king rat, the hit song by the indie rock sensation modest mouse

[dmboogie]

((Abe left the woods for the first time in days))

looking both ways before he crossed the road like a kindergartener so he didn’t get slam-jammed by some prick camper with a heavy machine gun the instant he ducked his head out of cover. When he was satisfied that no one was around he scurried away like a mouse fleeing a shipwreck, or maybe a forest fire, or maybe, haha, wait for it, a Forrest fire, haha, but he didn’t even get to take credit for that one because the Mr. Nice Announcement Man beat him to that joke.

He couldn’t hold a grudge, no, couldn’t begrudge the man for doing what he always did, making it sound like he killed his girlfriend for no goddamn reason, he knew it was coming, ‘cause it happened to Nick, after all, except no one except Zach was there to back Abe’s story up, and it was a weird case where knowing the whole story only made him sound even worse, so, like, DJ Murder Terror couldn’t really do that much damage, and, oops, he’d almost forgotten, everyone else was going to die so what the fuck did their opinions matter, right?

And, oh, he’d lost track of his thoughts there for a second, haha, weird, well, the second bullet point was that he had a nice prize waiting for him, so all was forgiven! Even though it meant at least one person was out there watching him murder his girlfriend, twice, at least they’d had the decency to recognize that he was the worst, because that’s what you got a prize for, right? For being awful, for perpetuating the violence inherent in the system, for being a model citizen of tragedy island. So, like, it was good to be bad.

“Hey I want you all to go to Youtube dot com and visit the channel ‘AW_Productions’, get it, because it’s like, my initials, and also the sound of vague disappointment, and that’s really the brand I’m trying to cultivate,” he rambled as he hiked towards his destination. He didn’t know if the cameras would pick it up, or if his collar has a microphone in it or something, but that wasn’t the point, was it?

“I’ve got like 200 subscribers, so yeah, I’m a pretty big deal, and I want those numbers to go up, alright, when I get back I want to see a very big number. And here’s what I want you all to do, alright, I want you to go to my most popular video on Youtube dot com, it’s got a couple views, and it’s about how The Room is a bad movie, are you still with me? Not too high-concept for you bastards? And, alright, cool, you’re still with me, I need you to, in the comments, just say, “wow this guy killed his girlfriend with a gun!’ Just post that over and over again, alright? It’ll be hilarious. And then all that good engagement will get the algorithm to notice, and then it’ll be in everyone’s recommended sidebar, and then everyone’s gonna watch a video a murderer made, and I think that’s a pretty funny prank, don’t you?”

What the fuck was he even on about, well, that was a question for the generation’s greatest minds, wasn’t it, except some of them were probably there, on the island, scattered in the soil and trees and walls, oozing slowly outta decaying ears. But like, he was the generation’s worst mind, so it was only fitting that his message of hope would only be heard by the dregs of society.

“Anyways, hope you got all that, see you shitheads on the news in a couple weeks as long as someone doesn’t ring my fucking bell, haha,” he finished, since he was gonna have to be out in the open for a solid few minutes and even though he was ready to ruin the day of anyone he tripped over it was a ruin-or-be-ruined economy going on out there, so might as well cling to the element of surprise until he was safely in the danger zone’s perimeter.

The way down was all steep so he had to go a lot slower than he would’ve preferred, it’d be pretty stupid to trip and fall and break his neck on the way to have a nice chicken winner dinner, right? But, like, according to the map the proper way down was right by the village, and he wasn’t quite ready to live in a society, so he’d just have to be a trailblazer.

It worked out alright, but he was still holding his breath waiting for his head to somehow explode the moment he crossed the line, like some other Abraham Watanabe had shot his girlfriend and earned a prize. But his surroundings were looking pretty beachy and he still had his head, so it was probably all cool.

Abe never thought he’d get to be a VIP treatment kinda guy, and even though ‘VIP” here was still pretty awful by most standards, he had to admit, it felt good to be king. They’d put his meal in a big ol’ tupperware box so it couldn’t be infested with maggots or like snatched by a seagull, and even though the plastic fork and knife they’d given him made cutting the steak a pain it was still the first real food he’d eaten in this lifetime.

He picked up one of the umbrellas from the ground and set it back upright, reclined in the chair, luxuriated over his meal knowing he was the safest man on the goddamn island. This was the only break he was gonna get until he won, so he better fucking savor it and not think about how Forrest’s entire life was apparently worth a steak and some greens, not even a bottle of coke to wash it down with.

The meal was honestly a better present than the gun lying next to it. Like, one gun was better than no gun, but two guns weren’t necessarily better than one gun, right? It looked like a single-shot hunting rifle, and even though it had a sick scope it wasn’t like Abe knew how to aim. Why shoot someone once when you can shoot them 50 times in about the same amount of time?

He still took it, obviously, because a gun was a gun even if it wasn’t very much fun.

He’d savored his meal even though it’d probably wreck his digestion something fierce, taking small little food critic bites, but he was also starving for taste so before he knew it he was finished and his seven minutes in heaven were just about up.

He sighed, tossed the plate and utensils over his shoulder so he could add littering to his list of charges, then tried to make a half-assed deal with the devil.

“Hey you guys mind if I just chill here for a while? I take a break, you walk away from the explosion button for a while to take that piss you’ve been holding in all day, and we’re all chill and I get a free ride? Pretty good deal, right?”

A couple minutes later, his collar beeped, once. Late enough to seem more like policy than a response, like a message going ‘hey man we gave you some scraps but that doesn’t mean we have a deep spiritual connection, get gatting or get going’, and like, that was fine, he wasn’t offended, when he won and met them for real he’d be all like ‘ayyyy’ finger guns to disguise the probable burning compulsion he’d feel to shoot every last one of them with fifty bullets fired at a rate of nine-hundred bullets per minute, and everything would be chill.

“Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?” He said, collecting his shit and making his long way back to the danger zone that was outside of the danger zone if you catch his drift. The second gun was kind of a pain in the ass to carry but he tucked it in his bag at a weird angle and it kinda worked even though it meant he had to leave it unzipped, but, honestly, who gave a shit, he had his stuff and he left.

On his way out it dawned on him that if there were other rat-brains left alive they’d be thinking, well, it’d be a pretty fucking solid idea to wait on the edge of the danger prize zone so they could nab themselves a second-hand prize from the loot piniata, huh? It’d suck to go out like that.

((To make a boring story short, he didn’t go out like that.))