Part 1: Character Creation / Chapter 2

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  With the exception of my recent dream, I hadn’t seen Nancy’s mother since she’d summed up my shortcomings all those years ago.

  So she was the last person I’d expect to find standing in my doorway after a bloody cage match with three possessed Cutie Pants dolls. But here we were.

  Impossibly, she hadn’t aged a day in the last decade. She was still slim and trim. Her hair was still as blond as could be. And she didn’t seem to have a single new wrinkle. But all of that was trumped by the fact that she was wearing the exact same canary yellow pant suit she’d been wearing the night she’d character-assassinated me at dinner. It appeared as though she’d come directly from that dinner to my door.

  She stared at me for a moment, then spoke up in her jauntily condescending British accent.

  “You’re not quite as fat as I remember.”

  Again, this was all impossible, so I was sure none of it was happening. But what seemed to be happening was Nancy’s mom was shoving past me to walk into my condo after greeting me with a backhanded insult.

  I thought about warning her to watch her step, in light of the slippery mess of doll blood and guts. But I was still pretty disoriented. And, everything else aside, maybe part of me thought it would be cool to see her uppity ass sprawled on my kitchenette floor, slathered in doll entrails.

  Regrettably, she tiptoed through the mess without incident, and looked at me appraisingly.

  “What did they take off you?” she asked judgmentally. “I’d wager three points? Four points?”

  “What?” I responded.

  She didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. After a second, I realized that despite my best efforts, I had fallen to four-thirteenths dead during the finale of my battle royal. But how did she know anything about that? Hell, how did I know anything about it? On the upside, as those questions nagged at me, I sensed my life force rebounding, one-thirteenth at a time.

  “Regardless, I suppose a begrudging congratulations is in order,” Nancy’s mom said as she leaned down to inspect one of the doll corpses more closely.

  “What are you talking about?” I cried. “How are you even here? And what is happening to me? Have I been hit by a mac truck? Am I lying in a coma in the hospital dreaming all of this? And if so, why in God’s name would I conjur you up?”

  “You’ve encountered your first quest objective, you dimwit—apparently fumbling your way to what passes as a victory.”

  “Huh?”

  “And now I’m here to see to your rewards, such as they are.”

  “You’re here to . . . ” I started, then switched tacks. “Here from where?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “You don’t know where you came from?”

  “I just work here.”

  “Work where?”

  “I forget.”

  “What . . . why . . . what?” was all I could muster.

  “Still a fat nerd, prone to hysterics,” she said, shaking her head at my incoherence. “Nancy really dodged a bullet.”

  “I’m not prone to hysterics!” I yelled. “And I’m not fat. And I wasn’t when I was sixteen either! I was husky!”

  “Ah yes, your bold play for Nancy’s heart. ‘I’m not fat, I’m husky.’ What a hill to die on.”

  “Screw you, you Stepford harpy,” I growled.

  “Up yours, nerd,” she shot back.

  This was ridiculous. Despite the surreal circumstances, I felt the nagging trauma of my adolescence flaring up. The marginally successful, not-fat-or-even-husky adult I’d grown into was forgotten and all the insecurities of my dumpy, self-loathing teenage self came flooding back.

  But you know what? Whatever else was happening in my dream or coma or who-knows-what, I thought it was time I put this shrew in her place.

  “You know, Nancy could have done worse,” I said. “I turned out okay.”

  Nancy’s mom looked around my place and made a face.

  “Yes, you’ve really arrived.”

  “Hey, maybe it’s a studio, but it’s a roomy studio.”

  I pointed at the bed and said, “That’s a California King.”

  “Ah, a bed fit for royalty,” she quipped.

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  “And that TV?” I said, pointing to my flat screen. “I got that new. From a store.”

  “Wow, a store.”

  “I mean I didn’t get it second hand. Whatever—I’m doing pretty well. I’m a contributing member of society, with a steady job.”

  “Really?” she said, her voice dripping with doubt. “What kind of job?”

  “At a respected ad agency.”

  “Respected ad agency,” she repeated. “A bit of an oxymoron, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’re an oxymoron,” I replied, ingeniously. “The point is, I’m a capable adult who can handle whatever life throws at me.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Hey, I beat up all these dolls,” I pointed out, gesturing to the corpses.

  “Barely.”

  “One of them had a knife!” I shrieked, defending the magnitude of my feat. “Which, by the way, why did one of them have a knife?”

  “To stab you,” she answered with a look that added, “Duh.”

  “I know to stab me!” I yelled. “But why would a doll want to stab me?”

  “Who wouldn’t want to stab you?” she quipped. “You’re so whiny.”

  “I hate you,” I said.

  “Ouch. You’ve cut me to the quick,” she replied sarcastically. “It’ll be a long, tearful diary entry tonight.”

  I just stood there, fuming. I didn’t know if I was angrier about the lack of answers regarding the nonsensical reality into which I’d veered, or the old wounds this pant-suited wretch had re-opened.

  She sighed and said, “Well, no sense dragging this out.”

  Then she froze in place and started vibrating.

  “What now?” I cried.

  She didn’t answer. She just stood there shaking, until a white slip of paper began to emerge jerkily from her mouth, accompanied by a subtle mechanical grinding sound. It reminded me of a receipt being printed from a cash register.

  “What the crap?” I exclaimed.

  Everything up to this point had been weird, but this was a new breed of weird. People did not print stuff out of their mouths.

  There was a pause as she reached up and tore the slip free, just in time for a second slip to begin emerging. A moment later, she ripped that one off and I went on staring in baffled disbelief as she repeated the process for a third slip. Finally, the paper stopped flowing and she stopped vibrating. She gave me a quizzical glare that said, “What?”

  Then she tossed the three slips of paper in my general direction with a flourish of disdain. As they fluttered down to the floor, she turned on her heel and strode toward the door. For a moment, I was too paralyzed with incredulity to react. But I tried to snap myself out of it.

  “What just happened?” I croaked after her. “And where are you going?”

  “Oblivion, I reckon,” she answered as she swung the door open. “I may not recall exactly what I’m doing here, but what does it matter? It’ll all be over in a snap. Unless you step up your game. And, you know, fat chance.”

  She leaned on the word “fat” to emphasize the double entendre that dredged up my teenage insecurities because she was horrible. Then she walked out into the hall, swinging the door shut behind her.

  “Wait a minute!” I yelled. I rushed over, yanked the door back open, and lunged out into the hallway. But she was gone—vanished. There was no way she could’ve cleared the hallway before I’d gotten out there. There was absolutely no explanation for where she’d gone.

  But I was getting used to that sort of thing.

  ###

  As I re-entered my condo, my eyes fell to the three slips of paper scattered across the floor. It was fair to assume they were laced with the Wicked Witch of the West’s saliva, which would undoubtedly melt my flesh on contact. But my curiosity got the better of me. I picked one up and found “100 XP” printed neatly on it in eight-point type. Picking up the other two, I found them to be identical to the first. Then as I frowned, trying to make sense of it, the burning sensation hit me. Was Nancy’s mom’s saliva actually melting my fingers? No. The pain wasn’t in my fingers. It was in my wrist, traveling up toward my bicep. I yanked back my left-hand pajama sleeve to find a blue-hued tattoo appearing on my inner forearm. It was a tiny grid of information.

  In the upper quadrant, there was something resembling a fuel gauge labeled Life-O-Meter. I intuited that this was the measure of my life force I’d been sensing. (It seemed to have been augmented by two points and now topped out at fifteen.)

  Below that on the left, there was a section titled Inventory, with just one entry: Doll Pelts (3). To the right there was a list of statistics still appearing, as if they were being written by an invisible needle. Many of the stats looked like thinly veiled retreads of standard role-playing game stats?there was a Muscles stat at eight, a Skin Thickness stat at ten, etc. But others seemed like absolute nonsense. One entry read, Girlfriend: You wish. Another read simply, Backfat: Tons.

  What the hell?

  I winced as I saw the last two entries materialize. Skills: none. Abilities: none. Seriously? Maybe I wasn’t the most accomplished guy, but this still seemed like a pretty harsh appraisal.

  The pain in my left arm had barely subsided when I felt the same burning sensation in my right. Yanking up that sleeve, I saw a progress bar, indicating that I was between levels 1 and 2. Below that, a section titled Quest Summary appeared, containing a series of eight-digit serial numbers. The topmost number was 22070058 and a phrase appeared beside it: “Baby doll brawl.” A second after its appearance, the phrase was crossed out, like an item on a grocery list.

  Apparently, the Baby Doll Brawl quest was complete. Also, a ghost was writing gibberish on my person. I’d definitely been in some horrific accident and I was lying in the hospital with half my body turned to hamburger, hiding in a coma-induced fantasy world. But no. In real life, you don’t know you’re in a coma when you’re in a coma. And the fidelity and detail of my surroundings was far too high for this to be any kind of dream. That settled it. I was hallucinating. It was a brain tumor. Or an aneurysm. A bad scene for sure. But not as bad as the only other possibility I could think of, which was I was trapped in some sort of hyper-real game, which was harvesting the fears and insecurities of my past to torment me with the likes of Nancy Cameron’s mother.

  As I continued to stare down at the rubbish now emblazoned on my arms, I realized that some of the entries that seemed to have no sensible meaning may actually be important. Granted, some were definitely just inexplicable, gratuitous shots at my self-esteem. Case in point, “Virgin: until 23 . . . pathetic.” That definitely didn’t seem like a trait with a whole lot of utility. But there were borderline entries, like “Noogie Resistance: moderate” that just might have some value. Of course, my only frame of reference was the vestigial remains of my teenage gaming phase. And it didn’t help that even at my gaming peak, I’d been a slow study. I’d usually just worked with what I understood prima facie and hoped the rest didn’t matter too much. Alas, I was usually wrong. That’s probably why my Book Smarts stat was sitting at a mere three. Yeah. I was losing my mind, but in a way that reminded me that I was dumb.

  As the full weight of my predicament settled on me, I started to feel a little dizzy.

  Then the phone rang.

  I picked it up to hear my sister’s voice.

  “Henry? Henry, we’re at the ER again.”

  Crap. I’d felt a brief flush of relief at the familiar voice signifying that my existence had retained some of the world I knew. But that relief was immediately annihilated by the pained acceptance that a big part of the world I knew sucked. My nephew was still sick.