50 Ways To Kill Your Boss

25 Ways to Die by Vending Machine

So this is kinda cool: by no force or particular outside influence, Jay and Claire were both up at the same time that night, and both decided to walk around.

Granted, the "force" might be the blaring smoke alarms that nobody else got up for, but Jay and Claire didn't evacuate the building either, so they're not much better off.

The cause of the smoke detector activation will be revealed at the end of this chapter, but it has nothing to do with the chapter storyline. Please trust that I would not withhold that kind of information from you.

Since Jay was already up, he figured he'd stop by the vending machine to get a head start on breakfast. He rested one palm on the glass and tried to make his decision, but kept getting distracted by his own reflection in the glass. He heard a slithering nearby and turned to see Claire.

"Want something?" He offered, not intending to pay for it.

Claire also took in the contents of the vending machine, unable to turn down food paid for by someone else (which is better than free food).

They stood there for a moment, and Jay wondered if she heard his question. He opened his mouth to ask again, but was interrupted.

"You know what would be cool?" She asked, still looking at the glass.

"Setting a waterslide on fire and then sliding down it with a firehose?"

"N--" That hadn't been what Claire was going to say of course, but it did sound cool. "Wow, yes. But I was thinking of rigging the vending machine to kill Perry tomorrow."

Jay looked back at the machine and saw rows of packaged snacks, not a mechanism of death, but he'd never been terribly creative. "Um, yeah uh, me-- I was thinking that too."

"But there's so many good ways." Claire pondered, with a sadistic twinkle in her eye. "Let's make a list." She pulled out a sharpie, held out her hand, and said "Handy dandy notebook!"

Nothing happened.

She shook her open hand in the air. "Handy dandy notebook!"

Jay was confused. "Do you think a notebook is going to appear?" He'd seen some weird things at the Sea Chantey, but that seemed cliché.

"No, Cameron is supposed to bring me a notebook. Notebooks don't just appear. Cliché's are outlawed here."

Jay just nodded, realizing he was never going to fully understand the Sea Chantey. "Cameron's not here."

"We'll use the wall." Claire popped the cap off the sharpie and wrote:

1,

"What's a common way to kill someone with a vending machine?" She asked.

"Uh, the lights are out and you walk into it? Like, really hard?" He'd hoped she would come up with most of the ideas.

"Good." Claire began writing.

1, Fatal crush fractures to the face.

"That's... sort of what I said." Jay mumbled.

"Now let me think of one..." She tapped her chin with the sharpie, but the wrong end, leaving black dots all over. "Got it."

2, Reaching under Flap to Steal Snack when a Power Surge hits and the Machine Reverses Itself so your Hand gets Pulled In by the Metal Spires and Twists, Sucking you Into the Machine.

Jay scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah that's, um, I think I've h-heard of that happening." He hadn't.

"Right?" Claire stood back to admire her work. "Your turn."