Morning broke completely unnoticed this time. The sun crawled across the blankets in Peter’s room without disturbing the occupant. Even the direct beam glaring on his face had no effect. It wasn’t until the day star had nearly reached it’s zenith that anything stirred in that room, and even then it was a snuffle, a cough and a rolling over to stick one leg out from under the covers – nature’s radiator for the overheated body.

Eventually Peter’s bladder decided that it was get out of bed time, though he seriously considered ignoring it. What’s with these random organs making demands of him. He was in charge of this body and he was enjoying the complete lack of motion.

Cracking a crusty eyelid Peter slid out of the blankets and onto the floor. Even that gentle movement brought stars to his eyes and a twinge from his arm. “Urgh. I really hope this isn’t death sickness. At least I don’t wake up in a box when I respawn here.” He heaved himself up to his feet with the help of the bed head and felt his way to the toilet to silence his demanding bladder.

Washing his hands and face brought some clarity and helped clear the fog. The face that stared back at him from the mirror looked worse than it had last night, if that were at all possible. Listening hard he couldn’t hear any movement in the house, so he didn’t bother grabbing his bathrobe before heading to the kitchen.

Surely enough, on the counter was a note from his mother.

“Order yourself whatever you want and get UberFood to deliver if the restaurant doesn’t. I have an appointment in the city, I’ll be home tonight.

Love, Mum.”

Hot diggity damn. Free reign and the house to himself. “Too bad I feel like that time I got stabbed through the chest, this could have been awesome.” Peter thought. “Still, best not waste it, Mum doesn’t give free passes often.”

Peter grabbed the phone and placed orders for a pizza, burgers, turkish kebabs and drinks for all three. He planned to eat the kebab straight up and reheat the other two later. He had at least five hours until Mum came home and now that one organ had had it’s needs met another was starting to make itself known. Oh well, ten minutes and that one would be fixed as well.

While he waited, Peter sat down and pulled up his notepad and pen app. First he jotted down the important new information discovered about the town, namely that there was a bus service that cost a whole gold piece. Next, he searched the message boards online to see if there was any mention of the Avatar of Death disappearing. This produced a grand total of zero responses, but not a result that surprised him. He began to ponder the implications of the gift received from what’s her name, the breakfast thief. His battered brain refused to serve up her identity, beyond “she who eats my food”.

A knocking at the door startled him from his thoughts. “Gwrmrmnrrr,” his stomach rumbled in joy.

“Coming!” he called as he rushed ill-advisedly to the door. He paused with his hand on the handle to let the stars stop swimming in his vision and his stomach settle again. “You’re about to get fed,” he thought, “shut it.”

Peter opened the door to three equally confused faces. Three differently uniformed teens bearing food stood in the hall sheepishly not quite looking at each other. “Good, you’re here. I’m starving.” He took the deliveries from each and stacked them up using the pizza box as a tray and tucked the drinks bottles under his arms.

“You gonna eat that lot yourself?” asked the last guy. “You must have hollow legs.” Peter just smiled as he shook his head and walked away. As long as he didn’t move too fast he was ravenous. He took the food into the kitchen and stashed the drinks, burgers and pizza in the fridge. They had the best reheating qualities. Sitting down he unwrapped the kebab and took a long sniff. While his mouth watered at the smell, his stomach, in a rare departure from form, rebelled at the greasy smell. Feeling betrayed by his own body he bit down into his food and savoured the taste. He loved kebabs and he would be damned if he was going let a whinging tummy stop him from enjoying one, especially since it was the demands of that organ that he had been trying to satisfy.

Peter ignored his rebellious gut and savoured every morsel. He knew he was going to pay for it later, but since it had his usual amount of chili sauce and jalapeno peppers in it, that was a given anyway. He sat in the afterglow of his gastronomic equivalent of a lava sandwich and thought about the last couple of days. He had no idea what he was going to do, or even how he felt about what was happening. His mum and dad’s fighting had gotten worse since he had been sent home from school. It hadn’t been Peter’s idea to get into a fight, but if only he had kept his mouth shut he wouldn’t have been beaten up, so it was his fault in the end. That meant that the increased tensions at home was his fault too. He began to feel guilty for causing more strife. He was out of ideas as to how he could remedy the situation, however. He needed to get back to normal school days, but he dreaded what it could mean for him at the same time. He wasn’t much of a fighter, and he knew that fat idiot was going to come after him again. At least when he got into a fight that he couldn’t handle in the Age all that happened was that he woke up in the crypt. Sure it hurt, but the gained experience, and sometimes items, left him better equipped to face the threat again and maybe succeed this time.

The Age! Now there’s an idea! I could learn to fight in the game. It wasn’t like he hadn’t died before, in fact he was becoming quite used to it. It probably wouldn’t train my real body to be any stronger, it is just a game, he pondered, but if I were to practice hand to hand combat against humanoid monsters I might be able to fare better against that orc and his goblin mates at school.

Feeling inspired, Peter wolfed the rest of his brunch and retired to the lounge with his drink in a cooling sleeve. He set an hour timer so he could come out and rehydrate and maybe grab lunch, and dived back into his virtual body.