In the City, 396 days after a wizard cursed the REALM…
Current Version:
Lightning flashed. The rain lashed down relentlessly outside, while within the rooming house a steady drip-drip-drip filled every pan, pail, and cup that could be placed beneath the leaky ceiling of the shared living space.
“It never used to rain this hard back in Wordler Village,” said one of the tenants, a gruff older gentleman named Ted. He was stubbornly perusing a waterlogged newspaper from two days before, with a front-page headline that read, “Marketplace in chaos, Mayor blames Villager immigrants.”
“If this rain keeps up much longer, I just might go back,” said Olivia, who was darning socks with a needle and thread.
“Maybe the packs of wild animals have moved on by now,” Jennifer suggested. “Maybe the earth has stopped shaking. Maybe all the fires have gone out.”
“Maybe the curse is over,” said Tori, a younger woman who sat by the hearth, preparing a meal of gruel-with-meat-bits.
“Don’t mention the curse,” the other four tenants chorused.
“Wait, we all just mentioned the curse,” said Larry. “Aaah! I mentioned the curse again! And now I did it again!”
Tori scoffed. “What, we can’t even talk about it?”
“I heard that if you say skeleton-you-know-who’s name three times, she appears,” said Ted.
“I heard that she follows you at a walking pace and, no matter how fast you run, she always catches up!” said Jennifer.
“I heard that she has the ability to enter your dreams and kill you in a nightmare!” said Olivia.
Tori rolled her eyes. “These are all the same stories my mom told us when I was a kid, only back then it was about the boogeyman who lived in my closet.”
“I had one of those under my bed,” said Larry. “True story.”
“No,” said Tori, “it’s not. It’s the same old story that gets recycled again and again, and now it’s being applied to Wordler 388.”
“Don’t say her name,” the other four tenants chorused.
“I’ll say her name if I want to. I’ll even say it three times, to prove how silly these superstitions are. Wordler 388, Wordler 388, Wordler—”
Larry was staring at Tori with his jaw dropped open. Olivia was scratching at her face, leaving deep gouges with her nails. Ted held the newspaper over his head with his hands clenched against his ears. Jennifer was spinning in place while reciting a prayer of protection.
“388.”
Lightning flashed. Water dripped into the pans, bowls, and cups. Something in the basement made a thumping sound.
“That…was probably nothing,” said Tori. “But if there’s a chance that someone’s down there, we should call the authorities.”
“Or we should check it out ourselves,” Ted suggested.
“Let’s split up and go down there one at a time,” said Olivia.
“We could draw straws to see who goes first,” said Larry.
Tori frowned. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Of course we’re kidding,” said Jennifer. “You said the name, so you’re the one who gets to check it out. The rest of us will stay up here and prepare to run in terror out into the rain where we’re likely to get picked off, one by one, in increasingly gruesome ways.” The others nodded and congratulated Jennifer on her ingenious plan.
“Okay, whatever.” Tori grabbed a lantern and descended the rickety staircase, through the cobwebs in the hallway, scattering rats as she went.
Thump-thump-thump!
The sound was louder now, coming from a room on the right side of the hallway. It was one of the tenant bedrooms. Her own.
“I’m coming in,” Tori called. “There better not be anyone in there because I’m not as small and weak as I sound. I’m actually quite muscular, and I know karate, and the tremble in my voice is how I control the dogs I’ve definitely got with me. Heel, Bruiser, heel!”
Thump-thump-thump!
Tori opened the door. The room was empty.
“It must have been the wind,” she rationalized. “The underground wind that blows through basement rooms all the time. Or—” She contemplated the closed closet door.
Tori crossed the room. She put her hand on the doorknob. She opened the closet.
“Boogah-boogah-boogah!” shouted a flaming skeleton in tattered clothes. “I dub thee Wordler 396!”
“Well, that was predictable,” Tori stated. Then she screamed, as a man popped out from under her bed.
“Word Wizard?” asked the flaming skeleton, who seemed equally surprised.
The wizard stood and smoothed out his robes. “Wordler 388, we need to talk about your job performance. How do you think it’s going so far?”
“I hate my job and I’m not very good at it,” the skeleton confessed.
“And why is that?” the wizard asked.
388 shrugged her shoulder bones. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re too predictable,” Tori suggested. “This whole basement scene is a worn-out cliché. It’s a stale horror trope. It’s been done so many times that it’s no longer scary, or even all that interesting. ‘Boogah-boogah-boogah?’ What even was that?”
“A classic catchphrase?” 388 suggested.
“It sounds like you’re talking about boogers. About snot. There’s nothing scary about picking your nose, is there?”
388 tapped a finger-bone against the front of her skull.
“That’s not scary,” said Tori. “That’s just sad.”
“You have such a fresh take on this all,” the Word Wizard told Tori. “If you fail today’s puzzle, maybe you’ll actually enjoy your tormented existence as an undead hunter of your former friends and countrymen.”
“Maybe,” Tori agreed.
Web3 Draft:
- Listed on OpenSea
- Listed on Rarible
- Pinned to IPFS
Revision Notes:
To be added.
