Since we’re taking this seriously, I changed my mind. Here is what I’ll do:
It’ll come suddenly, out of nowhere, just like the plan for invading my town would’ve had to have been just pulled out of thin air by daesh. People will be panicking, there will be chaos, and I’ll watch the current of the fleeing citizens from my window and think about joining them, but no: I haven’t played Call of Duty from my couch where I sat with sweaty controller in hand next to a tub of ice cream and the sound of my all-Rush mixtape dreaming grandiose thoughts for nigh on ten years for that.
Since we’re being true-to-life, I’m probably in a t-shirt and socks at any given time of the invasion, so the first thing I’d have to do would be to dash to the bedroom and put on an outfit: tight, yet unrestricting, and in different tones of black, probably. My hair is long as fuck so it would have to go, and so I’d gather it and twist it close to my scalp and then saw it off with a knife like Disney’s Mulan and it would somehow still look really cool, because when I imagine this scenario, I look cool the whole way through.
I hear gunfire and know daesh is approaching so I sneak out the back and dart from house to house, snaking in and out of yards and woods and sheds, against the grain of the running cowards like a badass. When I try to cut through one house, I find myself face-to-face with a lone daesh soldier and manage to wrestle with him before he can fire his rifle and I ultimately overpower him and take his gun, say something snarky about the shahadah before I shoot him--I’ll figure out the right words when I’m there, shut up--and continue on my way.
I fight my way to the center of town and it’s there that I see it: a bunch of captives, guarded by several daesh soldiers, and among the captives is the girl I have been crushing on at my university for like two years. I haven’t worked out the precise details but I take the soldiers out and in the process sustain a gunshot injury—but, you know, one of the cool ones that you can walk off. Like on the shoulder. And I pretend I don’t even feel that shit as I free the hostages and direct them back toward the pathways I took, promising to try my best to cover them, and also among the hostages is the guy I gave that embarrassing auto-response to at the coffee shop, and same with a handful of people who don’t like me or I’ve embarrassed myself around, and although they don’t say it they’re thinking, “Wow. I was wrong about her. What a huge, gigantic, unforgivable fool I have been.”
My crush is standing, astonished, hesitating to run, asks my name and if it’s really me, and I say something really smooth, I don’t know, give me a break, as I step forward and tilt her head up with my gun-free hand for a quick but not at all clumsy kiss. Camera pans away, towards approaching soldiers. With some convincing, she runs, but she looks back more than once, and then I make my last stand, holding my own for as long as I can before I’m hit--not just once, of course, like a ton of times--until I can’t shoot any longer. A daesh commander comes up to me and is impressed by how awesome I’ve been and considers letting me live, and that’s when I look up into his face and with the last of my strength say, “Ks umk,” and, enraged, he kills me. But not in a gross way. In a totally dignified way. Also, my body never rots.
The town is lost, but my crush manages to escape, and she lives a long life, although she never loves again—not really, anyway.
Little do I know, my death was recorded on video somehow and the video winds up on the internet along with my story. Browsing the stories of the small, inconsequential New England town that daesh conquered, _truth_ watches my totally heroic death and thinks, “Wow, I’m so glad that I asked for honesty, she was spot-on, and I've never seen someone pull off an IRL 360 no scope before.”
Fin.
Lua needs to retire now, because she's not matching this masterstroke.
Topic: CEMB Greatest Hits - posts you may have missed