Choose
Your Own Nuthouse
Section 75
You land hard on the ground, just behind Chris.
He pauses, and years of friendship allow you
to tell that he is smirking at your misfortune. It’s
not as malicious as it sounds.
Or maybe it is.
As you noticed earlier, Chris’s behavior during the last few
minutes has
been uncharacteristically erratic.
“So,” he says, “finally decide to show yourself to
me?” He turns around as you are getting
to your feet.
“Yeah,” you say.
“I finally decided to show myself to you.” Keeping
a straight face, you drop your pants and show yourself to
Chris. Smartass.
“Smartass,” Chris says.
“You wanna put that away so we can talk? There’s
something you should know.”
You pull your pants up and listen to Chris’s tale of
treachery and espionage. It would seem
that Zorlath the Betrayer, of all people, has been plotting your demise
for
some time now. Chris, Dave, and Dave’s
sweet-piece-of-ass girlfriend have been secretly working to foil his
plot. You are shocked that Zorlath the
Betrayer
could be such a two-faced, treacherous villain.
“Why would Zorlath the Betrayer want to betray me?
I thought he and I were homies.”
“Well, maybe it’s because you use words like ‘homies’,”
Chris says, rolling his eyes as you walk down the path. “Seriously,
though. Now that you know, you should kill
him before he kills you.”
“Yeah. That’s
probably the best option,” you admit.
“I’ve never killed anybody before.”
“Here, use this machete.” Chris
pulls a very serious machete from under his baggy
shirt. “I’ll be waiting for you and the
others down at the beach, so we can all celebrate the death of that
treacherous
villain, Zorlath the Betrayer.”
“Roger,” you say.
“Chris,” says Chris.
“Go now. There is no time to
waste.”
You run up the path back to the cabins, wielding the
machete. Bursting through the door, you
scream, “And now, Zorlath the Betrayer, there shall be a reckoning!!” Zorlath the Betrayer barely has time to turn
from the spunky little blonde he is chatting up, and ask the question
that has
just popped into his mind, “Already that drunk, my fri--” before you
cleave his
head in twain.
“Jesus Christ on a crutch!” Screams
Dave. “What the
hell is wrong with you?” Everybody in
the room has cleared a large circle around you, except for the girl
Zorlath the
Betrayer was hitting on. Splattered in
blood, she is currently taking a little nap on the floor, next to
Zorlath the
Betrayer’s corpse.
“It’s alright! I
know about Zorlath the Betrayer. I know
about his dastardly plot against me!”
“Dude, what?”
“Chris told me all about it!”
“You’ve seen Chris?
Where is he?” Dave asks, with
urgency.
“He said he would meet us at the beach to party after I
dispatched this vile, two-faced, treacherous villain.”
There is a nagging idea in the back of your
mind now. Something isn’t quite
right. Dave is rubbing his
temples. Good ol’ level-headed Gary is
rooting around in a backpack. Dave’s
girlfriend must be a bit chilly.
“Because, you know…he was going to kill me.
Right? You knew about it. Chris said so.”
“Dude, Zorlath the Betrayer was planning a surprise party
for you. He wasn’t going to kill you.”
“So, um. But why
would Chris…”
In response, Gary tosses you a little orange
container. You catch it, and look at
the prescription printed on the side.
Below the incomprehensible drug name is a brief description.
“Antipsychotics?” You ask.
“Yeah. Chris is
insane. We figured it out a few minutes
before you got here. He was naked,
smeared in motor oil, and cutting the eyes out of photographs of all of
us. We tried to tell you when you came
in, but you took off after Chris so quickly we didn’t have time.”
“And now I’ve murdered Zorlath the Betrayer.”
“Yes. You have.”
There is an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the
steady drip-drip of Zorlath the Betrayer’s blood dribbling off
the end
of your machete.
“Well. Fuck,” you
say. It seems to sum up the situation
nicely.
“There’s only one thing to do,” says Dave.
“We obviously have to drink a lot of beer now,” you
say. “And then go take Chris out before
he can do any more damage. Now that
everyone knows he’s insane, he will stop at nothing to destroy us all.”
Dave is about to say something when Chris suddenly flies
through the window. He is naked
again. Naked and armed with an
uzi. He blows his girlfriend full of
holes, cackling insanely.
“You cannot stop me!”
He screams. “I am the faithful
servant of Lake Doomhole!” This seems
like a pretty crazy thing to say, so you don’t hesitate to throw the
machete at
Chris’s face. It hits squarely,
piercing Chris’s head, and killing him instantly. You’ve
now murdered two people who, an hour ago, you considered
to be your friends.
Man, you reflect, things sure get confusing
when your radio starts talking to you.
Wait… “The radio! The radio knows what’s going on!” You run
out of the cabin to your car.
“Radio voice!
Speak! Tell me what the hell is
goin’ on!”
“Call me Grrrnaorth,” says the radio. “I’ve
already told you what’s
happening. One of your friends is going
to betray you.”
“Yeah? Well I
just killed two of them!”
“Not really. Look
behind you.”
You do so, and see all of your friends (the ones you
haven’t murdered), running out of the cabin, screaming.
You wonder why for a few seconds before the
answer presents itself in the form of Zorlath the Betrayer and Chris. Unfortunately, it seems that their corpses
have become re-animated and are bent on destruction.
One of the stragglers in the group of your fleeing friends falls
to Zorlath the Betrayer, who begins to feast sloppily on her flesh.
“This is a bit bigger than some stupid squabble between
humans. The only real question is
whether you have the testicles to do anything about it.”
“Oh, you just wait.
I’ll show you testicles!”
“Please don’t.
And also, a word of warning: the zombies are only the beginning.”
And Grrrnaorth is right.
As you run, bellowing with rage and bloodlust toward your undead
friends, your living friends are being attacked by monkeys! But these are no ordinary monkeys. They are Brain Monkeys! These
evil creatures perch on your friends’
shoulders and telepathically control their minds!
A huge battle ensues.
Those of your friends who have managed to avoid the brain
monkeys join
you in fighting off an army of mind-controlled monkey slaves and a
seemingly
endless stream of zombie-tourists who pour in from the forest. All the while, Grrrnaorth the radio voice
can be heard cackling with fiendish glee, sure that he and his unseen
masters
have won the day.
But they have underestimated you and your comrades.
As dawn breaks over the corpse-strewn beach
of beautiful Lake Doomhole™, your victory is apparent.
You have overcome the forces of Darkness!
You, Dave, Dave’s girl, and Gary all sit down on a patch
of sand that isn’t smeared with blood and diced Brain Monkey, and
breathe
heavily for a while, utterly exhausted.
“Well,” you say.
“It would seem we have triumphed over the forces of darkness.”
“Yes. It was
invigorating,” says Gary.
“It kind of puts things in perspective,” says Dave.
“Yeah. I think we
have all become closer friends because of our heroic battle against the
unseen
forces of evil and terror. And since
we’re all closer now, I think I should be totally honest,” says Dave’s
girlfriend. You begin to get a sinking
feeling in your stomach, and try to subtly wave her off, but she is
oblivious,
and plunges on. “Dave, I hope you can
forgive me, but I think it’s important that you know that I have been
cheating
on you with--”
“HA HA HA!” You
say loudly. “What a funny joke!”
Your desperation is transparent, however. Dave
sees immediately what is going on. You see
that he isn’t fooled. “Shit,” you declare.
“You prick!”
shrieks Dave, and he lunges at you, hands outstretched to your
throat.
“No! Please! It
was a mist--ack! Ack!”
You try to beat Dave away, but he is very firmly attached
to your throat, squeezing, squeezing.
“Dave! Dave,
you’re killing him! Stop!”
Gary shouts, trying to pull Dave off of
you. Good ol’ Gary. “Just
black his eye or something! Hasn’t there
been enough death today?”
“Oh, can’t we all just get along?” wails
Dave’s girlfriend, because she’s the
type of person who says things like that.
But Dave isn’t hearing any of it, so you use the last of your
strength
to lurch to your feet. You aren’t sure
what you mean to accomplish, and don’t have time to figure it out
because your
balance is severely impaired, and you fall forward, pushing Dave before
you.
Your fall is broken by Dave, whose fall is broken by a
big pointy rock. Dave dies instantly as
the big pointy rock caves in the back of his head.
“Aw, dammit!” you moan, rubbing your aching throat.
You notice that some of Dave’s head goo has
gotten on your hands. Quietly, sadly,
you begin to walk toward the pier that juts out into Lake Doomhole to
wash off
your hands.
“Well, that’s just fucking great,” says Gary.
“What a senseless death!”
Dave’s girlfriend is mute with shock. She
stares at you for a few seconds as you
kneel on the dock to rinse your buddy off your hands.
Then, snapping, she runs at you and lunges, much as her dead
boyfriend did. But Dave’s girlfriend
isn’t as good at it as Dave was, and she sails clean over you and lands
in the
lake. She struggles for a few seconds,
shouting at you, before you lean down and offer your hand to help her
out.
“I didn’t mean to kill him, I swear. It
was an accident!” She grabs your hand and
you are pulling her
up when, without any warning, the dock collapses directly on her head. Her hand slips out of yours and she is
crushed and drowned underneath the dock.
Gary is beginning to think that being far away from you
is a good idea.
“Look, no offense, but you’re a walking accident machine,
and I’m gonna go away and hide from you, okay?” He
says.
“That might be a good idea. Guess
I’ll see you later.”
“No! Don’t do
that!” Gary shouts, and without so much
as a goodbye, he turns and bolts into the woods to the road that winds
back
uphill toward civilization. As he’s
passing the tree line, just before he gets to the road, he casts a
glance over
his shoulder at you to make sure you aren’t going to try to do anything
that
might inadvertently cause his untimely demise.
He is just turning his gaze ahead of him again when he is hit by
a large
van driving erratically down the road at breakneck speeds.
You sit down on what remains of the dock for a while,
feeling sorry for yourself. When the
sun starts to set, you finally snap out of your self-pity long enough
to decide
to head home and try to get on with life.
You head for your car.
“So, you may have defeated the zombies and the threat of
the Brain Monkeys, but let your friends’ deaths be a lesson to you: Don’t screw with the eldritch and horrible
forces of Beautiful Lake Doomhole! We
will rise again!” Grrrnaorth shouts at
you as you approach your car.
“Screw you,” you call to him.
“Ah, don’t be a sore loser.”
“You’re a real jerk, you know that?” You
try to open the door, but it’s
locked. You reach in through the open
window to unlock it, but are startled when the car starts to roll
forward.
“Have a nice walk, sucker!” Shouts
Grrrnaorth as your car picks up speed.
“Hey! Stop! Wait!”
You chase after your car, but cannot catch it before it is
rolling too
fast. Grrrnaorth cackles mischievously
as your car rolls off one of the still-intact docks and into the lake. You sadly watch it sink irretrievably into
the deep waters of beautiful Lake Doomhole™.