Before she burst into Athena's apartment and shot Tanya with a crossbow, Vanessa entered her own room with trepidation. She wasn't sure if someone inside wanted to hurt her or if Simon had gone feral and would tear out her throat as soon as she opened the door. Since seeing Rusted Blood on Steam, she wouldn't doubt any twist of fate, no matter how cruel or unbelievable. Reality was fractured. Rules she used to take for granted no longer applied. The hooded monstrosities from that abandoned amusement park could have somehow gotten into her room. Her sweet chocolate Labrador could decide to kill her. Nothing was off limits.
The door swung inward, and she braced. Every muscle in her body tensed like so many wires pulled tight by powerful hands. Her blood throbbed between her ears. She held her breath, but not by choice.
Simon stood on her bed, staring at her laptop and baring his teeth. His eyes were animalistic, nearly rabid, unrecognizable to Vanessa, who had loved this pup the past few months, loved him and given him a home. He didn't look at her when she came in. He only glared at the computer. His growls vibrated through her, nauseating her and making her adrenaline thrum. She felt like she was on a rattly roller coaster.
The laptop was closed, but in the space between its lid and base, something glowed a late-nineties neon green. The light started on one hinge and traveled to the other, making a sound like a deep pulse before going dark and quiet for a beat. Then it pulsed and glowed again.
Vanessa stared at the scene before her. Her dog hadn't taken his eyes from the computer. He hadn't stopped growling.
"It's okay, boy," she said, not sure if it was. She crossed the room, nearly on autopilot. Every instinct told her to stop this but the one that propelled her forward. "It's okay."
She patted Simon on the head and gave him a scratch behind the ears. He kept his gaze locked on the computer but stopped growling. Instead, he whined, doubting her reassurances, and perhaps sensing that she doubted them too. Nevertheless, she opened the laptop.
A new icon blinked on her desktop. It was captioned Restless Void and showed an image of space, split by lines of static. The icon blinked, flashing neon green. The static lines on the image danced like scribble lines drawn by an unseen pen.
Vanessa reached for her mousepad, and Simon whined. She moved the cursor to hover over the icon. Simon began growling again. She ignored his protests and clicked the icon. The image of the yawning void filled her screen. The occasional stars were scattered and distant. Lines of static sliced the image and flashed neon green. It moved in sync with a piece of music, a subtle, vintage-sounding synth bass that played a single note over and over like a cyborg heartbeat. Simon stumbled backwards off the bed and let loose another vicious round of barks. She swore they almost sounded human.
Close the fucking laptop, Vanessa!
Throw it out the window!
The brightness died and the static faded. The outer space image restored itself undisturbed. She stared at it, waiting for it to do something. The music remained, hypnotic and throbbing. After nearly half a minute, a gaming menu materialized, but it didn't pose the usual options. It offered no new game, no game to load, and no exit. Instead, it asked, Save HazyGurl? Y or N.
Simon was whining again. He'd backed himself against the opposite wall. Vanessa looked at him, tried to convey without words that she needed to do this. It was her one chance to make amends for leaving Hannah behind, to cure her survivor's guilt. She pressed Y.
At first, nothing happened. The screen appeared to freeze. The menu's question remained, giving her the illusion that she could still change her mind. Fed up and sure she'd made a huge mistake—like opening a program that randomly showed up on her computer—she grabbed the lid of her laptop and prepared to close it. Before she could, her screen went black. It was plugged in, so it wasn't the battery.
Probably got a weird virus.
She crossed the room to pet Simon, hoping to once again remind herself that she was real, and the screen exploded back to life. Brilliant green light flared from the monitor, bathing the entire room. With it came a sonic burst that was part distorted guitar chord and part bloodcurdling scream. Simon yapped once more, then turned tail and ran out the door. Vanessa covered her ears and braced herself against the wall.
The light had substance. She could feel it on her skin like cold sweat. The blast of sound continued at a steady beat, assaulting her ears and churning through her internal organs. Looking down at herself revealed the true horror of the moment: she was breaking apart. Flesh became pixel. The walls of her room cracked with purple lightning before glitching completely, spilling the disintegrated pieces of her soul into the restless void.
She fell from that primordial blackness. As her pieces reintegrated, she felt tingly, as if from an intense body high. She fully came together and found she'd landed somewhere cold and slimy. Her limbs moved in slow motion. Somehow, she could breathe. Mercifully, memories of that non-empty emptiness with all its colorless colors and shapeless shapes faded like images from a bad dream. The ooze contained her like a chrysalis. Beyond its edges, she could see the blurred impressions of what looked like someone's bathroom.
She swam toward the barrier and wondered if this was what being born was like. The more she writhed and kicked, she remembered fighting free from that sinking vehicle while that father-thing tried to drag her into the black depths of Avalon Lake. How much of what she remembered had truly happened? How much was simply what others wanted her to see? None of that mattered now. Getting out of this cold slime mattered more than anything. She could figure out the next step once she got free.
As she strained, breathing grew more difficult. It was as if this ooze knew she wanted out and planned to kill her before she could escape. It hardened around her. Her flailing gave her less and less purchase the more time passed. This was how she would die. Not disintegrated in the vacuum of space. Not chewed apart by rats in an abandoned amusement park. Not pulled under a lake by a monster wearing her father's face. Instead, she would simply suffocate in this foul slime.
She couldn't let it happen. HazyGurl needed her. Not just that, she owed it to herself to do something heroic. Her feet found one of the more hardened portions of this hateful uterus. With a scream, she expelled the last of her breath and kicked away from the drying goop. The force sent her diving through the gelatinous casing and spilling onto a cool tile floor. She hit hard and cried out as the pain rocked her body.
She gasped for breath and glanced around to get some sense of her surroundings. She didn't recognize this room at all. To her horror, she found she was naked. Behind her, in the tub, the ooze from which she'd emerged bubbled and belched.
"Tanya," a woman called from another room. "Is that you? I thought you went to the hospital."
Tanya? Who's … Oh. HazyGurl. I'm in her house.
Something neon green flickered on the wall in Vanessa's line of sight. She turned toward it and could hardly believe what she saw. She blinked, expecting the words to fade, but they remained. They were choices on a gaming menu, projected on the space a couple inches above the baseboard.
Say Nothing or Imitate HazyGurl.
"Tanya?" the woman—likely HazyGurl's mom—said. "Are you okay?"
She tried to remember the sound of Tanya's voice. She needed to answer, emulate the girl somehow. Saying nothing was a terrible idea. She swallowed and cleared her throat.
"Fine," she said, making her voice a few tones lower. "Much better now."
She closed her eyes and willed the ruse to work.
"Are you sure?" Tanya's mother asked. "I heard a crash, and you sound—"
"I'm okay." She spoke quickly. "Just dropped something."
At first, Tanya's mother didn't answer. Vanessa gulped, thinking she'd fucked up. While she doubted Tanya's parents would pose a threat, encountering them would require some serious explaining, explanations that would hold her up when she couldn't afford to waste time.
"Okay," Tanya's mother said.
Vanessa realized she'd been holding her breath and began to breathe normally with Tanya's mother pacified. She pushed herself to her knees and used the sink to pull herself to her feet. The sight in the mirror made her flinch. Superimposed on her reflection were more words in that neon font.
Objectives, it read. 1) Get dressed. 2) Find transportation. 3) Find a weapon.
This can't be real. It was a half-hearted denial of what lay in front of her. How could she deny or even question it? It's real. Somehow, it's all real.
She wrapped herself in a towel and peeked out the bathroom door to glance down the hallway. Spotting what she thought was Tanya's room, she tiptoed toward it, slipped inside, and shut the door. It was the sort of room she would've fawned over before her misadventure in the amusement park. Occult and true crime books filled two shelves. Crusty Cory Jay stared down at her from a poster behind his neon skull mask. In the photo, he wore black shorts covered in pentagrams and no shirt so he could display his heavily tattooed torso.
Of fucking course you're here.
Vanessa went to the dresser and started opening drawers. She couldn't bring herself to wear another woman's underthings, so she went straight for the jeans. They were a little loose on her, but she found a belt to help hold them up. She pulled a black top from a hanger. Feeling a draft from the room's window, she grabbed a hooded sweatshirt too.
When she was fully dressed, she reentered the hallway and headed for the stairs. Projected on the wall ahead, digital words instructed her to walk softly and don't speak. She hadn't bothered putting on shoes, so stepping quietly took little effort. Not speaking took even less. She balanced herself with the handrail. Tumbling down the stairs would most certainly harm her chances at achieving her objectives. She reached the bottom step and peered around the edge of the wall.
Tanya's parents were seated on the sofa with their backs to her. The television played what looked like a romantic sports-comedy. Vanessa had always been good at determining a movie or show's genre from viewing just a few frames. Maybe it was all that time she used to spend watching movies with her father.
Again, memories of the thing who wore his face trying to pull her into the sinking car with him surfaced. She tried to blink them away, but they persisted, the way traumatic memories tended to do. She ducked back into the stairwell and flattened herself against the wall. A deep breath composed her, and she looked back into the living room. Several keys hung from hooks by the front door. The neon green made an outline around the key rack and blinked. The words Grab Any Key materialized underneath.
Vanessa cast another wary glance at Tanya's parents. The TV held their complete attention. She strode across the room, focused solely on the key rack. The woman spoke and stopped Vanessa in her tracks.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Vanessa remained frozen but didn't face her inquisitor.
"What are you doing in our house?" the man said.
"Where's Tanya? Did you do something to her?"
Vanessa began walking again, beelining for the keys.
"Hey, get back here!" Tanya's father called after her.
One or both parents had gotten up from the sofa. Vanessa heard footsteps but didn't look to see who owned them. She swiped the nearest set of keys.
"Where's Tanya?"
Something in the woman's voice cut Vanessa deep. It made her face the people whose home she'd invaded.
"She's in trouble," Vanessa said. Both parents stared at her, bug-eyed and pink-faced. "She's in trouble, but I'm going to help her."
"How?" the father asked. "What are you talking about?"
Vanessa held up the set of keys. "I need to borrow your wheels."
"Like hell you do!" Tanya's father said. He stepped forward to presumably tackle her, but his wife grabbed him by the elbow. He flashed her a glare, but when he saw the haunted expression on her face, he softened. "What are you doing?" he asked in a breathless whisper.
"Let her go, John," she said.
"Why?"
"You know why." She paused to flick her eyes toward a photo over the fireplace. It showed a black and white headshot of a man with longish hair. He was smiling confidently, but the frame had the words always in our hearts printed in elegant font. "And you know I'm right."
Her husband stared at her, unblinking and silent. She faced Vanessa and nodded.
Vanessa stood there wanting to say something reassuring, but she couldn't find the words. She only nodded back and turned to leave. Outside, the night was cold, but she burned with determination she didn't understand, only accepted.