text: [Themes: love & dating, serious]
  
  The sound of a lone basketball dribbling echoes across the gym and reaches your ears, causing you to shutter. You hate that sound, just like you hate this class. You've hated for it about three years now, but you never quit taking it. You just don't like change.
  
  Across the room, your best friend Bailey is talking with some people you've never seen who keep shooting you sympathetic looks. You hide your face in your arms, only risking quick glances. You know what they are saying, you know exactly what everyone is saying. They've had all Summer to get used to this, and so have you. I'm fine, you think.
  
  You turn your attention to the sound of the basketball. Some senior jock, who's being watched by three giggling freshmen girls is playing, effortlessly making every shot. For a moment, you watch him, but he's not Jacob. He doesn't even compare.
  
  > The Counseler's Office
  You sit in a red chair, a nice one that's sort of comfortable. You don't want to be here, not at all, but you are. The school thinks that talking to the counselor will make everything better, but the truth is, nothing will make it better or okay or anything of the sort.
  
  The counselor smiles another sympathetic smile, and before she can say a word, you talking.
  
  "I don't need you. I didn't need you when my biological father died, didn't need you when mom died, and I don't need you now. If you'll excuse me, I have an English class to get too."
  
  The counselor just nodded, and you leave without another word.
  
  > English Class
  You sit at the back of the class by the window so you can look out of it. Beside you, Bailey sits, dramatically sighing and complaining about how much she hates school. The teacher shoots her a death glare and she shuts up about that and starts going on about something else. She never quits complaining, which you hate.
  
  She has no reason to complain about anything. Both of her parents are alive, and she's never had a boyfriend die, and she hasn't had to deal with half of the things you have.
  
  A girl towards the front of the room turns and looks at you, and then turns quickly around and whispers to the boy next to her. You know what they are talking about. What everyone is talking about. They all feel so bad, like it's their fault. It's not, and they shouldn't feel bad, and you wish they would just forget. That's the problem, nobody ever forgets anything, especially not the things you want them too.[Themes: family friendly, humor]
  
  You slowly wake from your slumber, the effects of last night's binge-drinking session with your friends still rattling your brain. The light entering your bedroom from the window causes you to grimace as your head throbs in agony. Never again, you think to yourself as you weakly toss the covers off of your prone form.
  
  Still wearing the same clothes from last night, huh? You look down to see that you even have your satchel draped over your shoulder. How drunk was I? You make a mental note to never drink again, just like the last time.
  
  You groggily pull your feet over the side of the bed and sit with your head in your hands, your fingers rubbing your eyes fretfully. Maybe a glass of water will help for now, but the walk to the kitchen seems like an expedition the likes of the Oregon Trail at the moment. You sigh, defeated, accepting of your hungover state, and you force yourself to your feet.
  
  "Quack."
  
  You stop moving, confused. What the hell was that sound?
  
  You look around, but don't see anything other than your bed, the clock on the nightstand, your dresser, and some clothing strewn about the floor.
  
  Must be my imagination. Tequila was a bad choice...
  
  "Quack."
  
  The sound rang out again, and you look down at your feet.
  
  Below you sat...a duck. A living, breathing, bright white, duck. It ruffles its feathers as it gazes up at you. "Quack," it repeats.
  
  "Gah!" You yell, as you jump backwards from the offending avian. "Where the hell did you come from?"
  
  "Quack."
  
  Why in the ever-loving hell is there a duck in my room? You start to rack your brain, trying to figure where, in last night's drunken stupor, a duck would have entered the equation. No dice. Your memories are, sadly, duckless.
  
  "Whatever. I've just got to get you out of here, I'll figure out the rest of the details later."
  
  [Author's Note: An incredibly silly game.]
  
  > examine the bed
  Ah, your bed. So many memories. All the lonely, sleepless nights. The, uh, sheets, with, uh, a thread count of...
  
  Yeah, it's your bed. Your terrible, terrible bed. You're just happy that there don't appear to be any duck droppings on it.
  
  That said, you still are having difficulty remembering the last time you washed it. But that's a problem to solve at a later time. Probably.
  
  > examine the clock
  You look over at the digital alarm clock on your nightstand, its radiant red display flashing 10:24AM. You slept in, apparently, but it's Sunday; there's nothing on your docket.
  
  Except getting rid of the duck.
  
  Nothing else interests you on the nightstand.
  
  > examine the duck
  The duck is still staring at you with its beady raven eyes. It sometimes reaches its head back to scratch an itch with its beak, but mostly it just glares in your direction and lets out a "quack" every so often.
  
  It does not seem happy to be there. So the feeling is mutual.
  
  You have no idea how it got there, much less how it got into your bedroom with the door and window closed, but there it is, sitting in the middle of the room, tormenting you.
  
  This was not how you had imagined your day going.
  
  You want to pick it up and take it outside, but the duck continues its death stare at you while you contemplate how much you enjoy having your appendages.
  
  > take the duck
  You gingerly reach out to the duck and place your hands on its sides. Surprisingly, it doesn't resist, and simply quacks slightly under its breath as you lift it from the floor. It might be swearing, but you are sadly lacking a Duck-to-English Dictionary, and you are pretty sure you've never had the inclination to ever buy one. But keep hoping.
  
  You place the duck in your satchel. You never know when you might need a duck.
  
  > leave the bedroom
  You open the door leading out of your bedroom, and you gaze in horror at the sight in front of you. No less than a hundred ducks, all littered about the living room, all turn and face you simultaneously. An eerie quiet blankets the room as your brain tries and fails to grasp the situation that you have suddenly encountered.
  
  The duck horde takes a step forward, when the duck in your satchel decides to peek its head out of the bag. As if a switch had been flipped, the mass of ducks turn their attention to your satchel, and take a few steps back.
  
  "What is going on?" You ask, exasperated. This whole thing is becoming increasingly, inexplicably weird.
  
  The satchel duck replies, "Quack."
  
  The duck horde takes another step back, clearly jarred by the presence of the satchel duck. You tenderly take a step out into the living room, and the fowl retreat in kind. As you walk around the room, however, they continue to follow you while maintaining a safe distance.
  
  "Ok..." you mutter, bewildered. "I guess it's not just the one duck, it's apparently an entire army of ducks. This is just my new normal now, I either figure out how to get rid of them all, or I learn how to live in harmony with them until I die or they all die."
  
  While you ponder whether you can peacefully live as the new patriarch of a duck cult, you gaze around the room to see if there's anything you can use to help with your dilemma. The couch is covered in bird droppings and feathers, and all of your things are tossed about the room, as if a flock-shaped warhead had exploded in it. The only things left not completely destroyed are your television, a few bits of mail you brought in last week, and oddly enough, a bunch of intact brown paper bags by the front door. You can see into the kitchen from where you are, and it too is brimming with ducks. The bathroom door to your left is only cracked open, and you can't see what's inside. You look over at the front door of your house, and notice that it's locked. How did all of these ducks get--never mind. It doesn't matter.
  
  > examine the couch
  You gaze at your couch, the glorious green-ish, microfiber sofa that you bought from the thrift store a few months back. While it had stains and burns on it already, it had character. Now it just has poop. Lots of poop.
  
  You feel a tear running down your cheek as you mourn the loss of Couchy. "Rest in peace, girl. Rest in peace."
  
  > examine the television
  You turn on the TV, hoping to see news of some strange bird invasion enveloping the nation, but alas, the news is only covering the latest stock prices. You change the channel and a Drake music video comes on. You hear some of the ducks behind you quacking in excitement.
  
  ...you turn the TV off.
  
  > examine the paper bags
  You see a pile of brown paper bags on the floor near the front door. You save them from your shopping trips for recycling, but since you still haven't gone to the city to request a recycling bin, they've simply become a glorious mountain of disused kraft paper. You eventually had so many that you needed to use one bag to hold the rest of the bags, and then that soon became too cumbersome, so you used another bag to hold the bags that held the bags.
  
  The Russian Nesting Bags were almost near capacity, and you wondered how long you can keep this bag-ception going.
  
  > examine the mail
  You look over at the pile of mail on the coffee table. It appears to just be a bunch of bills.
  
  In the distance, you hear the sound of two drumbeats and a cymbal crash.
  
  > go to the Kitchen
  Entering the kitchen brings a new level of despair for you - the ducks are eating all of your food. You sorely regret that over the past few weeks your friends had convinced you that the Bread Crumb and Oats Diet was the best way to loss those extra pounds. The ducks had ripped open all of your containers and bags, spreading their meal all over the counters, table, and floor. The fridge had been cracked open, likely pried ajar by the birds' deft beaks. One of the drawers was also open under the counter, and a duck had started building a nest using broken Chinese takeout chopsticks and your celebrity hair collection. It seems to be rather fond of your large Gloria Estefan selection.
  
  Strangely enough, the blender on the countertop had been left untouched, although two ducks were eerily fixated on it, staring intently at the pitcher and muttering to themselves.
  
  > examine the table
  You take a moment to sit down at the table and wax nostalgic over the feast that used to be oats and bread. The ducks were happily nibbling on everything, and you silently wonder if there was some sort of "duck diet" you could exploit for personal gain. Lacking any sort of defense against a hundred ducks, however, you shelved the thought for a better time when you would be equipped for duck genocide.
  
  > examine the refrigerator
  The refrigerator was open, and your worst fears were realized - there was still no food in there. You remember, in the before-duck time, when you would play a game with the fridge. You would open the fridge, and see nothing, then close the door. Opening it again, you would hope that something new had materialized inside the fridge, only to be disappointed.
  
  It was a great game, and you always lost.
  
  > examine the drawer
  You approach the drawer, hoping to find something within, but the duck nesting among your kitchen tools is not terribly excited to be moved. Fortunately, you are beyond caring at this point. Picking up the duck from its perch, you place it on the ground, saying "All right, get on your feet."
  
  The duck quacks as it waddles away, irritated, and vowing revenge.
  
  Brushing aside the chopsticks and copious amounts of stolen legally obtained hair samples, you sift through the cutlery for something useful. You find many spoons, a level that most would describe as "far too many spoons," and a pair of potato mashers that were once used to mash potatoes, only for you to realize that cooking the potatoes first would ensure that the mashing would go as planned. As such, they resembled a pair of stainless-steel webbed Ws, twisted into some strange abomination from your misguided cooking skills.
  
  > examine the blender
  Ah, your pride and joy. Well, before the recent diet. Your special Shinobi™ Blender could slice, dice, blend, puree, and do pretty much anything you needed it to do that involved pulverizing something whole into something...less...whole. With a large capacity, capable of fitting something along the lines of 15 bell peppers, it was your favorite tool to use when you attempted to make dinner, or for when you needed confetti for the birthday party you threw for yourself.
  
  As you gaze upon the blender, an odd sensation rushes over you. You don't know what it is, but you find yourself wondering, "will a duck blend?"
  
  > place satchel duck in blender
  You find yourself being pushed by an unknown force, willing you to do its machinations.
  
  You grab satchel duck by the neck, and quickly stuff it into the blender. It quacks in fright, furiously attempting to escape, but its wings were rebuffed by the walls of the blender. It looks at you pleadingly as it struggles, and you ask yourself "why am I doing this?"
  
  This is silly. Why would I put a duck in a blender? What kind of sick person am I becoming? There's no way I'd even consider turning on the blender!
  
  > turn on the blender
  Oh god I'm really doing this
  
  I am about to take this duck, which I've already placed into the blender, and I'm going to turn it on?
  
  If there's a god, I'm certainly going to be judged harshly for this.
  
  If news gets out that I blended a duck, I'll be ostracized among everyone. A pariah! A duckslayer! And not even in a good way!
  
  The unknown force continued its strain on your mentality, and you find yourself placing the lid on the blender.
  
  As your finger moves towards the "Puree" setting, you gaze one last time at satchel duck, who glares back at you, a single, malicious quack emanating from its gullet.
  
  > Yep, you're doing this.
  You turn your head away in disgust as you press the button on the blender. The thought of a duck being shredded into a slurry of blood, bones, feathers, and sinew causes you physical pain, and you curse the name of the entity responsible for making you go through with such a horrific endeavor.
  
  After a minute of puree, you give it a few pulses just to make sure the duck is dead. You know that even if you hate what you're doing, you have to maintain your work ethic. Either go 100% or don't do it at all.
  
  You finally turn your head back to look at the carnage, but you are shocked to see that where there should be a duck smoothie, only a plume of smoke emanates from the pitcher, and the duck is nowhere to be seen.
  
  "Wh-what the..." you stammer as you open the lid, searching for some sort of pocket dimension to which your blender transported the duck. "That's impossible! It was right there! I saw it crying! I was worried that the smoothie would be too salty as a result!"
  
  Your brain furiously tries to cope with the current situation, and you turn around and lean against the counter.
  
  Then, you see the rest of the ducks.
  
  They all had gathered in the kitchen, lined up as if in a military formation, and they all stared directly at you. You tense up, and try a sheepish laugh, hoping to play off the fact that you had just murdered one of their own.
  
  One duck stepped forward, and stopped roughly a foot away from you. It looks up at you, then lets out a low, deferential quack, before bowing its head and spreading its wings wide. The rest of the duck battalion followed suit, and soon every single duck in the house was bowing before you.
  
  "What on earth is going on?" You find yourself questioning not only the scene before you, but whether or not life was indeed a simulation and the program running your character had decided to go rogue. The ducks seem to deify you - worship you, even.
  
  "Was that duck...bad?" You ask the apparent leader of the ducks.
  
  The duck nods.
  
  "Wait you can understand me?"
  
  Again, it nods.
  
  "And I'm, what, your king or something?"
  
  It nods and lets out an excited quack, followed by the rest of the ducks quacking in equal levels of joy.
  
  "And I suppose you want to stay here..."
  
  QUAAAAACK!, the duck chorus rings out.
  
  You slump down the front of the cabinets, slowly realizing your fate. The ducks will never leave. They will follow you to the ends of the earth. This is your life now. King of the Ducks. A smile creeps across your face, and you start to chuckle. It grows into a chortle, finally escalating into full-blown maniacal laughter.
  
  "Hahahahahahahaha...quack...quack...quack...quaaaaaaack..."