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Chapter 15 by Karbenyte Karbenyte

What's next?

You have a mellow evening at home

Back in your apartment, as evening rolls around you have a quick, convenient bite to eat - nothing great, but at least your belly is full - and you settle in for an evening of just doing nothing. You contemplate firing up your computer and doing some online gaming, but so far you've spent most of the day with your brain firmly in the "off" position and you don't want to ruin the day by starting to think about things.

You end up on the couch, binge-watching forgettable action movies on one of the various streaming services at your disposal. At a certain point it's hard to tell where one film stops and the other starts, and you'd be hard pressed to remember the titles of anything you've watched within minutes of the credits rolling. Still, mindless entertainment has its place.

Later in the evening, as you watch another round of Vin Diesel yelling at things with a little under half of your conscious mind and attention, you pull out your phone and start flipping through the good ol' internet. You don't have any messages, emails, or the like, so you decide to take a few minutes to check the news.

"City Council to Vote on Fate of Downtown Library Dropbox," reads the top local story.

Must be a slow news day, you think to yourself. You scroll a bit further past more stories you don't care about - a human interest piece interviewing a downtown-area hot dog vendor, a puff piece about a pet project of the author... Nothing really catches your eye or stands out as interesting until you hit a targeted ad, of all things.

"Silverdreams Books and Collectibles Going Out of Business Sale," the ad reads. "Blowout prices on all items! Books! Incense! Clothing! Replica and Decorative Swords! Everything Must Go!"

You never really cared too much about stores like that - the sort of that sells mystical-sounding nonsense to the kind of person who unironically uses phrases like, "spiritual, but not religious," in regular conversation, and sells mass-marketed peace of mind to aging ex-hippies and imitation-pagan shiny things to bored highschoolers who want to piss off their conservative parents. Still, though, it's a shame whenever any longstanding local business goes away, and while you've never been into the store itself, you know where it is, right downtown, not far from your office, your favorite pub, and a handful of other local businesses you patronize every now and again.

On a whim you click the ad and are taken to a website designed by someone who may well have had "AOL circa 1997" in mind as the look they were going for. There is some basic information about the store - you hadn't realized it was in operation since 1983! Apparently, the founder and proprietor of the store recently passed away and her son is not particularly interested in running the store himself, so after starting to wind things down for a few months, he's finally selling off all their remaining merchandise and closing up shop for good. You reflect for a moment on how long the store had been there, apparently still in its original location. You remember walking by one afternoon when you were a teenager, on your way to the music store with your friends. You recall virtually drooling over a gleaming, ornate prop sword hanging in the shop window. You had always liked the idea of having something like that hanging on your wall, but never convinced yourself to cough up the money to buy one. Never

"All merchandise up to 80%!" a large heading in Papyrus font proclaims to you. "No serious offers refused!"

"Alright, you've convinced me," you say out loud to no one in particular.

You make a mental note to pop by store tomorrow. As you close your web browser, a pounding nu-metal anthem starts playing form your TV as the screen fades to black. The movie is over, it's getting late, and you decide to hit the sack.

What's next?

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