Part 3: Final Boss / Chapter 24
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“You lied to me!” Darla screamed at someone behind her before rushing over, dropping to her knees and throwing her arms around me.
After a moment though, she pulled back, suddenly self-conscious. Her eyes were puffy and red, and her cheeks glistened with the tracks of her tears. I wasn’t a bit surprised to see Nancy’s mom darken the doorway behind her.
“You said a little girl killed him!” Darla growled at her.
“Huh,” Nancy’s mom huffed thoughtfully. “My bad.”
Then she sighed and said, “Oh, criminy. Here we go.”
She went rod-straight and began vibrating.
My Life-O-Meter was on the rebound in earnest, so as a new XP slip inched jerkily out of her mouth, I finally found the strength to get to my feet.
“I was so worried,” Darla said. “I got sucked into that thing and spit out here and you were nowhere to be found.”
She jutted a thumb in Nancy’s mom’s direction and added, “And then she shows up and . . . ”
She trailed off, letting her scowl of disapproval say the rest. Nancy’s mom responded with a laissez faire smirk as she tore the fully-printed slip away from her mouth and held it casually like a cigarette between drags.
“Why would you say I was dead?” I demanded. “You were there the whole time!”
“Actually, I dashed out right at the end. It was all a bit hard to watch. All your wounds were gushing blood. Disgusting.”
“And then you just decided I was dead?”
“Seemed like a lock.”
“And raced back here to tell Darla?”
“I had to tell somebody. It was big news.”
“Unconfirmed news!”
“Seemed like a lock.”
I grimaced and pressed the point.
“Didn’t you say you’d disappear into oblivion if I lost the game?”
“Mmhm.”
“So when you got back here, un-disappeared?”
“What’s your point?” she said, tossing the XP slip in my direction. I didn’t bother trying to catch it as it descended. I just watched it glide back and forth and come to rest on the floor beneath the sink. But when I looked back at Nancy’s mom, she was gone. I shook my head and grunted in frustration.
“Where the hell does she go?” Darla exclaimed. “And what’s her deal?”
“Never mind her,” I said. “How about you?”
“Huh?”
“To have and to hold?”
She took a step back and her eyes darted around the room, in search of something sensible to look at that wasn’t me.
“I . . . told you to forget I said that.”
“That’s not how forgetting works.”
She took a deep breath and met my eyes.
“Remember when you asked me if the printout said anything else about you and I said ‘not really’?”
“Uh huh.”
“It said some other stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like we’re married.”
“We’re what?”
I knew she’d been keeping something from me, but “we’re married” wouldn’t have been in my top thousand guesses.
“I feel like I’d remember getting married,” I said.
“Well, yeah,” she replied agreeably. “Obviously, we’re not ‘married married.’ We’re just . . . supposed to be.”
“What are you talking about?” I cried.
“Like Flying Dutchman Digital was supposed to be a big success but then it was a big flop.”
“We’re a big flop?”
“Kind of? According to the printout we were supposed to get married a year ago and move into a nice condo in the city.”
“What?” I said, my tone edging toward hysteria.
“Yeah,” she finished guiltily. “Don’t know much more.”
“And you didn’t feel like any of this was worth mentioning?” I snapped.
“I was afraid you’d assume . . . ”
“That you’d tracked me down like some crazy stalker based on the predictions of your whacko computer?”
“Yeah. That.”
I shook my head in disbelief, thinking back to her whole speech about being the “guardian” of the printout. All a smokescreen to keep me from reading the truth.
She looked terrified. Her nerves were clearly fried by worry over what might happen next. She’d saved the craziest of her future forecasts for last, afraid of being written off as the head case she feared she was. But she pressed on, shrinkingly bearing everything.
“At first I was sure it was nonsense. And then I met you and it seemed like . . . I can’t explain it. I’m sorry, I must be . . . ”
She trailed off, trembling with anxiety. But as her words sunk in, I found my hysteria retreating and my manner softening. Before I had time to think, I heard myself speak.
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“It’s okay,” I said. “I get it.”
“What?” she exclaimed in confused disbelief.
I didn’t completely understand myself. This revelation should have been the vindication of all my suspicions—a hearty meal for my hungry trust issues. But while I was angry that she’d been holding out on me, I realized to my surprise that I wasn’t angry about why. Because I felt what she felt. There was something about us that was just . . . right. It was a natural, undeniable eventuality.
“It was the same for me,” I went on.
“Are you . . . ” she stammered. “Really?”
I nodded and took a moment to process.
Then I said, “Married, huh?” trying the notion on with some verve. “I didn’t even think I was your type, what with the way you went on and on and on about Dean Merrick’s good looks.”
The tension fell out of her shoulders. That faint smile returned to her lips and that glint flashed in her eyes again.
“You think I’d risk the marriage we don’t have and the life we haven’t built for that dude?” she said, leaning into the repartee with burgeoning confidence.
“I don’t hear you saying he’s not good looking,” I replied, noticing some actual jealousy unexpectedly intermingling with my mock jealousy.
“He’s okay,” she answered. “But he’s clearly got mental health issues. And that’s a real turn off.”
She cracked an ironic smile.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t mind a little bit of crazy.”
She looked at me like I’d just said the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. Then . . . she kissed me.
Even amidst our impossible circumstances, it felt like this was it. I realized I’d been waiting for years for a reason to shed my trust shield—a reason to let go of the past, a reason to let someone in. And Darla Cunningham was it.
But then the phone rang.
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Seeing Margaret’s number flash up as an incoming call shocked me out of the moment. To my relief, she was just calling to ask if I could spell her at the hospital for a few hours. But it was enough to reset me to reality.
When I hung up the phone, Darla looked at me and I could see in her eyes that she understood. More than that. She shared my feelings.
“We can’t afford romance right now,” she said.
“No,” I agreed.
“But . . . ”
I nodded and she smiled. We both knew how much hope lived in that “but.” There was no need to elaborate.
My car was still parked in the hotel lot more than an hour away. So ten minutes later, we were in a ride share. I don’t know exactly how, but it was late afternoon. Somehow, the half hour or so I’d spent in the Twilight Zone with Becky Borgna had taken five or six hours of real time. As I grappled with that knowledge, I thought the worry I’d seen on Darla’s face upon my return made more sense. She’d been waiting all day to learn my fate.
Annoyingly, my fate had been to knock on death’s door for an amount of XP that had barely moved my stats. But there was some sense to that. In most games, the meaningful increases came with leveling up. And while I’d collected thousands of XP in rewards from my bathroom floor, that had landed just shy of level 8. I thought about the missed grinding opportunities I’d regretted as Becky prepared to strike her death blow. I didn’t intend to let that happen again, and as we passed through a retail section of town between my apartment and the freeway on-ramp, I noticed an eclectic window display in one of the stores.
“Hold up!” I called out to our surly rideshare driver. “Can we pull over here for a sec?”
He shrugged in agreement and added a stop through his app. I jumped out and ran into the nearby store. One of the items in the window had reminded me of a vow I’d made during my deathmatch with Becky Borgna—I’d sworn I wouldn’t squander the chance to amass more XP between battles.
The store had a paltry inventory, but it was better than nothing.
“What are you doing with those?” Darla called out as I exited the store a couple of minutes later, clutching the newly-acquired trio of Cutie Pants dolls in my arms.
“I gotta grind,” I responded as I started to open the door.
“Oh,” she answered, nervously. “Well, don’t do it in here. You’ll make a mess.”
I shrugged and nodded, stepping back and pulling the first of the dolls from its packaging. It seemed my urgent need to “grind” had unsettled our driver and he gave me a judgy look. “It’s for XP,” I said, by way of explanation. But that earned me a zing of pain in my forearm and it didn’t seem to assure him much. He was even less assured when I held up the doll and screamed into its face, “I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of bubble gum!”
A number of passers-by joined the driver in scowling at me in disgust. But I didn’t care anymore. Either the system would tidy the situation up, or we’d have to get another ride share before the cops arrived. I had more pressing matters to attend to, as the first doll intoned “Wanna be friendsies?” and tore its way through its packaging, clamping its pointy little teeth onto my throat.
“Son of a frankfurter! Mother crapper!” I cursed as I spun around trying to rip the thing away. I tripped and went sprawling across the hood of the car, my face smearing against the front windshield, putting me face-to-face with our driver.
“Jesus H!” he screamed.
But I paid him no mind, as I rolled back the other way. I finally managed to pry the doll away from my throat as I landed on the sidewalk. I stumbled to my feet, holding it at arm’s length by one of its legs as it thrashed around trying to get at me. But it was out of luck. I wound up and swung it into a parking meter. As it smacked into the metal pole, doll blood sprayed out all over the place and the thing let out an incoherent shriek that I knew was a garbled second invitation to be friendsies.
I was winding up to give it another whack when I noticed its two companions clawing their way out of their boxes. So I shifted my weight and redirected my swing. By now I was an old hand at bludgeoning the cherubic little bastards to death with their own kind and after two or three swings, it was all over. I looked up from the bloody pile of doll pulp to see the small crowd of passers-by had recoiled in horror. But I suppose the bloody doll gag just wasn’t as funny this time around, and the system decided to make it like it never happened. The little stuffed corpses just faded away and I saw everyone’s eyes glaze over as their brains were re-written to make it all okay.
“You ready to go?” the driver asked.
“Almost,” I said.
I knew I wasn’t quite done here. And sure enough, I felt a tap on the shoulder, as the passers-by passed me by, and I turned to see Nancy’s mom. Apparently, she’d already done her vibrating bit because she had three new slips in hand.
“Getting a bit predictable, if I’m being honest,” she said, gesturing to the grind fodder around me before tossing the slips in the air and walking away.
I shrugged, gathered up the slips and climbed back into the car.
“It’s like no one even saw any of it,” Darla said, awestruck.
“Saw what?” asked the driver, as he pulled away from the curb.
I looked down at my forearms which were just starting to burn. As my level indicator ticked past level 8, the rewards weren’t as meaningful as I’d hoped. But they weren’t nothing. In addition to my Life-O-Meter being bumped to sixty, my Muscles stat now sat at forty-three, my Skin Thickness stat at twenty-four, and my Twinkle Toes stat at fourteen. Checking my inventory, I wasn’t surprised to see two cyclist pelts, but I’d also received two more Freebies.
I thought maybe if I kept grinding I could survive this mess. Then I looked at my level indicator again.
“Crap!” I exclaimed.
“What?” Darla said.
I flashed her my forearm.
“The next level is fifty thousand XP away.”
“Well can’t you just find some more dolls and . . . ” she grasped her throat and made a choking sound.
I shook my head and showed her one of the slips Nancy’s mom had just given me. The XP value matched those I’d received at the GetGet, suggesting the dolls maxed out at that amount.
“They’re only worth 105 XP each,” I explained, dejectedly.
She took my meaning. To get to 9, I’d have to find five hundred dolls somewhere. Short of a factory in China, that seemed like a very tall order. Grinding often has its limits as you level up because you can’t find a rich enough source of XP to grind, and you hit diminishing returns.
“What about ferrets?” Darla asked.
“Pretty hard to find. And they’re only worth 110 XP.”
“Ugh. You’d have to kill more than four hundred of them.”
“Even I don’t hate ferrets that much.”
“Cyclists?”
“Not worth much more. Granted, after today, I think I hate them enough to kill hundreds of them. But finding that many would be tough. And whatever I find, I’d have to trigger them myself by guessing another incantation, which is a whole thing.”
We both fell silent, letting it sink in that there was very little I could do to prepare for whatever was coming next. But I was surprised by the difference it made when Darla took my hand in hers. She did it casually, almost reflexively. Neither of us said a word. We just sat quietly for the rest of the ride.