The day of the dart and the machete

I have decided that because I am not making money off this I will use the real names of those involved at the time, except for when I use their nick names, which some people were often better known by. So here goes anecdote two, which is a long drawn out number of events that took place over a month. I will be as brief as possible.

I had met Andrew playing Killer and we had gotten on quite well, despite the fact that we had tried to knock each other off. I invited him to come down on the weekend to John’s place and have a look at a game of Warhammer 40000. The game was fun and Andrew (and Dennis who came along as well) were keen to get involved and we were keen to be tough in front of the new guys.

Jason was acting the goat (he wasn’t the only one) and so I informed him that if he took another step toward me I would throw a dart (that was in my hand) at him. Not to let anyone down, Jason took that step. Following suit I threw the dart. I wasn’t really aiming to get him anywhere but the shoulder, but I muffed the throw and he twisted so that it was heading for his face.

At the last minute though, Jason threw up his arm and blocked the dart, which promptly buried itself up to the barrel in his flesh. Jason grabbed the dart and I turned to run as he pulled it out; I thought he was going to throw it at me. Running saved my life, but not from the dart. As Jason chased me out the door, he grabbed a rusty old machete with which he tried to remove one of my legs. He swung it back and forth and it was his swing action, which threw off his run and allowed me to escape. Andrew and Dennis were shocked, but still joined our gaming group.

About two weeks later and again in John’s garage we convened; this time to play a role playing game. At one point during the night, Dennis started describing the events of the day of the dart and the machete to those that had missed it. To make the story authentic he reached for the same machete and brought it in for a cross table swipe. It was a great story and the actual weapon being there helped us all re-imagine it, until Dennis lost his grip on the handle and the machete went whirling across the room straight for John’s head.

In a beautiful Spider-sense kind of way John quickly leaned to his left and the blade whizzed above his ear to crash into the wall behind him. We all breathed a sigh of relief, especially when John’s dad didn’t come and investigate the sounds of carnage. If that had been it, we would have had a funny double story, but there was more to come.

About two weeks later we were playing my adapted Warhammer 40000 role playing game (15 years before the real one came out) at my Grandparents place. This time Andrew was doing the retelling. It was all going smoothly until he got to the part where john dodged the blade. Being theatrical, Andrew threw himself side ways and down to simulate John’s (now legendary) move and managed to drive the corner of the wooden chair back into his temple. We all leapt up to see him as he writhed on the floor with a mild concussion. We all sat down. He would live.

Another week or so later, Dragon was retelling the story (again at my Grandparent’s house) and as he got to the part where we all leapt up to see if Andrew was alright, he leapt right into the faux chandelier that hung above the table. The noise was calamitous and we all threw ourselves to the ground, except for Cheezel, who looked directly up into what we all assumed was a cascade of falling glass knives. Not one shard of glass was loosed from the chandelier, but the noise took a minute or so to die down.

We all wanted to retell the story after that, but no one was game to. It did kind of seem like Cheezel had broken the curse by not having anything bad happen to him, but he had also extended the story, so no one was going to chance it.