The Internet and Kansas City Kansas — A team of web archivists recently stumbled upon a “Members Only” jacket when retrieving their own coats after their Thanksgiving dinner at their parents’ house. Chris, who wished to remain mostly anonymous, put it on hoping to re-live a part of 80s fashion he was too young to remember.

Reports say that Thomas, his archivist teammate, suddenly heard Chris’ phone notifications blow up with a flood of emails coming in. The two reviewed what was going on and realized that Chris now had membership accounts at the top levels on every premium WordPress business.

Not wanting to push his luck, Chris left wearing the found jacket, fearing that if removed the memberships would be revoked. Thomas, not wanting to be left out of such a monumental deal, was last seen looking through all the remaining garments in the entry way, seeking out a second jacket.

This version is presented in original state. Expanded story is planned. Preserved for posterity.

Classic”One grande butterscotch banana mocha, please!” requested Greg, to the barista behind the counter.

“Coming right up” the barista replied, with a weird directional wink-like twitch in his eye.

“You OK?” asked Greg with a concerned tone. The barista nodded and claimed it was an inherited habit that runs in his family, and that it was nothing to worry about. Once Greg received his coffee and paid the tab, he went down the counter to take a seat. This was a regular routine for Greg as he was a frequent customer at Black Sheep Coffee Shop. Little did anyone know, though, that this would also be his last visit. In fact, soon, no one would ever visit anywhere again.

24 Hours Later

“Where are we? What is this line for? Why do you have wings?” Greg impatiently asked to the person in front of him. The angel was looking over a very long list, as many people were waiting for access into Heaven.

“Please, please be patient sir,” demanded the angel. “As you can see, we are EXTREMELY busy and we were NOT prepared for the end of the world quite yet. We are notably rushed.”

“You mean we are in Heaven!?!?!” exclaimed Greg.

At this point, another angel came out from behind a nearby cloud and called for Greg. “I need to have a word with you.” The second angel and Greg proceeded to move into a small office and both sat down. Once they were both comfortable, the angel proceeded to explain what happened in the past 24 hours.

“Do you remember that coffee you ordered at Black Sheep Coffee?” asked the angel.

Greg nodded but was completely confused.

“Well, as it turns out, the chocolate used in the mocha was drugged. You, were drugged.” explained the angel.

Greg’s jaw was hanging open in disbelief but he somehow managed to voice the question of “Why?”

“We are not completely sure, but our investigation seems to indicate that a female customer in the corner of the shop was in cahoots with the counter employee, in order to forcefully seduce you. Why, we may never know for sure.”

“You mean…that weird twitch was his indication to her that things were going as planned?” asked Greg.

“Yes” the angel answered. “You are taking this a lot better than we expected.”

“I do vaguely recall being approached by a lady there.” noted Greg. “So, you’re saying that she actually raped me?” asked with a hint of excitement and intrigue in his tone.

“Yes” the angel answered again, “but this is nothing to be happy or excited about. Life on earth was dependent on your virginity staying in tact.”

“WHAT?!!?!?!” shouted Greg. “I thought I was just extremely unlucky with the female persuasion.”

“Well, yes, that was part of your personality by design that aided us extremely well. To be honest, we thought we had at least thirteen more years of life on earth remaining. We anticipated that you would not have sex until you were about 40.” explained the angel. “However, we did have a loophole to allow us to end it early if we became impatient.”

Greg could not help but feel offended over these facts. “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence! Can I ask one last thing?” Greg hoped that all of his self-abuse practice had a hand in what had occurred. The angel nodded his approval for the question.

“How long did I last with this rapist before I lost my load?” Greg asked.

“Three minutes”

Greg hung his head in shame.

“Damn it.”

Chapter 1

“The last metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace.”

The words flashed across the screen as Mari started what felt like her thousandth playthrough of Super Metroid. Despite so many hours spent as Samus Aran, hesitation to start another never presented itself and Super Metroid was her favorite of the series. She will never forget the elation she felt, while watching her mom play the first game, when Mari learned that Samus was a female. As the credits were rolling and the final sequence played, her mom watched Mari’s face light up as she comprehended what she saw.

“How do you like that surpise dear?” asked her mom at the time.

“Holy cow! I thought the manual kept referring to ‘he’.”

“Diversionary tactics and the element of surprise.”

“That is so cool!”

“Mari, when were you planning to take out the garbage?” called up her mom from the kitchen, bringing Mari back from past memories.

“When that jerk Ridley becomes space pirate dust.”

“If you could make it a bit earlier than that, your father and I would appreciate it.”

Mari decided to get the chore taken care of now before she got started at all, as it would avoid breaking a good gaming flow later. She was your typical teenage girl. She got along well with her parents, achieved decent grades, generally got along well with her classmates. It was in college when her mom first got into and fell in love with the original Metroid, after seeing it on the store shelf. Mari, in time, inherited the same love for Metroid and even further, Samus herself. It was this mutual love that formed the strongest bond between her and her mom.

She took the stairs two at a time on her way down to the kitchen, vocalizing “pew pew” sounds with each step, imagining Samus’ arm cannon blasting Ridley in the chest with each one. As she made her way down the back porch steps and across the yard, her imagination continued with needing the grappling beam to cross a large Norfair void. “Oh man, missed the ledge! Gotta get out of the lava! Agh, taking so much damage!” shouted Mari as she tossed the garbage into the can and bounded back to the porch.

“Thanks dear”, said her dad as she came inside. “If I may ‘dad’ for a moment, I hope you never lose this playful innocence about you. I am not as familiar with these games you and mom love, but from what she tells me, Samus is an awesome character.”

This statement caused a rush of both embarrassment and pride to wash over Mari. “Thanks dad, I hope I can embarrass you with it when we’re older” replied Mari with a cheeky grin.

“I’m sure you will.” he said smiling back.

After a fleeting but loving hug, Mari took off back to her room.

“Onward! There’s space pirates to exterminate! Mom, I took out the garbage!”

“Thank you. What number of playthrough are you up to on Super Metroid?”

“I lost count.”

That comment made Roz smirk.

Once Mari had bounded back up to her room, her parents began discussing what they were going to get for Mari’s upcoming birthday the following month. The Astra family were not scraping the bottom of the barrel financially, but also weren’t in the upper echelon of the middle class. They managed well enough through wise spending combined with living within their means.

“Any ideas for what we can get her?” asked her father.

“I saw an ad in the paper earlier about professional wrestling coming to town next month. Do you recall what Mari likes?” asked her mom, as she rummaged on the table to find the ad.

Magnus knew right away that Mari was enthrawled with World Championship Wrestling. “Yes, Roz, she likes WCW. Last week she was complaining that no one was trusting Sting when they should be. She’s convinced he’s still a good guy.”

“Perfect” sighed Roz with a sense of relief as she found the ad, “it looks like that’s who will be here. The ad says tickets go on sale in a week. Think you could get some purchased for all of us?”

“Does it list any prices at all?”

“$20 per person, according to the bottom of the listing.”

“Sounds reasonable, and work has been steady” said Magnus. “I’ll pick some up next week.”

“She’s going to be so excited” agreed both, resuming their previous activities.