Glieuaeiel's DJ

Under Siege (7:06)

I'm discussing something with Mom and one of my younger sisters when we suddenly see a crowd of torches through the front window. A crowd of people, carrying torches up our driveway. "Check it out," I tell my sister. "There's a mob outside."

I run upstairs. Dad passes me on the way and tells me to close all of the doors and windows and generally try to seal the house against invasion. So I run into the master bedroom and start closing everything. But there are a few balconies and other such things that have complicated methods of shutting, so I don't think I'm going to finish in time. I think I see a few shadowy figures already running around on the roof; they could be here in moments. I decide I'll try to gain myself some time by knocking a few of them back to ground level.

Somewhere I find a rope to swing on and a place to jump from, so that I can swing in and rabbit-kick people off of the roof. Turns out my aim is pretty good with the jumping, and they never see it coming, so I knock down a couple of them. I'm a bit apprehensive that I might kill them if they land on their necks, but at the same time, they are threatening my family's safety, and it would be a definite step forward in turning back the attack. But none of them actually die. There's one woman in particular who always seems to keep her balance and land on her feet, unscathed. It's frustrating, because I feel like I still haven't dented the onslaught.

I go back inside the house. When I walk into one room on an upper floor, I realize that there's someone else in here already, and he's not a friend. There's a pile of guns in the middle of the floor, and we both dive to grab a shotgun. Basically it comes down to who gets the first shot. But we both start pulling the trigger, and nothing happens.

Empty. Both of them.

We drop the shotguns and grab small machine guns instead. He's got a head start on me, so I need to take cover while I reload. I knock over a table and try to keep it between us by carrying it around while he shoots at it from the other side. Obviously, though, I have only seconds--somehow he'll find a way around it. I finish reloading and stick my head above the table to shoot at him, but I think he might have got me first.

Frags:

• I look in the mirror and am startled to find that my hair's grown long enough for me to pull off a sort of effeminate look. I spend a minute looking at it from different angles.