I sigh as I walk with my friend Bertha to our high school. I swear, the place gets worse and worse every day. But maybe that’s just me.
“So I’ve been playing this new game, Duck Adventure,” Bertha explains to me as we walk inside. There are already three kids hanging from the stairwell by their necks. Nobody pays them any mind.
We go inside the bathroom. Four more kids are hanging from the stalls- emo kids, by the looks of it. Bertha washes her face in the sink. “I think it’s kind of fun, but I have some complaints.”
One of the emo kids is still alive. I ignore Bertha and speak to the kid, concerned. “You all right? Want me to cut you down?”
“No,” the emo chokes out. “I’d just hang myself back up again.”
“Come on, Marge!” Bertha says, taking me by the arm. “It’s a long walk to our homeroom.” She pulls me out of the bathroom, leaving the emo kid behind.
As soon as we go outside, we see one kid shoot another. The kid that got shot falls. The kid with the gun aims and fires again. The victim lies still. A couple of teachers glance at the carnage, but don’t do anything.
Bertha points and laughs. “Call that standing your ground! Right, Marge?!”
The shooter looks at us. I grab Bertha and pull her away. “Let’s go, boo.”
As we walk down the hall, Bertha keeps yammering. “I think the game would be way better if it was more than just running, swimming, climbing, and flying.”
A kid runs past us, screaming and on fire. There's a guy with a knife chasing him. But it's not like we can do anything anyway.
We turn a corner and pause. A drug deal is going on. The dealer tries to hand his customer the drugs, but the customer whips out a switchblade and stabs the dealer. The dealer falls. The customer jumps on top of him and cuts his throat. The customer grabs the drugs and runs off, cackling to himself.
Bertha sighs. “You know, they used to just do that in the bathrooms.”
“Just keep going, Bertha,” I say.
We go down the hallway. A chemistry teacher splashes acid in a student’s face. The student screams in agony. A physical education teacher is torturing a student by breaking him on the wheel. We look through a window and see another gym teacher standing by the pool. A ton of students are thrashing around in it as piranhas eat them.
Bertha raises her eyebrows. “Piranhas again? These people have no imaginations.”
We move on. A big, burly guy punches out a student, slings them over his shoulder, and walks away with them. I don’t know what the guy’s going to do to them. And to be frank, I really don’t want to.
A girl opens her locker. A psycho jumps out, stabs her to death, and runs off. A few feet away, another girl steps on something that clicks. The landmine explodes, blowing her to pieces. Bertha grunts. “It’s so loud around here!”
We go up the stairs. “So back to my game,” Bertha says. “There are three types of gadgets: sports, mechs, and magic.”
A bully throws a student down the stairs next to us. The victim breaks his neck, but he’s still alive. Alive enough to beg for mercy as the bully walks over to him and starts beating him to death. I look away, annoyed. I suppose it could be me next. But for now, I’m safe.
“I think the concept of gadgets is overrated,” Bertha insists. We keep going down the hall. “Why not max out your base stats instead? The gadgets just buff them anyway.”
A student opens the wrong door and falls out of the building to his death. Down the hall, another student pulls out a machine gun and blows away three people. He reloads and marches down the hall, looking determined. We both ignore him.
“I don’t know much about these games, Bertha,” I say, “But why not use gadgets? I mean, if they buff you so much. They can’t really hurt.”
“They nerf some stats, though,” Bertha tells me. “So they’re double edged swords.”
Something explodes downstairs, shaking the floor beneath us. I hear people screaming. Someone cackles with laughter. “It worked!”
Bertha and I keep walking. “Did you hear that some guy found a razor blade in his food last week?” Bertha asks. “Well, not before he ate it, I mean. It came slicing out of his throat. What a way to die, am I right?”
I shrug. “I’ve seen worse.”
We finally reach our homeroom. One kid shoots another in the head. A bully is beating another guy on the ground. A kid opens his desk, only for acid to come spraying out. He grabs his face and screams in agony. Another kid opens a window and jumps to his death.
“Take your seats,” our teacher insists. She taps the rifle on her desk.
We both sit down. “I’ll tell you more about the game later, Marge,” Bertha promises.
“Uh huh,” I reply.
I sigh as our homeroom teacher takes attendance. Same old, same old.