A paintball travels at approximately 280 feet per second, which isn’t fast enough to break the skin in most circumstances. However, to deliver a barrage of them into a virtually unprotected face was considered an especially bad idea – even by people on YouTube. As ridiculous risks go, Smithy felt that the one he had taken had worked out remarkably well. His opponent’s howls were enough to cause Lousy Louis to come around. Louis looked up to see a ninja with a face splattered in pink paint and screamed. Smithy, however, didn’t have the luxury of time to scream, because his opponent was coming to terms with his surprising change in circumstances and was reaching his right hand around to the back of his outfit.
Smithy started to run.
He dived over the end of the couch as the TV exploded in a shower of sparks behind him. Not unlike a stopped clock’s ability to be right twice a day, a temporarily blind man can still kill you by shooting in your general direction. A series of shots from the gun that Smithy had correctly anticipated rattled off in rapid succession.
Smithy felt the whoosh of air over his head as a bullet passed through the hat that, thankfully, started a foot above the top of his head. Amidst the exploding TV and the sound of bottles of – no doubt shamefully expensive – booze in the bar shattering, Smithy counted possibly twelve shots. That would have been a useful piece of information had he the first clue what gun his opponent was holding and how many bullets it held. He didn’t. Smithy didn’t like guns in general – and this one in particular.
He tossed the leprechaun hat in the air, hoping to draw a couple more shots. Nothing. When he risked a glance over the top of the sofa, he found himself looking down the barrel of a firearm, behind which was the half-concealed and entirely pink face of his opponent, who was all kinds of pissed off.
“Who are you?”
The man’s accent was clipped, hard to place.
Smithy sighed and sat back on the floor. “I’ll be honest, it’s a really long story, and I’m guessing we don’t have that kind of time.”
Smithy closed his eyes.
WELL, YOU TRIED.
Smithy’s last thought was about to be something very unkind about God, but then he heard the noise. He opened his eyes just in time to see the immense form of Lousy Louis Reed, who had managed to get to his feet and was hurtling towards his would-be assassin with all the energy he could muster. He caught the black-clad figure just as he tried to turn, wrapping his massive arms around him.
It was the nature of Smithy’s existence that he was used to most of life towering over him. The everyday world was designed by men about six feet in height, who assumed that the rest of the planet shared their eyeline. Still, nothing had ever loomed over Smithy with such ominous presence as Lousy Louis Reed grappling inexpertly with a pink-faced ninja.
Smithy was trying to scamper away when, like an avalanche of assholes, the duo came crashing down on top of him, expelling all the air from his lungs and possibly shattering a few things. It was impossible to tell where the most damage lay – everything hurt too much to individualise the agonies. Hell was other people, or at least other people lying on top of you.
Louis was pinning both Smithy and his assailant to the ground. The good news was that Smithy knew where the gun was; the bad news was where the gun was. The ninja’s weapon-holding hand was pinned beneath Lousy Louis’s girth, leaving the firearm pointing directly at Smithy’s face. Smithy needed to move his head quickly if he wanted to preserve its structural integrity in the long term.
Above them, Louis was panting and groaning almost rhythmically. Smithy guessed this meant that the assassin’s other hand was free and throwing punches into Lousy’s body in an effort to move him.
Straining, Louis raised his voice. “Samantha … call … nine … one … one.”
Smithy tried to pull his head further away from the gun, but there was no give in that direction. He couldn’t breathe either, which was becoming an issue. Smithy had learned not to expect a great deal from life, but dying while Lousy Louis grunted and groaned above him felt like a particularly ignominious way to go.
The automated voice of Samantha boomed over the speakers, “Calling … Olivia Munn.”
It wasn’t as if the evening had gone to plan or, indeed, made a great deal of sense up until this point, but still – this was a bit much. As Smithy began to wiggle in the other direction while attempting to draw some air into his lungs, the thought occurred to him that surely this couldn’t be the Olivia Munn.
The sound of a phone ringing out filled the apartment.
The only Olivia Munn that Smithy had ever heard of was the Hollywood actress. She’d been brilliant in Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, and criminally underused in the X-Men film she was in. He couldn’t imagine that Lousy Louis knew her, but then he hadn’t expected him to be the target of an honest-to-God ninja assassin either. The dipshit was defying expectations left, right and centre.
After two rings, the phone was picked up and a female voice boomed over the apartment’s speakers.
“Hello.”
It was hard to tell if it was her or not. Smithy was now inches from his goal. Louis continued to grunt and groan, his weight shifting slightly, putting yet more pressure on Smithy and shoving his nose into the carpet.
“Who is this?” asked the female voice. It did sound quite like her.
Louis shifted again, giving a pained gasp as his weight moved back the other way. Smithy drew in a desperate breath and sweet, sweet air re-entered his lungs.
“Is it you again, you fucking pervert?”
Smithy was beginning to think it really was Olivia Munn.
Lights were flashing before his eyes now. Smithy summoned every last desperate ounce of strength he had left in his body and prepared to do the world’s hardest push-up.
“I don’t know how you keep getting my number, but I’m going to hunt you down and kill you, you useless, pathetic ball-sack of depravity.”
Damn. Munn Burn.
The call was terminated.
Smithy kept his eyes locked on the barrel of the gun and heaved with all his might. Above him, Louis moved a few inches …
Smithy pushed his head to the side and sank his teeth into the black-gloved hand holding the gun. Somewhere in the distance there was a scream – and the gun fired three times.
Smithy’s ears rang, and as the sound of the explosions faded, he realised he was temporarily deaf. The pain in his ears was mitigated by the fact that Lousy Louis, keen to avoid getting shot, had rolled off him completely.
Smithy reared up, gasping greedily at the air, born again. After a few moments, he placed a hand on the side of the couch and pulled himself to his feet laboriously. Amoebas of light were floating across his field of vision. He reached up to feel wetness running out of his right ear.
Having detected the smoke from the exploded TV, the sprinklers in the ceiling started to shower the apartment in water. Smithy felt like Andy Dufresne after his escape from Shawshank. An alarm was sounding, but with his ears still ringing it felt as if it were happening miles away, in a whole other life.
As he regained his sense of his surroundings amidst the man-made rainstorm, Smithy looked around him. Lousy Louis was on the floor, propped between the couch and the coffee table. His assailant was now limping towards the door to the balcony. The black-clad figure opened it and stepped back into the night from whence he’d come. Smithy watched in incomprehension as he clambered up onto the stone balustrade and, in one fluid movement, rolled himself off the edge.