Breakfast Beatdown

The voice has always been with me. The voice follows me, describes my actions, guides my choices and perhaps even mocks me. It sounds like a man, but realized and made whole by some sort of terrible machine. I blame the voice for the course my life has taken. I am a cop. No, a cop is a guy who walks a beat ten hours a day. A cop is a breeze or a gust of wind, I am the whole swirling totality of the earth's atmosphere. When I wake up my gun is in my hand. When I go to the bathroom my gun is in my hand. When I am turning the pages of a book I do it with careful aim and hot lead. I kiss a woman with my gun and, if I ever father a child, I'm sure I will usher him into this life with a few well-placed shots.

No, I am no cop. I am the infinite realm beyond cop. I am man second, for first and foremost I am a lethal enforcer.

The dream is always the same. I feel the metal disc slide into my back edge first and it passes right through my spinal column. It is cold and unfeeling and it fills me up completely. When the disc is inside me it turns me into raw fury. I inhale hate and I exhale death. They come at me, masks pulled over their faces, evil in their eyes and I deal the ace of spades to them again and again. Thousands fall by my guns. They climb over the heaps of bodies to get at me but I am a force that cannot be stopped.

The woman rises suddenly from behind the counter at the bank. I want to stop - I know what's coming next - but I can't. I am born to kill. My finger convulses on the trigger and-

I wake with a start.

"PLAYER ONE!" The voice announces.

It's still dark outside. I stagger into the bathroom and turn the lights on. My neighbor below me pounds on the ceiling and screams at me to stop shooting. If only. Sparks fly from the toilet seat as I empty the last three cylinders lifting it up so I can take my morning piss.

"RELOAD!" The voice commands.

While my bladder drains I point the revolver down and pull the trigger. The world flickers white and the revolver's cylinders are filled again. My empty stomach rumbles and I know I require sustenance beyond my usual repast of criminals and assailants.

"EAT FOOD!"

I shoot my way out of the bedroom and into my tiny efficiency kitchen. I know the refrigerator is empty but I shoot it to pieces just to check. A few glowing packets of soy sauce drop to the floor as the shattered wreckage of the appliance fades from view. The clock on the wall tells me that it is 4:00 AM. I shoot the clock from its nail for its insolence and throw a coat on over my shirt. There is only one place serving the kind of hash I want at this hour: Waffle House. I shoot open the door to my apartment and shoot it locked behind me. Bad neighborhood, worse when I'm awake.

"RELOAD!"

I sneer at the voice and reload the gun. Traffic is light this early in the morning, but a big white Cadillac pulls alongside me and I see it's packed full of thugs. I shoot out their tires and it drops behind me. Another car takes its place. This time I wait for the back door to open and then shoot the moron in the back seat. He drops from the speeding car. I pepper the driver with bullets, pausing once to reload, and watch with satisfaction as the Cadillac careens into a telephone pole.

With careful shots at point-blank range I steer my car into one of the spaces in the Waffle House parking lot. A few more shots and a few more reloads and I'm parked, out of the car and heading towards the entrance.

"My baby!" It's a female voice but I see no one else in the lot with me.

At that moment a baby carriage slowly begins to roll through the parking lot. My gun seems to tug at my hand, beckoning me to fill the pram full of lead, but I resist.

"Ha ha ha!" The laugh is anything but pleasant and issues from a black-clad ninja who jumps over the top of a parked van and makes ready to assault me.

"My baby!" Before I can fire at the ninja a second baby carriage ambles in front of him, making my shot difficult but offering no impediment to his own cruel shuriken.

Rather than risk hitting the infant I take the blow to my cornea. Red flashes brilliantly for an instant and my vision is obstructed by a rapidly-fading track of blood. I can't see clearly, but I can see enough. I empty my revolver into the ninja and smile with satisfaction.

"EAT FOOD!" The voice reminds me.

I settle into a booth in the corner. The place is practically deserted. Where is the fucking waitress?

"Don't shoot!"

I do shoot, but my aim is off this early. It's the fucking waitress, rising from behind a nearby booth with her arms raised above her head.

"PLACE ORDER!" The voice urges.

"Triple stack of waffles with a side of hash browns scattered, smothered and covered." I tell the waitress.

She descends behind the booth with her arms still held above her head.

"Ssseee you later, copper." Another shape rises from behind the booth, male and menacing. He's got a throwing knife headed my way before I can gun him down. Without the baby carriage blocking my shot I can fall back on my academy training. I shoot once, twice and the knife spins harmlessly away from my cornea. The knife-wielder starts to descend behind the booth but I peg him with the last two shots in my revolver. He drops like an engorged tick, fading out from this world to whatever hell awaits the bastards who constantly attack me.

"Don't shoot!" The waitress is back with my order. I shoot the plate from her hands and it reappears on the table in front of me.

"MAPLE SYRUP!" The voice crows when I trade my revolver for the syrup bottle. I drizzle it heartily onto the waffles, glad for once to at least momentarily be free of my firearm. I aim the syrup at my gun and it returns to my hand.

Eating is slow and noisy, marked less by the successful bites than the din of misplaced shots punching holes through the table's cheap wood. The food is garbage. I would expect nothing less from Waffle House, but this hot pile of dung is particularly terrible. I resolve to have a few words with the cook.

I approach the grill area only to find it abandoned. I am about to leave a harshly-worded (and painstakingly written) note when someone begins to rise from behind the counter.

"Ha ha ha!" It's the same voice as the ninja but this one has a machinegun and a ski mask. Brothers maybe? The world works in mysterious ways.

I take satisfaction in plugging him full of holes. Even if he wasn't the cook who ruined my meal my mind has assigned him that blame. Fuck it, I'm not paying for this trash. Lethal enforcers should eat free even when the food isn't awful. I whistle tunelessly and shoot my way out to the parking lot. The shattered glass of the door tinkles on the asphalt as it slams shut behind me.

The path to my car is blocked, not by man or baby carriage, but by the bulk of an Apache helicopter hovering only inches above the ground. Shit. The helicopter takes to the air and begins spewing out missiles. They make for easy targets, but there are so many and I can only reload so quickly. My corneas recoil again and again as the missiles slam into my eyes. For every ten I shoot one gets through and I only rarely have the chance to take a few shots at the helicopter. I can feel the world slipping away from me. The helicopter is smoking now, my finger a blur on the trigger as I attempt to fight back the tide of rockets.

"My baby!" I flick my eyes over to the carriage just as the missile hits me in the cornea. The red flashes across my vision and I collapse to the ground. I am paralyzed. I can do nothing but watch as the rockets streak again and again into my face.

"CONTINUE?!" I don't want to continue. Death, take me from this cruel existence.

"5…4…3…," merciful darkness, claim me! "2…1!"

"GAME OVER!"

The dream is always the same. I feel the metal disc slide into my back edge first and it passes right through my spinal column. It is cold and unfeeling and it fills me up completely. When the disc is inside me it turns me into raw fury. I inhale hate and I exhale death. They come at me, masks pulled over their faces, evil in their eyes and I deal the ace of spades to them again and again. Thousands fall by my guns. They climb over the heaps of bodies to get at me but I am a force that cannot be stopped.

The woman rises suddenly from behind the counter at the bank. I want to stop - I know what's coming next - but I can't. I am born to kill. My finger convulses on the trigger and-

I wake with a start.

"PLAYER ONE!" The voice announces.

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)