Everyone turned towards me and looked.

Concern melted away from Ellie’s face, her eyebrows rising, and she looked away just as a smile spread across her face.

Wood’s smirk evaporated and he shook his head, somehow looking even more pissed than usual at me. Teddy just walked towards me, setting his bow down on the ground, and producing a crowbar from his inventory. That was a nice bit of magic there. I was going to have to start putting things randomly in mine so I’d have things to pull out, too. I’d really needed something sharp a couple minutes ago, and hadn’t had anything.

After a couple tries, Teddy got the right angle, and popped me right out of the indentation I was stuck in. I looked back, expecting it to kind of look like a cookie cutter version of me, but instead was horrified how wide my hips, and how bulbous my butt imprint was. I immediately wondered if I could exercise myself into a more buff-gnome state. But, since I wasn’t able to eat, then I was pretty sure I was stuck looking exactly the way I was.

And that sucked ass.

Then I remembered something, fleeting, but I was pretty sure it had happened. Back when I woke up in this little terra-cotta body, there had been voices. Around the time that horrible, irritating-as-fuck sound that I made every time I moved had simply gone away.

One of the voices had said that the vessel—as in me, this form, this gnome—could only be changed by progression (leveling up), or by cultivation.

I had thought to myself, like in a video game. Progression or cultivation.

I understood progression fine. But cultivation? That one I wasn’t really sure about. I think it had something to do with meditating? And if that was true, then I was pretty much screwed. In a video game it would be perks, or mutations caused by radiation. Or like a passive ability that increases in time. Like being less and less effected by something. The old + 10 Iron Skin.

I made a mental note to ask Teddy about cultivation, and how it’s part of gaming culture and mechanics. If anyone would know, it would be Teddy. I glanced over at the giant pit that used to be the library he had worked in. I decided to ask him later. Instead, I took the chance to start looking at everyone’s stats boxes. After all, that’s why we had all come out here to grind: to try and level up.

Ellie had risen a whole level, receiving tons of experience points, and even some points for “true grit.” Getting literally smacked around by a huge-assed monster, and getting right back up again, meant something.

Wood rose one level as well, receiving not only experience points, but “crazy bastard points” for jumping on the monster’s back and manically stabbing it.

Then I took a look at my own stats box. I hadn’t leveled up an entire level, but it seemed like I was on the precipice. I did get a “getting stuck and being useless” reward box, though. “The stats box didn’t have a voice, but there was something about the font of the message that seemed rather sarcastic. They practically sizzled with metallic red. It made a perverse kind of sense that the system was going to be a dick. Why not, right?

I think everybody was sore after that fight. Well, except for me. I hadn’t gotten even a scratch on me yet. And that was a good thing. But it also made me realize that my friends were definitely not impervious to harm. Heck, Ellie was bleeding again, this time from a cut on the side of her mouth.

If I could, I would’ve brought the nasty opossum monster—and her kids—back to life and killed then all over again. But luckily I wasn’t a necromancer, because we had barely gotten that thing killed with all of us working together. Vengeance or not, there’s no point in bringing something back for an encore when it’s already dead.

“That was fun,” Wood said, knocking some dirt out of his short hair.

“Fun?” Ellie said, incredulous.

“Yeah,” Wood said. “That was fun.”

Teddy and I nodded our agreement. We were picking gold and jewels from where the NPC opossums had dropped them when they died.

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"Especially the part where I got to ride that thing like a bucking bronco," Wood said. "Her green blood was wicked gross."

Green blood? I looked around and saw the nasty stuff dripping or smeared on each of my friends. Yeah, wicked gross.

Ellie looked horrified.

"And did you see Ellie smashing the baby opossum’s skulls with her Negan bat? No wonder the mama tried to smacked her into next week!” Teddy said, his voice cracking with excitement. "I thought that little fu—I mean, little monster—had me for sure."

Ellie was shaking her head, looking at us all like we were certifiable lunatics. And then her shoulders sagged and she started to smile.

"Boys."

***

The sun was getting close to setting in the sky, so we decided to head back to the pizzeria. We were on the other side of town, so it would probably take twenty to thirty minutes to walk there. By then it would be pretty close to dusk. I had already gotten the memo that it was good to be inside before dark.

We trundled along, and I am pretty sure that everyone was going slower than they should have because of me. But it was so nice to have them with me, I really didn’t mind.

But by the time we were passing the halfway mark back to the pizzeria, a very familiar song started playing in my head. First it was soft, but it got louder with every step I took.

Since nobody reacted, I was pretty sure I was the only one hearing it. Whoever was playing this song was a pretty big prick.

I clenched my eyes and my jaw, even though I didn’t have eyes or a jaw to clench, and just kept on walking.

“You OK?” Teddy said from beside me. I was surprised I could even make out his words, the music was just so loud. That, or the memories the song dredged up were just overwhelming me.

“The game, or whatever, is screwing with me." The Beach Boys sang happily in my ears. It was fucking drowning me.

"It's screwing with everybody," Wood said with thinly veiled irritation. He and Ellie were walking a few feet in front of us.

"Yeah but, it's playing music." I tried to ignore it, but it was so loud, and… my mind was trying to relive the last time I’d heard it. "You guys can't hear it."

"Wow, that's dire." Wood kicked a rock, making it rocket into the distance. "It's torturing you with music? How terrible."

I saw Teddy’s head snap forward in his brother’s direction. He looked like he was getting pissed. But I couldn’t think anymore. The song was tearing me the fuck apart.

I gulped. "Right now it's playing California Dreaming."

Everyone stopped in their tracks. Ellie looked over to Wood. He shook his head and looked away. She walked back and kneeled before me.

"Your dad," she said.

I nodded. "It plays Down by the River, too."

"Why that one?" Teddy asked from beside me. His eyebrows were bunched up. "It's just your ringtone, right?"

"Mom called me right as… as it all happened." I stopped, reliving that moment again. Both my parents were dead. One's death had seemed to take forever, the other was over in seconds. "So, the last time I heard my ringtone was when I picked up for her."

"Fuckers," Wood said. At least his anger was focused on them—whoever they were—and not me.

Ellie reached out, hesitated, but then went ahead and touched my face. I barely felt it. She nodded, and for a moment I felt like we were going to get through this. All of us together. That there was hope.

She closed her eyes, and a dim glowing flickered behind her eyelids. "I don't know if this will help, but it's worth a shot." From her expression I thought she was literally looking for something inside her head. But then, a ring of dried branches appeared in her hand, I realized she’d been searching her inventory.

She leaned closer, reached out and placed the wreath over my red hat clad head. And just like that, the music stopped.

“Oh…” I gasped. “It stopped.”

Ellie nodded. “I won it last week for killing some mob with a auditory attack. It wasn’t even in a prize box—just appeared in my hand. Good to know it works.”

“Yeah,” said Teddy, “Nothing worse than a prize that doesn’t work.”

“Like Sea Monkeys,” Wood said.

We all smiled, remembering how angry he’d been in third grade over that.

I noticed Ellie looking at me and smiling.

“Looks stupid,” I said, “doesn’t it?”

She shook her head. “Overly adorable. Like you’re an overdressed Cabbage Patch Doll.”

I sighed as Wood and Teddy snickered and bumped fists.

I smiled. “It’s worth it.”

We started walking again. “So, what kind of monster was it? You know, that had a sonic attack?”

Ellie’s eyes got a little wider. “Well, ah…”

“She killed Cheryl,” Wood said.

Cheryl?

Cheryl!?!?

I stopped in my tracks and turned to Ellie. “You killed Cheryl? Cheryl from the pizzeria?”

She kept walking, shaking her head. “She was killed in the first attacks, and then she showed up a week later and she was… well, she was a banshee.”

“No fucking way!”

“She almost killed us,” Teddy said.

“Plus she was singing,” Wood added.

I ran after Ellie. “Just because you hated her singing?”

Ellie stopped and then glared down at me. “She was a horrifying singer when she was alive, but as an undead-banshee, she almost killed us all.”

“She was singing Dream On,” Wood chimed in. “And we all know how Ellie feels about Aerosmith.

I stood there, staring at her in horror.

“She. Almost. Killed. Us,” Ellie said, her voice getting really pissed off sounding.

And with that she turned and stormed off.

Unbelievable.