“I’m so sorry, honey,” a forlorn, but kind voice cooed softly.
Robin thrashed and rolled not knowing where he was or what was happening. He thumped bodily onto a wooden floor as he fell from bed. Sheets tangled his feet but the searing sensation on his back did not stop. In fact, it got worse. He rolled to his stomach in an attempt to clamber upright but the same searing pain flared in his knees leaving him prone on the cool wood.
A kindly, if elderly, face appeared over the top of the rumpled bed. “I’m just trying to treat your cuts, my dear. I know it hurts, but we really don’t want infection setting in, now do we?”
The old lady from the club. She had a khaki kerchief bound about her head and judging by her dark taupe features, Robin would guess she was Black, if normal people had that sort of distinction in this world. He wondered what color he looked like to her. Did all the non-player residents of this world see things the same way as players? They certainly seemed perfectly fine with demons working in nightclubs and wereSkunks assaulting pedestrians, but was their vision as color undifferentiated as their appearance?
“Please, sweetie. If you could get back onto the the bed, it’ll make things a lot easier,” she stated, not making it a demand, but the implication of a demand was, well…implied.
“Where are we?” Robin groaned as he gingerly scaled the side of the soft bed as if in a rock-climbing gym.
“My house,” she said. “It’s nearly morning. We ran until I almost fainted. Then you insisted on carrying me the rest of the way here, almost a mile, I should think. You passed out as soon as we were safe.”
Noticing long streaks of red on the sheets as he surmounted the bed he opted for a prone position on his stomach. There was nothing he could do about his badly scraped knees continuing to leak into the fabric, but by the feel of it, he needed to stay on his front so his lacerated back didn’t make the mess worse. He realized he was half naked. Had the old lady managed to disrobe him or had he lost his shirt and Santa jacket along the way?
“Try to get comfortable,” she said softly. She continued wiping the deep claw wounds on his back with a warm, damp cloth. That must have been the source of the pain upon awaking as it now redoubled. Robin hissed as contact with the fabric continued unabated.
“What’s your name, son? I figure I should at least know what to call my savior.”
Knowing it was best to keep breathing steadily through the pain, he said, “Robin. Robin Bennett. What’s yours?”
A garbled mumble was her response. The pain of his wounds must be affecting his hearing despite her gentle touch. “Sorry, what was that?”
The same wah-wah-ghah noise happened again, somewhat of a combo between the adult voices from Charlie Brown cartoons and an activating gag reflex. Had his hearing been damaged in the fight? Or the during the flight? He felt particularly weak, like he had spent three days at a music festival doing nothing but drugs and dancing like a seizing scarecrow.
Deciding he didn’t want to look stupid, he mumbled something noncommittal and pretended to have caught her name. “Well, it’s really nice to meet you. I’m glad you weren’t hurt in the attack. You hurt, were you?”
“No, no, Mister Robin. You made sure to keep me all safe. Your long legs kept us ahead of those nasty wereWolves. You even hurled lightning at them and made them stop following us.”
Robin had no recollection of anything after running around the block from the club and following the woman’s pointing finger as to what direction to flee. There had been light street traffic and he remembered considering hailing a cab but with no phone or money they just kept running.
The wiping of blood from his back stopped. “Oh my, these really do look worse than I thought. You probably need stitches, and a lot of them. I could call one of my children to come take us to the hospital.” When Robin took too long providing an answer, she said, “Or I could do it myself. I’m pretty handy with all kinds of needles.”
“Were you a nurse or something?” He assumed she was retired and figured she would have proclaimed herself a doctor if she had been one.
She laughed quietly. “No, no. Nothing of the sort. I was a teacher. I do a fair piece of knitting these days, though.”
The difference between chopstick-like knitting needles and one fine enough to use for stitching wounds seemed significant. Did he have a better idea? Calling more people to the house and getting them involved, and hence, put in danger, was not something he wanted on his conscience. Besides, as an actor, he had no medical insurance in the real world and certainly had none here. Unless this version of Amérku had universal health care, he was going to have to rely on the old woman’s ability to seamstress his flesh like a holiday sweater.
“Okay, you can do it. I trust you.” Robin didn’t trust her but didn’t know what else to do. He was in no condition to get himself out of the bed, let alone all the way to a hospital. Besides, with how angry and wet his back felt, even a bad stitch job was preferable to nothing.
The old woman shuffled out of the bedroom and was gone for a bit, or maybe Robin fell asleep for a minute or three. She eventually returned with a sewing kit. He didn’t examine it too closely as he preferred not to know what tools she was about to impale him with. She sterilized a blessedly small needle with alcohol and got to work. Robin gritted his teeth but soon passed out, hopefully more from exhaustion than from any butchery on the old woman’s part.
? ? ?
The next time Robin awoke, it was to the sensation of wetness under his cheek. His face rested on a soft pillow and he had clearly been drooling. Like a lot. He moved to dry off when the crackling sensation of acidic pain — as if a slab of salmon was grilling on the open flames of his back — made him gasp aloud.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” the old woman’s voice declared. He was facing the wrong way to see her. He carefully turned his head while slowly propping himself up on both elbows, the sweat-damp sheets peeling from his chest as he rose. The old woman sat in a soft chair in one corner of the cozy bedroom knitting with blue yarn. The bedroom was decorated in beige floral prints and what likely was tacky wallpaper had it been rendered in color. In shades of beige, it didn’t seem so bad, maybe visually too busy lending an air of over-decoration to the space, but not offensive. “How does your back feel? You passed out so I haven’t taken a look at your knees, but I did a pretty good job on those gashes, if I do say so myself.”
She sounded pleased and Robin couldn’t help but smile a little. “It feels okay, I guess. Maybe some aspirin or something would be nice to help with the pain.”
“Of course, dear. Right there on the bedside table, along with fresh, cold, sweet tea.”
Robin hated sweet tea, but didn’t want to come off as ungrateful so he took the pills with a healthy gulp and rediscovered that nothing had taste here. Hopefully the tea still had caffeine. He judged the light coming in the curtained window defined time as late afternoon. Had he been asleep all day? “What time is it?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Oh, about four-thirty,” she replied. “I’ve been asleep most of the day too, once I got you all sewed up. I reckon you must be gettin’ hungry. I know I am. The arthritis in my knees is telling me it’s time for food. A good meal always softens any discomfort. Do you like fried chicken? I got one o’ them fancy new air fryers so I can even make it all healthy.”
. “Sounds delicious, Betty” Robin said. He was thinking she reminded him of Betty White, his favorite actress from the Golden Girls; wholesome in appearance but naughty enough to throw dirty gestures. She probably had a wild and kinky side too which might explain her presence in the club last night.
She either accepted the name he gave her or she heard what she wanted to hear. Or maybe this game world kept plain people from giving their names to PlayersPlayerPlayers
Getting out of bed was harder than Robin expected. He felt terribly weak and his legs seemed ready to give out at any moment. As Betty toddled out of the room, he looked around for something to wear. It didn’t seem appropriate to wander around the house with no top on.
His red Santa jacket and plain white tee lay crumpled on top of the dresser. He pickup up the shirt but it was brown and crusty with dried blood and was so torn it likely would never be wearable again. The jacket, while also blood-stained, was somewhat more intact. The back panel was, of course, all torn up but the rest seemed in decent shape. If Betty didn’t have something for him to wear, he could probably salvage it after giving it a good wash. He might even borrow her sewing gear to remove the arms and use the sleeve fabric to patch up the back.
Grateful to still have pants, he note they were in bad shape from the knees down. If he was going to bother fixing the jacket, he might as well turn the pants into shorts while he was at it. He shuffled down the hall into the kitchen where Betty had started prepping food. “Do you have anything different I could wear? And maybe I could use your washing machine?”
Without pulling her kerchiefed head out of the refrigerator she absently waved one hand in his direction. “You go ahead and make yourself at home, sweetie. You will hardly be the first down-on-their-luck stray I’ve picked up over the years. In fact, that’s how my husband and I acquired all four of our children.”
Not feeling up to small talk, he simply thanked her. He retrieved his jacket from the bedroom and made his way into the utility room just off the kitchen where he found the washer and dryer and a basket of clean, folded towels. He stripped off the red pants and his underwear and tossed all three items into the washer. He took the largest, fluffiest towel and wrapped it around his waist. Contemplating draping another one over his shoulders to cover up a little more decently, he swiftly discarded the notion. Every move he made that required bending over or lifting his arms reminded him of the state of his back. It would probably be far more having a towel scraping across his back than it would be parading around the house mostly naked.
Betty was busy humming a soft tune while cooking so Robin returned to the spare bedroom. He took out the instruction manual from his satchel which lay under the mangled tee shirt on the dresser. The page after the neighborhood map was glowing so he read it the stark black writing:
Congratulations! You’re currently in shitty shape. Hope you’re feeling all saintly about saving a poor, nameless, old woman. You used up most all of your Attribute cards! All you have left are REA d8, AWR d6 & d8, PRE d10 & d12 and two BOH d8s. Betcha feel all accomplished at being an over-achiever, or maybe we should say over-user.
The good news is resting will slowly return your fatigued Attributes to your ready deck at the rate of two cards per full day of rest.
Your wounds, on the other hand, are gonna take a lot more time. Not only do you have a WLP d4 card out of circulation due to Stress, but your two BRN d6s, AGL d8 & d10 as well as FOR d6 & d8 cards are all lounging in your Injury cache. They are out of circulation until you get better medical treatment than granny stitches.
Robin groaned. He nearly let himself flop backward onto the bed but jerkily stopped realizing he would land directly on his hamburger-ed back. “This fucking sucks. Those wereDogs might be tracking us down and getting ready to rip through this house at any moment. I won’t be able to do anything in condition.”
He glared at the book before asking the inevitable next question. “So how do I refresh and heal faster?” He suspected he already knew the answer but he needed confirmation before deciding how to proceed.
Well, you’re gonna need to Feed, you silly goose. And not on Gram Gram’s fried chicken but on Gram Gram herself.
You still have your starting allotment of 10 Resources, two each of Flesh, Fear, Faith, Resolve and Life. As an Initiate, every 4 Resources you consume will either return 1 card from your Fatigue cache to your Ready deck or you’ll Heal 1 card. As a human, you have the privilege of using any flavor of Resource, so be glad your palette is broad.
Be aware, Healing moves cards from your Stress, Injury and Stigma caches to your Fatigue cache, not directly back to your Ready deck.
Time to find your appetite and chow down if you hope to stay alive in this world for very long.
There was no way Robin would dare FeedingFear
He mentally commanded the satchel to bring forth the chonky Resourcedid look tasty; candy-like even.
He knew the red ones were made from Fear
The texture was very much like a gumdrop and even though his fingers hadn’t hurt the dollop it chewed easily enough. The flavor was delicious! Fear
Robin quickly gobbled the second Fear
As he swallowed, a shimmering waver appeared atop his satchel on the dresser. A tarot-sized card depicting d10 in Agility
Robin summoned the rest of his AttributeThose must be all my cards.
A very slim pile of seven cards had also appeared, but these were easily readable. Presumably they were all that remained in his Ready
left which means I can heal only one more card from the Injury cache which will still leave five out of circulation. And that didn’t even shift a single card of the — he quickly counted the thicker pile of fatigued cards — deck. Betty seems accommodating enough and has already offered, I think, to let me stay and rest here. I don’t really have any other options, so I might as well call this Home for now and settle in.
As soon as that thought finished, he feared he was having a stroke. The walls and every item in the room wavered as if behind a screen of heat rising off hot summertime pavement. Color spread across every surface as if he had stepped out of a silent, black and white movie from the 1920s into a Hawaii-based one in the 1980s. Turned out the wallpaper was, indeed, tropically tacky. The entire room looked like Magnum P.I.’s wardrobe had been used as spackle, paint, varnish and upholstery.