Jasonscape: Torment

[jcompton]

Looking back, it wasn't the incessant remarks, the pestering, the grisly concept or even the slightly odd smell that made him so intolerable.

It was the clacking.

"C'mon, chief. If you can't muddle through this, there's no future for any of us."

But I just couldn't. And I had tried to explain why. I had never been able to power my way through the interminable low-level combat and the goofy dialogue options and the inexplicable self-mutilation on my own terms, and I certainly couldn't do it with a disembodied skull clacking about it in my ear.

Besides, it wasn't fair that I got stuck with him. Why him, of all the characters I had modded? Never mind one of the NPCs I might genuinely have enjoyed spending time with... even Salvanas or Tiana would have been preferable. Anything but this.

"Can't even venture a guess, pal. I felt a disturbance in the Force when you ran that daffy little fourth-wall breaker, and here I am. Maybe it's because nobody else touches us that way, if ya get my meaning. Or maybe it's just your lucky day."

Unbelievable! I write one stupid proof-of-concept dialogue mod for a game I had barely played... and apparently (he posited), because nobody else had done anything quite like it, it released the teeny tiny probability of something crazy like this happening in MY OFFICE.

"Hey, how do you know about The Force, anyway? That's a totally different game!"

"I, uh, took the long way. Brushed up a bit on this piece of the Prime."

So here I was, for the third straight day, trying to get far enough to convince Sheena Easton to join the party. And I was hitting the same roadblocks I had on days one and two. I just didn't care. Oh, he'd made it clear that the fates of several planar creatures strange and unusual were riding on my successful completion--something about collapsing the inter-planar singularity my mod had opened which, left unchecked, would start dissolving their reality like a tissue in the wash, but I couldn't do it.

"Hey, never say die, chief! Besides, don't you want to get to the part where you choke the guy to death through dialogue? That gets the berks juiced every time!" he snapped.

"I don't want to."

"How about we get to the bit where you get your head cracked open and find the prize inside? You used to like that kind of stuff when you were a kid, right? Find the prize?" he grinded.

"I can't want to. I can't want to do any chopping, grinding, or ripping off of anything. I just don't see my motivation."

"Be a sport. You won't have to do many. Except for the guts... okay, and then there's the eye... and then the... other thing... but hey, it's all disposable parts! Look at me!" he clacked.

"I'm sorry. I just can't fathom how this grabbed and held your real audience. I can't get through it! And why me, anyhow? I just bought the game on a lark! Give me a break! Find someone who will enjoy closing your singularity!"

He pouted--I can't describe how a skull pouts, but I swear he did--and floated out my front door, never speaking another word to me.

The last I saw of him, he was chasing the FedEx lady back to her truck.

"How's about you stash me somewhere soft and warm and I gnaw my way to freedom? Hey. Hey!"


Author's note: This "story" was originally submitted for the Attic's "mystery" theme. Domi and I made a deal--I would write a story about the "mystery" I feel towards PST, if she would write a story about Kelsey's bad side. This was the result.