|
During the course of this game, I found myself staring bleakly at the barren desktop through the fogged lens of the mental state in which I languished, contemplating with marginally bare enthusiasm the idea of the deadline which loomed before me. I thought of crows as I am fond of them, and the small torn animals which litter roadsides in winter seemed far more lonely than in summer: a consequence, certainly, of the frigid air deterring immediate disposal of them. These ignored and forgotten lives, abandoned and refrigerated into a costless memorandum of the promise of the brutal events of Night, nearly consoled me: at least they had died already. We who were left must suffer the absence of the dead, witness the decay of their memory, witness the slander of their words in the hands of those who would seek our destruction. O! happy to be dead.
Nearly, I say, but I was not entirely consoled, as I was a bare thirteen hours into a Day that would take some hours longer to complete, and long experience had taught me that villagers saved the most traumatizing discussions for times when the seconds tick ever closer to our mutually assured end. There is never any escape. There is never any variation.
Languidly I considered a large bird that circled something, drifting, spinning lazily on thermals. The shape of its silhouette and the manner in which its essence loomed convinced me it was a vulture. While eagles soar, vultures drift, and werewolf games contain vultures rather than eagles, opportunistic leering creatures satisfied by nothing but the ripping apart of the remains of the dead.
Eagles, those noble birds which kill quickly, for the sake of survival, hold no place in the Barrowdowns, where the dead rise again, and again, and again.
I had received a letter from a companion from whom I had not heard in many days; a letter which sought my presence in a tone much agitated. We had fallen somewhat out of touch, yet due to the mutually shared experiences of our educational youth - we attended an academy together, and shared many long nights sipping whisky and speaking of those long dead who had written tomes out of which we then studied, hoping to live up to the expectations of our forebears - I did not hesitate to respond.
Mira, sister of my youth and heart, I shall come as soon as arrangements can be made. I shall meet you at the House of Usher.
Yet swiftly following my arrival, my navigation of the green and gold tinted shadows which both guided me to and concealed my destination, I witnessed the most fantastical and horrifying demise of my companion, and of another friend - one equally dear to the heart - leaving me in a place which felt little short of haunted.
Though it would be unfair to say the haunting was that of ghosts; say rather that those who yet lived sought to lay many other guests alongside the fragile corpses in the crypt that now held my dearest (departed) compatriots. I could not turn but to find the suspicious eyes of others upon me, and it was little consolation to know they all wished the death of everyone: I supposed I should not take the matter personally, yet upon reflection of the events, it seemed as though one guest of the House in particular had become impatient with my atypical ways.
It would be brash, I supposed, to intentionally antagonize any given guest, particularly for an insult as petty as the one that had abused my vanity.
Of course I was cute.
It would be unhelpful at best, I thought, to waste time antagonizing such a guest...
But, I thought with unexpected malice, we cannot all be perfect.
|