Ch 4 - Miu - Making a Dead Frog Dance

Ever wake up from a night on the town and you're hurting in places you never even knew you fucking had? Well, it was like that, but a billion times worse. And I can't even remember what the hell I was up to before this. There's, like, 10 hours of my life I'm never going to get back!

So there I was, waking up from the worst hangover I ever had. The first thing I feel is my head falling forward and it's heavy, ungodly heavy. It felt like there was a bowling ball around my head, weight all around me, but a lot in front. The second was something in my mouth tearing from being pulled down. The moment I jerked my head back, I could feel it in the other direction, and I knew exactly what this was.

This huge metal something is wired in my mouth, or stabbing me, or something. Your worst trip to the dentist is a fucking cakewalk compared to this. Rightfully, I'm freaking out. Who just wakes up sitting up? Or with a torture machine as a new set of braces, freezing their ass off in the most disgusting room you've ever seen?

Before I get the chance to figure out what's going on, this ancient tv turns on. The droning snow is just like my nerves, constantly buzzing at the edge of my consciousness because something is seriously fucked up. It was impossible to tell what I'm supposed to be looking at, but then there's a red, jagged shape that cuts through the noise. And now there's a fucking teddy bear standing in a dark void.

"Wakey wakey!" It sounded like a little kid. I had no fucking idea what to think about this, as if I could before.

"So I hear you're supposed to be the 'ultimate inventor,'" he tells me. "But all you do is make machines to do the hard work for you when you shut off your brain. Doesn't matter if it's 40 winks or 40 grams, huh?"

It shouldn't have been a surprise he knew, but it was. Look, when you need to stay up for days at a time to meet your deadlines, you do what you got to, okay? Plus, I'm the victim here, and you can't prove whatever's in my system wasn't put there by this sicko. And you don't even have a warrant.

Anyways, so this bear knows who I am, he knows my vices, who doesn't? I'm thinking this is some sort of attempt at a company getting their hands on my brain at all costs. That's fucked up, but I could understand where they're coming from.

But it would have been a lot easier if that was the case.

"An inventor is only as good as her mind and her hands," the bear says. "And it really grinds my gears when I see yours squandering away your precious time on Earth. So, Miu, I made my own little invention to help you see the light.

"You're in…let's call it a 'reverse bear trap.' I'm a bear who caught me a human, after all, and it does this!"

The screen switches to a mannequin in an empty room. Instead of a head there's a watermelon and attached to it is this hunk of rusty…something. There's two flanged pieces of metal in the front, almost like the lips of a cartoon bimbo. There's gears and tubes and before I have the chance to figure out what they did, the thing jerks open, splitting the melon in half.

I, of course, try to scream, but that doesn't get me very far. The tv bear giggles.

"Do you like it? I worked really hard on it! With how smart you are, I'm sure you can figure out how it works in no time at all. But I'm not here to test your smarts. No, I want to test your desire to live."

A click behind my head makes me jump. I expect this thing to go off, but instead there's the ticking of a timer. A light snaps on and there's another chair, with another person on it, but they're slumped forward, as well as a table draped in some grimy cloth.

"Since you're so fixated on getting lost in your own mind, you'll have to grow some empathy and explore the head of another. Quite literally, in this case, if you have any hopes of finding the key! Everything you'll need is on that tray. Oh yeah, and you have 60 seconds. Better move quick!"

I jump out of the chair and rip off the cloth; the only thing on the table is a hammer, the kind you'd find in a fucking hardware store, not whatever the hell brain surgeons use. But the guy in front of me is already dead, he hasn't reacted to anything that's happened, and there's still-fresh sutures around his skull from being put back together. And in case it wasn't clear enough as to what I was supposed to do, there's this huge, cartoonish question mark in black paint on his head, too.

There's no time to think, I have to do this as fast as possible. So I'm not wondering who this dude was, why he's in this trap with me, why he has to die. I've never heard anything about Sparkling Justice before, I'm assuming it's just some random sicko with too much time on his hands.

I have no fucking idea just how thick a human skull is, or if what they say about getting super strength when you're fighting for your life is true, but opening him up is the easy part. It's….

…look, I don't know. I know machines, metal, not people. You can make a dead frog dance if you run current through it, it activates the muscles. So maybe that's what all that was. Or maybe I was seeing things, all my concentration was to feeling around in there. A key has a specific, known shape, it's hard, everything that felt like something else wasn't what I wanted, and I wasn't being gentle. I wasn't thinking about mad cow or hepatitis or anything like that, because if I fucking die now, then I won't be around to worry about any of that. It's not like I could tell what came from who and where. It's not like it matters. There's no fucking way you're going to survive a maniac shoving a key into your brain in a basement OR. He woulda died, no matter what happened.

Anyways, I find the key in some fucking corner of I-don't-even-know and rip it out. I feel around the back of this thing on my head and I find a lock. I don't know how long I'm fumbling with it, but there's a click and the weight of everything shifts. I pull the trap off me and it falls to the floor, but not before going off first. The clang of rusty metal violently shifting sounds like a gunshot. I only realize I'm hunched over crying when the fresh taste of blood coats my mouth.

Somehow, I'm fucking alive. I played that fucker's game and won.

So, of course, he has to show up. But it's actually him, the bear, and he's riding a fucking tricycle. He comes out of some dark corner of the room, so he had to be watching me the whole time. And this is obviously a robot, not some kid in a costume, its limbs are too spindly to be a person inside of there.

"Congratulations, you did it!" he says. It's the same voice as before, which is weird. It doesn't sound like one of those synthesized robot voices, but I'm not going to crack it open and figure out how it works. I just want to get the fuck out of here. The absurdity of this whole situation is really hitting me and I can't speak. What can I even say? "Hey, thanks for not killing me anyways?"

The bear has no problem doing all the talking, though. "I'm impressed, Miu, I never took you for the type to fight that hard to escape punishment. So…are you grateful to be alive?"

I nod numbly. I'm not stupid, I'm going to do whatever it is he wants so he'll let me go. But I am. If he just wanted to kill me, he would have, and, for whatever reason, he doesn't. He's okay with him losing this game.

"That's what I like to hear!" The bear giggles. "I hope this is the wake-up call you need to start using your talent for the greater good."

Buddy, if you wanted me to make a time machine, I'd do it, as long as I'd never have to go through something like that ever again.

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