Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 2 - The Body [LIM]

AUTHOR GAMES: EMPTY NIGHT - TASK TWO - LIMERICK

It is five in the morning, there is a dead body one, two, maybe three floors above me, and I am lost. Of these three things, the last is the most terrifying. It's not normal, being lost, because I've lived so long I've memorized nearly every map, walked every street. But this place, this mansion, this city in and of itself, is a place I've never touched before, and nobody even briefed me on the location when I arrived.

I hope this will at least be a worthwhile experience.

Now, I wander. The walls are tight, close, claustrophobic, and if I spread my arms out, they're crunched in to the elbows, scraping against a soft yellow wallpaper with intricate golden swirls dashed here and there. (If I have to guess, I say this dead man likes his luxury.) All the lights in the house are on, and they're bright, illuminating every corridor and making them look exactly the same. I've counted many doors, even ducked my head into a few, but none are the right door - and I begin to wonder what my fate would be if this were a game in which there were however many doors and you had to select the correct one or something horrible would happen. This doesn't help the tightness around me and inside me though so I just focus on the green carpet and how some of the threads are violently torn up out of their place and how plush it is. The light calms me. Continue walking.

My feet catch on a stretch of lifted carpet, and I glance down, only briefly, to ensure I'm not tearing up the whole damn thing. I look up again sharply out of habit. The whole world slams into me, a few seconds of white-hot disorientation emblazoned with a stimulating warmth over the shoulders. This is just the feed talking; this is the feeling of all the energy rushing back into my body, beginning to trickle into my veins. I dislike it.

It's also the feeling of seeing a flash of pink in an otherwise golden hall, seeing it there one second, gone the next around the corner, and knowing that it isn't a hallucination because I've seen hallucinations before and this is not the time for it. It's the feeling of quick surprise, because I thought I was alone and lost and perhaps this will lead me to civilization.

So I follow it.

Stride, stride, stride, wall. Left turn. There it is again, a flash of pink midair, but attached to a vessel of peach and green, skin and shirt. Only briefly is this image caught before it turns again, this time to the right, light-footed, calm-footed, no-sound-at-all-footed. It'd be smart to call out a quick "hello?" but I don't think of this at the time so I continue to follow. Stride, stride, stride, wall, right turn. Nothing. I glance behind me, down the left corridor, and nothing. Forward again. Maybe I should run. If I run I'll undoubtedly catch up. So I prepare, and hunch forward, and think of taking the leap-

-but never actually do, because a hand falls upon my shoulder and I take the leap against a wall, slamming the entirety of my weight against it. The wallpaper tears and I hear it; the plaster of the wall crackles and I hear it; my skull takes a hairline fracture and heals within seconds, and I hear it.

My neck cranes at an unnatural angle down at the man who's just laid a hand on me, and the officer from before raises his hands in defense and takes a fearful step back, knowing full well my tendency to...not be extremely careful when snuck up on. His name tag reads "Nickel." I huff precariously.

"It's alright, Cujo. No need to bite my head off, I just saw ya roaming around and came to check up." Nickel throws a thumb behind him, pointing to some vague area, and then he removes his hat, smooths his brunet hair, places it back atop his head. He flicks a gaze from my feet to my forehead, and then straightens himself out after assessing my stiffness. "What're you doing down here, walking about, anyhow?"