A young girl sits in her room. As it happens, today — October 31st, 2025 — is her birthday.

Nineteen years have passed since her life began. And yet, it is only today that her name will be chosen.

This is because the universe operates on absurd narrative logic, and nobody asked.

The room is a disaster. Not the chaotic kind that implies a rich inner life — more like the kind that implies someone's mom attended a cake-decorating workshop and then suffered a psychotic break. There are cakes on the dresser. Cakes on the desk. Two cakes on the floor. One suspicious cake balanced on top of a monitor that hasn't been turned off in six days. The room smells like buttercream and mild existential dread.

The girl sits cross-legged on her bed, staring at nothing in particular, in the way that only people who have seen too many bad movies can stare at nothing.

The narrator clears his throat.

Fate deliberates. Fate makes its choice.

The text box reappears. Pristine. Patient. Profoundly unamused.

This time, the name is typed slowly. Solemnly. Like someone swearing an oath they're at least partially serious about.

The world stabilizes. The girl — JANE, she is JANE now — looks up, as if she's always known the narrator was watching. She gives him a look that suggests she finds the whole arrangement mildly insulting.

The narrator presses on, undeterred.

Jane surveys the room. Her gaze lands on a dusty trunk in the corner, half-buried under a pile of laundry that gave up trying to be clean around March. Something shifts in her expression. The gears turn.

A mischievous smile slowly colonizes her face.

Jane has an idea for a prank.

This is, historically, where things begin to go wrong.

The trunk is old. Maybe older than Jane. Maybe older than this house. The lid creaks like it's narrating its own suffering, and a cloud of dust detonates outward the moment it opens, forcing Jane into a three-second coughing fit she refuses to acknowledge because she's committed to the bit now.

She digs.

She holds both items up, one in each hand, like a very small and very unprepared action hero. Then her cell phone rings. The ringtone is shrill, generic, and somehow offensive.

Jane wedges the phone between her ear and shoulder, already migrating toward the far wall where a rolled-up poster sits in suspicious silence, taped at both ends with the aggressive enthusiasm of someone who watched one too many gift-wrapping tutorials.

The tape surrenders. The poster unrolls.

Jane goes very still.

She throws the phone on the bed and digs through the trunk with the focused chaos of a golden retriever excavating a yard. Within thirty seconds she has found four rusty nails and a hammer with a steel head that has clearly been through things. She does not think about what things.

Jane drags a chair to the wall, climbs up, and nails the Minecraft movie poster into place with the conviction of someone installing a masterpiece at the Louvre. The sound echoes. BAM. BAM. BAM.

She steps back. She admires it. It is perfect.

The phone rings again.

Jane startles. The chair wobbles. She manages to answer the call without falling to her death, which is a better outcome than she deserves.

Jane slaps her forehead. The chair wobbles again. She hops off before physics can weigh in.

She digs again. This time she goes deeper — deep enough that her entire upper body disappears into the trunk for a moment, and it is unclear if she is okay. She emerges, one by one, with the following:

A plastic arm from a 2011 bargain bin novelty prop.
A Goku figurine, one arm missing.
A VHS copy of A Nightmare on Elm Street, no case.
A My Chemical Romance CD.
One Sonic the Hedgehog sock.
A single d20 die, rolled at some point and never retrieved.
An NES cartridge with no label.
A Friday Night Funkin' microphone, foam cover partially intact.

Jane freezes when she finds the microphone. She holds it with both hands. Her expression goes somewhere private.

She places it back in the trunk with the careful reverence one typically reserves for things that matter more than you've admitted out loud.

Then she remembers she's on a phone call.

Silence on Keith's end of the line. Then:

Explosive laughter. The kind that starts in the chest and exits the body with no respect for anyone in its vicinity.

She does not, particularly, love hammers.

But she loves being right. And right now, she intends to be.