If you’ve ever spent any time in the mountains of Canada, you know that everything can go to hell in an incredibly short amount of time. You’ve learned that even the best laid plans can fall apart, come crashing down around you in a heap of metal and fire and pain. You’ve learned that intentions, no matter how good in theory, amount to jack fucking shit.
If you’ve ever spent any time in those mountains, you’ve learned that it’s important to remain calm, even when, especially when, there is a good chance that your story is about to come to an end.
This is an important lesson to remember should you ever find yourself in the kitchen of a cannibal’s banquet hall, an enormous man’s 9mm aimed at your head, and there, on the table Virginia lay when you butchered her, your friend Dave, unconscious, but tied down just in case.
It’s important to remain calm should you ever find Walter pacing the floor of the kitchen, big-ass meat cleaver in his hand, saying something you can’t quite hear because you’re just coming to, and there’s this awful ringing in your ears, but you can tell by the look of him that he is more than a little miffed.
Remain calm if you see Angela, bound and gagged on the floor in the corner. Calm if you see Dick, standing near the door, silent and staring at his shoes.
It’s important to remain calm.
As the ringing fades and Walter’s increasingly angry voice comes into focus, remain calm. As you hear him screaming things like “poisoned the food” and “treated you like a son” and “treacherous little bastard”, remain calm.
Lose it now, and you’re dead. Just like that. And nobody will ever know. And a story is only a story if you can tell it to someone.
So it’s important to remain calm when you finally realize exactly what’s going on here. Remain calm when you remember Walter opening the door of a thousand locks, only to find Gregor dead on the floor, his own personal plate spilled all over. And when you remember Walter running into the banquet room, only to find a good twenty people dead, some sprawled over the tables, some on the floor, some just sitting there. At least they were already dressed for their funerals.
Remain calm when you remember Walter’s face, the way he looked at you when he put it all together.
It’s important to remain calm when you remember yelling at Angela to get the fuck out of here, now, and then pushing Walter to the floor. It’s important to remain calm because you weren’t calm when you did this, and it got you a pistol-whipping from a very large man who’d fucked and killed a friend of yours.
If you’re alive, you’ve learned that getting knocked out by the handle of a gun is unpleasant, and the hangover is even worse. You’ve learned it’ll fuck with your short term memory, and you might need a few minutes to figure out what’s going on.
It’s amazing what you can learn.
I, for one, learned that my plan was almost a total success. Almost. All that was left was the cool kids’ table, the prom court, the royalty. All that was left was to figure out what to do from here. All that was left was one last Mad Lib.