In Escape From Duckov, I roll great clutter Katamari of avian avarice and agony

Quack.

My flesh-coloured form tightens up beneath my body armour. The sausage fingers of my massive human hands grip the trigger of the SMG with white-knuckle desperation. The tiny eyes halfway up the huge head which forms the majority of my unnaturally lanky form spot it. A flash of green. I open fire mercilessly. Blood and bullets fly for 30 seconds. I’m still standing. Shaken, panting, and staring at a perfectly cooked bird on a plate.

Sweat drips from my brow onto a beak which protrudes at least 500 miles from my face. I commence an avian autopsy, pulling assorted junk, ammo, and a gun from the deceased duck’s innards. They go in my ever-bulging backpack for now, and will later be thrown upon the great stuff pile in my bunker. Now, to try and squeeze in a few more items before heading towards the extraction zone.

Upon my return to safety, I breathe a sigh of relief. I glance towards Jeff. He is the king of this underground cosmos, surrounded by work stations assembled from the goods I’ve rolled up during my brief romps on the surface. I orbit past the armour salesduck, Orange, and see in his place a pile of metal plates, bulbs, and bolts. In the pen to my right, a poo-coloured bodybuilder duck named Mud bench presses weights. I see only yet more metal plates and a tire Jeff gifted me for some forgotten deed. The same goes for the medical station, assembled with help from boxes of medicine I pulled from the camps of duck survivalists who didn’t weather the lethal storm of my AK.

They’re just the tip of the iceberg. Behind Jeff sits the warehouse locker, bursting with all manner of paraphernalia I’ve plucked from birdy bodies in Ground Zero. The apocalypse has drained our pond of all feathered friendliness and formalities. We lost it all when we failed to secure a flight off this world. All that remains is an insatiable hunger for more. Each extraction is more an extraction of the soul than the body. I can feel it slipping away, growing the wings I declined to give myself in the duck creator, and fleeing the purgatory of its mortal prisoner.

Well, I say mortal. I have seen what comes after. Piles of stuff, rooted to spots where once I stood and was cut down by ninja ducks with MP5s or mad duck warriors with battle axes. Lost items, these goods declare themselves, to be reclaimed. I must re-emerge, naked as the day I was hatched, and hunt them down. The ducks responsible for each of my murders never claim these items for themselves. I assume they’re as desperate as I am, but they must lack the hunger. If, strange little arse bumps hanging out in the breeze, I fail to get the stuff back, it disappears forever. Oh, unholy deities of mallard materialism, I cry. Why must you curse me so?

The storm rolls into Ground Zero. I’m warned against going outside, so retreat to my bunk and hibernate. I begin to dream. There’s a prince. He rolls a great ball through Edo-period Japan, snatching up all smaller objects that sit in his way. I’m awestruck. He rushes to pick up as many things as he can before a time limit set by his absent-minded master runs out. His subsuming of all he surveys, however, is not a violent one. Most objects submit without protest. Some emit an initial yelp, but this could just as much be a squeal of ecstasy as a cry of pain. Their assimilation from disparate chaos into one great whole feels natural. Once the ball is of an appropriate size to accommodate them, there is no struggle.

They float up into the cosmos as newly formed planets and stars, and all is right with the world. The prince does not sit aboard his spaceship, eyes wide and teeth gritted as visions of dead ducks pool like bird blood in the recesses of his mind. He does not suffer for his collecting artistry as I do. I don’t blame him, though. It’s out of our control. His are balls of love and mine are balls of hate. They reflect the differing states of nature we inhabit, his a Rousseauian idyll, mine a Hobbesian nightmare. We are alike, but total strangers.

I open my eyes and glance down at my little buddy duck. They’ve loyally followed me around since the moment I was born, and escaped the bunker which served as my introduction to this cursed life. Throughout all of the bloodshed and piling high of items, they’ve watched. Their beaks emitted no noise of judgement. I’m not sure if they’re a support mechanism, a fleshy security camera making sure I keep on taking the things, or the pond-dwelling ghost of my once clean conscience. Maybe it’s all three.

If they’re ever shot by a Welsh Harlequin with a smoking Glock, I don’t think I’ll ever recover. That day hasn’t come yet. It may never arrive. Still, it’s one of the litany of lurking horrors which’ll carry on haunting my days and nights until I manage to Escape From Duckov.

Jeff comes in. The storm’s passed, he says. I sigh deeply, wake my buddy, and grab my gun. As I climb the ladder to the surface, I think about the storm of duck death that’s about to begin. Poking my massive fleshy head out into the light of day, I’m surprised to see the prince from my dream standing there, his happy green form translucent. He’s unlocked a new expression to go with the toy horse around his waist and the miniature version of himself he wears as a hat. Its eyes are haunted.

“Time to roll,” he mouths.

“Quack,” I reply.