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Your friend Syd has a FaceBook strategy: only friend someone if you'd buy them a pint at the pub.
You, however, prefer to friend anyone and everyone the damn site suggests. You have 597 FB friends.
IRL, you have maybe four friends who would ever take pictures of you and post them online, much less [[tag->Stranger Tag]] you.You open the pic. You don’t remember being in London. You don’t remember that girl, or standing on that bridge.
[[Who the heck posted this?->Tiresias]]You certainly don’t know who “[[Tiresias Goodfellow->Tiresias Profile]]” is. The only album on their page is of you. In London. Where you haven’t been in months. Yet there it is, the piercing you got last week.
You cast a glance around the office - everyone is too worried about whatever skiving site is on their own screen to worry about yours. You roll your mouse around, trying to decide whether to [[message this Tiresias guy->message Tiresias]] or just [[untag yourself]] from their weird photo album.They don’t even have any identifiable information on their profile – just a link to a <a target="_blank" href="https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ">YouTube video</a>. Their status reports are generic, no one else has ever posted on their wall, you have no mutual friends, and they’re not tagged in any pictures. You [[close the profile->message Tiresias]].You send your 545th FB friend Tiresias a PM:
//Nice photoshop, dude. Who are you again?//
Not exactly "new phone who dis?" but it’s still probably rude. But how can they expect you to remember who they are out of the hundreds of sham friends you have?
You YouTube surf while [[waiting->message wait]] for a response.After about thirty seconds of staring at the pic, your brain begins to hurt. This is far too much thinking for its poor damaged, besotted cells.
Giving it up for one of those guerilla marketing campaigns that merges pics from your profile with stock images, you untag yourself and decide a mid-morning [[coffee and danish->new pic]] break will definitely help you be more productive.You should probably do some work while you wait for a reply, but it’s not like you’re the president or something. Nuclear war won’t erupt if you slag off for a day.
Besides, you have to know where this random guy got pictures of you in the last week. You haven’t even been anywhere, not since the bender that led to the piercing in the first place. You were tanked, but not so tanked you spent a day in London without remembering it.
You decide a mid-morning [[coffee->new pic]] break will definitely help you figure it out.When you return, your new friend has posted [[new pics->dead pic]].
There you are, striding along, same shirt you’re wearing now, your sunglasses on even though the [[rain]] has dotted them completely over, coffee in one hand and soggy danish in the other. The [[danish]] is missing a bite.You stare at the danish in the picture, and at your untouched danish on your desk, obscuring that TPS report you forgot to put a cover sheet on.
Before you even finish viewing the coffee and danish album, before you think to close the blinds on your office window against the stalker, another [[pic->dead pic desc]] goes up.Before you even finish viewing the coffee and danish album, before you think to close the blinds on your office window against the stalker, [[another pic->dead pic desc]] goes up.London again. It’s dark, the pictures shaky and amateurish, unable to compensate for the lack of light. Streetlights glow orange in a drizzle that muffles anything that might have been in focus. You can’t even really make out your own face in the first shot, until you roll your mouse over for the tag frame. [[There you are.->dead pic zoom]]Oh, shit. That’s not cool.
You’re naked. In a gutter. Your eyes are shut, your head drooping to one side.
The image is unmistakable: [[that’s your face->dead pic 3]]. There’s the new stud. There’s the scar from that misjudged hockey stick.Your hand rattles so hard your ring plays a tattoo on the plastic mouse.
You should have listened to Syd. Tiresias is definitely not someone you know well enough to hail in the pub. You could have [[avoided]] this. Now you'll just have to [[cope->psycho report]] with the crazy.You’ve heard of them, those psychos who peep on their exes’ profiles, blogs, status updates. The freaks who just feel so close to the celebrity via their online identity, even though it’s probably just the star’s publicist tapping out their ‘innermost secrets’. The desperate parents who drive their children’s rivals to suicide with their endless insults and accusations in comment sections.
Surely these bizarre pics fall in there somewhere: a weirdo you should [[ignore->unfriend Tiresias and bail]]? some really innovative [[spammer->report to site]]? or a crazed stalker the [[police->call the police]] should know about?You pick up the phone to call the police, but you hesitate. Is this an [[emergency]], or just a run-of-the-mill [[crime report]]?You click the photos and report them to the site for abuse. Stalking and creepy Photoshopping are abuse, right?
At any rate, the pics disappear from your [[feed->new message]].You decide not to be a total dick and report Tiresias to the cops or the site. It's probably just a buddy playing a stupid [[prank]] anyway.
You unfriend Tiresias, and the pics disappear from your [[feed->new message]]. That should take care of it.Don't put all your personal info online, Syd said. Use a fake birthday. Only accept connections for people you know - 9/10 of the ones you don't are phishers, scammers, bad mammerjammers (Syd has an inexplicable fondness for '70s rock).
You should [[be like Syd]]. [[Unfriend Tiresias->unfriend Tiresias and bail]], unfriend everyone, close the account, and find other ways of passing the time at work. Like work, maybe.
The thought makes you want to pluck your own eyeballs out. Syd is no fun at all.You punch out the 3-digit emergency code, but the operator is having none of your shenanigans. "This line is for emergencies only. Please hang up and call your local police precinct to [[report a crime->crime report]]."You google your local police, finding an online form. You start to fill it in, but then get bored. At least [[Tiresias's antics->new message]] are rescuing you from your dullsville desk job.The notifications flag pops up again. This time it’s a new message. Grimacing, you [[open your inbox]].Last year you convinced Ashley to get a kanji tattoo, and even translated it, thanks to those manga to learn Japanese. Except it wasn't the kanji for "peace" as requested; instead, the tattoo proclaimed Ashley's heartfelt love for pork fat.
It makes you chuckle every time you think about it. And you never fail to bring it up with Ashley, [[on FB->new message]] or IRL.//From: Tiresias Goodfellow
Message: I was there. I took the shots, 12 hours from now.//
You know you should pick the [[phone->phone rings]] up, should [[call the cops->phone rings]] right away, but something tells you that if you dial the emergency number, it will all stop.
That should be what you want, but then you’ll never know, will you? Sure, they could find the guy’s IP address – and something tells you he’s got an anon proxy, so even that’s not for sure – and the pics are probably just really good Photoshop work, but you’d never know why.The phone rings under your hand, and you jump so hard your coffee explodes over all those files you meant to organize last month. You use your ruined report to mop up, [[answering->answer]] before even considering it might be the ubiquitous Tiresias Goodfellow.“Oh, thank Christ I caught you.”
“Andie?” You haven’t heard her voice in ages, and she sounds tired and rough.
“Babe, I’m stuck in London. Some dipshit stole my purse, I’ve got no cash, no ID, no nothing.”
“Damn.” You sit back in your chair, relieved to face an ordinary, if not everyday, problem.
“What I was hoping,” she says, “is that you could run by my apartment, pick up my passport and spare bankbook, and bring them to me. We can catch the early train in the morning and be back in time for the meeting. I know it’s shit of me to ask.”
You close your eyes. London. Those pictures, twelve hours from now. Ten minutes ago, there was no way that was going to happen. It was a joke, a hoax. But now…now you either risk [[going to London]] and the bizarre future in the pics, or you [[bail on a friend]] who totally doesn't deserve it.“Fuck it,” you say. You don’t believe in that Mulder and Scully shit anyway. “Yeah, I’ll be [[on the next train->thinking]].”
Before you go, you change your shirt, making sure you pick one that didn’t appear in any of the photos.Andie's a grown-ass woman, you figure. Better that she spends a night sleeping rough and misses a meeting than that you maybe possibly (not that you even believe it) die, right?
"I'm really sorry, Andie," you tell her, "but I'm completely stuck in on this redistribution project." Every company has something going on with redistribution of something at any given moment. Obvs.
Andie's not happy with you at all, but you agree to turn over her spare key to [[whomever she finds]] to go and fetch her.You step off the train at Euston, peering around for Andie, and for anyone with a camera. Pretty much all you can think about is seeing yourself lying there in that alley, naked and still.
Except, of course, everyone over the age of five has a cameraphone and a selfie-stick; if Tiresias is here, you won't [[spot->hair change]] him."Hey!"
You turn to find you’ve just walked right past Andie. “You changed your hair,” you say, stunned.
“Thought I’d get a decent haircut while I was in the big city.” She pats the shorter, lighter [[style->photo girl]]. “Stopped for coffee afterward and someone nicked my bag right out from under me.”She’s the girl in the photos. The one you didn’t recognize. The one with you on the bridge. The hair changes the shape of her face, her coloring.
You look around madly. Tiresias //has// to be here [[somewhere->transition]]. How else would he have known about Andie's new hair?“What?” she asks.
“Nothing. Just a long, weird day.” You shake your head, and again look around for a shifty stalker type. It’s just too hard to tell in such a crowded place. “I guess we’re staying in a [[hotel]] overnight?”
“Yeah, I've still got my room on the company dime.” She grimaces. “But let’s [[eat]] first. I’m starving.”
You hand over the ID you picked up from her apartment. You still have a key, even though you haven’t been there since those [[five weeks last summer]].You rub your hand over your face, still eyeing the crowd for that stalkery creep.
"Can we just grab a bite at the hotel and crash?" The fewer public places for Tiresias to catch you, the better.
"Um, sure." Andie seems reluctant. Probably she was hoping you'd pay for her dinner at some swish restaurant.
She escorts you back to the mid-tier business traveler lodgings the company had put her up in. There aren't any extra rooms, and neither of you are up to shelling out for one anyway, so you [[crash with Andie]].You wind up in a dark cafe, happy to eat whatever is on the menu, glad for a back booth where no one can see you. You feel [[exposed]], defenseless.
Andie, however, is on a rampage. Now that you’ve come to her rescue, she’s livid about the robbery, and feeling confident enough to launch on one of her patented bitchfests. You nod and make the right noises, and you help her drink the wine she keeps ordering.
The restaurant is empty by the time you finally pick up your coat to [[leave]].Last summer started off pretty crap. Too much rain and too much work.
Then Andie started working at the office, and it got a lot better. Suddenly a little bit of overtime and some indoor-only activities weren't that big of a deal.
You barely took time apart for [[meals->eat]], and there was that one epic weekend in a not-quite-seedy [[hotel]].
It was mad hot love. Your Instagram history confirms it.For once, you don't want to Instagram your meal. You don't try to one-up Andie on anecdotes or name-drops. You don't mind that no one can see your good hair or your bronzed skin.
It's a new feeling, to be comforted by quiet and dark, to be private rather than public. As Andie fills in the holes in your side of the conversation, you start to feel like maybe the YOU-ness of you is slipping away.
Who are you if you're nothing but flesh, here and now, without filters and snappy captions? Are you still you if there is no record of you?
You're glad when it's finally time to [[leave]]. This day needs to be over before you think about it any more.You both stagger when you stand up.
“Shit,” Andie says. “I think you’re drunk.”
“Not as drunk as you.” And suddenly it’s really fucking funny, and you laugh, and you can’t stop. You almost [[throw up]], but you keep laughing.
Outside the restaurant, Andie says, “What is so goddamn funny? And why do you keep glancing around like you’re the Pink Panther or something?”
This sends you off again, and you’ve stumbled half a block in the [[direction]] you think the hotel might be in before you can begin to tell her the story of your day. By the time you tell her how you nearly soiled your trousers over her new haircut, she is doubled over with spasms as well, wheezing in that way she does.The laughter is too much, and you wind up puking after all. Andie wobbles next to you, ostensibly patting your back, but you can tell she's trying not to look at or smell you, lest she suffer the same fate.
"Oi, you two look like you could use a lift."
You look up to see a dull little compact, and a guy waving a smartphone at them.
"I just Ubered a guy around here. Not the best place to hang if you're from out of town."
Andie fiddles with an app on her phone, making sure the guy is legit, and you [[pass out]] in the back of the car.You pass into a pool of gray, underneath a non-functioning streetlight. Andie leans against the pole, her gaze wandering along the locked building fronts. She utters a post-laughter sigh and squints at you.
“You really are a dumb shit sometimes, you know, babe.”
“Yeah,” you say, though you don’t think you’re as dumb as she clearly does.
“You shouldn’t have done what you did to me.”
“Sorry?” You cock your head and wait, trying to unravel the knots of the [[conversation]].“[[Last summer]]. That was pretty fucking cold.” Her voice is sharp as razors.
“I don’t understand. We had a thing, but…”
“A thing. Lovely. It was more than a thing for me.” She pushes away from the pole, nodding at someone behind you. “Now you can have your fucking [[thing]] back, you selfish shit.”Something whams into your kidneys. A fist, a really big, really hard fist. You gasp and drop to your knees in pain as she crosses her arms and smirks. The fist hits you in the side of the head, and you fall to the concrete, smelling piss and vomit and beer.
[[“Andie, what the hell?”->Andie explains]]Andie waves a hand, and the boots to your ribs cease. She crouches down to you, hovering over as you strain for air on your hands and knees.
“I thought about it a lot, babe.” She runs a hand over your scalp, digging her fingernails into the knot forming over your temple. “I knew when we started that you were who you were. I just couldn’t help getting so obsessed. I tried to become what I thought you might want forever.
“And you still shagged anything and everything. Seriously, that hairy-moled muppet from accounting? Your brother’s roommate? Your mom’s bridge partner? You’re disgusting.”
She slaps you, hard enough to swell your eyes with reflexive tears.
“I could have keyed your car. I could have trashed your apartment. I could have added you to that ID-a-cheater website. I fantasized about so many things.”
You hold your hand to your stinging face, struggling to [[defend yourself->not Andie pics]].
“So you post weird pictures on Facebook and hire someone to beat me up? You’re nuts, Andie.” You spit on the pavement, flecks of blood spraying.
She frowns. “You think I'd pay this guy and then post pics to scare you off? Sounds like I’m not the only you've screwed over, sicko.”
Her face convulses, and her hand flicks from your head to your eye. You can’t even flinch away, she’s so fast, and she snatches the metal ring from your eyebrow. It clinks away on the concrete, the sound registering in your mind before the pain does. Blood streams down your face, stinging your eye and tasting of old pennies.
[[Rage]] rushes through you, pushing out the pain. [[Walking away]] from this no longer seems possible, even if you wanted to.Shouting in fear and pain, you launch at her, shove at her, anything to get her away from you. You spring from the pavement, your ribs screaming at the movement, and hit her on your way up, full in the abdomen. Her breath deflates over you, not smelling much different from the gutter, and you [[propel her backward]].You bite back the anger, somehow. You hold on to the rage for one second, then two, then three, until you're no longer in danger of Hulking out.
You pinch your eyebrow to stop the bleeding and squint at Andie through the muck that is now your face.
Most of your brain is telling you to [[smack the bitch]] right back. A teeny part of it knows you kinda [[deserve this]].Into the pole.
She strikes it like a gong, and the vibration spreads through her body to yours. Slack, her eyes roll back in their sockets and she crumples to the pavement.
“What did you do?”
You turn to her heavy, her thug, his face covered by a lint-balled balaclava. “We was just gonna rough you up some!” He darts off, the slapping of his boots fading into static as the misty rain begins to lick the [[street]].Half a block away, a car passes, its headlights casting a dim glow over the scene, glinting off Andie’s watch. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t breathe. The foul exhalation you forced out of her was her last.
You kneel to [[attempt CPR]], but the scratch of rubber on concrete [[startles you]].You tug out your mobile and dial 999, hoping an ambulance comes in time.
You lay Andie out on the ground, your hand on the back of her head coming out wet and sticky with blood.
You have no CPR training, but your self-involved life has left you with plenty of hours to watch medical dramas, so you set to pounding on her chest and blowing into her head.
There's a crunching from her ribs, and she tastes like vodka and bile. You start to [[sweat]], feeling the gorge rise in your throat.“Shit!” You try to yell, but a trembling whisper is all you can manage. Your chest hurts, and your heart is trying to get the hell out of there.
“I did warn you,” the newcomer says mournfully. He’s small, wearing a gray suit with a hat and a waistcoat. A watch fob hangs from the waistcoat, and in his hand is a small box [[camera]].You back away from him as he raises the camera. “This isn’t what you showed me. In those pictures, it was me. [[I was dead]].”
He shrugs. “Futography is not an exact art. I do my best.”
You stand there, staring at the man, unable to look at Andie at all. “What…[[What do I do now?]]”You track back over the choices you made today. Was there one that pushed Death onto Andie's track instead of yours? If you'd gone to the [[hotel->transition]] instead of the restaurant? If you'd [[never come->answer]] here at all? Never [[dead pic 3<-opened]] those pics?
What the hell do you do [[What do I do now?<-now]]?The shutter clacks, and the futographer cranks the film wheel. “I’m not god.” He fires off two more shots, then turns to face you. “She looks cold,” he comments. Then he walks away from you.
You follow, but the gray suit on the gray street on the gray night disappears in only a few strides. You are left with your torn clothing, your aching bruises, and the corpse of the woman you were once so intimate with. Your [[train ticket]] is in your left pocket, your undamaged [[mobile phone->attempt CPR]] in the other.
The choice is yours.Maybe it's the coffee. Maybe the barista slips that Limitless drug in the danish goo. Whatever it is, you have a moment of clarity.
Syd's not (just) boring and paranoid. He's a //grown-up//. Unlike you, who up until this point, really shouldn't be allowed to vote.
You rub the still-sore eyebrow ring, still not sure about how or why you got it, and your frontal lobe grows just that smidgen it needed.
You grow the hell up. You spend the rest of your day at work unfriending the 452 people whom you would //not// buy a pint, and the rest of the week actually working.
Obviously, it doesn't stick. By the following week, you've discovered Twitter, and it all begins again. But hey, at least you had a week of solid adulting; your [[Intro<-choices]] definitely could have led you elsewhere.The friend Andie sends turns out to be Syd. Syd being Syd, he doesn't buy your BS "redistribution" excuse, so you tell him the whole bizarre pics story.
"So you ditched a friend because you saw something weird on the internet," Syd says. His face could be a new "aw, no you didn't!" meme.
In your defense, you pull up the last pic for him: you, lying dead in the street.
Except you're not dead and naked this time. Now, the picture shows you on a dirty mattress, your face gaunt and hollow, needle tracks marching up both arms.
"Someone's messing with you," Syd says. "You gonna [[come with me->go with Syd]] to get Andie, or are you going to [[hide here]]?"Maybe it's the coffee. Maybe the barista slips that Limitless drug in the danish goo. Whatever it is, you have a moment of clarity.
Syd's not (just) boring and paranoid. He's a //grown-up//. Unlike you, who up until this point, really shouldn't be allowed to vote.
You rub the still-sore eyebrow ring, still not sure about how or why you got it, and your frontal lobe grows just that smidgen it needed.
You grow the hell up. You go with Syd to rescue Andie. Somewhere between one train and another, you realize you've missed her, and you weasel a date with her for the following week.
You spend the rest of your week at work unfriending the 452 people whom you would //not// buy a pint, and the rest of the month actually working.
Obviously, it doesn't stick. Within six weeks, you've completely screwed up even your friendship with Andie, you've discovered Snapchat, and it all begins again. But hey, at least you had a month of solid adulting; maybe your [[Intro<-decision-making]] is getting better.You look again at the picture of you, stoned and skeletal.
"I'm going to sit this one out," you tell Syd.
You're still at work when you notice your FB friend tally has ticked down by one. A few clicks show that Syd has finally dumped you. Before the night is done, Andie has too.
You don't care. You're alive. You spend the next day waiting for pics from Tiresias Goodfellow, poring over each one pixel by pixel. You start taking circuitous routes home from work, never traveling the same way twice in one week.
Within a few days, you [[can't sleep]]. What if the next pic showed you with a knife quivering out of your chest, and you were too asleep to take the warning?You start with coffee, and advance quickly to pills to wire you awake. You paper your office cubicle with your supervisor's written warnings. You hardly notice when she fires you.
By the time the final image posts to your wall, you don't have a flat anymore, and you can't remember your log-in ID anyway. If you could see it, you would see you, as you are right now, lying on a pallet that a hundred greasy heads have graced before you. You would see your demons eating you up from the inside.
You would see you, broken. Your [[Intro<-choice]].6 Sept 2016
Began hypertext draft, based on previously written print story "FuturePics/LoveSounds".
Finding that I don't like the game-y quality of giving a multiple choice of options at the bottom of the lexia, though these are the most obvious of "basic navigation". I'm not really classifying the links as I write, either...it's probably going to be a post-drafting application.
Most of the links seem to be Affective Navigation, maybe a few Narrative Exploration. I apparently like to stay away from the extremes. Depending on what it looks like at the end, I might need to create a version that incorporates BNs and AEs just to make sure they're in the text for research purposes.
Stopped writing at "transition" for the day.
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7 Sept 2016
Completed hypertext draft. It has numerous endings, some loops, some bubbles, and I've gotten rid of all the game-type options, so it's basically pure hypertext.
Next tasks:
DONE 1. Save this draft version, work on a new one.
ROUND 1 DONE 2. Alpha test for length, bugs.
3. Revise for length, bugs.
4. Record and classify the links according to the typology.
5. Incorporate any elements of visual design (if time). At least get rid of Harlowe's default "back" option.
6. Consider changing the name "3sheets". It's not making sense with the current evolution of the story.
DONE 7. I think, instead of all the "begin again"s, I should integrate that into more of a "Could you have made better choices?"
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From 13 Sept 2016 - on visual formatting (from short version):
now there's a passage titled "headAppend" - any script that I want to go into the head tags should be put into this passage. In the story's JavaScript file, I have added the jQuery line "$('head').append(tale.get("headAppend").text)", which grabs all the scripts in the "headAppend" passage and places them within the head tags of the html.
Then I customized the CSS to get the "Facebook" look: I used Glorious TrainWrecks' "Simple Box" template as a start (https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/5163), then used the background gradients to create the Facebook stripe instead of the generic gradient on Glorious TrainWreck (notes in the CSS code on how to do it), and a text box for the passages mimicking the style of FB.
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3 Nov 2016
This long version got cut way down for the RDF hypertext research. I'm going back to it now for posting to IMDB, to have both long and short versions. I'm also playing with the idea of turning this into an e-book version for pilot publication to Amazon.You both try to be good, responsible adults, but the hotel bar has a mid-week two-fer special going, and the booze is much better than the food. You both stagger when you stand up to go to the room.
“Shit,” Andie says. “I think you’re drunk.”
“Not as drunk as you.” And suddenly it’s really fucking funny, and you laugh, and you can’t stop. You almost throw up, but you keep laughing.
In the elevator, Andie says, “What is so goddamn funny? And why do you keep glancing around like you’re the Pink Panther or something?”
This sends you off again, and you’ve stumbled out of the elevator and into the [[room]] before you can begin to tell her the story of your day. By the time you tell her how you nearly soiled your trousers over her new haircut, she is doubled over with spasms as well, wheezing in that way she does.You don't even get the lights turned on in the room, so turned on are you both by alcohol, laughter, and the loose ends of last summer's fling. You're a little clumsy, and she's a little loud, but for a few minutes, it's just like old times.
Of course, when daylight slices through those curtains you forgot to close, things aren't so rosy. You skip breakfast, because neither of you want to see it coming up again, grab the first train out, hiding behind sunglasses and mobile phones, and shuffle into that all-important meeting at [[work]].For a week, Andie drops by your desk. First a few times a day, then once or twice, and then not at all. Natural fall-out, you think. Until somebody asks you about her, if you know whether she's quit, or she's sick, or she got promoted or something.
Andie hasn't been to work in five days. And no one knows why.
Well, [[someone]] does.You'd almost forgotten about your little friend Tiresias, he's been so quiet. No pics, no messages, no nothing. You shrugged it off as a really weird prank and moved on. You're good at that, moving on.
Until he sends you a new photo album. Not pics of you this time, not [[yet]]. Just pics of Andie. What she'd done.He lets you stew in the images of Andie, the scenes you can't unsee, the guilt you can't reason away.
And then he sends you some new ones, and it all [[Intro<-begins again]].You don't remember making it to the hotel, to the room, to a pillow, but the next morning you both get on the train back to work, back to your office, back to the endless parade of meetings and memos.
Two weeks later, the photos from Tiresias Goodfellow [[begin again->Intro]].You really shouldn't have played in the office paddling pool, but both your jobs are boring, last summer was full of rain and indoor-only activities, and Andie's adoration of you was really really attractive.
Who could blame you?
And so what if the final two weeks were just you trying to figure out how to move on to the Betty Page brunette at the coffee shop. Andie knew the score.
You are what you are, right? Andie shouldn't have tried to make it into a [[thing]].And then she coughs. She spews a bit of vomit and spittle right up into your face, but that's better than being left with a corpse.
You ride in the ambulance and sit with her during the long hours the docs place her under observation for severe coma. She doesn't remember you, and she might not be coming back to work, either.
The police talk to you, and you sly dog, you spin them a tale about a mugging gone wrong. Andie's missing purse and memory, and your battered face make it all too feasible.
Andie's family take her home, and you go back to the office. The following Tuesday, the photos from Tiresias [[begin again->Intro]].You leave her there. Lying in the street. Nothing else you can do, right?
You spend the rest of the night on a bench at the train station, and then take the next train home. You stumble in to work, but you can't hide your battered face, and it's not like your relationship with Andie was a secret.
"Your own social media accounts place you with her the night she died," the police sergeant tells you when they arrest you for her murder. "You've made some really stupid decisions, here."
You have, haven't you? You should have [[tried harder->Intro]].You don't smack her; after all, it's two against one, and ending the ceasefire would bounce back on you twice as hard. No, you charming devil, you use your mouth instead.
"Maybe if you were half as worth it as you think you are, I wouldn't have screwed around." And then you spit at her.
Whatever rage you felt, Andie must have felt it ten times worse. She screams, her tears garbling her voice, and [[shoves you]] so hard that you're sure you'll have handprint bruises tomorrow.You step away from both of them, holding your free hand up in a surrender flag.
"Look, Andie, I'm sorry. I was a dick. I mean, I don't think hiring someone to beat the shit out of me was the mature thing to do, but I understand why you did it."
She blinks in surprise at your shining moment of adult behavior. She and her thug exchange glances; he shrugs, and wanders off, his mission completed.
"I guess..." Andie flounders. "I guess that's what I wanted to hear. Thank you."
You stand there, nodding at each other awkwardly, you bleeding and she crying. Eventually you call an Uber to [[cart you both away->end]].Except you won't make it to tomorrow. Andie shoves you, and you stumble backward, catching a heel on the thug-for-hire's cliché combat boots.
You freewheel backward into the street, into a plain compact car. It wasn't even speeding, but when you get smacked square in the head with a grill at 40MPH, you don't get back up.
You don't get back up.
Your last thought is that no matter what you did, no matter how you tried, those pics were right. You were fated to die here, tonight. No other [[choice->Intro]] would have saved you.It's a little too much to expect you to share a hotel room and a train ride back to work with her, though, so you crash on a bench at the station and catch the first train out.
You go back to work, and she goes back to work, and other than some awkward exchanges in the corridors, you don't ever talk to Andie again.
From time to time you click on the picture, the one of you, in the gutter, corpsified and gross. It's the only remaining sign - well, that and your cool new eyebrow scar - of one truly bizarre day. Sometimes you wonder whether it would have come true, if you'd made [[different choices->Intro]].@@.foo;text-align:center;font-size:36px;color:#3b5998;
The Futographer
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by <a target="_blank" href="http://lyleskains.com">Lyle Skains</a>
[[Begin story.->Intro]]
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</script>When is it ever not raining? No one you know sings in the rain, much less dances. Rain makes for bad hair, ruined shoes, and soggy [[danishes->danish]].