Silence hung between us for a while, my thumb rubbing against the pad of my middle finger in undeniable anticipation, before I finally buckled and separated my fingers, “Fine, but just so you know, that’s going to eat me up for the rest of my life.”
“I’m aware, much like the time you-”
“Don’t.” I snapped somewhat jovially to hide how anxious I was, “The last thing I need right now is to be having flashbacks of all my greatest mistakes in life.”
“Heh, fair enough.” Quinn said with more than a little smugness as I reached and peered down the shaft of the dumbwaiter, “You’re going to want to take it slow down there, looks like there’s a fair few bits and pieces of jagged metal.”
“Mmm, tetanusy.” I replied before lifting the hefty flashlight off my belt that, if I’m being completely honest, I’d only just noticed I had, “Suggestions?”
“Prepare to hurt, a lot.”
“Well that’s helpful,” I laughed, “seriously though, what do yo-”
“Hehehe!” the tweaker cackled from behind me, “Looks like piggy got outta his pen!”
In a moment of panic, I turned to face my assailant, discovering he was not unlike that mugger I’d met in the park, and tried to take a swing at him with my flashlight.
To my great surprise, that didn’t work, and he managed to tackle me, causing me to overbalance and push us both tumbling down the dumbwaiter.
Thinking back on it, I probably should have taken Quinn’s advice, would’ve made the following few seconds a whole lot more bearable.
ABATTOIR
After a good few seconds of wrestling, and a couple of decent wounds being inflicted on the way down the rusty hole, the tweaker and I hit the bottom, his frail and bony body offering just enough cushion for me to be able to survive.
“That was…” I choked out as I slowly got to my feet, “That was fun, let’s never do it again.”
“Agreed,” Quinn laughed, “you may want to put some pressure on that wound in your side.”
“Hmm?” I groaned before noticing and pushing my hand to the gushing hole that was dangerously close to my left lung, “When did that happen?”
“I’m guessing you just got slashed by one of the parts sticking out,” Quinn remarked nonchalantly, “need I remind you that you can do something to fix that?”
It took me a moment longer than it should’ve to realize what she was talking about, though even when I did I still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that hacking was the best idea.
“What if I turn into a potato?” I chuckled half-heartedly, the blood loss apparently having done wonders for my sense of humor.
“Then you’ll be the best damn potato the world’s ever seen.” Quinn replied with what sounded like pride, but could’ve just as likely been annoyance, “Now hurry up and patch yourself up, we don’t have all day and you’ll want to be conscious for this next part.”
“Why’s that?” I asked before giving in and snapping my fingers, fixing every last scrape and bruise on my body, then picking up my flashlight from the mostly mangled corpse of the tweaker and shining it around the dingy metal hole I was in.
“Because you’re in the basement, and from what I’m seeing it’s going to be a tough fight.”
A chuckle escaped me and I smiled, “What’s the point of fighting?”
“What’s the-you know what the point is.” Quinn snapped, “You’re all that stands between Messiah and the end of the world, you’re the only one who has any hope of stopping him, and I just now realize that you were referring to the fact that you’re supposed to be going for the portal.”
“No, not at all,” I lightheartedly mocked, “go on, tell me more about our dire mission and how I don’t understand the consequences should I fail.”
“Shut up,” Quinn bit back with an equal amount of brevity, “there should be a hatch at about head height that opens up onto a sort of laundry room.”
“Let me guess,” I said once I’d found the near-invisible hatch on one of the walls, “it’s not used as a laundry anymore?”
“And circle gets the square.” Quinn replied as I tucked my flashlight between my head and shoulder before going to work on lifting the broken hatch, “Seriously though, be careful.”
“Why?” I grunted with exertion, the hatch proving to be more difficult to shift than expected, “Is there some kinda knife obsessed guy in a gimp suit?”
“He was in that room upstairs, remember?”
I finally gave up on trying to lift the hatch and simply snapped my fingers, shattering it into splinters, before tossing my flashlight into the dark laundry room, “Ugh, don’t remind me.”
For obvious reasons, I was uncomfortable climbing in blind, but at the same time I was pretty damn sure that Quinn wouldn’t deliberately send me to my death.
The issue was the ‘deliberate’ part though, something I couldn’t get out of my brain no matter how hard I tried.
Would an enemy spawn in as soon as I crossed the threshold? Or would the ground simply cave in below me, sending me tumbling into the depths of Hell?
Those thoughts proved to be ridiculous though as I finished my awkward clamber and discovered that the room was, in fact, empty.
Well, aside from the large, bloody burlap sacks hanging from the ceiling, dripping copious amounts of blood all over my flashlight as I picked it up.
“What’s the issue?” I asked after giving one of the bags a poke, “Is someone gonna jump out at me or..?”
“No, nothing like that,” Quinn replied, clearly very concerned for my health, “it’s just that it is incredibly slippery.”
At first I wanted to scoff and laugh about her trying to fill the void of my mother, but then I almost went head over ass and decided against it.
“Okay, so it’s slippery, big whoop,” I said, trying not to sound too concerned, “where’s this big boss you keep telling me about?”
“He should be in the basement, just beyond the door at the end of these… meat curtains.”
I successfully managed to bite my lip before I openly laughed at Quinn’s accidental crudeness, an act I quickly regretted as I slipped and barely caught myself on one of the bags, biting a small but painful hole in both my tongue and lip.
“You okay?” Quinn asked while I tried to find my footing, an action that proved difficult to do while holding a burlap sack, that definitely had more than one dismembered body in it, and an eight-pound flashlight, “I told you it was slippery.”
“I know you told me it was slippery, stop saying the bloody word ‘slippery’.” I snapped bitterly, failing to maintain the tone of respect I’d been working on with Quinn for so long.
I get that it probably seems like I had a completely unnecessary fit, but keep in mind that I was about an inch from falling flat on my ass in a large puddle of stranger blood which, in case it wasn’t already obvious, seemed really disgusting.
Though Quinn… Quinn didn’t really appreciate that, deciding that instead of talking through the issue with me she’d just take great offense to my minor outburst, and fell silent, properly silent.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even notice at first, I was too busy making sure I had my footing after all, but when I did I couldn’t get it out of my head.
I hadn’t even noticed it until it was gone, but Quinn was always making some kind of noise, whether it was faux breathing, or quiet little chirps, or simply humming to herself while going through whatever it was that she was working on.
“Quinn, I’m sorry.” I said as genuinely as I could while both focusing on my feet and shining the flashlight at the door at the end of the weirdly long laundry, “I didn’t mean to snap.”
Quinn remained silent.
“I know it wasn’t cool of me, and I’m sorry. I wish I could give you some excuse t-”
“Shut up.” Quinn ordered before falling silent again.
“Pardon?”
“Shut. Up.” Quinn repeated, though significantly mor
e forcefully.
She sounded concerned, genuinely concerned, and not the kind she had when I was in danger of being killed or maimed. No, it was the kind of concern that came from a place of logic and reason.
“You need to be careful.” Quinn finally said as I reached the door.
“Of what? The big bad guy?” I replied with more machismo than I’d expected before toning it down, “I’m sure I can handle him.”
“No, of what comes next.”
Again, Quinn sounded worried, and that worry was starting to infect me.
“Alright…” I trailed off confusedly before turning the door’s handle and stepping over the slight lip in the doorframe, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The next portal, there’s something wrong with it. And no, I don’t mean the kind of wrong that you caused with the last one, I mean…” Quinn muttered before falling silent for a third time.
“Quinn? You there?” I asked as I hovered nervously just outside the laundry, “Is it messing with your code or something?”
“Hmm? Oh, no, what? No.” Quinn stammered almost incoherently, “Sorry, it’s just… there’s something wrong with the other side. Are you sure you’re the only Code Jumper in here at the moment?”
My brow furrowed automatically as my brain asked me the question again. I hadn’t really thought about that a whole lot, whether or not there were other Code Jumpers roaming Re.Gen I mean, but with the question asked out loud I suddenly found myself confused.
“I’m not sure,” I finally replied after wrestling with the inquiry a while, “those spooks weren’t exactly in a chatty mood when I dove. Is there anything in the file about them sending in more?”
“Believe me, if there were, I would’ve told you about it.” Quinn replied as if I’d asked the most stupid question in the universe, “Anyway, you’d best get a move on, you don’t want the boss to get the jump on you, especially not with those meat hooks of his.”
“Meathooks?” I laughed before taking my first steps into the pitch black basement, “What’s he plannin’ to do? Lead me off to slaughter?”
“I think it’s more likely he’ll go ahead and stuff you in one of those burlap sacks, which I can only speculate as being a means of preparing his later meals.”
I chuckled nervously as my flashlight lit up the two walls of leather that were leading me toward some unknown destination, “Well, gotta hand it to the guy,” I said after I spotted a nose sewn into the ‘wall’, “he uses every last bit of the buffalo.”
“In this case, I believe the turn of phrase should be ‘long pig’, not ‘buffalo’.” Quinn corrected, sending a shiver up my spine as I pictured myself bound on a big silver platter with an apple in my mouth.
Then I heard him, his blood freezing squeal, and felt as the walls around me billowed and wrapped around me despite my flailing.
The monster in the basement had found me, and I was absotively shitting myself.
LEATHER PARTY
The curtains continued to flap and engulf me, causing me to get completely lost in what should’ve been a straight line, and even though they seemed to move like silk, they were as heavy as… well, as heavy as about twenty peoples’ worth of skin.
“Just don’t panic,” Quinn whispered coolly, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t get to close.”
“And how’s that?” I asked, flapping my arms like a confused bird and, as a consequence, making the skin sheets look like the most intense and crowded German discotheque ever with the help of my ridiculously bright flashlight.
“Because I know where he is, and it’s nowhere near yo-oh never mind, you’re going to want to duck.”
I barely had time to think after seeing the glint of light bouncing off my would-be killer’s meat hook, let alone duck. I just barely had enough time to dive to the ground, narrowly missing the sharpened hook as it sliced through the sheet.
“Well that’s just wasteful…” I muttered to myself in the hopes that some humor would alleviate the terror in my heart.
It didn’t work.
Good news was that, thanks to the sheet being cleaved in twain, the portal was visible, sitting in a corner next a bathtub filled with red food coloring.
I can pretend, alright?
Anyway, the bad news was that, again, thanks to the sheet being cleaved in twain, the apron-wearing, blood-covered nutcase had a clear view of me, to which he was taking full advantage and staring at me.
Breathing heavily.
Very visibly erect.
It was all a very rich tapestry.
“What do I do?” I asked, frozen in place and ready to be hooked.
“Shoot him?” Quinn suggested calmly.
“With what!?”
“Well I don’t know, maybe try spawning in a gun?”
It seemed obvious once she said it, but that didn’t matter, the hooked fiend was already making a move for me and I was having trouble focusing.
With all the grace of a swan, I fell backward on my ass in a successful attempt to avoid the hook, something that I quickly regretted when I saw that my attacker was faster than I thought, recovering and moving in for another swing before I could so much as get in a position to snap my fingers.
“Christ!” I cried as I shuffled back just in time for one of the hooks, which I could only guess was made of adamantium, wedged into the concrete ground a mere foot from my crotch.
There was my advantage.
While the butcher of the basement struggled to pull his hook out of the ground, I scrambled to my feet and ran in for the attack, clubbing him over the head with my hefty flashlight.
The attack did little to cause any permanent damage, but it was enough to make him fall to a knee while still struggling to pull his hook out of the ground.
I went to hit him again, really hard, stopping only when I remembered my true purpose for being in the basement.
“Oh, right…” I murmured before darting toward the portal.
My path to safety seemed assured, but then I heard the unmistakable sound of the hook being reefed from the ground and turned to look, stumbling and falling to the ground as I did so.
“What the Hell are you doing!?” Quinn barked, “Get through the damn portal!”
“I’m trying.” I bit back, shuffling toward the portal while failing to perform the simple act of standing up due to the fact that I couldn’t take my eyes off the approaching hook-man, “It’s a bit hard wh-”
“Just do it!”
I wasn’t sure why, but that demand made me smile for a moment, right before I realized that I was about to get got that is.
In a moment of panic, I threw my flashlight at the cannibalistic madman, catching him right in the center of his fat head and eliciting another shrill squeal, before getting to my feet and continuing my mad dash for the portal.
“He’s gaining on you…” Quinn warned, spurring me on toward the portal that seemed to be drifting away the closer I got.
I gave up on running and leaped for the glowing rift as soon as I was close enough, but I was just a millisecond too slow, allowing the final boss of the madhouse to sink one of his hooks into my ankle.
‘This is it,’ I told myself as I fell to the ground, ‘this is how your story ends, with you dying in some unknown basement in the depths of some obscure game mode.’
I didn’t want to be so melodramatic, let alone surrender to the fact that I was as good as dead, though there wasn’t much I could do to stop it.
“Oh for God’s sake.” Quinn snapped, “Do I really have to help you with this one?”
“Help me wit-argh!” I cried out in pain as not only did the other hook get brought down into my lower back, piercing whatever organs happened to have the bad luck of being in its way, but also my shoulder was dislocated and my arm sent flopping out in front of me.
I wanted to cry, maybe even shriek, demanding to know why Quinn had popped my arm out of place, but I didn’t get the chance.
My fingers had touched t
he portal.
WAKING UP
Sunlight burned my eyes, and the bouncy sounds of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones deafened me.
The pain was all still there, but it wasn’t, much like I was still lying on my stomach, but I was actually sitting up in one of the most comfortable seats I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting in.
“What…” I gagged before opening the car door and emptying my stomach all over the dirt.
“Are you alright?” Quinn asked as I stumbled out, narrowly missing the pile of vomit during my fall to my hands and knees, revealing that I was wearing my brown leather jacket, “Eddie? Buddy?”
I couldn’t find it within myself to answer, instead I could only dry heave and hope to God that I wouldn’t start coughing up my lungs.
Good thing it was only dry heaving too, as, after a few seconds of imitating a puppy that had eaten a bunch of grass, my arms buckled under my weight, resulting in me falling face first into the dirt.
“Eddie?”
“Ed can’t come to the phone right now…” I groaned, sucking in a bunch of dirt and rocks in the process that I had no ability to spit out, “But if you’d like to leave a message…”
That was the last of what I could get out before my brain decided I needed to take a power nap.
From there it was a pretty short road to waking up, in fact it barely felt like I’d blinked by the time I woke up from my dreamless sleep, the only indication that any time had passed being that the bright yellow sun had died down to a soft orange glow, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones had given way to the Barenaked Ladies’ One Week.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure I had a bunch of ants in my ears, which was just fantastic.
“Feeling any better?” Quinn asked as I got to my feet, dusting myself off in the process.
“Yeah…” I replied hesitantly before spitting out the small molehill that’d congealed in my mouth, then nodding confidently and rolling my shoulders, “Yeah, I’m feeling pretty good. What’s this? Some kinda mountain survival simulator?”
To be fair, that was all I could really make out. I was at some kind of lookout, and all I could see for miles around were mountains and trees. I didn’t even remember the car following the whole vomiting and stumbling into what I thought had been a desert thing.
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