The aroma of coffee wafting through the window woke her. She smiled. Suddenly, she sat up. She had no idea where she was.The cream colored silk sheets and the vase of orchids on the glass table told her the place was quite fancy - nothing like the budget hotels she usually stayed at. If only she could remember, if only her head didn’t hurt as much. Right on cue, a maid in a starched white apron appeared on the right side of the bed presenting her with a couple of aspirins and a glass of water set on an exquisite silver plate. A folded piece of paper was also waiting on the plate.
‘You won! You deserve this!’
No name, but there was no need, as now she understood. Rick! It was all his doing! She remembered the game last night, some silly conquest board game she had trouble following the rules. The first prize was to be a surprise, but knowing Rick and his buddies that usually meant a bottle of wine. This was not about the game - it was their one year anniversary.
Oh Rick, you shouldn’t have! A night in this kind of place must cost a fortune, but what’s done is done, she might as well enjoy it. Maybe tonight’s the night. They’ve been together long enough, a nice little ring was to be expected. And roses! And champagne!
She sat back on the pillow and took a sip of the coffee the maid had placed on the night-stand.
The liquid burned her throat, its foul taste making her want to throw up. She tried to control the spasms that shook her body and groaned to catch the maid’s attention, but the woman was gone.
Louise curled up on the bed clutching at her stomach, rocking gently back and forth waiting for the pain to subside.
‘Most importantly: Feel free to change your plea - feigning innocence won’t get you anywhere. We know what you did last night!’
The stern voice seemed to be coming from somewhere above her, but in the utter darkness it was impossible to tell. Even if she wanted to look, there was no way to move her head fastened to the back of the cold metal chair. Louise had no idea how she’d got here - wherever here meant - or what plea the voice was talking about, but if this was Rick’s idea of a joke, she was going to kill him.
She resolved not to play along and instead wait calmly until somebody came to untie her. The cords on her wrists cut into her skin and she was beginning to feel her legs cramping, but she won’t give them the satisfaction of going into a panic and making pathetic attempts to free herself.
Hours must have passed, still no one came. She could hear distant noises she couldn’t make out, even footsteps outside her room, but they didn’t stop. Louise felt exhausted and started to cry, knowing somebody must be watching - otherwise why all go to all this trouble? - but neither Rick, nor his hapless friends showed up.
Somewhere near her a clock struck three times and suddenly the room was flooded with light. It was not a room, more of a glass cage, empty but for the chair she was tied to. When her eyes adjusted to the bright light, she gasped seeing a huge auditorium in front of her. Row after row of nightmare creatures seated on marble benches studying her with obvious contempt. She must be hallucinating, probably the coffee was laced with some shit. There was no other explanation for this freak circus she saw in front of her. There were many almost human faces in the fake audience, but also creatures with two heads talking to each other, some sort of bird with lips like a frog, trembling masses of colored jelly shooting up arms at random angles and feeding themselves treats from the small tables in front of them. Louise watched in horror the jelly arms bending to shove food somewhere at the back of the presumed heads, than followed the food items travel down the translucent bodies. Latecomers hurried down the steps to take their places, greeting friends with broad smiles and much shaking of mismatched extremities.
One group was definitely not smiling, though - five creatures with oval heads and small mean red eyes, burning and changing expression like LED-lights. The radio-heads were angrily pointing stick arms at her and she could swear one of them made a fist - a tiny one - in her direction.
The lights blinked three times calling the audience to order and the voice made itself heard again. Seen, too, as it was coming from one of the almost human folks that seemed to occupy the center of the auditorium.
‘Louise Marsh, you stand accused of genocide, following to complete destruction of the Zelda system on the evening of May 23rd. How do you plead?’
Since her mouth was gagged, she resorted to furiously shaking her head, even though a voice at the back of her mind was beginning to make sense of this hallucination or nightmare or whatever it was. ‘Conquest of Zelda’, the game they played last night - moving those small plastic soldiers across the board, tossing the cards in her hand, each action written on them bringing her one step closer to conquering the fat yellow blob of a territory at the centre of the board.
‘It was just a stupid game’, she tried to mouth, and the judge in a pointy white hat seemed to understand her unspoken protest and shook his head sadly.
A round furry creature beside him rose to read a detailed version of her ‘criminal actions’ - burning the crops, poisoning the river, unleashing the hounds of Hell on the peasants (this drew angry shouts from the crowd) and finally nuking the capital.
‘Way to go, baby’, she remembered Rick laughing.
‘Stop this nonsense, you know it wasn’t real. Just a random game Fred and Jenny picked up as a gift’.
‘Most things in the Universe are random’, the pointy hat replied. ‘All of us here are just random results of a brilliant, but sick mind. I had a splendid day planned out back home, yet here I am, charged with taking care of your reckless destruction of a world I hadn’t heard of before this morning. Instead of useless protests, you'd better reflect upon the lives you've so brutally destroyed'.
By now, Louise was desperately trying to free herself or at least shake that thing over her mouth to tell them to go to Hell all of them and their stupid games, but the leather straps binding her only grew tighter.
‘No point in trying to defend yourself. Maybe it was just bad luck you caused all this to happen, maybe you’re truly a bad person - it doesn’t matter. The punishment is the same. Your game and everything you built in it is to be deleted now’.
The last thing Louise saw was the auditorium dissolving into a black screen, but then there was no Louise left to remember it.
Story written for
's freewrite challenge, the weekend three-prompt special! Check out her blog and join our freewrite community.
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