kid falls down the stairs and you want to offset any blame, you have to go to his office.
No one likes going to Mr. Sanders office. First of all, it’s always hot, no matter how high the air conditioning is set to. And it smells like burnt hair and bad cologne. But you have to do what you have to do if you don’t want to end up fired, lectured, or arrested for child endangerment.
You knock on his door and it swings open, revealing a tastefully decorated office with an oak desk, wood paneling and framed photos of various modes of torture. The pictures always give you the creeps, but they’re better than the oil paintings of sad clowns your last boss had.
“Come in,” Mr. Sanders says, looking up from his computer. He frowns when he sees it’s you. “What the hell did you do this time?”
“There’s been a teeny bit of a problem,” you say, holding your fingers close in a false approximation of the severity of the issue.
“How small?” Mr. Sanders asks. “Copier broken small, or the police are on their way small?”
“Weeell,” you say, looking over at a picture of a woman being thrown into a volcano to avoid looking Mr. Sanders in the eyes.
“It’s kinda sorta about your son. You see, he was goofing around and – “
Mr. Sanders stands up and walks towards you. You try to back away but find the door is shut, even though you don’t remember shutting it. He reaches you and shoves your shoulder, causing your back to dig into the door handle.
“Tell me exactly what happened and be perfectly honest,” Mr. Sander’s says. “Your very life depends on it.” He stares into your eyes, locking your soul to his and forcing you to tell nothing but the truth. This is why you hate looking into his eyes. It’s like the visual equivalent of Sodium Pentathol, but much more effective.
“I was wading up work and playing a nice game of paper ball, when your son decided to be a prick and tell on me. So, I chased after him and he fell down the stairs. I didn’t even touch him. What kind of idiot kid doesn’t watch where he’s going, anyway?”
Mr. Sander’s other hand is now around your neck. “I could kill you right now,” he says, his voice growing gravelly and deep. “I could drain the life from your body and send you to the deepest pits of hell.”
Since this is the way your boss usually conducts himself, you aren’t too worried. But that changes when his eyes start growing red and two horns spring from under his bangs. That’s not normal anti-social boss behavior. You squirm a bit, which only causes Mr. Sanders to increase the pressure on your neck.
“But I won’t,” he says, as his eyes return to their usual green and the horns recede back into his hair. “I need you, at least for another week. Now get back to work and forget what you saw here. I’ll take care of my son.”
He releases your neck and heads back to his desk like nothing happened. The door swings open, revealing the safety of the hallway beyond.
Do you:
A – Get back to work and forget that your boss just sprouted horns?
B – Post the video you secretly made of the event on YouTube?
A: Check on the poor boy with the possibly broken mouth
You skid to a halt just before the entrance to the stairwell. Taking a second to steel yourself (you’ve never been able to stomach the sight of a hangnail, let alone the pools of blood your imagination is serving you up with) you slowly peer into the stairway.
You see… nothing.
What? Nothing? There can’t be nothing! Even now you can hear the kid hollering, and the sound is clearly coming from in front of you, so at least you know that his mouth is fine. But, come to think of it, the yelling sounds wrong. It’s the same kid, still screaming on about his injuries, but it sounds like its being shouted through a tin megaphone in a cave a long way away.
An odd feeling steals over you. Without taking your eyes from the stairwell, you pick up one of the pens you threw at Jimmy and toss it through the door. You watch in terrified amazement as it sails through the doorway and vanishes before it reaches the top of its arc. A second later you hear a tinny, echoing “Ow!”
You begin looking around for a man in a gray suit smoking a cigarette, expecting to hear at any moment, “Presented for your consideration…”
Even in your current state of alarm a few ideas present themselves.
Do you:
A: Close the door to the stairs and seal little Jimmy in whatever Twilight Zone he’s in, or
B: Investigate the portal further
B: Beat him to his dad and make up a story about him screwing around
Hell man, what a day you’re having. First it was eating someone, now it’s chasing kids to their possible death. You realize that there’s going to be a real big shit-storm in a matter of minutes, but it might just be possible to not have all of it fall on you. Figuring out a story as you go, you head back over to your boss’ office. You put on your best look of concern and begin pounding on the door.
Strange chanting and other eerie noises emanate from the other side of the door, which breaks off to become a nasty “What d’you want?” from your boss. He sounds pissed about something already, but you can’t back out now.
“Boss! It’s Jimmy!” you shout back, hoping against hope you sound alarmed and not like you’re covering your ass, “He was running around, throwing pens at people, when he tripped and went down the stairs!”
Your boss yells something, and is at the door and flying down the hallway in a blink. Really flying. It takes a moment for this to fully sink in. As you try to process this turn of events, the strange noises in the office resume. You look over and, seemingly in slow motion, something that looks like a H.P. Lovecraft creation emerges from some unspeakable substance boiling in a small pot on the desk. It fixes you with a multi-eyed stare and you are unable to move as the tentacle monstrosity launches for you. The thing devours you before you even have the presence of mind to scream.
Cool enough, but isn’t there supposed to be a second half? (i.e. the part where we get two other choices???) 😉
A. You trot to the stairwell to look down. He’s moving and groaning. Hah. Maybe if you pretend to be sympathetic or threaten him in a timely manner he’ll keep quiet. You take the first step and realize why he fell. Slick step. You land beside him and hear a crunching noise from your neck as your head bounces off the floor. Jimmy’s head lolls toward yours. There is an intense blue light and an odd noise.
“I can help,” he says in a deep bass voice. More blue light. Isn’t Jimmy a — a — the thing under soprano?
A moment later you can’t feel your pain, your hunger, or anything else, and the thing beside you says, “I can keep you alive, but it requires an — edit? You will either be twice as strong and hairless, or deaf and mute and twelve times as strong and able to see things you never have before. Which do your choose?”
—Well?
You go to boss’ door, grab the handle and it bites you. A bag envelopes you and you hear “He’s heavier than I remember?”
Your boss’ voice says “Kill it NOW!” and——
Sorry, my work cpu’s were shutting down and my edit didn’t post–
2nd try:
A. You trot to the stairwell to look down. He’s moving and groaning. Hah. Maybe if you pretend to be sympathetic or threaten him in a timely manner he’ll keep quiet. You take the first step and realize why he fell. Slick step. You land beside him and hear a crunching noise from your neck as your head bounces off the floor. Jimmy’s head lolls toward yours. There is an intense blue light and an odd noise.
“I can help,” he says in a deep bass voice. More blue light. Isn’t Jimmy a — a — the thing under soprano?
A moment later you can’t feel your pain, your hunger, or anything else, and the thing beside you says, “I can keep you alive, but it requires an — edit? You will either be twice as strong and hairless, or deaf and mute and twelve times as strong and able to see things you never have before. Which do your choose?”
a.—Well? Hairless–there’s always Rogaine.
[or]
b. 12x as strong? I was never that good at conversation anyway!
B. You go to boss’ door, grab the handle and it bites you. The metal just sprouted teeth?! A bright blue bag envelopes you and you hear a voice say “He’s heavier than I remember?”
Your boss’ voice says “Kill it NOW!” and——
A: Check on the poor boy with the possibly broken mouth:
Sure, Jimmy annoys the hell out of you, but no kid deserves this. You need to get down there and help him, it’s the least you can do, and it might just prevent the boss firing you. You leap down the stairs to be by his side, only to see that someone has beaten you to it. Geoff, the security guard, is crouching over him giving mouth to mouth. Well, if Geoff is sorting it out, you don’t need to be here, right? You’re about to turn around and head back upstairs when you hear a weird crunching sound. Is that the sound that mouth to mouth usually makes? Wait a minute, Geoff isn’t one of the company’s designated first aiders! What’s he doing, giving mouth to mouth? Realisation smacks you across the face: He’s EATING Jimmy! This won’t look good to the boss, you need to do something. You kick Geoff off of the pile of bones formerly known as Jimmy, and send him reeling further down the stairs. With no time to waste, you haul Jimmy onto your shoulders and start to run back up to the boss’ office. But before you can get into your stride, you feel an overwhelming sensation of pain in your neck. Jimmy’s biting down on your neck. HARD. You’re not sure what’s going on here, did everybody skip breakfast? Perhaps you should’ve shared those Jack’s Links with them. You collapse, and Jimmy proceeds to chew on your defenseless body. I guess his mouth wasn’t broken after all. Your life, and adventure, end here.
B: Beat him to his dad, and make up a story about him screwing around:
Let the kid sort himself out, you’ve got a boss to lie to. You knock rapidly on Mr Grimes’ office door, but you only hear a muffled reply, and can’t tell whether he said “Yes?” or “Go Away!”. It doesn’t usually matter what he tells you to do, so why should it now? You enter the office to find Mr Grimes sitting at his desk, looking rather bedraggled, with what looks like ketchup all over his face. Your boss has always been a messy eater, so this isn’t anything unusual. What is unusual is the fact that Ms Penny is lying on the shag carpet unconscious, with, uh, a massive red wine stain around her? She must be drunk, you know how she can be sometimes. Totally unprofessional. “Is this a bad time, Mr Grimes?” you ask awkwardly. He doesn’t even bother to acknowledge your existence, and continues to stair blankly at the bookcase in front of him. He’d have already bursted your ear drums with furious shouting if it was in fact a bad time, so you take a seat across from him at his desk. “You see, sir, ahem, there’s been an accident, with your son, Jimmy. It seems he tripped and fell down the stairs. Completely of his own accord, I should add.” Your boss has an amazing poker face, his expression hasn’t even changed in the slighest. “Brains?” he murmurs. What an odd question. “Well, no sir, I guess he doesn’t have much brains, to do something like that, bu-” “Braaiiins?!” he interrupts. How rude! You’re trying to explain that his son is in trouble, with a possibly broken mouth, and all he cares about his how smart he is? “Beg your pardon, sir?” “BRAAAIIIIINS?!?!” he shrieks, and flips the table over. This is bad. You have no idea what’s going on. Now he’s shuffling closer to you, arms stretched out in front. It’s at this point that Ms Penny gets up and turns to you. She’s missing half of her face. Oh! NOW you get it. They’re ZOMBIES! Wow, sometimes you can be so slow. From the sound of distant screams of terror coming from outside, it appears that these two aren’t the only ones zombified. And now you have to try to escape. You sigh. This has ruined an otherwise perfect day.
What do you do?
A: Vault through the open window onto the window cleaner’s lift outside.
OR
B: Try to escape via the zombie-populated staircase.
Woo! I was finally picked for something! I knew you couldn’t resist my comedy gold haha I must say though, I thoroughly enjoyed everyone of the entries, definitely got a few laughs.
x_x I just realized I put “wading” instead of “wadding” in my entry.
The “Your days end here” didn’t give away that you DIE?! oh oh oh oh ohhhhhhhhh.Sorry
He means, you’re supposed to write up the results of A or B from the post above. One of those choices ends in death, but the other one gives us two NEW choices that YOU WRITE. Then next week that is the way the adventure continues. You only gave us the death option, and didn’t write up the results of the other choice, which would give us two new options.
-You see Jimmy. In your mind you have a WTF moment. He fades away. You say to yourself “Ok HOW am I still alive or am I going crazy? 1st) Going through umpteen walls. 2nd) You are under about 120 degrees in the sky. 3rd)You are FLOATING. 4t… OH HOLY S#$%!” You begin to plummet.Your lunch flashes before your eyes.You look at the road you are about to hit. A hole appears and fire erupts from it. You fall into the hole.You see a dark figure. You scream.The figure says “I don’t want your pity a$$!” You see the light of day.You stand again. You don’t know where you’re at. The place looks like Italy. You can’t understand ANYONE,and everyone looks like there wearing dresses.
You can either
A.)
Ask WTF is going on to this chick you see.
{OR}
B.) Fall to you knees and pray
B – Beat him to his dad, and make up a story about him screwing around?
What luck! If you hurry, you can get to the boss before he even has a chance to notice the little brat’s shrieking! Without a second thought, you race to your boss’s doorway. You pause in the hallway to straighten your shirt and roll your eyes at the boss’s choice of music for the day—some sort of weird new-agey rhythmic clicking accompanied by random hisses and moans that would be sickeningly creepy if you hadn’t heard some of the other crazy stuff the boss likes. You also notice that one of the pens you threw somehow managed to stick itself into the corkboard right above the safety memo from last week about not having projectiles in the office. You smirk at the irony as you dislodge the writing implement and tuck it into your shirt pocket. Do you look professional now, or what? The boss is sure to believe such a suave, sexy, on-the-ball specimen of professionalism over his own flesh and blood, right? You take one deep breath and step inside the office.
“Hey, boss, you won’t believe what that kid of yours—”
The boss isn’t at his desk.
“Boss?”
Puzzled, you look around. You could have sworn he hasn’t left his office since that dumb staff meeting earlier, but he’s not at his desk, not at the window, not in the other chair, and generally not anywhere you would expect him to be if he were in his office. In fact, you don’t see him at all.
You’re about to turn around and leave when you notice that annoying creepy music again, getting louder and more agitated. It doesn’t seem to be coming from his computer, or from the radio on his desk, or from the cassette player next to his desk (who still has a cassette player these days, anyway? you wonder). Maybe that’s not music, after all?
You barely have time to come to this conclusion before you are proven right. With a thud, your boss’s head hits the floor next to the desk and rolls toward you. You see that his mouth is choked with foam and his complexion looks slightly greenish. Also the head isn’t attached to anything.
You hear a stream of shouted obscenities and realize they’re coming from you. You start to back out the door, but before you can take a step, a giant bug-thing rises from behind the desk, mandibles and scythe-like limbs dripping with blood and bits of the boss’s navy-blue designer suit. Shock roots you to the spot as it lunges towards you, and the last thing you feel is the cold, chitinous blade of the creature’s front leg as it slices through your neck.
You are dead.
A – Check on the poor boy with the possibly broken mouth?
That’s what an innocent person would do in this situation, right? Plus, if it isn’t broken now, maybe you can find a way to rectify that before he has a chance to talk! You follow the boy’s path past his father’s office and to the top of the stairwell.
It is immediately apparent from the renewed shrieks and obscenities that come as soon as you are in sight that the kid’s mouth is not broken. In fact, he’s probably not very hurt at all; this stairwell is weird and the first flight only has like three steps.
You walk towards little Jimmy, hoping maybe the sight of your intimidating figure advancing towards him will shut him up for a few moments while you think of another plan of action. No such luck; if anything the shrieking just gets worse. How does such a little kid know that many swear words? you wonder for a moment, but then you remember who his father is.
When you get within reach of the kid, you grab him by the arm and pull him to his feet.
“Shut up, kid! Save it for when you’re actually hurt!” you say as he struggles against your grip. You note with satisfaction that even if you couldn’t keep up with the youngster when running, you’re still much stronger than he is.
He squirms and shrieks for a moment, but then he quiets down. His eyes grow big like he’s terrified of something, and a smaller, more genuine-sounding moan escapes from his lips.
“Behind you,” he whispers.
“Yeah, right,” you laugh, “as if I’d fall for that one!”
Jimmy wordlessly pulls against your grip again, this time with such sudden vigor that he at least succeeds in pulling you towards the other end of the landing.
“Holy—”
Your oath dies on your lips as you glance up and see what Jimmy was so scared of. Standing at the top of the stairwell is a gigantic bug-thing! Its silhouette fills the doorframe as it stands on two hind legs and waves four arms that end in scythe-like claws in the air. Its shiny black body is spattered in blood—you guess that of your poor dear officemates, given the shreds of cloth that are also sticking to it here and there. It kind of reminds you like a horrible, bipedal cockroach.
You stand there gaping at the impossible creature before you, and would probably continue to do so until the thing gobbled you up with those huge blood-soaked jaws, but as you think you catch a glimpse of another two or three similar creatures coming down the hall, something pulls at you.
Jimmy has now gathered his wits about him enough to have the sense to make for the exit. Since you haven’t thought to let go, the viselike grip you have on his arm is pulling you along, too. Jimmy reaches the other end of the landing, and you shake yourself into awareness just in time to consciously think about not tripping as you dash down the stairs. You can hear the creature behind you, clicking and hissing like that weird music that was coming from the boss’s office when you were chasing Jimmy earlier. It occurs to you as Jimmy leads you down another flight of stairs that the weird music may not have been music after all…
At least I don’t have to worry about being lectured for fifteen minutes! you think.
Down another flight of stairs, and another, and another, you go, never letting go of Jimmy’s arm, always with the clicking and hissing bug-thing right behind. But all too soon, you find yourselves out of stairs! You only work on the third floor, after all.
With nowhere else to go, you shove the door to the lower level open, and you and Jimmy rush inside. Jimmy finds the knob that locks the door from this side, and you hear the beautiful melody of the tumblers sliding into place just half a second before you hear the thunk of the bug-thing running into the door.
Panting for breath, you lead Jimmy down the hall. Nobody works in the basement; it’s just a dimly-lit storage area for janitors’ supplies and extra office stuff. The other stairwell is always locked and the elevator needs a key to get down here, so you should be relatively safe here. But just in case, you take Jimmy into one of the storage rooms, lock the door behind you, then plop down on an abandoned office chair, finally letting go of Jimmy’s arm.
“Now what?” Jimmy asks, rubbing the developing bruise shaped like your thumb.
Now what, indeed…
A – Stay here. With the boss’s bratty kid. Hey, it’s better than getting eaten by one of those things!
B – Go exploring. You may be able to find something to defend yourself with, and, hey, if the kid “accidentally” crosses paths with the monsters, extra bonus!