Devil in the Deep Blue Sea

by A. J. Markam

  HAHAHAHAHAHA!

  The Jesus freaks had accidentally recruited an NPC who had no idea what the fuck was going on, by oh-so-ethically plying him with alcohol, all because they thought he had a ‘boss’ who worked at Westek.

  I mean, I guess I did work at Westek, but I wasn’t that kind of boss. Not to Stig.

  Of course, the protestors didn’t know that.

  Hell, they didn’t even know that Stig wasn’t real.

  I laughed until I cried.

  “What’s so funny?” Alaria asked.

  I finally simmered down and wiped a tear from my eye. “Nothing. I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier, dude – I’m glad you took them for as much booze as you could.”

  “…you are?” Stig asked, perplexed.

  “Absolutely.”

  “So I can keep telling them stuff? So I can get booze?”

  “Sure, just tell them that – ”

  I stopped mid-sentence as a jumble of voices rushed through my brain at once.

  Satish’s.

  Desmond’s.

  My own.

  Think outside the box.

  Look at ALL your resources… utilize ALL your options.

  James Tiberius Kirk that shit.

  Didn’t Kirk actually do the Kobayashi Maru simulation three times? He lost the first two times… but he reprogrammed the computer before the third, right?

  Kraken…

  Nymphs and Nagas…

  Third time’s the charm.

  “Holy shit, that’s it,” I murmured.

  “What?” Alaria asked.

  I stood up quickly. “You know how I space out sometimes?”

  I meant when I logged out of the game and returned to the real world.

  “YES,” both she and Stig said in exasperation.

  “Well, I kind of… go into a trance, or a spirit world, or… it doesn’t matter. When I was there this last time, though, I met one of the leaders of the protestors. She’s the one who told me about Stig.”

  “So?” Alaria asked.

  “So they think Stig’s a spy and that he’s giving them valuable information.”

  Alaria looked down at Stig. “Really?”

  Stig just shrugged. “I just want booze.”

  Alaria burst out laughing.

  “A-hahahahahaha! Okay, that is pretty funny… but what does that have to do with you?” she asked me.

  “They think they can turn me, too. So I’m going to double-cross them and get them to help me kill Zali.”

  “Ohhhhhhhhhh… nice! Will they?”

  “I think I can convince them. There’s, uh… there’s just one little problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The girl who tried to recruit me…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think she’s trying to seduce me.”

  Alaria looked at me blankly.

  “I mean,” I said hurriedly, “it’s not like I would sleep with her or anything – ”

  “Why not?” Alaria asked, mystified.

  I stared at her in shock. “Because you and I are in a relationship.”

  “WHOA, WHOA, hold on,” she said, waving her hands in the air. “I get to sleep with any women I want – just no guys. That’s the agreement.”

  “I know that.”

  “So you can sleep with whoever you want to on the side, too.”

  “…but… that just feels weird…”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t care?”

  “What do I care if you hit some other chick?”

  I winced. “It’s ‘hit THAT.’”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you… just don’t say that anymore, okay?”

  “It’s an expression,” Stig said mockingly.

  “It’s the WRONG expression. Please stop saying it.”

  Alaria huffed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll redo it for Mr. Sensitive: ‘What do I care if you sleep with some other girl?’”

  “Don’t you… aren’t you… I don’t know… a little jealous?”

  Alaria snorted. “About what? I know she can’t compete with me in bed.”

  Alaria’s confidence was extraordinary.

  And extraordinarily well-founded.

  “That’s true,” I admitted.

  “Go on, have some fun,” she said, then leaned over and purred in my ear, “As long as you tell me allll about it afterwards.”

  No matter how weird the whole situation made me feel, I started to get a boner.

  “I don’t think it’s going to happen, anyway,” I said hastily.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s a Jesus freak.”

  Alaria frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It means she’s all about Jesus.”

  “Ohhhhh,” Alaria said knowingly. “She wants to fuck Jesus.”

  “What?! NO!”

  “Yes she does,” Stig snickered. “It’s an expression.”

  “WHAT?! No it’s NOT!”

  “Yes it is,” Alaria protested.

  “WHAT is?!”

  “‘Jesus Fucking Christ.’ You say it a lot,” Alaria pointed out.

  “Yeah, boss,” Stig agreed.

  “It’s a CURSE, not an expression!” I shouted.

  Alaria shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “It does NOT mean – ”

  “That he’s great in bed?” Alaria interrupted. “Your little spy friend thinks so.”

  “Jesus never slept with anybody! He died a virgin!”

  “He did?”

  “Yes!”

  Well, unless you believed The DaVinci Code.

  “What a waste,” Alaria sighed. Then she got a mischievous look in her eye. “Of course, that’s what all the gods say… that they’re chaste, and pious, and pure… but you can be sure they’ve got some virgin on the side they’re impregnating with a Chosen One.”

  I’d never heard the Virgin Mary described that way, but… Alaria kind of had a point.

  “Hump bug, hump bug, hump bug,” Stig chanted as he scooted around humping the air.

  “STOP THAT!” I shouted.

  “Didn’t you say this Jesus is a god incarnate?” Alaria asked as she raised one eyebrow. “Might be a god in bed, too.”

  “STOP IT!” I roared.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop talking about Jesus like that!”

  “Why? I’m sure he’s god-like in other ways, if you know what I mean. No male deity ever wants to hear, ‘See that guy over there? He’s got one WAY bigger than yours.’”

  “STOP IT!”

  I did not want to think about Jesus’s dong. EVER.

  “Doesn’t he wear a robe?” Alaria asked. “Probably has to in order to hide all that godly endowment.”

  “Hump bug, hump bug, hump bug,” Stig chanted.

  “CUT IT OUT!” I roared, then unthinkingly cursed, “Jesus fucking – ”

  “SEE?!” Alaria and Stig both shouted gleefully.

  At that point I just logged out.

  There are certain discussions I don’t want to have in life, and anything involving Jesus’s junk is one of them.

  Unfortunately, I was about to go into another conversation that was potentially even worse.

  45

  After I logged out of OtherWorld, I slogged back through the protestors on my way to O’Shaughnessy’s.

  As I pushed past the Chick tracts getting pushed in my face and all the people screaming at me to repent, I wanted to shout, Hey, guys, didn’t you get the memo? I’m on YOUR side now!

  Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

  Cue mustache twirling.

  I found Carrie still waiting in the booth, her beer stein almost empty. My beer was sitting across from her next to a plate of untouched sliders and the change from my twenty.

  As soon as I walked up, Carrie looked at me expectantly, her cheeks rosy and flushed.

  I was also pretty sure she’d undone a few more buttons on her blouse. Although I still
couldn’t see anything.

  “I’m in,” I said.

  I sold her a load of crap about how I knew who ‘Stig’ was in real life.

  I told her all about our conversations regarding Westek’s slide into immorality. (Hahahaha… I don’t know how I kept a straight face during that.)

  I told her that Stig hadn’t told me he’d made contact with the protestors, which was why I’d been so surprised. (And spit beer in her face.)

  Of course, now that I’d confirmed everything with Undercover Agent Stig, I was ready to join The Cause. And I knew exactly what the next step should be.

  “There’s a city in the game called Fathmos, and inside it is a sculpture garden so…”

  I struggled to find the words she would find most repugnant.

  “…sexual, and perverted, and vile, that I really think we need to get all your friends together and destroy it.”

  “…s-sexual?” she asked.

  I could have sworn that her lower lip quivered.

  Not exactly the reaction I was going for.

  “Uhhh… yeah. WAY too sexual.”

  “Do we… do we have to destroy it?” she asked, as though the thought distressed her.

  “Well, it’s full of sculptures of perverted sexual fantasies.”

  She stared at me and licked her lips. “What… what kind of sexual fantasies?”

  This was not going how I’d thought it would.

  “Uh… a lot of bondage…”

  She started breathing harder. “Uh huh?”

  “People tied up…”

  “Yes?” she asked breathily.

  Shit.

  I tried a different tack.

  “And lots of group sex,” I said.

  Swear to God, her modestly covered bosom started to heave.

  “They’re… naked?” she whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Lots of women with one man, or…?”

  “Everything. One woman with a lot of men – ”

  A high-pitched little eep escaped her throat.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she squeaked, and chugged the rest of her beer. “You were saying?”

  “Look, it’s just perverted sex everywhere you look. Fathmos should be leveled to the ground – and we should kill the video game character who made it all.”

  “Uh huh…” she said, her eyes staring right into mine. “Well, as long as there’s not gay stuff, maybe we don’t have to – ”

  “What?” I interrupted.

  “Gay stuff,” she said. “You know – gay stuff.”

  “You mean like… guys doing it?”

  “Yes.” She visibly shuddered. “As long as there’s nothing like that – ”

  “There’s TONS of gay stuff.”

  Her eyes almost bugged out of her head.

  “Oh. Well, then, it HAS to be destroyed,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Um… why, exactly?”

  She looked at me like I was insane. “Because it’s promoting the homosexual agenda.”

  “…what’s the homosexual agenda, exactly?”

  I was thinking matching dress socks and pocket squares. Maybe good grooming,

  “GAY stuff,” she snapped. “It’s an abomination unto the Lord.”

  “Riiiiight… but why is gay sex any worse than group sex?”

  She expelled an indignant little huff of air. “Does Sodom and Gomorrah ring a bell? God destroyed it because it was gay, Ian. We have to follow His example.”

  “Riiiiiight… but just a second ago, you were kind of turned on by one woman with several guys, and that’s sorta kinda gay, isn’t – ”

  “NO I WASN’T,” she snarled.

  A long silence followed as I stared at her and she glared at me.

  O-kaaaaaay…

  I found myself at an interesting crossroads.

  I don’t like even glancing at gay porn. Midget porn is worse, but gay porn definitely has a very high squick factor for me.

  Which is kind of ironic, because if you’re watching straight porn, there’s schlongs all over the place.

  But, hey – vaginas have the ability to cancel that shit out and make what would otherwise potentially be gay become magically straight! Right?

  That was facetious, by the way.

  But… also sort of what I actually believe. I think.

  Let’s not go into it too much. I’m getting uncomfortable.

  On the other hand, even though I find it gross, I’m perfectly willing to concede that other people love gay porn, and they should be allowed to watch it. I just don’t want to.

  (Well, dude gay porn. I love me some lesbian porn. As long as they’re hot.)

  And yet, here I was, figuratively in bed with someone else who hated gay porn.

  But in my opinion, she was a bigot and an asshole.

  Me?

  Oh, I’m not a bigot. I just don’t like gay porn. Cuz, you know… GROSS.

  Anyway, it was all kind of unsettling.

  Especially since I was preying on Carrie’s prejudices to get my own way.

  So… did that make me worse than her in a convoluted sort of way?

  I didn’t really want to pursue that one too far. Ethics are a bitch.

  You know what?

  FUCK ethics.

  I had a goddamn hatchetfish to kill.

  “Alright, we should totally destroy Fathmos,” I said, “but I think we should get out of here. We’re too close to Westek, and I’m afraid other people I know might come in.”

  “Which could compromise both you and Stig,” she said, very seriously.

  “Yyyyyyeah. Something like that.”

  In actuality, I just didn’t want my coworkers seeing me hanging out with a religious nut job.

  Carrie stood up. “I know somewhere we can to talk in private.”

  “About destroying Fathmos?”

  “That…” She started breathing heavily again. “…and the sexual… perversions.”

  “Just to clarify… you mean the non-gay sexual perversions, right?”

  That snapped her out of it.

  “O-of course,” she said, flustered.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  I grabbed my change, snagged two of the cheeseburger sliders to eat on the way, and followed her out of the pub.

  46

  “Well, this is it,” Carrie said as she opened her front door and clicked on the light.

  I looked around to see a nice studio apartment. Clean, prettily decorated, with a color scheme on the feminine side of things.

  And some framed Bible verses on the wall.

  OF COURSE there are.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked as she closed the apartment door and went over to the fridge.

  “Sure, I’ll take a beer.”

  “Oh… I don’t have any alcohol,” she said apologetically.

  Well, fuck.

  Now I knew what Stig felt like all the time.

  She giggled as she grabbed the top of her blouse and pulled it in and out to cool herself. “In fact, I never drink, so that last beer really went to my head!”

  I watched her fanning herself by moving her blouse, which had the benefit of outlining her small but shapely breasts.

  I had an Irish friend named Rory who once told me a story about a date he had in high school. He moved to the US when he was 14, so he still kept his accent. Try to imagine the lilt in his voice as I paraphrase what he said.

  So I took this girl out and we decided to go ice skatin’. An’ she wore this little skirt, and she kept fallin’ down. She finally got back up and brushed off her rear end and said, ‘Now my fanny’s all wet.’

  Now the thing you hafta understand is that back in Ireland, ‘fanny’ is slang for a woman’s you-know-what.

  So when she starts sayin’, ‘My fanny’s all wet,’ I’m thinkin’, ‘Is she tryin’ ta tell me somethin’?

  As I stood there watching Carrie giggle and fan herself by
pulling her blouse in and out, all I could hear was Rory’s voice:

  Is she tryin’ ta tell me somethin’?

  I knew I had Alaria’s permission, but… something about this still felt wrong.

  You know, besides the fact that I was lying to Carrie to get her to complete a quest for me.

  Before I could get sucked back into Ethics 101, though, Carrie interrupted my train of thought.

  “Who’s responsible for all of this sick, perverted stuff you mentioned earlier?” she asked.

  “A warlock named Zali.”

  She stared at me. “A warlock? As in a male witch?!”

  “Well, it’s not exactly the same thing – I mean, it’s a playable Class, like a Warrior or a Hunter. It’s just that their main power is to summon demons.”

  Carrie’s eyes almost bugged out of her head. “HE SUMMONS DEMONS?!”

  “Uh… yeah.”

  I didn’t think it wise to mention that I was a warlock, too.

  She shook her head in utter disbelief. “I am so glad I talked to you, Ian. This whole thing is a complete abomination.”

  “Actually, a guy I know thinks the JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek was an abomination,” I joked. “Because of lens flares.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  Probably not the time, Ian.

  Or the appropriate audience.

  “Uh… never mind.”

  She shook her head again. “I can’t believe this even exists in a video game for children.”

  I frowned. “It’s not meant for children.”

  “They can still play it. I mean, seriously… warlocks?!”

  “Well, technically, Harry Potter was a warlock, too.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Which is why those books deserve to be burned.”

  Whoa –

  “Wait, what?”

  “I’m going to have a Coke,” she said, opening the fridge. “You want one?”

  “…uh… sure…”

  I sat down on her couch and waited until she came over and gave me a can.

  And then sat unnervingly close to me.

  “So…” I said. “About that book burning stuff…”

  She either ignored me or didn’t hear me. “I’m pretty sure I can get 6000 people to show up at Fathmos.”

  I stared at her. “Six thousand?!”

  “Is that not enough? I could probably get more if you give me a couple of days.”

  “No, 6000 should be fine…”

  The nymph army had been about 2000 warriors. The Nagas, probably about the same.