It's a Choose-Your-Own-Horrible-Death Adventure!

Cafe Society
1

We’ve all seen that movie. Y’know, the one with the teenage girl in the skimpy negligee who wanders upstairs after receiving an anonymous phone call that says “I’m in the house”. The annoying jock who waves off reports of the Urbsville slasher and goes off to make out with his girlfriend in the local lover’s lane. You’ve sat there, screaming at the TV: “Don’t go in there!”

So now I ask: Think you can do better, smart guy? Maybe if you were trapped in Urbsville, three of your friends had met untimely demises and you were isolated on a dark night you would do the same stupid, stupid things. That is what this thread is supposed to find out.

First, some ground rules: You are a typical teenager, in the Central American town of Urbsville. You are a virgin and have never used drugs, so your chance of survival is >0. You do not have access to any weapons except those that might be found in a typical Urbsville house (no guns!). Your aim: survive the night.

Scenario 1): You’re home alone. It’s a dark night, possibly with rain. Suddenly, the phone rings. It must be that anonymous caller again. They’ve been bugging you all night with their throaty rasp/sibilant whisper/toneless threats. You pick up the phone and, during the conversation, inevitably ask, “Where are you?”. The answer: “In the house.” Just then, the lights go out. What do you do?

Scenario 2): You’re in your car (or your boyfriend’s car) on Seducer’s Street: a wooded lane overlooking the town, surrounded by fields and woods. You are making out with your SO (don’t worry, nothing heavy has yet occured, survival is still a possibility!). Suddenly, the radio crackles into life (odd, you don’t remember turning it on).

What do you do? [BONUS: If you can also guarentee the survival of your SO you gain extra points!]

Scenario 3): Endgame. You stand in the Isolated House Without Access to Outside World, knee-deep in the corpses of your unfortunate and uniformly attracitve teenaged friends. The killer is in the house, and the police are very far from arriving (they’re probably dead). Floorplan is what one would expect: Roomy house with lots of interconnecting doors, creaking staircases and conveniently placed household objects that could be transformed into weaponry. You will, of course, have to slay the killer in order to survive. Suddenly, there is a muffled thud from the next room! What do you do?

[You may, if you wish, have the services of one other surviving teenaged friend, previously thought dead. If so, they will be in no way extraordinary- no martial arts, firearms experience or unusual abilities beyond an extensive knowledge of horror movie trivia.]

If I’ve left out an obvious scenario, feel free to add it below.
Get cracking, or get eviscerated!

2

Hmmmmm.

S1 has four possibilities.

S1-a The room I am in has a window to the outside, and is on the first floor. Open window, leap to outside. There’s usually enough ambient light from streetlights, moon, etc., to see once I’m outside, so run for nearest open space, such as road, so I can see what’s coming.

S1-b The room I am in does not have a window to the outside, but is on the first floor. I’m going to assume, as a worst case scenario, that the caller is also on the first floor, putting them closer to me. After all, why go upstairs and give me a greater chance to escape? Most of the rooms in my hourse have something long and loose enough to keep a killer without firearms at bay. (I’m assuming killer has a knife, for maximum gore effect.) Chair legs, lampstands(for electrocuting?)tablelegs, and so on. I have a rolling pin big and heavy enough to crack a skull.

S1-c The room I am in is upstairs but does have a window to the outside. In these movies there is always a treee close enough to the house to climb out into. So I will, but I won’t immediately descend. To get to me the killer will have to either come to the window I went out of, or emerge from the house on the ground. If they come to the window I shimmy down the tree at top speed and run like a deer for the nearest lighted area. I’m good on my feet so I won’t do the stupid falling trick, allowing the killer to catch up. If the killer comes out at ground level and starts to climb the tree I will position myself directly above them, to be able to stomp their hands with my feet if they get close enough, or jab at them with a medium branch I’ve broken off.

S1-d The room I am in is upstairs but does not have a window. This is the worst possibility. I’m still working on this one.

3

S1: Start singing to the guy on the phoe, “we’re going to get ya, we’re going to get ya” I then quickly put on my clown costume and get out my favorite axe. This is going to be a fun evening. I ask Betty (my axe) if she feels hungry, she always does.

4

I think you’d like this comic:
www.choppingblock.org

5

Thanks, I’ll save you till last for that. http://www.choppingblock.org/d/20000815.html

6

Your suggestions are admirable, Baker, but remember we are living in movieland: any running over rough ground in the dark, no matter how short a distance, will result in a sprained ankle. Any tree branch will snap, and so on. Mind you, I like some of your suggestions (the killer almost never attacks in a well lit area, for example).

7

In Scenario 1, I’d get out of the house immediately - all the rooms in my house have at least one window, and if I was on the second floor, I’d hang from the windowsill and then let myself fall (shorter drop than jumping.) Once I was out, I’d run to the firestation (it’s a block away), calling 911 from my cell phone (which is always in my pants pocket) on my way there. That’s one thing I’ve never understood about horror movies - no one ever seems to have a cell phone.

In Scenario 2, is there anything to stop us from simply locking the doors and driving home? Again, if there was any sign that the killer was RIGHT THERE, I’d call 911 on my cell phone.

Scenario 3, assuming “no access to the outside world” means I can’t get a signal on my cell phone, I would do one of three things:

  1. Smear my friends’ blood on me and hide under their bodies.
  2. If possible, exit the house, run into the - are we in the woods? It sounds like it - and hide. If there are cars outside, and I have a key, I’d take off.
  3. If possible, climb out a window on the roof, take off my shoes so I’m not clomping around, and find a spot where the killer can’t see me to hunker down and wait until the killer left, thinking he’d killed us all, or the cops arrived.
8

Do you mean “Central American” as in “Indiana” or “Guatemala”?

In either case, I’d think my chances at finding a gun would be a bit more than “typical.” :wink:

But, anyhoo, for scenarios 1 or 3, I’d probably try to find a blunt instrument, like a Baseball bat (It’s like a Cricket bat, I understand.), a maglite, or a crowbar, and hole up in as secure a room as I could find until morning. The darkness shouldn’t be that much of a problem—movies always have enough everpresent bright blue moonlight to see by, even during a storm.

Of course, my problem is that movie gods—especially horror movie gods—cheat. Killers have been known to ambush people even when the only they could have managed it is if they could teleport, walk through walls, and could read minds. Even when they turn out to just be a guy in a costume with no combat training, and a mask that would restrict their vision. Badly.

So I guess my best chance at living would be to rip off my pants (but not my shirt or coat) break a window to impale my hands with jagged pieces of glass, and run insanely through the house screaming the song Heart of Oak at full volume. That should surprise the cliche demons enough to give me back a fair edge.

9

  1. I’d grab the nearest heaviest bashing object I could find and place my back against the wall trembling, but quietly. And wait. The cops would find the killer dead on the ground with me still beating on him. My pants may still be damp.

  2. I’d turn on the car and speed out of there. Hopefully I wouldn’t run into any trees.

  3. Same as 1.