From Future Streaming Services User Generated Content #2, by Jason Herbert

Everybody in our town carries adrenaline shots. Also, they only go under in pairs. Hashtag, no solo is a rule, a recommended parental guideline. A necessary one, because, if you die alone you might never come back. Because, when you play you can unlock euphoria. Because, there are times you could seizure/stroke your way out of a real life.  Nobody wants to OD.  

Lately, I’ve used up multiple lives in a computer my brother built and all my dreams have become Elmo in front of mushroom clouds and the ghosts of black Friday shoppers.    

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On behalf of @FutureStreamingServices
Read This: / Smell cinnamon:

There is a reason all the doors only open out:  
     Holiday Shopping, Peak ‘90’s Edition.
     Get barricaded in to the hyper real, last-man-standing competition with Department
Store Deathmatch.
As always:
The only goal is to survive.

The only reason I am even here to tell this story is a narrow escape from the stampeding crowd. A desperation jump through the tear in time of a Christmas shopping line. A line of code in Department Store Deathmatch (registered trademark).  

These nerds, they use a random patch almost every time and it scares the shit out of me. And last game a propane blast singed the fur right off the toy and a lot of people couldn’t get away.

Do you know what nightmares are made of? I will tell you:  

The screams of burning victims in a pinecone fire. A furless Tickle-Me-Elmo programed to kill.

But never mind any of that. This is a story about adrenaline shots.  

I’ve been stuck three times. For no other reason than everybody had one and I was at the bar and I was drunk.  

We have to watch our backs.

Dennis Scott Herbert is dangerous. He is a graduate of Mankato’s MFA program and winner of the Toy Wilson Blethen Fine Arts award. His writing was recently featured on Fear No Lit’s Show Your Work podcast and has appeared in Paper Darts, Squalorly, the Minnesota Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and Hobart among others. He currently lives and writes in Lancaster, PA.