~ Chapter One: Things Get Worse ~
I pushed open the doors, revealing a magnificent dining room. Crystal chandeliers hung from a high vaulted ceiling, casting a warm glow over the tables. Compared to the squalor and ruin of the new world, this place looked like heaven.
“Pardon me, Madame,” said a voice.
It’s worth pointing out that I had very recently been beaten to death. That sort of thing would make anyone jumpy, right?
I stared at the gasping, frail little man that I’d just suckerpunched in the throat. He writhed in pain on the luxurious carpet, badly wrinkling the dapper suit he wore. Most books on fighting say that it’s bad form to kick your opponent in the nards, especially if they’re lying on the floor struggling for breath, but that’s probably because books aren’t written by people who were recently bludgeoned to death. (Well, until now, that is.)
Some more little men in suits came up, tut-tutting officiously. I stopped kicking the fallen steward. They mistakenly took this to mean that I was finished attacking, and rushed to help their comrade. It made it much easier for me to hit them from behind. Three footmen hit the floor, gurgling, and a maître d’ turned around and caught an elbow in the cummerbund. I grabbed two headwaiters by their heads, and was going to bang them together like cymbals, when a horrible mannish voice sliced through the room like a greased chainsaw through a wax mannequin.
“CIERA SHMEBULOCK EASTIN! JUST
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!?”
I froze. There’s only one person who knows my horrible embarrassing middle name.
“
Mom?” I squeaked.
I looked around, and saw nothing. Then I remembered how short my mother was, and looked down. All four feet and nine inches of her were quivering with rage.
“WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? I DIDN’T RAISE YOU TO BE AN ANIMAL! PUT THOSE HEADWAITERS DOWN THIS INSTANT AND BEHAVE YOURSELF!”
The simpering waiters slipped out of my hands and slumped onto the heap of moaning tuxedos on the floor. I had already turned around to go to my room for a good sulk when a few things occurred to me. First, this wasn’t my house, so my bedroom was probably inconveniently far away at the moment. Secondly, my mother had suffocated while trying to deep-throat a live electric eel at one of her infamous orgies. Her death came as quite a shock. (Three midgets and a gay Jewish black cowboy tried to give her CPR, but the other participants mistook this for something else
entirely, and she was crushed to death in the ensuing debauchery. It was really awkward when they all showed up to the funeral).
I struggled for a tactful way to broach the subject. “Hold up, Mom! Aren’t you dead?”
Mom just rolled her eyes. “Of course I’m dead. You are too, you horrible disappointment!”
“Hey!” I snapped back. “I survived the freaking
apocalypse, thank you very much!”
Mom’s hands shot to her hips. “Oh really? Because as I recall you let your twin sister die, then got yourself killed by a crowd of retarded shithead. Some survivor you turned out to be.”
My mouth opened and closed a few times, but no witty comebacks fell out.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Mom huffed. “Now stop acting like a savage, take your nametag, and go socialize. Try not to embarrass yourself more than you already have.”
Pulling a label from a sheet, she slapped it onto my chest hard enough to make me wince. “Cripes, look at how you’re dressed. You look like one of those creepy blonde hipsters who hangs out at Starbucks writing awful free-verse poetry,” Mom snapped, her lip curled in disgust. Then she marched away to ruin someone else’s life.
I looked down at the words splayed across my breast:
Confused, I turned it over:
I was still confused, and pretty insulted. I didn’t have an inferiority complex! I’m the cause of inferiority complexes in other people!
“Excuse me, Madame,” said a voice. I turned around, fist raised. “I am sorry, Madame!” whimpered a cowering waiter sporting a sweat-slicked combover. “But if Madame would care to find Madame’s table, so we can begin?” I punched him square in the bald spot, and left to find my table.
Several people were milling about, laughing obnoxious laughs and drinking expensive-looking drinks. This surprised me. Since the world ended, I’d been drinking nothing but rainwater and waterlike fluids I found oozing out of things. I desperately wanted to drink something that nature had actually intended for human consumption.
I spotted a glittering crystal punchbowl, and headed towards it like a hawk towards a mouse. I nearly bumped into a muscular guy whose nametag read “Silas Gaither, The Adventurer, 38 NW – 63 NW, Jealousy.” Smiling shyly, I slipped past him, heading for the punchbowl. There would be time for flirting later.
A curly-haired guy dunked his cup into the punchbowl without even using the ladle, tossed his head back and drained the glass in a single gulp. “Sooooo thirsty,” Ethan moaned, filling the cup again.
I probably should have been turned off at this egregious lack of hygiene, but at this point my personal standards were lower than the waistline of a rapper’s pants.
Just then, a blonde kid stepped forward and smashed his fist into the punchbowl. Liquid and glass geysered everywhere.
“What the hell?” screamed Ethan.
“The sign said to punch the bowl!” whined the blonde kid. He held up a hand full of bloody knuckles. “LOOK MY HAND MAKES RED JUICE! MMM SALTY!” he screamed and began licking up the blood.
I would have recognized that idiot anywhere. It was Carter, the dumbest fucking dumbfuck of them all, the moron who got me killed. I picked up a shard of punchbowl and headed forward to slice open his throat for the good of humanity, when my ears perked up. Someone was saying my name.
Well, not just someone. It was the person I hated most in the entire world, the person whose putrid presence was so awful that having my undead mother and the derpy wonderfuck here was a day in the park by comparison. As soon as I heard this person say my name, my heart sank. Whoever had resurrected me obviously had nothing but evil in their heart. Their tiny, tiny heart.
Even before I read the nametag affixed to a bloated melon, I knew that it was my old high-school nemesis,
Heidi. She was back from the dead and looking even more disgusting than usual, which was really saying something. After she tried to kill me, I snapped her neck and burned her to death in a campfire, and then accidentally fed her charred remains to her friends. Not to mention, she had overdosed on tanning solution and had a sex change to make herself look like a black guy. Apparently she was trying to revert to her high school self. I can’t think of any other reason why any self-respecting black man would cover himself with white paint and wear a blonde wig and a bikini top full of cantaloupes.
“So then I was elected prom queen and homecoming queen and school president and valedictorian for every single year I was in school. This weird girl named Ciera tried to say she should have been valedictorian because she did better in academic challenges than me. So ridiculous. Me and her boyfriend had a good laugh about it in the backseat of his car that night!”
I flushed red. That bitch! She had been great in her first year, but since then she’d sucked out loud and everybody knew it. She somehow stumbled into the finals for everything (usually because her opponents knew nobody would vote for her for any title) and mistook this for greatness. And I was totally better in academic challenges than she was, but because some of my subjects were listed differently she ranked first on a technicality. (And I can’t believe she banged Justin! He and I never had sex, so I thought his horrible death from supergonorrhea in senior year was a freak accident!)
Heidi had a cucumber covered with whipped cream. (S)he licked it off grotesquely. “I’m great at licking, among other things,” she said as seductively as she could manage (meaning… not very seductively at all).
“Yeah, I know you’re great at SUCKING,” I huffed. I glared daggers at the freak of nature, and happened to glance at her (his? its?) nametag:
Turning away from the horrific spectacle that was Heidi, I did some thinking. Heidi was here. I was here. My mother was here. That made three dead people in the same room, which was three more dead people than one generally expected to find in a five-star hotel dining room. Perhaps we were all dead. I didn’t really understand the numbers, but from the phrase “Own Fucking Stupidity,” I surmised that the last part of the nametag was whatever it was that got us killed. Certainly explained “inferiority complex.” The numbers were probably our age, since I’d been 23 at the time of the apocalypse, and 24 when I died. Heidi and I were the same age, which is why we had the same numbers, but she was clearly lying about her age. However, due to her inability to understand negative numbers, she had accidentally made herself ten years older than she was supposed to be.
The circled number, I guessed, was probably our table number. I headed for the table sporting a curly-cued numeral four. I ignored the list of people since Heidi was on it, and sat down. Who brought us here? What did they want? Why did they do that? It didn’t matter. There were glasses and a pitcher of water, and I was still thirsty as hell.
Someone grabbed my ankle.
“MATT!” shrieked the person under the table.
“What the hell?” I screamed.
An Asian girl scrambled out from under the table. “Sorry, I was looking for drugs.”
I blinked at her, totally confused. “Drugs? What? Why? Who’s Matt?”
The girl (Brenda, the booty, -27 to 0, drug overdose, according to her tag), looked confused. “Matt? I didn’t say Matt.”
“You totally did.”
“No I didn’t.”
I sighed. “I don’t think you need to go looking for drugs. Looks to me like you’ve already found them.”
“LENTILS!” Brenda cried, and walked away.
Clutching my head, I sat down. There was a neat printed list of questions. Since there was nothing better to do, I decided to peruse them at my leisure while I drank copious amounts of water.
1) What is your strategy coming into this life? Any different from last time?
That one didn’t even make any sense.
My life has no strategy. Except if you count trying not to be an idiot and not to die. Except that didn’t work so well last time. No clue how I’ll do anything different.2) What are your thoughts on some of the cast as they sign up?
I looked around.
Heidi sucks, obviously. Cliff is a joke. Ethan’s boring. Alicia is a backstabber. Brian’s a sweetheart. Andrew’s interesting. Brenda’s ridiculous. Malcolm’s interesting. Tanya’s alright. Bob is dumb. Courtney’s trying too hard. Ian’s ordinary. Sean’s basic.3) Who are you looking forward to living with?
Absolutely no one. Next question.4) What do you think the twist of the season will be? (Other than the Star Confessionals)
Annoying.5) Why do you think you have what it takes to survive?
I’m not an idiot. That’s a rare commodity these days.6) Anything else you would like to say before the craziness begins?
I’ve been out of high school for like five years, Mom! And even if I wasn’t, the world got destroyed by a meteor or something! All of the schools were destroyed so I can’t possible have homework! Gah!I tossed the paper down in disgust and took a long drink of water. What in the world had I gotten myself into?
