The Wards (Novella #2)

by Alan Ryker

  Beth tilted her head slightly, and Elizabeth could almost see the processors humming. “There’s nothing outside of Wardville. Are you saying you want to kill yourself? Because I don’t need that reputation on my home.”

  “No, I’m not going to kill myself.” Elizabeth felt indignant at the casual way this woman inserted herself into her business, but confused both by that and by the strange leap in logic. Then she understood. For the Wards, there was nothing outside of Wardville. There was almost no way off the edge, though she’d found a few glitch areas, and when she’d managed to lure a Ward through one, they’d fallen, and fallen, and fallen until she’d closed the program. When she opened it again, the Ward was gone, lost to the glitch.

  “Isn’t there a way out of Wardville besides death?” Elizabeth asked.

  Beth rolled her eyes. “Are you talking the urban legend of the breaches? Come on. I thought you seemed intelligent and put together. Did you spend too much time with Betty and Davey?”

  Feeling like they were almost speaking different languages, Elizabeth decided to change the subject. She held up the dress in both hands. It was a little black number she’d wear out to a nice restaurant. “So why the evening wear? It’s the middle of the day. I’m not sure if I’m up to going out right now.”

  Suddenly her robe fell open again as Beth reached out and pulled one end of the belt, exposing her body. Elizabeth gasped and, as she grabbed for each side to wrap herself back up, she found Beth once again appraising her, openly examining her nude body as she chewed on a lip.

  Elizabeth felt her face flush warm and enough adrenaline hit her that her fingers fumbled to find the edges of the robe so that she pulled it back and forth for a few moments before she managed to close it, the expensive dress balled in one hand and forgotten.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Beth scowled and stood tall. “First of all, we don’t talk like that in this household. You’re not in the slums anymore, and I won’t have our reputation brought down with foul language. I was looking at your body.” Her face lost a little of its anger. “It’s good. It’s very good. I can see some things that could be improved, but a few hours on the ExerFlexer 5000 and you’ll look almost as good as me.” She gave what Elizabeth felt was supposed to be an encouraging raise of the eyebrows and nod, which for some reason made her more furious than every other intrusion.

  She sputtered in rage before saying, “I work out every day. I wear a size four and that’s only because of butt and boobs, which I keep because David likes them. I—”

  “Oh, don’t I know it. But let me tell you, whatever you’ve been working out on, the ExerFlexer 5000 will take it to the next level. We had the 3000 up until last year and I just couldn’t get any better, no matter how hard I tried. Now, I can’t keep David from trying to grope me every time I turn my back on him. I mean, look at this rear end,” she turned and put a hand on it, cocking her hip out. “That’s all ExerFlexer 5000, dear, and…”

  Beth faded into the background as Elizabeth thought about the insanity of the conversation she was having. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t challenged the woman on her ludicrous intrusion, but on the slight she’d made about her figure. She was actually taking part in this discussion with a video game character she’d met five minutes ago, one she’d made. And this was her favorite version of herself. But if the indignancy she’d felt at having her robe pulled open had been an electric jolt, being told she needed to workout had been like being struck by lightning. It had wiped away all the strangeness, brought her to familiar grounds, to conversations she had with herself every day. It made her feel the same as when David looked at her, so that when he was around she stood in a way she’d studied in the mirror for hours, one that showed no bulges, everything taut, breasts high and supple, ass jutting out, rounded by her flexing, just so that he didn’t have anything to settle that judgmental eye upon.

  “…but what this house needs to get to the next level is more charm. This gosh darn nouveau riche trash moves in with their endless, tacky mansion under endless, crass construction, and everyone is impressed. I mean, there’s a difference between having money and knowing how to spend it.”

  Elizabeth had been working on that house for months. She took a deep breath. She couldn’t keep getting lost in indignancy at the horrible things this horrible woman said, these things this perfect model of herself said, more perfect than perfect, these things that came out of that perfect mouth the same way they bounced around in her own brain. She took that deep breath and held it, let it out. She’d seen an episode about deep breathing on a daytime doctor show. It did clear her mind.

  She interrupted Beth. “I’m sorry, I still have no idea what this has to do with me or this dress.”

  “David is studying to make more money, but they seem to have endless amounts. What we have over them is reputation, and I think you were sent here to help us improve it. All you need to do is put on the dress and go to that mirror and practice your charm. That will open so many opportunities for us.” She looked down at the dress crumpled in Elizabeth’s hand. “You’ll need to iron that first.”

  The insanity of what this doppelganger was saying stunned Elizabeth for a long moment, because she looked like a real person. Until she put it in the context of her own game, the way she’d turned this version of herself into the ultimate upper class wife, made this family the best version of her own there could be, it didn’t make any sense. Then she remembered the hours she’d made Beth exercise, watching her stats rise. The hours she’d made her study topics of conversation. The hours she’d forced her to talk into the mirror, slowly inching up her Personality meter, which increased her abilities of Persuasion and Small Talk.

  Once she realized this, she shook her head, “No, I think you’re confused. I’m not going to live here. I just need a minute without that psycho hounding me to figure out what to do.”

  Beth nodded. “Albatross is terrible. That whole family is terrible. Do you know how hard we’ve had to fight to bring our property value back up since they’ve moved in? We put in all this work and money into improvements and it just brings us back to even. I swear The Eyes did this just to test us, to see if we really are the best family.”

  “So I just need some help, a place to stay until—”

  “Until you can afford to put a house on your own plot? That’s going to take awhile.”

  “No, I…” Elizabeth trailed off. She was about to again attempt an explanation of how she needed to get out of their simulated world and into her real one, when she looked at Beth’s face and saw that this creature simply wasn’t programmed to be able to understand that. It was beyond the limits of her comprehension. “Yes, that’s what I need. But it won’t take long, I promise.”

  Beth chuckled. “I like that ambition. I can see that we’re two of a kind in more than just appearance. But,” she pursed her lips, shook her head, raised an eyebrow, shrugged her shoulders, her Wards body language exaggerated to make speechless communication sensible to the player, “no freeloaders in this house. You’ll work on improving our reputation until you have enough money to get a place of your own.” She turned and started for the door.

  Elizabeth followed close behind, trying to find the words, the logic, to get out of this situation. She needed the safety of the house, but this was insane.

  Beth didn’t notice that Elizabeth was directly behind, following right on her heels, probably because Elizabeth was barefoot, but when she went to shut the door, Elizabeth grabbed it.

  “What is it?” Beth asked.

  Elizabeth was still searching for the words.

  “Do you want to leave?” Beth asked.

  “No, no I need to stay.”

  “And you need to put on some clothes.”

  Elizabeth nodded. That was true. She released the door and took a step back. “We’ll talk about this after I’m dressed.”

  “That sounds fair,” Beth said, stepping out into the hallway and shutting
the door behind her.

  But then there was a click, and then another, and Elizabeth remembered the locks.

  “Damn you! Let me out!”

  PART 9

  Back when she’d first started the game, Beth wasn’t the Ward she was now. She was impulsive and carefree, prone to doing wacky dances and taking naps when she should have been at social engagements. She belched after eating.

  It wouldn’t do. Elizabeth wanted this household to be like hers, but perfect. So she began a program of education and improvement for Beth. Exercise, study, meditation. The problem was that a Ward would only do something they didn’t enjoy for so long before becoming unhappy and rebelling. Beth, being so naturally impatient, had about ten minutes of study in her before she’d put the book back on the bookshelf and wander out to do whatever struck her as fun at that moment. At that rate, she’d still be a schlub in a year.

  So Elizabeth put locks on the outside of the door and instructed Dave to make her study. He wanted her to improve, too. He had the drive to move up the ladder at his business while maintaining a rather strict course of self-improvement at home in the evenings. His Ambition rating was just naturally high. He got frustrated with Beth’s hippy-dippy attitude, so it was easy to get him to lock her into her room with no television or magazines or bed, nothing to do but exercise, study and meditate. Once she’d raised her stats a bit, she would be let out.

  At first, when stubborn, she’d nearly starved herself to death. That let Elizabeth know that she had the willpower to improve herself if she wanted. The problem was that she was too ignorant to want to improve. Once she broke, once she began studying etiquette, speech, self-help, she changed. She focused that energy and will into climbing the social ladder.

  It had made Elizabeth feel guilty, having Dave lock her in to the room that in her own life was a safe haven. In her real life David was always trying to change her, to turn her into a trophy wife, to turn her into the idea of perfection of a person from a different generation. He hated hip hop. He hated Facebook and Instagram and selfies. He wanted her to read the news so that she could join into the conversation he had with other lawyers and their appropriately-aged wives, and he didn’t mean celebrity news.

  So she’d felt guilty having his doppelganger lock her doppelganger in for hours of study, because it’s exactly what he would have liked to do to her. But it was a game. She had no idea these things had real lives of their own, or that she’d fall into it one day.

  And yet she’d felt guilty even when it was just a game.

  Elizabeth grabbed the doorknob, twisted and pulled. The door didn’t open, of course. On autopilot she shouted and banged on the door. She knew it wouldn’t help. And it was justice, wasn’t it? She installed the damn locks herself. And it didn’t end there. She’d made Albatross the way he was. She’d given him reason to hate her.

  What happened when God found himself powerless amongst the suffering he’d created? What happened when the starving and the war-torn saw him for who he was?

  Beth didn’t come back to unlock the door and let Elizabeth out. She hadn’t been made that way. Besides, Elizabeth had never done that for her.

  So she turned to the room. She’d have to get herself out of the situation. This was a hell she’d created, and she couldn’t expect any help.

  Heading to the closet, she rummaged up something sensible to wear. She wouldn’t be escaping in high heels and a little black dress. She found a hiking outfit that had come in The Wards: Outdoor Adventures expansion pack and put it on, immediately feeling much more able to face the dangers ahead. Just putting on the heavy boots made her feel less vulnerable. She imagined kicking Albatross with them. She was strong. She exercised. In a flapping robe with nothing beneath, running had seemed the only answer. But she wasn’t a frail woman.

  Then she imagined the expression on Albatross’s face when he saw his mother fall from the tiny torture room that Elizabeth had kept her in for months in a state between life and death. That hate… Elizabeth had nothing that could compare to it, no source of strength like it. Could even her will to survive match what he must feel for her?

  The house was very quiet. She was safe—not happy with her situation, but safe. So the thoughts and images that had been queuing up in her subconscious began to file forward.

  That house. Davey, that poor man, made into a helpless child. Albatross, much, much smarter than his idiot parents, probably the cruelest torture of all. But then Betty…

  Elizabeth saw that sunken face, those eyes rolled to whites, she heard the scream coming from the distended mouth, ripped at the corners from expressing the endless torment, she saw the swarm of flies, smelled the stench, watched the woman crawl gratefully to the place on the floor where she could lay down and die. The bliss that must have been, to die…

  Elizabeth collapsed on the thick carpet, her head spinning, her stomach roiling. She closed her eyes and things only got worse as her memory came into extreme visual clarity, the poor woman stuck halfway over the wall, struggling towards death.

  Elizabeth vomited bile, having nothing in her. Unsatisfied with this, her stomach kept wringing itself like a mop, sending acid up her throat.

  She crawled to her attached bathroom. Unlike in her own, the beauty products were kept neatly in the cabinet and drawers, which was lucky, because she would have made a mess of them otherwise as she hoisted herself up, turned on the faucet and cupped water into her mouth. She spit out the first handfuls, then began swallowing the cool water, using it to push the acid back down into her stomach. She focused on keeping it down. She didn’t have time to lose her mind just then, and that’s what thinking about Betty would do. She needed her wits about her if she were to have any hope of escaping that place.

  Because she didn’t know if there were any way out at all, any way but death, and who knew what that would even mean with an actual Death taking people off to a dark realm filled with flies?

  Another whirlpool to lose her mind down. There was no point in thinking about that. Splashing cold water onto her face, Elizabeth tried to clear her mind of everything pressing in on her that only distracted, which was almost everything.

  She needed to escape this world, to get back to her own.

  The problem was that she didn’t know how she got to this world. She fell asleep in her own and woke up here.

  But something different had happened to her that day. She’d installed the hack and it seemed to wipe out her game. And then she’d fallen asleep beside her computer and woken up in the game.

  She’d thought the hack had destroyed her Wards world, but instead it had caused some sort of connection between the two, one that she’d fallen into somehow.

  Maybe she needed to go back to the torture house. She wiped her face on a lovely embroidered hand towel, then walked back into her dressing room. The hack had dumped her into the torture house for a reason. She dreaded the thought, but the only way forward she could see at that moment was to go back.

  She went to the window and opened it, looking down. The height wasn’t that intimidating. Beth probably hadn’t thought of securing it because a Ward couldn’t go through a window higher than the ground floor. They weren’t programmed to be able to. She’d found that out when she’d accidentally caught a house on fire by instructing a child to cook while her parent was upstairs. By the time the adult Ward realized the house was on fire, she couldn’t make it down the burning stairs.

  Unable to stop or change the scene, Elizabeth watched, gripping the desk so hard she’d had shoulder cramps for two days afterward. She waited for the fire department, who showed up far too late to do any good, and she literally shouted at the mother to jump out of the window.

  But the stupid Ward didn’t even consider it. She ran in smaller and smaller circles, panicking as the flames grew closer, until they touched her, covered her, and she fell down and eventually stopped moving.

  Death came, then, through its dark portal, proceeded by its army of flies. She’d n
ever seen Death before, didn’t know it was in the game. It seemed so dark and sinister compared to the happy, goofy tone of everything else. But the death by fire Elizabeth had just then witnessed had been anything but happy and goofy, so that was her first taste of another side to things that she hadn’t suspected, something below the surface, something that intrigued her, and that she went looking for soon after, despite the guilt she felt over the horrific demise of this person she was supposed to take care of.

  Elizabeth shook her head. She didn’t have time to obsess over this again. She needed to get back to the torture house, to try to find some clue as to how she got there and how she could get back.

  Going to the closet, she began tossing clothing out. She looked for anything long and sturdy, passing over the skimpy outfits she’d bought her Ward that had helped make her marriage to Dave so much more successful than her own to the real David.

  As she tied together knit scarves and sweaters arm-to-arm, she thought about how that woman out there was so much more successful than herself. Elizabeth had attempted to recreate her own life, but perfect, and she’d basically succeeded. Beth had a perfect body, a perfect husband, an upwardly mobile household… She had the energy and will to spend every moment of every day polishing her life to a high shine. Everything was an opportunity to better it, even a stranger crashing through the front door with a serial killer chasing close behind.

  Beth should have been everything Elizabeth wanted to be. When she was playing the game, she was. When she was ordering the Ward around, she felt pride in her perfection, even. Now, meeting the autonomous creature on the other side of the screen, she felt a strange mix of emotions she couldn’t completely figure out. She felt envy. She recognized that right away, because it was so common for her, whether she was watching people house hunting for tropical vacation homes on HGTV or watching a woman’s children get doted over by a waitress at a restaurant.