“Alright, listen up, you bunch of lucky duckies! The tutorial round is officially underway, and the clock is ticking. You’ve got a whopping seventy-two hours to tackle two trials and shimmy your way to the next circle. But hey, no pressure, right?

“Now, if you fail to complete these trials or can’t find your way to the next circle in time, well... let’s just say you’ll be saying goodbye to your player status faster than a cheetah on a hot tin roof. Your soul will be repurposed, and there’s a very good chance you’ll end up as a toilet cleaner in the dungeons of Infernum… or an NPC in the game if you’re really lucky. Either way, all hope will be lost.

“So, my dear contestants, let’s put on a show that’ll knock the socks off the rest of the galaxy! It’s time to prove that humans aren’t just a bunch of walking punchlines... although, between you and me, I’m not holding my breath on that one. But hey, miracles happen, right? Right? Hello? Is this thing on?”

The gameshow host voice finished blaring out all over Limbo as I stood outside the SIPC building like a kid lost at the grocery store. Despite the power-ups I’d received earlier, I still felt as vulnerable as a mouse in a back alley full of feral cats.

And speaking of feral… things, there were other players fanning out away from the enormous building I was standing outside of. Men and women of different ages, some looking too old to be contestants in a fucked up game like this. According to the counter on my screen, there was just over five thousand players at this stage, which meant they should all be leaving the building at the same time as me. But all I could see were a couple dozen people, most of whom were striking out alone. A few seemed to have formed small groups, as if they thought they stood a better chance that way. Something told me that probably wouldn’t be the case, but we’d see.

“Jesus fuck, this is goddamn crazy,” I said, my marbles threatening to spill out of my skull any second thanks to to the sheer, overwhelming madness of this whole situation. It hit me then, really hit me, that I and everyone else from Earth, was just pawns in some cosmic game show. A plaything for alien overlords and their twisted entertainment desires. We were nothing more than lab rats in a maze, dancing monkeys performing for the amusement of beings so far beyond our comprehension that they might as well be gods.

I shook my head, trying to clear the existential dread that threatened to consume me. No point in dwelling on that shit now. I had bigger problems to worry about, like not ending up as some toilet scrubber for all eternity.

As I surveyed the other players, I realized I wasn’t the only one sporting some questionable vintage attire. It was like a thrift store had exploded and rained ‘80s fashion all over Limbo.

One guy was strutting around in a neon windbreaker that looked like it had been designed by a color-blind Jackson Pollock. The thing practically glowed in the dim light of Limbo. I wondered if it granted him the power of invisibility—by blinding anyone who looked directly at it.

Another contestant was rocking a pair of parachute pants so voluminous they could probably double as an emergency shelter. Maybe they had some kind of storage ability, like a wearable bag of holding. Or perhaps they just allowed the wearer to float gently to the ground if they ever fell off a cliff. You never know in this place.

I spotted a woman wearing a sweater so chunky and oversized it looked like she was being slowly devoured by a wool monster. For all I knew, it might actually be alive and grant her some kind of symbiotic armor ability. Or maybe it just gave really warm hugs.

But the pièce de résistance was the dude sporting a full-on Member’s Only jacket, complete with shoulder pads that made him look like a linebacker for the Damned Souls football team.

As I walked, I caught the eye of some dude in a faded Master of Puppets t-shirt and ripped jeans. I nodded at him, curious to see how he’d react. To my surprise, he sauntered over, a manic grin on his face.

“Hey man,” the guy said. “This is some crazy, fucked up shit, right?”

“Understatement of the… eternity? I don’t know. But yeah, my brain is fried right now. I expect it’ll stay that way for the duration.”

“Duration? How long do you think we’ll be here?”

“Until we finish the Trials. Or until we die… again.”

“The dude I spoke to in that dark hole we just came out of said our souls will get repurposed.”

“Yeah, I heard that too. I guess death really is an illusion after all.”

The dude eyed my 80s getup. “Nice threads, man. Why they gotta dress us all up like this? I fucking hated Metallica.”

“What’s it do? The T-shirt, I mean.”

“Gives me +3 Constitution or some shit. Fuck man, I know nothing about all this gaming nonsense. This is like my worst fucking nightmare. I used to beat people up for being into all this nerd shit, and now I’m like, fucking drowning in it.”

I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “The irony, huh?”

He nodded as if he knew what I meant, even though he didn’t, clearly. “Yeah, I now, right?” He paused, and I realized he was wearing some sort of fingerless glove on his right hand. It had metal studs on the knuckles, like something an 80s rocker would’ve worn. I guessed it enhanced the guys punching ability. Right then, I felt a pang of something. It took me a second to realize it was some sort of dark desire. I wanted his glove because I thought it would give me more power, and because it would give me an advantage over other players. The guy saw me staring and moved back a step, as if he suddenly saw me as a threat.

“Anyway, man. Good luck.”

“Yeah, you too.”

He backed away a few more steps before turning around and hurrying off, glancing over his shoulder a few times like he thought I was going to follow him. Or jump him. The urge was there, I have to say. The urge to pummel him into the ground and take everything he had.

Jesus, that didn’t take long did it? I thought. Two fucking seconds in this place and I’m ready to go full Mad Max on everyone around me.

Is that how things are going to turn out here? Are the players gonna turn on each other, slaughtering each other just to gain that little bit more power?

Competition, man. That’s what it does to you. When I was fighting, I would’ve done anything to get an edge on my opponents. I knew that feeling all too well.

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“I’ll have to watch my back here,” I muttered, glancing around at the other contestants, suddenly seeing the look of suspicion on most of their faces. Maybe they were all realizing the same thing as me, that it was dog eat dog in this place. No room for friendships. Everyone was a potential enemy.

I stared up at the reddish tumultuous sky for a moment, then silently cursed the Overseers. Fucking aliens, man. Folks on earth had the right idea bringing shotguns to UFO sightings. Turns out, you can’t trust the little green men after all.

As I started to continue on my way, I spotted an old lady nearby, clutching a large knitting needle like it was Excalibur. Her gray hair was in curlers, and she wore a floral housecoat that had definitely seen better days. As our eyes met, she scowled fiercely.

“Fuck this utter shite,” she spat in a thick accent that might have been Scottish, brandishing her makeshift weapon. “I was promised cats and cloudy hereafter, not this bullshit. Alien bastards can kiss my wrinkly arse!”

Before I could respond, she turned and ambled off in a random direction, muttering curses under her breath. I watched her go, torn between amusement and a newfound fear of senior citizens armed with craft supplies.

But as it turned out, the old lady didn’t get very far before something came from the sky like a direct retort from the very aliens the old lady had just cursed.

A piercing shriek cut through the air, and I looked up to see a bizarre creature diving from the sickly sky. It was about the size of a large crow, but that’s where any resemblance to normal birds ended. Its body was covered in iridescent scales, and its wings looked more like bat wings than feathers. But the most horrifying feature was its long, needle-like beak that gleamed wickedly in the hellish light.

Looking at the creature, an info box soon popped up.

Skull Pecker - Level 2

A nightmarish fusion of bird, reptile, and pure malevolence, the Skull Pecker is Infernum’s answer to the question, “What if we made pigeons, but evil?” With its iridescent scales and bat-like wings, this creature looks like it was designed by a committee of drunk taxidermists. Its most prominent feature is its absurdly long, needle-like beak, perfect for pecking holes in the skulls of unsuspecting damned souls or for use as a novelty cocktail stick in Infernum’s seedier bars.

“Look out!” I yelled, but it was too late.

The creature swooped down on the old lady with terrifying speed. Its beak struck her head with a sickening thud, and she let out a surprised yelp. Before she could even react, the thing struck again, and again, pecking at her skull with horrifying precision.

I started running toward her, my heart pounding. “Hey! Get away from her, you feathered freak!”

The old lady, tough as nails even in the face of this nightmarish assault, didn’t go down without a fight. With a war cry that would’ve made William Wallace proud, she swung her knitting needle like a sword. “I’ll teach you to mess with me, you overgrown pigeon!”

By some miracle, she managed to stab the creature right in its beady eye. It let out an ear-splitting screech and flapped away, trailing ichor as it disappeared into the red-tinged sky.

But the damage was done. By the time I reached her, the old lady was swaying on her feet, her housecoat now spattered with blood. She looked at me, her eyes already growing dim thanks to the holes in her skull, her wispy white hair now stained crimson. It would’ve been a good look on her, given where we were, if she wasn’t about to die.

“Well,” she muttered, clutching her bloodstained knitting needle, “at least I got the bastard.” Then she collapsed.

I caught her before she hit the ground, lowering her gently. But it was too late. The light had already faded from her eyes, her body going limp in my arms.

“Shit,” I muttered, feeling a weird sort of admiration for this tough old bird who’d gone down swinging. “Rest in peace, you knitting needle ninja.”

Honestly, this hardly even felt real. If this old lady had died in my arms back on Earth, I’d be devastated. Here, however, it just felt too surreal, too absurd to fully process. The whole situation was so utterly ridiculous and over-the-top that it was hard to take seriously, even as I held the fading body of a woman who’d just been pecked to death by a creature that looked like it had escaped from a demented carnival sideshow.

Would things feel different the more time went on? Or would I remain the walking punchline in this cosmic joke? Who the fuck knew.

Right now, I had a dead old lady in my arms and I wasn’t sure what to do next. A few of the other players came over for a look, asking ridiculous questions like, “Is she dead?” and, “What level was she?”

“Seriously?” I snapped. “Of course she’s fucking dead and who gives a shit what level she was? It didn’t do her any good, did it?”

The sudden anger I was projecting was enough to make the looky-loos piss off. And I was glad, because their stupid faces made me realize I wanted to be alone in this game, for now at least. I had a feeling these dumbasses would end up getting me killed if they stuck around, and that wasn’t something I wanted to happen. I’d already died once and I wasn’t keen to repeat it, even if I had virtually nothing to live for at this point.

As I lay the old girl down on the ground, it hit me that life here wasn’t so different to what it was on Earth. Nobody had a fucking clue about anything here, either. We were all still lost souls. The only difference was, we could actually gain significant power here if we tried hard enough… and killed enough shit.

I felt like raising my head to the sky and giving whoever was watching the Gladiator speech, but didn’t see the point, especially as they would probably find that entertaining in itself. So fuck ‘em.

The old lady’s corpse suddenly blinked strangely, like her form was glitching or something, and then an info box helpfully appeared above her.

Lootable Granny Corpse - Level 1

Contestant Martha Grimes, killed by Skull Pecker

Granny’s Knitting Needle of Fury

Health Potion x1

Blue Rinse of Stout Constitution

Toffees x10

The items were all apparently there for the taking. But was I really going to loot an old ladies corpse like some ghoulish grave robber? You bet your bottom dollar I was. I needed shit, and she had some. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to need it anymore. Plus, she wasn’t really dead, was she? The Overseers or whoever handled the “repurposing” would probably bring her back as a cat, or maybe even as a Skull Pecker. Or a sentient hairball, I don’t fucking know. Either way, she was gone, and I was still here, so I took what little items she had.

Granny’s Knitting Needle of Fury - Level 1

Once a humble tool for creating cozy sweaters, this knitting needle has found new purpose as an instrument of righteous geriatric vengeance. Infused with the indomitable spirit of a cantankerous old lady, Granny’s Fury packs a surprisingly vicious punch.

+2 Stabbing Damage

+1 Sass

Special ability: Guilt Trip—Has a 5% chance to make your opponent feel bad about their life choices.

I guess the needle would come in handy if—when—I got up close and personal with some of the denizens around here. It seemed like it might be good for stabbing out eyeballs, at least.

“Jesus,” I muttered as I put the knitting needle in my inventory, along with the Health Potion and Toffees (where the hell did she get toffees from, anyway?), “listen to me, talking about stabbing eyeballs like it’s just another Tuesday. Yep, I’m gonna do well in this place.”

Blue Rinse of Stout Constitution

This vibrant hair dye isn’t just for looks—it’s infused with the resilience of a thousand bingo nights. Slather it on and feel the power of senior citizenship flow through you!

Effects: +3 Constitution, +1 Resistance to Millennial Sass

Special Ability: “Get Off My Lawn!” - Once per day, unleash a shout that sends younger foes scurrying.

“Jesus.” I shook my head. “If I utter ‘Jesus’ one more time, the man Himself is gonna come here and tell me to shut the fuck up. But Jesus—blue rinse? Am I really gonna die my hair with this shit for +3 Constitution? No, I’m not that desperate… yet. Still, into the inventory it goes.”

One thing this whole incident made me realize was how dangerous this place was. And this was just the first level… or Circle. So far I’d seen mayhemic imps and murderous Skull Peckers. What other beastly delights awaited out there? I couldn’t wait to find out.

And if you believe that, you’ll believe fucking anything.