A Slippery Slope

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

“Are you hearing yourself??” Liana planted her feet, arms akimbo.

Tina grimaced. “Not this again-”

“First you wanted to save everyone.” Liana’s words tumbled in an accusatory waterfall. “Then it was necessary to give up on a few people. Then we needed to turn our backs on people. Now you’re talking about throwing everything away?”

“Not everything-”

“What’s the point in getting to our goal if we burned so much to reach it!”

“Li, we’ve talked about this-”

Liana’s cheeks puffed up and her eyes snapped. “And every time I’ve argued with you, and every time you just talk over me and say ‘it’s necessary’!”

“Because it is-”

“How far are we going to go, huh? When is too much for you??”

Tina sucked in a fortifying breath. “Liana. Sweetie. Honey.”

The measured placating only made Liana scowl harder, but Tina doggedly pressed on. “This is how Lemmings goes. It’s how the game works. The whole point is that you want to save everyone but can’t.”

“The retry button is right there.”

“Ok sure but we’re not going to be able to-”

“I bet it’s possible!” Liana yanked her phone out. “I bet someone’s done it.”

Briefly free of that scorching glare Tina took a moment to roll her eyes. “Sure. Some obsessive loser with nothing better to-”

“AHA!” The phone was shoved against Tina’s face, so close that she couldn’t make out the video. “Full perfect run! It can be done! We can save everyone!”

Tina pushed the phone away to glare at her girlfriend. Then she sighed and surrendered to the bubbly determination. “Fine. Great. Lemming utopia here we go.”

Prompt was “Write a story about a character slowly getting closer and closer to evil.”

[This started out as something suitably dark, then suddenly my brain went for comedy. 😅

Perhaps because the one time I tried playing Lemmings I got so angry with them for being useless that I started building death traps until my friend freaked out and dragged me away from the computer. Zoombinis was much more my jam.]