An Abrupt Ending to a Stupid Story the Author Couldn't Finish o7

This was not my day.

I dodged another zombie trying to swipe my head off, the whole crowd of them howling loud enough to bring the place down. It felt like the whole missing ninety-nine were right on my tail like a pack of rabid fans at a rock show. Or a crowd lining up at Flipped Up in the summer.

I hate Mondays. Especially long weekend Mondays, and this was starting to feel like a long weekend. A bloody long weekend.

What sort of training do they give you in your world?

Great, now the audience was getting snarky. I spotted the shadow of a building through the rain. We were on some kind of street, so this must’ve been a town. At some stage. Who knew if it was even populated now. “If you wanted trained you should’ve run over my brother.”

Aren’t you a great warrior? You have high rankings in tournaments.

What? “You mean in ID:W and Codfish?”

Oh, those are interesting names. Yes?

I splashed through a puddle, trying not to slip in the mud. Had nobody here ever heard of paving? This place was practically a swamp. “They’re not real. They’re games.”

You should still have some skill, though. You’re uncoordinated, panicky, and have twitchy but unhoned reflexes.

“They’re not physical,” I snapped, nearly breaking down the door as I blasted into the rickety house. “I use a keyboard and a mouse, sometimes a controller. I don’t shoot the gun myself.”

The silent confusion was nearly thick enough to cut with my useless knife. ...You use a rodent to make the moving pictures fight with other pictures?

This was like my grandpa learning that smartphones existed. Geez, had he never heard of technology? Were they still stuck in the dark ages in whatever nightmare wonderland I’d gotten shoved into?

I took a glance out the flimsy, half-falling apart slats covering a glassless window. It looked like there had been glass in it at one point from the jagged shards in the corners, though. Fantastic, they weren’t cavemen. But they had probably abandoned this place. I could see the shadows of zombies shuffling around aimlessly through the rain, half-following where I’d gone, but now that they couldn’t see me it looked like they’d lost interest. Good.

Puffing out a sigh, I stepped back. Now I just had to figure out a way to do a little zombie busting. No, ghoul-busting. Heh. And do it without getting mobbed again.

Hmm. I glanced down at my hand, trying to see if I could summon some kind of heat on demand. “How big can I make these fireballs?”

Hmph, I can do more than just fireballs, you know. Like all vampyrs, I have an affinity to dark and destructive forces—

“Great, then I can make an explosion, right?”

An... explosion. You do know you can do more precise things, don’t you? Perhaps more eloquent things like a Dark Slice or a Lava Crevasse....

“If I want baking I’ll head to the dairy. Right now I just need to take these peustakins—” I took a deep breath. Why? Just... why? Really? Who spoke this language? Garden gnomes? If I didn’t want to sound like an idiot I’d have to start talking the Queen’s bloody English like a damn snobby pomm, from the looks of it. “...I need to take these zombos out.”

The voice in my head sputtered. They’re not— those are moves! Techniques! Not food.

So I’d finally found out to offend him. I smiled. Fantastic. That was payback for the uppity commentary, p— whacka.

Moving back further into the house—from the look of it, it used to be someone’s home, complete with some old bare furniture—I hunted for some stairs. If I could get up on the roof, I could experiment a bit with throwing firebombs and not blow myself and the house up. Accidentally shooting a rocket launcher into the corner right next to you was bad enough in a game, I doubted I’d be able to respawn here, though dying might be able to get me out of this nutcase dream.

Still wouldn’t bet on it.

The rickety steps I found in some kind of dusty, trashed remnants of a living room took me up to a second floor. Close enough. I slid the frame of a whole window up, shoving it as far as the creaky warped wood would go, and took a look. Should be able to make it from here, the roof was pretty low. With all the wood and these claws, it’d be easy.

Oh, so you’re not completely incompetent, my judgemental inner voice commented as I twisted up and got hold of the eaves, heaving myself onto the top. Which took less effort than I’d thought it would. Vampire strength. Nice. I must’ve been shredded under this jacket. Shame I wouldn’t be able to take that with me when I got back to reality. Working out was a real pain in the neck with Flipped Up flipping me up.

I crouched at the edge, taking a look over the budget-horror scene shuffling around below. None of them had noticed me. They were just hissing/moaning to themselves in standard zombie fashion.

Then they all blew up and I died. The end.