Gail finished Tuesday at around ten PM. This was a greater achievement than it sounded, mostly because halfway through it had turned into Thursday, then Monday.
She surveyed her apartment, considered her fridge, turned her head to the stove, then the sink full of the morning’s dishes and last night’s dishes and last morning’s dishes.
“Fuck all of this,” she mumbled, and she took an anonymous frozen lump from the freezer and was just about to feed it into the microwave when sixteen very large police piled through her door and fanned out tactically through the apartment shouting “CLEAR” and shooting her neighbour’s dog.
“You have failed to appreciate the value of food,” said the largest of the police, putting a handcuff on each of her wrists and two on their own out of sheer overexcitement. “You are hereby sentenced to snaxecution!”
“Do I get a trial?” asked Gail. Her neighbour’s dog was still barking, and therefore still being shot.
“Trials are for people that don’t need to be snaxecuted,” said the largest of the police, cuffing Gail’s microwave. “Now start perp walkin’ or get perp dragged.”
Gail walked.
***
The waiting room was mechanical and round and filled with round mechanisms. Strange acidic smells eeled through the air. Two hours in, Gail asked for water.
“No water for you,” said the largest of the police. “Only colours. You want blue, green, red, or purple?”
“Blue,” said Gail. She got a bottle with blue in it, which tasted like blue. The big metal doors on the far side of the chamber slammed open when she was trying to swallow and she inhaled blue until the largest of the police held her upside down by the ankles and shook the blue out of her. Upside down, light-headed, she saw a wretched husk of a crumpled figure being wheeled away in a gurney.
“You’re next,” said a serious man in a serious jacket with a serious mouth. He looked like someone had replaced his head with a mailbox and put NO FLYERS above his eyebrows.
“Can I finish my blue?” managed Gail eventually, after the largest of the police remembered to put her back down.
“You won’t need to,” said the serious man.
So they took her through the big metal doors and put her on a sofa and put a bowl of Cheetos in front of one hand and a bowl of chips in front of the other.
“Choose,” said the serious man.
“What flavour are the chips?” asked Gail.
“Salt and vinegar.”
Gail picked up a chip.
“Trick question!” shouted the largest of the police. “You get both!”
“Shut up,” said the serious man, seriously.
“Sorry. I get excited.”
“You get both,” said the serious man, to Gail. “It was a trick question. Now watch this.”
The serious man turned on a screen and filled it with a deeply inadequate Netflix original.
“It was cancelled on a cliffhanger due to poor viewership,” he explained. “Goodbye.”
Then he dragged the largest of the police out by their ear and left Gail alone.
There were no windows. The door was locked. There were no controls for the screen.
So Gail watched, and as she watched, she ate.
***
The serious man came back after an unbearable amount of time with more bowls and a tub of ice cream and a terrible, terrible threat.
“Would you like to watch the last five episodes of the series you just watched, OR see three made-for-tv movies recorded before 2008, determined at random?” he asked, consulting a tablet.
“Bwuh,” said Gail.
“That was a trick question,” said the serious man. “You will watch both. This bowl has party mix made of adequate cheese puffs, terrible pretzels, crappy corn chips, and excellent tortillas. This other bowl has popcorn with too much cheese powder. This ice cream isn’t a flavour that actually exists but it doesn’t taste like anything you want right now. Goodbye.”
Gail felt very strongly that she was meant to feel very strongly about this situation, but she was full of congealed sodium food colouring, and grease and it filled her throat like old dirty socks. Instead she croaked, and coughed, and watched.
***
The next visit brought two more choices: a procedurally-generated playlist of youtubers reacting to videos of youtubers reacting or a video documentary on why the earth was definitely flat; and a 24-pack of expiration-discounted store-brand half-stale cinnamon buns or a previously-opened plastic vegetable tray with half-eaten ranch dip that had a soft carrot lodged in it.
“These are both trick questions and you will receive both of them,” explained the serious man. “In addition, you will also experience an internet outage sometime in the next hour. It will last between twenty and twenty thousand minutes. Have this pack of mint gum.”
“No,” managed Gail. The serious man ignored her.
***
“Now you will watch this livestream of a room full of puppies. The puppies are all asleep and one of them knocked the camera around to face the wall. There are six people in the chat and none of them like each other. There is no moderator. Here is a full Halloween-sized bag of gummi worms.”
***
“This Korean drama is subtitled until the last two episodes. Take this bag of stale mini marshmallows.”
***
“This is a recording of someone’s wedding. There are six more after this. None of them are edited. Here’s a store-brand cake that someone ate half of, asymmetrically, without using a knife.”
***
“This is just TikTok. And here’s something that’s legally not a box full of pizza pockets. They are still frozen.”
***
“Can I leave?” managed Gail. It had taken her several trillion years to make this thought, and it arrived frail and flat and already-defeated.
“Anytime you want,” said the serious man. “Let me unlock the door for you.”
Gail stood up and felt like she could never do that or walk or move or think ever again.
“Really?” she asked, because she wanted to be disappointed.
“Really,” said the serious man. “But just do you know, you’re not done.”
“What?”
“This will happen to you once or twice a weekish for the entire rest of your foreseeable life,” said the serious man. “Snaxecution is not a procedure. It is a practice. And once you’re checked in, you can never check out.”
***
Gail went home.
She surveyed her apartment, whose door was still hanging on a thread from a boot, whose neighbour’s dog was still yapping angrily about having been shot, whose fridge was still judgemental, whose microwave still tempted, whose sink was still full of dishes.
She had no idea what day of the week it was and wasn’t sure if any of them could possibly be told apart.
There was just one question left. One thing to consider. One obstacle between her and bed.
Dinner.
“I’m ordering pizza,” she said.
Because of course that had always been a trick question.