A horrific shrieking woke Andrew from his light, fitful slumber. He’d had the strangest dreams the night before– the characters of his LitRPG serial had tracked him down and were trying to murder him.

He shuddered, and rolled out of bed, fighting the thin sheet that threatened to strangle him.

Was everything trying to kill him, these days?

He barely managed to slide his feet underneath his skinny, wiry body and hoist himself up. It wasn’t morning– not even close– but the shrieking, whatever it was, had inspired him. A banshee! That’s what The Pipe and the Pendulum: A Sherlock Holmes LitRPG needed.

He looked at his desk through reddened, bleary eyes. Pure chaos reigned: mountains of receipts, scraps of paper, endless mostly-empty journals (he started a new one for every new story idea), and dishes, always mountains of dirty dishes.

He looked at the one closest to him– a gaudy yellow monstrosity in the shape of a far too happy sun with the words You’re the Sun in Our Life, Son! written in script usually reserved for the wedding invitations of women with perfectly blown out curls and a haunted, starved look– and picked it up.

It was half full of a questionable liquid, but Andrew deduced that it had to be coffee, and the freshest on the wasteland that was his desk. He wouldn’t have been using that mug if it hadn’t been the last one in his tiny efficiency kitchen.

With a grimace, he swallowed it down and told himself that it wasn’t that bad– once he’d weaned himself off of the milk & suger accoutrements he preferred, it had become reasonably safe to drink mysterious liquids from the desk. He’d made that change the hard way.

He slid into his chair, miraculously free of crap, and banged on the Enter key on his decrepit old laptop.

He told himself that Macbooks from the early 2010s were superior machines anyway, though while that had probably been true, there was a limit to how long the damn things could survive. He was barely able to pull up Safari, let alone any of the newfangled browsers.

As he waited for Aristocratic Avenue to load, he drummed his spindly fingers on his knobby knees and looked around with a sigh. He pulled at the threadbare boxers that only made it down to his mid-thigh– he must have had these ones since high school.

Despite being sixteen floors above street level, somehow there was always an obnoxious flourescent streetlight beaming directly into his apartment, and his very thin, makeshift curtain didn’t do much to block it out.

Blackout curtains. That was first on his list– he had to start sleeping again. But he didn’t need to look at his bank account to know that they were a bit out of reach for the moment. Maybe they were something his parents could get him for Christmas this year? he wondered with only a touch of misery. A thirty-eight year old man, angling for necessities from his parents for Christmas. How pathetic.

They wouldn’t do it anyway. They preferred to buy him, as his mother said, ‘happy’ and ‘fun’ things he certainly wouldn’t buy on his own. Non-essentials. Like the damn mug.

He took another deep sip as he entered his password for Aristocratic Avenue.

Andrew had only a moment to register that anything was strange when he flickered out of existence.

The next thing he knew, he was in a dark, dank cave. It was cold, and a strange, ethereal light emanated from– somewhere.

A box popped up into his field of vision, partially translucent but very easy to read.

You have 0 Race Options.

You have 0 Class Options.

You have 0 Ability Options.

You have 2 Game Play Options.

Race: Human

Class: Detective

Abilities: Deduction, Investigation, Synthesis

Game Play Options:

Lone Ranger - Generally offputting, people just don’t like you, but you don’t care. You’ve got a mission, a calling, and by god, you’re going to get it done.

Insufferable Know It All - Annoying as hell, people keep you around because you know things and won’t shut the fuck up about it.>

Andrew shuddered, a shivering feeling running down his bony spine that had more to do with what he read than the temperature. He recognized the words in the text box: they were his own.

“Oh, thank god,” a woman’s voice said from the other side of a stalagmite. “Come over here and fuck me.”