I drove my beige sedan back into the austere apartment complex, pulling up the handbrake and parking it near the stairwell before taking the keys from the ignition. With Wayne taking his own car back, and Leo doing whatever it is that he did for a job, I was alone with my thoughts in the car.
Frankly, being alone with my thoughts was probably the last place I wanted to be with them right now.
I opened the car door, stepping out into the midnight, as my mind kept replaying the same memories over and over again. I tried to distract myself from it. It was probably a bit early for a beer, and it probably wasn't a good idea to start drinking right after a hangover, but I could really use it right now - and I was never particularly gifted at moderation anyway.
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Items Retrieved
1 Beer Can
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As I gripped the beer can in my outstretched hand, I tore the lid open, and took a sip of the can as I clambered up the cigarette-covered steps. I thought it'd do a good job of keeping my mind off the daemon, and it did for a bit - that was, until I got some of the sleeve blood in my mouth by accident. It tasted horridly bitter, and as it touched my tongue, I nearly immediately started coughing and hacking from the horrid sensation of it.
"Ah fuck!" I said, as I projectile spat toward the ground. Traces of crimson and burgundy streaked the otherwise transparent globule of saliva. I wasn't sure, but not all of that blood looked dark enough to have come from the daemon.
With the beer in one hand and my keys in the other, I opened the door to the apartment, and as I pulled my keys from the door - I stowed them back inside my inventory. It seemed Jenny had gone out for a bit. I quickly stored the milk from the supermarket in the fridge as I wandered into the kitchen.
"I hope this is the finest fucking milk that I've ever tasted," I murmured under my breath. "Otherwise, it sure as hell wasn't worth the effort."
The kitchen table was still covered with dirty dishes from this morning's breakfast. The coffee mugs were stained with circular rings around the inside, and my plate still sat there from this morning. I wish she cleaned up occasionally, but I guess I also contributed to the mess - so I couldn't really blame her.
I sighed, as I put my beer can down on the living room table, and took my jacket off - throwing the sordid jacket into the washing basket in the bathroom. Plugging the sink and turning on the hot water tap, I squirted detergent into the mug as I grabbed the old cloth and rubbed it around the inside. The soap foamed to the surface as I dumped the mug into the water, a lather forming across the surface of the water as I did so.
Leo and Jenny always told me that I used too much detergent when I did the dishes, but since I was the only person who ever did the dishes in the first place, it always struck me as a little hypocritical of them. Then again, I probably should've taken their advice anyway - it's impossible to see through the dish-soap when it gets like this.
As I busied myself with the dishes, doing whatever I could to take my mind off the horrendous hell that my supermarket journey had been, Jenny opened the door behind me - entering the apartment with mail in her arms and an actual pair of pants over her legs.
"Morning, I see you got dressed," I said.
"Yeah, not by choice, of course," Jenny replied with a laugh. "I had to get the mail, and it's probably a bit too cold to wander down there in just a nightshirt and some briefs."
"Anything for me?" I asked.
"Unless you want the bills, then no," Jenny replied.
Putting a cleaned mug to the side of the sink, I moved onto washing one of the plates as Jenny slumped down into the kitchen chair, opening the envelopes one by one. As she put them on the table, she sighed.
"Fuck, I hate bills!" She yelled.
"Problem?" I asked.
"Yeah, the arcanic's bill has just been going up and up," Jenny sighed. "It's from keeping the lights on all the time with the whole darkness thing and all. It's gone up again this month."
I dried my hands as I put the cleaned plates in the drying rack on the sink. While she stared down at the bill, I looked over her shoulder. It was not a pretty sight. As she stared vacantly at the number, dumbstruck, I took a quick look in my wallet.
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Wallet Funds
163 Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Copper
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It looks like I'd gotten 125 Gold from the Konglet: 100 for surviving the Konglet encounter, and an extra 25% on top for completing the bonus objective of smacking the living shit out of it. At the end of the day though, it seemed I was going to have to part with it. We needed the mana supply. There was no way in hell that we'd be able to live a decent life, in a time like this, living in an apartment without arcanics. In an apocalypse of darkness, it seemed pretty counter-intuitive to stop paying the bills for the lights.
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I dumped a pile of gold coins on top of the envelope. 100 of them, to be precise.
"Will this help cover the excess?" I asked.
"Yeah..." Jenny said. "Where the hell did you get this much in gold coins from? I thought you were unemployed?"
"Had a trial run at a local cafe, didn't go too well," I lied. "They paid me for my time though, so there's that."
"You mean yesterday?" Jenny said.
"...Yeah?" I said uncertainly.
"You stingy son of a bitch," Jenny said. "You said you were too broke to pitch in for the booze last night!"
"Well, I'm pitching in now, alright?" I said.
The truth was, I really was too broke to chip in for the beers last night, but I couldn't tell her that. I'd rather she believed I was a miser than know that I was a killer.
"Whatever, I'm going to put the laundry on," Jenny huffed. "You enjoy that stolen booze, Mr. Broke Boy..."
She'd get over it, probably. I plunged my hands back into the dishwater, about to pick back up where I left off. However, after a moment, the gears started turning in my head.
Fuck. My bloodied jacket was still in that laundry basket, and Jenny was about to walk in to wash it.
"Jenny, wait!" I yelled out as I rushed from the kitchen, soap suds still dripping from my hands.
As Jenny stood there, holding the washing basket, I could see the drip-drip-dripping of blood droplets through the wicker onto the floor. She hadn't quite noticed it yet herself, but it was probably a matter of time.
"What, Oscar?" She said, her voice filled with irritation. Another crimson drop hit the floor as she spoke.
"I'll... I'll do the washing for you," I stammered. "It's only fair... since I flaked out last night."
As she wandered forward, she angrily pushed the basket into my hands.
"You've got a hell of a lot more to do before you're back to fair," Jenny replied.
She stormed out of the bathroom, apparently failing to notice the blood that had dripped on the floor as she left. I let out a sigh of relief as she did. As she wandered into the hallway, another quest notification appeared before my vision again.
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Quest Added: Blood on the Carpet
You may have saved your own hide this time, but some evidence still remains. If Jenny finds the evidence, you might run the risk of exposing her to the harsh horrors of both her boyfriend's new job and your encounter at the supermarket. It's probably in her best interests that she doesn't find out about either.
Quest Objectives: Scrub the Blood Droplets off the Bathroom Tiles (0/5)
Wash the Bloodied Jacket (0/1)
Clean your Baseball Bat (0/1)
Remove the Bloodstains from the Washing Basket (0/2)
Wipe up your Spit from the Stairwell (0/1)
Fail Conditions: This quest will automatically fail if Jenny Lim finds out about the Supermarket Incident before the Quest Objectives are completed.
Rewards: 1 Silver, 1 Copper, 1 EXP
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"Great, I guess we're back to the usual cheap-ass quests now, aren't we?" I said to myself. "Why does it want me to clean the baseball bat? I can just leave that thing inside my inventory and Jenny will be none the wiser..."
I sighed. Well, at least this quest gave me a silver, I guess. I could maybe buy, like, at least a lollipop with that. That's at least something. Plus it probably wouldn't scar me for life, which is more than I can say for that fucking milk quest.
"Also, why the fuck does it want me to wipe up that tiny ass bit of spit outside?" I said, as I read through the quest. "As if she's going to notice that shit..."
As I knelt down, I grabbed a bit of toilet paper from the toilet roll, wet it in the bathroom sink - and wiped it across the bloodied tiles. The droplets came off easy, but they left a streak across the tiles - each one taking a few pieces to clean off. After a few minutes, I'd managed to get rid of most of it, wiping up the final bit of residue with a piece of toilet paper.
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Objective for "Blood on the Carpet" Complete
Scrub the Blood Droplets off the Bathroom Tiles (5/5)
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I threw the paper into the toilet bowl and quickly flushed the evidence, before rushing over to the front-loader and throwing the contents of the washing-basket inside. Throwing in a cup of cleanser powder, I slammed the washer door shut, and put it on the deep setting - pushing in the start button. The machine whirred loudly to life, arcane power resonating through the machine - the clothes levitating in the chamber, slowly being cleansed of all their impurities with some spell that I knew little about. Now that I was a mage, I thought to myself, maybe I should try figuring some of this shit out?
Actually, I should probably try to figure out my life before I tried to figure out the washing machine, I told myself.
As the washing machine started, I moved over the shower-bath, turning on the showerhead before taking the baseball bat from my inventory.
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Items Retrieved
1 Metal Bat
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Rinsing the baseball bat under the showerhead, the bloody liquid came off pretty quickly, washing down the drain of the bath and out of my mind. However, even as I cleaned it, a faint crimson stain still lingered across the surface of the bat where it had impacted with the beast. The quest system didn't seem to mind about that.
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Objective for "Blood on the Carpet" Complete
Clean your Baseball Bat (1/1)
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I did though.
As I stood by the edge of the tub, wiping the bloodied stains from the bat, I looked over the shining metallic surface of it - now tinted slightly red in parts from the violence of it all.
"Out, out!" I said. "Come on!"
As I tried to rub the bloodied tint from the bat, it didn't seem to come out - no matter what I did. It were as if it were part of the bat now, a symbol of what it was: a kind of stain that could never truly come out. It was futile. I tried desperately to rub the stain off. However, no matter what I did, those stains wouldn't come clean.
The beast's ichor ran too deep; a murky hell etched into its surface.