Tarnished
12/5/2023

Ford is cheering, dancing down a flight of stairs at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles. His name has been called for the halftime fan challenge. He walks onto the court floor, decked out in Lakers gear. He runs over to halfcourt, to meet the announcer there. The crowd is cheering & the Lakers players sitting on the bench talking over strategy. “Heya Ford, you have been drawn to take on the $1,000,000 dollar Lakers Halftime Challenge!!” The crowd erupts, Ford is ecstatic. “The challenge itself is easy. We will draw an opponent from the crowd, and they have 3 tries to make a shot. You cannot let them score a single point.” Fords heart is racing, he’s confident. He’s good at basketball, he’s ready to get this show on the road! “If you win, you get the million dollars. But if you lose…” Behind Ford, two technicians’ wheel over a TV on a dolly and turn it on. He sees his entire family, enslaved. All of them, his wife, his kids, his brothers, sisters, nephews, parents, grandparents, family pets, everyone is there and gagged. Tied up, battered and bruised. They’re all being surrounded by men with rifles & knifes and they’re on what seems to be a boat on a dingy dark dock. Ford thinks he’s dreaming and blinks for a second. “If you lose,” The announcer starts, “Your entire family gets abducted and sent to Guantanamo Bay where they will become slaves and work for the rest of their lives!!” The crowd goes wild, wanting to see this spectacle take place. Ford is absolutely devastated. “Son…” Fords dad can be heard audibly, “Its okay son… you can do this…” Ford is still in absolute shock when the announcer starts again. “Now, bring out his opponent!!” The arena goes dark with a single spotlight spinning around the arena crowd, searching for a person. It eventually lands on someone who then stands up. It’s revealed that the man who stood up is his father-in-law, Phineas. Phineas has been waiting for this moment for years. All 10 years Ford has been married to his daughter, his stupid daughter that he hates with all his heart. Ford genuinely thinks this is a bad bad dream. Phineas makes his way to the court, decked out in ball-playing gear. He even brung his own ball. He finally snaps out of his trance and tries to beg the announcer to stop this, but her and everyone on the court have moved to the other half, leaving one as a play area. Then an incredibly loud buzzer beeps. He turns around to see Phineas, absolutely ripped and 8ft tall, towering over Ford. He checks the ball to ford, who slowly dribbles it. He’s so confused, shouldn’t he not have the ball? Then Phineas takes his huge, monstering, gargantuan left hand, and slaps the absolute mace out of Ford. Ford is sent flying to the right, as the whole stadium goes silent. Ford hits the announcers table at full force, immediately suffering a concussion and a broken neck from the impact. Phineas then grabs the ball, dribbles it through his insanely long lanky legs, and runs outside of the 3-point line. He then goes on a charge for the rim. The speed, the agility, the airtime of his jump is monstrous. Notorious, even. Everyone in the stadium in on their feet, in awe. Even the Los Angeles Lakers and opposing Memphis Grizzlies are starstruck. Ford is laying on the ground unable to move forces to watch.

At this moment, Phineas connects with the rim hitting possibly the greatest slam dunk in basketball history. Little did anybody know, but that basketball he was using wasn’t filled with air, but with 280 trillion active protons. Constantly moving, wanting to escape. All that mass in such a tiny space, it didn’t end well. One second passes. The entire Staples Centre has erupted. The explosion was insane. Immense. Half of the state of California is completely and utterly destroyed. Theres fire and ash everywhere. It’s a national emergency. This explosion has caused a monumental earthquake that’s speading throughout the entire US. 4 seconds pass. Ford has been blasted from California to Louisiana. His bloody, fleshy, limp body flying across the country. He hits Louisiana and keeps going, skidding across the ground floor all the way to Florida. He finally stops when he hits the hull of a boat at a dock, puncturing it. He causes a tidal wave that will just push back into the water. The wave does take Ford airborne to see a sight for sore eyes. He sees that the boat he hit was the one with his family on it, tied up and beaten. They will all fall to the ocean floor and drown, along with the abductors. Ford will eventually fall in the middle of the ocean, his insane speculative battered bloody red body scarring away any sea life. He won’t be alive for much longer. The entire nation, and his family, are certainly done for. And it’s all Fords fault.

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