Steel clashed and the sound of peppered machine gun fire drowned out the audio of men as their dying screams rose up amongst pixilated smoke.
"Damn it all, Josh! Nathan and Carter are closing in on our flanks!" a feminine voice cried out amid the clamor.
"I know, Jackass, I'm trying!"
"Not hard enough apparently. And don't call me that!" Her voice fell for a moment as the furious clacking of a game controller reverberated into the headset. "Now hasten your sorry ass forth and gain some ground so I can switch to my sniper rif-Shit! Did you seriously just drop!? Tell me you didn't."
"Yup, looks like you're on your own on this one, Jackie," Josh laughed into the headset as the echo of submachine guns sounded in the distance. "Best of luck to you, me amigo. I'm out."
"What? No!" she cried into the mike. "So help me, Josh, I will put itching powder in those condoms you hide in your glove compartment, don't think I won't!" But the line had clicked off.
"Huh, a perfectly good threat, wasted," she muttered dejectedly, storing it in a mental filing cabinet for future reference. She threw down her x-box controller in defeat, disgusted by the loss, though it was clearly due to Josh's ineptitude as a gamer.
"Whatever happened to a competent gaming partner?" she sighed as her x-box powered off, its echoing farewell tune ringing in the still silence of her apartment.
Grumbling to herself, Jacqueline lazily pulled off her headset, her mussed, smoky curls in a state of disarray. She rose stiffly, stretching her five feet two inches to the max before she made her way to the kitchen, weaving her way through the stacks of classic literature and game cases that littered her room.
The tile was cold on her feet as she strode into the kitchen on a laudable quest for food. Whistling the theme to The Avengers, she yanked open the fridge. Shaking off the chill, Jacqueline felt the cool air nip at her bare legs as her oversized t-shirt failed to warm her.
Being utterly void of all that is delectable, the fridge was abandoned, and Jacqueline began the tedious search for ramen in the cluttered closet that dared call itself a pantry. The search was futile. Grumbling, she cursed her terribly male, particularly voracious roommates for their insatiable appetite. "Austin always eats all the ramen, God damn it," she muttered.
And so her search continued.
The harsh ring of her phone pierced the silence, startling Jacqueline into dropping her bag of Twizzlers. She caught it mid-fall, dodging catastrophe. "Crazy Bitch" jammed from her cell, and she knew the ring tone could only mean one person.
Clutching her Twizzlers possessively (knowing they were her emergency stash), she rushed to her cell as it lay hiding amid the couch blankets. She flipped open the cover in a rush.
"Hello? Jacqueline? It's Charlie."
"I know who it is, stupid, that's what caller ID is for," Jackie replied, her words lathered in sarcasm.
"Oh. Yeah. I guess you're right, Sherlock," she laughed. "I was afraid you wouldn't answer for a sec."
"You and me both, my friend. And you interrupted me in my noble quest for food in the jungle my roommates call an apartm-"
Charlie interrupted. "Jackie. I need you to come to Huntingdon."
"What? Now? I have to change the head liner of my bike today, and I have a critique on Longfellow's oh so very vitriolic review of Poe's Eureka due on Mon-"
"Jackie. Listen to me. It's important."
Jacqueline cocked her head and fell silent, listening intently as Charlie spoke urgently into the phone. Her voice fell to a decrescendo as Jacqueline's grade school friend related the events of the last few days. Jackie nodded here and there, her mind no longer on the Twizzlers clutched in her hands, but on the happenings that lay much farther south from the Notre Dame campus.
Charlie finished speaking.
After a few moments Jacqueline replied, "I'll be right down."
The line clicked off.