text: [Themes: love & dating, dystopia, drama]
  
  It's raining again.
  
  The slosh of water rushing down the hills into the valley and the splash of droplets on the river bring a sweet reprieve to the silence that surrounds me.
  
  I don't know why I'm still alive.
  
  [Author's Note: A short story written and scripted in about four hours. This isn't meant to be a masterpiece or an attempt at being deep. Hopefully it shows that a competent 20 page + story can be written in a weekend's time. Contest entrants: there's no reason to garner SHAME when entering a contest on the site. Just sit down and write. Five Endings.]
  
  > Dead and Gone
  The plague came and went in little more than a year. Most died within a week of showing the first symptoms - black tumors swelling from beneath the skin.
  
  My wife died on the eighth day of her sickness when the baron burnt her alive. Witchcraft the official claim. Nothing more than a ploy to quell the misplaced fury of the commoners.
  
  The baron died the day after. When I caved his skull in with a poleaxe.
  
  > Fire and Blood
  No one raised a sword against me. Perhaps the household guard didn't know what to do. The baron was my uncle. And the plague made me his heir.
  
  But I did not rule. I sat and strummed my lyre upon the battlements, watching the world die around me.
  
  Lightning struck the keep within a fortnight. The timbers crackled and splintered, caught fire and burned throughout the storm.
  
  The commoners rioted and brought their own storm against the walls.
  
  > Here you Stand
  Death did not touch me. Not that night, not the next, not now. Even when the plague corrupted my flesh, I remained and the sickness faded into the annals of time.
  
  And here I stand on the ruined remnants of the barony walls. All alone. With nothing but the sound of the falling rain.
  
  > The Wood
  I went out walking in the wood the other day. The birds don't even sing here anymore. Today proves no different.
  
  The air no longer stinks of death. It's almost sweet and strange.
  
  Hearty oaks and old hickories surround me. I used to think they'd be here long after I'm gone. I'd wonder what they saw from a 100 years ago, what they'd see 100 years from now.
  
  Death did not touch me. Not that night, not the next, not now. Even when the plague corrupted my flesh, I remained and the sickness faded into the annals of time.
  
  And here I stand on the ruined remnants of the barony walls. All alone. With nothing but the sound of the falling rain.
  
  > The River
  The river flows.
  
  My parents had me baptized in her waters as a babe. I fought at the Battle of Muddy Waters far to the south, near the river's mouth, in my younger years. Melody and I married at her headwaters in the north as the river surged with fresh spring snow-melt.
  
  The river and I labor on even as the world passes us by.
  
  Death did not touch me. Not that night, not the next, not now. Even when the plague corrupted my flesh, I remained and the sickness faded into the annals of time.
  
  And here I stand on the ruined remnants of the barony walls. All alone. With nothing but the sound of the falling rain.
  
  > The Empty Village
  The commoners all either died from the plague or left these lands long ago.
  
  Thatched cottages lie in disrepair. Some resemble nothing but rubble, a spare few stand strong, and others have collapsed roofs or broken walls.
  
  The earth has reclaimed the bulk of the fields on the outskirts. Shrubs and small trees grow in the untilled soil. Only a lone scrap of land remains plowed. The sparse bit I work by myself.
  
  Death did not touch me. Not that night, not the next, not now. Even when the plague corrupted my flesh, I remained and the sickness faded into the annals of time.
  
  And here I stand on the ruined remnants of the barony walls. All alone. With nothing but the sound of the falling rain.
  
  > The Ruined Barony
  The keep exists as a mere ruin, a shadow of the past.
  
  Charred timbers rot away in clusters. New sections collapse with every passing year.
  
  I cleared a path to the old courtyard years ago. The old baron lies buried there. I piss and shit on his grave.
  
  Something... more than a feeling, tells me that the book of fate meant for my wife and I to survive this plague together, even as the rest of the world died. And my whoreson of an uncle murdered her and rewrote the story.[Themes: modern, humor]
  
  It was somewhere between the lower radiator hose and the overflow tank that your father walked quietly into the garage. You try not to acknowledge him too much these days. He can be a pathetic man if you let him. Mumbling, wondering out loud, trailing off. That's what he's like when he's content. If you don't ask him what's going on, at least it will force him to spit it out on his own. Finally, when you get the coolant and go to pour it in the tank, he speaks up.
  
  "Woah! Woah! What the fuck are you doing?!"
  
  That's what he's like when he's not content. Now he's making you angry. You know what he wanted - he came down here because he wanted to watch you work until he got a chance to do what he's doing right now.
  
  "Son, you can't just..." he sputters for effect. "I mean," he continues, shaking his head. He sees the anger on your face and sneers back at you. "Look, if you don't want to do it right, go right the fuck ahead. I just thought you loved your car."
  
  If you were ever going to whack your dad across the head with a breaker bar or a tire iron or any one of those heavy tools within a few feet of you, it would be right now. But you really do need his knowledge. And he's old, and pathetic. And despite this he still knows how to make you feel worthless. So you don't.
  
  Because you don't reply, he assumes you do want his help, so he snatches the coolant and orders you to grab the white funnel out of the gray box, which you do.
  
  "Now, this is how you want to pour the coolant. See, this way you can tell when it's full or when you pour too fast. See?"
  
  Of course, you don't see because he's in the way.
  
  "Yeah," you say with irritation. He stops pouring and turns.
  
  "You need to watch your fucking tone!" He thrusts what remains of the jug of coolant into your hands, then storms away. "Do the fucking thing yourself if you don't want my help!" he bitches as he goes back into the house.
  
  Thank God!
  
  You do the fucking thing yourself and four gallons later, the job is done. You start her up and she sounds fantastic. You take her out, don't bother to close the garage door and spin the back wheels when you hit the road. Same old road, same old neighborhood, the nondescript type. It's not as special as what happens there.
  
  It's early November and late in the day. Your Corvair likes this weather. Those Jap cars, they don't like or dislike this weather, because they don't have personalities, but the Chevy is something else. Fifty years old and she's still Miss Personality.
  
  Since you got your license two weeks ago, you spend less and less time at home.
  
  They say there's nothing finer than being behind the wheel of your own car, and maybe it's true, but you're not what you'd call happy at the moment. You feel good, sure... because you're anticipating that you're about to do something that's going to make you happy. Some kind of need pulls at your soul; some kind of aggression; some kind of rage that makes you smile and turns your foot to lead.
  
  When you kick in the four-barrel, something definitive happens in your mind. The need is more immediate. You have to pull your plan out of a hat and make it real, now. And that plan is going to be...
  
  [Author's Note: Everyone knows that a big part of playing choose-your-own-adventures is making wise choices. Not anymore. P.S. This game is SHORT!! I'm telling you now so you don't have to tell me later. In fact, it's really just a test run. I want to know what you do and don't like about my writing so I can take it into consideration when I make a game of normal length in the near future.]
  
  > get laid
  Good, that's real good. You're going to get laid.
  
  The world is a pretty fucked up place. You know? It's like this. Here you are, you're not a bad looking guy, and you have a car. And there's all these hot girls who you would enjoy screwing. They're on the street, on the soccer field, in their houses, and they would probably enjoy it too. Right? Well, it's not happening. Here you are, driving down main street, and there's no girl in the passenger seat reaching over at your dick, no girl home alone waiting for you to get there so you can do it. AND IT PISSES YOU OFF!!
  
  Looks like it's up to you to make it happen. Logistically speaking, it should be the easiest thing in the world.
  
  But it's not.
  
  Fortunately, you have this great internal organ that's going to help you out here. It's called a 'brain,' and it's thinking of some possibilities you should consider on your quest to get laid.
  
  Plan A: There's a redhead in your engineering technology class who you've been flirting back and forth with for a little while. She gave you her number the other day. You'd have to go back home to get it, but that's just as well, since you don't have a cell phone. You would have called her sooner, because she's actually pretty damn hot. There's just one problem... you don't remember her name!
  
  Plan B: You've known this girl called Arianna for a long time. She's slightly less hot than Plan A, but you've always been attracted to her because she reminds you of yourself. So much so that you can tell what she's thinking a lot of the time, and you can tell that she thinks you're all that, so you should probably have this one in the bag if you go for it. You know where she lives because you did a project for school together once. Now that you think of it, you're not sure why you haven't made a move on her before.
  
  Plan C: Finally, a girl named Jocelyn lives a few houses down from you. She will fuck you. You know this because she has offered. The catch: she weighs 300 pounds.
  
  So, what will it be?
  
  > Plan A
  Hot redhead? Sign me up! So you pull a uie and a few minutes later, you're on the phone.
  
  "Hello?" answers a gruff male voice.
  
  "Hey. This is Titular Character. Is your daughter around?"
  
  "She has a name, you know."
  
  "Yeah. I know."
  
  "Hello?" It's the girl.
  
  "Uh, hey! How you doing?"
  
  "Alright. And yourself?"
  
  "Never better. Hey listen, uh... I was just thinking, you know, let's get together sometime."
  
  "Sounds great! I... hang on." You hear the father shouting at her in the background.
  
  "Trish, your mother wants to see you in the kitchen."
  
  "Yeah, be there in a minute."
  
  Perfect! You took a chance and it paid off. Now you just have to wrap up this conversation and you're in.
  
  "Ok. Like I was saying, sounds great. I'm free on... Saturday the 23rd."
  
  Well. This is some bull shit.
  
  After you finalize your plan to go grab a burger in three weeks, you start heading back to the car to get something else done, but your father stops you before you get to the door.
  
  "Boy, where do you think you're going?"
  
  "Out."
  
  "What makes you think that?"
  
  "I know you're getting at something, now are you going to spit it out some time today?" A disgusted look crosses his face.
  
  "I thought I told you that your mother is making meat loaf today."
  
  "...Don't get snappy with me, boy. AND, are you retarded or some shit? And you're going to show that senile old bitch how to make something I can chew, because I'm sure as fuck not going to do it. I have Spider Solitaire that needs playing."