This Rotten World (Book 1) by The Vocabulariast

body might be crafted from shit. He couldn't blame her. Few
people found redheads attractive. Fewer still were attracted to the 300 pound
variety.
    Her hair
was in disarray. She had clearly just woken up, and he could hear her audience-less
muttering as she passed the door.  "Fucking drunk assholes banging on the
door..." Her tirade trailed off as she passed his door and headed down the
stairs. He hoped she wouldn't be dumb enough to let in his friend downstairs.
    The human
part of him thought about going out there and warning her about the man
downstairs. But then the asshole part of him thought, If she can't figure
out not to open the door for an unresponsive man who is bleeding profusely from
his face, then she's got bigger problems in her life. This was Darwinism,
plain and simple.
    Rudy
plopped back into his La-Z-Boy, and tried to log into a lobby. The night was
slow, and there wasn't nearly as much traffic as there usually was judging from
the little map of the world that was featured on the main page. Where normally
the entire country of North America was lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree to
indicate who was online, this morning there were pockets of darkness here and
there. It was odd. Maybe the COD servers were being updated. He hadn't heard
about any downtime for the game, but when you sold millions of copies of a
game, you could fuck your customers over without even thinking about it. They
would always come back.
    By now, the
franchise had become a tradition more than anything else. Some people only
bought one video game a year, and it was always Call of Duty.
    Rudy was
pondering the dimwittedness of the series' fans when he was abruptly dumped
into a domination lobby mid-game. The connection wasn't the strongest and the
lag made his character jump around the screen. Rubber-banding they called it.
Oh, boy. He wondered what area he had been connected to. Usually, he'd find
himself lumped together with local players from the city, in order to cut down
on lag. But occasionally, when you played this late in the evening, or morning
as it were, you tended to get dumped into random groups of people from all over
the country.
    "Rudy
adjusted the mic on his head and said, "Where are you guys from?"
    A staticky
voice promptly replied, "Alabama over here."
    It appeared
the rest of the lobby wasn't using microphones.
    "Where
are you from?" the other voice asked.
    "None
of your goddamn business, you fucking noob!" he shot back. He laughed at
his own cleverness, while deep down inside, he knew he was not particularly
clever. He liked to pretend he was having a good time anyway.
    The other
man didn't take the bait, and he continued to ignore Rudy as they played. There
was a thumping sound over the man's mic. "What the fuck?" he mused
intelligently as the thumping continued.
    Rudy took
the chance to be even more of a dick. "Who is that, your dad trying to
break down the door to get a piece of your ass?"
    "Fuck
you, noobkiller420x," the man spat back. Then, to himself, he said,
"Who the fuck is banging on my door like that?"
    The man
must have left the room, because Rudy stumbled across his character sitting
listlessly in a corner. He aimed his shotgun at the man's face and blasted it
point blank. "Thanks for the points, Iceman."
    Iceman
ignored him some more, and instead yelled, "What the fuck do you want? Go
away! It's six in the fucking morning!" There was more pounding. Rudy found
Iceman again, his character sitting in a different corner of the map but the
result was the same.
    The
pounding continued. "I've had enough of this shit." The sound of a
chain rattling could be heard over the mic, and then Iceman said, "I don't
know who the fuck you are, but you need to get the fuck out of here
before..." Iceman shrieked into the microphone. "Get off me,
faggot," he yelled.
    Rudy
giggled a little bit and said, "Oh my God, I was right. It is your
dad." The laughing didn't continue for long, as the screaming went on for
quite a