Chapter 3

(Let the games begin)

Jarow lay on the cold, flat floor with his back against the wall, staring at his own corpse. He had somehow mentally moved the yellow window to the side of his vision, allowing him to see his corpse clearly once again. The yellow window which had been floating in his vision was mostly transparent, except for the border and the slight distortion in the middle of the window where the text floated, but he disliked that it got in his way.

His emotions were finally beginning to align. He was definitely no longer cheerful as he had been. He was actually feeling rather emotionally numb. However, he did feel an extreme sense of loss as well. He could still feel the memories of his past, but it was like they were blocked, just beyond where he could access them. No matter how hard he tried to recall anything from his former life, nothing returned but the images of his parents and his name.

He lay there for an unknown amount of time, losing track of it since there was nothing to focus on. Nothing moved or made a sound in this place. His knees still hurt, but the pain had faded. He could feel the hardness of the floor beneath him as well as the stiffness developing in his appendages and side, but he didn't really care anymore.

Then a familiar-looking bug scampered past the edge of his vision. Jarow briefly wondered if it was the same one he had seen earlier. Back then, he had felt alive, he had a purpose, even if he didn't understand why he was doing what he was doing. He had felt like moving and pressing forward. But now, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He no longer could think of a reason to move or to even get up. He no longer had the motivation to go and search as he had before, the curiosity compulsion seemingly gone, so he just laid there and did nothing.

The little bug was some kind of beetle looking insect. It had a black chitin covered body with a small blue spot on its back. It scuttled over to his corpse and gingerly climbed one of the legs. Jarow watched it as it moved and skittered along the leathery skin. It was busy exploring the body without care or concern. It had no obvious goal, but still moved forward on its journey.

At one point, it pushed its way underneath the skin of the corpse, finding a hole next to a small bone that protruded out along the arm. The disturbing sight made him feel a bit queasy, but before he began to actually heave, the bug popped back out. The small creature seemed to be enjoying its game of cavity spelunking.

As he continued to watch the little beetle, Jarow began to envy it. It may not have known what it was doing, but at least it had the motivation to do something. It had a purpose. It had a reason to live. Just like all living things, it had to eat and mate, the basic necessities of life. The things which every living being worked towards their entire life.

The strange realization that he was also a living thing that needed to eat finally moved to the forefront of his thoughts. But when he listened to his body, expecting it to need nourishment he found that he wasn't hungry or thirsty at all. He quite obviously couldn't remember the last time he had eaten or drank anything. "I should be hungry, shouldn't I?" he asked himself.

He tried to recall the taste of food. He knew what different foods tasted like, but he couldn't recall the flavors themselves. He knew a plum would be sweet, but he didn't know what sweetness felt like on his tongue. The same was true of all the other flavors too. He had an idea of what they were, but no reference to them. He knew a pepper would be hot, but he wasn’t sure what hot even was. He knew the concept of fire, but couldn’t remember ever having felt it.

“Does this mean I am not truly alive now? If everything needs to eat to stay alive, but I don’t even feel the desire to, does that mean I am not alive?” he asked himself mentally. He didn’t come up with an answer, only more confusion followed the question he asked of himself.

He lamented his loss even though he couldn’t fully grasp what all he had lost. Tears leaked from his eyes, but they were pointless and unhelpful. "Is this going to be my life now? Empty and numb?" he thought through the tears. He wasn't sure how to react or what to do in this situation. His questions only led to more questions, and he could find no answers. He was lost in this place without reference or memory and sank deeper into the depression which bound him thoroughly.

He could think of nothing he could do to help him in this circumstance, nothing that would give him the answers he desired, so he just continued to watch the little bug as it scuttled along. Lost in its own little world.

The small beetle moved to the other side of the corpse out of Jarows’s sight. Its departure made him feel a little more sad, and almost motivated him enough to move so that he could keep watching the bug. But not enough. Sadness and a new wave of numbness accompanied the loss, so he continued to lie where he was. He simply couldn't find the motivation within himself to do anything more at the moment.

He was becoming enamored with the idea of just staying here and fading away. Allowing himself to just pass on without fighting, without moving, just letting himself go.

Then, a new window appeared in his vision.

“You have been immobile for over 10 hours. If you do not begin moving soon, you will lose the ability to move at all. You don’t want that to happen do you?”

He read the message once, then reread it to make sure he had read it right. He had been lying there for ten hours already? The number was somewhat alarming, but in his current mindset, he wondered if he actually wanted that. Would it be so bad to just stay here for the rest of his life? He could watch the bug when it came back to this side of the corpse. He didn't need anything beyond that, did he? He didn't need to eat, and breeding was the last thing on his mind. So he dismissed the window, and it disappeared in a wavy distortion, a sense of sadness and disappointment trailing in its wake.

Then he remembered the window from before, the one he had moved to the side. It had stayed there, just out of view the entire time. He thought about it and it jumped back into its original position. He wasn't sure what to do with it; he really didn't have an answer.

You have discovered your old body. Do you wish to loot? [ Yes/No ]

“What would looting even do? What was there to loot, anyway?” Jarow thought to himself, but honestly he didn’t really care anymore. “Looting is a term for stealing, right? Or maybe taking what is left over, in this case?” He mentally shrugged and thought, “Sure, why not?”

The window disappeared for a moment, then reappeared with new text.

You have looted - [ 1 ] Soul Coin

He read the text, not really understanding what it was saying. He dismissed the window mentally, and it shimmered out of sight.

But as soon as the first window disappeared, a new one popped into existence. This one was different, though. For one thing, it was a darker yellow in color. Written in the same squarish font along the top of the window was the word,

Inventory

In the square of the window, instead of text as in the previous messages, was a grid. In the top-leftmost grid square was the image of an iridescent coin. It spun around as if on display.

Jarow focused on the coin, and the grid square expanded to occupy the entire window. With this enlarged view he could see the details of the coin as it spun around in the middle of his vision.

One side had an image of his face. His old face, the one from the corpse. It had writing along the bottom: "06-23-2010." It was his birthday. He wasn't sure why he knew this information, but he did. The coin spun slowly around as he watched, eventually the reverse side coming into view. On this side was an image of his parents, the same image he had burned into his brain. Along the bottom, more numbers could be seen: "06-23-2026."

That must have been the day he died. He couldn't remember anything about it, but as the coin spun around again and his brain did the math, he realized that he had barely turned sixteen. He had such a short life before. He remembered looking at this body he was occupying now and thinking that he must be in his forties.

He stared at the coin for a while longer, watching it slowly spin in his vision. But finally, as his mind began to once again become entangled in his depression, he dismissed it. It shrank to its original size and showed the grid of the inventory screen once again.

Out of some small interest, he counted the squares. There were five rows and five columns. "Twenty-five places, huh?" he thought to himself, trying to focus his mind on anything other than the life he had lost and the memories that had been stolen from him.

He wasn't sure why, but he thought the amount of space seemed plenty for now, but he would need more later on. The absurdity of the thought came to him almost like a memory of something. A memory of something that wasn’t real, but still important, a part of his life, but not his reality. It felt as though he had spent a lot of time watching or doing these things that meant a lot to him, but in the long run he knew they weren’t a real part of who he actually was. It was a truly confusing feeling.

Then again, all of his feelings seemed confusing to him now. He couldn't discern what was real or unreal; even this place he now found himself in baffled him. He could touch and see it, but there were things about it that seemed unreal: the pixelated walls, the fog that never allowed him to get close to it, the repetitively empty but symmetrical rooms. He couldn't quite put a word to what he thought this place was, but he definitely didn't feel like it was completely real in the sense of the reality he had defined in his previous life.

After several moments of fruitlessly trying to bring some sort of reason to this place, Jarow finally dismissed the inventory screen and once again stared at the corpse of his old body. The sense of curiosity from before that had previously gotten him moving and searching tried to stir in him again, but his depression quickly overwhelmed the familiar curiosity. He apparently wasn't ready to move again, not yet.

But it wasn't completely gotten rid of. The curiosity wiggled in his brain like a tenacious worm, nagging at him and making him feel uncomfortable. It worked its way through his thoughts of depression and laziness, feeding on the desire to explore and the fear of becoming completely immobile. It brought to the forefront the numbness in his appendages and the innumerable doors in the hall just waiting to be opened. It had mysteries to solve and clues to find.

"Ugh... Fine! I guess I'll move. But I don't want to," he thought to himself with a mental sigh. The need to look at his body again, to check it more thoroughly. The curiosity was finally strong enough to get him to sit up. If the body he had before, the one in front of him, was only sixteen; then why was he now in an older body? His mind kept asking.

With difficulty, much more than he expected, he pushed himself up from his prone position and looked down at his body. He needed to verify what he had seen before to satiate this new line of questioning..

As he had noticed before, Jarow's legs were squat and flabby, his skin almost white and virtually hairless. He also noticed new details, like his feet, which were too long and skinny, with the small toes curled over the next toes in. His stomach had too much skin, flopping over his waist in a way that unnerved him. His chest was similarly saggy. He jiggled the skin, which had very little sensation. While doing so, he noticed his short, pudgy fingers with short, jagged nails. This was almost the exact opposite of who he had been in his old body.

He couldn't really remember anything about his old body, but his corpse left many clues. Its frame was lean, with no fat and very little muscle. Its feet were turned in and bent, but its toes were long and slim, as were its fingers. It was hard to tell if the nails were well-groomed, because most were broken or missing, but the few that were visible seemed trimmed and neat.

After comparing the two bodies, Jarow faced the strange truth: his current body had belonged to someone else. He was now somehow living in another man's body.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A chill ran up his spine, shaking him. His head jerked upward as the electric shock found its way into his neck. The thought of where he was, or who he was, settled in.

He felt nauseous, but his stomach was empty. Dry heaves racked his body, flapping and jiggling the loose skin. He could feel the wisps of hair on his head move through the air with each heave, imagining the thin strands sticking out from an almost bald head. His hands touched the cold floor, and he felt the inflamed joints in his fingers.

He didn't understand why he could suddenly feel everything so acutely. Before, he had been fine, not quite numb but comfortable. "Comfortably numb," the words came to him, but their meaning was lost on him.

Then he remembered the compulsion, the overly excited and happy demeanor he had displayed. It must have been a part of this new body. He, as in the part of him that came from the corpse before him, had been muted and held back from being dominant. He had been led to this room by the need to explore, by the curiosity and need to find out everything about this place that was still vying for dominance within his mind.

The convulsions finally stopped, and he lay back down on his side. He could feel the cold floor now. He could feel the blood pooling against it. This body was so much more sensitive now, and he hated it.

Jarow sobbed uncontrollably, his tears spilling and pooling on the floor. This was real crying, it came from deep within and brought with it a true sadness and sorrow. The tears held within them the loss he felt, the frustration with his current circumstances, and the fear of what was still yet to come. He didn't know who he had been before, those memories ripped away from him, gone forever, but he definitely knew he didn't want to be who he was now. This body felt old and weak. A decrepit, flabby prison he longed to escape.

The thought of suicide crossed his mind, but he hesitated. He didn't know how he would do it or even if he had the courage to do it. He also wasn’t sure about what would happen if he did. Would he actually die, or would he simply move to another body? Was this his second chance or was it some sort of nightmare where he moved from one sad body to another?

Could he endure this existence? This place, it was all the same, it was nothing but gray dreariness. The mysteries he had found weren’t enjoyable, they didn’t lead to a way out, they just made him feel wrong and sad. If he died and had to do this all over again, would he even be able to handle it mentally? He was already feeling like his mind was ready to break.

After a while of questioning himself and the world he was in, Jarow's tears subsided, leaving him numb once again. He stared at the corpse, his eyes unfocused and unseeing. His mind was on anything but what lay before him.

In his state of dissociation, Jarow absently noticed a small, semi-transparent clock floating in his peripheral vision. It was the same strange yellow color as the message windows and inventory screen. He had been ignoring it until now, but there was nothing else to focus on, so his mind drifted to it.

In a depression-ridden daze, he watched as the numbers of the clock ticked away relentlessly. He no longer felt the need to move or do anything else. His mind was occupied, and his body once again found a comfortable numbness. For over two hours, he lay and watched the small transparent clock tick away the time, without feeling the need to think of anything else. It was a type of pause, a mental reprieve from the dire thoughts plaguing him. His mind's way of coping with the overload of emotions and feelings that had sent him into this mental state.

The numbers of the clock eventually penetrated Jarow's fog of depression, and he noticed something strange about it: the clock was moving at an unusual rate, counting one hundred seconds per minute and one hundred minutes per hour. He couldn't quite remember how time was told in his previous life, but he sensed that it was on a much different scale.

Jarow didn't move. The new mystery wasn't enough to get a rise out of him. He remembered the message from earlier about being immobile for over ten hours and wondered how long it had been since then.

As if the small clock in his vision could read his mind, it elongated vertically and showed an additional set of digits below the original screen. The numbers were in sync, the seconds ticking by in unison, but the number in the hour's place was different. Rather than showing the almost three hours he had been watching the clock, it showed forty-five.

Jarow was confused at first. How could the first row show the hours he had been watching the clock and laying there, yet the other row show a much larger number? The seconds ticked away as an idea slowly wormed its way into Jarow's consciousness.

“Are the numbers forty-five showing me how long I’ve been here?” he mentally asked himself. Words came to Jarow then, things he understood but had no real reference for. Timer: the first number, the almost three hours, is a timer. It must have turned on when I focused on the clock.

The other word that came to Jarow was: day. "It's supposed to be twenty-four hours in a day, isn't it?" he asked himself, the number coming from somewhere he didn't quite know. "If I've only been here forty-five hours, then that's almost two days, right?"

Again, the small semi-transparent clock knew his thoughts and slid a new numeral in front of the number forty-five representing hours. The number was a zero. Jarow felt his heart sink, and a sense of confusion rolled over him.

He didn't quite understand. It felt as though multiple days had passed. Something nagged at his mind again about the change in how time was counted here, and he wondered how long a day actually was in this place.

Although, for some reason, seeing the clock and knowing how long he had been like this filled him with a strange comfort. He finally had something he could count on, a sense of stability and familiarity. It gave him something to think about other than his surroundings and circumstance.

He focused on the clock in his vision once more, but this time, he mentally dove deeper into it. A menu appeared, with four vertical rows lined in a bright green floating above the timer. In the lines, it contained the words: Settings, Format, Schedule, and Appearance.

He mentally clicked the Appearance tab in his mind, and the original menu was replaced with a new set of options: Color, Style, and Position. He chose Color, and a new window appeared, separate from the menu and clock. It showed a color wheel and a separate timer set to all fives.

He looked at the bright yellow of the color wheel and mentally chose it. The fives turned an even brighter yellow. "Ow, that's obnoxious," he thought, before picking something new. Next, he chose a dark red. The row of fives changed to that shade of red. "No, that looks too much like blood," he complained.

Jarow cycled through multiple colors before finally choosing a pleasant pale blue. He liked the color; it reminded him of something, but he wasn't sure why or what it was. Once finished, he dismissed the color wheel. The clock in his vision changed to the blue he had chosen.

“That is much nicer.” He thought to himself before moving back in the menu and on to the next tab.

He focused on the Style tab next. In the center of his vision, a larger image of the clock appeared, set to zeros. Underneath it, three different clock styles were displayed. The simple digital version was currently in use and was displayed first in the line. A circular-faced clock occupied the second position, and the word "DUAL" appeared to the right, with no other picture. Jarow wasn't a fan of the round-faced clock style, so he chose DUAL to see what it was.

The image in the center of his vision changed. It now showed a round outline of a clock face with hands at the eight and two positions, with numbers from one to ten visible in a circle. In the middle was a separate smaller space, not a window, but more of a void. Inside the blank space was a version of the digital timer the same as he had been looking at.

He wasn't sure how, but he knew that by choosing the "DUAL" style, the hands of the clock would show the time of day, whereas the timer would continue to display the timer. He wondered how he knew that, since he obviously hadn't known about the timer when he had opened the menu.

"But I did know somehow that I could open the menu," he thought to himself. He contemplated where this information had come from. He wasn't sure he liked having random information rattling around inside his brain.

"Could it be leftover from the memories of my past life?" he asked himself as he looked again at the corpse in the middle of the small room. It didn't gross him out anymore, for some reason. In fact, he actually felt rather comfortable there. It felt as though this room would always be safe. He couldn't explain why, but he wondered if his emotions were still not totally under his control.

He couldn't explain or figure out what was going on, but was happier with the small distraction he had with the menus of the clock, so refocused on them. He wanted to have at least one thing he could control, and at the moment this floating clock was all he could find.

With a mental poke he tried to confirm his choice of DUAL, but an error message appeared.

This time format is unavailable at this location. Please choose a different option.

Jarow hadn't expected that. He sighed and dismissed the error message. He was left with the two clock options, of which he preferred the digital style over the round clock face, so he kept the setting as it was and exited the Appearance tab.

Now that he had explored the Appearance tab, Jarow wanted to explore the others. He mentally reversed and poked his way to the Schedule tab, which allowed him to create timers and add appointments, but he didn't have any, so he exited the tab without interacting with it much.

Next, Jarow explored the Format tab. This section of the menu allowed him to switch between different types of time displays: 10 Hour, 50 Hour, Day/Night, and Auto.

The clock was set to the 50 Hour setting, which made sense since he had been there for 45 hours and the day numeral still showed zero. Jarow wondered if the zero in the day slot would change to one once it reached 50. He realized that if he changed the setting to a 10 Hour day, it would show him as being there for four and a half days. This time frame still felt off, but it was more accurate to what he thought might be normal, so he changed the setting. He was correct, as he watched the day number change to four. Now, his clock showed that he had been there for four days, five hours, seventeen minutes, and fourteen, fifteen, sixteen seconds.

He explored the Day/Night option next. The larger image of the clock face appeared in the center of his vision again, this time showing the round clock face without the hands at eight and two. Instead, where the face of a clock would normally be, two opposite colors appeared: sunny yellow on one side and shady dark gray on the other.

"Oh, okay. So this one shows me if it's night or day. Makes sense," he thought.

Jarow moved to the Auto option next, unsure if he wanted a day and night clock at the moment. It was just another reminder of how gray and unchanging this place was. As he chose the remaining option, the clock preview went completely blank and disappeared from his view.

"That's odd," he thought. He chose Day/Night again, and the clock reappeared as it was before. "I guess Auto isn't an option either," he thought. Then he finalized his choice, keeping the clock as the simple digital clock it had been originally.

The last tab for him to explore was Settings. He mentally poked it, and a new menu of options appeared. The first option was Reset Timer. This verified that the smaller three-hour number was indeed a timer that he had somehow triggered when he began looking at the clock. He didn't reset it, though. He wanted to wait until it had run over ten hours to see if the display added another numerical value, as it did with the clock part.

He moved on to the next option: Position. This allowed him to move the clock. The available positions were center top, center bottom, top left/right, and bottom left/right. Jarow figured out that by choosing the left/right options, the clock moved to either corner of his vision where he had first found it. He decided to keep it bottom left where it first was, for now.

The last option in the Settings tab was Adjust Auto, which Jarow assumed referred to the Auto option from the Format tab. He poked the Adjust Auto menu tab, hoping to learn more about the function.

A huge window appeared, occupying his entire field of view and filling his vision with a gray fog that he couldn't see through. The only way he could tell that it was a window was by the green borders along the edge of his peripheral vision.

Jarow reeled back from the blast of gray. All he could see now was the swirling fog-like manifestation occupying the window. He mentally searched for a way to make the giant window disappear. The gray distortion obscured everything beyond the window. He traced the yellow line around the edge with his eyes, which twitched strangely as they moved around to see in the farthest corners. Finally, he found a small X at the top left of the window and mentally stabbed at it. The window disappeared.

"There's definitely something wrong with the Auto function," Jarow thought as he allowed his eyes to return to their normal position. With his vision restored, he shook his head to clear it, then exited the menu system altogether.

Before he fell back into his stupor, another thought came to mind: “What was that Inventory thing?”

As if summoned by his thought, the Inventory window appeared before his eyes again. The Soul Coin still occupied the top left spot. Jarow looked at the grids, and an idea came to him. Finally, he willed himself to sit up. His entire body hurt, and the movement seemed to require much more effort than he cared to expend, but he managed to sit and lean his back against the wall. Then, he removed one of the extra blankets he had picked up. They had remained draped around his shoulders the entire time. With the cloth in hand, he tried to tell it to go into the inventory, but nothing happened.

Jarow was almost positive it should have worked. He didn't know exactly what an Inventory screen was or how it functioned, but something told him he should be able to store things in there. He tried again, but this time he focused on the second square and mentally told it to hold the blanket.

A small crack in space opened before Jarow. It looked as if reality was a sheet of glass that had been shattered by something heavy. Inside the crack was a swirling darkness, visible only long enough for the blanket to distort and be sucked into the spatial orifice, as if it were breaking apart into atoms.

Jarow blinked repeatedly, disbelieving what he had just seen. Then he noticed a small piece of cloth in the second square from the top left of his inventory screen’s grid, folded and laid in the center. At the same time, a smaller window appeared in front of the inventory screen.

You have stored the ratty blanket in your inventory. I'm not sure why you would want to keep something so useless, but okay. It's even folded nicely for you now.

Jarow smiled at the text of the smaller window. "I didn't expect that," he thought. He certainly agreed with the analysis of the useless piece of cloth the message gave. He then tried to reverse the action. He focused on the grid square with the blanket in it and wished it back, but again, nothing happened.

He had figured out how to move things into the inventory now, but was having trouble retrieving them. He began trying different ways to access the menu or objects inside the inventory, but nothing seemed to work.

After several frustrating minutes, he cursed. "Stupid blanket," he said under his breath. "I was just going to throw you away anyway." Apparently the thought of actually using the blanket for something was the key, and a crack in reality began to form again.

As if in reverse, particles flowed from the darkness and reformed into the blanket. It appeared in Jarow's hand, folded as it had been in the inventory window. Then just as quickly, the crack vanished, and reality sealed itself up as if nothing had happened.

After staring blankly at the blanket for a moment, Jarow reiterated to himself how his inventory worked. "To put something in, I need to think of where to place it. To pull something out, I need to think of what I need," he mumbled to the corpse, who didn’t hear him or care.

He closed the Inventory window and tried again. He visualized the blanket going into the bottom right grid square, but nothing happened. He then thought of the second to the top left square again, and the crack formed. The blanket dissolved and disappeared into the darkness.

"So not only do I have to know where it goes, I have to put it in order," Jarow mumbled again. He thought of the blanket and his need for it, and the crack formed again. The blanket swirled into existence.

Congratulations! You have learned to use your inventory. How about putting something useful in next time?

The small window appeared, and Jarow chuckled again. "Great, my user interface has an attitude," he thought sarcastically, but was happy to hear the dry humor in the message at the same time. He then wondered why and how he knew what a user interface was.

The window was right, though. There was no need to put blankets in his inventory. He didn't really have anything else to store at the moment though, but then he remembered the silver key he had found earlier. He looked around and found it wrapped in one of the blankets on the floor next to him. He picked up the key, examining it once again and wondering what it was for. Then, he thought of the second spot in the inventory grid and willed the key to go there.

Inventory is for non-living items only. Dumbass!

"Non-living? Wait, does that mean this key is alive?" Jarow wondered, bringing the key closer to his face. He examined it from every angle. "Hello?" he asked the inanimate object skeptically.

Of course, the key didn't respond. He shook it and looked again. Nothing changed. He gently tapped it on the floor and inspected it more closely. It hadn't dented or chipped, and it didn't move or respond. Some of the tarnish may have chipped off, but that was all.

"How can a key be alive?" he said aloud, trying to place it in his inventory again.

Inventory is for non-living items only: don’t make me repeat myself!

"How frustrating!" Jarow said, growing increasingly annoyed. He was alone in the room, unless the key could listen somehow. The corpse wasn't paying any attention, and the blankets hadn't complained about anything. "Maybe that beetle is still around," he thought, contradicting his own reasoning.

Jarow looked again at the corpse. It wasn't going anywhere, but he was finally starting to feel the need to move again. His body was stiff and sore. "Some movement might work out some of the kinks," he thought.

With some grunting and help from the wall, Jarow managed to stand upright. It took a few moments for his legs to feel steady again, but once they did, he stood there, wondering, "Is this my life now?"