Double Points

new fiction from Claire Hopple

collage by Kyle Anderson

DOUBLE POINTS

by Claire Hopple

Wait, this can’t be right. By the looks of it, I’m sitting out back of a pizza parlor with a horde of rabid opossums beside me. Big mistake.

It’s a Wednesday, which doesn’t mean anything. Especially not to me. Not anymore.

We appear to be eating what I can only assume is leftover pizza. I want to claim it all for myself and give these opossums the dumpster crusts, but they’ll know. They’ll test. Just look at them.

The pizza parlor was a nice place once.

As you can probably tell, morale is low. I’m regretting my major life decision to let myself make major life decisions.

Last thing I remember is picking up a few things at the grocery store. The usual stuff. Not much to speak of. A disembodied voice spoke overhead about getting double points of some kind. These points are highly valued for the obtaining of an acrid liquid that poisons us and our surroundings but makes us impressively mobile. Double the points gets you double the liquid ge…