When last we left our intrepid Office Adventurer, we were locked in a storage closet with the boss' bratty son. Our options were to a) stay in the room and hope for the best or b) go exploring to try and find our way out. I enjoyed all four of the suggested outcomes (thanks to Renxin, Herr D, Gero, and borntobealoser!), but I'm going to go with Gero's as our official response. Here's what happens as a result of both choices:
Stay Here: You decide That this room should be safe enough, as long as Jimmy keeps his big trap shut.
“Hey, kid” you whisper to him, “stay real quiet and we’ll be fine, okay?” Jimmy looks at you for a moment, then immediately starts bawling his eyes out. You faintly hear a chittering sound outside, moving closer and closer to you and the crying boy. Thinking quickly, you grab a turned over chair from the corner and wedge it under the door handle. There, that’ll keep the creepy-crawlie out!This is the image that sprang to mind as soon as I saw "fire axe" and "boss' kid".
You turn back to Jimmy, smile and say “See, we’re fine, there’s no way that thing’s getting in here!” Just as Jimmy starts to smile back, you hear an ear-splitting shattering sound, as the large glass window that makes up the top third of the door explodes inward. You’re showered with glass, and knocked to the ground. As the scuttling mostrosity squeezes it’s way through the hole you realize: Your Office Adventure Ends Here…
Go Exploring: “Now what?” you repeat back at Jimmy, “Now you stay here and be reeeaaal quiet while I go look for help.” You quickly unlock the door, open it, slip out, and close it behind you before the shocked expression even leaves his face. You quickly but quietly make your way down the hall. If you remember right, there’s a stairway leading to an emergency exit around the corner.
Just after you round the bend, you hear Jimmy start to cry loudly. Man that kid has a set of lungs! Over the bawling, you can just make out the sound of something with a lot of feet heading towards your former hiding place. As you try to get the image of a giant cockroach eating a small child out of you mind, there’s a huge crash, and Jimmy’s cries turn to screams. You peek back around the corner, and see the monsterous insectoid has apparently gotten itself stuck trying to climb through the window in the door. You also see that there’s a fire axe attached to the wall opposite the door. You realize you have two choices. Do You:
A. Go back and use the axe to try to kill the monster before it eats little Jimmy, or
B. Decide the little brat has caused you enough trouble for today, and continue to the exit while the monster is distracted?
Your challenge is to write up the results of both of these choices, with one leading to death and the other to a continuation of the adventure by giving us two more possible actions.
I realize this doesn't draw the participation levels of, say, a character creation contest, but doggone it I think it's really fun!
A: Go back and use the axe to try to kill the monster before it eats little Jimmy:
The kid probably deserves what’s coming to him, and you haven’t really got the time to go saving people, you’ve got your own hide to save, after all. But something about “being a good human being” means you have to help the kid, and if you aim for anything in life, it’s being a good human being. Well, a not-bad one, at least. The creepy crawly is distracted by Jimmy, so you’re easily able to get close and grab the fire axe. You raise the weapon high above your head, and with all your might, send it flying down towards the giant bug’s back. With a dull thud, it bounces off of the roach’s tough exoskeleton, and clatters to the floor. Suddenly the bug isn’t trying to squeeze through the window, but has pulled itself out, and has turned it’s attention on to you. You’re uncertain, but you think you see the equivalent of a smile spread across it’s face. And with that, you realise you’re screwed. Before you can turn to run, your head is firmly inside it’s mouth. Your adventure, and your life, end here.
B: Decide the little brat has caused you enough trouble for today, and continue to the exit while the monster is distracted:
Finally, the annoying brat isn’t your problem any more. One less thing to worry about is always a good thing. Still, that fire axe might come in handy. While the critter is busy dining on screaming child, you sneak past and grab the axe. You head over to the locked stairwell on the other side of the basement, break the lock, and head up the stairs. You know, you feel surprisingly good. You thought that you’d feel at least a little bit guilty about leaving a kid to die a gruesome death, but nope, nothing. Meh, the days of needing to look after your fellow man are long gone now. In the main foyer, it looks as if the military have arrived to start evacuating the survivors. This probably means that this is a far bigger problem than a simple roach infestation. Hanging with the military sounds pretty cool, but then, you’ve seen all those apocalypse shows, the military is defeated and falls to pieces early on, and small groups of survivors fare a little better in comparison. Maybe you’re better off on your own?
Do you:
A: Follow the military to the safe zone
OR
B: Go lone wolf and head off in your car
(This really is fun, and I totally appreciate the guys who are doing the heavy lifting for our group enjoyment. I have nothing to add to the story. I just wanted to say that.)
Thanks for saying it, X-stacy, I appreciate it very much! And I too am very grateful to the handful of talented writers contributing to this.
Go back and try to use the axe to kill the monster before it eats little Jimmy
You stifle a groan. Do you have to do everything here? Judging by the screams Jimmy isn’t doing any fighting on his part at all. Reflecting on how kids today just aren’t nearly as self-sufficient and violent as they ought to be, you creep over to the fire axe and slip it from its holder.
Your scouts experience unaccountably didn’t include “How to Take Down a Freakishly Large Mutant Roach from Hell”, so you aim for what looks like a weak point, put as much strength into the swing as you can and hope for the best.
You have, by sheer luck, hit the weaker connective tissue that attaches the bug’s head and mid-section to the larger lower body. You have also hit an artery. The big bug lets out an ear-splitting wail that is almost Jimmy-like in its power to annoy as blood and other buggy juices begin to gush around the axe blade. Some of it hits you in the chest and face, just short of scalding heat.
Grooooooss! And as if that weren’t enough, you were wearing your favorite shirt today. It’s looking doubtful that this will ever come out completely. That Jimmy kid better be damn thankful.
But, the thing isn’t dead yet. As it thrashes about, the axe is wrested out from its back, and the wound opens still further. Blood is sprayed everywhere, making the floor worryingly slippery and disgustingly sticky all at once. As the thing finally dies and slumps to the floor a rancid stench fills the air. With the reek making your eyes water, you figure it’s only a matter of time before this mess attracts other bugs. Already you can hear skittering sounds above you.
Stepping over the carcass you open the door, and see little Jimmy just standing there shaking, too much in shock to even continue screaming. For a moment you ponder what to do.
Do you:
A: Remain here. You have a weapon now, and if you keep the door closed the bugs if they come will have to come one at a time, or,
B: Stick to the original plan and let Jimmy fend for himself. If he dies it’s no skin off your nose.
Decide the little brat has caused you enough trouble for today, and continue to the exit while the monster is distracted.
Jimmy devoured? No downside. You shrug and jog off. He’s not your kid after all. If your boss really wanted his son to survive this then he shouldn’t have gotten himself eaten, now should he? The logic may not win you the Person of the Year award, but you’ll be alive and in a Jimmy-free world, so again, no downside.
You reach the fire escape, and yank it open. From the top of the flight, an even bigger bug is crawling down towards you. It springs with terminally surprising speed, before you can even manage to finish the thought, “Oh shi–”
First off, Jeff, thanks for picking my entry! Second, good luck to everyone entering this week! Out of the two so far I kind of like Renxin’s, since the live and die choices are the ones I wanted from a continuence of mine, and because everything is better with buggy juices…
b. Every one for himself! You realize this is the one that followed you, and so you run to the other door. Doh! That one’s locked. You KNEW that . . . you run back to the door you came in, snatching the fire axe off the wall. WHAH-WHAH-WHAH- Oh great, the fire alarm was attached to it. You dash out the door and up the stairs, unable to tell what upsets you more–the bugmen, the stupid kid dying, that bogus fire alarm . . . You make it to the first floor, and, finding it surprisingly clean and empty, dash out onto the street, and fall into shadow. You look up to realize that a giant bug foot is coming down on you and have just enough time to reflect on the irony of such a reversal of fortune before it squashes you like a bu-well, a human. THE END.
a. Hey! I need my bait a little LONGER! You grab the fire axe off the wall and go to swing at it. WHAH-WHAH-WHAH– How annoying! Unfortunately lumberjack experience never made it onto your resume. You seem to have broken the sprinkler head off with your first wild swing. Orangy-brown water gushes out on you, the axe, the floor, and just as you’ve remembered that this was one of your favorite shirts, the water spraying on the bugman apparently begins to hurt it. The thing starts SCREAMING. It sounds actually more pathetic than Jimmy. Who is still screaming, though it takes a moment to be sure. Lower pitched than a human, almost more of a deafening moan. It’s scales seem to be falling off and melting. The legs and body are writhing and a little steam or something is coming off them. Some things do react to water, right? You snort. Like you remember chemistry class. As the writhing slows, you take a couple of practice swings and chop off the legs, one at a time. You use the axe to push them out of the way and then realize too late that the bugman is unhurt past the window in the door. It crawls in after Jimmy. Oops. Oh, yeah. Some bugs can live after stuff like that. Do you:
A. Go ahead and keep saving Jimmy? You’re half done, right? You do need him as bait for as long as you can stand him.
B. Leave. All this noise is bound to bring unwanted attention. There are probably a lot more bugmen in the gang. Hive. Swarm. Oh, WHATEVER. Get while the getting’s good before you’re gotten. Or something like that.
Did “You’re going to die” die? Was it something I typed?
Sorry, no, I just got a little behind last week with some travel I was doing.