text: [Themes: Horror, zombie, music, violence, strong profanity, scatological, America, monster girl, mall, abjection, rpg, ghost, occult, sexual content, relationships, romance, vampire, horror]
  
  My dad came home late one night when I was nine and threw an old copy of the Monster Manual by Gary Gygax onto my bed. He woke me up, stressed and shaking at the humiliation his friends had put him through earlier that evening.
  
  He asked me if I wanted the book. I was still groggy, but I picked it up and thumbed through it. "We didn't play Monopoly tonight, Jarret," he told me. "That's because not a one of them can beat me. Instead, they brought out this... thing. Some 'game of the imagination'." He practically spat that last word. "You can move all you like without throwing any dice, but to actually do anything, you need to throw a handful!!" I was both reading entries on the different monsters and paying half-attention to his rant. "Five minutes in, Benson tells me that I come across something called a gorgon. That got me stoned. Why would I play a game that depicted the recreational use of marijuana cigarettes? I got up and left."
  
  "They let you read this during play?" I asked him. He nodded. I turned to page 49. "I don't think they were supposed to. It says right here that the gorgon can turn you to stone. It doesn't get you stoned. And right here are all its weaknesses! How did you not see this? Are you stupid or something? Or what?"
  
  My father snatched back the Monster Manual. He didn't state that what he was going to do was going to hurt him more than it hurt me. (I think all he did say was that he should have left his 'patented Duffy blast' on my mother's face the night I was conceived, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me then.) He instead just quietly gave me a spanking for back talk. But as that 112 page reference to a modern mythology of villainy struck my bony behind, it was as if he were bonding the pages and me for all time. Like directed osmosis through anger or something.
  
  (Okay, it actually wasn't like osmosis at all, but I've sacrificed knowledge in basic chemistry for additional levels in Modern Mythology, so please cut me some slack on the occasional analogy outside of my experience.)
  
  In the week that followed, my father tried to ban Dungeons & Dragons from the house as he had previously banned video games, cursing, Cajun food and music recorded after 1959. I stood up to him on D&D, though, and he caved for the only time in my childhood. Within a week I was running my own games for the kids in my tract. We were creating adventures together with Devils, Demons and Dragons and it was one of the best times of my life. My old man may have never been on the short list for an award from the PTA, but his maniac antics did a better job helping me understand just what I was interested in than the fathers of anyone else I grew up with. And heck, he did have my back that one time I met D&D creator Gary Gygax himself at DragonCon and started kicking him in his bag of magic beans (if you're digging my ditch here) in misplaced, latent vengeance due to how hard the board stock was for those manual covers.
  
  I don't think you've truly bonded with your father until you've spent 36 consecutive hours in a holding cell mocking and taunting an inmate set consisting of multiple thirty-somethings decked out in homemade hobbit, fairie and chocobo costumes, where the only thing the lot of them had in common, aside from a complete lack of human dignity, was relating how difficult it was to sleep late when the sump pump went off.
  
  [Author's Note: This story ollows the story of gaming store employee Jarret Duffy when all hell breaks loose in his mall. Getting past the waves of undead in his path will require ingenuity, imagination, empty demands for the return of pre-casting, the ability to use common mall objects as weapons and twenty-six alphabetic keycaps working together with a functional 'enter' key. It's text, baby!]
  
  > Y.
  Thanks for playing!
  
  My dad came home late one night when I was nine and threw an old copy of the Monster Manual by Gary Gygax onto my bed. He woke me
  up, stressed and shaking at the humiliation his friends had put him through earlier that evening.
  
  He asked me if I wanted the book. I was still groggy, but I picked it up and thumbed through it. "We didn't play Monopoly tonight, Jarret," he told me. "That's because not a one of them can beat me. Instead, they brought out this... thing. Some 'game of the imagination'." He practically spat that last word. "You can move all you like without throwing any dice, but to actually do anything, you need to throw a handful!!" I was both reading entries on the different monsters and paying half-attention to his rant. "Five minutes in, Benson tells me that I come across something called a gorgon. That got me stoned. Why would I play a game that depicted the recreational use of marijuana cigarettes? I got up and left."
  
  "They let you read this during play?" I asked him. He nodded. I turned to page 49. "I don't think they were supposed to. It says right here that the gorgon can turn you to stone. It doesn't
  get you stoned. And right here are all its weaknesses! How
  did you not see this? Are you stupid or something? Or what?"
  
  My father snatched back the Monster Manual. He didn't state
  that what he was going to do was going to hurt him more than it hurt me. (I think all he did say was that he should have left his 'patented Duffy blast' on my mother's face the night I was conceived, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me then.) He instead just quietly gave me a spanking for back talk. But as that 112 page reference to a modern mythology of villainy struck my bony behind, it was as if he were bonding the pages and me for all time. Like directed osmosis through anger or something.
  
  (Okay, it actually wasn't like osmosis at all, but I've sacrificed knowledge in basic chemistry for additional levels in Modern Mythology, so please cut me some slack on the occasional analogy outside of my experience.)
  
  In the week that followed, my father tried to ban Dungeons & Dragons from the house as he had previously banned video games, cursing, Cajun food and music recorded after 1959. I stood up to him on D&D, though, and he caved for the only time in my childhood. Within a week I was running my own games for the kids in my tract. We were creating adventures together with Devils, Demons and Dragons and it was one of the best times of my life. My old man may have never been on the short list for an award from the PTA, but his maniac antics did a better job helping me understand just what I was interested in than the fathers of anyone else I grew up with. And heck, he did have my back that one time I met D&D creator Gary Gygax himself at DragonCon and started kicking him in his bag of magic beans (if you're digging my ditch here) in misplaced, latent vengeance due to how hard the board stock was for those manual covers.
  
  I don't think you've truly bonded with your father until you've spent 36 consecutive hours in a holding cell mocking and taunting an inmate set consisting of multiple thirty-somethings decked out in homemade hobbit, fairie and chocobo costumes, where the only thing the lot of them had in common, aside from a complete lack of human dignity, was relating how difficult it was to sleep late when the sump pump went off.
  Necrotic Drift
  
  I'm here this evening at an Academy Videos store thirty-five minutes from my home with two of my roommates and my best friend. We have to come all the way down here to rent because of the late fees on my memberships at all the video places back in the Fort. I wish I had a good story for why that is the case, but I don't. I'm just poor and had the first Lord of the Rings movie overdue for more than
  two weeks at multiple video chains. I kept it around to mainly prove trivia. (It will probably end up costing me more to show my friends that the elf character Legolas was walking on, and not
  in the snow, than it did for director Peter Jackson to
  implement that effect on-screen.)
  
  Supposedly, Audrey is dropping by tonight to watch a movie, which is why I'm even here to begin with. In the five years we've been together we've dumped each other a total of nine times. She is currently ahead of me six to three. Her most shallow dumping was when she wanted to exclusively hang around a hardcore goth guy who had somehow managed to finance or lease his own cemetery plot. That guy was the black fingernail Alpha male until he missed his first payment. To be fair, mine was when she filled out Student Loan paperwork for me without my knowledge or consent and almost enrolled me into classes at the nearby University of Central Hill. She doesn't like the fact that I work at the Funtime Teen Mall for $5.51 an hour at age 27.
  
  I have to work later tonight, so I guess I'd better pick something and get out of here quickly.