A Gamer's Guide 425 (Patreon)

“So, how do we best…?”

“I’ll be on the floor,” I say, lying down, “and you… Knife. But I’d like to see what’s going on, so… Do you think we can get the mirror over here?”

“Absolutely,” she says. As she stands up and goes to grab it, I slip out of my pajamas and into something more comfortable. That being exactly nothing. Mm. Yes, this is how it’s supposed to be. All those clothes and things… Needless. On the other side of the room, Gecko dismounts the gratuitously detailed mirror from the wall, and holding it in both hands, swirls around to face me. “Okay, so I was thinking, if we put two chairs, then—” She spots me. I stare back at her. “Hm.” She nods. “I thought I’d be less okay with this, but honestly, this is totally fine.”

“Heck yeah,” I say, laying myself down on top of the cool stone floor.

“So, as I was saying, I’m thinking, if we get two chairs, then we can make an observatory set-up, so you can see what’s going on.”

“Sounds good,” I say, allowing myself to get a bit comfortable. Usually when I touch something, it feels warm, or it feels like nothing but dull pressure. But now things feel cold, because I’m slightly warm. It’s nice! I quite like it. As I smile to myself, Gecko constructs a strange apparatus above me, using two chairs, a mirror, and a pair of throw-pillows to create an angled mirror for me to see through. “Lookin’ good,” I say, both about the apparatus and my own body. See, in the mirror, I can see my lower body. And I don’t look skeletal! My hip bones aren’t jutting out, my ribs only protrude a normal amount, and there’s actual flesh on my legs and arms. It looks odd, I’m not really used to it, but… It feels right. 

I run my hands along my chest. Smooth, slightly warm, not dead. 

“Here you go,” she says, raising my head and stuffing a pillow beneath it. “Does that feel better?”

“Yup, absolutely.” Drumming my fingers along my chest, I watch as she threads the robe over her head, leaving her in only her bloomers and undershirt. 

She gives me a look. “Just to confirm, I’m going to be looking for something in there that’s both vaguely edible, and has enough divinity in it to get me to… zero-point-zero-one squiggle? Is that it?”

“Yep.”

“So far, we know you have milk and maggots in there.” One hand on her hip, the other on her forehead, she looks down at the floor, carefully inspecting her black buckle-shoes and socks. “It’s going to be messy, isn’t it?”

“Most likely.”

“I only have one pair of underwear. There’s no way I’ll have the energy to do laundry after this. A shower, maybe, but…” She starts pacing up and down the room, which is really weird, because the solution seems to be really simple. Sometimes she really does confuse me. Apparently she heard my thoughts, because she suddenly pauses in the middle of the room, sighing theatrically. “I know, I know, it’s just that, well…” Over there, in the middle of the room, she looks so small. But I can feel what she’s thinking. Her emotions radiate with enough strength for the air to pulse with it. The things they would say. The things they did say, all the way back then. “A boy and a girl, alone in his bedroom. Naked.”

I nod gravely. “Yeah. It can only mean one thing.” I catch her gaze, and give her a grave look. “Someone’s getting dissected.”

A sharp exhale leaves her lips, though I can’t tell if it’s a laugh or something else. “Sure, that’s what’s going to happen, but—”

“Gecko, I do not give a shit, and frankly speaking, even if I could talk to anyone else about what’s going to happen, I wouldn’t care enough to mention what we weren’t wearing. Didn’t you agree that the whole fear about people’s bodies and sex and stuff is weird?”

“Well, yeah, but…” She throws down her arms. “You know what? You’re right. I don’t give a shit either! Why am I…?” A shake of the head. “It’s the movies again. They always make it seem like it means so much. But it doesn’t, does it? We’re only people, and bodies are only flesh.”

“Not mine,” I say. “Mine’s made out of, like… maggots and milk. Or something.”

She chuckles. “I wonder what else is in there,” she says, pulling off her socks and shoes, threading the undershirt over her head. “Maybe bees?”

“Bees?”

“Yeah, bees,” she says, stepping out of her underwear. “Where else did the honey come from? For the milk, that is.”

“Oh, that’s true. I guess I never thought about it before.” I rub my chin. In the center of the room, butt-nude, stands Gecko. She looks like a totally normal human. There’s a heart-shaped birthmark on the side of her chest, and she’s got pale scars running up the inside of her upper arms. I nod to myself. “Yeah, this is fine.”

“Alright, then.” With that done, she takes a seat next to me, and pulls out her dagger, only pausing to check its sharpness. Yep, looks good. Dagger in hand, she looks me over. “So, um… Where do I even begin…?”

“If there’s going to be something whacky, it has to be in my bowels. Most effective thing to do would probably be to make a slit right down the front,” I press my index against the top of my chest, where the clavicles meet the sternum, “and then go down,” I run my finger, down, down, down, “all the way to my pelvis. And then, slit one line here,” I cross my chest, “and another down here,” I say, slitting my finger across my belly. “That should give you pretty good access to my inner workings.”

“Right, gotcha.” She presses the tip of the dagger into the spot on my chest, and I focus my eyes on the mirror above, where I get to watch in perfect detail how the dagger simply slips off. She gives the dagger a look, and then glances down at my chest. “Hang on, I need to check something.” She runs her hand across my chest. A little pinch, and she catches the fabric, rubbing it between her thumb and index. “Okay, so this is absolutely silk.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. Some kind of silk fabric. In other words,” with the flick of her wrist, the dagger disappears back into her inventory, and in the next moment, it’s been replaced by her sewing scissor, “this will be a much better instrument than the dagger.” Weapon in hand, she wastes no time cutting up a long line across my chest and abdomen, digging into her task with tangible excitement. Dang, she’s a clever one. I really do hope she gets badass claws out of this whole mess. They’d suit her excellently. In only a few short moments, she’s got the two additional lines cut out across my chest and stomach. Grinning, she looks up at the mirror, catching my gaze. “Are you ready for the grand reveal?”

“Tell it to me straight, doc,” I say. “Am I going to be okay?”

She pulls open the flaps on my stomach. There’s about a gazillion maggots in there. She closes the flaps again. “Totally random question, but how’s your health insurance? Good, or…?"

“Oh, I haven’t got any.” I smile innocently at her. “Insurances are a hoax by the government to steal your money and precious lifeblood. Haven’t you heard?”

“Is that so? Wow.” She makes a show of thinking things through. “Okay, so, I’m going to start digging, and if I find any organs, we’ll put them on the market, and whatever we make off of the exchange will be deduced from your bill. It probably won’t be enough, but it should cover the anaesthetics.”

“You didn’t give me any.”

“Yeah we did. You’re lying. You don’t know anything. How dare you question your doctor?” Saying so, she pulls open the flaps again, fastening them to my skin with bobby pins to keep them open. There are six flaps in total, but with them all open, we can get a pretty dang good view of my innards. Which, at the moment, only really consists of maggots. That’s all I can see. “By the way,” she says, affixing the final flap, in her non-character voice, “if anything hurts, just tell me, okay?”

“Alright, I will.” Though, honestly, even if this did hurt, I wouldn’t mind it that much. It has to be done, after all. The fact that it doesn’t hurt must mean that my body’s fine with it. Makes sense—it’s not like I can die or anything. 

“Damn, that’s a lot of maggots,” she breathes. A thoughtful look passes her face. “Maggots don’t bite, do they?”

“Haven’t bitten me yet.”

“That’s what I thought. They don’t seem very bitey. In that case…” She plunges both hands into my bowels and scoops out a handful of maggots. There isn’t much milk to go with them, so when she drops them on the stone floor next to me, they don’t spill much of anything. “No, wait, I’ve changed my mind.” Standing up, she goes over and grabs the washbasin, bringing the large metal bowl over to where she dumped the maggots. She scoops them into the basin, and then puts it to the side. Then, on her knees, she begins scooping handfuls of maggots out of my bowels, putting them all in the basin. 

…There has to be more than a million maggots in me. Like, way more than a million. Not to mention that a single glass of my bloodmilk was enough to get her to like 3 per cent, even though I have to have at least like a liter or two of the stuff in me. But I only have like zero-point-zero-three or four § as of yet. The math doesn’t add up. How the hell does this even work…?

She pauses the maggot-removal. Kneeling over me, both hands plunged deep in there, she says, mildly surprised, “I think I’ve got your spine?”

“You do? I can’t feel it.”

“Really? But this is,” she says, tugging on it, but it isn’t my spine, so there’s no resistance. Instead she effortlessly pulls the upper half of a white snake out of my bowels, fast enough to fall back on her rump. The snake falls partially into her lap, lazily coiling and uncoiling. We both stare at it. Yawning so huge we can see both its utter lack of fangs as well as its white, fleshy insides, it stretches out, blinks—which it should not be able to do—and turns its big white eyes on the both of us. 

“Whoa.”

Wait, Gecko isn’t moving. Is she okay? She didn’t strike me as the sort to be afraid of snakes, but with the way she’s trembling…

She slowly reaches out a hand to the snake. Head wobbling slightly, it moves its snout over to the tip of her fingers, flicking its white tongue at her. After a moment or two, it leans in, bumping its nose against her fingers, pressing the top of its head against her palm. Tears stream down her face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone cry like this. “I died,” she says, through the tears. “I died, and I’m in heaven. This is it. This is the best my life is ever going to get. It’s all downhill from here.”

“Fido,” I mutter, mostly to myself. “If I’m going to have a snake living in my bowels, then I think it should be named fido.”

“That’s a dog’s name,” she says, but with the way she’s smiling, totally lost in the living fantasy of a snake that likes being pet, I know she’d accept anything right now. If I told her I wanted to go streaking through the castle with her, hand-in-hand, I’m sure she’d accept it. But I can’t let her keep petting Fido forever, no matter how much the snake in question seems to enjoy it. “So, are you going to eat him?”

“Eat—” Eyes flashing with indignation, she pulls Fido closer to her, close enough to keep him out of my reach. “No! There is no way I’m eating Fido! Look at him—so adorably perfect… Absolutely not. I’d rather eat the maggots.”