“God lends a helping hand to the man who tries hard.”

Aeschylus

Bethany found herself lying on her couch with her blanket pulled up to her neck, staring at the ceiling. It was the dead of night, and despite her constant yawns she found herself unable to fall asleep. She could hear Rocky’s lumberjack snores from across the hall, occasionally interrupted by a sharp, deep sleep snort from Emily that carried through their adjoining wall.

Their snores did not keep her awake. The sounds were a constant reminder that she was not alone in this world. They provided a comfort that had long been absent from her life.

It was her thoughts that were keeping her awake. Her mind would not be still, even in the intense stillness of the night. She kept replaying the Arena in her head. Had she made the right decision? Was her grandmother’s soul truly left to wander the afterlife, waiting for her father? Was any of it real?

Maybe, just maybe, she was also scared to fall asleep. She rubbed her Oracle Eye with her palm, wondering what dreams would come when she finally slumbered.

Eventually, Bethany threw her blanket to the floor in frustration and hauled herself off the couch. She needed to do something to get her mind off everything, or else she would lay there frustrated and awake until morning. She snatched her ball-peen hammer from beneath her pillow and headed down to the lunchroom to search for a snack.

She slowly opened her door, not wanting the high-pitched squeak to wake up her friends. She tiptoed over to the stairwell, listening to pick up any change to their snores. She would never have dared snuck out of her room for a snack when she was with her father. Not that there was ever enough food to have snacks. Bethany felt herself smile when she realized this might have been the first time that she’d ever had a midnight snack. It felt… normal, and that made her smile even more.

Two minutes later she was sitting in the massive lunchroom, stuffing a strawberry-flavored, yoghurt-covered granola bar and some ketchup potato chips in her mouth. She savored every bite. She stared out the eastern-facing windows, towards the massive stone wall and the ocean beyond it. She could see the full moon above reflected on its surface as gentle waves crashed against the shore. She recalled how peaceful she had been in the dream with Danita, sitting on the beach and listening to the waves, and resolved to one day sit on the beach beyond the wall and listen to the waves once more.

An ocean in Saskatchewan. How was it even possible? Then again, how was any of this possible?

She reached into the bag of chips, only to come out empty handed. She had finished the whole bag without even realizing it. She felt guilty. How many bags of chips were left in the city? One day, the last bag will be consumed, and there will be no more.

Bethany looked over to the stack of groceries that lay near the cafeteria check-out counter. It suddenly seemed so small. How long would it last them? Two weeks? A month? Certainly no longer than that. They would need to collect more, before it all disappeared into people’s homes.

Bethany walked over to the groceries, and her tiredness made her legs feel weak. But she was not ready to go back to bed quite yet. She grabbed three of the eleven remaining bags of chips and walked them over to the cafeteria pantry. Bethany was heartened when she saw oils, flour, sugar, bread, buns, ketchup, mustard, and Styrofoam takeout containers taking up about a quarter of the shelving space inside. She placed the chips on the top shelf, where she would have the most trouble reaching them, and went back for another armload.

An hour later, Bethany had stored all the groceries in the pantry. She was pleased with how organized it looked, and there was plenty of room for the bounty of their next scavenging trip. Somehow saying ‘scavenging’ sounded better than ‘looting’, so Bethany had decided that is what they were doing. Surviving, not stealing.

She had also poked her head inside the walk-in freezer, though she did not walk in as she was afraid it might lock behind her. It was full of frozen burgers, sausages, and fries, which explained the contents of the pantry. Emily’s frozen pizzas were piled haphazardly on a shelf.

“Good for you, Rocky,” Bethany said with a smile. “Emily would be disappointed if you if you’d let her precious pizzas go to waste.” She let herself marvel at the steadiness of the man who had punched the Impastabull in the face, carried two unconscious women out of the supermarket with a broken hand, and still had the wherewithal to put frozen pizzas in the freezer. She thought Rocky might have been underestimated his whole life and knew she would not make that mistake.

Bethany stifled a yawn and plopped down in one of the worn folding chairs that encircled each table, returning to the great bay windows. She tore her gaze away from the ocean and looked towards the refinery towers. The refinery was eerily silent, the refinement process having shut down when the workers fled for their homes. But the bright lights on top of the towers still illuminated the ground beneath, casting unsettling shadows across the grounds. Bethany’s mind began to swim, her imagination creating make believe terrors that may lay in wait beneath their darkness. Or perhaps those terrors were not make-believe at all. Not here. Not now. Not anymore.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

A yawn finally escaped Bethany. Her eyes were growing heavy, and her mind felt muddled from lack of sleep. She suddenly craved the safety of the second floor and the comfort of her couch.

As she stood to leave, a bright shimmer reflected in the bay window caught her eye. The reflection rippled, as if the glass were a puddle of water whose surface had been disturbed. As the ripples calmed, Bethany could see an image form, and she thought she knew what it was.

Bethany turned around apprehensively and stared at the row of vending machines that occupied the wall on the other side of the lunchroom. She gripped her hammer tightly, and her Oracle Eye shimmered, as she prepared to call on her golden threads of light threads of light.

The vending machines were blue and grey, a pane of glass giving a clear view of the treasures within. There were five in all, each holding a collection of chocolate bars and chips, granola bars and soft drinks. One machine was refrigerated and filled with sandwiches and salads, the latter of which were starting to wilt with age.

Or rather, there were five when Bethany had entered the lunchroom an hour earlier.

Now, there were six.

Bethany stared wide-eyed at the new addition to the vending machine row, lodged between the salads and the chocolate bars. The machine was the color of deepest black, with speckles of gold light that formed the night’s sky across its surface. In the middle of that sky rest an image of the Vitruvian man. Bethany had come across the image while reading in her school library. It was iconic - two superimposed images of the same nude man, representing Da Vinci’s ideal proportions of a man. Except, unlike the original, this version had color. Its head was a bright, piercing blue and its four hands and four feet were green. The muscles on its arms, legs, and chest were a deep red, and everywhere else was a light shade of grey.

Engraved in bronze lettering across the top of the machine were the words:

Mr. Mercury’s Emporium

Noble Purveyor of Player upgrades

Helping Contestants Achieve Greatness since 3309 B.C.E.

“What the… heck is this,” whispered Bethany, cautiously approaching the vending machine with hammer raised. She grew closer, then abruptly jumped backwards, in case the machine was secretly a monster luring her close before it pounced.

The machine did not move, and Bethany got a little closer. She repeated the motion a couple more times, until she had creeped close enough to tap the side of the vending machine with her hammer. Its clangs rang out across the lunchroom, and Bethany breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever it was, it did not seem malicious.

“What is your purpose?” Bethany asked curiously, half expecting the machine to answer back. It wouldn’t have been the strangest thing to happen today if it had. But it did not. It just sat there, as inert as the salad vending machine next to it.

Bethany, in a sudden burst of bravery, ran over to the cashier till and grabbed some coins. She placed a quarter in the machine’s coin slot, but it simply flowed through and landed with a clink in the coin return below. She grabbed it and tried again, with the same result.

She tried with the other coins in her palm. Nickles, dimes, loonies, and toonies. Each one simply fell through the machine, ineffective.

“If you don’t want the money, Mr. Mercury,” Bethany exclaimed in a sleep-deprived frustration “What the hell do you want?” She was in the middle of contemplating whether her hammer of light would be powerful enough to smash open the machine when she remembered.

She had heard that name before. Mr. Mercury… why did it sound so…

“Oh for… I’m such an idiot,” Bethany scolded herself, feeling like a fool.

Bethany reached into her pocket and grabbed the two silver coins that she had received for destroying the leaf and pasta orb monsters. She lifted the flat and featureless coin up to the light and read their gold engraving aloud.

“Bethany Fox. Attribute token. Redeemable at Mr. Mercury’s Emporium,” Bethany bellowed in triumph. “I don’t know what you do, little coin, but let’s find out.”

Bethany inserted the coin into the vending machine and held her breath.

There was a rusty click and a whirl from inside the machine, as if this were the first time it had been activated for decades. Bethany jumped as a short musical tone sounded, and a hollow voice came from the machine.

“Attrib… attribute coin… coin… coin accepted. Bethany Fox… Fox confirmed. Please… make… selection… attribute selection… enhancement…,” Mr. Mercury’s Emporium said disjointedly. Its voice crackled as if projected through an old speaker, like a mechanical fortune teller at a carnival.

The Vitruvian Man began to glow, drawing Bethany’s attention. Its four colors lit up one after another, directing Bethany to make a choice.

“Umm… I don’t really know what to do… um… Mr. Mercury,” Bethany said hesitantly, but the machine did not respond. Perhaps it was inanimate, or maybe Mr. Mercury had simply chosen not to reveal himself.

Bethany reached forward and touched the Vitruvian man’s far left foot, not knowing what else to do.

The machine began to whirl and groan again, and Bethany could hear something moving through the machine. Then the sounds stopped, and a small item fell into the pick-up slot.

Bethany carefully retrieved the item. It was a glass vial, the same length and width as her finger, and filled with a deep green liquid. It was sealed with a tiny brown cork. It looked like something from a doctor’s office. Or from a mad scientist’s laboratory.

Bethany held it up to the light, watching the green swirls within. Then, before she lost her nerve, she popped the cork.

“This is probably a bad idea,” thought Bethany, and she tipped the vial’s contents into her mouth.