HAM SANDWICH ADVENTURE

"Gosh darn it, I'm super hungry!" you scream at your empty living room. You sit for a moment, trying to figure out what you want to eat. Then you realize...you want a ham sandwich real bad. Like REAL bad. [[Go the kitchen, which is where the food lives.]] [[Try to eat your coffee table.]]

You run into your kitchen, so excited about the idea of a ham sandwich that you can barely think straight. You're so hungry and abuzz with condiment possibilities that your basic comprehension fails you at first. You see several heat machines and a coldness box (with very coldness compartment). [[Calm yourself for a moment.]] [[MAKE MEATFOODS NOW!]]

This was...not a good idea. As you bite into your solid granite coffee table, your teeth explode, shredding your mouth apart. Mouth pieces are everywhere. It's really gross. [[Keep trying to eat the coffee table.]] [[Fall down and bleed a lot.]]

You're not very good at this. With each successive chomp of the granite slab, your mouth falls apart more and more. Since at this rate it can be assumed you just want to keep going, you do. This leads to your silly human jaw falling off. "A's nuh guh" you splortch. Blood is everywhere. Pieces of mouth are all over the table and floor. You're starting to feel a little light-headed. [[NOW go to the kitchen.]] [[Fall down and bleed a lot.]]

This has been a really disgusting path for you. The room is a mess. You no longer have the ability to speak or eat. Blood is pooling all around you. And all you can think as you shuffle loose this mortal coil is how unfair it is that you died wanting a ham sandwich so bad. [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

It's a nice thought, isn't it? That you can obliterate your face on a big block of stone and then continue your ham sandwich adventure. A nice thought, but a dumb and futile one. It's fairly expected from you at this point. As you try to fight off the dizziness and faintness you're feeling in order to head the kitchen, you slip on the puddle of your own bad idea blood and fall, striking your head on the very coffee table you thought looked so delicious. Your last thought as you thump towards death is "I really, really wanted the ham sandwich." [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

''YOU ARE DEAD NOW'' Boy, you really blew it, huh? Now you're dead and you can never ever ever ever who am I kidding? Nothing's stopping you from going back and picking a different path. In fact, I encourage it. The parts where you get dead are the most funnest. Go. Go for it. Live, friend! Be free!

You take a few seconds to center yourself, confident that if you had rushed into the process of making a sandwich, you'd probably be bleeding all over the place right now or somehow crushed beneath your heavy, oddly-balanced fridge. You look around at the kitchen. It's a normal kitchen. Oven. Microwave. Dishwasher (ooh, aren't we fancy?). Et cetera. [[Check the pantry for ham.]] [[Check the fridge for ham.]] [[Check the trash for ham.]]

"MUST HAVE MEATFOODS!" you screech, running full-bore towards the...refrigerator, that's what it's called! The refrigerator! This epiphany costs you your concentration just long enough for you to forget to stop running. But at least you know the name of the thing you slam into at full speed. You bounce off the fridge and land on the linoleum floor. You have enough time to wonder why the area just under the cabinets is so hard to clean when the stainless steel refrigerator you knocked off balance falls on you, crushing your impulsive, hungry body. Just as you fade off into non-existence, you think you smell the faint delightful odor of ham... [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

You open your pantry door on the search for ham because of course that's where you would keep ham, right? A pantry? Right next to the dry pasta and cans of condensed milk should be ham, yeah? Of course not. This is a ham-less pantry, which is typical. We're not talking about SPAM or canned ham here. That's not the kind of sandwich you want. Fool. FOOL. [[Check the trash for ham.]] [[Check the fridge for ham.]]

You open your stainless steel fridge. There's not a lot in there. There are some condiments, a can of Grapefruit Mint Fresca, a box of baking soda, and an empty ham bucket. "I crave a ham sandwich," you think with sorrow, "but cannot make a ham sandwich from these fine ingredients." [[Go to the store to procure ingredients.]] [[Die of sorrow.]]

You found ham in the trash! Good job! You scrape off a layer of coffee grounds and onion...peels? Rinds? What's the outside of an onion called? Well, whatever. It probably doesn't matter to someone who's looking for ham in the trash. You're holding the ham now. As well as you can, considering the layer of slime on it. Dr. Seuss would be proud of how green the ham is and it smells a little bit like the solution you would use to dye eggs for Easter. [[Use the trash ham to make a sandwich.]] [[Come to your senses and check the fridge.->Check the fridge for ham.]]

Fine. You gross monster. You make a sandwich out of your trash ham. It tastes like some unholy cross between pig, fish, and mildew that's been dunked in vinegar. The texture is not unlike what you imagine it would be like to bite into a cat's flattened tongue. It is not satisfying. Half an hour later, you're on the couch reading a copy of DISGUSTING HUMAN MONTHLY when your stomach screams out in terror. It doesn't gurgle or bubble, it SCREAMS. Suddenly every opening on your skin begins to gush with everything that's supposed to be on the inside. Your last thought before your husk finally stops convulsing is "AAARRRRAARGGGHHHbbbbllllrrrrggggghhh..." [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

You make sure that you're appropriately clothed for the outside world and that you have money for purchasing goods and/or services. You are as ready as you'll ever be. Walking out of the front door, you look around for the next place to go. [[Go to the left, where there is eventually a grocery store.]] [[Cross the busy street to the ham sandwich store.]] [[Go to the right, where there's a sheer cliff face.]]

You fall to your knees, screaming and crying. Tears pour down your face. Snot also pours down your face. You eventually strain so hard in your crying and screaming that you rupture things inside you that are best left un-ruptured and you start bleeding all over the place. Trying to make sense of what led you to this point, you try to look around. But your eyeballs ruptured, so even if you could see, it would just be a vision of blood going all over the place. You crumple to the ground. This was fun, wasn't it? It was such a good day. Until the sandwich. The gosh darn ham sandwich. [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

You're about halfway to the grocery store, glad to not be dead at the bottom of ravine or crushed by a ceaseless flow of cars, when you notice an open piece of grating in the sidewalk. There's plenty of room to go around it, but your curiosity is piqued when you hear a voice whispering your name from the open grate. [[Must be a friendly voice! Investigate!]] [[Continue on to the grocery store.]]

"Of course! The ham sandwich store!" You're so excited that you forget one of the fundamental rules of street-crossing. You look neither left nor right and instead, your mind locked into its singular focus, barrel straight ahead into the very very busy roadway outside of your house. When you come to, you vaguely recall bouncing back and forth between five to ten different vehicles ranging from SUVs to hatchbacks to what might have been an ice cream truck. That would explain the ringing in your ears. You look up and see that you've landed right in front of the ham sandwich store! Huzzah! You've made it! You try to get up and celebrate, but it's at that moment you realize your body is now basically a skin sack stuffed with bone dust and you're unable to move. You then have a fuzzy memory of most of your blood exiting you during your journey as well. This is probably not good. As the last of your vision begins to fade, your eyes lock on a sign on the door to the ham sandwich shop that says one simple, sad word: CLOSED [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

Oh, sure. Okay. You pitch headfirst into the neighborhood ravine. During the first leg of your fall, you think back on all of the bad decisions in your life like "buy a house next to a giant ravine" and "go to the right, where there's a sheer cliff face." You smash into an outcropping, knocking off your arms and legs. Sure, that sounds improbable, but this is real life and sometimes weird things just happen. Your head and torso continue down to where the bottom of the ravine begins to slope. You roll, end over end, until what's left of you slams into a bunch of bushes that, wouldn't you know it, have a bee's nest in them. The bees begin to swarm you and before you know it, you're engulfed. They sting you bunches. Through the agony, you have the presence of mind to think "Haaaam...saaaaandwiiiiich..." [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

"Hellooooooooo!" you shout into the hole, excitedly. You don't see anyone in the darkness, but you can make out a double reflection that is probably not the eyes of a horrible goblin king or child-devouring clown spider. The voice, which has a similar timbre to a rake being pulled across a sheet of glass, whispers your name again. Then it whispers, "Come on down, friend." [[Forget this, let's go to the store.->Continue on to the grocery store.]] [[What? He called me a friend! Let's go!]]

You enter the brightly-lit grocery store, excited for the adventure that is shopping for meat. You grab a hand basket and head towards the rows, looking at the signs above for the sandwich aisle. Remembering that there //isn't// a sandwich aisle, you wander around, grabbing the components that will, soon enough, become your delicious new ham sandwich. Once your basket is full, the ingredients start taunting you. Looking around and noticing that the store is surprisingly devoid of other people, you think to yourself "Well, this basket is super heavy now. What if I just make a sandwich right here?" [[Start ripping open packages and build your beautiful sandwich.]] [[Take the separate ingredients up to the register like a normal person.]]

You see a ladder, so you eagerly start climbing down to meet your new friend! It's very exciting, isn't it? Oddly, with each step you take down the ladder, you notice it getting colder and colder. By the time you reach the bottom, you can see in the dwindling light from above that your breath is visible. Intriguing! Something shuffles in the inky darkness. You start to have a little bit of doubt. [[Head back up the later and go to the grocery store.->Continue on to the grocery store.]] [[Find your new best friend!!!]]

You stumble forward into the darkness, shouting "OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE!" when you hear a //whish whish whish// noise all around you. Suddenly you start feeling warmer! When the sewer demon opens its hellfire eyes, flooding you with harsh red light, you can see that what you heard was the sound of half a dozen razor-sharp claws cutting razor-thin slices in your skin! Your new-found warmth comes from your blood cascading down your body! "In the future," you think, "I will not go into sewer grates and follow strange voices." As the grinning, tooth-lined maw of the sewer demon gets closer and closer, you realize that future will last for about the next four seconds. [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

You sit down on the floor in the middle of the diaper aisle and start tearing open food packages. You slap ingredient after ingredient together in a controlled whirlwind of sandwich-making. Mayo. Ham. Mustard. Ham. Cheese. Ham. Lettuce. Ham. Tomato. Ham. Pickle. Ham. All between two slices of delicious, fresh-baked bread (rubbed with ham). At this point, it's starting to feel like stealing. You figure that if you head to the register and pay for everything, then you can eat your delicious sandwich without guilt. "OR!" your stomach suggests, "You could just eat the sandwich right here and take a nap! There's no one around!" [[Head to the front of the store to pay for what you've done.]] [[Eat the sandwich and have a nap.]]

As you approach the front of the store, dragging your heavy basket, you notice that all of the employees and other shoppers are huddled behind the Information Desk. On the other side is a beefy fellow with pantyhose over his head pointing a sawed-off shotgun at them. He's sweating a lot, which isn't pleasant. The group is scared. How you missed this scene when you came in, you're not sure. Or how they didn't happen to see you enter. It's best not to think about it. Just, you know, don't. The pantyhosed bad guy finally notices you and pulls out a handgun, pointing it your way. [[Throw the basket of ingredients at the sweaty bad guy.]] [[Talk your way out of it.]]

Oh no! Your basket is too loaded down with delious sandwich-makin' goodies to lift up high enough to throw! How embarrassing for you! They say you never hear the one that gets you, but you definitely hear the big sweaty robber laughing at your feeble upper body strength before taking you out with his handgun. The good news is that while he's distracted killing you real good, the rest of the patrons swarm the robber and take him down before he can do any more harm. The bad news is that you're already way dead. [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

"Whooooa, buddy," you say. "What's the happy haps?" In this moment, you remember that you're not so great at talking people out of things. The robber mumbles something sweaty from under the pantyhose. "WHAT?!" you scream. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU! TAKE YOUR PANTYHOSE OFF!" Oh, man. He did NOT like that. He did not like that so hard that he expresses said dislike with a few rounds from his hand gun. And, unfortunately, you take his dislike to heart. The good news is that while he's distracted killing you real good, the rest of the patrons swarm the robber and take him down before he can do any more harm. The bad news is that you're already way dead. [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

As you approach the front of the store, carrying your delicious sandwich, you notice that all of the employees and other shoppers are huddled behind the Information Desk. On the other side is a beefy fellow with pantyhose over his head pointing a sawed-off shotgun at them. He's sweating a lot, which isn't pleasant. The group is scared. How you missed this scene when you came in, you're not sure. Or how they didn't happen to see you enter. It's best not to think about it. Just, you know, don't. The pantyhosed bad guy finally notices you and pulls out a handgun, pointing it your way. [[Throw your amazing sandwich at the sweaty bad guy.]] [[Talk your way out of it.]]

You don't eat the sandwich so much as pull it into your body like an amoeba might absorb a bit of algae. There is no time for savoring. YOU EARNED THIS HAM SANDWICH, GOSH DARN IT. Sorry for yelling. You grab some of the soft diaper packages and make a little bed, still thinking it's strange that there's no one around trying to stop you. You curl up on top of your absorbent mattress and are almost immediately asleep. This is the position you are in when the coroner declares you dead. See, what you didn't realize is that when you came into the store, it was in the process of being robbed. As the robber grabbed all the money and went running past you to get to the back door, he slipped on a mayonnaise puddle and dropped his shotgun, which went off, nearly vaporizing your head. MORAL OF THE STORY: Just...so many morals, you know? Can't narrow this one down. [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

You decide that the good of the many outweighs the good of the you or the sandwich. Using your training from years of Madden games on the XBox, you throw the sandwich in a tight spiral right at the robber's head. There's an explosion of ham and other things (but mostly ham) as he falls to the floor, COMPLETELY UNCONSCIOUS SOMEHOW. The patrons and employees cheer! The police are called! YOU HAVE SAVED THE DAY! But all you can do is look at the remains of your beautiful, beautiful sandwich all around the bad guy's sweaty, hosieried head. [[Die of sorrow.]] [[Talk to the store manager.]]

"You did a good job today," says the manager, extending his hand to shake yours. "How can I repay ya?" [["Just doing the right thing is repayment enough."]] [["HAM SANDWICH."]] [[Punch him in the throat.]]

"Just doing the right thing is repayment enough," you choke out, instantly regretting not demanding a ham sandwich or punching him in the throat. But he sees something in your eyes. Maybe it's the look of hunger and loss, knowing that you had held your beloved sandwich for far too short a time before chucking it at a sweaty guy with guns. "Tell ya what," the manager says. "How would you like...?" [[YES?]]

"You're direct. I like that. I'd be happy to ring you up for a ham sandwich." Your vision starts to go red. Your hands start to flex into fists. You feel a throat punchin' coming on. "Ha ha. I'm kidding. Relax! Hero like you? Free ham sandwiches for life. In fact, I own the ham sandwich store down the street. I'll have someone run a fresh hammy sammy to yer place every day. How's that sound?" [["Sounds like I just won the game, sir."]] [[Punch him in the throat.]]

You punch the old man in the throat, sending him sputtering backwards down to the floor. He's trying to yell, but no air's getting out and, well, you probably killed the guy. You probably forgot that the police are still there. And, get this, all of the cops on the scene are brothers. And, get THIS this, the store manager was their dad. You're basically a lump of liquid and lead before any of you hits the ground. Don't punch old people in the throat. Come on. What's wrong with you? [[YOU ARE DEAD NOW]]

"HOW WOULD YOOOOU LIKE...?" [[YESSSSSS?!]]

"...another one of these all-American handshakes? I'll even throw in a pat on the back or two." [["HAM SANDWICH."]] [[Punch him in the throat.]]

''CONGRATULATIONS!'' YOU JUST WON ''HAM SANDWICH ADVENTURE''!!! Have you ever felt so //ALIVE//?! Thanks for going on this hammy sammy journey with me today. I think you and I really got closer as a result of this. Good day to you and many happy ham sandwiches. - Brandon J. Carr Oh, right. If you enjoyed this adventure, let me know on Twitter (@brandonjcarr) or via email (brandon@brandonjcarr.com) or using the ancient eldritch ways (raven's breath three knocks double drinking horn).