It took us a week to get the first chapters posted up onto Royal Road. We chewed on our fingernails and watched our microscopically climbing stats and I worried. Cliff set up Paypal, Patreon, and churned up business through Facebook and Pinterest. He posted as my husband and tried to play Dom as he did it. I laid bare every memory I could pull out of myself, even when it got into my deepest emotional turmoil after losing Kat. The Quill scratched out the notes and the typewriter churned them into chapters in the book. This book.
I fretted over the time going by in the game and worried about Kat and Dom and whether they were surviving. Had they killed Fizzbarren? The typewriter wouldn’t tell me anything unless I put in at least twelve hours of writing every damn day. I ranted about the logic of having the game world move so much slower than this one and noted that that was one of the very first things I would change. I couldn’t change it yet, though, since I needed time to churn out chapters.
At the end of week one, I got a progress report. Fizzbarren was still alive at the end of that day, and I could feel the dread well up in my stomach. I read the pages of the things unfolding in the game and was furious and terrified all at once. Fizzbarren had managed to cast some crazy Charm spell over the guards we had used to infiltrate the ranks and they had surprised Dom. Kat had resurrected Dom, but our plan was in shambles since Fizzbarren now had the Smite spell again and Dom was comatose for a week.
I crumpled up the pages that came out of the typewriter and screeched out my frustration. At least that’s what I did until I noticed the cringing of the constructs. Then I just sat on the floor and cried. Cliff held me while I drank way too many shots of Fireball. Pillow nudged her way under my head once I’d passed out on the floor, and they all must have used a heck of a lot of Clean spells for the mess I’d made in my self-indulgent pity party.
It took another week to churn out enough chapters to be taken seriously by anyone. I was desperate to get readers, so I started posting in the forums. We’d have bought some advertising space, but we were stuck with just a few thousand dollars to live off of and that had only been possible because Cliff had emptied out the cash withdrawals of those credit cards I wasn’t supposed to ask about. At least we didn’t have any bills, with magic covering our expenses. I told myself that week that if we didn’t get more followers by the end of the month, we’d break into the stash to buy advertising.
Cliff finally owned up to the credit cards. He didn’t want to use them anymore because he didn’t want anything to lead to our current location. As far as the world knew, our whole family had dropped off the face of the earth. What does it mean that our own mothers didn’t notice? When I logged onto Facebook after a year and some away, I found a chat message from my mother that wondered why I was mad at her this time and nothing afterward. Dom’s mother? Kat had kept up Dom’s conversation with her, but that was mostly because Dom’s mother actually had the power to do something about Cliff and Kat running off to Europe.
“Pages,” I demanded from the typewriter, sounding suspiciously like a master even as they all treated me more like a stepmother that they didn’t have to listen to but liked enough to almost try to. At least I wasn’t the evil stepmother. It was time for my weekly update from the game world.
“I don’t know if you wrote enough pages this week to get your update,” the typewriter teased me, and I grit my teeth. They were just testing to see if I’d stick to my promise to leave them their autonomy.
“This is your fault,” I told Cliff, my teeth aching from clenching them.
“This isn’t funny folks,” Cliff explained to the constructs, who were really only following his example. Still, he must have seen the glint of tears in my eyes because he tried to be stern. “She lives for these reports.”
“But what if they upset her like last week?” the pillow fretted. Cliff really sucked at being stern.
“I’ll hide the Fireball,” Cliff promised.
“That might be best,” the mirror put in and I could have strangled them all.
“Pages,” I ground out, my voice cracking.
“Seriously, folks,” Cliff patted my side ineffectively. “She needs to know they are okay.”
“Unless they’re not okay,” I choked out. “Are you saying they aren’t okay?
“I tell you every morning that they are okay,” the typewriter said, its ribbon fluttery with nerves.
“Are you lying to me?” and I was getting crazy.
“Give her the pages you heartless fools,” Sammi thumped out from under the table. “They are doing well. I promise and I’ve been watching.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
I snatched the page as it cleared the carriage return of the typewriter. Dom and Kat had to move deeper into the Underground with King Douglas. The Underground was laying low for the day.
“They’re alive,” I breathed out and slumped down to the floor to cry again.
“We’d thought she’d be mad,” the pillow tried to say around my sobs.
“Those two people in that game are everything in the world to her,” Cliff explained. “She isn’t mad or even sad. She’s relieved that they’re still alive.”
“We thought she’d be mad because they hadn’t made any progress in the storyline,” the mirror admitted.
“She isn’t Fizzbarren,” Cliff admonished them. “Shame on you for thinking that way about her when all she’s ever done is fight for your rights, even when you torture her with the bare minimum of reports on the people she loves more dearly than her own life.”
“She loves you too?” the pillow asked Cliff softly as I pulled myself together without the crutch of a shot of Fireball.
“Yeah, but not like that,” he told them.
“That’s not true,” I grunted out around a soggy tissue.
“Maybe no Fireball, but I got some chocolate covered caramel apples from that candy store while I was out today,” Cliff offered, and that was one of dozens of reasons why I loved him so much. It was the way he loved me, totally differently from how Kat or Dom loved me. Cliff loved me even when I was down in the deepest down because he knew what that felt like and what it would take to help me back up. Last week had taken Fireball. This week was chocolate and caramel because the thought of cinnamon would still make my stomach clench in memory of last week’s turmoil.
We were enablers for each other when the chips were down, and we were enablers of each other when we were magnificent and no one else could see it.
“What if the book isn’t good enough to get that god card?” I asked around a chunk of gooey-covered apple.
“The book and your writing are awesome,” he told me, but he had to say that. “And I’m not just saying that.” Because he knew me that way. Dom saw me as the best thing that ever existed and ignored all parts of me that didn’t live up to that, but Cliff was ready to see me at the bottom that I didn’t want Kat to know I hit too often for my own taste and that Dom wanted to wish away.
There are poems throughout the ages that try to explain how you can love several people as much as this. They say that you love them all, but differently. I loved all my family the same, and that’s with every ounce of my heart. It was that I showed my love with each of them differently. That was okay because they showed their love for me in differently faceted ways that enriched my life so that I was free to be loved that way, all those ways.
“We shouldn’t have put in that section about how I broke down about Kat,” I worried. “We lost followers and I need them all. I need to get back in there and save them and for that I need a god card.”
“We’ll get one,” Cliff assured me, filching a piece of my caramel apple even with my snarled protest.
“At this rate, it’ll take a year,” I grumped. “Stop stealing my apple. I need it.”
“I got you another one too,” he assured me, unruffled. “And some divinity fudge.”
“Oh,” I answered inelegantly, still wanting to snarl as he took another chunk of apple. I was an only child and had never gotten the hang of sharing graciously. I could pretend, but I didn’t need to do that with him. He’d had an older sister. He was used to the grumpy selfish of a person who felt entitled to snuffing out anything important for him. At least I repaid Cliff for my grumping. I leaned into him with affectionate gratitude that he craved from having been deprived of it in his ungrateful parents and sister. Cliff’s family hadn’t talked to him for over a decade and didn’t care if he was alive or dead. I guess all our families were idi-fucking-otic. “Okay.”
“It’s okay,” Cliff patted me, more because he liked it than because I wanted it. I put up with it because he was putting up with me.
People are supposed to be dysfunctional together. The miracle of true love, cohesion, and partnership happens when your dysfunctions mesh in a way that makes you both stronger in the end. Fall apart in the dark together and rise stronger the next day. If that wasn’t the case, we’d all be perfectly fine on our own, which you know isn’t true. I don’t care how strong you think you are, you need another person to let yourself be the dysfunctional truth that exists as the real you.
“If I was there, I could just restart again,” I reasoned. “We could do it better this time. I promise. Just one god card and we’ll restart and it’ll all be okay.”
“You can’t,” the typewriter admitted, making me want to break every key off their face.
“I could and I should,” I insisted, angry at being told no by something that didn’t love me enough to understand what this was doing to me.
“Fizzbarren died,” the typewriter clattered out. “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to screw you up more than you already are.”
“If Fizzbarren is dead then it’s all okay,” I rushed to say, my heart taking a dangerous leap of hope.
“They had a resurrection stone for him,” the typewriter dropped the bomb. “His followers resurrected him and are keeping him hidden behind his army of zealots. He and Dom will rise at about the same time.”
That changed stuff. That changed into some really bad stuff. That’s when I started swearing. If Fizzbarren died, then I couldn’t restart anything. Fizzbarren would remember and he would be out here with all the power. He was a player like us and would remember everything upon waking up. This time he’d been limited to three god cards because we’d caught him by surprise. He’d had no idea where we were hiding. My greatest strength had just been neutered like a pit bull at the pound.
“I need divinity,” I breathed out.
“Fizzbarren is the deity of the game world,” Sammi was confused.
“She means the fudge.” Cliff rose to go get the fudge and more chocolate he had stashed. “This is going to require a few tubs of Ben and Jerry’s and another tub or two of chocolate frosting.”
“Why?” the pillow asked quietly, as if a louder question would disturb my mind further.
“Her mind needs padding for the trauma,” he told them too honestly.