“Good evening, Mr. Stryker. A pleasure to see you again.” I hold the door open as Mr. Stryker, a chubby raccoon who wears sunglasses for the “cool” factor, wobbles in. He holds an internet router in his tiny hands.
He sets it on the coffee table while I close the door. “Have you been enjoying that drama of yours since its revival?”
“No,” Mr. Stryker’s gruff voice replies. “It’s terrible. They’ve got Suzie’s character all wrong.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Some shows are better dead.”
“No matter.” Mr. Stryker wiggles his ass as he climbs on the coffee table himself and sits on it. “I have another job for you. It’s my internet connection. It’s busted. Completely went out yesterday. How an I supposed to see how else they’ll ruin my show with Bulu??”
“That is troubling. Let me take a look.” I pick up the router and examine it. A single light blinks faintly, but the router is cold to touch and makes no sound.
“Well, the internet itself is fine,” I tell him. “It’s the router that’s dead. Old and worn. The internet’s too new age for it. They update it all the time, you know.”
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t afford another bloody router! Things are a fortune now.”
I tap my fingers on the router, thinking. “I have a better idea. Where do you mainly watch your Suzie?”
“My laptop,” says Mr. Stryker. “It’s in the car right now.”
“Grab it, won’t you? I think it’s time we freed your internet from this decrepit thing.”
The laptop sits on the coffee table, covered in petals of lilies and orchids, in order to call the spirit of the internet to it. On the floor next to it, Mr. Stryker and I smash the router to pieces with sledgehammers, releasing the captive internet.
Soon, a gravelly voice erupts from the laptop.
“I may have said I didn’t need a man before, but a woman can change, you know!”
“There it is!” Mr. Stryker cheers as he rushes to the laptop. “Oh, it’s out again. Now it’s back. It’s coming and going, but better than not at all. What do I owe you?”
I look down to the floor. “The remains of your router should be enough. I’ll be able to make something new from it.”
“Done!” Mr. Stryker slams the laptop close and starts to waddle out the door. “Can’t thank you enough!”
As he leaves, I can’t help but wonder why he puts so much effort into watching a show he doesn’t like. Raccoons. So different from necromancers.
Just a short and silly story from a solo journaling game I played a few months back! When I rolled “raccoon” as my client, I knew I HAD to write this. The game is Six Figures Under by Blinking Birch Games!
You can read my other one shots and solo journalling games here!