I took a walk to the store. They were selling home-made ice cream. I bought some and ate it on a bench outside the store. Very refreshing.
But then, suddenly, I felt a disturbance in my stomach and I knew that something was very wrong. My fears were confirmed when a circular saw blade erupted from my abdomen in a fountain of blood and frothy ice cream. I stopped paying attention at that point. My head went back and the world took on that washed-out dreamy quality that indicates you’re going into shock. In a detached sort of way, I felt the blade sawing me in half horizontally. You wouldn’t believe what having your own spinal column sawed in two sounds like.
When the cutting was through, my upper body toppled to the side and rolled off of the bench, flopping onto the pavement like a sack of meat. In my semi-conscious state, I looked up at my legs and lower torso, which looked for all the world as though nothing were amiss. That is, if you didn’t move your eyes up too far.
A small sphere with a saw arm attached to it floated up out of my lower body, dripping blood and ice cream. A gleaming red eye regarded me.
Then I died.
What, you wanted a point? You’re not alone. I mean, someone mixed a disassembled robot in with some ice cream that I ate, thus allowing the robot, once unfrozen, to reassemble itself and saw its way to freedom, killing me in the process. Talk about your meaningless deaths.
So how am I telling you this? The author is well within his rights to claim artistic license, but that’s not the case here. I was fortunate in that a roving band of dwarf hamster mechanics was in the area and heard the commotion. Commotion, incidentally, that was created not only by my bisection but also by the shotgun blast that tore the robot apart mere seconds after my passing. Apparently someone at the store had an outdoorsy bent and had a stocked gun rack in their vehicle. The robot was blown to smithereens.
A few moments after that, the dwarf hamster mechanics arrived and were able to reassemble and resuscitate me. In gratitude, I hosted a hamster party at my apartment that weekend. It was really fun.
Ethan Abides 