The Quest of Words

Chapter 3 - Silliness, Sadness, and a Long Night

Having said so, the menu immediately vanished. Then, after a brief moment, I felt a gust of cool wind blow through the remains of my clothing, causing me to shiver involuntarily. A faint feeling of contact, almost like the gossamer caress of a cobweb, traced across my chin, and I distinctly heard a trio of women’s voices whisper in my ear a series of words. I had no clue as to their meaning nor could I possibly repeat them, but they felt significant. The sensation caused me to jerk away in fright — looking around frantically for the source of the sound. I saw nothing.

Then I felt a chill run from the top of my skull to the tip of my spine. And knowledge appeared in my mind. Of the nature of non-motion. Silence. Of slipping through the cracks of a person’s consciousness. When the knowledge had finished unfolding before me, it rapidly wadded itself up and slipped into some dark recess of my psyche.

<blip!>

I blinked rapidly for a moment as I tried to get my bearings. That was… unpleasant. Even more, it raised a heck of a lot of questions. Questions like: What just happened? How did it happen? Why was there wind? That touch? Were those things even related? And then those voices! …And now was I going to start subconsciously making people forget I was there?

I screwed up my mouth and exhaled. All questions for another time.

Wait… that thing said I could toggle this skill somehow. Is it even on? How should I…

Suddenly, the unbidden image of an animated version of myself sprang into my mind. The camera zoomed in close to my left hand as I slowly brought it up to my eye in a sideways V-sign and thrust my right out to my side. Action lines humming all about me, I stood, my legs wide, and screamed to the heavens as the J-metal swelled, “FORGOTTEN IN STILLNESS!!!”

…

…

…

“Uh… t-turn on, uh… F… Forgotten in… uh…” I cleared my throat, “in… in Stillness.”

“Okay, then,” I said, bouncing on my toes, my arms swinging limply at my sides. “Good… That’s what I like to see. Very Johnny-on-the-spot of you. Pip pip.” What is wrong with my brain? I didn’t know if other people were capable of embarrassing themselves when they were all alone, but I just had. I laughed nervously.

“Right. Maybe we should see if we can… not… say that out loud anymore,” I cleared my throat again.

After some simple experimentation, I found that I could, indeed, toggle the skill just fine with simple mental commands. Deciding to leave it on for now, just in case, I set about distributing my stats. One each to Agility and Toughness, as I had previously settled on. I couldn’t really decide which would be better between Wisdom or Intelligence, but I decided to opt for Wisdom for now as it was the lower of the two. The last point, though… The last point I figured I’d sneak into Charisma. It probably wasn’t the best choice. But mine was a 3. And now it was a 4. They were my stats. I could do what I wanted with them.

“Character Screen.”

I needed a bath. And a change of clothes. The mud on my face had begun to dry at this point, and it was starting to itch. Scratching absently, I looked over my new and improved stat sheet. There wasn’t much to say about it, really. What was the difference between ‘Toughness’ 3 and 4? I thumped myself on the knuckle, experimentally. It hurt, of course. I frowned. Continuing my research, I stood up to try out my brand new three points in Agility. “Time for the ultimate test,” I said in eager anticipation. Slowly, I bent forward in an attempt to touch my toes. Grunting in effort, I pushed for all I was worth, but my digits remained just out of reach. Going limp, I hung there, hunched over in disappointment.

“My three points of Agility have failed me.” Standing back up, and giving my head a shake as the blood that had pooled there returned to equilibrium, I muttered, “I must still be in the negative modifiers…”

Not knowing what else to do, I stared at that last skill point I hadn’t assigned. I really didn’t want to fight with the menus any more, and I was starting to get a bit peckish. I had packed myself a chicken salad sandwich that morning, but of course, it was still sitting in the company refrigerator in the break room back at Steg-o-call. Someone had undoubtedly stolen it by this point. Bastards. Not that I’d have gotten to eat it anyway. Not… where ever I was.

Deciding to put my frustrations into walking, I picked a direction at random. I didn’t have a clue where I was or where the closest civilization might be, so one direction was as good as another. There was a road, more of a dirt track actually, and that meant there had to be something at the end of it. Glancing down, I decided to pick up the loose wheel from the office chair. It was heavy and metal, and I figured that in a pinch, I could stuff it into a sock or something and use it as an impromptu flail. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need it. Sliding it into my pocket, as I began to walk, it of course slid straight down my leg, hit my shoe, and was kicked several yards ahead of me.

“My IQ is slipping into the negatives.”

Shaking my head at myself, I picked up the stupid wheel again and continued walking. It didn’t take long before my wet shoes started to chafe. I wasn’t much into exercise, as it was, and starting up a routine now was sounding like a bad idea to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. It was late afternoon, by this point, and I should have been off of work and firing up my gaming system. Instead, I was walking. Walking, walking, walking. Idly, I began humming an aimless tune to try to take my mind off of the monotony — and the faint itch that was slowly developing between my butt cheeks — which slowly morphed into ‘Space Oddity’ by David Bowie. It had a good walking tempo, I justified to myself.

—Several hours later—

“This is ground controooool to Maaaajor Tom!” I sang loudly, my walk having devolved somewhere along the way into a sloppy skipping dance. “You’ve really made the grade. And the papers… mumble mumble…” the tune drifted off. “Damn. What is that lyric?”

<blip!>

“Huh?” I was stopped short at the notification popping up all of the sudden. Reading it, I frowned, “Oh, I guess I’m done now, am I?” And my dancing improved to 3, did it?! Tsk… Cheek.

Waving my hand vaguely through the box to dismiss it, I looked around. There really didn’t seem to be an end to this blasted forest or this road. Looking ahead, though, I saw a bit of a clearing. The sun was setting by this point, and I decided that I badly needed a rest. Stepping around the corner into the clearing, I found what seemed to be the remains of an old campsite. There was a ring of stones in the center with some scattered ashes left. Randomly situated around the stones were a few upturned logs and a largish rock that a person could sit on.

“Alright then! Looks just this side of perfect!” I looked around. That fire circle taunted me a bit though. It was getting a bit cold now that the sun was setting, and here I was with the remains of my polo shirt hanging around my shoulders like a hobo cape. What was I going to do to start a fire? Rub sticks together? My stomach took the opportunity to gurgle loudly.

“Quiet you.” I jiggled my flabby stomach, “You’re just going to have to feed on the reserves tonight.” That said, I was getting extraordinarily thirsty, having not had a drop of water since my last break. I decided to cautiously probe the entrance into the forest a bit. I had a hunch that a campsite like this might just have a source of water nearby, and before long I heard the welcome gurgling of a small stream.

Turned out, it was little more than a creek, scarcely more than a running jump across. The truth be told, I was more than a little hesitant to drink water just sitting out in nature. I mean, it was on the ground, of all things. It couldn’t be sanitary. Looking at it, there were several fallen leaves and branches in it, too. I tried to swallow, but my throat was completely dry at this point. I edged closer and gave it another long considering look. It wasn’t overly deep, but it seemed to be running fairly clear. I could see the bottom, after all, so it wasn’t brackish. Shrugging, I took a few swallows out of my cupped hands. It tasted like good clean water. Of course, my hands weren’t the cleanest. Oh, well. I’d see how I handled that for now. If I felt fine in the morning, I’d come back for more. I nodded to myself. Sounded logical to me.

Thirst somewhat quenched, I decided to take the opportunity to strip off my clothes and take a little bit of a bath. Of course, the stream wasn’t really deep enough to allow me to submerge, at all, but I did the best I could by scooping water into my hands and vigorously scrubbing at myself. It was a welcome relief to get that dried mud off, in any case. I also gave my clothes a quick rinse. They weren’t in much of any condition to preserve, but they were all I had. I was going to keep wearing them until they blew away in the wind. Pulling on my shoes and my still wet boxers, I threw the rest of my clothing scraps over an arm and returned to the campsite.

It remained as I had left it, but darkness was starting to set in. Not knowing what else I could do, I decided to just go to sleep. I threw my shirt and pants over one of the logs to let them air dry, and I snuggled in next to it. The night was less than warm, and I was wearing wet underwear. You could say that things could have been better. Still, the trees around the clearing blocked most of the wind, so it could have been worse. It could be raining.

That was when I saw the lightning.

“Well. Fuck me, I guess.”

I had never tried to sleep outside with no tent, no sleeping bag, no clothes, in the open air, and during a thunderstorm. Nor can I say that I ever will again. Not if I can help it. Mostly, I just lay there on my back while the sky pelted water at me, looking up at the sky and watching the lightning dance through the falling rain. There was a strange sort of beauty to it. And on the plus side, I was in no way thirsty any more. Maybe I should have tried to find shelter, a cave or something, but in the middle of the night, during the rain, and through an unfamiliar wood? No. I’d just tough it out. The rain settled into a soft patter eventually, and at some point, despite the cold, I must have drifted off.

The next morning, I awoke to some kind of bird warbling happily in a tree off to my left. I had never heard its kind before. Then again, I wasn’t exactly an ornithologist. The clouds from the night before had mostly scattered, leaving a nice sun to warm the morning air. Sitting up, my torso shucked out of the silt that had accumulated around me during the night. I was a sodden mess. Reaching up to scrub some of the water off of my face, I noticed that my fingers had pruned up so bad that the phenomenon had traveled all the way down into the palms of my hands. It was a level of ‘wet’ that I heretofore had no account of. Standing up, and shaking stray pieces of grass and bark off of my body, I went to where I had lain my clothes the night before. My pants were still there, so thoroughly soaked they were practically welded to the log I had draped them over. My shirt, meanwhile, had blown off into the fire pit at some point during the night. It was crumpled up in an unrecognizable ball of mud, sand, ashes, and very occasionally, polo shirt. I stood for a moment, just staring at it, expressionless. I decided to leave it there.

Abandoning my pants on the log in the vain hope that the sun might dry them just a bit by the time I came back, I returned to the stream that I had discovered the night before. I could hardly get more wet, after all, but at the very least, I might be able to scrub myself back down to bare skin. The stream had swelled a great deal during the storm, and it burbled along at happy and brisk pace. At least one of us had enjoyed the night. The extra pep in its step meant that I was able to wade in to about knee depth. The little stream was bracingly cold, but I didn’t care anymore. Sitting down, I lay back and submerged my head into the oncoming water. Using the pressure of the current to rinse twigs and leaves from my hair, I vigorously ran my fingers through it to try to get the rest of the grit out of it while I could. Sitting back up, I gasped for air and just sat there for a while as the water swelled about my shoulders.

By the Unholy Shitgibbon of the Watcher. What a night. I had never conceived of the possibility of a night that bad in all of my 26 years. I couldn’t really even think about it. I just sat there in the cold water, my brain totally switched off, staring at nothing. Just breathing. I wasn’t sure for how long. I think that my mind needed me to go into some kind of quasi-dream state while it frantically shuffled the level of misery I had just suffered into a quiet little corner of my subconscious where it could plot and scheme for some unassuming night ten or twenty years from now. Eventually, though, the cold got to me, and quaffing a large swallow of water to try and stave off the hunger, I shambled off to the bank.

Once I had returned to the campsite, I felt my pants and was pleased to see that they were, in fact, dry. Picking them up, however, I discovered that they had formed into a semi-permanent U-shape molded from the log they had been laying on. It took me a fair bit to beat them back loose again, and putting them back on, they felt… somewhat less than laundry fresh. I looked back at the fire pit and reconsidered my shirt, before finally abandoning it to its fate. I slapped my pockets, out of habit, before I remembered that my possessions were missing in action. Looking around, I finally recalled that I had placed my keys and that stupid wheel from the office chair on the sitting rock. They waited for me happily oblivious to my mood. Slipping the key ring back around my middle finger and grabbing the wheel, I took another final look at a campsite I never wanted to look at again. I wanted to remember it. It would make for a good story, at least. Over beer. Lots of beer.

Idly putting my hands in my pockets, I turned around to return to the road — and stopped.

A group of about twelve men were standing there, quietly staring at me.