Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011

by Mike Davis (Editor)

  “What?”

  “They are called the Dreamlands.” The smile returned to his face. “And you have made them perfectly, however you did it.”

  “Thank you. I hope things are going as well with the rest of the development team.” I was lying. I had my money and didn’t care how the rest of the project went, though the game did look awesome. I was pretty sure that I would try it once it came out. “I look forward to playing it after release.”

  “Oh yes, it is all going very well. The engine has been populated with the graphics and sounds, while the text is being incorporated in stages.” His eyes twinkled with merriment. “While I applaud our author’s creativity and attention to detail, his grammar and spelling can be a bit…tiresome.”

  “Well, that’s too bad. But otherwise, it’s going well?” Again, I didn’t really care, but I knew how to play the game with someone who had just given me over five million dollars for the work of less than a month. “We’re launching soon?”

  “Yes, we should be launching very soon.” He leaned forward into the camera, but this time it was his eyes that filled my screen. They were dark, the pupils dilated and liquid. “If you choose to play, I invite you to join a guild with the rest of the developers and myself.”

  “You mean a ‘cult’.” I remembered the spec sheets. In this game, guilds were called cults. “And what kind of guild?”

  “Yes, a cult. And it will be the most hardcore cult in the game.”

  “What’s the name going to be?” For some reason, this was always important to me. Names were powerful.

  “Harbingers.” His eyes filled the screen. The only reason I believed there were whites in them was because I knew there must be. No one’s eyes are all pupil, no matter how dark. “It means ‘those who prepare the way’. A first sign of what is to come.”

  I considered the proposition. I had, of course, been in many guilds, clans, player associations, and clubs over the years, but I had always played the game before joining. Ah, what the hell, I thought, it’s just a game. I can always quit.

  “I’m in,” I said, smiling broadly.

  #

  Fire and Glass wasn’t only brilliant, it was popular. The game went gold and launched, and the next thing we knew, it was the most played game in the world. I started playing with the Harbingers, and we quested and harvested and worked our way through the game together, but somehow we never really talked about anything except the game. The only person I talked to from the cult outside of game was Sabrina, the graphics developer. She was kind of cute, a little Asian chick with purple strips in her hair, if her Facebook picture was anything to go by. I didn’t know whether she was Korean, or Japanese, or what. Frankly, I was afraid to ask. She lived near me, a couple of miles away near Market Street. We became friends on a few sites and talked on IRC late into the night, after everyone else had logged out of the game. That’s how we decided to raid the King in Yellow, the last boss in the game.

  “Not everyone is ready,” I typed. “Hell, Josh’s best spell is the Elder Sign. He can’t even Dream Real.” Dreaming Real was a special ability granted at level thirty, or by a special quest, allowing you to add new functions to the game, like spells you came up with, new monsters, or non-player characters. Few cults allowed anyone without the ability to Dream Real to join, but since he was a developer, we had mercy on him.

  “Well, we can just do Y’ha-nthlei over and over till he levels,” Sabrina responded. “That should level him up enough and get him some better gear. Then we can do it.”

  “Sure, we can do that,” I typed. “I need to harvest sea slugs for tradeskilling, anyway.”

  “Hey,” she asked. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

  “I don’t have anything,” I responded. “I was supposed to help Kevin grind out some quests, but that’s about it.”

  “Want to come over and drink and watch some movies?” She asked. “I have the entire ‘Phantasm’ series rented.”

  “I don’t really drink,” I typed. “Interferes with the coding.”

  “Oh. Well, what about the movies?” she asked. “You don’t have to drink.”

  “I own them all already,” I responded. “The first and fourth are the best.”

  “So you don’t want to come over?” She asked.

  “I don’t want to go someplace else just to watch movies I already own,” I typed. “What would be the point?”

  “To watch them together,” she typed. “Look, do you want to come over or not?”

  “…” She had me there. I didn’t have much of a concept of ‘together’. I had never had an in-real-life friend, much less a girlfriend. “I…I don’t know?”

  “…” That didn’t seem to sit well. Frustration welled up in me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her…didn’t want her. I just didn’t know what to do, and she wouldn’t tell me. “SAB-GRAPHICS HAS LEFT THE CHANNEL.”

  Damn. I knew I had pissed her off. I even knew it was because she wanted me to come to her house. I just didn’t understand why. I closed the window with a sigh and logged back in to the game.

  Out of the corner of my eye, there was a flicker of motion, then it was gone. Then a second flicker, this one longer, more defined. Something was moving on the wall. I turned my head slowly. I had found insects in here before, and once, even a ragged, half-starved rat. The key to getting rid of them was slow, purposeful movement.

  The motion stopped the moment I got my full vision on it. The eyes. I examined the aesthetic center of the collage, trying to see the insect that had been creeping before I looked, but found nothing.

  I went back to the game.

  #

  I walked out into the garish light of the morning, about a week after launch; I hated this part of the week. Leaving my little lair for any reason perturbed me, but getting groceries always bothered me more than anything. Putting out that much effort for a bunch of carbon and calories. When I thought about the human race, a species capable of touching the stars, creating masterpieces, and contemplating the deepest mysteries of existence, and thought about the fact that we still have to take in fuel through rotting organic matter, I was disgusted and vaguely insulted.

  And I wanted to play the game.

  The morning air was chilly, as always, though the fog was already burning off. The walk down to the store was uneventful, sidewalk and streets relatively empty. Some homeless kids panhandled next to the store. The boy had bi-hawks–twin mohawks–on his head, and the girl’s hair was green. They were both dressed in filthy army surplus gear that had patches sewn on with dental floss. The girl had a stud through her bottom lip that she toyed with her tongue as her partner asked me for change. I handed them a quarter, literally the only cash I had on me, and made my way inside.

  Inside the small grocery, mayhem reigned. People shouted at each other in groups and pairs, men shoved men as women screamed at each other. The cashier and manager were attempting to shove each other out of the store. One woman, forgotten in the chaos, sat on a display of self-lighting fire logs and wept unashamedly.

  I walked through the small market like a ghost as the battles raged around me, picking up what I needed. No one had come to blows yet, but it seemed imminent. I made my way to the cashier, who rang up my goods without pausing in his description of the virtues of the manager’s mother. I slid my card, tapped my code, and fled with my bags. The bell on the door clanged behind me.

  Outside, the homeless kids were fighting. I didn’t have time to hear much of it before the young man threw a handful of change and single dollar bill on the ground and stalked off, over-sized backpack thrown over his left shoulder. As I began to gingerly walk by, the girl called out to me.

  “Hey, man, hey.” I walked over to her. “Hey, you like to party? Let’s get some wine with this.” She nodded at the change on the ground. “Head back to your place. Have some fun.” She licked her lips.

  I shook my head. “I don’t like parties,” I said. “They make me anxious. I don’t know
what people are going to do.”

  “You gay?” Her eyes narrowed. “Not that I have anything against it…”

  “No.”

  “Look,” she said, clearly exasperated. “If you let me stay at your place, I’ll have sex with you, is that clear enough?”

  “Umm…” I considered. I had never had sex, but I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. And I didn’t want anyone else in my space. “No, thanks.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Her eyes narrowed again, and she tossed her green hair. “I won’t rob you or anything. You can watch me the whole time. I just don’t want to squat with that loser.” She tossed her head to indicate the tiny, departing silhouette of her partner.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, walking away. “I just wanted some groceries.”

  “You’re mental, ain’t ya?” She rolled her eyes. “A few screws loose? Maybe a little retarded?” I didn’t answer and kept walking.

  She started cursing as I walked away, and I felt bad, but I didn’t know what she expected. She couldn’t really do anything for me that I couldn’t do for myself, and I live in a small place. As I walked past the floor apartments, I saw Mrs. Krantz sitting at her computer through the window, her white hair and oxygen tank unmistakable in the small building. Always intrigued to see old people using new technology, I stopped and watched to see what she was doing. On the monitor, a familiar animation told me all I needed to know; she was playing Fire and Glass.

  Our little game was quite a hit.

  #

  Two other members of the cult were online, so we went questing. We were silent, as usual. Each of us knew what to expect. The in-game world had gotten more and more savage as more players joined and gained power. It was getting hard to find things to kill. Too many predators make for poor prey. Just as we finally closed on another group of players and began to attack, I saw the flash of movement to my side again. I couldn’t stop playing; my group was depending on me, but I couldn’t help glancing over at the wall for a brief second as one of the eyes, cut from a baroque print from the 17th Century, batted its elaborate and filigreed eyelashes at me.

  I gasped and pulled back, but my group needed me, so I pushed myself back up to the desk and continued the battle. Each of us conjured new and more powerful twists of reality which attacked the other group or counteracted their summonings. Out of the corner of my eye, the baroque eye winked again, then all the other eyes started rolling around and twisting. I split my attention between the game and the wall as we continued the fight. The eyes continued to roll madly in their two-dimensional sockets as we fought in the game. I worked to ignore them; if I stopped playing or logged out, my party would die, and our cult would be humiliated. They had to be hallucinations; only the game was real.

  I was my mother’s son.

  In the bathroom, I heard the water turn on. The echo told me it was the bathtub. I ignored it and continued to play. The eyes danced madly in the corner of my vision, and I could hear the tub filling in the bathroom, the pitch getting lower as the water grew higher. Soon, it stopped altogether, and I heard the familiar drip-drip-drip as the faucet drained its last bits of water into the now-filled tub.

  Somehow, during all of this, I reassured my mind with trivialities. So someone was in my house, without coming in through the windows or door, and taking a bath? So what? So the pictures of eyes on my wall had decided to have a look around? After the comfort their gaze had given me, it was only fair that I allow them some exercise.

  And then the battle was over. My party was victorious, and our experience points reflected it.

  “I have to log,” I typed. “Thanks for the group.”

  “No problem,” they each typed, almost simultaneously. “Have a good night. Good game.”

  “Good game.” I logged out and stood up, looking over at the eyes, almost daring them to do something. They were still, but I could still hear splashing and movement from whatever it was that had invaded my bathtub. I slowly walked to the bathroom, careful not to make any noise, and slipped my head around the corner.

  Almost submerged in the bathtub, lay a shape…

  (Part 2 of Dreams of Fire and Glass was published in the June 2011 issue — click here to read it!)

  -

  -

  Neal Jansons, also known as “thePuck”, is a writer and poet who spends his days and nights thinking, writing, and solving interesting problems. Visit his website at this link.

  His fiction work has been used as the basis for the upcoming online game Ghostees!, published by BakedOn Entertainment, and his non-fiction work has previously been published in “Thinking Critically” (10th ed.), published by Cengage Learning, Inc./Nelson Education Ltd., and in “Critical Thinking, Thoughtful Writing” (5th ed.), also published by Cengage Learning, Inc./Nelson Education Ltd. He has been interviewed by Mashable, and maintains a strong social media presence online.

  Story art by mimulux.

  Return to the table of contents

  NOTE: Images contained in this Lovecraft eZine are Copyright ¬©2006-2012 art-by-mimulux. All rights reserved. All the images contained in this Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without my express written permission. These images do not belong to the public domain. All stories in Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without the express written permission of the editor.

  O, Lad of Memory and Shadow

  by W.H. Pugmire

  I crept like a frightened girl on silver-sandalled feet beneath an arc of moonlight, toward the House of Shadows. The street of sorrow on which I crept was as hard and cold as reality, and I was eager to be off it. Finally, I arrived at the porch that would lead me into the infamous dwelling, and so I hopped onto its first step, whereon my foot encountered a splinter that drove its way into my heel. Thus wounded, I limped up the remaining steps and staggered through the threshold, into the edifice. The hallway was very dark, except for sad phosphorescent faces that floated, now and then, near to the ceiling and provided the only illumination. I leaned against a tall and sturdy grandfather clock and listened to its sound; then watched the pale face that, floating to the clock, kissed its face of glass. The ticking stopped as time extinguished, but was replaced by another rhythm that issued from behind a nearest door. Stepping to that door, I turned its knob and entered in. It was a spacious room that pulsed with music played by a band of mechanical grotesques, in which masked gigolos moved in solitary dance around a splendid fountain that gurgled in the middle of the room. I laughed at their jerky movement, it seemed so clumsy; and at the noise of my mortal sound one figure hobbled to me, and it the room’s insipid light I could see that the whore was made of wood, smooth and white. It removed its mask and revealed its puppet physiognomy, a countenance so smooth and handsome that I could not resist tilting to it and pressing my lips against its unyielding mouth; and then I smoothed its mask against my face, to which the thing adhered, and waltzed to the fountain so as to peer into its depths. I should not have looked, for beneath the surface of the water I beheld a bloated thing that was a remnant from my past, a boy I once had loved and tossed aside. He had been a creature of bewitching beauty, but once that beauty had been debauched I found that we had nothing in common, and thus I became complacent although he seemed to worship me. We had one final meeting, beside a river within one moonlit park, and I told him that our love affair was at an end. I did not want to hear his tedious sobbing and so I sauntered away, free to find new victims of my diabolic lust. I stepped onto a charming antique bridge that spanned the moonlit river, and I stopped midway to watch some pink blossoms drift from branches that stretched over the slow current of water; and looking down, I saw the white sphere that emerged from underneath the bridge and drifted weightily away – the white sphere that was my discarded lover’s face bobbing in the water into w
hich it finally sank from view.

  Awakened from reverie by the mannequin that touched its puppet fingers to my hair, I peered again into the fountain and saw the spectre of my dead lover – but it did not look like a ghost, the thing of bloated flesh, but a thing of the cold reality that I had thought to escape by entering this House of Shadows. I backed away from the cruel fountain and pushed the dummy from me, and rushing to the doorway I fled the room and its monstrous memories. I fled, up carpeted stairs, into an upper realm where existed a soft golden radiance that was nothing seen in harsh reality; and I sighed to that light as I entered another room that was furnished with exquisite antiques and exuded the ambiance of an elder time. I approached the upright mirror and winked at my image that was cased within an arch of golden filigree in which the mirror had been fitted, and I began to caper before my image, wincing only slightly when my wounded heel struck too haughtily the floor. But I could not dance for long, because I grew so easily exhausted; and this perplexed me until I peered again into the upright mirror and saw my eidolon within the glass. How could this old, old thing represented there, on the cold unyielding surface of polished glass, be me? How did I acquire the bags beneath my eyes, the sagging flesh and wrinkles, the withered hair? Why had cruel reality followed me into what should have been a realm of happy phantasy? I could not comprehend it.

  My reflection did not stand alone. He stood beside me, no longer a drowned and bloated husk of flesh. I felt his chilly fingers in my hair, and his frigid mouth that pressed against my ear and called my name. I felt that mouth on my throat as the fingers left my hair and found my breast, followed by his glacial mouth, which froze my heart as it pressed against my breast. His fingers worked their way into my trousers, the fly of which separated as his icy mouth touched my phallus. One phantom hand caressed my foot, working free my silver sandal and pinching the sharp fragment that had pricked my heel. Smoothly, the little fragment of wood was pulled from my flesh. I moaned, because my heart had grown so arctic and I could but barely sense its rhythm in my blood. And then he rose before me one last time, the boy who had adored me, and I watched the smile that played upon his lovely mouth as he pushed the sharp, sharp splinter through my breast and into my bitter heart.