“An English mastiff. And a big one.” Judging by the hulking creature’s size, the dead dog probably weighs as much as the two of us combined.

I point to the brand on its hip. “Belonged to someone who likes putting their mark on things.”

“Look at the eyes,” Fenna says, turning her head away. “They aren’t right.”

It’s not just the white stain that clouds the eyes. A lot about the dog isn’t right. The slime-gray color of its skin. The odor of decay that hangs around it like a fog. The long incisions that have been stitched up but never fully healed, giving its body the appearance of wearing its own skin as if it were clothing. Not to mention the breed sounds like my boat got a hard-on.

Beneath the folds of dog skin about the neck, I spot a strand of old leather. Trying to touch the beast as little as possible—are there germs in this world?—I push its head to the side to get a better look.

The collar is a simple leather strap and buckle and the initials B.F. embroidered in black cord on one side. Hanging from a ring on the buckle is a hand-made charm composed of bones, twigs, and woven reeds, some still green from recent picking.

“B.F. mean anything to you?”

Fenna shakes her head. “But we should get out of here,” she says, “just in case.”

We follow the trail of broken brush left by the beast, a wandering path of cracked branches and smashed plants that generally leads eastward.

Still, even the pleasant motion of Fenna’s hips traversing uphill isn’t enough to shake the vision of the mastiff from my mind. Monsters are fine and dandy on T.V. and in games, but once you see them in real life, it changes you.

The world’s not a safe place anymore. Walking with my pistol in my hand makes me feel a little safer, but not by much, until a skeleton staggers out from behind a vine-enshrouded tree, and I blast it through the skull in one shot.

“You’re getting better,” Fenna says, her gun aimed but not yet fired as the skellie tumbles to the dirt.

A flash of light surges behind me, and I glance back to see Rufus grinning at me through the glow.

Rufus has once again done nothing, a true embodiment of his character class! He has gained a level. New advancements are available. Do you wish to advance him now?

You have chosen yes.

Choose an advancement area for Rufus:

* It Rubs Off - Rufus is so bad at being a pirate, he makes you worse just being near him. When this ability is active, reduce all of your skills by 2 ranks as long as you are within Rufus’s line of sight. 5 minute duration.

Okay, what in the actual fuck? That’s my one and only level-up option?

I look down at the pistol in my hand and then over at the monkey. What exactly is his purpose in this world, anyhow? Does he exist solely to make my life more difficult? Doesn’t logic then suggest I put him (and by extension, myself) out of misery?

It brings me great psychological pain to have to mentally select Rufus’s new talent for him. It’s like when I found out I was giving my high school girlfriend rides to her friend’s house to practice the clarinet, only to find out later that the clarinet reed wasn’t the reed she was blowing on in band.

Do it behind my back, okay, that makes me feel bad, but at least I can pretend it’s not happening. But when you make a man an accomplice in harming himself, you make a life-long enemy.

And I’m not saying that Rufus is my enemy. As useless as he is, I kind of like the little fucker.

I don’t actually mean him harm. It’s just thoughts. Stress.

This whole place, the world, the system, whatever it is that’s driving all this—it seems pretty normal on the surface, but I see it clearly now. There’s something deeply wrong with it.

Games are designed to fuck with you. If this world is modeled after games, then it’ll never let you just live life. It’s always going to be pushing you, taunting you, pressing you forward. It will give you a life without rest, without solace, of constant threat, of continual sorrow.

I’m going to figure out a way to escape from e-1337. I’ll take Fenna with me, and we’ll reincarnate somewhere else. And I have a feeling that somewhere in that rain of new traveler spawns, there might be a clue how to make all this happen.

I did it once. I can do it again.

“Oh, congratulations,” Fenna says, coming over to Rufus. She crouches down and leans in for a hug, absolutely suffocating him in her large breasts. He doesn’t fight it, and I swear I think I see him wink at me when she stands up.

We press on, taking out a handful more skeletons in the trees ahead to earn some coin and leather scrap drops until we come upon a proper path. It’s a dirt path, man-made, and wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side through the trees without issue.

"Well this bodes well," I say.

The hound track takes us to the right. We can see glimpses of a couple of buildings at the top of the hill through the trees.

“A settlement of some kind,” Fenna says.

“You see anyone with those big eyes of yours?” I say, “Or, anything?”

“Not yet. Looks abandoned.”

We advance further uphill. Near the final bend, just as the buildings come into view, I hear the chanting—a low, feminine song of deranged, sharp words with no rhyme or melody. They are words of power, of evil magic, and I have the unmistakable feeling that they are being voiced directly at me.