With my knees sliding in a layer of smeared dust, just inches from Rocket's most recent piss stain, I could see the neon safety-orange muzzle of the Nerf Longstrike just out of the corner of my eye, flickering in the glow of the 'wave completed' screen still lingering on the TV.
"I'm so sick of carrying you, Frank!"
I glanced at the screen. "Casual mode is serious bizniz," I muttered, thinking how the irony of Bri's rebuke would give even the densest of exceptional individuals a brief respite for reflection. But not Bri.
"Ess tee eff up, Frank," she snarled, her Barbarella boots frantically pacing in front of me. That cosplay still haunted my dreams, and now again it intruded harshly upon my reality.
The Longstrike dangled back and forth in front of me, like a grotesque mockery of the appendage that was so spitefully discarded. While the sticker on the side said 'Nerf,' ever since she tested that metal-tipped dart on me that she learned to make during another Internet-fueled sperg of whimsy, I know to not second guess Hasbro's safety warnings about aiming at the eyes or face. I guess I had deserved it then... "Professional Armaments Manufacturer and Leading Wu-Man in NERF-Mod Tech" was a mean-spirited thing to print on her coffee mug. But this was different. She had begged me to play. She knew I had other shit to do. And I'd say coming in third place while trying to focus on a conference call with Eli Lilly was a fair effort. But not for Bri.
I could barely finish this thought when the barrel's swinging came to a sudden stop, and I felt that familiar circle of room-temperature ABS plastic press into the crown of my skull with more pressure than most would consider playful.
A defeated-looking zucchini thumped to the floor before me and rolled to a halt at my knee. Barely audible, in a voice not unlike Alvin huffing sulfur hexafluoride, through the dust and dander-choked haze came the words I had grown to dread.
"Now... Dialate it."
