*Actions/Sounds*
‘Thoughts’
“Speech”
[System]
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Upon the realization that what Evelyn was seeing was a human skeleton, she backs away toward the exit door she came out of. With the feeling of the door against her back she slides down to sit upon the ground, she continues making eye contact with the corpse draining her of sanity. Her palms make contact with the brown dead grass beneath her, crumbling upon her touch. Evelyn’s mind starts to crumble away at the hope she had that it was just the facility that was in disrepair, but now it is confirmed that something was terribly wrong. Evelyn’s body begins to tremble due to her stress and tries to wrap her arms around herself to try to calm herself, while doing her best to ignore the corpse 2 feet away from her.
*Ding*
A sudden ding sounds off next to her right ear. Evelyn pans her head to look for the source of the noise, making eye contact with a floating light blue panel of white text at eye height.
[Congratulations on being the last survivor. You have been selected for the Admin role, Do you accept?]
[Yes] or [No]
Reading the text box over and over, Evelyn could understand the words, but her brain refused to accept them. She reached her shaking hand over to the text and tapped the [No] option, after which the text box vanished as if it was never there. She had the gut feeling that accepting the offer would result in something terrible, but the fact that it stated that she was the last survivor terrified her. ‘I refuse to accept that statement unless I see for myself’ Evelyn attempted to calm her mind. She unsteadily gets off the ground and observes the surroundings closer as she begins to move toward the city.
The once beautiful mixed temperate forest, with the diverse mix of broadleaf and conifer tree species, now a graveyard of withered trees. It can only be described as a wasteland now, the grass and the other plant species, native and invasive, are also withered away. Evelyn’s nature loving heart broke seeing the scene, she knew all of their scientific names by heart, but now she could barely identify them.
While walking, she saw other corpses scattered through the forest both human and animal, all mere skeletons; this disaster spared none in its path. Evelyn tried her best to give each one she encountered a respectable distance as she moved past. To be respectful and in case there was some disease that might come from contact with them. Each time she encountered one she inadvertently started to speed up, her once unsteady walk turning into a brisk jog.
After a few unnerving minutes in the dead forest she sees a clearing ahead indicating she has found one of the main roads leading into the city. Upon exiting through the treeline, Evelyn arrives at the main road, she is met with another depressing sight. The road was littered with cars strewn about, peering into some she could see more death present. Some vehicles were unoccupied, but the presumed owners didn’t make it far as just outside the doors she could see skeletons sprawled against the pavement. Some had bones broken or part of their skull smashed by someone or something.
Evelyn passes by a few more vehicles, and she makes an observation that all the cars are coming from the city, none were heading into the city. She halts for a moment in consideration on if she should press on as by the scene seen here. She can only make an assumption that they were all trying to flee from something happening in the city but just didn’t make it far.
‘Nonetheless… I have to push forward. The city might give me a clue on what happened even if it might be dangerous.’ Evelyn thought to herself. Pushing forward with her battered body she marches onward to potential danger in the city. She walks a few miles on the road avoiding occasional obstacles until she passes by a sign. The sign was a welcome sign that had ‘Welcome to the City of Hyacinth’ written in a bold white font. In one of the bottom corners was an illustration of an ocean beach, while in the opposing corner was an illustration of some cool colored hyacinth flowers. Like most objects found so far, it had also dulled in color due to the weathering of time.
Finally reaching the outskirts of the city, Evelyn needed to take a breather. Evelyn puts her hand against a tree as she leans against it. She was exhausted and her lungs burned from the amount of exercise her unprepared body had to do so far today. Only for the tree to crumble under her slightest touch and topple over, Evelyn moved out of the way before settling to sit on the trunk of a nearby convertible to rest.
After her rest, Evelyn hops off the trunk and begins her venture into the unknown of the once familiar city. Walking through the empty streets, Evelyn steps around the trash almost completely fused to the pavement and the glass shards from all the shattered windows. Some buildings have collapsed completely, causing a few streets to be cut off as they are blocked, unless Evelyn wanted to climb up the most likely unstable rubble. Risking a potential landslide that could trap her limbs with no likely help, she thought against such an idea.
Painted among the walls of the alleyways and empty walls was graffiti, the last remnants of humanity. And a glimpse into what could have happened. The most common thing was a simple blue box and an aggressive red ‘X’ over it, the other were the sayings ‘Don’t trust the Words of Blue’ and ‘Blue despair’. This reaffirmed Evelyn’s gut feeling about the blue box but also told her it was not a hallucination.
A couple of streets later, Evelyn starts yelling out to anything that could hear her, as at this point she would welcome even getting attacked, as long as it showed she wasn’t alone. And the eerie silence was grinding her nerves as she discovered that there was no sound besides her own footsteps and worn out breathing, not even the wind was present. It was as if the world itself was as stagnant as the air, the only true sound she had heard besides her own was the water dripping in the facility but after that, pure isolating silence.
“Anyone…please…anyone there” Evelyn pleaded as her voice finally grew horse from her yelling, her vocal cords felt like it was being ground by sandpaper in any further attempts to yell out. Slowing her pace, she looked at the street signs and saw she was near the piers to the ocean and thought maybe the ocean might soothe her crumbling mental state. Walking onto the pier street that was once the prime tourism spot for the town besides the nearby national park, now as desolate as the rest of the town, with the trinket and food carts toppled onto their side and the storefronts in ruin.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Resting her hands upon the railing that overlooked the beach and the ocean she is met with a sight that makes her wish this whole day was a terrible nightmare that she can wake up from. The beach was lined with black bags that were side by side that stretched out into the distance in three rows. The little spark of hope she had when going through the city and finding the lack of bodies was cracked, but what caused it to shatter was the sight of the ocean.
It was gone, the ocean was missing, it defied all logic Evelyn had. The only reminder that it was once there were the bones of marine life washed ashore, as if the ocean pushed them all ashore before vanishing. Evelyn dropped to her knees while still holding onto the railing with her left hand, the only thing that was keeping her going was that little spark of hope, but now what was there to hope for. Evelyn felt tears welling up in her eyes, knowing all she had and known was gone.
*Ding*
A sudden ding noise rings out in the silent world, Evelyn in her newfound despair pans her head to look at the source. Finding a light blue text box with white font.
[No other lifeforms detected in this reality. You have been selected for the Admin role, Do you accept?]
[Yes] or [No]
“Ha…hahaha” Evelyn began a shaky laugh in response to seeing the message presented. It was slightly different from the one from before, but it was relatively the same. Evelyn did not hesitate to hit the [No]. She saw the messages in the graffiti throughout the city, the blue box was not to be trusted as it was likely involved in the destruction of the world or the main culprit. The blue box disappeared shortly after Evelyn’s response.
The next few hours was Evelyn mindlessly wandering the city for more clues and remnants of humanity. Simultaneously dealing with the blue box each time it appeared with the same ding noise and same message, each time she would hit the [No] response, and it would simply vanish to reappear awhile later.
Seeing the sun beginning to set, Evelyn decides to find a spot near the pier area to watch the sunset. Finding a bench on the storefront side of the road to sit upon, as it also blocked the depressing sight of the beach. After watching the full sunset, she brought her legs up on the bench to hug them with her arms and to hang her head down to clear her mind.
*Ding*
A sudden ding rang out, at this point it is now synonymous with the arrival of the blue box to Evelyn. And in muscle memory, hit where the [No] option was located with blind precision.
*Pop*
A pop noise, similar to a party popper, jolted Evelyn out of her drowsy stupor. An unfamiliar noise, she rapidly turned to face the box, to be met with a change in its appearance and a dreadful sight. It was the same message as before but the [Yes] and [No] options were different, they were both the same light blue box and white text before but now were drastically different. The [Yes] changed to a black box with red text while the [No] had changed into a black box with purple text with the word [Yes], there was no longer a [No] option to select, and she had mistakenly hit the now purple text [Yes]. She had accepted the offer.
“No, no, no, no” Evelyn cried out in despair and her pupils shook in shock. She then turned to where the other noise came from. The pop noise was from the opening of another smaller text box. That was the same blue scheme as the offer text box but had little confetti poppers sides with the confetti circling the edge of the text box to give it a border. A little opened gift box icon was seen above the white text.
[You have gotten a gift from the sender ‘N’. They have given the following message attached: Congrats on finally accepting the offer, here is a little gift from the great me to you. Enjoy Tee-hee.]
Evelyn wanted to ponder what that gift could entail with that little laugh written at the end, but she was quickly occupied with a different problem. She suddenly felt a severe pain throughout her body, she could barely see the offer text box had swapped text.
[Offer has been accepted. Beginning of change to suit admin role.]
Evelyn’s skin began to bubble and blister on her left side before it was slowly wrapped with a bandage of unknown origin. That in itself felt like someone was ripping her skin off to then put it back on in a different place. Evelyn at this point has fallen off the bench and has curled up on the ground in pain, it was proceeding as a slow and horrendously painful process. That was until she was hit with a different pain that felt like her brain was being torn apart. As she felt emotions of all kinds but mostly soul crushing ones all at once until she heard a simple *Click* and all went black.
Not far above Evelyn’s now unconscious body, two distortions appeared. From one distortion, a white marble hand that had its fingers closed gently over its palm, and it appeared to be shattered off something else a few inches past the wrist. The wrist had what appeared to be a simple black tattoo or print of a black chain in a complete loop around the wrist. The hands opened to release an eye with an iris of the deepest black.
From the other distortion, appeared a closed mouth with the lips being a black coloring or lipstick. The mouth opened suddenly, revealing a tongue, a set of teeth, and a deep black void further down the assumed throat. A few seconds passed, and an eyeball can be seen being pushed from the void by an unseen force until it was almost out of the mouth until it was held in place by the white teeth, preventing it from proceeding forward. The eye turned, revealing a blood-red iris.
The hand turned toward the mouth, “What in the stars did you do” a monotone feminine voice said in a slightly annoyed tone.
“I gave it a slight gift, you finally decided to join me in my game and since it was so curious what happened. I decided to give it the emotions that the world had felt during that time period. It's not my fault it couldn’t stand the emotions all at once.” a more masculine voice said in a childish and mocking tone as the mouth turned to the hand and floating up and down in response.
“Yes, I did say I wanted to join your game and that I did want her to be my player. But that didn’t mean you could do this.” The female voice emotionlessly stated. The black eye above the hand narrowed itself while it looked at the mouth before opening more as it looked at Evelyn’s body.
“You are lucky I stopped the transformation midway due to your gift causing her too much pain” the feminine voice stated. A few seconds of silence before the female voice spoke coldly, “I want a contract”.
“A contract! My, do you not trust me, why would you need a contract over such a silly mistake” the masculine says in a surprised and jesting tone. The mouth almost lost its hold over the eyeball in sheer shock.
“It’s due to the fact that I’ve known you since we have been conceptualized, that I want a contract. That you won’t interfere or look into this dimension and its inhabitants the entire span of the game” the feminine voice coldly stated while looking at the mouth.
“But that will be an unseen aspect of my game” the masculine voiced out while looking at hand.
“It's precisely why an unseen aspect would make it fun, as it will be a surprise for the game, knowing everything could make it boring for you” the feminine voice said back.
“Oh my indeed it would!” the masculine voice excitedly said. “I do have 11 others and the main playing board I’m currently keeping watch of, one less to that would make no difference” the masculine voice then quietly said. “Alright then it is a deal”.
“The deal has been set, let's proceed with the game” the feminine voice confirmed, thus sealing the deal.
“Indeed let us watch” the masculine excitedly said before manically laughing. The mouth then could be seen with the teeth applying pressure against the eyeball until it popped, and the destroyed eyeball slid back into the mouth and the lips closed, causing the mouth to distort and disappear.
Leaving just the hand left, it turned to look from where the mouth disappeared to Evelyn. The eye looked at her for a full minute, before its fingers began to slowly wrap over the eye. The eye closed before the fingers held flat against the hand before the hand distorted and vanished as well, leaving Evelyn in the lone world.
Chapter 2: The Devil’s Contract Dyed in Blue