As the night swallows all heat from the farmer’s cottage, he bolts the doors and windows and ignites the fireplace so that the stranger finds comfort in its warmth. They pour him a hot cup of Wassail, which he takes graciously even if the warmth and the taste would make no difference to him and how his body processes it. Wetting his lips upon this drink, he continuous to give the family what they eagerly await.

–

There I was, invading a game between a group of friends unfamiliar to me. They were missing one player, so they shouldn’t have complained as much. Yet, the moment they saw my name they shrieked like demented chickens. You see, even in my world my infamy got people quaking in their boots. As a squad-member, Banality, whines about me all the time:

“He’s nothing but a frickin’ rando, and he enjoys ruining games! I was playing Sniper Ops 5 the other day, and was doing so good at it too, but then he shows up out of nowhere, joins the Communists, creates an ambush and headshots me! He ruined my perfect streak!”

His saltiness kept him from admitting that, no matter how good he was, I was still the last face he saw.

Then this other dude called Shorty yelled, “Kick this asshole! I’d rather wait 10 minutes than deal with him for 1!”

So I told him, “You sound like I teabagged your wife, though to be fair, I sure would.”

I could hear him fuming. I bet he has yet to recover from this slick burn.

The other squadies protested and it was quite clear I wasn’t wanted, but one brave soldier called Dalton, the one invited me to this game, made a pretty good case for me:

“For one, this rando far outclasses our entire team combined in terms of kill-count. Secondly, I really gotta get back to my school-project, and I’ve only got a few hours left to finish it.”

“What the hell are you doing procrastinating then?” The squad captain, BronzeFinger69, barked politely. “We can play later.”

“Dude, we’ve been on a losing streak!” Dalton pleaded like a desperate puppy. “I wanna go out with a bang, and there’s no better help we can get. Please, make my day.”

“Yeah, make his day,” I said. “And mine too.”

They reluctantly gave in, and we went straight to the load-out to pick our weapons.

We were five soldiers in a special-ops unit, facing five terrorists in a battle to the death. In our goal to keep the enemy from detonating a bomb, we kept an eye out for an imposter in both groups. We did not know the terrorist masquerading as our team-mate, and they did not know which one of them was, in fact, one of our own.

Our team split in two groups; Dalton with Shorty, and Banality with BronzeFinger69. Meaning, I was on my own. That’s how much they trusted me. It was also too late to warn them it was a terrible idea, so I took the high ground and began scouting.

Fortune, however, took kindly to Banality’s team as they found a sole terrorist bomber and killed him swiftly. The same couldn’t be said for Dalton’s team; they were ambushed, facing a barrage of fire and death, forcing them to hide behind a vehicle with nowhere to run. Shorty bravely fired back, asking Dalton to cover him. He was able to pick off one terrorist, but an unknown bullet found its way to his head.

“This is bad,” Dalton cried in the voice-chat. “Shorty is down! I need backup!”

“There’s only three terrorists firing at you,” I panned my binoculars to high places until a figure validated my suspicion. “There’s the forth. A stupid sniper on the bridge. He thinks nobody can see him.”

I waited for a moment, but I got no response.

“Yo, sixty-nine, get on it.”

“Sorry, bud, they must have muted you,” Dalton revealed, apologetically.

“Talk about team-play,” I mumbled, deeply offended.

“Can you have my back?”

“Roger that.”

I readied my rifle, zoomed in on the sniper, took a deep breath, and fired. The bullet made a nest inside his forehead and pushed him backwards onto the bridge pavement. Dalton took this opportunity to shoot three times to stagger the terrorists and escape to safety.

Yet, the loudest sound at that moment came from neither of our guns.

“What the hell are you doing, you dimwit?!” BronzeFinger69 fired insults into my ears like a machine-gun. “You block-headed noob! That was our guy you just shot! He was picking off the enemy for us! He exposed himself to us for a reason, you clown!”

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“You sure sound like a guy with friends,” I was quite frustrated at his nerve. After all, if he didn’t mute me, none of this would have happened.

“Rando is the imposter,” Banality vented like a pressure cooker at its limits. “He knows what he is doing. He picked off Shorty, and then Scepter, just to mess with us.”

I was very hurt by this accusation. Barely a minute into the game and my team was already mistreating me. There’s only so much disrespect a man can tolerate. So, for the sake of this game as well as my dignity, I decided to put my foot down and tell him in no uncertain terms:

“You’re mum gay.”

And then he had the audacity to say, “I’m gonna kill him.”

I heard his declaration of war and I watched him run towards my location. He wasn’t alone. Not only did BronzeFinger69 follow him, but three remaining terrorists knew exactly where I was by the sound of my rifle.

You could say I united two warring teams by becoming their common enemy. The question was which of them had a bullet with my name on it.

Both teams cornered my location, leaving me nowhere to run. Among the three terrorists, one stayed behind for cover-fire while the other two tossed a flash-grenade to stagger me and ran into the passage-way.

In an instant, both turned into a pile of meat and blood to the sound of a small explosion. they should have been more careful with that trip-mine I planted.

Banality, who climbed in through the window, heard two gunshots piercing the silence in the hallway. He rushed in from cover to cover and he hid behind a couch. He tried his best to trace the only sound in the dark, empty room, the sound of footsteps that approached him. The tromp of heavy boots then turned to the left.

And stopped near the window, close enough to touch him.

Banality took the opportunity and shot the silhouette three times, missing the head. The silhouette, in turn ran for cover and fired, missing all his shots at point-blank range. Banality, without hesitation, switched to a knife, parkoured over the couch and slit his throat, then stabbed him multiple times for good measure, all the while screaming:

“I got you, you bastard! You rando piece of–”

He stopped mid-sentence as he saw the name of the figure he killed. Now, there was only the imposter left.

“Thanks!” Standing right behind him, I did my best to sound as grateful as I could.

Once a single bullet tore through his skull, I ran out the door only to be greeted by gunfire. BronzeFinger69 was right on my heels.

“Dude, I’m not the imposter!” I called back to him, running past pillars to protect myself.

“Yeah, the corpses of our team-mates say otherwise!” BronzeFinger69’s voice was barely audible due to the sound of his rifle.

“You guys muted me!”

“So you kill Banality?!”

“That idiot had it coming! You could have–”

“Don’t reason with me, fool. This entire game has gone to hell within minutes after you’ve joined. There’s only one way this ends, and it’s by puncturing your smug face with so many bullets that you–”

He was interrupted by a single system announcement that resonated across the map: The bomb has been planted. Following these ominous words was a countdown to detonation.

“See?”

“Oh…”

There was only one imposter left, and between the three of us who remained only the imposter had the ability to plant the bomb. This realization caused his delusions to come crashing down.

I felt bad for him. He sounded crestfallen, like a whimpering puppy.

“Sorry, man.”

“It’s alright. I forgive you.”

I smiled. Then I unloaded one bullet to his head anyway. The whimpering puppy morphed into a raging demon cursing me through my headset, but I was too busy laughing to care.

When I reached the bomb-site, the time-bomb’s ticking grew louder with each step. Sunlight pouring from a crack in the ceiling illuminated my target like a spotlight: the imposter, the bomber, the one who took advantage of my simple misunderstanding to eliminate the lone sniper who posed a threat to him, thereby making me his decoy. Dalton was, after all, who invited me to this game, so it was oddly poetic that we face each other one last time.

“That was some smooth play,” I complimented him.

“Thanks. Quite a ruckuss you caused out there.”

“But it was fun, wasn’t it?”

“True.”

The next five seconds stretched for an eternity as the countdown threatened to annihilate us both. The two of us stared at each other, waiting for the other to make a move like it was high noon in a cowboy movie. The pigeons that, up until a few moments ago, were busy pecking around had all at once sensed the tension in the air and flew for their lives.

Then, in the last fluttering of the birds, we moved and opened fire.

My rifle couldn’t keep up with his machine-gun, so two shots in I hid behind a shipping container. If I came out the other end, he was quick to fire, but he wouldn’t move from his location.

The clock was ticking. So I threw my gas-grenade to obstruct his vision. Unable to find me through the thick smoke, he panics and sprayed his machine-gun everywhere and at everything that moves, hoping a single stray bullet would get me. In his ferver, he left one blind-spot open.

I slid past him with my back against the floor, aimed my rifle at his jaw and went pew-pew-pew! He fell to the floor like a used-up tea-bag in the bin, followed by the game’s announcement that the imposter has been killed.

Being the only survivor left, I sometimes ask fate: Why me? Just kidding. There’s no better explanation than the fact that I was obviously the protagonist of this game. So I swaggered towards the time-bomb with only 20 seconds left. As I readied my kit, my dead team-mates short of praising me even a little instead bickered inside my head.

“Can’t believe we made a fool of ourselves.”

“We got the wrong guy.”

“Got you guys good, didn’t I?”

“No, we got the RIGHT guy! He’s so obnoxious he might as well be the imposter.”

“Yeah, who needs imposters when you’ve got team-mates like him?”

“He didn’t even contest the suspicion!”

“Well, actually, I–” I stopped talking as their quibbling left no room to hear me out, and the ones who did hear me proceeded to curse me at the top of their lungs.

“You dimwit! The clock’s ticking! Are you going to diffuse the bomb or not?”

Considering the lack of gratitude, and their woeful inability to have fun –

“Yeah, I’m on it.”

– I let my heart lead my fingers.

I picked up Dalton’s machine-gun and, to the horror of every voice in my head, emptied slugs at the time-bomb. I laughed heartily while the explosive shockwave and shrapnels tore through my flesh, leaving nothing but blood and ash.

“Terrorists Win.”

If only I could have seen their faces, it would have made this even more precious.