Coming Together

by Zeke Biddle

  Coming Together

  Zeke Biddle

  Coming Together

  Zeke Biddle

  Copyright © 2019 Zeke Biddle

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the copyright holder. This book contains sexually explicit content which is suitable only for mature adults.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  If you enjoyed this book…

  1

  Stuck in the back corner of yet another dorm party, drinking the beer but not talking to anyone, I’ve come to a big realization.

  Something’s got to change.

  When I came to a similar realization each of the previous two semesters, I transferred to a new college.

  This time it will be different.

  Rather than run from my problems—bad grades, no friends, definitely no girlfriend—I’m going to grab the bull by the horns, take charge of my happiness, and stop running away from my challenges.

  No more running.

  I’ve been staring at a cute redhead trapped in the opposite corner. She’s wearing a shirt with anime characters from an edgy show I’ve watched a few times. She’s even smiled at me twice. Most importantly, despite being gorgeous, she’s somehow as invisible to the rest of the room as I am.

  I won’t have to compete with all the jocks and pretty boys. I’m definitely not one of those. I’m about as average as can be…on a good day.

  Get your ass moving, Marcus!

  I cringe at the sound of my dad’s voice in my head. Since the voice only tends to get louder and more obnoxious if I wallow in my misery, I either need to get hammered to drown it out or do something shut it up.

  The room is crowded, and my will is weak, but I step away from the wall still unsure exactly what I plan to do.

  Three songs blast over the speakers while I wind my way through the mass of people who nudge me around like I’m a beachball at a rock concert. I stop at the keg to refill my red cup. I’m not quite planning to get drunk yet, but I could use some liquid courage.

  When I finally make my way over to her, she smiles and says, “About time you came over. I’m Jenny. What’s your name?”

  Before I can reply, someone bumps me from behind.

  In slow-motion, my cup tumbles toward her. I flail, trying to catch it or at least push it to the side. My fingers just barely hit the lip of the cup. Miraculously, it knocks it away without a single drop splashing on her.

  Joy quickly turns to fear as I realize the it is falling back toward me. Uselessly, I swat at the cursed object some more, but I’m unable to stop all the beer from spilling right onto my crotch. My testicles shrink from the cold liquid and the shame.

  Any hope I have of not being noticed evaporates almost immediately.

  A guy with long hair dangling down over his eyes points at me and shouts, “This guy pissed himself!”

  Everyone turns to look, and laughter fills the room.

  I’d like to say I played it cool and laughed with them. Or punched the burnout right in his stupid face.

  I didn’t.

  I pushed my way through the crowd and slammed the door behind me and started sprinting to my own dorm. I make myself a promise: there are only two weeks left in the semester, and I won’t be returning after the break.

  2

  Alone in my dorm room, I can’t even get interested in porn.

  I need a pep talk. Someone who will help me figure out the mess of crap in my head.

  I slap on my VR headset and ping my sister.

  A virtual orange tabby cat appears in the middle of my room. Sitting on her haunches, she barely fits beneath the ceiling. She licks her front paw and wipes it behind her ear.

  “Still going with that stupid giant cat avatar?” I ask, avoiding the reason I reached out to her. When she blinks at me without saying a word, I add, “What kind of message does that put out for others?”

  Even without human facial features, I can hear her boredom. “You called me on a Friday night during your Homecoming weekend, and you’re trying to paint me as the pathetic one? You transferring again? What school are you headed to next?”

  That’s Margie. She always cuts straight to the chase.

  “I’m thinking of joining the Army.” Up until this second, I’ve never considered such a thing.

  The giant cat snorts. “You wouldn’t even make it through MEPS. And they’re nice to you right up until you take your oath.” She’d know. She went the officer route in the Navy after college. “Just go to bed, Marcus. Sober up if you’re drunk. Study for finals and we’ll figure out what to do with you when you go back to Mom’s for Christmas Break. Whatever you do: stick with it and get your degree.”

  “Collect my useless piece of paper?”

  “Yes. The paper might be useless, but when you get it, you’ll have proved to employers you can finish something substantial. More importantly, maybe you’ll convince yourself along the way you’re good enough to overcome basic challenges and not run away from everything.”

  “I don’t run away…”

  I don’t bother finishing the sentence once the cat disappears, leaving behind a fireworks display in her digital wake.

  Someone knocks on my door. I ignore it at first. I get frequent visitors during party nights from students too drunk to know they are at the wrong room.

  When the knocking doesn’t stop, I rip off my headset and yank the door open. “Wrong room!”

  It’s not a drunk student, though. It’s a pizza man. Kip, according to the name sewn onto his shirt pocket. “Room 319?” he asks, pointing at the number on my door.

  Just like me, he struggles to keep his shirt tucked into his pants. I glance at his head and wonder if I’ll be going bald like him and delivering pizza to college kids in another twenty years.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t order a pizza.”

  I wish I had. It smells so good. My stomach could use something to soak up the cheap beer from the party.

  “Marcus Dillon?” he asks, pulling the pizza from the carrying case.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Someone pranked you.”

  I shrug. “Colleges during Homecoming. What can I say? But I don’t have any money for you.”

  “I’d take the pizza home, but,” he pats his belly. “Trying to cut back to once a week. I’ve already had three so far this week, and… Sorry. You don’t care about my problems. Anyway, the pizza’s paid for. Tip, too. You look like the kind of guy who could use a random act of kindness, so why don’t you just take it, okay?”

  It’s like the guy sees straight into my soul.

  Hell, it’s like all of humanity noticed a down-on-his-luck sophomore and decided, Let’s throw this kid a bone.

  It feels like if I just take the pizza and sit down to study while eating it, I’ll pass all my classes, eventually graduate, and start my own company or something. I can get married to a beautiful, funny woman—maybe the on
e from the party—and we’ll have three or four incredible kids.

  And it would all start with this little random boost from a stranger.

  “Okay, Kip. I’ll take it. Thanks. I really needed something like this tonight. I think I’m on a path and…well, I’m sure you’re not interested in my problems, either. Let’s just say, I think things might be changing for me. Someday when I look back on the great things I’ve done, I’ll remember you, sir.”

  “I don’t doubt that at all, Marcus.”

  Kip hands me the pizza. Holding up a finger to tell me to wait, he reaches into his pocket and fishes out a folded up piece of paper. “You might be interested in this, too. I can tell you from experience that it’s killer.”

  He sets the piece of paper on top of the pizza box, pops in his earbuds, and starts walking toward the stairs. He flashes a peace sign over his shoulder before disappearing.

  I set the box on the bottom bunk. Since my roommate moved out, I use the bottom for eating and homework.

  Inside the box is a pepperoni pizza. My favorite. I moan in ecstasy when I take the first bite and the grease covers my tongue.

  “So, what’s this?” I pick up the piece of paper that fell to the floor when I lifted the lid.

  It’s an advertisement for a computer game, probably an indie one. The advertisement looks like it was printed on Kip’s personal inkjet printer after he’d run out of color ink. Whoever drew it had an active imagination and the skill to match it, though.

  There’s a warrior clad in plate mail. His helmet is shaped to look like a dragon head. His shield covers the left side of his body from his neck to his knees and has a picture dragon breathing fire in the center of it. His sword makes no sense. It’s longer than his body and about two-feet wide.

  Computer games don’t need to make sense, though. The physics are arbitrary. Style is always more important than logic. That’s half the fun.

  Standing next to him, and practically wrapped around his sword arm like a snake, is a very curvy, practically naked woman.

  I’ll take two. To go.

  I sigh and wonder when I’ll finally get laid. Odds are it won’t be this semester. It won’t be while I’m back home during break, either. Looks like another year will pass with me firmly in the virgin camp.

  The title is written in giant block letters across the top of the page.

  Loot and Booty

  Splashed in various spots around the page are the messages:

  Play the alpha release before your friends.

  Be the alpha.

  Kill the monsters.

  Dominate your kingdom.

  Fuck all the women in your harem.

  That last line definitely piques my interest. I’ve played plenty of VRMMORPGs. They’re a great way to pass a weekend with people when no one wants to hang out with me in the real world. In other words, almost every weekend.

  But they never allow sex because the feedback systems in the game for the sense of touch are nowhere near good enough.

  I grab my headset and scan the 2D barcode printed in the lower-right corner of the page.

  Spinning gears float in my line of sight while the game loads.

  There’s no splash screen, music, or cut scene.

  Just when I assume the game is Kip’s lame personal creation, the spinning wheels and black background disappear and are replaced by the game world.

  “What the fuck?”

  3

  I’m standing at the edge of a cliff. My arms pinwheel as I try to throw my weight backward to keep from falling off. I can’t even see the bottom. It’s not like there’s clouds or mist or anything blocking the view.

  There’s just no bottom.

  A few hundred feet away, another sheer cliff shoots up out of the nothingness and rises several hundred feet higher than the piece of ground I’m standing on.

  Once I’ve scrambled safely back from the edge, I try to call up the game menu to create my first save file, check out my stats, and see what kinds of skill points I have available to distribute.

  Nothing happens.

  Stupid alpha games and their never-ending bugs.

  “Hey there, Marcus,” a voice calls out from all around me. “It’s me, Kip. How was the pizza? I didn’t expect you to log in quite so fast. Let me pull over so we can talk.” I hear the sound of brakes squealing and a car honking. “There we go. Nice and safe. So how’s the game? Having fun yet?”

  “I just logged in. So far all I’ve done is nearly fall off a cliff.”

  “Oh, I see you’ve spawned at the Infinite Falls. That’ll be handy. It’s kinda out in the middle of nowhere, so you should have plenty of time to get your shit together. Are you near Raven Haven?”

  “There hasn’t exactly been a welcoming committee,” I say.

  I turn around and see I’m standing in the middle of a road that leads right up to the edge of the cliff. It passes straight through a tiny village of maybe thirty houses, each little more than a shack. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to live so close to such an extreme drop-off.

  There’s a tiny, old, black woman, leaning heavily on a walking stick taller than she is, coming toward me.

  “Welcome to Raven Haven. Any friend of Alexandra’s is a friend of ours,” she says.

  A line of villagers fans out behind her, three off each shoulder.

  “He’s not with me,” another woman says from my left.

  The woman is a complete badass. She’s pale beyond pale, despite the hot sun beating down on her. Her hair is whiter than snow. There’s a giant two-handed sword in a scabbard that runs from her hip nearly down to the ground. It would be one hundred percent impractical in the real world.

  So would her outfit.

  The black leather skirt is so tight that she shouldn’t be able to run, and her…armor, for lack of a better word…is a black leather bra that doesn’t even have shoulder straps. There’s no way it would contain her full breasts if she needed to run or jump in real gravity.

  It is fucking hot, though. She’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.

  She pulls out her sword and points it at me. It sparkles in the sun as we stare at each other.

  I realize I’m still staring at her breasts and hurriedly divert my gaze.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Are you an Engineer?” she demands.

  “Umm. No. I’m studying Broadcast Media.”

  She scrunches up her nose like she just smelled something awful. “Do you have any useful skills? Can you make the bridge extend again?”

  She points to the top of the other cliff.

  A quest!

  I have no idea what the hell is going on around here, but I know how to solve game quests.

  “Sure,” I say, certain I’ll figure it out as I go. How hard can the opening quest of a game be?

  Kip clears his throat. “Can you tell them all to wait a sec so I can finish my speech?”

  “Later, Kip. Can’t you see that the beautiful woman needs my help?”

  “No, actually. I’m on Earth. You’re stuck in the game.”

  I hear his words, but my brain doesn’t really process them. “Later, Kip. Check in once you’ve finished delivering all the pizzas.”

  Ignoring his complaints, I walk over to a control panel attached to the top of a pole about waist high. It’s just off to the side of the road a few feet from the drop.

  “Ah ha! Piece of cake. You just press the button. Here. Let me show you how.”

  Alexandra snorts.

  I press the button and take a step back.

  Nothing happens.

  The people behind me snicker.

  “Hmm. That should have…Let me take another look.”

  There’s nothing else on the panel except the one button. I mash it several times with my finger before switching to hammering it with my fist.

  “How long do you think he’s going to keep mashing the button?” the old woman asks.

  “What do you expect?”
Alexandra asks, sounding joyful for the first time. “He’s a man, Dasandra. They never know how to work a button.”

  Everyone around us laughs.

  “Hey, I know what a clitoris is,” I say.

  My complaint does nothing to silence the laughter.

  “Can you stop hitting that button unless you’re an Engineer or Builder or some class that knows what to do? I don’t want you to break it worse than it’s already broken.”

  I turn toward her and flex my arms. “I’m not a Builder. I’m a warrior.”

  The laughter swarms me like flies at a picnic.

  “You’re no warrior, scrawny man,” Alexandra says.

  I look at my arm and do a double take at the skinny limb I find there. “What the hell? I’m always a warrior.”

  “You look more like a wizard to me.” She scrunches up her nose again as if the word tastes bad in her mouth.

  Dasandra places her free hand on Alexandra’s arm. “Can I interrupt for a second, dear?”

  “Be my guest. I’m going to hit the road, anyway. I’m not going to find someone to fix the bridge sitting around in this village. Farewell, Dasandra.” Alexandra starts shoving some of her supplies in her pack as she prepares to leave.

  “And you,” the old woman replies, turning her clouded-over eyes back to me. “Wizard, will you help—”

  “Actually, I’m a warrior,” I mumble as if repeatedly saying it will make it so.

  “Don’t try to pass yourself off as something you’re clearly not. Especially when there’s no shame in the route you’ve chosen. Some of the land’s mightiest heroes and most terrible monsters are magic. Even the great One-Eyed Monster wouldn’t be half the man he is without the two fierce Magi who battle by his side.”