Dear Diary,

  Have you ever experienced the terrible burden of being too pretty? Annabell Smith had. In fact, it was happening to her right now, as a third figure stumbled out of a dark alleyway with the single-minded determination of someone who either wanted her phone number or intended to eat her face.

  It was hard to tell sometimes, and the music pulsating in her headphones had a way of blurring the fine distinctions between admiration and mild threats of cannibalism. Annabell was inclined to dodge them either way.

  “Oh, it’s really flattering, but no hugs tonight, thanks,” she said brightly, slipping neatly under the man’s lurching arms. Moments later, having gained a safe distance, she muttered to Wallace, “Honestly, don’t people have any respect for personal boundaries anymore? Or public decency, for that matter?”

  Further down the street—where the lamps kept flickering with indecision, as if midlife crisis had just struck and it came with a love for film noir—a small crowd was gathered around a woman lying on the pavement. The group seemed to be having a marvelous time, though their enthusiasm leaned toward the unsettling end of the spectrum. Then again, the fact that the woman wasn’t fighting back, just staring blankly up at the sky, was perhaps an indication to the fact that she was enjoying the attention.

  “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” Annabell shrugged, stepping neatly across the street to avoid the writhing mass of limbs and questionable intentions. If the woman didn’t mind being mauled—or didn’t care enough to stop it—who was Annabell to interfere? There were plenty of people who wouldn’t approve of her life choices either, but Annabell was happy—well, content, at least. And contentment was just happiness with a bit of a shrug.

  People simply enjoyed different things.

  The evidence was all around her: two twitchy figures on a nearby street corner were devoted to snarling at each other like feral dogs, only to snap her way the moment she passed a bit too closely. She avoided them, much like she avoided breathing in too much of the smoke and ash and oily tang of burning fuel. It carried the rather unpleasant undertone of roasted pigeon and panic, and it couldn’t be healthy to breathe in.

  She could tell from the scattering of passed out (in the same way corpses are only a little bit asleep) contortionists littering the pavement around her, their limbs folded into positions that made her spine hurt in sympathy.

  Evidently, the entire city had partied a little too hard tonight, leaving overturned cars sprawled like sleepy cows across the street, their hazard lights blinking on and off like they couldn’t quite decide if this was an emergency or just an inconvenient way of parking. Fire hydrants spouted water into the sky, as if auditioning for a musical about urban decay. On the sidewalk, someone had thoughtfully placed a dumpster fire, illuminating the darkest hour of the early morning—that peculiar time when logic and dignity had long since gone to bed.

  Then there were the partygoers themselves, shuffling about in the time-honored tradition of the deeply hungover or the slightly undead. Given the circumstances, it could go either way. Some of them even had little glowing bars hovering over their heads.

  Smelly Corpse Level 1

  Bob Unleashed Level 3

  Regretful Undead Level 2

  “Isn’t that a bit too on the nose for performance art, Wallace?” Annabell asked, dodging through a shattered phone-booth to avoid another handful of admirers stumbling her way. She really was criminally pretty. “I mean, while I can appreciate a good social commentary on the gamification of modern life, the slow erosion of humanity into NPC-like drudgery, but the addition of levels…?”

  That just muddied the message. Was it a critique of class struggle? A wry commentary on how even with the increasing detachment of mind and body in the digital age, some people—like Mister Bob over there, who was easily the size of a wardrobe and currently engaged in a philosophical debate with a burning car—still managed to be on top?

  Not to say he wasn’t a lovely person to be around. Just, you know, hypothetically inconvenient.

  Annabell wasn’t about to judge either way—if Bob wanted to chew his way through a car bonnet, more power to him. She had her own priorities. So, when yet another lumbering figure lurched toward her, arms outstretched, jaw hanging wide, she simply dodged gracefully to the side.

  “Brush your teeth and no thanks,” she quipped, spinning away and heading straight for the beacon of civility that had been her goal: the convenience store. Located just half a block from her apartment—a fact Annabell considered a gift from the gods of logistics—it was truly convenient.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  The automatic doors let out a cheerful pling as they slid open, welcoming her into the store’s embrace.

  Inside, the lights were flickering in that unsettling way that always seemed to precede Bad Things in horror movies. It was the sort of ambiance that might have made a lesser person hesitate.

  Annabell, however, was no lesser person. She was a snack-seeking, music-drowned creature of perfect, selective focus. The screams for help, threading through air that buzzed with refrigeration and smelled of melted slushies, cheap coffee, and that particular kind of loneliness only convenience stores have at night? Thoroughly unnoticed.

  Instance Entered: Mini-King’s Convenience Store (Level 2)

  The doors slid shut just as the lumbering figure she’d dodged smacked into them with an audible thud. They didn’t open for him, though he did his best to make his case by pounding one bloodied hand against the glass. His jaw remained locked in an eternal snarl.

  Annabell, naturally, saw none of this. Her attention had been wholly captured by the store’s snack section, which was bathed in the heavenly glow of a new promotion: “Extra Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies!”

  Her eyes lit up, and she let out an “Ah!” of delight as she grabbed a basket with the enthusiasm of a treasure hunter spotting gold.

  Soon, she was gleefully raiding the shelves, loading her basket with an assortment of crunchy, salty, sweet, and chocolaty wonders. The world beyond her headphones—the flickering lights, the bloodied hand on the door, the increasingly desperate screams from the neighboring aisle—didn’t even register.

  Annabel was in her happy place. And nothing, not even the store clerk currently undergoing an unsolicited and highly interactive anatomy lesson just a single shelf away, was going to spoil it.

  Loot Obtained:

  Chocolaty Mana Bar (contains neither chocolate nor mana)

  Toxic Jellybeans (banned in three systems, but hey, free radicals build character)

  Crunchy Waste-Fuel (fortified with the kind of minerals normally found in industrial runoff)

  Garbage Rolls. (No, really. That’s what it says on the packet.)

  This-Is-Not-Even-Food-Anymore-Balls. (Now with 30% more despair. Just please, don’t put these in your mouth…)

  And Soda Too. (Currently dissolving its own bottle.)

  ***

  "Hello?"

  Annabell’s voice rang out. Her basket, stuffed to the point of insurrection, left a trail of fallen snacks behind her like breadcrumbs in a particularly disorganized fairy tale. She peered over the counter, or rather, she tried to. The counter was clearly designed for giants—or at least for people taller than five-foot-nothing—which left Annabell straining on tiptoes, her chin barely cresting its edge.

  “Hello~?” she called again, stretching the word out like it might summon someone from the ether.

  Nothing happened.

  So, she stood there for a moment, rocking back and forth on her heels, humming along to the music still pounding in her ears. This was fine. Patience was a virtue. At least for the full five seconds it took her to realize no cashier would miraculously materialize.

  At that point, Annabell was left little choice but to shrug, pull out her shiny new credit card, and press it to the card reader.

  “Bi-bip,” she intoned, mimicking the terminal’s usual sound with surprising accuracy. She even followed up with an official-sounding, “Transaction complete. Your payment has gone through.”

  Satisfied, she gave a deep and entirely unnecessary bow toward the counter. “Thank you, come again~”

  Reaching for her overloaded basket on the counter—a flimsy plastic contraption that was definitely not designed for out-doors travel—she hesitated. Her gaze flicked toward the store's empty interior, then back to the basket. “I’ll borrow this until next time,” she said aloud, as if someone might be lurking nearby to hear her promise.

  When no one protested (not even a polite cough from the shadows), she hefted the basket into her arms with a shrug.

  The flickering lights overhead followed her way to the exit, her arms full of crunchy, chocolaty, gummy treasures. The cries for help she hadn’t noticed earlier had, at some point, stopped entirely. This was probably significant. Annabell, however, oblivious as ever, hummed cheerfully to herself.

  It wasn’t until she reached the glass doors that she paused.

  The figure she’d dodged earlier was no longer alone. A small crowd had gathered outside—nearly a dozen of them now—pressing their grimy hands and snarling faces against the glass. Their movements were jerky, their eyes vacant, and their collective growling sounded like a particularly disgruntled choir where at least one member was a bit too enthusiastic about bass.

  "Groupies," Annabell said with an eye-roll, flicking her hair over her shoulder with an exaggerated flourish—the kind that, in certain online dramas, signified a woman about to deliver an unnecessarily devastating workplace takedown. "If you hope to earn my attention, you should at least learn how to operate an automatic door."

  With a sniff that suggested she was far too busy and important to be dealing with such incompetence, she turned away from the entrance and… made her way toward the exit. A separate set of sliding doors positioned six steps to the right, where modern engineering had thoughtfully allowed for a second chance at leaving.

  With a cheerful pling, the doors slid open, and Annabell stepped out into the night, her bounty of snacks putting an extra spring in her step. She did not notice how the horde outside collectively froze, their heads swiveling toward her with the eerie precision of marionettes realizing they had been played. Nor did she notice them lurching into motion once more, their numbers swelling as shadowed figures peeled away from alleyways and doorways to join in the slow, inevitable pursuit.

  Annabell simply adjusted her headphones, gave the city’s ongoing collapse one last idle glance, and continued on her way with the quiet smugness of someone who had, against all odds, absolutely made the right choices in life.

  She hummed as she walked, a bright, chipper tune only she could hear.

  The horde followed.