Mars, Pennsylvania.

Population: 247 248

The pain was… well, it was pain… it fucking hurt, but…

But, it was different. I’d never felt pain like this. It was severe, like the compound fracture I’d earned when I tried to slide down a stair-railing on my skateboard Sophomore year. It was just…

Different.

I was face-planted in something squishy, and it was hard to get purchase on whatever it was so I could push myself up out of it.

Squishy equaled slippery.

Something was scraping, making annoying-as-hell sounds as I tried to push myself up off my face. I blinked, and tried to shake my head—but my head was immobile. Did I hurt my neck?

Jesus…

I looked down at what I’d pushed myself up out of. Holy shitballs! What the hell is that? There was a lot of red, and everything was shiny and wet looking. White stood out here and there, and bugs and other things were moving around in it.

Were those teeth?

Gross.

And I had my face in that???

The realization that there was hair sticking out from the top of whatever it was settled in.

What the…

I scuttled back, away from it… that irritating scraping sound coming with my every move.

I tried to get to my feet, but instead I fell backwards. I toppled head over heels until my backside hit the ground hard. I groaned, though falling should have hurt more, and then pushed myself up to a sitting position. I was sitting really low to the ground, and, since I couldn't move my head, I had to lean back really far to look up and see where I’d fallen from. That’s when I saw that the mess of blood and teeth and hair was sitting at the top of a prone figure leaned against a wall.

A body.

I recognized my PS5 Controller Icon t-shirt. There was a long streak of dried blood running down its front, bisecting the icons.

My mind couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at. I climbed to my feet, unable to pry my eyes off the rotting corpse before me.

“No…” I said, falling back a few steps again. “No, no, no, no, no!” my voice was cracking, and I started to cry out like a wounded animal. And that fucking scraping sound kept coming with every goddamned move I made.

“He’s right,” a voice said. “That is an irritating sound.”

“Which one,” another voice asked, “the scraping sound or the screaming?”

The voices sounded familiar.

I bent over, tearing my eyes from… whatever that was, wanting to puke, needing to puke. But nothing came.

“I’m still not convinced this was a fruitful endeavor,” one of the voices said. “But there’s only one way to find out now.”

“Agreed. Let us watch and wait.”

“We won’t need to wait long, I wager.”

I stood there, bent over, not puking, and unable to turn my head from side to side. I stood up straighter and tried not to look at… at my body.

That can’t be me. It just can’t be me. I’m here, right here.

I raised my hand up to my face and…

I screamed again, this time even louder than before.

My hand, it was… it was a goddamn doll’s hand.

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What the fucking hell!!!

I tried to look at myself. Everything I could see was brightly painted porcelain or something.

No.

No, no, no, no, no!

Something shiny caught my eye, over by a wrecked and scorched wall. I hobbled over to it, the short walk seeming to take forever. And that fucking scraping sound just wouldn't go away… as if it was coming from me. Like terracotta pots rubbing together.

The shiny thing turned out to be a piece of broken mirror that was lying propped up against the wall. The other half of it was still hanging up, up, way up on the wall.

That was my grandma’s old mirror, the one mom won’t get rid of. The one with the beveled edges and the silver peeling off the back, so when you look into it there are fuzzed-out parts of your reflection.

A sinking feeling flowed through me. I bent down and looked into the broken mirror. A horror looked back at me, and I just gaped at myself. I looked like…

I blinked hard, over and over before looking back into the mirror. I looked like Mrs Hendershot’s ugly fucking gnome. Red hat, red shirt, brown pants, black shoes, and a ridiculous white beard. Well, a pink beard. My face was covered in blood. My blood.

This has to be a freaking nightmare. I have to be asleep. I lurched away from the mirror and started slapping myself. Over and over I heard the scrape of pottery hitting pottery.

I stopped, more disturbed by the sound than the fact I could barely feel hitting myself. I looked around, and that something dropped inside me again.

Everything around me had been destroyed, wrecked and burned. Even the thickly overcast sky looked burnt and yellow.

But, as I looked around me, there was just enough left that I recognized it as my neighborhood. I looked to the wall with my grandmother’s mirror still hanging upon it.

Oh god… this is our house.

"Mom…" I said.

She was just talking to me on the phone before…

“Mom! Mom!!!” I cried out, turning this way and that, searching the distance. I didn’t see her car, but then again, even the street looked like it had been ripped up and thrown to the side.

I heard that fucking scraping noise even when I blinked. Goddamn it to fucking hell!

“Alright, I can’t take that sound anymore,” a voice said, and I started to remember something… but it slipped out of my head. “I’m going to get rid of it.”

“That sounds like an unfair advantage,” the other voice said.

“How so? The creature’s original vessel would not have made such a sound when it moved. Not only is the sound abhorrent, but will doubtlessly be a detriment to his ability to play the game. It will give away his position at every turn.”

The first voice sighed. “Very well, we’ll take the sound away. But game continuity dictates that any further alterations to the vessel should only be applied as progressions of the game, or by cultivation.”

Progression? Cultivation?

Like in a freaking video game?

“Agreed,” said the second voice, and I felt a slight tingling sensation. I moved, and the scraping sound was gone.

I tried to shake my head, but couldn’t. This is so fucking insane. It has to be a nightmare. It just has to be. Maybe I fell and hit my head? Maybe I’m having a stroke, or… maybe I took something. Did I take some drugs? I’ve never taken any before, but I’ve been pretty whacked out lately over… stuff.

But… what if this isn’t a dream, or a drug-induced hallucination? What if this is all real, and I’m dead—and rotted—and somehow I got shoved into Mrs Hendershot’s stupid fucking gnome?

I could swear I heard someone say something. A name. But I didn’t catch it.

My senses were pretty dull, well… except for sight. My vision was crystal clear and I could hear a freaking pin drop. But I couldn’t really feel much, not sensation-wise—except fear… I felt fear like I was at the bottom of a lake full of it, drowning on the shit.

Instinctively I did the first thing my scared-shitless brain came up with. I screamed, “Mom!!!!” with all my might. I didn’t even wait for an answer before I screamed it again. I was about to scream a third time, when I remembered something.

Mom on the phone.

Morty! I love you!

"Mom…" I whispered, trying to remember what had happened next. But a monstrous roar shook me right out of that thought. I take it back—I could hear just fine. I looked around frantically, and pushed myself up against the broken, scorched wall. What the hell was that?

A loud scrabbling sound from right above me made me push myself back so I could see the top of the wall. A big, emaciated, yellow toothed monster with bloodshot eyes and dark gray, sagging skin stared down at me.

I started screaming my head off, already on my feet and running. I ran straight out where a wall had been, and into the side yard. I ran so hard, but I wasn’t really going all that fast. Short gnome legs and all.

I ducked on down through a hole that was in the bottom of the fence. I fit nearly perfectly through it, but fell as soon as I was on the other side. I landed on my face, hard, and scrambled to push myself up. I’d fallen into a long, shallow hole of some sort. Then the monster simply plowed right on through the fence, broken pieces of wood raining down everywhere.

Jesus…

I tried to get back up onto my feet, but the monster fell upon me, bashing me back down into the ground with its clawed hands, and biting at me with its nasty yellow teeth. I felt each attack, and it hurt… some. But then I realized that the thing wasn’t really causing me any damage.

I was too hard for it to sink its teeth into.

"Come on,” the thing said with an angry, growling voice. “If it moves, it has meat and blood inside." It kept trying to slice at me with its claws. When that didn’t work, it pinned me down and rapped its knuckles against my belly. "Maybe it's like a nut that needs to be cracked?"

I saw something familiar lying on the ground beside me. I reached out and grabbed hold of it, recognizing its familiar heft. Mom’s old cast iron skillet. I lifted it up and brought it down onto the monster’s head as hard as I could. The thing screeched, but then grabbed the pan out of my hand, holding me down with its other claw.

“Thank you, my ornery snack.” It held the skillet up, appraisingly. “This will make a fine nutcracker!” It grasped the skillet with both hands, bringing it up over its head, ready to bring it down on me. I held my hands up to try and stop it…