by savinobarile
In the wee hours of one cold October night, I was at what I thought was rock bottom. I had just failed my HCOL 366: Sustainability in Baroque Music fired from my post at Northern Lights. My girlfriend had left me for the Treasurer of the UVM Quidditch Team.
I was immobile, entranced in a YouTube autoplay cue of aircraft video essays. As I reached over to grab my third sip of water for the week, a voice broke through the analysis of the Boeing’s forward collapsing landing gear. I turned, startled, and saw a clean-cut hunk on my screen.
‘What are you doing with your life?’ he inquired loudly, ‘Are you tired of living on other people’s time? Are you fed up with pushed around by faceless suits all day? Do you want your wife to love you, your son to look up to you, and your father in law to acknowledge you? Grab your future by the scrot, pull it close, and tell it YOU’RE MINE. Take the wheel, raise your sails, and prepare for takeoff.’
I felt the adrenaline course through my veins, my strength returning.
‘This is what I tell all my clients, friends, children, ‘If you want the top, you need to drop(ship)!’.
I knew what had to be done. I scoured the web, searching for the perfect product to jumpstart my empire. As the sunrise crept through my window, I realized the answer had been sitting in front of me the whole time. On my monitor, an oil-slicked knife glared back at me. The Karambit would be my answer.
In the world of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, knife skins are king. Arguably the world’s first crypto-currency, these little pieces of the Source engine have made many men rich. This cultish obsession has led to the emergence of an equally cringe market, the physical replications of these weapons. By accepting orders with knives I could buy for pennies on China’s dollars, I knew guap was in my future.
I set up my website, CSGOCounterStrikeKnifeUS.com, and set off on my entrepreneurial odyssey. I couldn’t believe the returns. It turned out, thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s countrywide 4G initiative, the CS:GO market was starting to take off in India. I was fulfilling daily orders of bulk Crimson Web Butterfly’s, making bank in the process, all from the comfort of my own lair. The rupee to the USD exchange rate wasn’t too shabby either. I was able to upgrade from two monitors to three, finally frame my vintage Akira poster, and get my hands on a pair of the CDG Play Chuck Taylors. When I whipped down South Prospect in my newly acquired certified pre-owned 2017 Subaru Impreza, I spotted my former love trying to capture the Golden Snitch on Redstone Green. She must have seen the thread count on my KITHxKAWS bomber jacket and ran over, ‘Baby, remember me?’. I gave her one last look of disgust, ‘Beat it, chick,’ and sped off.
They came at night. I was busy fixing Excel spreadsheets to write off my Bumble Premium subscription as a business expense when I heard my window shatter. I tried to reach for my StatTrak M9 Bayonet. Still, I was overwhelmed by a barrage of war cries, flashbangs, and my anemia-induced lightheadedness. The last thing I remember is the dying flickers of my RGB setup being ripped off the walls.
I woke up in a shipping container of my own stock. I was aboard the People’s Liberation Amy Naval Surface Force Ship ‘Baiyun Shan,’ captured by Chinese special forces. I was being held as a foreign agent of the Republic of India, accused of smuggling weaponry into a highly contested land area near the Nepalese border.
It turned out, instead of selling my blades to eager collectors, I had been strapping the Indian Army with the most tactical of steel. I had appropriated the resources of the CCP to their most immediate enemy. Somewhere in the high peaks of the Himalayas, brave men were reenacting ‘Most Clutch Defuse Plays of May 2017 Part 3 *INSANE*’. I begged and pleaded, but I was shown no mercy. These men lived the same way I did, with discipline and intent.
This will be my final transmission. Do not take pity on me, for I know this is what must happen. Maybe in the next life, I will have honed my instincts to know when something is too good to be true. I will do better. I will. Goodnight and good luck.
Categories: cooler, November 3, 2020, savino barile