It’s often these days that I think back to what mom said about horses all those months ago- “Free as the wind.” She could not be more right. As Thom and I leaped mere millimeters above electrocution and certain death, I tried my hardest to keep this in mind. Would wind be stopped by the odd gate or fatal shock? Of course not. Wind would circumvent the tallest of barriers, would fly to safety and freedom above any obstacle or obstruction. Therefore, we were completely safe.
“Brad!” Thom shouted above the wind and buzzing electricity, “We’re almost at the last gate! We’ll need to jump off before then!”
“What!? Why!?” I shouted in return.
“There are turrets programmed to shoot anyone unrecognized behind it! The horse should draw their fire while we run in after!”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before!?”
“Forgot! Sorry!” Closer and closer drew the gate. Even I, with my will of iron and figurative balls of steel, began to grow nervous. “Alright, prepare to jump! On the count of five! One! Two! Oh shit, jump, JUMP!!”
Thom vaulted off beautifully while I slid off the horse’s backside like a graceful Volvo falling off a cliff. The horse, surprised by the sudden disembarking, forgot to jump the final hurdle and instead plowed right through, a tank barging through the barricades of oppression. True freedom.
“Now’s our chance! After the horse!” shouted Thom. He sprinted through the gap while invisible turrets punched holes through Betty’s horsey flesh. I sauntered on after the two of them, weighed down by all the gear. Jeez that stuff was heavy.
“Hold on guys!” I panted, “I’m not good at running!” It was that heavy rifle, it was too bulky! Every step I took it would sway and tip me off balance. How was I supposed to run with this thing? Thinking quickly, I ditched the gun behind me. Now I could run unhindered.
By some miracle I managed to make it the whole twenty meters without sustaining too many injuries. The horse, however, was not so lucky. Apparently, the core tenet of the inquisitorial order was overkill because the turrets only shot high-calibre incendiary rounds. We stooped to gather what we could of Betty’s ashes into our pockets before continuing inside. She deserved to be properly commemorated, after all.
Ironically enough, after all the gates and turrets and electricity, the main door to the dungeon was unlocked. After running in, Thom turned to me and asked “You okay? Didn’t get tagged?”
“No, I’m good!” I replied between heaving breaths, “I was, *gasp* too fast to be hit.”
“Your vest is on fire!”
“Huh?” I looked down at my Kevlar vest only to find flames and a sizable black crater in the middle of my chest. “AAAUGH! OH MY GOD I’M HIT! HOLY MOLY THIS STINGS!”
“It’s okay, it’s only a little flame!”
“I CAN’T BREATHE! I’M GONNA DIE!” I fall to the floor, hands clutching my new crater.
“Oh yeah, guess you did get hit in the chest. Hold still, lemme get that.”
It took some effort, but Thom managed to wrestle the vest off of me. Probably because of his clumsy sausage fingers and not because of my panicked squirming. But this was all for the best anyways. Now I can move unhindered by that useless luggage. Now I could unleash my true potential.
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“WEEWOOWEEWOO,” screamed the alarm system. If eyes could hear, the flashing red sirens would be saying much the same thing.
“Aw heck, no time to dawdle! Hope you’re ready for MURDER.” Thom fingered the safety off his rifle. The two of us speed-walked past the atrium and into a narrow corridor, all badass like. “We’ll need to get to your old storage closet! Follow me!”
“By the order of The Four, stop right there!” Twenty some inquisitors pooled out of adjacent hallways to surround us on both ends. They bristled with a myriad of weaponry from bo staffs to nunchucks to machetes. We were trapped. “You have committed crimes against Fort Pants and her people! What say you in your defence?”
“I’ll take the ones in front, you take the guys behind,” whispered Thom.
I assumed my mantis stance and ripped the top off my yellow jumpsuit. “I’d rather die than go to prison!”
“Then you’ll pay in blood!” is what the lead inquisitor would’ve said had he not been interrupted mid-sentence by a vicious stream of bullets. Thom laughed maniacally as he sprayed the man’s bloody mess of a corpse.
“Inquisitors assemble! Engage battle formations!”
“I’LL SEE YOU IN HECK, INQUISI-DORKS!” Thom boomed as the metaphorical force of his raw bloodlust blew back the inquisitors’ wills and the non-metaphorical force of his bullets blew sizeable holes in their faces.
Meanwhile on my side, the inquisitors charged to attack me one at a time, as is tradition. But their weak techniques proved no match for my trollish strength and superior skills. “HII-YA!” I screamed, as I karate chopped a crowbar-wielding inquisitor in the neck, front-flipped over the bo staff flipping warrior, and landed in perfect splits to uppercut the nunchuck master in the nutsack. Moving like water, I wrestled the nunchucks out of his hands and held them out before me, probably looking really cool while doing so. “Enter the dragon…” I whispered, as I whipped the nunchucks around me in an aura of destruction. I still can’t remember what happened next as it all passed in a haze of blood and death. When I finally came to, I stood atop a pile of dismembered corpses, soaked in guts and gore.
Of course, that weasel Thom would later try to steal my glory, saying that he single-handedly murdered all twenty-something inquisitors while I lay curled up in the fetal position, silently weeping. Don’t believe a word of it.
Anyways, after they were defeated and I finished wiping the tears off my face, we proceeded down the labyrinthine corridors of the Dungeon, descending deeper and deeper into the bowels of the place. The air grew cooler and damper, the light began to dim. Where once were fluorescent lights, there were now torches. Where once were linoleum tiles, there were now rough-hewn stone slabs. It smelled like moss and damp. What few inquisitors we encountered on the way I dispatched with incredible ease, with absolutely no help from Thom whatsoever.
I have no idea how Thom found my storage closet in that mess of a dungeon, but we soon found ourselves standing in front of its scratched wooden doors. Those flimsy boards were no match for my superior ‘Meteor Kick’ technique, which was why I couldn’t expend my full force to kick them down. I’ll only unleash my power against a worthy foe, after all. So Thom kicked down the doors for me.
“Oh hey, Brad. What’s new?” The only full doggie cage in the room contained a hideously writhing mass of eldritch tentacles and twitching eyes. Wait, no. It actually contained a girl.
“Hey Katie! You know, I totally thought you were a hideous eldritch horror for a second.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. It kinda hurts when you call me hideous though…” Katie looked normal in every sense of the word, from her blackish brownish blondish hair, to her brownish greenish bluish eyes, to her human-colored skin. She looked like the background characters in your dreams.
“Anyways, we’re here to rescue you! To free you from the oppression of this tyrannical church!” I stood with my bare chest puffed out and hands on my hips, a badass combination of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Lee. “That’s right, no need to thank me!”
“Oh, okay. Can you let me out of this cage then? And maybe get me some water?”
Thom shot a glance at me “She’s the one? She ate the diarrhea?”
“Yeah! They were trying to starve a confession out of her, but I was kind enough to sacrifice my own meal to help her. Totally forgot that, honestly. I do so many acts of kindness it’s hard to remember them all, you know?”
Thom responded by shooting the locks off her cage. Katie kind of flopped out of the cage, landing in a sort of pool on the ground.
“Hey, this is really awkward, but I think my muscles atrophied from disuse and lack of nutrition,” said Katie. “Could one of you carry me maybe?”
“Brad, carry the girl. I’ll cover you.”
I slung my fiancé over my back, piggyback style, and noted how light she felt. Almost as if she were filled with air or paper. Like a stray breeze could blow her away.
Thom sighed. “Alright. Let’s re-break out of prison.”