Exploration Report, Day 68
General Summary
“Hands up...bitch.” The bandit was stunned. His face was the target of a tricked-out 9MM. He raised his hands, finger still on the trigger of his sawed-off. “Easy, scumbags, easy...” he said. Those words were coming from a dead man. Ogma knew it too; Kory tumbled out of his hands as raw instinct pulled out our own sawed-off. The bandit fired a wild shot, making moldy metal moan and hitting nothing. Ogma pulled his trigger, dragging the bandit's intestine out of his back and puncturing both lungs. I fired two shots; the first grazed the chin, but the second hit square between the eyes. The bullet rested in brain matter before the bandit even hit the floor. No two ways about it; I was a badass.
“Fuckin' MOVE!!!” the hag screamed, the shrill bark bouncing its way from Ogma's end of the hallway towards our open cell. No way was I gonna pull off this sideways floor-hugging peekaboo position for an entire shootout. My adrenaline-filled arms pulled me up and pushed me against the cross hatched metal wall. I had absolutely no friction, so my leg with the not-blown-off kneecap planted itself on the floor. Old man Spicket had somehow whizzed by me, joining Ogma on our quest to get to that damn closet. I peeked back into our cell; The cell guard that Kory knocked out and my bodyguard-assistant Ricky lay unconscious. Only part of me regretted sucker-punching Ricky to make him shut up. Then, the realization hit me; I had to cover everyone. I quelled my flash of anger and reasoned; someone's gotta do it. Ogma and Spicket are running their asses off to do their part, and I can't trust little girl Kory to do more than run. If it's gotta be me, it's gonna be me.
“HEY FUCKERS!!!” I yelled as the last three cannibals ran into view of the hallway. Ogma had his hand on the closet doorknob, ready to whip it open and give us a fighting chance. My scream only caught the attention of one cannibal. In retrospect, it was definitely the boss. She was towing a shotgun. The two lapdogs were carrying hooks and a machete. My last coherent thought was, “I guess I got the right one.” I pulled my 9MM trigger three times. The last bullet missed. Boss-lady fired one shot and put two pellets in my stomach. It hurt.
I fell back into the cell. I wasn't going to make it. I heard the closet door swing open. That was enough for me. The scream of a little girl and a deafening burst of gunfire faded into the background. My aching hand reached out to Ricky to wake him up. The pain was all blending together. Another few shakes went nowhere. I had to try harder. I managed to push Ricky's leg. Ricky's torn-up spine twisted, causing some internal reaction in him. I quit trying and immediately fainted.
***
My consciousness regained, I opened my eyes to dirt and a faint red haze. The wrong gravity immediately turned my stomach. Kory was wringing my arm from side to side, asking me to, “Please wake up mr. man.” At this point I came to realize that Ricky had slumped me over his shoulders, ass up and head down. “Put me down, Rick, I need to catch myself.” My good leg swiped his back and took the blow for my bandaged (but still blown-out) knee. As I sat, the damaged leg laid straight while my good knee bent and rested on the dirt.
“I'm still alive,” was a good first thought. I saw my surroundings; the burnt and battered buildings of Maplehood surrounded us. The bright bloodshot fog of the Maelstrom surrounded Ricky, Ogma, Spicket, Kory, and I. Didn't I just get shot? Yep, there are bandages covering up my gut. The Maelstrom fog made everything past a good 50 yards impossible to see. The only member of the group who could have healed me was Ogma, so I have him to thank. I gathered we had exited the hideout of the cannibals who had kidnapped us (they called themselves the, “Nail-Fingers”) and were standing in the middle of the road, presumably trying to figure out what to do next. My neck ached, so I swung it around like a crane and–
“Hey mister, can you drive?” Kory shattered my peace. Bewilderment was the only reaction I could muster while still recovering. “...Uh, yeah, I can.” I responded, grasping at the simplest answer. She reeled back with a quiet excitement. Reading my mind (or rather my lack of understanding), Ogma tilts his head back to the cannibal hideout. Next to the entrance was two garages, one completely empty and another holding a crudely malformed VW Bug. It was garish and unsightly, but it looked operational. It was an appealing thought; driving away from this awful situation in the vehicles they used to wrangle me in. There was only one problem.
That Bug only sits four people. We had four adults; Ogma, Ricky, Spicket, and I. We could maybe fit Kory somewhere, but that wasn't going to happen with all our equipment. We needed that equipment to survive, and Kory was some local kid that crawled out of her hole only to get trapped with us. The choice, to me, was logical; ditch the kid and hightail it outta there.
“Kory, go away for a second, us adults need to talk about something.” Before I could even signal to everyone else, Kory fired back with, “Why?”
I reasoned, “Because we need to talk about stuff that isn't right for kids.” She was still standing there, all of her attention focused on me. This strange sense of panic engrossed me. It was alarming and terrifying. On command I took off my hat and tossed it as far as I could.
“Why'd you do that?” Kory interrogated.
Out of nowhere, Ricky chimed in. “Yeah, why did you do that boss?” Of all the fucking people, it was Ricky.
“I have obsessive compulsive disorder,” I squeezed out of my mouth. “It makes me do certain things compulsively.” Ricky was enough of an idiot to be satisfied with that answer.
“Kory, could you please go get me my hat?” I asked with as much of a fake smile I could muster.
“Boss, I can go get it for you.”
“Ricky, it's fine, Kory can get it herself.”
“I want the big man to come along!”
“Yeah, what's the problem with both of us going boss?”
This initial plan of distracting Kory wasn't working. I let them both go, hoping to fill in the details later. I turned to Ogma and Spicket; “Alright guys, here's the deal; we can't all fit in that buggy with our equipment. One of us has to stay behind, so I say it's Kory. Yeah, she's a kid, but she's local and she just abandoned us in that cell way earlier. We need each-other more than she needs us. We need to distract–“
Ogma cuts me off. “Why can't she just sit on my lap?”
As Kory and Ricky are walking back from retrieving my hat, everything was silent. I didn't think about that.Character(s) interacted with
Report Date
26 Feb 2019
Primary Location
What’s working well: I though the imagery used throughout the scene was well done. I was able to envision each situation with enough detail to satisfy. Furthermore, the piece was well written and easy to read. There weren’t many times, if any at all, I had to reread a line to understand the situation. I like how the text was split up into different segments and thought the elapse of time from when the character faints was well done too. It can be hard for a short story to elapse time and it still flow well, but I thought you did a good job doing so. What could be working better: I wasn’t the biggest fan of how the dialogue near the end of the story was working. Since the characters are going back and forth talking, but there’s no indicator of who said what, I got lost of who was actually talking. Furthermore, I also thought the story could have ended in a better way. The beginning of the story is just full of action and tension, but then the rest of the story is the total opposite. There’s no real conflicts and the story ends with the character thinking to himself about how he didn’t think of something. An ending that has more tension or create a situation where more tension starts to rise might work better since the beginning sets up the story in that sort of way. Overall the story was fun to read and I enjoyed it!