The Day We All Died Because I Couldn't
General Summary
It’s a great idea, I said. Trust me, I said.
I don’t know what shit I must have been blissed out on to believe that packing our van full of CJ’s dynamite was a good idea. I don’t know how many shots of tequila I must have had to come to the conclusion that we should drive it straight into C-Breeze, as if to ram it right up the ass of Irene and all of her possessed little carnies.
What I do know, now that I’m bleeding out on the beaches of the bay with a bullet in my gut and a nice cocktail of bloody sand in my face, with all of my buddies and pals lying dead or dying next to me, is that it was a bad idea from the start. I was fine with having bad ideas- I’ve had way too many bad ideas in the past, anyhow: smoking a whole pack of cigarettes at once so CJ wouldn’t catch me, trying to open a beer bottle with my ass cheeks, sitting on a landmine for a week straight, the entire premise of Throwing Knife Thursday in general and wanting to play chicken with sharp projectile objects.
I didn’t regret any of those things though. They were fun- always new, always exciting, always different, always more strange and bizarre than the last. That’s exactly how JT rolls, and how I’ve always operated in life. Sure, people came and went, but they did so willingly. Though, in all fairness, I imagine that most of the lads and ladies who decided to roll along with me either did it because they had a blatant disregard for their own mortality or they couldn’t keep it in their pants when it came to the blue-eyed brunette of a babe (hey- that’s me!).
Oh, right- dying. I’m not exactly sure how to die, if I’m being completely honest. I never thought I would. But I suppose it had to happen at some point, considering how obsessed I was with proving that I was the Baddest Bitch in All of the Apocalypse That Ever Lived. That’s why I was so excited when I came up with that dumb idea- to blow up C-Breeze, to blow up the Lock, and to blow up Irene like they all never even existed in the first place and bring an end to that whole goddamn war. It has nothing to do with the fact that we roll around Irene’s Decoy; this was about my career- about being the best at being batshit crazy.
Everybody tried to talk me out of it at first. DD refused to drive us up to C-Breeze at first, but immediately pulled a U-turn when I agreed to disclose the location of my drug stash in her van (well, my auxillary one at least). RJ only got on board after I gave him a pair of dirty lingerie (poor sucker thought it was mine), and KC only wanted to go because RJ was going. GG and VV only agreed to go if I had a threesome with them (eh, I’ve had better). But CJ refused.
“Why the fuck not?!” I begged the guy, stoic and charming as ever with tough, dark skin and thick curly hair. I remember how dark his eyes looked, staring at me with cool intuition and undeniable disappointment. He folded his arms, interposing between us and the dynamite we were hoping to borrow from his hideout. I could smell the frustration on him even more than the loose gunpowder.
“You dumbass,” he hissed towards me. “You’re all going to get yourselves fucking killed. You can’t just drive into Irene’s turf and set off a bomb! How are you even thinking about getting away?”
I could only shrug, trying to discern the flavor of whatever mystery-flavor lollipop I was sucking down on (anchovies?). I kept pestering him day after day, but CJ would never agree to fork over his TNT. I was pissed as hell- he was never this much of a prude with wanting to blow things up! I couldn’t blueball him like I did with the others- he and I weren’t like that. If I ever flashed my tits at the guy, he’d just look and give a sad little sigh like he’s just seen a puppy piddle itself on his living room carpet.
Oh, uhh, dying. Right- sorry, it’s not really my specialty. DD ended up being pretty good at it though- at least, after she got possessed by a Renie, that is. Maybe if I wasn’t yelling at CJ for being such a prick all of the time, he would have been able to spot the Renie behind the car before it possessed DD. At least then I wouldn’t have had to put a bullet in her brain. But by that time, she’d already diverted us onto the bridge, sent us careening straight towards Fort Seaway. I was hoping that offing her there was going to slow the car down, not send it swerving off the bridge and into the bay.
By all rights, I feel like we all should have died at that point, or even earlier before when we were plowing through carnies and popsicle stands. But we all bailed as soon as the van hit the water, somehow managed to keep the radioactive sludge floating on the water off of us, somehow managed to crawl to shore and catch our breath. I suppose that’s the cruel bit, Gypsy- giving us a moment to rest.
I screamed to CJ as soon as I felt sand between my fingers. “FUCK- what do we do?!”
I’m sure he would have given me a brilliant answer if the line of Seaway troopers didn’t emerge over the sandy cliffs at that exact moment. Instead of a witty response like usual, I was greeted happily by the cracks of a dozen assault rifles turning RJ, KC, GG, and VV into swiss cheese. Do I feel a little bad for hiding behind RJ and letting him take thirty more rounds to the chest for me? Not really. But I took one right to the gut, so I suppose that I sustained my fair share of injuries.
RJ was more of a bloodbath than a man by this time, and crumpled to the sand. KC tried to scream and run, but was gunned down a few paces away from the rest of us. I tried to flop on top of RJ to give the appearance that I was also shot while GG and VV both tried to swim away, only to get peppered with bullets and turn the waves red. I held my breath and tried my hardest to think of what dead people sounded like while CJ laid out across the sand with a few extra holes in him, and did exactly that.
I remember lying there for a few moments with CJ, wondering if he was actually really dead or if I was. If I was dead at that point, then being dead tasted funny- like giving a bloody blowjob to a total stranger at gunpoint. But his eyelids fluttered and his chest heaved, and so did mine, so I guess we were both sort of alive. I remember crying. Not the sort of crying I would normally do alone in my room with a bottle of booze, but a new sort of crying- a type of crying that involves having to say goodbye when you really don’t want to go.
I tried to take his hand in the sand, tried to find it and hold it real tight, but my arms wouldn’t work the way I wanted them to from the shock as I reached for that mangled arm. All I remember saying to him were the dumb ideas that came to mind on how to get out of it- “claim we’re secret agents from the future” or “play dead long enough that they think we turned into vegetables from the shock.” I listed off every idea in rapid-fire succession I could think of to get us out of this scrape- just like I always did.
CJ was muttering something and I couldn’t quite hear him, so I asked him to speak up. He only got to say, “Shut up, JT,” before General Gypsy Harper shot him square in the back of the head.
I know it was her. She held the rifle- I saw the glare of the sun off those god damn aviator shades she tacked onto that smug and ugly goat face of hers. Later I would be told it was a .22 rifle round that ended CJ’s life- just the type that Gypsy Harper likes to shoot with. Gypsy Harper was the one standing at the edge of that cliff, looking down on the rest of us. Gypsy Harper stepped down onto the beach and kicked all of our bodies. Gypsy caught me red-fucking-handed trying to play dead while all of my other friends bled out on the beach. I tried to stab Gypsy. Gypsy stomped on my hand to stop the blade I pulled out of my ass. Gypsy broke two of my fingers. Gypsy killed my friends. Gypsy killed me.
Though, when you really think about it, I guess you could replace Gypsy with JT in any of that and the idea stays the same, more or less, give or take a few. At this point, I really don’t care whose fault it is anymore. All I know is that CJ deserved better than that. DD deserved better than that. RJ, KC, GG, and VV all deserved better than that. Gypsy might not have known the stragglers on her beach weren’t Renies- that they didn’t have to die or shoot on sight. But she did it anyways and, that, I refuse to forgive her for- not until she’s six feet in the ground.
It’s Gypsy’s fault for killing us- not mine. It can’t be. I won’t be remembered like this. I can’t die like this. That’s why Gypsy has to die for me. For CJ, for DD, for RJ, for KC, for GG, for VV, and for me.
Pros: I like the main character though we don't know much about her. My favorite part was when she thought she was dying and started crying and describing what it felt like before reaching out to grab CJ. She was a silly character, but you managed to get a good serious moment out of it so quickly and that is not easy to do. Especially when this is mere seconds from when she was describing what death tasted like in such a ridiculous and vulgar fashion. Speaking of that, there's a lot of great analogies and environmental descriptions here. Cons: We didn't really get to know any of the other characters that were supposed to be important. Didn't even get real names to be familiar with. Everyone being just two letters doesn't give me any sort of attachment to them. I was also pretty confused towards the end because I was waiting for the title to make sense but it never really did. It's an oxymoron as it is, but I figured it just meant they all lost because JT couldn't do something. Then I thought maybe JT literally could not die and was waiting for an explanation. But then it's just flat-out stated that "Gypsy killed me" even though the first-person narration continues. Then she says it could've been CJ's fault too. Then the final sting sounds like a revenge statement, I just couldn't figure out what was happening. I guess she died metaphorically or something but it didn't come across to me.