And The Winner Is…

We’ve been running a contest recently here on the blog and on KillTheCan.org where we asked our members to to send in their quit story.   Here’s a quick recap of the contest:

Your Story
This contest will be for the “best” quit story.  It can be funny, educational, heart-wrenching, etc.  It’s YOUR story.  The only caveat is that it CANNOT be a reprint of your Hall Of Fame speech or a post you’ve taken from the forums.
New and unique content only.

The Prize
500 custom chips in multiple denominations courtesy of Mint Snuff.

I’d originally intended to post all of the submissions and allow KillTheCan.org members to vote on them.  Quite honestly, my “real life” has been rather crazy lately and that wasn’t quite possible.  So… I went with the next best thing.  I posted the submissions and had the mod/admin team vote on them.  I posted only the stories, with no names/email addresses and so we voted just on the story itself.

So… without any further build up…  The winner (in a very close vote) is… Scott D!  Scott will be getting the 500 chip poker chip set courtesy Mint Snuff (send me your mailing address and we’ll get it out to you).

And with that, here’s the winning story.  Congrats Scott!

Where the fuck am I?

I picked myself off of the ground of the darkened chasm.  I squinted in an attempt to make out something…anything.  Just moments beforehand, I had found a strange little door hidden behind the copier at my new job.  It wasn’t a normal door.  It was only 2 feet tall, and it led into a cave (a cave?) in an office building (in an office building??).  Of course I was going to see where it led to, and I did…until the floor fell out from below me and I began falling.

As I patted the dust off of my new suit, I heard voices ahead in the dark.  I gripped a wall (I hoped) and felt my way along.  The voices grew louder and louder.  After a short while, I saw slivers of light dancing on a wall ahead.  The cave turned ahead to the left, so I could not make out any shapes. I had no idea of what I was wondering into.

I hid around the bend, and peeked as little of my head into the light as necessary in order to assess the situation.  My jaw immediately dropped.

The most striking feature in the room was a large stone idol.  Circling around it (like he was protecting the object) was the evil dojo master from Karate Kid.  I saw lots of military emblems, and, yup, that’s the guy Full Metal Jacket there yelling at an American flag.  There was this demented little pit bull, and boobs.  Lots of boobs.

Of course I had to enter.

When I did, the room screeched to a halt.  I think I even saw this guy that was playing poker run over to a record player and pull the needle across the record to heighten the effect.  It was weird, but there were a lot of boobs so I was strangely calm.

“What the hell?” I said, mesmerized by the guy jumping up and down in the corner with his shirt open.  His man boobs were amazingly feminine, and he knew it.  He even shaved his chest for full effect.

“Are you saying what the hell over Mrs. MikeA over there?” A voice behind me said.

I turned around, and there was the poker playing guy.  He had left his game to engage me.

“Kind of.  He’s entrancing.”

“Oh.  He is.” The poker player said.  “He thinks he’s married…to his chest.  Thinks they’re attached to somebody else…poor guy.  I’m…”

A sudden voice broke his thoughts.

Come on, what does it matter?  Nobody even cares if you’re “quit”!  You could do whatever you want to do.  You’re a big boy.

“Who was that?”  I looked around anxiously.  The voice was alluring.  I could picture it being emancipated from the lips of a beautiful woman.  I could almost see the cherry red lips mouthing those sensual words.  I’m still not sure if it was this image, or all of the boobs in the room, but I quickly had to adjust myself.

“That” said the poker player, “is the Nic Bitch.”

My jaw must have fallen open again, and the poker player began exclaiming further.

“This is a lot to handle, so let’s sit down.  First off, are you quit?”

“Yes” I managed to mumble out.  “I quit chewing a few days ago.  It fucking sucks man.  I feel like my brain is fried, and nothing is fun anymore.  I really wanted to go bum one off of my friend Paul at my office, but something drew me to the copier.  I found this little door, and here I am…”  It sounded even weirder saying it aloud, and I flashed him an awkward smile.

“Outstanding!  Congratulations on being 3 days quit.  That is just…outstanding!”

“That little door you found was your entrance into the KTC.  You see, all of us here quit just like you.  We’ve all been through that shitty journey, and we’ll continue on it until the day we die.  We’re here to help our members drown out that bitch’s voice.”

He then took me around the room, and introduced me to the caricatures placed in front of me.  It was surprising how much we had in common, and how quickly we bonded because of something that we all used to do.

He then took me to the front of the “cave”.  I realized at this time that we were not inside a cave at all.  I was staring out of the eyes of another human being!

The poker player sat me down at a seat very similar to Captain Kirk’s in Star Trek with prime viewing seating.

“Our goal here is to keep this fine quitter quit.  The nic bitch is here as well.  She’s a persistent one, and she doesn’t take weekends off.  Our goal here is to camp out in this quitter’s head and drown out her voice.  We are his voice of reason to her insanity.”

I suddenly got an idea.

“If we have control of this quitter’s head, then why don’t we just knock him out or MAKE him stay quit?  It seems pretty easy.  I mean, you guys must have hundreds of years of collective quits going.”

The poker player frowned.  “We can’t make somebody quit.  We all have free will.  We can tell this guy what to do.  We can tell him what we did.  But, ultimately, he’s gotta decide whether he’s going to use or not.”

“So does this mean I have little weirdos running around my head?”  I asked.

He smiled.

“Yes it does.  We are always here to help you, no matter the situation.  We are angels on your shoulder, but you’ve got to carry this quit.”

My fear of my weaknesses instantly became less of a burden.  I had friends that knew just how damn hard this shit was to quit, and I was relieved.

The poker player sat down at the microphone, and looked at me.

“Wanna take your knowledge for a test drive?”

 We’ll be having some more contests in the future… stay tuned!