Chapter 1

  ... ay

  ?

  Clay.

  ...

  Clay.

  Who is Clay?

  Clay.

  Wait... Am I Clay? I'm Clay!

  "Clay!"

  I sat straight up, feeling like I should be vomiting water from my lungs. But for some reason I was dry. Sitting directly over me, her pale face broadcasting an expression showing a mixture of concern and annoyance, was Joan.

  Upon seeing her, I immediately scanned the situation. We were nowhere near the water, but the air had a strong smell of fish. I felt hard dirt beneath me, and we appeared to be in some sort of alley between two old wooden buildings.

  The lighting on everything felt wrong. It was day-time, but everything was covered in fog and shadows. The entire surroundings were darker than that kid that set next to me in fourth period study hall's poetry. It was like Poe had painted the surroundings. Or more accurately, this appeared like a Lovecraftian setting except off.

  I couldn't see much from where I was sitting, but everything around me seemed like a confused mixture of different time periods and genres. The only consistency was that it was all made to look dark and edgy, like a creepy pasta written by a hormonal fourteen-year-old. There were horse-drawn carriages, phone booths, and people walking past taking selfies (albeit really menacing and edgy selfies). The few people I could see from my position were also an odd mixture including normal looking humans, demi-humans, people that clearly came from anime and video games, and, although I might have been mistaken, someone who appeared to be Colonel Sanders (the KFC guy, but of course also dark and edgy). Deciding not to dwell too much on the visual of the beloved fried chicken mascot wearing goth makeup and covered in tattoos, I turned my attention back to Joan.

  "... on staring at everything, or are you going to help me figure out what's going on?"

  I only caught part of Joan's question, but I think I got the important part.

  "Do you think they'll give us a refund?"

  Joan looked at me like she wanted to strangle me. Apparently now wasn't the best time for jokes. Noted.

  "I mean, I'm not one to talk, but whatever this place is, it appears to be made by someone with pretty bad ADHD... And like someone who read the first couple paragraphs about everything that has ever existed and decided they were an expert. But..." As I continued to speak, I noticed Joan staring intently as if she was testing me or trying to read my capabilities. "... Am I missing something? Did anything happen before I woke up?"

  For the first time since I had hid my very real suicidal aspirations behind a very fake laugh on the cruise ship, I saw a smile form on her lips. "That's an understatement. You missed the entire exposition." If I ever doubted Joan's claim to be a writer, that was completely erased when she started talking about our situation like one of her plays.

  "I think I'm going to need to sit down for this." I was aware I had been seated this whole time, but it's never a bad time for a cliche.

  Apparently I was wrong, and there are bad times for cliches. Joan's smile disappeared as she instantly looked extremely annoyed. "It was remotely charming on the ship, but you need to get your act together. Now's not the time for your little comedy routine, so just act like an adult for once. Focus. I'm starting to see why you were alone on a couple's cruise."

  Ok, that was a low blow. I immediately thought to respond with a snide remark, but before the words escaped my lips I realized my head was in fact clearer than it had been moments before. Joan could have been a therapist because he was able to clear my mind of its tangents unlike anyone I'd ever met before. "Sorry. No excuses." One thing I'd learned from somewhere, either therapy or a harem manga, was that it's never a smart idea to follow up an apology with an excuse. Take the 'L' and move on with things.

  Joan's smile returned and she straightened up, like she was preparing to tell me something important. She then proceeded to tell me something important, "When you were just laying there, there was a really loud booming voice that started talking, I'm surprised you could sleep through that."

  I really wanted to make a quip about my impeccable ability to sleep through anything, but my mouth refused to open. I guess even I could learn to read a room.

  She continued, "I'm paraphrasing here, so don't blame me if I forget something, but... This is all some sort of elaborate game. Every passenger on the ship is now a player, but because this is the prologue we have been split into our own individual worlds based on couples. Two couples per world." I wish I was better at reading faces because I couldn't tell if Joan was blushing from embarrassment or annoyance. "Apparently, we were considered a couple so we were paired up... Don't get any ideas."

  "Or we are considered two separate couples and we're here alone. So if we're the only two people here, or possibly two of four people here, who are all those people I see walking around out there on the street?"

  Joan was actually taken aback by my rare insightful question. "The voice called them NPCs. I'm vaguely aware of the term, but last night was actually going to be my first time trying a table top role play game, so I would guess you have a better grasp than me."

  "I'm just going to come out and state the obvious. If what the voice said to you is even remotely true, there's no way in Hell this is some sort of elaborate extension of the cruise. I mean, yeah I see it in shows and anime all the time how an evil organization traps people in a life or death game so they can make money gambling... But there is no way there would be anything close to a profit coming from something like this. If they have to build unique spaces for each of the hundreds of couples on the cruise, and staff each of them with paid actors who work twenty-four hours a day... And I'm not about to get into the legal issues that would come from this." I lied and immediately went into some of the legal issues. "For starters, even if they kill every single one of us off in here so there are no 'loose ends', it's not like none of us have family that would sue The Love Craft cruise ship people for losing all of their loved ones at sea. Or the amount they'd have to hope non-disclosure-agreements would keep the actors quiet. Not to mention the risk of the actors if we suddenly got violent and hurt them. I mean, none of it would add up."

  To be honest, it hadn't been a spontaneous observation. I had spent countless hours watching shows and movies about elaborate games set up for gambling, and every single one caused me to rant to my fiancée... to her... to Stacy... about how the math and logistics didn't add up. It had gotten to the point where she refused to watch those shows with me because I would insufferably complain about how unrealistic it all was. It almost felt like destiny that I was here to debunk the idea this could be a gambling ring... A point that did nothing to help the situation but made me feel smart.

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  I couldn't get over the surprise in Joan's eyes as my rant came to an end. "I thought you said you were an insurance adjuster. You sound more like a lawyer or something."

  I laughed proudly, only afterwards realizing how lame the source of my pride was. "What do you think an insurance adjuster does?" I puffed out my chest, once again, in hindsight I am very embarrassed. "I spend all day interviewing and investigating auto accidents, the people involved, their doctors, their lawyers, and the shops servicing the vehicles involved. All I do is deal with money, legal mumbo-jumbo, and liars. I wouldn't be very good at my job if I wasn't an expert at dealing with being able to analyze all of that stuff on the fly in any situation." I might have over-exaggerated. I didn't recall any car accidents that had moved into the territory of mass kidnapping and elaborate death-games.

  "Were you any good at your job?" Joan raised an eyebrow, less as an accusation and more an honest question.

  "I was alright." I should note that I said this not as a humble brag, but in a way that made it very clear that I was nowhere near as good at my job as I'd previously implied. I might try to make myself look cool in front of Joan but lying to her seemed pointless and the thought of it made my stomach uneasy.

  "I think you're right. We didn't pay nearly enough for this to be for our benefit, and even if it was footed by the richest people in the world, it's hard to see anything they'd gain. Although we won't know the extent of anything until we leave the safe zone, I'd have to agree with you that this is something else entirely. Also, there was a lot more that the voice said."

  "Ok, so we're in a game. There are at most us and two other passengers in this world, the rest are elsewhere. This is some sort of prologue. And all those random people are NPCs. Got it. What else?" I made the effort to repeat everything I knew partially because I wanted to see if it sounded as insane coming out of my mouth as it did coming out of Joan's (it sounded more insane), and partially because I learned that repeating a person's information back to them was the best way to verify that both parties were on the same page. Sadly, it's a technique I'd used regularly interviewing clients.

  "Correct. You almost seem like a functioning adult if you keep your random tangents at bay." Why did Joan like to break my heart like that? "We are all some sort of 'investigator' and our stats and abilities are based on an 'occupation' that was provided for us. I'm not really sure what that means specifically, it sounds more like something you'd understand."

  She was right, or at least I was pretty sure I knew the gist of what the voice was implying. "Call of Cthulhu game mechanics, or at least I think that's what they're talking about. It's what we would have been playing on the ship if tall-dark-and-tentacles hadn't spoiled the party. Most people have a general idea how basic table top RPGs work because they know games similar to Dungeons and Dragons, or they could have an understanding from video games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Call of Cthulhu is different. Like the voice said, the players are called investigators and each investigator has an occupation. The players or Keeper, that's the person running the game, can workshop their own occupations and the abilities that come with it, but it's their occupation that determines what they are able to do. Like a police officer occupation might have the fire arms skill, but a college professor occupation would not have that skill. There is also a major focus on deteriorating stats, but the biggest difference is a focus on sanity. No matter what you do as a player, the world is finding ways to whittle away your sanity until you have nothing left, and then it's game over."

  Joan had been nodding along, although I wasn't really sure if she fully understood my explanation. I definitely gave her a majorly abridged version, especially since I hadn't really played much of that particular table top game. It wasn't until I'd mentioned sanity that her eyes widened in recognition. "Yes! The voice mentioned that. It said that keeping your sanity from dropping was the most important part. Now it makes a little more sense, I guess."

  Something was nagging at me as Joan continued to explain what she'd heard from the voice. Actually, there were a few things, but I figured I'd start at the most pressing one, "Did it say how to look up your stats and occupation?"

  After a moment of staring at me for my fairly obvious question, Joan held out her right hand. "Journal." Suddenly a small brown worn leatherbound book appeared in her hand. She opened it up, and I looked over her shoulder. The pages flickered in front of my like a computer glitch or some sort of censor. The journal seemed to act more like a electronic tablet than a book on the inside, and the contents were likely only visible to the owner. I suspected maybe there was a skill or ability to allow me to see other people's contents, but that was something I'd have to put aside for now.

  "I can't read yours, it's censored or something."

  Joan jumped slightly at my presence over her shoulder. She immediately relaxed, stepping away so that I was at a safer distance. She might have known I couldn't see the contents of her journal, but I had obviously invaded her personal bubble. "Investigator Joan Roy, Occupation The Playwright. Then it lists my attributes and abilities below. I don't really understand it all, but I'm sure I'll figure it out as we go. Why don't you check out yours, just hold out your hand and summon your journal."

  The Playwright. Joan's occupation was very nail-on-the-head. I guess I'll be The Insurance Adjuster, or The Otaku, or something else that made an effort to sum my entire existence up in a single title.

  I held out my left hand and said, "Journal!"

  A leatherbound book appeared in my hand. It was very similar in appearance to Joan's but mine was black instead of brown... Very edgy. I reached out with my right hand and opened the cover. Before I could read the contents on the page, the entire world around me grew cold and terrifying. I would be able to better describe it, but with every part of my body feeling like I was facing impending death, my brain wasn't quite ready to look at the finer details. Let's just say it was scary as Hell, which was a huge leap from my current views of this world where everything looked like the creation of a teenage goth kid.

  WHO ARE YOU?!

  The voice spoke directly into my head, a simple glance at Joan made it clear that she could see the change in the world, but she didn't react to the voice so I must have been the only one to hear it.

  WHO ARE YOU?!

  I didn't think the voice could get anymore terrifying than its first outburst, but upon repeating itself, I realized it could get much much worse if I didn't appease it.

  "I am Clay..." Joan looked at me in a mixture of terror and confusion. I could only imagine what she was thinking since she couldn't hear the voice like I could.

  YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE!

  Are you fucking serious?! It took every fiber of my being to keep myself from berating the voice for having the audacity to act like I was the one who was inconveniencing them. "What do you mean?" was all I could manage.

  What do I mean? Are you serious? I didn't plan for this... Are you trying to ruin this before it starts?

  What? The terrifying booming voice changed immediately to one of a whiney brat. I was at a loss, but without the crippling fear I had before, I managed to voice the obvious question. "Then why don't you send me home?"

  At these words Joan tensed up, and I immediately felt guilty. There was little context to my question, so even without hearing the voice, she must have realized that I was either making a very sensible request or a very deadly one. Either way, the end result might leave her without her only ally in whatever the Hell was going on.

  It's already started. I will have to fix this. You have given me so much more work. I hate you! Watch your back, the all powerful Azathoth, is NOT happy.

  "Azathoth? Like The Azathoth? Not like a player handle because you want to sound tough, but make yourself sound infinitely more nerdy in the process?" I might have lost all sense of danger at this point.

  If you know of me, then maybe you should understand the danger you are in. You will NOT ruin my game!

  The chaos around me suddenly dissipated, leaving everything as it was before I received Azathoth's unwanted eldritch DMs straight to my brain. Joan looked shaken, but something else was bothering me. Well, many things were bothering me, but one thing piqued my curiosity more than the others at that moment. If I wasn't supposed to be here, then what did my journal say?

  I looked down at the journal I had opened immediately before I was rudely interrupted.

  Investigator: (14Y

  Occupation: +h3 /\/u11

  Str: error

  Dex: error

  Con: error

  Int: error

  Wis: error

  Cha: error

  Skills:

  404 error

  Not found

  Sanity: undefined

  "Clay, what happened? What does your journal say?" I couldn't even look toward Joan, my head swam with too many questions I had no way of answering.

  "They talked to me directly."

  "The voice? Wait, you called it Azathoth! Is that who they said they were?" Despite her lack of gaming knowledge it was clear Joan knew enough about the literature side of things to warrant her attendance on The Love Craft.

  "They said I'm not supposed to be here. So I looked at my book."

  I was expecting some sort of response from Joan, but she remained silent.

  After I realized she wasn't going to say anything I continued. "The entire thing looks like a glitch. My name and occupation are written in something like leet. Everything else is some sort of error message." There was something else that didn't match the rest of the facts, but it wasn't the time to bring up even more confusion. Before I investigated even further into what is going on, I had other questions for Joan.

  She interrupted my thought process, "I don't know where to begin. It's all really hard to wrap my head around. I can only imagine how confused you must be."

  I looked at her for the first time since Azathoth had ended our chat, my eyes were wide not sure where to even start explaining my confusion over the realization that we are playing some kind of game in the palm of an eldritch God's hand, and that for some reason I'm not even supposed to be a part of it, yet I'm still not allowed to go home. "You're telling me. I'm supposed to be an atheist. What am I supposed to tell everyone, that I found God on the couples cruise?"

  Joan groaned loudly.