When I was an Assasin: Or, One Way to Deal with January

January is a horrible month.  There should be a pre-January after Christmas, before January starts, so we can all get our shit together.  A week before New Years is just enough to recover from Christmas and suddenly there you are, thrust into the New Year, pants around your ankles.

On top of the anxiety that curdles in my belly like a bad cheese at the prospect of all the things I should do this year—many many coloured boxes taunting me –it is a cold and bleary month. That’s right: Bleary.  Not because it’s dim and indistinct as the dictionary would have you believe—but because it is equal parts bleak and weary.  Spoiler alert:  If you came to the November Rain City Chronicles, you know where this is going.

When I was in college in Michigan, January was such a bleary affair—cold, snowed-in and grey—that they made something called Interim—which was essentially a one month January term between fall and spring semester. Interim was easier, it was usually pass/fail, and you were encouraged to take something outside of your discipline—go abroad, fulfill a language requirement in three weeks, or take something fun.  That way you wouldn’t succumb to total despair.  Also, we played Assassins—to keep our spirits up, one imagines.

Now Assassins goes like this.  Anyone in the dorm who signs up to play gets a target’s name.  You don’t know who has you and no one knows who has them.  Your job is to ‘assassinate’ your target with a nerf gun.  Then, you take his or her target’s name and kill again…until eventually one person emerges victorious, rising out of the nerf foam and faux-slayings a hero.  As I said, to lift our spirits.

So, Assassins has a few basic rules:

1.  Your weapon must be a standard nerf or suction dart-type gun.
2. Any kill must have at least one witness or it doesn’t count.
3. No kill can have MORE than 4 witnesses (to prevent the giant slaughterhouse the dining hall would become)
4. Classrooms are off limits—it is after all, an institution of higher learning.

Now, I am a deeply competitive person.  I once potato-sacked-raced an entire class of fifth graders and cheered horrendously when I won.  I was their teacher.  Another time, a four year old girl I babysat had a mermaid sticker board, and would insist that only she got to decide where everything went.  So when she wasn’t looking, I would move stickers around and insert new ones.  Out of spite, I think.  That’s what sort of adult I am.   So when I started playing Assassins, something dark and a little disturbing clicked deep inside of me.  I very badly wanted to win.

I don’t remember who my first few targets were.  The whole time is awash in fear and adrenaline—because I could not help but take this that seriously.  I wore cargo pants, combat boots, and a camouflage shirt to class.  I started collecting the weapons of the early casualties, so I had 2 or 3 guns on my person at a time—one of which was a tiny dart hand-pistol and one of which was a huge, semi-automatic nerf gun.  I imagined myself as a spy or covert operator.  It was kind of sexy and thrilling and fun.  At first.

Very quickly, however, intrigue turned to pure fear.  I got super paranoid.  I made my roommates enter our room and sweep it before I would go in.  I wouldn’t go down the hall to the common bathroom by myself.  I slept with the pistol under my pillow, and went to class with it tucked in my belt.  I saw danger everywhere.  But I was not wrong.

My friend Lucas called and asked me to meet him in front of the mailboxes.  He was already ‘dead’ and my friend, so I thought I was safe. That’s when I got shot for the first time.  Lucas lured me down for a floormate of his.  And while there were too many witnesses for it to count (if only real bullets worked so bureaucratically), I was livid.  The treachery!  My roommates and I went back up to our room and wrote a letter to Lucas that began “Dear Judas…” and I wrote it with a safety pin and my own blood.  Mostly we did that because we thought it would be dramatic and funny.  Mostly.

I hid in peoples bunk beds.  I tip-toed down the hallways.  I became vigilant.  And pretty soon, the only two people left in the dorm were me and Nate Karsten.  Since our dorm was separated into Women’s  and Men’s floors, there were only certain times—“Open House Hours”—where I was actually not safe in my own room, but by now the dorm had polarized and Nate had spies everywhere.  I would sneak down to the basement at one in the morning to visit with my boyfriend—it being too dangerous at other times—and immediately someone would dart out of the room.  Minutes later Nate would appear, dragged out of bed in only his boxers, and the fire-fight would send me back up the stairwell to the safety of my floor.

We had a shoot-out in the gym—until there were too many witnesses.

Nate tried to drive by shoot me from the open door of a van and I only escaped because I varied my routes to and from the dining hall. 

Nowhere was safe.  One afternoon, Nate showed up at my work.  I looked up from my desk in the business department and saw a guy hovering in the doorway—a witness.  Instinctively I pulled the dart-pistol out of my belt and jumped up just as Nate Karsten popped up from behind the front desk.  We shot and ducked around files and staplers until a professor yanked Nate out of the office and lectured him on appropriate behaviour.  Now, I’m not sure what constitutes “appropriate behaviour” when a college sanctions the imaginary slaying of classmates as a community-building exercise, but I didn’t complain because it was one more day I didn’t die. 

I was scared to leave my room.  I had a stomach ache.  I was nervous all the time.  I knew it was just a game—but I couldn’t help myself.  And I’d come so far. My friends thought I was nuts—but Nate was wily and cunning and nefarious and he was everywhere.  I decided I needed an offensive move to end this, so I dragged my roommate Katie down to Nate’s room during open house hours.  I nodded, Katie threw open his door, and there he was on the couch.  I aimed my semi-automatic nerf gun and fired, but while the bullet was in the air, Nate’s friend jumped off the couch and took the bullet in his chest.  I shit you not.   And before I could reload Nate locked himself in the bathroom.  Nate was an arch-nemesis who would not be foiled.

And that’s pretty much when I decided I wanted to die.  The waiting and the fear and the constant threat of Nate Karsten was killing me.  I wanted to win, but mostly I just didn’t want to lose. And now what I really really wanted, was for it to be over. 

Interim term is supposed to fun and relaxing—it’s supposed to make January bearable, so that maybe you can make it through February, and by March the overwhelming despair of the universe will pale enough to put you back on an even keel.  But this? This was not relaxing.  And it wasn’t fun.  It was like an exhilarating, consuming kind of awful.

So maybe I got lax.  Maybe Nate Karsten was just that good.  Or my desire for rest was more powerful than my need to win.  Because Nate Karsten shot me in the head in broad daylight outside of the Knollcrest dining hall after two weeks of our mano a mano showdown.

I was defeated.  I was embarrassed.  But mostly, I was sooooo relieved. 

Was that feeling of relief worth the three and a half weeks of extreme panic?  I can’t say.  The relief was amazing.  And Assassins was certainly a distraction.  And this January, as I find it hard to get out of bed, hard to get excited about things, hard to go outside, hard to fight the bleariness …I wonder if a distraction is exactly what I need.  

I’m not gonna play Assassins again.  Ever.  I don’t have the constitution.  But remembering my showdown with Nate does remind me that maybe I take things a little too seriously.  And that does help.  Because January won’t last forever.  The sun and flowers are coming.   So lighten up, already.  And maybe don’t use phrases like “the overwhelming despair of the universe” in your blog.  I mean for real. 

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Shauna, I loved reading this. Awesome story. And while I did enjoy Interim, I must confess I never played Assassin.

Ahhh, memories. Great story. (And story-telling.)

[Shauna Johannesen]

Thanks Elizabeth--although I remember many an evening when you and John would be in the basement too...so maybe you were inadvertently a part of the story?