The Long Dark Four-Way of the Soul

by Alden Odessa

  I knocked again, and once again the door slid open. “How much?” I asked.

  “Hundred bucks, up front.”

  “A hundred bucks! Down here?!”

  He slid the door shut, and once again I knocked. He took longer to open it this time, so I knocked again.

  “Did you find a hundred bucks?”

  “Two-hundred dollars, in two days.”

  “You want fucking credit?!”

  “I just want to save this girl's life. She’ll die of infection if I don’t get it out.” Before I had even finished the sentence, he had already closed the window. Fuck. I didn’t know what I would do without this. I guess I would have to learn how to be a surgeon, but I still didn’t know what I would do about an antibiotic. I would have to find something or just hope I could get her to sweat out the infection.

  As I turned to walk away, I heard a clank behind the door, and a lever be pushed down. I turned back and saw that the door was opening. As I had suspected the wood boards on the front of the door where for show only, as they were just attached to the metal door behind it, giving it the effect of a boarded-up door.

  There was an old, stubby man with a thick white beard behind it. He was wearing a white lab coat that didn’t look like it had seen the inside of a washing machine in quite some time.

  “Bring her in, lay her on the table,” he said, and we did as we were told.

  His—operating room—I guess, looked dated like it was something out of 1940. It was dimly lit and looked like a mad scientist's lab more than anything else. In the corner of the room was a fish tank with fish swimming in it. I hadn’t seen a pet store, so I had no idea where he got the fish or the supplies to take care of them. Of course, I hadn’t done much exploring, there hadn’t been time, I doubt there would be time.

  We put her naked body on the table which had a white pad covering it. I don’t know what was more likely to give her an infection. The gunshot wound or the pad covering the table. I looked at the wheeled cart beside it and decided that it would be the medical tools that did it. They did not look sterile.

  “I wasn’t expecting an operation today, give me a minute,” he said and then went back into the back room.

  Allie was awake, and she looked at me. “Am I going to die?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not that bad. We’ll have you good as new in no time.” Based on my own experience with my ribs, which were busted two days ago and now feel remarkably better, I figured that an NPC would heal just as quick.

  I should really stop assuming that everyone I meet is an NPC. I already suspected Balderson was a player, and it was possible that anyone I encountered could be. I mean it is possible that Allie was a player. Women could play this game as well I presumed (unless they wanted to just avoid 51% of the population) and they probably had to sign up as something.

  I’m really just talking out of my ass right now and should probably sit down and rest while I had a chance. I said I would stop worrying about all of this shit and just play the game as it unfolded itself to me. I had to treat this as if it was real. Right now I had to get this girl back to full health, so I could get her to work. I acquired her by default but that doesn’t matter; she was mine now to take care of.

  With the four new people and a new motel that I just somehow happened into I was having a hard time keeping track of everybody.

  I looked at Kyle and thought about the fact that there had been no questions. He was just mine now. My responsibility, and also my employee. I had to take care of him and he, in turn, had to take care of me. It’s more support staff and protection, which is great since I have more people and places to protect.

  I had to figure this all out in my mind before the doctor came back. “Kyle, how far is it from The Side Light to Show-Tel? Ten Minutes?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Is there a shortcut or do I need to stick to the streets?”

  “Streets are safer.”

  “How many times has Balderson attacked you?”

  “This is the first time. He only made an offer before.”

  “What was the offer?”

  “Give me your motel or I kill you.”

  “Lovely,” I said. Not sure if Kyle understood sarcasm.

  So Balderson was taking over, and he hadn’t made a money offer, he made a threat. This meant something about the gameplay that I already knew. If you took somebody out, you acquired their assets, their girls, their men, all of that. Balderson took somebody out. He took out Albert. But was Albert and NPC or was he a player?

  If Albert was a player then technically, The Show-Tel, Allie, Katie, Kyle, and Ricky should be Balderson’s. But hadn’t I intervened?

  Also, Balderson wasn’t there, so does that count?

  Another thing. The game, the bartender, led me to The Show-Tel meaning that was just a step along my way. It seemed awfully convenient that the shootout happened just as I was getting there. Of all the times that it could have happened why did it happen then?

  Albert was an NPC, had to be. That meant that Balderson had no claim to the Motel and the employees, it was fair game. But that would mean that he is on the same path I am. So where is he?

  He would still be gunning for The Show-Tel, so I had to choose. What I had to decide was I all-in or not. I had to be, right? The goal of the game is to run the town. If I couldn’t handle running this motel, how was I going to handle running a city?

  These are tomorrow questions I am asking today.

  This is just one small, shitty hotel, in The Lower Bottoms, how long was this storyline going to take.

  Fuck me.

  The chubby doctor came back into the room with two large glasses of hot water. He set it on the cart and put his utensils in it. He looked at Allie; he put her hand on her thigh, not where she was shot. Kind of creepy.

  “Hello, young one,” he said. “Let’s get a look at that bullet.”

  He took my crude bandages off and then took one of his towels and rubbed it on the wound. She cringed. “Take it easy,” he said. “This won’t feel good.”

  I found his bedside manner lacking.

  “Let’s roll over,” he said and then helped her over onto her stomach. I reached over and grabbed her hand. She squeezed it tight. I couldn’t help but notice her ass as she was lying there. She was filthy, but she appeared to have a nice butt. I guess I would learn all about it when I tested her out later to learn her stats. I was and was not looking forward to it. She’s okay and may look fine when she’s cleaned up, but there are other girls in my harem I’d rather fuck.

  Once again, I can’t believe I am thinking about this right now.

  Her back and legs were covered in bruises and a few scars. I got the feeling that this wasn’t the first time that she had been injured. I wonder how many of these injuries came from her employer and how many of them came from clients. Hard telling and I don’t think she wanted to go into too great of detail. Especially not right now.

  I watched him go to work on her; he wasn’t subtle or gentle about it. He dug in there like my grandfather would have popped out one of my loose teeth as a child. With no emotion, no thrill. Open the mouth, pop it out, walk on. That’s how this man treated a young prostitute with a bullet in the back of her leg. She squeezed my hand and put her other hand in her mouth to bite down on it. She screamed into her own hand.

  He pulled out the slug and put it on the table. He then took a bottle of what I assume was disinfectant and poured it over the wound. She squeezed my hand tighter, and I leaned closer to her and told her it would be alright as I rubbed my hand on her head. I looked at my hand, and it was noticeably dirty from this act. She was that dirty.

  The doctor looked at me, and how I was comforting her. He shook his head, almost as if mocking me. “You’re new around here, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, set up shop over at The Side Light. Just gained The Show-Tel as well.”

  “You kill Albert?”

  “No, but I killed the ma
n who killed him,” I said. Not true, Ricky had done the killing, but Ricky was mine now, so six of one, half dozen of the other.

  “So it is.”

  “Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Indeed, he is.”

  He turned away from me and rubbed his hands on a cloth and then pulled out a needle and some thread and went to work stitching her up. He then placed a bandage on her leg and taped it down and then rubbed gauze around it.

  He finished and laid his hand on her ass and rubbed it. I wanted to tell him to get his hands off of her, but I was so surprised that he was doing it I didn’t know what to say. He then took his hand and ran it down her ass and in between her legs. Still holding onto my hand, I felt Allie tense up. I looked over to Kyle, whose hand was slowly moving to his back, where he had put his gun.

  He rubbed her pussy for a few seconds and started to put his finger into her.

  “Is that really necessary?” I asked. I figured I’d give him a warning before I became more forceful.

  “Of course it is,” he said, and he rubbed around a little more, and I looked at her face. She appeared scared.

  He took his finger out of her and took away his hand and went back to the towel on the cart and wiped off his hands. “Pussy seems to work just fine. I’ll clear her for work. She might not be worth a damn for a day or two though,” he patted her ass again. “If she ever was.”

  This guy was a creep and classless, how many fucking brutes was I going to owe money to before the day was over.

  He looked past me and seemed to notice April for the very first time. She had been completely silent up until this point. She cowered in the corner, not saying a word. She was uncomfortable here; she had been from the first second she had entered The Gallows. It made sense; she was from here, or at least this was the first place that she had had any memories of. They weren’t good memories.

  “How ‘bout you, sweetie?” he said to her. She didn’t know what to say or where to look so she just looked at me.

  “What about her?” I said to him.

  “She need a look over?” I cocked my head, and he looked back at her. “Been a while since I looked over a girl that didn’t have dried come on her tits.”

  “And we’re done here,” I said as I leaned down to help Allie up. He abruptly looked back at me.

  “You’re not from here are you?”

  “No, I told you, I’m new in The Lower Bottoms.”

  “No, I mean: You’re not from—here.”

  It wasn’t so much what he said, but it was the way that he said it that made my heart sink. The way he said “here.” He knew something about me that no one else knew.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “The question you want to ask me is not why I asked, but what I asked, isn’t it?”

  I had to play it cool; I had to make him believe I was from here, that I was an NPC, I was just a randomly generated character, and I was not from another reality. I decided to play it a little harder. “Start making sense, old man.”

  “It’s funny,” he said without referencing what was actually funny. “You’re not there yet. But you will be.”

  I didn’t know what to say; he had me dead to rights, somehow I knew that he could see it in my eyes. How afraid I was, how I was real, and not one of these Sims.

  “You been around as long as I have, you see all kinds of people, from all kinds of places. You’re not hard yet. You’re still soft. You haven’t broke sync yet?”

  “What,” I said, trying to hide the fear in my voice.

  “Just remember. One sentence.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you’re not back here in two days’ time with that money, all I have to do is say one sentence,” he was looking me deep in the eyes. I was looking into his as well. There was something different there. Something that only time can bestow. There was knowledge. Deep knowledge and understanding of not only who you are, but of what you are.

  “One sentence from me, in front of anybody else,” he continued, “and I end you.”

  I squeezed Allie’s arm harder than I should have.

  “I zero you out.”

  22

  Spawning

  Instead of going back to the Show-Tel, I decided to go back to The Side Light. Odd that I felt comfort at The Side Light; it strangely felt like home. Maybe it’s because of the shitty accommodations at my new piece of property.

  I needed to settle my mind. So many things had happened since I last left The Side Light. I had only been gone a few hours, maybe half the day. It felt like a lifetime.

  The biggest, and most pressing thing was the doctor.

  He knew who I was.

  Or rather he knew what I was. He knew I was not from the game; he knew I was a player, but it begged the question: How? Who was he and how did he know? He said he had been there for a long time and I don’t know even what that meant. He knew he could kill me. All he had to do was tell the surrounding people what and who I was, and it would zero me out. I would die.

  This left me two options. The first being that I should find a time to talk to him. Sit down, just he and I, find out what he knows and how the hell that he knows it.

  The second was to kill him.

  Who was I now?

  There were too many things happening at once, and I was having a difficult time keeping up. All the while that this had been happening I had seen a few flashings out of the side of my eye. Stat updates all of them, but I hadn’t really focused on what they were. Hopefully, it was money, but I didn’t know. I had also done many other things, like increase my harem. Not to mention being in a firefight. Surely that had to do something for my stats.

  I felt like the world was spinning and I was getting tired. I needed to lie down for a little bit, collect my thoughts and try to figure out my next few steps. I had been going two-hundred-miles an hour today and although that may be the way I was supposed to play the game, and honestly, how most games like this play, it was hard to get my bearings. In a game you can pause, you can go piss, you can get a snack. Your hands may get tired, but you could use them with broken ribs! Living a game, and I mean really living it was not something I could have possibly been prepared for.

  I felt human.

  As surprising as all this was, it was not the strangest thing that happened in The Gallows.

  Kyle was carrying Allie; she was weak and tired. She had had the worst day of any of us. Well, maybe not Albert and those two Balderson men, but still—a bad day. She needed rest, and to be cleaned up, and for that to happen I had to get her back to The Side Light. I needed Betty to see if she could work a little magic.

  April walked beside me, and she had no idea what to make of the doctor. Plus, this place, The Gallows, scared her. Too many bad memories.

  It was dark here, in The Crossroads. It was blacker than night, even though, by my estimation, it was only mid-afternoon. Being under the Landmark Bridge blocked all the light from The Upper Bottoms, and it is what made this area so dangerous, according to Betty.

  It was in this near total darkness that we heard it. April heard it first. She stopped walking. She stopped and closed her eyes. I noticed this and stopped and looked at her.

  “What?” I asked.

  She didn’t respond, so I got closer to her and asked again. I was right beside her, inches from her face when she whispered: “Listen.”

  She was trembling. I put my hand on her arm to try to calm her. I did as she said. I listened. It was quiet, and the harder I listened I could hear a little noise coming from all directions, but nothing that stood out. Perhaps foot traffic around South Light, casinos, the subtle sound of wind even though I couldn’t feel it.

  The confines down here were close. The streets were narrow and didn’t even look like they were built for vehicles. Buildings all around us that were either boarded up or broken out. It was amazing to me that there was not one open business down in this section. We were alone.

  I listened, and none of us
moved. I wasn’t listening for what I heard when I heard it. I had been listening for the sound of footsteps, men’s voices, guns loading.

  I was not listening for a girl.

  “Help me,” came the voice. It was feeble, scared. Close.

  As I heard it I looked at April, and her eyes bolted open. I didn’t know what to say. She looked to her left and pointed. “We have to go there. There’s an alley, a dumpster, rats. There’s water falling from a staircase that goes nowhere. There’s a puddle that no water is falling into. It smells, It’s dark. It’s a bad place.”

  This seemed pretty detailed, and I wasn’t even really sure what she was pointing to. “April, how do you know this?”

  “Because it’s the first thing I remember. Where I was when Betty found me.”

  Kyle was standing guard as I approached the naked woman on the ground exactly where April said she would be. April and I approached her, and I spoke to the woman.

  “Miss?”

  She said nothing, all I heard was the sound of crying. She didn’t even look up at me; she just kept her head buried in her knees. She was sitting down; legs pulled towards her. Shaking, or rather, rocking, back and forth.

  I looked at April, all she did was stare at the new girl. I couldn’t make out what this new girl looked like, other than she appeared to be short, a little heavy and had white blond hair. I wasn’t sure how to approach her, so I took it directly. I slowly walked up to her and put my hand on her naked shoulder.

  She screamed and looked up at me; she scrambled back to the wall of the alley.

  “Whoa whoa whoa,” I said, putting my hands up, trying to let her know we meant her no harm.

  She looked at me and slowly stopped her screaming. All the while I had been in The Gallows I had tried to stay as quiet as possible, I had had no desire to alert anyone who may be around to our being there.

  I would say this spoiled that.

  I didn’t move, or at least made no sudden movements and waited for her to calm down. She looked at me and then over to April. Then she took a glance at Kyle, who had to be getting a little tired of hauling Allie around.