Velvet

Bunny

I stood alone in the most perfect, velvety darkness. A darkness you could press yourself into. A darkness you could lean on.

“Hello?" I called experimentally.

No reply. The air felt soft. Tangy. A scent of sweet earth. Where the heck was I? I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed. I probably ought to be scared, but for some reason, I felt sorta snug, almost like I was a kid again, safe in a blanket fort or something.

“Is anyone there?"

"Hello, Abigail."

I jumped about a foot in the air. The voice came from all around me. A rich, rolling, masculine voice, like a dodgy plastic surgeon or a sleazy politician. A voice used to being in control of things.

I've always been a jumpy person. Carl, my husband, makes fun of me for it, hiding behind doors and then popping out just to see how high I go. He keeps a score on his phone. I don't like it much when he does that.

It was pitch dark, and I was hearing voices. Definitely not a good sign, but still, I wasn't afraid. What had I been doing, before this velvety darkness? I couldn't remember.

"Where am I, please? Am I sick?"

"No, Abigail, you are not sick."

Only my mother calls me Abigail. To everyone else, I'm Abi. Abi Nightingale, the homemaker with the bad leg, popping painkillers and shuffling around the store leaning into the cart. Mother to three grown-up kids who never call. Nice house in the suburbs. Toyota Camry out front. Nothing remarkable about me at all.

Maybe I was sick and people were trying to communicate with me, or else maybe I was in the lair of some serial killer, but seriously, what serial killer would want someone like me?

Maybe I was dreaming. Or dead. That was another option. Actually, dead made the most sense.

"What is the last thing you remember Abigail?"

I tried to remember. It felt like a dream, fading on waking. The doorbell chiming, hobbling to my front door using my cane. Pushing the door open. Saying hello to the woman in the sharp suit who was standing on my porch.

“There was a woman at my door.”

"Good. You remember."

Why had a woman in a sharp suit come to my door? Why was everything dark?

With a sudden shock, I realised my leg didn’t hurt. My breath caught in my throat. I took a step in the dark. The motion was smooth, nothing caught inside. I reach down, touched the place at my hip, where the scars were, where the hip and pelvis were held together with metal. My skin was smooth beneath my pyjamas.

I'm not broken anymore? And pyjamas? I'm wearing pyjamas?

The missing pain was like a hole. Like a piece of meat gone from the middle of me, replaced with warmth. Tears sprang into my eyes. It felt good, but it felt like a betrayal too. My dad hadn't survived the accident. Losing the pain felt like losing a little piece of his memory.

“What happened? Why doesn’t my leg hurt?”

"You have been - reassigned."

The voice came from everywhere, all around me. Rich and close and rolling. Reassuring. Unnerving. How can a voice in the darkness be both reassuring and unnerving at the same time?

“Am I dead? I can’t see anything. Are you God?”

"No, Abigail. You are not dead. I am not God."

What was happening? My body felt so light, almost... springy. Reassigned? Where was the pain? Who was the girl in the suit?

"What do I do, please? I can’t see anything."

"I need your help, Abigail."

“Help? Help with what?”

As if in reply, writing unfolded in the air in front of me. Green writing that pressed itself into the flawless blackness and shimmered. I reached out, trying to touch the screen that logically must be there, but there was no screen and my hand passed right through the words leaving a glowing trail like smoke.

Three words humming in the darkness:

“Defend the dungeon.”

---

Cat

"What the actual fuck?"

The last thing I remembered was marching up that woman’s drive, latte in one hand, divorce papers tucked under my arm. Knock knock. Dumb blonde opening the door, all pyjamas and messy hair. Stupid woman had no idea she was about to get served. No idea her husband was leaving her.

Dumb kid should have paid closer attention to business.

I paced through the empty darkness. I could see nothing with my eyes, but somehow, I could still sense what was around me, a pillar here, a ceiling somewhere very high above. I could hear the sound of water dripping a long way away. I could sense small creatures moving somewhere nearby. They were afraid of me, trying to be quiet. I could hear them anyway, I could almost smell them.

“Hey!"

“Hello Katherine.”

The voice had come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. I couldn't help but laugh, shit was actually pretty terrifying.

"Hello? Weird voice? What’s going on? Why is it dark?"

There had better be a pretty good explanation for all of this. I had a busy Tuesday lined up and I was in no mood to be fucked with.

“What is the last thing you remember, Katherine?”

I ignored the question. People don't ask me questions. I'm the one that asks questions.

“What the fuck is going on?” I said.

There was a pause.

“Please answer me, Katherine. What is the last thing you remember?”

“Yeah, I don’t need to answer you. I know my rights. You’d better let me out of here right now or things are going to get ugly for you.”

“I need your help, Katherine.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening. You’re going to turn the lights on, and you’re going to show me where the door is, or I’m going to make bad things happen in your life. Don’t fucking test me on this.”

Writing started to unfurl in the empty space out in front of me like some sort of sci-fi hologram. I stalked around it, studying it from all angles. The edges of the letters wavered as I got in close. I swiped a hand through the message. It hummed like something electrical.

Three words were written there, hovering in the dark like a unix terminal. Not that I’d know what a unix terminal is, I hate that nerd shit.

The words were an instruction. I don’t take too kindly to being bossed around, but these words were interesting. They said:

"Destroy the Dungeon"

---

Bunny

...and there was light. And I could see where I was.

I was standing in the most glorious little limestone cave with chandeliers of hanging stalactites and bright sparks of aragonite all up the walls. The roof was a beautiful mess of soda straws, with bright beads of water clinging to their tips. I could see the carbonic acid weathering from eons of seeping rainwater. The floor was lined with flowstone, smooth and undulating. Helictiles spiraled from the walls like lilies.

I’ve always loved caves. At school I was the kid who would bring square faceted salt crystals to science fair. I travelled a good deal in the French Dordogne when I was a teenager, zipping from gouffre to grotto in a ratty little hire car. NArrow roads between cliffs. Glorious trees and fairytale chateaux. Later I spent a wild few years studying Geology at Cornell, but then I met Carl and had the kids and all that had to stop.

I wouldn’t change anything of course. The kids are a blessing, but sometimes I do wonder.

There was something on my head, flapping around, nagging at me like a hat. It caught in my hair. Before I could check it, the voice spoke again, very smooth and professional, like a dentist about to pull teeth.

“Welcome, new user Abigail. You have been assigned a role.”

New user? Was this a VR game? I touched my hand to the crystal wall. Little spikes of mineral pressed into my fingertips. It certainly felt solid.

I wouldn’t put it past Carl to buy some brand new type of PlayStation and jack me into it without telling me. Carl likes a practical joke, but was there a console that could feed images directly into a persons mind? I hadn’t heard of anything.

“Carl, are you there? Do I get a weapon? Are skeletons going to come and try to eat me?”

“No, Abigail. Skeletons will not come and Carl is not available in this environment.”

“Carl, this isn’t funny.”

“Carl is not available in this environment.”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

I touched my hands to my face. There was no headset. My chest was hurting. I didn't feel safe anymore.

“Carl is not available…”

“I think I’d like to wake up now, please.” I interrupted. Although the voice didn’t stop talking. It spoke right over me as though I hadn’t said anything.

I put my hands on my knees, breathing. I was in a cave by myself with no pain and I was hearing voices. It had to be a dream.

But did I really want to wake up? Back into the real world where I had to hobble from couch to kitchen, sucking pain killers every four hours? Limping around the store for Carl’s dinner.

“Assignment complete. Please pay close attention to the system prompt.”

"System prompt? What..?"

The air shimmered, and new writing appeared, this time floating in the middle of the cavern. There was no screen and no obvious projector. Clearly it was computer generated, but how?

“New alignment: Evil. Level zero. Job title: Dungeon Mistress.”

Another shimmer. Words appeared and the voice spoke in my mind. This time it sounded a little less reassuring. There was a manic edge to it, like a corporate executive contemplating an open window.

“You are tasked with defending the dungeon from adventurers. Protect the core! Failure means death. Your death! Good luck, Dungeon Keeper. I've seen the competition, and I'm pretty sure you’re gonna need it!”

Yet another shimmer. This time the words were huge, right on top of me. I couldn’t see round them:

“CORE INBOUND. Be ready to catch! If you drop it, you might actually die!”

A sudden brightness sparkled like a little star near my face. I could hardly see around the enormous writing. I snatched at the brightness, fumbled. It rolled down my front. I let it hit my slipper to cushion the fall. It rolled across the floor. As it tipped, I felt vertigo.

It was a white crystal shard, no bigger than my hand, lit from within by some inner fire.

As it rolled, it was as though I was turning over and over with it. Rolling with the bright stone across the floor. I sank to my knees, feeling queasy.

The voice spoke again. It's tone was breathless. Very much not reassuring.

“You have been granted control of the core! Boy, are you in trouble now!”

The voice stuttered and glitched. A system error chime sounded, loud in the little cavern. Words appeared in the air. The box was different this time, bold red text on a textured grey background.

“Critical exception! Out of memory! System going to reboot! See you later!”

“Are you a computer?"

The voice said nothing.

“Are you still there?"

A little computer shutdown tune played. The popup disappeared, leaving me alone.

Try not to die? The crystal lay on the floor near my hand, quite still now, but still pulsing with light. There was something - attractive, about it. I was drawn to it like hot cocoa. I tapped it with my fingernail. It was an extraordinary sensation. I could feel the tap, as though I was poking my own skin. I lifted the rock and held it to my chest. I could feel my own hands wrapped around, warm and safe. It pulsed in time with my heart.

Holding it was like holding a baby bird, except the baby bird was me somehow. Like I was holding my own soul, made afresh. A new life. A do-over. I had tears in my eyes. Why was I crying over a rock? I brought it up to my face and pressed it to my cheek. It pressed back.

"Are you the core?" I asked.

I didn't need to ask, I knew it deep inside. Someone was coming to hurt it? I might actually die? I kept my hands tight around it, picked a tunnel, and began walking.

Cat

At least there was actual light now, not just the weird spatial awareness I had experienced before. I still had that, stashed in the back of my head somewhere. I’m not sure how I knew it, but I knew it.

“Hey motherfuckers, I can see in the dark,” I yelled. No reply, but I could sense movement somewhere off in one of the tunnels.

“Yeah, you’d better hide,” I muttered. "I'm coming to fuck you up."

A weapon would be sensible. I hunted around for something suitable. Even a stick or a rock would do. I had a Glock in my car, but that wasn't much help now. This whole thing was probably a halucination, but I wasn't taking chances.

Drugs. That was the best explanation. Someone had spiked my coffee. I was probably passed out on the lawn with that blonde girl staring down at me and the paperwork all spread out on the grass. Well that was fucking awkward. Heck, I had enough enemies.

I work for a company that handles, what you might call, “asynchronous divorces”. That is divorces where one party wants no fuss, and the other party - usually the woman if I’m honest - has no idea that their comfy little world is about to be shredded.

Steve, the CTO, calls it “divorce as a service”. The client fills in a few forms on the website and we handle everything else, from serving the paperwork to negotiating the settlement. The client goes out in the morning and basically never has to see their partner again, except for the final hearing, or unless there are kids, which does complicate things quite a bit.

Steve calls it "Streamlining the flow of romantic capital". Steve is a dick, if I'm honest, but he pays well.

I don't like my job, if I'm honest, but fuck it. Someone's got to do it.

This client had been pretty standard. Some middle class asshole called Carl decided his wife wasn't doing it for him anymore, but was too chickenshit to do the deed himself. Boring house in suburbia, one unit in a grid of thousands, all the same. The deal was he would go out to work, we'd do the dirty, then he'd move into a hotel until the financials were complete.

Knock, knock at the door. Boom. Life over.

Maybe the blonde girl shot me and now I was locked in my own head? That would explain the voices, probably doctors trying to communicate. I was going to take someone to the cleaners for this. The motherfucking cleaners. It was going to be brutal.

Maybe this whole cave thing was some kind of metaphor for coming out of a coma.

There was something caught in the back of my trousers, spoiling the line of my suit. Something in my hair too, spoiling the do. No time to worry about hair.

“Hey! Motherfucker! Talk to me."

The voice didn’t reply,"

"Hey! Asshole!"

“Hello... Katherine... Please stand by...” the voice sounded a lot less smarmy. It sounded kinda broken. The pitch was all off, and it kept freezing.

New writing appeared, floating in the tunnel in front of me.

“Alignment: Good. "Level zero. "Job title: adventurer. "Racial ability: blindsight.”

It was like the games of DnD I used to play with my dad, back before dumb little Kat realised that life is hard, and people never really love you. Fuck 'em all.

"Why would I care about this shit?"

More words appeared, this time in a different font. The voice read the words aloud. Its tone was a lot less polished. It sounded a little - unhinged to be honest.

“Welcome adventurer to Challenge Dungeon World! New objective: Smash the Dungeon Core! All you've got to do to escape this hellhole is break a little rock. Just like breaking hearts, except with more physical violence. You should be great at this!”

Was that meant to be some kind of joke about my job? Someone was going to pay for this. The whole mental anguish angle was shaping up nicely.

"You trying to be funny? I'm going to fuck over your life when I get out of here."

I contemplated just sitting on the floor and refusing to move, but sitting on the floor has never really my style. I like to run.

I could break things. I could break a rock, if that was what it took. It legitimately didn't sound too hard.

I just had to find it and hit it with something heavy.