“Attack! My loyal battle monkeys!” …

“Attack! My loyal battle monkeys!”

If Warren had to hear that grating, Wicked-witch-of-the-west-on-helium voice through his high definition headset one more time, he swore he was going to leap out of his chair and throttle his computer screen. He wasn’t quite sure how he was going to dispose of the three-screened monster of his computer screen, but for an occasion such as this, he’d find a way.

This was the twenty-second time that he and his guild fought the Swamp-Witch of Boggart Marsh, and quite honestly, the novelty of fighting spider monkeys riding on giant spiders was starting to become a bore. The first few times was great, the voice was funny, the spider monkeys were ridiculous, and the absurdity of it all made the battle against the Swamp Witch one of the most memorable fights that Warren had been in since his induction into the World of Conflict MMORPG.

That was, until he and his guild-mates decided to do it again.

And again.

And again.

At some point, Warren stopped seeing the spider monkey riders flinging their droppings at him. He stopped being the knight enduring the barrage in golden armor. All of those were distractions nowadays. Warren had dissected the battle through a combination of forum posts, FAQ readings and youtube videos. It had become a game of numbers- and everything else was just a distraction.

The monkeys each had 1000 hit points and their flying feces attacks dealt 200 points of damage with each fling. His Pauldrons of the Treacherous Terax would give him 250 armor points, which would enable him to resist the monkey’s attacks while he used his Sword of the Agile fencer to Tornado blade the monkeys for 250 points of damage.

Warren was more like a monkey in a lab than a knight. He was being rewarded for pressing buttons and clicking icons- and even then, at least a lab monkey would get something tangible as a reward- like a banana or an apple- but all Warren got was a chance at a sword that had slightly larger numbers than the sword he was using, and a realization that somewhere along the way, he had turned from gallant knight to number-crunching cubicle prisoner.

Cassie always thought she would die …

Cassie always thought she would die young. Her death would be something flashy, but not too flashy, just… different. She didn’t want to end up being a story on the evening news or a fail on the Internet. She just wanted to be someone that regulars at the coffee shop whisper about every now and then.

Her ideal death would be a pair of jeans so tight, that the lack of circulation would ensure her death. Subtle enough to be under the radar, but cool enough to be talked about.

The jeans would be a gift, of course, from an obviously unfashionable aunt that hadn’t seen her niece since she was in grade school. she would only be wearing them because the sweater-wearing social elite that was her family told her to. Cassie would begrudgingly agree to wear them to her family reunion, where her father would be telling the family a set of agonizingly corny jokes. He would be telling the joke about the monkey and the toaster when she would fall down on the vomit-colored linoleum– with stark white legs and a dead look on her face. It would be a beautifully ironic– Cassie never liked her father’s jokes, especially the monkey ones.

She’d be cremated, but not in one of those huge ovens everyone else gets cremated in, she’d have her friends fire up an old barbecue grill and burn her up there. Even after death, Cassie wanted her friends to remember her as a trendsetter.

Besides, the cremation-by-barbecue grill made it easier to have her funeral on her apartment building’s rooftop, so that it’d be kinda like Clerks but without the hockey. After her family stuffed her ashes in a urn, the afterparty would be on the rooftop, with a bathtub of PBR and burgers from the grill (Another grill, of course.). There would be bands like Audios Muchachos and Sparrow Implosion playing sets. Assuming they didn’t sell out. She promised herself that she’d die before she would see them sell out. Which would turn out to be true- Hopefully.

It wouldn’t happen like that. Turns out Cassie and her guy friends were having a rooftop party, and she had too much to drink.

She didn’t even notice the ledge.

She would be a story in the evening news, and an “LOL” on the internet. She would have her wake in a dreary funeral home and her body would be buried in a old fashioned cemetery. There would be no music for the reception, because presumably, both bands sold out.