Number Twenty-Five: Death by Gambit
When Scott finally awoke, his head hurt and his vision was fuzzy. A conveniently placed calendar in the grass showed him that it was now a week and a half after the day when he had been eaten by radioactive squirrels, and yet he’d only just woken up. But that wasn’t right! All the other times he’d died, he’d been back within an hour or so, and he hadn’t felt so awful. He felt as if he was going to be sick, but he was having trouble sitting up. Great, now he could choke to death on his own vomit (yippee!!!). He forced himself upright quickly, propping himself up on his elbows. His head spun. His hands were sinking in the now muddy ground. The tree where the radioactive squirrels had appeared from was now apparently squirrel-free, but it had been raining a lot in between now and his last death. In fact, it was raining a bit now.
And so Scott found himself inside, wondering, as he ate Gambit’s cake. Gambit chatted about himself as he watched Scott eat.
Blinking to try and get his eyesight back to normal, and remove the hazy fog that floated just under his visor, he didn’t see a stranger appear in front of him. “Oh no, everything’s gone red!” Scott wailed. “Wait a minute, it’s ALWAYS been red.”
The stranger looked at him, clearly confused at why this man was sat on the grass talking to himself. He cleared his throat.
Scott glanced up. “Whoa!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Non, I t’ink the question is, what are you doing ‘ere?” the stranger asked, in what was quite possibly a French accent (I can’t do French accents, okay?)
Scott was about to say, ‘I was eaten by radioactive squirrels a week and a half ago and now I’m slowly recovering from my twenty-fourth death. What are YOU doing here?’ but he stopped himself and said, “I live here.”
“Non, you don’t,” the French man replied, annoyed. “I t’ink I live ‘ere and I t’ink you should leave before I ‘ave to ‘urt you.”
Scott looked around, about to claim that he’d lived at the Xavier Institute for many years, this was his home, and his mad French bloke who he had never seen before in his life had most definitely never lived there, when he realised he wasn’t at home at all. In fact, all he could see was a sign written in French, which meant he was in trouble.
“Get up,” the man commanded. Okay, you all know he’s Gambit (it’s in the title, duh), so I will now refer to him as such.
“Urrghh,” moaned Scott as his head began to spin again when he got to his feet. He reached for something to hold him up and grabbed the tree.
“Zat is MY tree!” Gambit said, irritated. “You are trying to ‘arm it!”
“No,” said Scott, shaking his head bewilderedly.
“Oui!” replied Gambit. “Now you will pay!”
Oh, bummer, thought Scott. And why does he carry a big white stick like a blind man?
“You will pay,” Gambit said, “after you have eaten cake.”
“Cake?”
“Oui, cake.”
That’s funny, Scott thought. “Why does my stomach feel like it’s about to explode?”
There was a very loud boom in which pieces of Scott splattered all over the room.
“Zat’s why,” Gambit said.
Next death
