The Long Dark Four-Way of the Soul

by Alden Odessa

  We returned to The Side Light, and all was as I expected it to be. It was a little better than I had expected it to be, actually. A few tricks had been turned.

  Katie had had two men at twenty dollars apiece, a rate Betty negotiated, and Allie had managed to give four, count ‘em, four blowjobs for ten dollars each. Not too shabby. I found that there was a market for “tourists” who had lost their asses in the slum casinos of South Light and had just enough money to buy a girl before logging out of the game. A player logs in, gambles all the credits he had purchased, loses his ass in South Light and then comes over and gets a ten-dollar blow job from a hooker with a bum leg.

  This was all hypothesis on my part. I was operating under the assumption that only I could not log out. Meanwhile, for most players, the game continued to function as it was intended. Men logged in, got laid, gambled, smoked cigarettes, or feed whatever addictions they had.

  Then they logged out.

  Later, in the real world, they would add money to their account and re-spawn in another part of town, or maybe even this part of town. Who knows?

  I hated these men almost as much as the men I had watched fuck Emily. Why was I stuck here? What was the purpose? I was beginning to not wonder for the answer to the question so much that I was starting to not even ask the question.

  I was crashing, I could feel it, it had been a long day and an even longer night; I hadn’t checked my stats, but I could feel myself falling apart. My ribs had even started to hurt again; I guess that was part of my fatigue. Hell, maybe the injury would always be with me. Like how my knee used to act funny when a storm was coming.

  I was angry, I was frustrated, and I needed sleep. But I still had to address the room and the people in it.

  Then I realized someone wasn’t there that was supposed to be.

  April.

  I scan the room, find Betty. “Where’s April?”

  A look of confusion washes over her face. She looks around the room. We had called a house meeting since no one was working and no one was currently sleeping, anyone that was here, was in the room. “I—I don’t know.”

  “When was the last anyone saw her?” I said and looked at everyone around the room. Everyone shrugged their shoulders. Everyone that is, except Katie.

  “She went outside.”

  “What?” I said.

  “She didn’t say anything, she just opened the door and walked out.”

  Shit. This wasn’t good. April had been acting weird ever since we went to The Gallows and found Casey. I still didn’t know, or rather, didn’t understand April’s story. We knew nothing about her other than she woke up in The Gallows with no memory. With no past.

  It was a real hindrance I had no one to talk to about my suspicions. I couldn’t talk to anyone here about the elements of the game or that I had a feeling she was only recently spawned. That she was a glitch.

  Casey, however, ruined that theory. If something (or in this case someone) was a glitch, it was unlikely that there would be the same exact glitch this close to the original glitch.

  Hence, it’s called a glitch.

  So there was a purpose behind her, a reason. I just didn’t know what it was and there was no one I could discuss it with.

  Except for maybe one person.

  The doctor, he seemed to know who I was, who I really was. It was on my list. I had to go see him because I owed him money, a lot of money, for work he did on a hooker that had only earned forty dollars today. My dependency on picking up stray cats was not a good investment.

  The girls I brought back, although they were earning, and would continue earning, may not make enough to cover the cost of feeding, housing and fixing them. Casey was a total wash and did I really need someone else just to do laundry? I had another motel now, so maybe she wasn’t a bad investment, but could I trust her? Like April, she had no memory, no history. So far she had not seemed like a real self-starter, but I guess I would have to change that.

  I broke out of my thought and looked back to the others in the room.

  “Bogo, come with me, we’re going to The Gallows.”

  30

  New Trinkets

  The Gallows were total darkness now. Clearly, it was nighttime in Canny Valley, the middle of the night, beneath The Landmark Bridge it was difficult to see your hand in front of your face.

  Much less find a missing prostitute.

  “What’s the story, Boss?”

  “April is from here,” I told him, realizing that he had not been with us earlier and didn’t know all the details of Casey. “So is Casey. When we found Casey, it was April that led us to her. Being down here again, in the place you guys found her, really freaked April out. She hasn’t been the same since.”

  “Why would she come back alone?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s the only place that I could think to look.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “You didn’t happen to think to pick up a flashlight earlier did you?”

  “What’s a flashlight?”

  Of course. When it’s always night, and the city is lit almost exclusively by neon signs, you would never think to need a flashlight. So much so that the designers of the game didn’t even build the code into the game.

  So far, nothing had been a part of the game that didn’t serve a purpose; everything was the way that it was for a very specific reason. The game didn’t want you to have flashlights because the places that were dark were designed that way for a purpose. In The Gallows, that purpose had been for spawning NPCs and who knows what else?

  “Hey,” came a voice from our right.

  Bogo instantly tensed up, and I reached for my gun. It still didn’t come naturally to me, as it took me a second to get the gun out of my pants. This avatar was programmed for shooting something else, not a gun.

  We looked in the direction of the voice, waiting for it to speak again and it didn’t take long.

  “You gents want some Splice?”

  I heard footsteps coming towards us, and I don’t know if the man walked into some form of light or if our eyes were just slowly adjusting. He was a tall man, thin; his face was a roadmap of acne scars, and his pants looked like they were barely hanging onto his body with no belt to hold them up. He was thin like a junkie, and his light white skin was indented around his cheekbones. He looked dirty, and I could see filth in his beard.

  I knew that if he looked like this in this kind of darkness that he was going to be a real peach in brighter light.

  “We’re looking for a girl?” I said to him. Letting him see my gun.

  He wasn’t intimidated. “What kind of girl?”

  “A normal girl.”

  “Ain’t no normal girl around here,” he said. Still not even acknowledging the fact that I even had a gun drawn and was ready to shoot him. “Coupla bitches 'round the corner if you can wake them up.”

  “Thanks, we’ll look into that,” I said, dryly.

  “What about the Splice?” the man said.

  I walked up to him, slowly, gun still drawn at my side. “What’s so great about this Splice?”

  “It takes you places man,” he said, with a far-off look in his eyes, then suddenly moving them back to me, locking eyes. He had the devil’s eyes. “Places you couldn’t imagine.”

  “I’ve already been places,” I said and then turned to walk away. I got next to Bogo and turned back to the man, who walked backward, almost as if he was simply being reversed, back into the shadows.

  I looked at Bogo, and in turn, he looked down at me. “Whaddaya think, Boss?”

  “I think we’re chasing our tails and if I walk around that corner, I’m gonna find two more kittens to take home with me.”

  He looked at me, confused because metaphors and Bogo did not mix.

  “But why not?” I said and turned to go around the corner if I could find it. We went through the darkness and followed a sound we heard. It sounded like movement, like writhing.

  We almost tri
pped over them. The two girls on the ground. I couldn’t make them out; it was too dark. All I could tell was that they were laying on the ground in a shallow pool of water. A puddle.

  They were holding onto each other, shivering. They were naked and young; they looked like they were barely twenty years old. I couldn’t tell what color of skin they had or what hair color, only that they were soaking wet.

  I still hadn’t seen it rain, yet the ground in Canny Valley was always wet, and the gutters were always dripping. All part of the design.

  “Should we take ‘em back to the motel, boss?” Bogo asked.

  I paused for a moment, waiting to speak. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. “Bogo, do you know anything about this splice?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “I don’t know if these girls are useful. Look at them,” I pointed down to them and then knelt. Bogo knelt as well.

  Their eyes were open; they weren’t even blinking, they were glassed over, not looking at anything, just staring straight up into the sky. Wherever they were, they weren’t here.

  “I don’t know that they're safe,” I said. “I mean, to be around the other girls.”

  “Do they belong to anybody?” Bogo asked. He was picking up on the whole ownership element that girls here had.

  “Maybe at one time they did, but I think they’ve been abandoned.”

  “What do we do?”

  Fuck. Do I really want to bring this into my life? Am I really going to pick two junkies up off the street and try to reform them? Clean them up? Trust that they will never use drugs again and be good earners in my harem.

  I touched their skin. It surprised me to find that their skin was warm. Not burning, but warmer than a body lying in a puddle should be. I ran my hand over their skin, down the girl’s hip. Her skin was soft, like a pillow. I looked at their faces. There was beauty there; these were pretty girls, or at least could be. I looked at their chests, both had nice breasts, and both were thin.

  Both would make good additions.

  I stood, and Bogo did the same. I looked up at him. “I have a handful of rooms that I’m not currently using and a couple of girls that aren’t working. I don’t know what this drug does to a person, and I don’t know if they are salvageable. But if they can work, it didn’t cost me anything to find them.”

  “So, back to the motel?” Bogo asked.

  “No, Show-Tel. I want to keep them separate.”

  “You got it.”

  Bogo leaned down and put his arms beneath both of their bodies. The two girls were intertwined with each other, and they didn’t even flinch when he lifted them. It wasn’t even a struggle for Bogo; they were tiny waifs of women.

  He stood with both of them in his arms, and we turned to walk away, and both of us were startled by what was behind us.

  Or rather who was behind us.

  She was motionless and had her hands clenched. She was shivering, and her hair was wet. It was dark, but I would know that frame of a body anywhere. It was April.

  “April?” I said, making sure.

  “Yes,” she responded in a flat tone. Something was not right with her, I could tell by the way she spoke and the way she stood. She was wounded in some way. Not physically, but mentally.

  I slowly walked up to her; she seemed like she would be easily startled. I didn’t want to do anything that was going to scare her. I thought she was getting better, and I really believe she was until I brought her to The Lower Bottoms. Until I brought her to The Gallows.

  “April, what are you doing here,” I said as I raised my hand and gently pressed it on her arm.

  “Answers,” she whispered.

  “To what. To you?”

  “I am looking for answers.”

  “Why did you come alone?”

  She paused before answering the question. “I thought you would be angry at me.”

  I was mad at her, but I certainly didn’t want to make that apparent. She seemed very fragile, and she looked different. Something about her was different. Maybe it wasn’t something I could see, but it was something that I could feel.

  She started crying, her body shaking.

  “April, what? I’m not mad at you; you just should have let us come with you.”

  She didn’t respond; she just continued crying.

  “Come with us,” I said. “We’ll get you back to the motel and get you warm.”

  She nodded her head, and I put my arm around her for comfort until we got out of The Crossroads and The Gallows.

  We got to The Side Light, and I asked Bogo to stand back, closer to the office. I told him he could set the girls down if he wanted to but he said he was fine.

  They were small women, but they had to weigh two hundred pounds. Bogo carried this weight as if it were a single log for the fire. Bogo did not ever seem to fatigue physically. He was only always hungry, that was his only hang-up. I’m pretty sure that if I asked him to pick up the entire Side Light and move it, he could.

  I knocked on room three. “Betty, it’s me. I found April,” I said, always announcing myself as I had instructed everyone else also to do whenever they knocked on a door.

  Slowly the door opened, even with announcing yourself, it was always a good idea to be safe. I saw Betty and behind her was Kyle, gun at his side. Good girl.

  “Hi,” she said, opening the door further.

  “I’m not staying, I have to go over to The Show-Tel,” I said. “Is Casey here. I want to take her with me.”

  “I can have her ready in five minutes. Is she going to be staying there?”

  “Yes. I got two new girls, but they are in—bad shape.”

  She cocked her head, not knowing what I meant. She had seen what a girl in bad shape looked like. A few days ago she was a girl in bad shape. “How do you mean?”

  “Junkies,” I said. “I need to sober them up.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I have no idea, but I am going to have Casey look after them.”

  “Well, I’m sure they are better off with us than they were wherever it was you found them.”

  Compassion, that was Betty’s strength. A belief, she believed I was going to take good care of them and maybe I would. And then I would put them out on the street to suck stranger’s dicks for twenty bucks.

  I looked back at April, I put my hand on her and pushed her towards the door. “Take care of April; she’s had a rough night.”

  “Can’t I come with you?” April asked.

  “I need to take care of some things over at the other location,” I said. She nodded and did as she was told.

  “Do you need any of the other girls?” Betty asked.

  “Not yet, but I will soon, we need to move some girls over there, I just need to get it functional first. See what Augustus and Beatrice have accomplished,” I said, and she nodded her head as April walked past her. “How are the other girls?”

  “Sleeping.”

  I looked past her to Kyle. “You doing okay?”

  “Yes sir,” Kyle responded.

  “Both of you should get some sleep,” I said.

  “We’ll take naps, but I don’t sleep well when you’re gone,” Betty said. She was sweet and caring. She had become accustomed to taking care of me, especially after what happened with Bruce beating the shit out of me. I say beat the shit out of me, but it was only one punch. One really good punch.

  “I may be gone a while, get some rest.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll go get Casey.”

  She closed the door, and I turned and looked at Bogo, still not showing any sign of being bothered by carrying the girls who were tripping out on something. I walked over to him, not so much to talk, but I wanted to check out the girls.

  They were motionless. So much so that I checked their pulses. They were still alive, and their pulses were actually healthy. I don’t have a watch, so I wasn’t able to gauge their heart rate, but it felt normal.

 
“Have they moved at all?” I asked Bogo.

  “No, Boss.”

  I looked at their eyes, still wide open and glassy. It was odd. Maybe when they woke up they would have a story to tell. These girls were essentially a mystery box that I was opening up. I felt like I was a kid and I put my quarter into a machine at the grocery store. A little plastic egg was going to spin out, and I had no idea what was going to be inside.

  Trinkets. That’s what they were to me now. Trinkets.

  I’m starting to refer to people as trinkets.

  “Let’s go, Betty will have Casey ready,” I said to Bogo, and he followed me back to the door. The girls were all asleep, and there was no reason for him to stand back anymore.

  No sooner than we got back to the door, it opened, and Casey walked out. Betty and April stood by the door and looked at us, and our new additions.

  “Are those the girls?” Betty asked.

  “Nope. Just trinkets.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I,” I said with a smile. She didn’t know if she was supposed to smile, frown, laugh, or cry. She did what Betty does so well when she doesn’t know what to say...

  “Okay.”

  She accepts.

  I nodded and turned to walk away. With my old, fat hooker who wasn’t going to be hooking, instead playing nursemaid to two junkies coming down off a high and my giant bodyguard who was carrying the two said junkies.

  We got about thirty feet away from the motel when I heard a voice behind us.

  “Buster!”

  It wasn’t a threatening voice. Nor a strange one, it was April. I turned to see the door open and her running at me. She got to me and wrapped her arms around me, putting me into a tight embrace. She grabbed my face and kissed me. She kissed me long and deep, before finally pulling away from me and looking me in the eyes, looking all the way through, into the man behind the avatar it felt like.

  She pets my face, her mouth so close to mine that her lips almost touched mine when she spoke. “I love you.”