Choose Your Own Misadventure: You Are Insane but Having a Blast — Part 2

Keeping it together is so much work. Why not smile? — Image is my own

Part Two of an ongoing interactive story. Your choices matter. Promise.

You are standing in line at a convenience store with gas bulging in your midsection. Under normal circumstances, you would unleash what bubbles inside, delighting in the reactions of those around you. However, on this occasion, the man from your building is mere meters behind you in the queue. This same man has been silently observing you for months and plotting your destruction. You decide to keep your flatulence to yourself, despite the abdominal discomfort.

And then your fragile, deteriorating mind loses all sense of self-preservation and composure. Your mouth hangs open as you witness through glass one of your seventeen trigger objects pass by the store’s exit door — a balloon. You spring from your place in line and burst out the door onto the sidewalk.

“You gotta pop that thing!” you shout at a child carrying the balloon. It looks back at you with a scrunched brow. The child’s mother presents you with a startled face that betrays an instant of fear, which then hardens into disgusted anger.

“You gotta POP that thing!” you blurt again. Do they not understand how imperative it is for that balloon to be popped? Do they not share your obsessive/compulsive need for all balloons to explode? Do they not ache to hear a report snap in the air, to release the tension that feels like a thousand ants marching up and down your spine?

“Come on, sweetie. Let’s go,” the child’s mother urges with force. She clamps down on a small hand and leads the child away as if pulling a wagon filled with bricks.

“Hey lady! I’m telling you, you gotta …” you begin.

“Hey! HEY!” thrusts forth a voice drenched in molten fire. You pivot to see the man from your building exiting the store to confront you. He is baring his teeth.

“Uhhh …” you reply.

“Shoplifter!” the man from your building accuses with a pointed finger for emphasis.

You peer down at your hand, and sure enough, you are still holding the item you intended to purchase in the store. It is a bright neon green key-chain, the very thing you need to complete your collection of five dozen or so identical bright neon green key-chains.

“Hey! Police! Police! Shoplifter! Right here!” the man from your building calls out. You scan the opposite sidewalk and observe a police officer in the distance begin to hustle toward you.

The fart you had been holding inside you dislodges.

It is time to choose! Post a comment with your preferred course of action. After a week (or whenever I get around to it), the votes will be tabulated and the most popular choice will act as a springboard for the next part of the story. Your choices are:

1. Run down the alley to take the long way back to your apartment building.
2. Run across the street to make your way to the park where your friend Bingo Kim may be able to help.