Zack had been here before.  Same place, different day, very similar circumstances.  And with significantly diminished expectations.

Over the years, Zack’s family had come to use Lucky’s Pizza Kingdom #3 as their de facto location for staging birthday parties.  Though their video games were outdated and their food was unremarkable, Lucky’s was able to handle any number of cousins who showed up.  Nobody would be impressed, but neither would anybody be terribly disappointed.

Zack’s father surely knew how to get there.  Assuming he decided to show up at all.

Zack’s mom didn’t notice that Zack was miserable.  She knew that his best friends Tyler and Noah were off playing in some baseball tournament somewhere.  She knew that Zack was stuck in a room full of bratty kids who were each at least four years younger than he was.  But she didn’t know that Zack had no interest in playing the same crappy games he played the last time he was here.  She didn’t know that he was suffering from what was certain to be a fatal case of boredom.

She didn’t know that this was shaping up to be Zack’s worst birthday ever.

Even Uncle Randy, Zack’s father’s brother, seemed oblivious to his pain.  Uncle Randy showed up with a wrapped present under his arm but seemed more interested in chatting with Zack’s mom than acknowledging Zack’s existence.  He was just there for the free pizza, Zack thought.

Dissatisfied with the clatter of the arcade, Zack made his way to Lucky’s party room, reserved by his mother just a few days earlier.  Navigating a narrow drywall hallway, he passed a dry storage room just as a teenager wearing a filthy apron exited with a large can of pizza sauce in his arms.  Gross, Zack thought to himself.

Reaching the party room, the woodland mural on the wall seemed particularly pale, scarred with fresh scuff marks and scotch tape remnants.  Along one side was a familiar folding table holding a pile of wrapped presents and another table holding an assortment of goodies:  a bowl of M&M’s, a basket full of Blow-Pops, an array of bagged cotton candy.  And to one side sat a white box of cupcakes decorated with green icing.  

Seeing the full array of junk food made Zack think of the time his dad took him to the batting cage and let him order whatever he wanted from the snack bar.  That day Zack ate pizza, and nachos, and ice cream.  He drank at least three cups of orange soda.

In the party room, Zack grabbed a green cupcake, peeled back the wrapper, and took a big bite.

At the batting cage with his father, the food hadn’t been particularly tasty, but it didn’t stop Zack from eating as much as he could.  His father didn’t object when he stuffed himself full of every junk food option available.  

But then Zack’s dad re-started the pitching machine and insisted that Zack keep taking swings.  You won’t get better if you don’t practice, Zachary.  Working hard when you don’t really want to will make you a better player.

Looking back, Zack wondered if his dad actually wanted him to gorge himself like that.

By the end of the second batch of pitches, Zack’s stomach felt like lead.  He lost focus and swung wildly.  Stay in there, Zachary.  Keep your eye on the ball.  

Zack’s dad then ordered up a third round of balls.  The memory made Zack feel dizzy.

Today’s birthday cupcake had an unfamiliar taste but Zack just assumed his aunt was experimenting with another new recipe.  But then he felt something different in his brain.  He sensed something out of the corner of his eye and turned to see the mural on the wall shift ever so slightly.  

Thinking for a moment that he didn’t see what he saw, Zack then felt the ground shift below his feet.  Something was wrong.

In the storage room, two slack-shouldered teenage employees held court, sitting amongst boxes of pizza crust mix and party balloons.  Mason the kitchen worker hadn’t heard the latest gossip about Austin the assistant manager.  Jimmy the busboy explained in disgusting detail what Austin had done to the inside of the Lucky the Lion costume.

They were soon joined by Jesse, the old dude who manned the pizza oven.  Have you guys seen Zoe’s cupcakes, Jesse asked.  Zoe the cashier had left behind a box of special cupcakes the night before.  Neither Mason nor Jimmy had seen any cupcakes, nor would they have even talked to Zoe, lest she file another complaint against them with management.  What a bummer, Jesse said.  He was really looking forward to having one of those cupcakes.

Meanwhile, in the party room, Zack felt as if the walls were pulsating.  He looked up and noticed the stains in the ceiling tiles for the first time.  They seemed to be growing, their edges spreading darkly.  Dull voices echoed through the vents. 

Zack shifted his gaze and felt the walls start to spin.  Gazing upwards, he saw an enormous hole open  in the ceiling and a jet-black expanse seep through.  Suddenly a flaming ball of energy shot down through the darkness, blasting into the ground behind him.  And then another came crashing down.  Comets the size of melons plummeted into the ground then bounced back into the air.

One meteorite ricocheted right past Zack’s face.  It was only then that he realized that the flaming objects were not just balls of energy, but shimmering white rabbits.  And the flaming bunnies weren’t falling randomly, they were bouncing off the floor with a regular, consistent pattern.  

When the next bunny fell close to Zack, he instinctively jumped out of the way.  With firebunnies falling and bouncing all around him, Zack suddenly found himself running, and ducking and dodging.

Mason the kitchen worker returned from break just as the pizzas for Zack’s party were starting to come out of the oven.  Working at Lucky’s during a birthday party meant being cursed with a concentrated demand for pizza but blessed with a lower expectation of quality.  Mason haphazardly sliced up the first two large pepperonis, slid them onto round plastic trays, and backed through the kitchen door with one on each arm.

Rounding the corner into the back hallway, he became aware of an unfamiliar commotion coming from the party room.  Peering inside he saw Zack, a lone eleven-year-old boy, manically running around the room, jumping off of the communal benches and colliding into the walls.  The pizza-bearing teenager had seen plenty of weird kids during his time at Lucky’s, but this scene was weirder than most.  He instinctively backed out of the room and returned to the kitchen.

Meanwhile, Zack was doing well to avoid the flaming rabbits.  The meteors had stopped falling, but now a dozen blue-burning bunnies were bouncing randomly around the room, growing closer to Zack with each pass.  Whichever direction he turned, there was a throng of firebunnies there bounding toward him.  

Zack dashed to the table holding his birthday presents and grabbed the long, narrow package that appeared to be a gifted baseball bat.  He tore off the wrapping paper and discovered that it was, in fact, a sword that glistened in the pale light of the party room.

Eyes widened, Zack spun around to face the flaming bunnies.  He swung the sword wildly as he charged through a cloud of flying rabbits, deflecting them momentarily as he passed.  Reaching an opening on the other side of the room, he turned to face off against an inbound firebunny.  Quickly shifting his position, he pulled his sword to one side, then swung laterally as the projectile approached.

His sword sliced through the bunny in mid-air, cutting it in half through the torso.  The head and tail portions each falling lifelessly to the ground.  A smile crept across Zack’s face.  He turned quickly to confront another firebunny, repeated his stance, and deftly cut it in half.

Zack looked down at the dispatched bunnies and saw each half curl inwards and begin to vibrate.  He watched as each bunny half then grew into a new, fully regenerated rabbit.  The multiplied rabbits twitched upright, and glared at Zack malevolently.

Then, one by one, the zombie rabbits each launched through the air in Zack’s direction.

Mason found Jesse, the pizza oven dude, smoking in the alley behind the kitchen, propping open the emergency exit with his foot.  Dude, Mason said, there’s a problem with that birthday party.  There’s nothing wrong with those pizzas, Jesse said.  No, it’s something else, Mason said.  You need to see this.

Back in the party room, Zack was dashing around, avoiding the zombie rabbits that flew at him from all directions.  He continued to swing his sword overhead, successfully slicing the bouncing firebunnies in half, but creating new zombie rabbits in the process.  

Well that’s something you don’t see every day, said Jesse, watching the eleven-year-old kid run around the party room, swinging a baseball bat over his head.  Should we tell somebody, Mason asked.  I don’t know, man, Jesse responded.

Jesse’s eyes looked from Zack to the table of treats at the front of the room, finding a box of cupcakes with the letter Z written on the side.  Oh no, Jesse said.  This is going to be a problem.

Zack backed into a corner to size up his situation.  Only a few blue-glowing firebunnies remained, but the zombie rabbits were methodical and deliberate.  If he finished off the firebunnies, he may create more zombie rabbits than he could handle.

Then a firebunny bounced off the ceiling above him, forcing Zack into the path of a low-arching zombie rabbit.  Struck from behind, Zack fell to the ground facefirst.  He scrambled to his feet only to be struck by another rabbit firing from the opposite direction.

How do I get out of this, Zack wondered.  How was he going to get through this level?

In the back alley, Mason and Jesse pulled aside Jimmy the busboy.  You need to get rid of this, they said, handing him a white box with a Z written on the side.  Then from around the corner of the building drove an old sedan, heading in their direction.  It parked about a hundred feet away.  

As the driver emerged from the vehicle, the chatting employees recognized that it was their former boss, the freshly-fired assistant manager Austin.  The bespeckled young man popped the hood of his trunk and pull out an armful of tan fabric, sewn into an oversized garment. 

Paying no mind to the others standing nearby, the young man moved about mechanically, as if he was on his own private crusade.

Inside, Zack was honing in on the last remaining firebunny, withstanding the ongoing attack of twenty-odd zombie rabbits.  His sword had long grown heavy and the strikes he took from the zombie rabbits had left him winded.  But he found an opening in the melee and cornered his final target.  He raised the blade above his head and cut it in two.

Suddenly, the ceiling lights flickered and the walls began to undulate.  From a corner emerged a billowing cloud of black smoke, which quickly collected into the form of a medieval warrior wearing a dark suit of armor.  A towering figure soon stood before Zack, a nebulous Phantom Knight, armed with a mace in one hand and a shield in the other.

Meanwhile, Zack’s mother sat at a table adjacent to the video arcade, half-listening to her cousin talk about her latest dating misadventure.  She turned her gaze to the rest of the room, populated primarily by her little nephews and nieces, and made eye contact with her brother-in-law Randy.  They exchanged a nod and a smile.

Randy was far better at family events than her ex.  Zack’s dad always had an excuse, always showed up late.  He didn’t even confirm with her that he would be showing up at all today, to celebrate his only son’s eleventh birthday.

And where was Zack, she wondered.  He had always been a low-maintenance kid, capable of entertaining himself with little direction.  But now something told her she needed to check in on him.

In the party room, Zack looked to his own hand, still holding his own magical sword, and felt he understood what was to happen next.  But then the zombie rabbits turned towards him in unison and the Phantom Knight spoke.

You need more practice, Zachary.  You’ll never be good at anything if you don’t practice.

Zack fell to his knees and immediately vomited all of his stomach’s contents. Partially digested pizza, nachos and ice cream poured into a pile on the floor.

Gross, Zack thought to himself.

Zack’s mom passed through the rows of video games, looking around corners for her son.  Leaving the area, she angled down the narrow hallway that led to the rest of the restaurant.  But before she could reach the nearby party room, an exterior door at the far end of the hallway unlatched with a metallic clunk.  When the door opened, she was initially confused by the deformed figured that stood before her.

Some time later it would be questioned whether the backdoor to Lucky’s Pizza Kingdom #3 had been left unlocked, or if Austin Singer, a recently fired employee, had secretly retained keys to the establishment.  But what was not unclear was that on the day in question Singer had entered the restaurant, during business hours but without the consent of the owner, wearing a homemade lion costume.

Whether former assistant manager Austin was hoping to win his job back, or was just acting out a weird revenge fantasy, he succeeded in causing a scene that disturbed many of the children who witnessed it.  Not that he had expected to be clocked by an eleven-year old boy carrying an aluminum bat.

When Zack emerged from the party room, he held the bat at waist height, but raised it above his head as charged towards the bipedal lion.  He brought the bat down against the base of the creature’s neck, instantly dropping him to his knees.

You ruined my birthday, screamed Zack, raising the bat for a second blow.

Zack’s mom rushed towards him, her hands reaching out.  No, Zack, she cried.

Undeterred, Zack brought the bat down again, deflecting off his opponent’s upraised arm and against the side of its fabric-covered head.  An all-too-human groan emerged from the animal as it fell to one side, its plastic crown rolling onto the floor.

Zack, that’s enough, said Uncle Randy, stepping forward to reach for the bat.  Zack instinctively pulled the weapon away, glaring at his father’s brother.  Randy tilted his head forward with a firm,  imploring expression.  You’ve done, Zack.

Uncle Randy sidled next to Zack and put an arm around his shoulders.  Zack took a deep breath and released the tension with a sigh.  He lowered the bat to his side.

I think we’ve had enough of this party, said Uncle Randy.  We should probably leave.  Right, Sara?

Zack’s head spun to Randy, then to his mom, finding the two in the midst of a knowing look.

Yeah, we should go, said Zack’s mom, offering a warm grin to her son’s uncle and then to her son.

For a moment, Zack’s hand tightened around the handle of his sword, it’s energy coursing through his forearm.

I don’t ever want to come back here, said Zack.

Don’t worry, said Zack’s mom.  We never will.