My head popped up right at the beginning light of dawn. The pillow fell off my head as I blinked. I breathed as best I could in the dirty bedroom, trying not to think about what happened last night.

I glanced at the corner of my vision, seeing my sanity and stamina filled back up. I sighed, bowing my head. It threw me off how quickly my sanity dropped last night, but on the other hand, I was an absolute scaredy cat. There was something about being completely alone at night that freaked me out. Especially in the middle of a forest. With no memories of who I am.

Honestly, why wasn’t I scared a bit sooner? What is going on?

The only clue I had to anything was the messages on the phone. I climbed out of bed, placing my slippers on my feet again. The house filled with the red light of dawn as I walked through the tv room, then the living room. The kitchen, though still far from clean, was at least decluttered. And it looked so good. I was quite proud of my accomplishments yesterday. It was important to focus on what I did instead of that ungodly growl.

Don’t think about it.

I picked up the phone as the light blinked on the base, pressing one.

“What is this house? Why am I here? Why don’t I remember anything?” I asked right into the phone before listening to the woman speaking.

“-days, they will come. In six days, they will start to destroy. Anything you didn’t complete on your to-do list from yesterday will be added to this new list. Please do the following so you may protect yourself.

“Order farming overalls from the clipboard by the storage unit.

“Find the key to the first greenhouse in the garage.

“Prepare one soil bed in the greenhouse.

“Further instructions will follow…”

The phone beeped, and I closed my eyes, sighing as I placed the phone back on the base. The to-do list appeared on the note paper, and I tore it off, studying it. I couldn’t help but feel like a rat in a maze. Why didn’t someone just tell me what was going on? Mysterious things in the darkness shouldn’t… growl.

And sure, I forgot what happened, but I’m pretty sure people didn’t wake up with no knowledge about themselves in a house they don’t recall and suddenly be asked to clean it. I’m pretty sure I would have heard that story somewhere if it actually happened.

I walked into the covered back porch to the clipboard by the storage unit. I flipped to the back page to see my cleaning levels were at three. There was another leveling that unlocked, called farming. I flipped the pages back to the outfits and studied the overalls. They looked simple, sturdy, and worn. By the looks of it, any outfit could be upgraded. How, I didn’t know, but I needed to buy it, first. All the farming outfit options cost five dopamine points each, and I had 4.75 total. That shouldn’t be too hard. After all, clutter in the dumpster gave me points, and there were plenty of things to toss in the dumpster.

I tried opening the window in the living room, but it was sealed shut. Maybe that was for the best. Oh well. I grabbed more bags and stuffed old letters from the card table into the bag, filling it up to the top. It didn’t take any stamina to carry it.

I dropped the letters in the dumpster, waiting.

+.01

My shoulder’s sagged. This was going to take a while.

Letters didn’t give much. I learned that after dropping a bag of newspapers and got a whopping +.03 dopamine points. I focused mostly on newspapers after that until I was starting to get annoyed. It was really hard to take so much time and get so little. The longer it took to get to 5.00 total, the harder it was. It shouldn’t be that long, yet here I was. Taking that long.

I sighed, placing my hands on my hips before realizing that if the garage was anything like the house, it was probably just as dirty. I should be killing two birds with one stone.

I walked out the front door, glancing at the lamp post. It hadn’t turned on, since it was midmorning. The sky was still hazy. I had a feeling it would remain hazy for the foreseeable future.

I walked toward the garage that I still saw as a covered car port. It wasn’t a huge garage. It could probably barely fit one car. A wooden door to the side revealed the garage was as dirty as I feared. At least the dumpster was close. Since I couldn’t carry a lot of bags in a trip, it was nice that the trip wouldn’t take as long.

The door was jagged on the bottom, like it had been broken. There was no garage door, and hazy, midmorning light filtered in through the open wall. Despite the open wall, there was so much stuff piled everywhere that it still felt dark when I stepped inside. One step was all I could take. I was glad I remembered the garage would be full, but also annoyed I lost two hours to things not on my to-do list that only gave me the minimum number of points.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

I wanted to be a bit more careful with the stuff in the garage. I wasn’t sure what they expected me to do in the future, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t tossing things in the dumpster that could be useful later. I always hated starting a new farming game and selling all the important things in the beginning of the game before realizing their importance. Considering the woman on the phone didn’t bother telling me about the clipboard by the storage unit, I didn’t dare toss anything that I wasn’t certain was trash.

I hadn’t been wearing gloves while cleaning the kitchen or the fridge with the moldy food. Perhaps I should have. Once the game aspect came on, I wasn’t too worried about catching something. The logic that my nightgown felt as fresh in the evening after an entire day of cleaning that they had when I first got out of bed, showed me that perhaps this place followed a game logic.

It was difficult to remember now that I was in a garage full of rusty nails. Those gloves in the cleaning outfit would also cost five points, and it felt like a necessity. I needed to buy those overalls first.

I dropped the first bag of oil-soaked rags into the dumpster. +.04 was more of a dopamine rush than +.01. At this rate, I only needed a couple more trips. And there happened to be a lot of oil-soaked rags to dispose of. I needed to be quick, because it was almost lunchtime.

The thought made me pause. Why did I care about lunchtime? I didn’t even eat breakfast. In fact, I technically hadn’t eaten in a day and a half. I never ate yesterday, and I felt no deep feelings of hunger. Perhaps my only food was for stamina. Did sanity have food options? If I ate something comforting, like a huge slice of chocolate cake, did it help my sanity? Because that would be nice. Having chocolate cake would be a plus, too.

I kept working, trying not to imagine everything I could build with all this old junk, watching for the key. Despite being small, this car port was stuffed with junk.

Once I hit that beautiful 5.02 total dopamine points, I took a break and tried to walk through the back door, before forgetting I locked it the night before. I refused to get mad at myself for that, though. The too recent memory of that primal fear threatened to ruin my afternoon, so I pushed it to the side.

This house wasn’t big, which was nice. It just seemed overly crowded with all the stuff. I walked to the back of the storage unit and grabbed the clip board. This time was different. Once I touched the page, the different farmer and cleaning outfit options started to glow, and words appeared in my vision.

Choose which to buy.

Despite how tempting it was to pick the gloves so I could have a bit more stamina while cleaning, I picked the overalls instead. The key couldn’t be hidden for much longer.

Wear overalls now?

“No, thank you,” I said. I wasn’t farming, after all, I was cleaning. Though it might be nice to wear pants for once. “Actually… yeah, sure.”

In an instant, my nightgown disappeared, and I was wearing overalls. I didn’t have the farmer’s shirt yet, so instead I had a basic tank top on. I was barefoot, but considering I grabbed rusty nails and never worried, I walked out the back door and wasn’t too scared for my feet now.

It took some getting used to, stepping in that dirty car port barefoot, but I muscled through the unease and kept working. I would find that key soon.

Turns out, the key refused to be found. Saving things that seemed like they might be useful made the process slow. I put things in piles of “definitely trash”, and “possibly not trash”. “Possibly not trash” was turning into a huge pile indeed, and as much as I inspected every item in case the key was inside, I still didn’t find it.

I told myself not to worry about it until the shadows got longer. Once it got dark enough for the lamp post to turn on, I would go straight to bed. The house wasn’t bad in the light, but nighttime gave a completely different ambience.

Gathering the piles, I started filling my bag. I started carrying them three at a time to the dumpster, until I found myself able to take four at a time without it hurting my stamina. Once the shadow of the car port got to where it was touching the house foundation, I gave up entirely on saving my stamina. An entire day, trying to find a key. Where was that stupid key? There should be some light guiding me as I got closer, like a warm/cold feature to help me out. There were some games I played where it didn’t matter where I looked, the thing automatically popped up after searching for a certain number of minutes.

The carport was small enough to barely cover a car, but it was also full of junk. How big was the key? Maybe I should have looked at the lock to guess the size.

I grabbed a huge bag and stuffed it full of trash from the pile. The garage was getting clean. That much I could proudly say, but soon I’d need to turn on the bare bulb hanging over the beams to keep going.

No, wait. No, I would not. Not only did the garage not have electricity, but I would be well into my sleep before I did anything like that. I would give up searching for the key for the day and give up trying to finish my to-do list. My sanity was far more important than a reward for completing whatever this was.

I was approaching 3.00 total dopamine points and still no sign of the key. How did this garage feel so massive yet so small at the same time? I used up the rest of my stamina to get rid of the junk pile, though the “possibly not junk” pile was way too high. Out of desperation, I pulled open some drawers to see if there was a flashlight. It was getting too dark, and I might have thrown away the key by accident. I needed a super bright flashlight for this. Or maybe clear out the junk by the window so I could finally tear down that cardboard covering the window.

Where was that stupid key?

There was a buzz of electricity, and I glanced up at the bulb, until I realized the electricity didn’t work out here. I glanced out the open door to see it had gotten dark. The lamp post flickered on. There was no garage door. I was out here in the open, near the place where I heard the growling from last night.

Was it already nighttime? My heart did a double flip as I heard the wolves howling again. I was not going to stay to hear that growl again. Absolutely not.

I flew out the side door and sprinted into the house, holding my breath the entire way until I was inside. I locked the front door and the back one before covering my ears and running straight for the bedroom and body slammed the bed.

“Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!” I shouted.

The darkness overcame me, and I was asleep before anything could scare me.