I walked outside with renewed stamina and picked another tree. With many thwacks, I brought it down, and with a few more thwacks, they changed into beautiful firewood. I still had a sliver of stamina, which was nice.
The shadows were starting to get long when I straightened. I had a few more hours until nighttime, and I needed to set traps. I pulled the to-do list out of my pocket and studied it again. Everything was crossed out except purchasing trapping hats and placing the firewood in the traps.
I glanced around, frowning. I don’t know what they meant by traps, but maybe if I bought the trapper hat, that would help me see what they meant. If I remember right, all the articles of clothing cost 5.00 dopamine points, and with my current 2.15 total, I needed to start selling some stuff.
There were exactly ten bundles of firewood, which was a pity, because I wanted to see how many dopamine points, I would get if I sold a bundle, but I wasn’t ready to give one up. Instead, I dove into cleaning. I really wanted to clean the bedroom, since I didn’t enjoy waking up to the mess. It would be nice to wake up to it nice and clean, with no mice scampering over the piles of junk.
My cleaning levels must have been higher, as I was able to carry an entire garbage bag stuffed with clothes from the closet to drop into the dumpster. Once the closet was cleaned, I noticed my nightgown hanging there, with my slippers underneath. The door was still hanging off the closet, but I just left it there. This closet was now mine, with the only other pair of clothes I owned.
As far as I could tell, my nightgown didn’t have any magical properties to help me sleep.
“That’d be nice, though!” I said out loud to the scientists controlling my lab experiment.
I gathered up the ashtrays from the bedroom and the entertainment room before dropping them into the dumpster. They each gave me a measly +.01 dopamine point. Oh well, they were gone, and I wasn’t allowed to smoke.
I don’t know why I knew that, but I did. Even at my twenty-three- or twenty-four-year-old self, I also distinctly remember being warned against something like that.
2.26 total dopamine points. I tried hard not to imagine what it would be like if I’d never upgraded the calendar, because that wouldn’t do anyone any good. Instead, as the shadows of the trees stretched toward the house, I buckled in and gathered up trash.
The bedroom was slowly coming together. I knew I’d appreciate it better in the red dawn light instead of the red setting sun light. Right now, I was stressing more about getting to 5.00.
When I dropped another large bag of beer cans into the dumpster and got +.04 points for all that effort, I started to get anxious. The sun was filtering through the thick forest trees, and it already felt dark. I didn’t want to stay up until midnight, and I didn’t want to feel terrified until my sanity couldn’t take it. I was creeping ever closer to 4.00, and the trash in the house wasn’t giving me what I needed.
I still had a pile of “definitely trash” in the garage that I could get rid of. The stuff in the garage always gave me more than the stuff in the house.
Crickets were chirping in the distance as I started throwing things from my “definitely trash” in a bag. I ran over to the dumpster, keeping an eye on my stamina. I still had a few slivers left.
I dropped it in there, finally making it to 4.02 total dopamine points. I didn’t pause to celebrate. The shadow of the trees inched up the house, and I focused more on them than what I was throwing away, until a phrase popped into my vision.
Are you sure you want to throw that away?
Y/N
I stared at the phrase, blinking, then down at the bag in my hand. There were a few items inside it, and usually stuff from the garage gave me an average of .07 points. I was slowly making my climb to 5.00, and I needed to get this finished, but this phrase stopped me for a solid five seconds.
There was a way in the game to make sure I wasn’t throwing away anything useful. That changed everything.
I dumped the contents of the bag onto the ground and began plopping things into the dumpster one by one until I got the phrase again.
Are you sure you want to throw that away?
Y/N
It was an old battery. I thought it was a rusted bullet, but now that I looked again, it was a battery. There was no way it would work, but since I got the prompt, I was far too afraid to throw it away, now.
I mentally chose no, then ran into the garage. I began stuffing my bag with as much of the “possibly not trash” pile as my stamina would allow and booked it to the dumpster. I held my breath as I dropped the junk in there. I dropped ten items in there, giving me .08 more dopamine points, and no message about whether I wanted to throw something away.
I’d been saving too much stuff. It was fine. I now had a way to get rid of the junk in the garage.
The stars started to appear in the sky as I forced myself to stay calm. To think of other things besides how quickly the light was disappearing from the sky.
The garage was going to look so nice now that the junk was getting thrown out of it. Seriously, so nice. It’ll be so sparkly clean, and someone could actually fit their car in there now. Beautiful.
I sprinted toward the dumpster again with a new bag of junk, dropping them in one at a time.
“So nice. So beautiful,” I stuttered. “I bet who ever owned this house had a beautiful car.
+.01
+.01
+.02
+.01
“So lovely,” I said, dropping things in as I started at my total
4.42
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4.43
4.45
4.46
“I bet it was a beautiful green car,” I said. “Green cars aren’t often pretty, but I bet they had a beautiful one. Probably had a beautiful model T. That’s the first car invented, right?”
I sprinted back into the garage, stuffing things into the bag. “I bet it had glitter, too. Like a green, glittery model T. I bet the lady of the house was beautiful. This house is beautiful. Back in the late eighteen hundreds.”
Halfway to the dump, my hands dropped the bag and I collapsed, the last of my stamina disappearing. I could not lift that bag, not even if my life depended on it.
And there was a chance I was now in that situation.
“Come on. Come on. You can do it. Whatever your name is, you can do it,” I said to myself as I gathered a few of the spilled items on the ground and dropped them in the dumpster. I crossed 4.52 total points and ran to gather more trash in the bag before returning to the dumpster.
“I believe in you. You’ve got this. You can-”
The guttural noise cut me off. I was talking to myself. Outloud. Why was I doing that? Only idiots in horror movies did that.
My eyes shot toward my sanity bar. The growling from that first night caused the bar to drop, this time it held firm.
You can do this. I believe in you. You’re going to be just fine. Your sanity is fine, so you’re fine.
I dropped the items in there and sprinted back into the garage, gathering more. I held my breath, but still sprinted, dropping items in the dumpster.
My ears tingled. The crickets weren’t chirping, and I could hear the river roaring behind the greenhouses. The growl was deeper in the woods, but close enough that the creature could no doubt see the garage.
The first of the tears fell down my cheeks, and a sliver of sanity disappeared. I shoved trash into the dumpster, my mind feeling scattered. If I didn’t get this done, I would be locked inside the house until I could go to sleep at midnight.
The creature growled again, closer to the garage but still hidden in the trees, and the light from the lamp post gave me a shadow. The stars above twinkled in the sky as I dropped junk into the dumpster.
4.65. I wouldn’t make it. If I hadn’t upgraded that stupid calendar, I would have been there by now and already in bed.
Don’t get scared like that. You can’t change the past. Use the energy to work on what you have now.
My knees were weak, and the growl I heard just at the edge of the forest made every hair on my arm stand on end, the stamina beginning to drop. I needed something big. I needed to sell one of the more valuable pieces of junk. But what if I sold it, and couldn’t get it again, and then I wouldn’t be able to complete another task, and I’d be stuck with a continually piling list of to-do’s that would keep me up until midnight and would undoubtably drive me insane and I couldn’t-
Milk. I had an extra gallon of milk.
I let out a breath and sprinted into the house, opening the fridge. Food always sold in these kinds of games. I grabbed the full gallon of milk and tried not to think about it as I opened the front door and tiptoed to the dumpster.
The river flowed behind the greenhouses. I couldn’t hear the monster. All I heard was my own breathing as I dropped the gallon of milk into the dumpster.
Please, please, please.
Are you sure you want to sell this?
Y/N
Yes, yes, yes.
+1.50
I let out my breath and sucked in another ragged one. 6.15 total dopamine points.
I rushed through the back door and purchased the trapper hat. It appeared on my head, the little flaps resting against my ears. I must have been a sight in my worn-out farming overalls and my fuzzy trapper hat. As soon as I saw them, numbers appeared right outside. I opened the back door to see an impression of a fence covering my house and garage. In red, I saw 0/50. But how was I supposed to put the firewood into the fence?
With a sinking heart, I realized all the firewood was stacked by the dumpster, closest to the garage. The last place I heard the growling.
I took a steady breath. I could do this. It was either this or stay up until midnight. Or until my sanity hit twenty percent. I did not want to see what insanity did to me.
Every instinct in me told me to hide in my bedroom, but I pushed through, stepping onto the concrete front porch and eased onto the side of the house that had the dumpster. I didn’t hear anything, which I wasn’t sure how that made me feel. The ten bundles of firewood were against the house, and I put two bundles of firewood in my arms. Trying to get a third one in my arms made the other two tumble to the ground and a wave of nausea hit me.
Fine. Two bundles at a time.
I grabbed two bundles and followed the impression in my gut, given me through the inspiration of the trapper hat. I needed to place the bundles in the fake fence floating in my eyes. The closest was the place by the garage, but I refused. My ears practically curled as I tried to hear the creature. Knowing it was out there and not hearing it felt almost worse than hearing that growl.
I dropped two bundles in the fence and snuck back to gather two more.
At least it’s not one bundle.
I repeated this phrase over and over again. Ten trips would be horrible. Five was doable.
4/50.
My own to-do list would have a different number. Six more bundles of firewood, and then I could go to bed.
The lamp post cast a shadow of something coming out of the forest. It stepped onto the ground, sniffing. My feet froze in place, and my breathing turned shallow as my sanity took another dip.
No. No, don’t freeze. Come on. Come on, dear girl. You can do this.
I forced my feet to start moving again. I had hoped that my sanity would stop dropping, but it still did. I gathered two more bundles and tiptoed to the fence, shoving the bundles of firewood into the imaginary copy. Two more trips.
The creature still sniffed, and if the garage wasn’t there, I would see exactly what that creature was. The shadow it cast, though, was enough that my sanity was a continual drain, almost reaching halfway.
There was a good chance I’d be going to bed in another couple minutes, whether this job was done or not.
The creature had four legs, and according to its shadow had thick, mangy fir. A wolf was the first thought I had, but I didn’t believe it. I’d heard wolves howling in the forest. They didn’t make the noises this creature made. It sniffed around the bottom of the garage as I picked up two more bundles, tears streaming down my face. My sanity hit fifty percent. The creature’s sniffing became more intense, with snarls intermixed as it grew more fervent in its search, starting to move away from the garage.
It must not have that great of a sense of smell. Shouldn’t wolves have a better sense of smell? They hunted, after all. This thing should have smelled me already.
Maybe it was better to not think about the logistics of it all. I should just be grateful this four-legged creature didn’t have a great sense of smell.
I placed the bundles of firewood and turned to head for the last two. Just as I picked them up, the creature stopped sniffing, and I remained frozen on the spot. Tears raced down my cheeks, dripping off my chin into the unkempt ground below. I waited, my breathing nonexistent as my heart pounded into my ears. These were the last two bundles. I could do this.
Please let me do this.
My sanity was dropping. How low, I wasn’t sure. Not low enough to run and go to bed, though. Maybe I could stay here, frozen, until it was at twenty percent. That could work, right?
The creature barked, and it was a bark of recognition and anger. I gasped, hugging the bundles to my chest as I sprinted toward the fence.
What was I doing? Go for the door! Why wasn’t I running toward the door?! Don’t run for the fence, stupid, run for the DOOR.
Fear was one hell of a stimulant. I shoved the remaining firewood onto the fence as I heard four paws pounding into the ground as the creature sprinted toward me.
“Done. I’m done. I’m done,” I said as I pumped my legs, carrying me into the house.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shadowed four-legged creature. It snarled, before there was a deafening crack. At first I thought it was a bullet, but then I watched as the creature squealed in pain before it stood up on it’s hind legs and started to run. The speed was inhuman, and I screamed, throwing myself against the front door.
It could run. Run on its hind legs. What was that thing? What was it doing here at this house?
I slammed the front door and locked it, tears still dropping off my chin as I scrambled to the back door in the dark, making sure it was locked before I bolted into my room.
“Sleep! Please! Sleep! It’s done! My to-do list is done!”
The last two nights didn’t produce a dream. I begged the overlords that the same applied tonight. Because I couldn’t have a nightmare. I was already living one.