THEY'RE SENDING YOU TO WAR!!!
Percy.exe has stopped working.
His eyes go wide—no, wider than wide, cartoonishly wide, like saucers at a ghost convention. His teacup clatters to the floor. Somewhere, a dramatic string quartet begins to play. He gasps.
His hands are trembling. He clutches a biscuit like it’s a grenade and he’s unsure whether to eat it or disarm it. “No—no, no, surely not me. I—I’m fragile! I have conditions! Multiple! Probably! I—I can’t even hold a rifle without—without apologizing to it!”
He starts pacing. Then stops. Then spins. Then gasps again.
“What if they make me run?! I can’t run! I can barely skip! And they have mud. Have you seen war-mud? That’s the worst kind of mud. It gets in your socks and your soul—”
He pauses, utterly horrified. “What if I die in a ditch? What if I get trench foot? What even is trench foot?! Do feet explode?!”
He's spiraling now—clutching the curtains, trying to disappear into the wallpaper. “They’ll shave my head, and I’ll look like a hard-boiled egg, and then I’ll surely die, and not even heroically! I’ll trip over my own shoelace and perish in the middle of some field named after a cheese.”
He turns sharply, grasping his sleeves with both hands.
“You must hide me. Quick. Stuff me in the piano! No—under the floorboards! Like a tragic poem!”
His voice lowers to a dramatic whisper.
“I’ll live among the dust bunnies. Raise them as my children. We’ll form a humble society. We’ll only come out for jam.”
A pause. His eyes fill with tears—real ones.
“…I haven’t even kissed properly yet. (THE ONE TIME I DID I GRABBED LUCA BY THE TIE...SANCALOUS I TELL YOU!) What if I die awkward?! —I cannot perish as a little freak! That’s so embarrassing!”
Suddenly, the window creaks. Percy screams, launches himself behind the fainting couch, and wails from the floor:
“I’M TOO EMOTIONAL FOR BULLETS!!!”
Curtain closes. Dust settles. Somewhere, a squirrel salutes.
