Moving out, getting a fancy ‘higher-education-degree’, and expanding my horizons was supposed to be fun and exciting. When I left home at the end of summer, I’d packed some sophisticated philosophy books in anticipation of my transformation. The thing is, they were all boring. I tried Proust, Kant, and.. well just those two but still.

Here I was, about to head home for the Christmas break, and I was still as boring as ever. I hadn’t even gone on a single date during the semester. So many of my friends had crazy stories from dating and here I was, boring. I could’ve at least become a stoner or something but instead I somehow spent ninety percent of my time studying. Other friends of mine had gone out exploring in the loosely-forbidden tunnels below campus, or partied a lot. The extensive studying hadn’t even done much, my grades weren’t great either.

I checked my phone, and… my Uber driver had canceled. Great. That’s another thing about being boring, somehow you end up leaving campus later than everyone else. I stared around me at the slightly depressing entry-way to my dorm. The building was kind of old, which meant that it wasn’t only cold, but it was also ugly. A small hallway with white walls and a cork-board covered with everything from tutoring ads to flyers telling people to audition for a play that had already performed in November. A side door was open, leading to the common room. I could hear some music from inside. 

Temporarily giving up on getting a driver, I went to go check out what was happening in there. Somehow, despite a full semester of failure I had this faint idea that by following the sound of some shitty harp sound I would find myself in the middle of a salon-type discussion and my transformation would begin. Upon opening the door it was clear that I was wrong. The large room was empty, and there was just one guy playing clicking through the menu of some sort of medieval-type video game.

Walking closer, I saw that he’d been in my 18th century lit class. He had one of those generic names, James or Jeremy or something. With that I turned around, which unfortunately made my boots screech against the wood flooring. He turned around and smiled.

“Oh hey! Emma right? We had lit together. Are you snowed-in too?” 

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Uh, yeah. I ended up working on one of my essays until the last possible second and then I hadn’t even packed yet and here we are. I mean, hopefully not actually snowed in though?”

“Sorry to tell you, but I think all the roads on campus have like three feet of snow on them, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to get out. On the bright side, they might cancel your flight? Or, bus? That’s what I’m telling myself anyways.”

“So you think we’re stuck here?” I walked over and sat myself on an adjacent couch.

“Yeah, we’re stuck. But… if you want you can play Honeypot with me.” He turned to me and wiggled his eyebrows expectantly.

I frowned. That sounded… a bit ridiculous.

“It’s new! Ok, I know it sounds really misogyinstic, but it’s actually a really cool indie game. Essentially, the game revolves around this girl who’s trying to like, seduce a bunch of medieval princes to slowly gain control of all the politics and stuff. I’m hoping that you can like seduce a King, become Queen, and then kill him. That kind of stuff. Plus, it’s supposed to be super open-world and interactive. Like you can have all sorts of convos with the characters, and you slowly start killing more and more people. So there’s like fighting too.”

“Is it even a two player game? It doesn’t sound like one.”

“Well, it has a two-player option so we could try it out. I have no idea how that’s supposed to go. It could be fun.” He started fiddling with the console, and plugged in an extra remote.

“Try it out, I’m sure you have nothing better to do.” He offered me the extra remote.

I shrugged. How bad could it be? He was kind of cute, in that way tall, lanky nerds could be. He had curly blonde hair, and the kind of extroversion that automatically brought energy to a room. Sometimes, like in an 8am seminar it was unwanted energy, but he brought it regardless. Maybe, this could be the first bit of excitement in my transformation into an interesting person. I could have a cute little moment with a cute guy right before I left.

“Sure, why not.” I took the remote.

“Aye, ok let’s goooooo.” He toggled through the menu. It was clear that he’d almost started the game. As he backed up through his selections, I could see that he’d been choosing a character and a class and some other things. If this game was actually open-world with that many options it was kind of impressive. He reached the opening menu, and selected [Two-Player Game]

Then, I blacked out.

***

I was lying on the ground, and it was scratchy. There were little things poking into my arms, and I could feel more things poking through the cloth around my legs. Something small and warm was laying on my chest.

I heard voices.

“What is this? Some girl in the sacred chamber of inheritance?” A shrill female voice asked,

“Your majesty, I believe the ritual worked this time. I think this is our boon, our blessing in the coming times.” a gravelly male voice replied.

A couple other voices gasped.