Midnight. Swordfight.
by Chandler Groover (2015)
Genres: A Folly

A fool receives a challenge from a countess. Violence. Sex. Profanity. Sausage.

action: %
response: How did you ever get into this predicament? A rumor, a glove thrown down onto a dance-floor? Now you're standing in the moonlight and your knees are knocking together, although you hope that no one notices. You're still dressed for a masquerade and nothing feels quite real. But it must be real.

The scene is set: landscape garden.

The cast: your second, Ferdinand, handing your weapon over; your rival's second, Onegin, handing her weapon over; and your
rival -- the countess.

"En garde!" the countess cries.
action: Attack countess
response: You lunge toward the countess with your cutlass. Initiative should matter during a duel, shouldn't it? But then there is a clash and you find your blade scraping the countess's rapier as she drives you back with a parry.

Sparks fly from your feuding swords. You are both dancing over the lawn, back and forth, here and there, and somehow you are still alive. It's unbelievable. But that comes to an end when you make a misstep and the countess waltzes right into the opening.

How did you get into the air? Why can't you feel anything? And what is your body doing down there without a head?

Oh.
action: Kiss countess
response: You cast aside your weapon. You cannot fight the countess. This feud is a mistake. Instead you walk across the lawn toward her.

She must see it in your eyes. She must know how you feel. Perhaps she even has the same feelings?

Apparently not, because what you get is her rapier plunged into your mouth. It keeps plunging until your lips are pressed onto its hilt.

At least you got to kiss something.
action: You attack Onegin
response: The countess? The countess? Why should you fight the countess when that bastard Onegin is undoubtedly the mastermind behind this whole charade?

You're overcome with outrage and you lunge toward Onegin. It's certainly a pretty sight to see him flinch, but your cutlass never even grazes him before you've been repelled by the countess. Her sword intercepts your own; she's faster; she has pushed you back.

"Your challenge is with me!" she says.

And then her rapier is in your gut, your innards spilling out. Somehow she must have done it when your focus was on Onegin. His smile is the last thing that you see, and your intestines are the last thing that you feel as you try to push them back inside.

You aren't successful.
action: You attack ferdinand
response: Something whispers in your brain, like a perverse worm, encouraging you to attack Ferdinand, and you do. Onegin and the countess are irrelevant. All your frustrations erupt in your own second's direction.

You swing around, your cutlass slashing sideways through the air, in order to take Ferdinand by surprise, but in the brief moment before your weapon would connect, you realize your mistake: nothing can take Ferdinand by surprise.

She has your wrist, her knee is in your gut, and suddenly your arm is bending backward in her grasp. You can see in her eyes something nobody living has seen. That is because everyone who has seen it is dead. It is killing intent.

"If this is how you repay your allies," says Ferdinand, "no wonder you have enemies."

Now she has your sword, but she does not wait too long before returning it.
action: You examine her
response: Ferdinand told you to run, but you were never going to listen, which is why she's serving as your second now. Her head is shaved completely bald, she has grown out her moustache and goatee, and she is wearing a captain's coat with epaulettes. It's a pity that she couldn't fight in your place; then the match might have been more even.

The countess is suddenly there, only inches away. A clash is ringing in your ears and you can see your own sword sailing out over the garden. More importantly, you can feel her sword sinking into your stomach.

"Revenge," she whispers in your ear, "is always sweeter than forgiveness."
action: You look at the countess
response: The countess cuts a formidable figure with her rapier upraised, its point a silver promise in the moonlight. Her face is partly hidden by a mask, her lips a scarlet smile underneath. Even encumbered by her outrageous gown (and it is indeed outrageous) you have no doubt that she is the better swordsman, and she seems to have no doubt about it either.

She is suddenly there, only inches away. A clash is ringing in your ears and you can see your own sword sailing out over the garden. More importantly, you can feel her sword sinking into your stomach.

"Revenge," she whispers in your ear, "is always sweeter than forgiveness."
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying a playscript and a cutlass, and you are wearing motley.
action: About yourself
response: You're dressed as a chequered jester with enormous sleeves and jingling bells. You expected to spend this night playing practical jokes on the other guests, stealing kisses. Fighting a duel for your life was never on the agenda.

The countess is suddenly there, only inches away. A clash is ringing in your ears and you can see your own sword sailing out over the garden. More importantly, you can feel her sword sinking into your stomach.

"Revenge," she whispers in your ear, "is always sweeter than forgiveness."
action: You examine the gown
response: A thousand luminescent jellyfish have been stitched together to create the countess's gown. They cannot breathe well in the open air, but their gasping only makes them glow more wonderfully. Their tentacles and arms drag out behind her in a stinging, lightning-crackled trail, but the countess moves just as gracefully as the jellyfish themselves would in water.

She is suddenly there, only inches away. A clash is ringing in your ears and you can see your own sword sailing out over the garden. More importantly, you can feel her sword sinking into your stomach.

"Revenge," she whispers in your ear, "is always sweeter than forgiveness."
action: You examine the mask
response: A domino mask fashioned entirely from pearls covers the countess's face. Far from romantic, it seems to lend the skin around her eyes a lesioned, bubbling appearance, or perhaps suggest frog-eggs or caviar. Nobody else would be able to wear such a thing without looking a fright; the countess makes it look impeccable.

She is suddenly there, only inches away. A clash is ringing in your ears and you can see your own sword sailing out over the garden. More importantly, you can feel her sword sinking into your stomach.

"Revenge," she whispers in your ear, "is always sweeter than forgiveness."
action: You wake up
response: You open your eyes.
action: You wake up
response: On the floor you can see a white glove where it has been contemptuously thrown down, and expanding outward from this glove the world takes form. There are dancers surrounding you in a circle, but they are not dancing: they are staring at you and staring at the glove, and their eyeballs never cease staring because they are frozen.

There has been some hitch and time stands still.

A chandelier hangs overhead, candles unflickering. Everything is mirrored in the marble floor. Toward the future you can glimpse the grand staircase, where the countess is ascending with her back turned after having delivered her challenge.

Maybe you ought to try examining your playscript.
action: You examine the script
response: Scene:
ballroom, evening

to thwart the countess prior to their duel.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
kiss (when wearing motley)
action: You examine the glove
response: A simple white glove.
action: You examine the dancers
response: You cannot recognize anyone behind their masks. There is a jackal in a tailcoat, and a nymph with shellfish in her hair, and an enchantress with gold orbs for eyes, and someone with marzipan skin, and an alpine maiden with a shepherd's crook, and an antlered baron, and a raven in a judge's wig, and a sequined succubus, and other masqueraders more fantastic still, but the one thing they all have in common is that their frozen gazes are condemning you: Guilty, they seem to say, guilty.
action: You examine countess
response: Looking at the countess now, you can still feel the shame and confusion and rage that washed over you when she first threw down this glove -- or was it the only time she threw down the glove? Is this moment the same as the other? You were too shocked to respond, and could only watch her sail away through the crowd, up the grand staircase, like some royal frigate among smaller vessels bobbing in her wake.
action: You look at the jackal
response: It's strange, but when you look at the individual dancers their details warp as though you were looking at something from inside a fishbowl.
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You are carrying a playscript, and you are wearing motley.
action: You examine motley
response: You thought you would look rather charming in motley when you selected this costume, but considering the circumstances you look more like a genuine fool than you ever intended -- with or without the
costume.
action: You look at chandelier
response: You once heard a story about a chandelier falling on a crowd during a dance and crushing everyone under its weight. It just goes to show that you never know when death will come calling, or how.
action: You examine the floor
response: You look down and find your reflection looking back from the polished marble. Apart from you, your mirrored double is the only thing that moves in this ballroom.
action: You examine the staircase
response: Grand staircase? Monumental staircase is more like it. Battalions could march down those red-carpeted steps with room to spare, but right now the countess has the staircase to herself with her tentacled gown trailing behind her.
action: You examine the script
response: Scene:
ballroom, evening

to thwart the countess prior to their duel.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
kiss (when wearing motley)
action: You take the glove
response: You try to lift the white glove, but your muscles strain and it remains stuck to the marble. This glove is the core around which the entire evening is anchored, and nothing will ever budge it from the spot.
action: F.
response: When you reach the grand staircase landing, the countess is already gone, which is to say that she was never here at this particular moment. Perhaps she just left or perhaps she's about to arrive, but the salient point is that you're not going to find her.

Ferdinand, however, is leaning against a balustrade, her gaze cast toward the dancers in their formations below. She isn't one for dancing herself unless it's atop freshly slain enemies. Her cutlass, which you will borrow later in your duel with the countess, is leaning against the balustrade beside her.

The ballroom is in the past now, and in the future you will look behind a polar bear.
action: You examine Ferdinand
response: Your oldest friend, Ferdinand might also be your only friend left now. There's no one more experienced when it comes to warfare, and in most situations you'd take whatever tactical advice she had to give. But when she drew you aside earlier tonight and told you that your goose was going to be cooked -- that the countess, indeed, was stoking the fire -- you assured her that you'd baste yourself thoroughly first. She didn't think it was funny. She also knew she wouldn't change your mind.
action: You look at the cutlass
response: Ferdinand's cutlass has lopped away more heads than ever rolled during a revolution. But although she's agreed to lend you her weapon for the upcoming duel, you'll probably lose your own fingers before you even scratch the countess with it.
action: You talk to Ferdinand
response: You can't talk to Ferdinand. She is paralyzed and will remain paralyzed in this moment.
action: Kiss ferdinand
response: You respect Ferdinand far too much to take any liberties with her, even as a joke. There's also the fact that she'd have your head if she ever found out that you'd stolen a kiss.
action: You look at the dancers
response: Right now the dancers appear to be engaged in a minuet, although nobody is moving and there's no music. You always found the minuet rather tedious, but this takes it to a new level.
action: F.
response: Dmitri's chest is pressed against the wall, arms overhead with his fingernails raking down the wallpaper. Onegin is straddling his rear, gripping his waist, paused mid-thrust with his cock halfway inside Dmitri's cunt -- or maybe halfway out?

As the countess's minion, it is Onegin's duty to carry her weapon, and right now her rapier is resting nearby on the floor in an opened case.

The polar bear itself is at least three meters tall, preserved taxidermically in a perpetual roar with claws outspread. Traveling counter-clockwise would reorient you toward the black salon, and the grand staircase is in your past.
action: You look at the script
response: Scene:
behind a polar bear, evening

to replace a weapon.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
kiss (when wearing motley)
action: You take the weapon
response: When you try to take the rapier, you feel something resist, and then it occurs to you: there will always need to be some weapon in this case, otherwise the countess would be unarmed during the duel later. You'll need to find a replacement and drop it here if you want to remove the rapier.
action: You examine Dmitri
response: It's unbelievable. Dmitri ought to know better than this. There must be, what, a few hundred people attending this masquerade ball, and he has to cavort with that bastard Onegin? You can't fathom what's going through his head, but at least there's one upshot: he has Onegin distracted, and the countess's unguarded weapon is yours to meddle with.
action: You examine Onegin
response: Onegin, that bastard. He's just got to fuck everything in your life, doesn't he? First it was spreading that rumor (probably) and now it's this. You wonder how people like him even come to exist. What influences must have converged to plant him right here, at this moment, with Dmitri, behind this godforsaken polar bear.
action: Cc
response: Black sable tapestries hang from the ceiling and walls, and black velvet carpets the floor. Scarlet radiance slants through scarlet windowpanes. An ebony grandfather clock has stopped keeping the time at one quarter to twelve.

There is nobody here.

Clockwise you will look behind a polar bear, and when you glance back toward the past you can see a celebration in the banquet hall where everyone has gathered to drink, feast, and make merry.
action: You look at the tapestries
response: Such trappings bring to mind the plush interiors that cushion high-class coffins.
action: You examine the windows
response: When you glance outside through the scarlet windowpanes you can see great tripods burning. Heretics writhe in their flames. It's a glorious auto-da-fe.
action: You examine the tripods
response: You see nothing special about the heretics burning on the tripods. They're what you might call "garden variety." But you'll be in a similar spot if you can't finagle some method to outwit the countess soon.
action: You look at the script
response: Scene:
black salon, one quarter to twelve

fails to express any hour.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
kiss (when wearing motley)
action: You look at the clock
response: Two long cast-iron hands mark the time at one quarter to twelve.
action: P.
response: Somehow a rift must have opened, because obese cherubs are pouring through the air onto the banquet-table; or at least, they would be pouring if they were in motion. There are several hundred, faces grimacing and feathered wings shedding blue pinions, and in their conglomerate they have impacted the table at one end, sending the other end skyward like a see-saw. Some even appear to be crawling upward along the table as rats would a mast aboard a sinking ship.

This arrangement has naturally relocated the banquet itself into midair, where roasts and cakes and goblets and plates hang with their glazes and their silver sparkling. A tremendous kielbasa glistens temptingly.

When it comes to the diners, most have already departed, although a few remain watching the cherubs with mild interest from seats pushed back against the walls. One lady dressed as a swan is eating angels on horseback, with a champagne flute daintily suspended in her other hand.

A clockwise inclination would direct you into the aftermath, while moving counter-clockwise would steer you toward the cloak room, and in the future yawns the black salon.
action: You take the kielbasa
response: You pry the kielbasa from midair and heft it in one hand to test its weight. Yes, yes, this kielbasa will make for a perfectly delicious weapon in the right context.
action: You examine the swan
response: She has outdone herself. Apart from her two human hands, this lady looks exactly like a swan. It is uncanny. She would probably
waddle and peck breadcrumbs if she could move.
action: You look at the angels
response: The "angels" are oysters, and they are "on horseback" because they've been wrapped in bacon. These angels have also been speared with a skewer, which the swan-lady is holding to her beak between thumb and forefinger.
action: You examine the flute
response: It is never too early or late for champagne. When there's no occasion for champagne, then the champagne makes the occasion.
action: You look at the cherubs
response: For some reason artists always represent cherubs as adorable little darlings when the truth is that they're hideous. Their skulls are elongated, their black eyes bulbous, their tiered teeth serrated, and their flesh cracked where an ordinary infant would have folds. A piranha would look friendlier.
action: You examine Dmitri
response: Vines dripping with muscatel grapes are draped like laurels around Dmitri's ears, and he has a toga knotted over one shoulder. He's not an adolescent but he's still blooming with youth like one. Some people never seem to age, not even when time's moving properly.
action: You examine script
response: Scene:
aftermath, early morning

with an interested party,
or perhaps with a disinterested one.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
kiss (when wearing motley)
action: You look at the book
response: "They're fables," explains Dmitri. "Someone left this book behind and I've just been skimming the stories. Here, listen to this one."

He clears his throat and then begins:

"Sly Bertrand and Ratto in company sat
(the one was a monkey, the other a cat)
before a fire to watch chestnuts roasting.
Said Bertrand to Ratto, his voice imploring:

"'My brother, you ought to exhibit your skill
and fish out those nuts so we can eat our fill.
Your paws are suited expertly to the task
whereas I am afraid mine would just burn, alas.'

"'It is done,' answered Ratto, extending a paw
and attempting to dig through the ash with his claw.
One after another out the chestnuts popped
though Ratto was still scorched before he had stopped.

"Yet the poor cat had nothing to eat
for the monkey had made his retreat
with the chestnuts in hand; peasants bring
power in this manner to their king.

"I believe that the phrase 'cat's paw' is derived from this fable," says Dmitri, "but what I want to know is why a monkey and cat
were eating roasted chestnuts in the first place."
action: You talk to Dmitri
response: "Honestly," says Dmitri, "I'm surprised you're still alive. I suppose that you must have done something tricky to manage that, eh? Put your finger on the record to stop the universe from turning, then slipped out the back door to dodge your appointment with the countess? Otherwise you'd be dead. You're an incompetent swordsman. I've seen you. But I guess it doesn't matter: you're here now, whenever
now is in the grand scheme.

"I'm afraid that you won't find many others still hanging around though. They've all gone. It's dreadfully late -- or maybe dreadfully early? Early and late are the same when the hour is right. But you know me. I never sleep."

He pauses to turn a page in his book.

"Can't wake up when I do," he says.

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: You examine the script
response: "I've got nothing to say about that," says Dmitri.

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Countess
response: "I'll tell you how I first saw the countess," says Dmitri. "It was a twilight evening some years back, and I was standing outside with the crowd on the steps leading into the opera house. If you aren't familiar with the opera house, it's situated beside a canal, and a long stairway runs down from the piazza to the water. People arrive in gondolas, and naturally there's a lot of preening and parading on that staircase.

"Well, from where I was standing I could see something marvelous coming down the water. It was like a carriage, like a chariot, completely gold and drawn by seven bottlenose dolphins. They were pulling it through the canal just like a horse would pull a carriage on a street. But what's a bottlenose dolphin, you ask? I didn't know at the time, but since then I've learned that they're a highly endangered marine mammal. They look like very large, sleek fish, and supposedly there aren't more than fifty still alive. And
seven were pulling that chariot through the canal. You can
imagine the spectacle when it drew to a stop at the staircase and its passenger emerged. That passenger was none other than the countess.

"You don't need me to describe her appearance. She's always the most gorgeous person in the room -- or, in this case, on the waterfront. Everything she wore shimmered with diamonds. The world seemed to come into more focus around her, to clarify, like something magnified under a jeweler's loupe. You could feel that everybody in the crowd had either fallen in love with her immediately (if they weren't in love with her already), or that they were just boiling with jealousy, but she didn't pay any attention to them. She didn't climb the staircase either. Instead she went over to a walkway extending beneath a nearby bridge's underpass and came out again with the most grimy little urchin in the city. That child had been camped beneath that underpass for weeks, eating rats from a sewage pipe that emptied into the canal. Since there weren't many rats, the child wasn't very healthy. The countess took the child and actually wrapped it in her own cloak, right there in front of everybody at the opera house, and then she helped it step into her chariot and drove away again without even the slightest hello or goodbye to her socialite peers.

"What an outrage that scene caused! I can hardly remember the opera itself because I was still thinking about the countess during the whole performance. Later on, the scandal was splashed all over the papers, but the countess never cared. She had seen someone in need and that was the only thing that mattered to her. Now I have it on good authority that her street urchin eats all the rats that anyone could ever want."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Time
response: "What does anyone know about time?" says Dmitri. "It's always slipping away like an eel when you want it to stay put, and when you've got no use for it, why, then of course it drags its feet worse than a convict with a ball and chain. Time's a contrarian, that's what it is. It never makes any sense, so finally you stop trying to look for any sense in it."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Urchin
response: "That street urchin will probably be an earl or something by the time that the countess is finished," says Dmitri. "You know that she's more than a countess herself? She's got enough titles and styles in different countries and districts and principalities or whatever that she can pick what she wants to be called. It wouldn't be wrong to address her as a baroness, a duchess, even a grand princess,
but she prefers countess. For the word's ring, I suppose."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Ferdinand
response: "You're lucky to have Ferdinand on your side," says Dmitri. "The countess is formidable, but even she's as meek as a kitten in comparison. I can't begin to guess how many kills old
Ferdinand must have under her belt. Of course it was all done in the line of duty, or whatever other nonsense people will say to try making it palatable. But facts are facts.

"What does Ferdinand see in you, anyway? You're certainly not her peer in martial prowess, and not in social status either. I don't think you can claim to match her intellectual level. Maybe she keeps you around like a little pet dog. Am I in the right ballpark? You're like a shih tzu for her. Something she can take out every once in a while and play with and then put back into a kennel without feeling too guilty about it. Not that I think she can feel guilty about anything. She
must have killed her conscience a long time ago. Probably her first victim.

"Then again, perhaps I'm being too hard on her. I suppose life has taken its toll on Ferdinand just like everybody else. The difference is that not everybody else has a little pet shih tzu to distract themselves."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Onegin
response: "What could I tell you about Onegin that you don't already know?" asks Dmitri. "You don't want to know anything about him. No, what you really want is to know about me and Onegin, but
there's nothing to tell about that either. There's nothing between us.

"Of course I won't deny that I've fucked him, but he's just another notch in my bedpost. A handsome notch, but still a notch. Your problem is that you think he's such a bastard you can't fathom why I'd do it. And that is your problem, not mine. He might be a perfectly disagreeable character -- pompous, egomaniacal, even a little thick-skulled -- but that doesn't mean I can't have a good time with him. You see, the difference between us is that whereas you
take everything much too personally, I just take things as
they come. I've told you the same thing before, but did you listen to me? No. And you won't listen to me now. Forget about Onegin. Bury this ridiculous vendetta you have with him. It makes you look like a child."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Bear
response: "You saw us behind the polar bear, did you?" asks Dmitri. "I don't care. I have nothing to hide. I'll admit I'm a little annoyed that you'd sit there and watch like a voyeur, but I'm not going to let myself get angry over it. I'm not the one who needs to grow up. You are."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Vendetta
response: "Do you even know why you have a vendetta with Onegin?" asks Dmitri. "I'd be shocked if you did. The worst thing he's ever done to you is just exist on the same planet. He barely even acknowledges that
you exist. I can understand why there'd be no warmth between
you, but this lust for blood you've got is something else entirely. It's pathetic is what it is."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Dmitri
response: "Even after all this time, you don't know who I am," says Dmitri. "It's hard for two people to really know each other, naturally, but I'm not talking about that deeper level. I'm talking about the surface, the little things that go into everyday life. Sometimes when I'm talking to you I feel like you're talking to someone else behind me. Like words leave your mouth and go over my head to this other person. And you seem satisfied with their response, whatever it is, because I don't give you a response. I can't. You don't hear
me. But you don't want to, because you already think you know my answer. You've invented another me to suit yourself. Well, here I am now. I refuse to be that other person's shadow anymore."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Jellyfish
response: "Yes, the countess is always on the cutting edge when it comes to fashion," says Dmitri. "Who else would wear a gown made out of living jellyfish? Nobody. The jellyfish would sting most other people. But do they sting the countess? Oh no, because they love her."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Yourself
response: "You know what I think about you," says Dmitri. "I've told you many times... so many times... but now I recognize it was my fault. Not that I'm apologizing. If anyone deserves an apology, it's me
for putting up with what I did. What I mean is that people will always be themselves. No matter how many masks they wear. No matter how many costumes. Trying to change them is the greatest fool's errand in the world. Do you know how much agonizing it took me to reach that conclusion? I kept trying to resist. I wanted to believe that if I pushed a little harder, said the right thing, used the rights words in the right combination, everything would change like winter into spring. I was an idiot. An absolutely blithering moron. I won't say that I'm smarter now, but I am more pragmatic. Nowadays I'm
content with much smaller victories -- like drinking a very well-made martini."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Martini
response: "Nothing slips down quite as smoothly as a martini," says Dmitri. "They must be mankind's greatest achievement."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Love
response: "Love?" says Dmitri, and he stifles a laugh. "Yes, I suppose love is playing a role in tonight's farce. The question is why, since
nobody's in love with anyone. Some people just think that
they are. I won't name names, but I will say it makes them look... foolish. And I'm not just talking about you either."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Party
response: "Attending these masquerade parties is like playing russian roulette," says Dmitri. "Someone always dies, and yet invitations have never been in higher demand. You remember last time it was that poor girl Matilda? And the year before that, they found the duke's cousin hanged in the kitchen pantry. This year it's your turn apparently."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Matilda
response: "Matilda, that poor girl," says Dmitri. "It's terrible what happened to her. Drowned in the fountain last year. She wasn't exactly an innocent lamb -- in fact, she was a spoiled brat -- always sticking her tongue out and snubbing her nose -- but it was an
endearing snobbiness, if you know what I mean. She almost did
it on purpose, adopted a character to poke fun at herself. Anyway, my point is that she had no enemies. Nobody could figure out a motive for why someone would want to kill her.

"Everyone was shocked, of course, but no one took it worse than the countess. Those two had been great friends. You should've seen the countess out there bawling by the fountain. They had to pry the corpse away from her with a crowbar. Grief like that, you think that it only exists in novels, but then you see it firsthand and realize you never understood the world at all."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Cousin
response: "Can you imagine opening a door and being confronted by a dead body hanging from the rafters?" asks Dmitri. "I still remember the screaming from the cook. She said that she'd been going to get saffron, and what she got was that. Everyone suspected
suicide, although the duke himself wouldn't humor the notion.
He said murder. Someone always has to say murder."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Duke
response: "The duke shot himself later on," says Dmitri. "That was definitely suicide. It didn't happen at a party though."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Murder
response: "It's never been determined that a murder actually took place," says Dmitri. "Inquiries were made; they went nowhere; people moved on. That doesn't mean there aren't still suspicions in the air. Sometimes they flash out like knives when you least expect it. But it's almost a game. No one takes these things seriously."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Glove
response: "Throwing a glove at somebody is the traditional way to demand a duel," says Dmitri. "But the countess isn't wearing gloves tonight, which means that she brought one on purpose just to challenge
you. The whole thing was premeditated."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Heretics
response: "They're a highly dependable fuel source, heretics," says Dmitri. "I hear that in the countryside they spring up just as easily as weeds, although you'll occasionally spot them sprouting between the social cracks in more urban areas too. Some people are scared that we might burn them all and run out, but I say fiddlesticks. All you need to do to make more heretics is tweak the official definition a little."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Clock
response: "That salon is a ghastly chamber," says Dmitri. "It's the sort of place that makes you giggle because you're nervous, and then you want to get out as soon as possible. No wonder it's always deserted. And to make matters worse, they say that it's... haunted isn't the right word, but visited. I wouldn't set foot in its precincts at
all when the clock isn't working."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Cherub
response: "Beastly pests," says Dmitri. "There's nothing worse than a cherub infestation. Did you ever hear about the RMS Lusitania? It
had a cherub infestation. The things made a nest in the boiler room and eventually ate through the hull. Everyone blamed that ship's sinking on a torpedo, but torpedoes don't leave bite-marks and perfumed guano behind, do they?"

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Swan
response: "Oh yes, I saw that lady in the swan costume earlier," says Dmitri. "At first I thought she was a swan. I was ready to herd her
outdoors. But then she turned around and gave me such a
savage expression that I knew she couldn't be a swan. She had
to be at least a baroness."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Kielbasa
response: "It certainly is a big kielbasa," says Dmitri. "What are you going to have with it: sauerkraut, pickles, mustard, fried onions? Maybe some vodka? Or are you just going to smack someone over the head with it like it's a baseball bat?"

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Second
response: "Dueling has a certain etiquette," says Dmitri. "Duelists have seconds to help sort the rules out and keep everything by the book, because we can't have people killing each other in an uncivilized manner."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Garden
response: "Landscape gardens are bizarre," says Dmitri. "Some people build old towers in their gardens -- well, let me correct myself: they're designed to look old. They're called follies and they're
absolutely useless. Uninhabitable, hollow shells for the most part. But they contribute to the garden's picturesque scenery,
because who wouldn't want a romantic old pile in the corner?

"Occasionally you'll even find fake hermits employed to live in these follies like wild men. That makes it more charming, to have a fake hermit living in a fake ruin. Who are the hermits? Poor people who need money. What is their job description? To sit around and never bathe and look contemplative. It's harder than it sounds. And if they make a mistake and do something as contemporary as trimming their hair or wearing shoes, why, then they aren't paid.

"This palace's garden doesn't have a folly, thankfully."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Cutlass
response: "A cutlass is a standard enough sword," says Dmitri. "What makes Ferdinand's cutlass special is that it belongs to Ferdinand. That sword has glutted itself on more blood than I care to think about. It's something that someone would hang in a museum -- that admirers in future generations will undoubtedly handle like a sacred relic -- but in your hands it's no more dangerous than a stick. Still better than nothing, I guess."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Rapier
response: "The thing about a dueling rapier is that it hasn't got a good edge," says Dmitri. "It requires a certain advanced talent to wield correctly, especially if you're wielding it with the intent to kill. But the countess shouldn't have any problems. She's a practiced duelist. When she goes for the throat, she gets the throat, and sometimes she takes the head too."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Motley
response: "In olden times it was only the court fool who could speak uncensored," says Dmitri. "Everything a fool said was discredited simply because a fool had said it, which allowed these court fools to speak the truth disguised as nonsense. That's why you find your costume so appealing, isn't it? I know you well enough. But what you haven't considered is that any society that still needs fools to hide the truth in jokes must be repressed. It's only when fools are retired for good that we'll have actual freedom. In that light, your motley could almost be considered a symbol for oppression, couldn't it? So much for fun and games."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Mask
response: "Identity is the greatest prison in the world," says Dmitri. "Everyone's trapped in their own. And while wearing a costume doesn't allow you to escape, it does make you forget for a while. But then the morning breaks and you see how your make-up is smeared and your hair's come undone and the diamonds in your rings are just rhinestones. You've spilled wine on yourself. You're hungover. That's the real you, and you don't want to look in the mirror at it."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Time
response: "What does anyone know about time?" says Dmitri. "It's always slipping away like an eel when you want it to stay put, and when you've got no use for it, why, then of course it drags its feet worse than a convict with a ball and chain. Time's a contrarian, that's what it is. It never makes any sense, so finally you stop trying to look for any sense in it."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Playscript
response: "Don't tell me you don't know what a playscript is," says Dmitri. "It's something that's got everything written down -- scenes and stage directions and all that. Actors use them to memorize lines for plays. However, when they finally recite the lines they try to pretend that they're speaking spontaneously. That's what makes them actors."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Book
response: "I won't recite it again. You can read it for yourself," says Dmitri, opening the book to the right page.

(the one was a monkey, the other a cat)
before a fire to watch chestnuts roasting.
Said Bertrand to Ratto, his voice imploring:

'My brother, you ought to exhibit your skill
and fish out those nuts so we can eat our fill.
Your paws are suited expertly to the task
whereas I am afraid mine would just burn, alas.'

'It is done,' answered Ratto, extending a paw
and attempting to dig through the ash with his claw.
One after another out the chestnuts popped
though Ratto was still scorched before he had stopped.

with the chestnuts in hand; peasants bring
power in this manner to their king.

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Farewell
response: Dmitri turns his attention back to his reading and his martini.
action: You look at your surroundings
response: Splintered glasses, paper streamers, confetti, and cigarette butts litter the floor. You cannot step anywhere without crunching something underfoot. The banquet-table has been thoroughly demolished, cracked into two halves that lean inward toward a sunken middle.

Everyone else is gone, but Dmitri is sitting at the table as though nothing has happened, reading a book and nursing a martini.

Moving counter-clockwise would return you to the banquet hall when it was slightly more intact. Slightly.
action: You examine table
response: Apparently the cherubs succeeded in smashing the banquet-table, although you don't know where they've gone now. Probably sucked back into another rift.
action: Cc
response: Somehow a rift must have opened, because obese cherubs are pouring through the air onto the banquet-table; or at least, they would be pouring if they were in motion. There are several hundred, faces grimacing and feathered wings shedding blue pinions, and in their conglomerate they have impacted the table at one end, sending the other end skyward like a see-saw. Some even appear to be crawling upward along the table as rats would a mast aboard a sinking ship.

This arrangement has naturally relocated the banquet itself into midair, where roasts and cakes and goblets and plates hang with their glazes and their silver sparkling.

When it comes to the diners, most have already departed, although a few remain watching the cherubs with mild interest from seats pushed back against the walls. One lady dressed as a swan is eating angels on horseback, with a champagne flute daintily suspended in her other hand.

A clockwise inclination would direct you into the aftermath, while moving counter-clockwise would steer you toward the cloak room, and in the future yawns the black salon.
action: Cc
response: You find yourself lost in a forest. The trees are coat-stands draped with cloaks. Among the cloaks someone has hung a butchered pig carcass. Clockwise, the banquet awaits.

In the past you can see the palace doors opened wide to the night. Guests are thronging through them to the masquerade, their stream bordered by footmen holding lanterns high, and foremost in this crowd is the countess.

She is the jewel set in the evening's crown. Onegin has her hand, but she is not looking at him; she is looking at everybody, enchanting them with her smile. Her domino mask is lowered and you can see her face. She is more beautiful than anyone.
action: You look at the pig
response: This pig carcass has been expertly butchered, with the belly slit wide enough for a person to easily slip inside. As a costume, you must admit that the idea is genius.
action: You examine countess
response: You are in love with the countess. There, you can admit it. When you look at her like this, you cannot help but be in love. Even though she loathes you and you've come to loathe her too. Even though she wants to fly your flayed hide for a flag. You are in love. It is horrible news. But you aren't alone, because everyone loves the
countess. That's what makes her the countess.
action: You take the pig
response: You lift the pig carcass down. It's a bit unwieldy, but you'd rather leave a baby behind on a sinking ship than allow this opportunity to pass.
action: You look at the script
response: Scene:
cloak room, evening

than human words can put into language.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
kiss (when wearing motley)
action: Undress
response: You disrobe from your jester's motley and feel decidedly less tricksterish. You won't be stealing any kisses now.
action: You wear the pig
response: You hunch your shoulders together and crawl into the pig carcass. Now the sky is no longer a limit.
action: You look at the script
response: Scene:
cloak room, evening

than human words can put into language.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
fly, oink (when wearing the butchered pig)
action: You fly
response: You fly upward but the trees close overhead: their branches form a ceiling, and you're still inside the palace. You thump your head and flutter back down to the floor.
action: Oink
response: You oink with meaning.
action: You examine Onegin
response: Onegin, that bastard. He's strutting and puffing his chest, skin painted red from head to toe, wearing horns and bat-wings with his cock hanging out like some archfiend with nothing to hide. What an obnoxious exhibitionist. You'd think that the guests were all gazing at him from the grin on his face, but he's nothing next to the countess. He's just her pawn. He won't confess it to himself, but it's the truth.
action: P.
response: The palace doors stand open, but no one has arrived yet.

A landscape garden stretches away into the past.

In the future, guests will deposit their cloaks in the cloak room.
action: You examine the doors
response: Whenever you are standing at a doorway, you never know if you are stepping in or stepping out. Divergent possibilities tug at you. You wonder whether you've made the right choice. But then you're stepping through the door and into whatever you're stepping into.
action: You examine the garden
response: This garden is where you will duel the countess at midnight.
action: P.
response: You are standing alone on a long manicured lawn bordered by cypress trees, whose moon-cast shadows divide the grass into neat quadrants as though it were a rugby field.

Below the lawn, further into the past, there is a great and gurgling fountain, and in the future you can see the palace windows alive with candlelight and merriment.
action: You look at the trees
response: Columns in a colonnade -- that's what these cypress trees seem like. This garden is a temple and they gird its sacred space. That's what the landscape architect must have been thinking.
action: You examine the moon
response: There's a blue moon in the sky tonight. It looks just like a skull. You've known visions more reassuring.
action: You examine the fountain
response: Disaster seems to dog these masquerade parties. Last time it was Matilda that they found drowned in the fountain with her hair streaming around the water-lilies. Nobody could discover how it happened. This time it will be you that they find dead on the lawn, and everyone will know how it happened.
action: P.
response: You gaze into the fountain's murky depths. Its water is stagnant and green from many years without cleaning, and unchecked lilies spill over its rim. Below its surface floats a drowned body.

In the future you will stand alone in a landscape garden.
action: You examine the body
response: Before your eyes she rises from the fountain's sludge. Her skin is slick and green and semi-transparent like gelatin. You can see her dead organs inside, rotten, black, and her black veins running through her green body. Her hair drips down over her face. When she looks at you, her gaze is blank; she does not have pupils or irises, only whites as slimy as a dead frog's underbelly.

She settles herself on the fountain's stone rim, dripping and drooping, her shoulders slouched.

She waits.
action: You talk to the body
response: She cannot talk to you, although her tongue is swollen with unspoken words. Only the dead can commune with the dead.
action: Oink
response: You oink with bravado.

The drowned girl draws one finger across her throat. Well, she can just go join the club with everyone else who wants you dead tonight.
action: You fly
response: You rise into the night sky and the garden and the palace and the world diminish underneath your hooves until they appear small enough to step on, but you don't step on them. You fly higher and higher until the atmosphere thins into nothing. Shooting stars are brushing past your cheeks. You can see little planets in the distance hanging like humid nightblue fruit dependent from the heaventree.

But your goal is not that far away. You fly upward toward the moon until you are flying downward toward the moon, and then you alight on its lunar surface.
Moon
A cratered wasteland. Soft cheese squishes underneath your weight and smoke rises from foreboding chasms cleft into the glowing camembert.

Before you a great beast is sprawled, slaughtered. It has been dead for eons and its form has decomposed to the bare bone. It is larger than any other animal, some colossus from legend, its death-grip encapsulating a lunar mountain over which it has collapsed.

Into its forehead, in the exact spot at which a bindi would be applied, is plunged a gleaming vorpal blade.
action: You take the camembert
response: Acquiring cheese from the moon would not help you against the countess, would it? Unless perhaps she suffers from lactose intolerance, in which case you might slip the cheese... no, no, that's much too indirect.
action: You take the blade
response: You begin to climb the beast beginning at a nearby talon sunk into the moonscape. It is rather a large talon, perhaps one thousand meters (give or take), but luckily the talon is sloped, and soon enough you are standing atop a knuckle from which you can survey a considerable metacarpus extending toward an even more considerable radius and ulna.

metacarpus extending toward an even more considerable radius and ulna.How awkward, mountaineering on a giant skeleton! Any footholds you find are porous holes in the bone. You have no gear to help. It is all desperate scrambling and split-second decisions. At one point you come across a crack in the humerus large enough to swallow a house. Thankfully you can flutter over it.

At last you arrive at a wide scapula. Many hours have elapsed, and your own bones ache from the ascent. You determine to rest for the night.

Well, it is not really a night. There aren't normal nights when you are on the moon, and besides, space/time is still bent into a pretzel. But the constellations turn and fireflies twinkle in the gloom.

But the constellations turn and fireflies twinkle in the gloom.It is at this juncture that you notice a strange lowing. You peer over the scapula toward a crater in the mountainside below. Inside this crater are numerous creatures like cows, but they are larvae. They are embedded in the lunar cheese, which is dripping from some petrified organ still attached to the giant skeleton's pelvis.

In the morning you begin to descend again along the cervical vertebrae attached to the skull. It is a descent, because the skeleton is slouched over the mountain with its head downward. That is how it must have fallen when it was slain.

It was indeed slain. You can make no mistake about that.

It was indeed slain. You can make no mistake about that.Finally you are scrambling over its cranium, and there in the bone is stuck the vorpal blade. Everything is eerie and quiet, and somehow it seems as though you have come to this spot by appointment. That you are not alone. That the vorpal blade is studying you as you are studying it.

It occurs to you that the blade might be some keystone holding the situation together, and that by drawing it out you might reawaken the monster or trigger another unforeseen calamity. But you have determined to take it, and therefore you are going to take
it.

You grip the handle and you pull. The vorpal blade slides free as easily as a knife from butter -- or in this case, a sword from camembert.

camembert.Nothing terrible happens. You have drawn the blade and it is yours, and without delay you return to the moon's surface.

A cratered wasteland. Soft cheese squishes underneath your weight and smoke rises from foreboding chasms cleft into the glowing camembert.

Before you a great beast is sprawled, slaughtered. It has been dead for eons and its form has decomposed to the bare bone. It is larger than any other animal, some colossus from legend, its death-grip encapsulating a lunar mountain over which it has collapsed.
action: You look at the blade
response: Nothing is more dangerous than a vorpal blade. Even glancing at its edge threatens to slice your eyeballs open.
action: You look at the beast
response: Monsters like this should not exist. They are the fever dreams that hermits have in the desert. They dwell under the floorboards in the mind, and you can hear them scratching if you listen close enough. But somehow this one must have gotten out. It must have grown. You're glad that something killed it long ago.
action: Describe the surroundings
response: A cratered wasteland. Soft cheese squishes underneath your weight and smoke rises from foreboding chasms cleft into the glowing camembert.

Before you a great beast is sprawled, slaughtered. It has been dead for eons and its form has decomposed to the bare bone. It is larger than any other animal, some colossus from legend, its death-grip encapsulating a lunar mountain over which it has collapsed.
action: You examine the mountain
response: You can't accurately judge the mountain's size with that monster draped over it. The proportions involved seem too fantastic.
action: You fly
response: You rise into the night sky and the moon diminishes underneath your hooves. As you fly higher you find yourself flying lower, breaking back into the world's atmosphere.

This re-entry stings a little, but sooner than later it's over and you've returned to that wretched masquerade party.
Landscape Garden
You are standing alone on a long manicured lawn bordered by cypress trees, whose moon-cast shadows divide the grass into neat quadrants as though it were a rugby field.

Below the lawn, further into the past, there is a great and gurgling fountain, and in the future you can see the palace windows alive with candlelight and merriment.
action: P.
response: You gaze into the fountain's murky depths. Its water is stagnant and green from many years without cleaning, and unchecked lilies spill over its rim, on which a dead girl is sitting.

In the future you will stand alone in a landscape garden.
action: You examine the fountain
response: You can't even see your reflection. Algae and scum have congealed into a green sludge inside the basin.
action: You look at the lilies
response: A thin phlegm coats the lilies and glistens in the moonlight.
action: You examine matilda
response: Her skin is slick and green and semi-transparent like gelatin. You can see her dead organs inside, rotten, black, and her black veins running through her green body. Her hair drips down over her face. When she looks at you, her gaze is blank; she does not have pupils or irises, only whites as slimy as a dead frog's underbelly.
action: You look at the playscript
response: Scene:
landscape garden, evening

to lamentations from the dead.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
fly, oink (when wearing the butchered pig)
action: You talk to Matilda
response: She cannot talk to you, although her tongue is swollen with unspoken words. Only the dead can commune with the dead.
action: Undress
response: You clamber out from the pig carcass. Now the sky is once more is the limit.
action: You examine the script
response: Scene:
landscape garden, evening

to lamentations from the dead.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
action: You wear motley
response: You don your jester's motley and potential pranks inspire you. Everything in this wide world is kissable.
action: Kiss matilda
response: You bend toward her but then you flinch, repelled by a stench like flowers left to rot inside a vase.

She stares back at you with her white frog-belly eyes.
action: You look at the script
response: Scene:
landscape garden, evening

to lamentations from the dead.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
kiss (when wearing motley)
action: Kiss kielbasa
response: A kielbasa this tremendous demands a smooch equally tremendous, and you plant one with passion.
action: You examine the windows
response: Black silhouettes are poised in the yellow palace windows, and even though they aren't moving they still convey some sense of happiness. It is like you are looking at puppets for a shadow-play, abandoned but still waiting to be animated.
action: F.
response: The palace doors stand open, but no one has arrived yet.

A landscape garden stretches away into the past.

In the future, guests will deposit their cloaks in the cloak room.
action: F.
response: You find yourself lost in a forest. The trees are coat-stands draped with cloaks. Clockwise, the banquet awaits.

In the past you can see the palace doors opened wide to the night. Guests are thronging through them to the masquerade, their stream bordered by footmen holding lanterns high, and foremost in this crowd is the countess.

She is the jewel set in the evening's crown. Onegin has her hand, but she is not looking at him; she is looking at everybody, enchanting them with her smile. Her domino mask is lowered and you can see her face. She is more beautiful than anyone.
action: You examine the footmen
response: These footmen form a gauntlet that the guests are passing through, like statues lining a pathway. Their features are somehow both neutral and severe, statues indeed, and they are wearing silver-threaded livery. Their lower bodies dissolve into shadow because the light from their lanterns does not reach that far.
action: You look at the cloaks
response: In order to progress you have to push your passage through the cloaks. They are musky with perfume, cologne, and once you've advanced their folds close back behind you.
action: Kiss swan
response: Always better to peck a swan than to have a swan peck you.
action: You examine table
response: It is a massive table that would seat at least a hundred were it not being upended by a cherub horde. Fortunately no one is sitting at the table. Everyone seems to have anticipated the interruption and moved away in time.
action: Kiss dmitri
response: You steal a kiss from Dmitri and he promptly rubs his cheek to remove any residue left by your lips.

"Just wonderful," he says. "Exactly what I needed. I must've
been begging for that and I didn't even know it."
action: You talk to Dmitri
response: In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Vorpal blade
response: "A vorpal blade isn't a real weapon," says Dmitri. "It's invented, imaginary, from a poem. The most relevant stanza goes:

"One, two! One, two! and through and through
the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
he went galumphing back.

"That's why a vorpal blade is so deadly, you understand. It can cut through anything simply because it doesn't exist. When
something doesn't exist, there's nothing it can't do."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Moon
response: "Supposedly people act more irrationally during a full moon," says Dmitri. "More accidents happen. More people are killed. It may be superstition, but the night sky is brighter with a full moon, isn't it? Therefore people stay awake later, and that provides a larger window for mishaps. The moon doesn't change anyone. They're just as irrational as always."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: Pig
response: "It's extraordinarily difficult to butcher a pig correctly," says Dmitri. "They're like lobsters in the sense that they ought to be kept alive until the last instant before they're eaten. To that end, many butchers have great nets in their shops where they keep the pigs contained beneath the ceiling, just as a balloon vendor would use a net to prevent their balloons from escaping. Then, whenever anyone asks for a pig, the butcher just has to pop back and grab one."

In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
action: You take the rapier
response: You have multiple weapons you could swap with the rapier. In order to take the rapier, try dropping one of them.
action: You drop the kielbasa
response: You drop the tremendous kielbasa into the opened case on the floor, also taking the initiative to remove the rapier while you're at it. Let's see how well the countess fights with that for a
weapon.
action: P.
response: Ferdinand is leaning against a balustrade, her gaze cast toward the dancers in their formations below. She isn't one for dancing herself unless it's atop freshly slain enemies. Her cutlass, which you will borrow later in your duel with the countess, is leaning against the balustrade beside her.

The ballroom is in the past now, and in the future you will look behind a polar bear.
action: You drop the blade
response: You prop the vorpal blade against the balustrade and take Ferdinand's cutlass, and already you can taste imminent victory. With a vorpal blade at your disposal, even an amateur such as yourself will be unstoppable.
action: Undress
response: You disrobe from your jester's motley and feel decidedly less tricksterish. You won't be stealing any kisses now.
action: You wear the pig
response: You hunch your shoulders together and crawl into the pig carcass. Now the sky is no longer a limit.
action: F.
response: Dmitri's chest is pressed against the wall, arms overhead with his fingernails raking down the wallpaper. Onegin is straddling his rear, gripping his waist, paused mid-thrust with his cock halfway inside Dmitri's cunt -- or maybe halfway out?

As the countess's minion, it is Onegin's duty to carry her weapon, and right now her tremendous kielbasa is resting nearby on the floor in an opened case.

The polar bear itself is at least three meters tall, preserved taxidermically in a perpetual roar with claws outspread. Traveling counter-clockwise would reorient you toward the black salon, and the grand staircase is in your past.
action: Oink
response: You oink with determination.
action: P.
response: Ferdinand is leaning against a balustrade, her gaze cast toward the dancers in their formations below. She isn't one for dancing herself unless it's atop freshly slain enemies. Her vorpal blade, which you will borrow later in your duel with the countess, is leaning against the balustrade beside her.

The ballroom is in the past now, and in the future you will look behind a polar bear.
action: P.
response: On the floor you can see a white glove where it has been contemptuously thrown down, and expanding outward from this glove the world takes form. There are dancers surrounding you in a circle, but they are not dancing: they are staring at you and staring at the glove, and their eyeballs never cease staring because they are frozen.

There has been some hitch and time stands still.

A chandelier hangs overhead, candles unflickering. Everything is mirrored in the marble floor. Toward the future you can glimpse the grand staircase, where the countess is ascending with her back turned after having delivered her challenge.
action: You examine the dancers
response: You cannot recognize anyone behind their masks. There is a jackal in a tailcoat, and a nymph with shellfish in her hair, and an enchantress with gold orbs for eyes, and someone with marzipan skin, and an alpine maiden with a shepherd's crook, and an antlered baron, and a raven in a judge's wig, and a sequined succubus, and other masqueraders more fantastic still, but the one thing they all have in common is that their frozen gazes are condemning you: Guilty, they seem to say, guilty.
action: You look at the enchantress
response: It's strange, but when you look at the individual dancers their details warp as though you were looking at something from inside a fishbowl.
action: You wake up
response: You open your eyes.
On the Stroke
How did you ever get into this predicament? A rumor, a glove thrown down onto a dance-floor? Now you're standing in the moonlight and your knees are knocking together, although you hope that no one notices. You're still dressed for a masquerade and nothing feels quite real. Perhaps it isn't real... and all you need to do is wake up from
this nightmare.

The scene is set: landscape garden.

The cast: your second, Ferdinand, handing your weapon over; your rival's second, Onegin, handing her weapon over; and your
rival -- the countess.

"En garde!" the countess cries.
action: Attack countess
response: It only requires a thought and you are already moving, less from your own volition than from the blade's volition in your hand. It knows your wants and knows how to meet them, and suddenly you have leapt into the air and the countess is beneath you with her tremendous kielbasa lifted to deflect your blow.

There is no deflection. Your vorpal blade slices through her weapon without any resistance. You cannot even feel the slice; your blade might as well have been passing through air.

"Impossible," the countess says, but that is all she has the chance to say before you are kneeling on the ground at her feet. You are still holding the blade in your hand and now its edge is buried in the lawn beneath the countess, having taken a vertical route through her body.
She wobbles in place, reaching about with one hand as if for support, and then she takes a woozy step forward. Her bisected figure comes in half. One side slumps backward onto the lawn and the other continues standing upright, that disoriented hand still grasping in midair for nothing. It is almost as though she does not realize she is dead.

You pull your vorpal blade skyward again, dislodging it from the lawn, and in the arc it makes it seems to shatter the countess. It draws her veins and tendons and her muscles along with it like a puppet yanked by strings, and she is not even a person anymore: she is a gory shower sprinkling across the garden. What remains where she once stood are only bones. They are quite bare. Vultures could not have picked them any cleaner.

"Now that," says Ferdinand, "is how to win a duel."
action: Curtain
response: A paleontologist, upon finding a cache filled with dinosaur bones, was pleased to discover that they formed a single specimen, a veritable monster. It went into the textbooks. Not until many years later did other paleontologists begin to poke at the bones and doubt this original configuration. They rearranged the bones into another specimen, and it went into the textbooks instead. Well, it happened again, with reconfiguration after reconfiguration, and new dinosaur after new dinosaur. The poor textbooks were panting to keep up. Finally the paleontologists were flustered enough to tromp back and examine the cache's location, which happened to be on a farmer's property. When they consulted the farmer about it, they were told it was a mass grave for chickens.

This game has no optimal ending. It has certain elements (weapons, costumes) that can be reconfigured to produce more than twenty-five different outcomes. Some involve violence. Others do not. You can change what happens to suit your preferences.

All endings will lead you here behind the curtain.
action: You kill Onegin
response: The countess? The countess? Why should you fight the countess when that bastard Onegin is undoubtedly the mastermind behind this whole charade?

You're overcome with outrage and you lunge toward Onegin, and when the countess tries to intercept you with her tremendous kielbasa, your vorpal blade slices through it.

Nothing can intercept a vorpal blade.

The countess cannot comprehend what has happened. She is staring at the severed stump left in her hand, but you've already finished your business. The same slice that went through her weapon also went through Onegin.
He is looking at you in horror, and you can't blame him for that, although you don't feel sorry when his horrified head pops off his shoulders like a champagne cork. A bloody geyser rises from his neck and continues to rise for far longer than it has any right to do, scattering at its pinnacle into a scarlet shower that patters down over the garden. Warm droplets speckle your skin.

The countess sinks onto her knees at the sight, her gown ballooning around her. Blood is still spouting, still raining from Onegin's standing corpse, and his head hasn't come back down yet.

The countess says: "I surrender."

You didn't even have to ask, and a good thing too, because you likely wouldn't have.

When Onegin's head finally does land on the lawn, the countess faints. You can't blame her either.
action: You examine the script
response: Scene:
landscape garden, midnight

in which the pig...
and the countess...

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x)
attack, wake up
fly, oink (when wearing the butchered pig)

The countess is suddenly there, only inches away, but before she has the chance to strike with her tremendous kielbasa, your own sword rises to parry the blow. You did not even attempt to react; your vorpal blade did it for you.

It also did much more than that. It has sliced her weapon in half, leaving the countess to stand there, stupefied, holding a severed sausage stump. She cannot process what has happened, and she never will.
action: You fly
response: You rise into the night sky and the palace and your problems shrink to pinpricks below you. Someone is shouting something (it's the countess probably) but you don't hear what they're saying. You're not going to fight this silly duel, not when the heavens beckon, not when you can step into the stars.

An interstellar wind tickles your chin.

You won't return now that you've flown this far.
action: Oink
response: You oink like a pig rooting for truffles, and the countess's fighting stance slackens. She looks at you with a new expression, as though she has just seen you for the first time, and then she begins looking to the left and right.

"What's going on?" she demands. "Where did this pig come from?"

Ferdinand and Onegin are also in apparent confusion, peering over their shoulders, glancing back toward the palace. Soon the countess has Onegin searching behind the cypress trees, behind the fountain, behind anything that might serve for a hiding spot, but you -- her rightful opponent -- are nowhere to be found.

"How could you ever let this pig onto the grounds?" she is snapping at Onegin. "Aren't there meant to be protocols? Aren't guests meant to have invitations? And now look at me, standing here, about to duel a pig! Where's that silly jester gone? Go and find out now, and don't come back until you've brought the right person -- person
being the operative word!"
Meanwhile Ferdinand has hooked you with a leash and is guiding you away from the garden.

"Good move," she says when you're both alone in a little courtyard. "I'm glad that you finally took my advice and opted to escape rather than fight."

You oink again. It won't do to break character now. But Ferdinand knows what you mean: Thank you for everything.

"You're welcome," she replies. "Now we need to get you on a train bound somewhere far away. Eventually the countess will figure out what happened, and you won't want to be anywhere in the country when she does. The trick will be to put you someplace where they don't eat pork. You do make for a tasty-looking pig."
action: You wake up
response: You open your eyes.
Ballroom
On the floor you can see a white glove where it has been contemptuously thrown down, and expanding outward from this glove the world takes form. There are dancers surrounding you in a circle, but they are not dancing: they are staring at you and staring at the glove, and their eyeballs never cease staring because they are frozen.

There has been some hitch and time stands still.

A chandelier hangs overhead, candles unflickering. Everything is mirrored in the marble floor. Toward the future you can glimpse the grand staircase, where the countess is ascending with her back turned after having delivered her challenge.
action: You look at what you're carrying with you
response: You are carrying motley, a rapier, a cutlass, and a playscript, and you are wearing a pig carcass.
action: Kiss countess
response: You cast aside your weapon. You cannot fight the countess. This feud is a mistake. Instead you walk across the lawn toward her.

She must see it in your eyes. She must know how you feel. Perhaps she even has the same feelings?

You take her hand -- the same hand that threw down that glove before -- and press it to your lips. Her breathing flutters; her chest heaves; she opens her mouth but she doesn't speak, and then her bones are water, she is melting in your arms, bent backward as you bend over to bind your breath with hers.

Are those fireworks in the night sky above the palace? Are those tender violins playing? You feel her smile on your lips, her hands wrapping around your shoulders, and then you close your eyes.
action: Kiss onegin
response: What are you doing out here fighting a duel? You came to this masquerade party for one reason and one reason only: to steal kisses from people.

You cast aside your weapon and lunge toward that bastard Onegin, seizing his cheeks and then planting your lips against his before he can resist. You are falling with him -- he is falling backward, toppled by your impact -- and you land on the lawn in a heap together. Limbs tangled. Bodies writhing. Chests heaving with passion.

Passion isn't always romantic.
You can feel and hear a thwap against your back: the countess
is standing nearby, throttling you with a tremendous kielbasa. But it doesn't matter. Your feud has always been with Onegin, and as you look into his furious eyes your kiss deepens.

Finally he musters the strength and self-possession to shove you away, but you only dart back and peck his shoulders, his legs, his feet as he attempts to flee. You are chasing him in circles around the garden and he's cursing you as the countess pursues you both with her kielbasa.

You won't stop, not for him and not for her. They wanted blood but you gave them nonsense instead, and now they'll have to live with it.

That's what they get for fighting with a fool!
action: Attack script
response: You take out your playscript and tear it in half. Who wrote these scenes? They make no sense. You won't perform this dreck. Instead you toss the script into the wind and its sheets blow across the garden.

"What are you doing?" says the countess. "Come back here!"

You don't come back. You're walking away from this production. They can find someone else to play your role if the duel is that important because, frankly, you don't understand a thing.
You didn't know what you were getting into, but you didn't know it would be this. It almost feels like there's a conspiracy against you. Well, of course there is: you're supposed to be killed, after
all.

That's not going to happen. Not if you don't say your lines. Not if you don't play along.

Let them boo and complain. Let them throw rotten fruit. Let them fill the newspapers with scathing reviews. Let them call you a prima donna.

You are going to live. That's what counts.
action: Kiss script
response: You press your lips against your playscript. Oh, what a blessing and torment its words are tonight! Sometimes you wish you could rip it in half, and sometimes you cherish its lines. It's just too bad that bastard Onegin gets to play a part.

The countess is suddenly there, only inches away, but before she has the chance to strike with her tremendous kielbasa, your own sword rises to parry the blow. You did not even attempt to react; your vorpal blade did it for you.

It also did much more than that. It has sliced her weapon in half, leaving the countess to stand there, stupefied, holding a severed sausage stump. She cannot process what has happened, and she never will.
Your arm is moving here and there, zigzagging through the air, and
you can barely process what is happening. But you know that
you want it to happen. You know that it means you will win.

When the vorpal blade has finished, your arm flicks it downward as an artist might flick down a brush to dislodge clinging paint. But there is nothing clinging to the blade. Its work was much too clean and quick.

The countess is still poised before you, but she is not moving anymore. When she finally blinks, that is when thin red lines in a grid begin to manifest across her face, and then across her entire body, and without further ado she tumbles apart into neat little cubes expertly butchered. It is like watching a house of cards topple, with no structural support to hold anything together.

You hear someone applauding: Ferdinand.

"Bravo!" she says. "Bravo! I couldn't have done any better myself."
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You are carrying a pig carcass, a rapier, a cutlass, and a playscript, and you are wearing motley.
action: F.
response: Dmitri's chest is pressed against the wall, arms overhead with his fingernails raking down the wallpaper. Onegin is straddling his rear, gripping his waist, paused mid-thrust with his cock halfway inside Dmitri's cunt -- or maybe halfway out?

As the countess's minion, it is Onegin's duty to carry her weapon, and right now her tremendous kielbasa is resting nearby on the floor in an opened case.

The polar bear itself is at least three meters tall, preserved taxidermically in a perpetual roar with claws outspread. Traveling counter-clockwise would reorient you toward the black salon, and the grand staircase is in your past.
action: You drop the cutlass
response: You drop the cutlass into the opened case on the floor, reclaiming the tremendous kielbasa for yourself.
action: You drop the kielbasa
response: You prop the tremendous kielbasa against the balustrade and reclaim the vorpal blade. This might make for a decent joke, but the joke will be at your expense.
action: You wake
response: You open your eyes.
On the Stroke
How did you ever get into this predicament? A rumor, a glove thrown down onto a dance-floor? Now you're standing in the moonlight and your knees are knocking together, although you hope that no one notices. You're still dressed for a masquerade and nothing feels quite real. Perhaps it isn't real... and all you need to do is wake up from
this nightmare.

The scene is set: landscape garden.

The cast: your second, Ferdinand, handing your weapon over; your rival's second, Onegin, handing her weapon over; and your
rival -- the countess.

"En garde!" the countess cries.
action: You attack ferdinand
response: Before the countess has the chance to strike, you lunge in the last direction that anyone would expect: toward your own second, Ferdinand.

Your tremendous kielbasa is raised overhead like an axe, but before you have the chance to strike, Ferdinand has seized your
wrist, her knee is in your gut, and you've dropped your weapon on the lawn. You're doubled over in anguish, and then you feel and hear a thwap and then another thwap, because Ferdinand has
appropriated the kielbasa and is smacking you relentlessly with it.

"Down, dog!" she barks. "You mangy cur! I've never seen such disrespect! Attacking your own ally! Have you lost your mind?"

The countess and Onegin can only stare as Ferdinand chases you across the garden, slapping you with the tremendous kielbasa at every step. Finally you collapse, but she just grabs your ankle and prepares to drag you away.
"I hope you understand that the duel's off," she tells the countess. "I'm not releasing this traitor until I've delivered my own retribution, and believe me, it will be significant."

"I don't blame you," says the countess. "By all means."

But when Ferdinand has pulled you a considerable distance into a little courtyard and you two are alone, she releases you and laughs.

"It worked!" she says. "In a million years I never thought it would, but you were right!"

You can't help but think that she might have overplayed her role in the plan, but you're in no position to grumble. You are alive, and soon you are laughing along with Ferdinand.

"You may not be a warrior," she says, "but when it comes to nonsense you're a champion."
action: F.
response: Ferdinand is leaning against a balustrade, her gaze cast toward the dancers in their formations below. She isn't one for dancing herself unless it's atop freshly slain enemies. Her tremendous kielbasa, which you will borrow later in your duel with the countess, is leaning against the balustrade beside her.

The ballroom is in the past now, and in the future you will look behind a polar bear.
action: F.
response: Dmitri's chest is pressed against the wall, arms overhead with his fingernails raking down the wallpaper. Onegin is straddling his rear, gripping his waist, paused mid-thrust with his cock halfway inside Dmitri's cunt -- or maybe halfway out?

As the countess's minion, it is Onegin's duty to carry her weapon, and right now her cutlass is resting nearby on the floor in an opened case.

The polar bear itself is at least three meters tall, preserved taxidermically in a perpetual roar with claws outspread. Traveling counter-clockwise would reorient you toward the black salon, and the grand staircase is in your past.
action: Cc
response: Black sable tapestries hang from the ceiling and walls, and black velvet carpets the floor. Scarlet radiance slants through scarlet windowpanes. An ebony grandfather clock has stopped keeping the time at one quarter to twelve.

There is nobody here.

Clockwise you will look behind a polar bear, and when you glance back toward the past you can see a celebration in the banquet hall where everyone has gathered to drink, feast, and make merry.
action: You look at the clock
response: Two long cast-iron hands mark the time at one quarter to twelve.
action: You examine the hands
response: These hands don't look like they're going start ticking anytime soon. But they might be taken.
action: You get the hands
response: When you remove the cast-iron hands from the clock-face, they coil and twist in your own hands, black vipers. You drop them on the carpet and they slither away into the shadows.

Something stirs in the salon.

You aren't alone here.
action: You look
response: Black sable tapestries hang from the ceiling and walls, and black velvet carpets the floor. Scarlet radiance slants through scarlet windowpanes. An ebony grandfather clock tells no time.

In one corner slouches the Red Death.

Clockwise you will look behind a polar bear, and when you glance back toward the past you can see a celebration in the banquet hall where everyone has gathered to drink, feast, and make merry.
action: You examine Death
response: Garbed in the grave's dirt-bedraggled and worm-eaten habiliments, the Red Death couldn't look more like a corpse if it were displayed on a bier. Crimson drops bead from every pore in its flesh, and the bags beneath its eyes have drooped to expose whites thoroughly bloodshot.
action: You talk to Death
response: You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"What are you doing in here?"
"Where did you come from?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: What
response: "That's not a very polite way to begin a conversation," says the Red Death with a pout. "Just barging around like a reporter asking questions. Not even a how-d'ye-do..."

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"What are you doing in here?"
"Where did you come from?"
"How-d'ye-do?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: How
response: "Very well, thank you!" says the Red Death. "Although I'm a bit muddled."

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"What are you doing in here?"
"Where did you come from?"
"Why are you feeling muddled?"
"How-d'ye-do?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: Why
response: "It's difficult to explain," says the Red Death. "I'd intended to make my debut here at midnight, on the very stroke. But for some reason I just cannot put my finger on the time this evening. Is it
twelve o'clock, or isn't it? Has the hour struck already, or hasn't it? There's a muddle if I've ever known a muddle!"

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"What are you doing in here?"
"Where did you come from?"
"Why does your schedule need to be so precise?"
"How-d'ye-do?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: Why
response: "It's only a whim, but I stick to my whims," says the Red Death. "The first time I ruined a masque ball, I did it promptly at midnight, and it was a rousing success -- as gruesome as you please! You should have seen them running down the halls in such a pandemonium. They didn't know who they'd invited to the party! Although they hadn't
invited me precisely. But in any event, since then it has
become a tradition for me to make my appearance at midnight. I wouldn't have it any other way."

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"What are you doing in here?"
"Where did you come from?"
"When did you attend your first masque ball?"
"How-d'ye-do?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: You wear the tapestries
response: (first taking the sable tapestries)
You have no reason to remove these tapestries from this salon, but pulling them aside does reveal... nothing interesting. Too bad there's not an arras anywhere. Then you might've found a dead counselor or something.

"I always check behind tapestries too," says the Red Death. "In case someone's trying to hide from me. I don't allow that."
action: When
response: "At midnight, of course," says the Red Death. "However, if you meant to ask about the date or the month or the year or even the century, then I haven't the foggiest idea. Trifles like that tend to slip through my mind like a sieve. What pointless details! I've never been able to figure out why people are so obsessed with calendars. When you're as experienced as I am, then you'll realize that emotions are what matter."

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"Who hosted your first masquerade? You must remember that at
least."
"What are you doing in here?"
"Where did you come from?"
"How-d'ye-do?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: Where
response: "Where did anything come from?" asks the Red Death. "It's a grand old question but I'm not in the mood for metaphysical chestnuts tonight."

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"What are you doing in here?"
"How-d'ye-do?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: What
response: "I'm here in my usual role as plague-bearer," says the Red Death. "It's my duty, you see, to travel about the countryside and lay waste to whatever civilizations fall within my pathogenic purview. To be honest, it grows a tad dull once you've been at the job for as long as I have. You've always got your bleeding and your lesions and your vomit. Throw in a few thousand rats here and there, some mass graves, some plague-doctors, and every programme runs about the same."

The Red Death suppresses a yawn with one hand.

"That's why I like dropping in on masque balls from time to time. An extravagant setting tends to generate more extravagant horror. It's more entertaining for me to watch, although I suppose that it's just as miserable for the participants no matter what."

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"What do you think about this rumor that's going around?" "How-d'ye-do?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: What
response: "Rumor? What rumor?" asks the Red Death.

You explain all about the rumor.

"Well, when you put it like that," says the Red Death, "I should have to conclude that you're the victimized party. However, since you're also the one telling me this story, your account may be
biased. I'm afraid I can't give my opinion, except to agree that Onegin does sound like a bastard."

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"What would you do in my situation?"
"How-d'ye-do?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: What
response: "I would do what I always do," says the Red Death. "The answer to everything is wholesale slaughter. You cannot balk at the countess's challenge. You must throw it back into her face with enough force to bury her six feet underneath the nearest cemetery plot. And ideally in a bloody, unrecognizable mess."

You have a few lines you could recite.
Speaking the first word is enough:

"How about lending me a hand with the countess?"
"Goodnight, sweet prince."
action: How
response: Scratching its chin for a moment, the Red Death considers your proposition.

"You know, it's not a halfway bad notion. I'm in a pickle myself, what with the hours having gone all sideways this evening, but your duel is scheduled for midnight precisely. If I were to pass on my mantle, so to speak, then you would know just when to start the ball rolling -- and no one, please let me reassure you, survives against my contagion. Your countess wouldn't stand a chance."

A ghastly smile creeps across the Red Death's face, running from ear to ear just like a glasgow souvenir.

"All right," it says. "You've got yourself a deal. But remember: only start infecting people on the stroke!"

Suddenly its graveclothes are empty, and after an odd hesitation they crumple to the carpet, leaving you alone once more with only the hourless grandfather clock.
action: You look around
response: Black sable tapestries hang from the ceiling and walls, and black velvet carpets the floor. Scarlet radiance slants through scarlet windowpanes. An ebony grandfather clock tells no time.

In one corner are empty graveclothes.

Clockwise you will look behind a polar bear, and when you glance back toward the past you can see a celebration in the banquet hall where everyone has gathered to drink, feast, and make merry.
action: You examine the graveclothes
response: These blood-speckled bandages reek with disease. It's almost as though someone rotted away wearing them long before they were ever buried.
action: Undress
response: You disrobe from your jester's motley and feel decidedly less tricksterish. You won't be stealing any kisses now.
action: You take the graveclothes
response: You pinch and lift the graveclothes gingerly. Could a more repulsive costume be imagined?
action: You wear the graveclothes
response: As you shuffle into the graveclothes, a strange malevolence steals over the scenery; or perhaps you yourself have become that strange malevolence. Your fingertips drip with infection.
action: Script
response: Scene:
red salon, hourless

fails to express any hour.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
infect (when wearing graveclothes)
action: P.
response: Somehow a rift must have opened, because obese cherubs are pouring through the air onto the banquet-table; or at least, they would be pouring if they were in motion. There are several hundred, faces grimacing and feathered wings shedding red pinions, and in their conglomerate they have impacted the table at one end, sending the other end skyward like a see-saw. Some even appear to be crawling upward along the table as rats would a mast aboard a sinking ship.

This arrangement has naturally relocated the banquet itself into midair, where roasts and cakes and goblets and plates hang with their glazes and their copper sparkling.

When it comes to the diners, most have already departed, although a few remain watching the cherubs with mild interest from seats pushed back against the walls. One lady dressed as a swan is eating angels on horseback, with a champagne flute daintily suspended in her other hand.

A clockwise inclination would direct you into the aftermath, while moving counter-clockwise would steer you toward the cloak room, and in the future yawns the red salon.
action: P.
response: You gaze into the fountain's murky depths. It is stagnant and red with thickened blood, and unchecked lilies spill over its rim, on which a dead girl is sitting.

In the future you will stand alone in a landscape garden.
action: You examine girl
response: Her skin is peeled away and you can see her crimson muscles stretched and woven on her bones. Her red veins are pumping with blood and her red heart contracting inside her ribcage. Her face is framed with flaming hair. When she looks at you, her eyes are two embers; they burn through you as though you were paper.
action: You talk to Matilda
response: "...oh yes... how lovely... to have someone to talk to... to listen... oh no, I would enjoy it, please... nobody ever listens... just a silly girl, they say... what can a silly girl have to say about anything... but I do have things to say, I do... I have my own dreams... maybe they're silly dreams... a silly girl with silly dreams... they mock me when my back is turned... I know it... but you listen, you listen, you understand me, you know me..."
action: Script
response: Scene:
landscape garden, evening

to lamentations from the dead.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
infect (when wearing graveclothes)
action: You talk to Matilda
response: "...you may not think you know me... oh, you do... thank you for that... it means... you can't know what it means... my own family aren't this kind... they have responsibilities, they have important things to do... they don't have time... they never hear me when I speak... even when I yell, I scream at them... I feel like a fool... but I'm invisible... sometimes I think that I have always been a ghost... that I was born into this world as a phantom... a silly notion from a silly girl..."
action: You talk to Matilda
response: "...sometimes I knock against the wainscoting... they don't hear me... like I'm a rat behind the wainscoting... that's what they think... only a rat... their own daughter... but they love me, they love me, they do... only it's changed... our lives have changed... the years have changed us like old keys... now we don't fit the locks... doors won't open... I rattle handles... nobody hears... no one listens..."
action: You talk to Matilda
response: "...when I look into this fountain I can see myself... I see the moon in the sky... I can see everything reflected... an underside... to everything... there is another meaning but I've lost it like a coin in the fountain... you don't know what it's like... don't say you do... you'll never know... you shouldn't know... I wouldn't wish this on anybody... this transparency... where you look through your own reflection and you can't see anything... no matter how close you lean to the water..."
action: You examine the fountain
response: Brimming with blood, this fountain festers like an open sore in the world.
action: You talk to Matilda
response: "...even now I can still feel that hand on my head... pushing me down... holding me there... a human touch... a word... a glance... can mean so many things... but what does anyone else know about love... without having been there, without having been me... when we walked outside onto the lawn... and we could see the stars... the fountain in the night... and when we sat here together and I said..."
action: You talk to Matilda
response: "...oh yes... how lovely... to have someone to talk to... to listen... oh no, I would enjoy it, please... nobody ever listens... just a silly girl, they say... what can a silly girl have to say about anything... but I do have things to say, I do... I have my own dreams... maybe they're silly dreams... a silly girl with silly dreams... they mock me when my back is turned... I know it... but you listen, you listen, you understand me, you know me..."
action: Undress
response: You peel away the blood-speckled graveclothes and the world feels less malevolent. You won't be infecting anyone now.
action: You wear the pig
response: You hunch your shoulders together and crawl into the pig carcass. Now the sky is no longer a limit.
action: You fly
response: You rise into the night sky and the garden and the palace and the world diminish underneath your hooves until they appear small enough to step on, but you don't step on them. You fly higher and higher until the atmosphere thins into nothing. Shooting stars are brushing past your cheeks. You can see little planets in the distance hanging like humid nightblue fruit dependent from the heaventree.

But your goal is not that far away. You fly upward toward the moon until you are flying downward toward the moon, and then you alight on its lunar surface.
Moon
A cratered wasteland. Soft cheese squishes underneath your weight and smoke rises from foreboding chasms cleft into the glowing camembert.

Before you a great beast is sprawled, slaughtered. It has been dead for eons and its form has decomposed to the bare bone. It is larger than any other animal, some colossus from legend, its death-grip encapsulating a lunar mountain over which it has collapsed.
action: Undress
response: You clamber out from the pig carcass. Now the sky is once more is the limit.
action: You talk to the giant
response: This beast has probably been dead for more millennia than humankind has known the spoken word. Its bones aren't going to shake off the dust and have a conversation anytime soon.
action: You wear the clothes
response: You're already wearing the graveclothes.
action: Infect beast
response: It's always moontime here. Midnight doesn't figure into moontime.
action: You wear the pig
response: You hunch your shoulders together and crawl into the pig carcass (after removing the graveclothes). Now the sky is no longer a limit.
action: You fly
response: You rise into the night sky and the moon diminishes underneath your hooves. As you fly higher you find yourself flying lower, breaking back into the world's atmosphere.

This re-entry stings a little, but sooner than later it's over and you've returned to that wretched masquerade party.
action: You look
response: You are standing alone on a long manicured lawn bordered by cypress trees, whose moon-cast shadows divide the grass into neat quadrants as though it were a rugby field.

Below the lawn, further into the past, there is a great and gurgling fountain, and in the future you can see the palace windows alive with candlelight and merriment.
action: Future
response: The palace doors stand open, but no one has arrived yet.

A landscape garden stretches away into the past.

In the future, guests will deposit their cloaks in the cloak room.
action: You wear motley
response: You don your jester's motley (after removing the pig carcass) and potential pranks inspire you. Everything in this wide world is kissable.
action: Kiss giant
response: You shiver at the thought.
action: Kiss moon
response: What a creamy and marvelous flavor! No earthly camembert compares.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying graveclothes, a pig carcass, a vorpal blade, a rapier, and a playscript, and you are wearing motley.
action: Kiss rapier
response: You consider kissing the countess's rapier, but the farther you keep it away from your head, the safer you'll probably feel.
action: Kiss vorpal
response: You press your lips against the vorpal blade. It is sharp and cold and clean like some instrument sanitized for surgery. You can taste its sharpness and its sharpness is cutting cleanly and coldly your lips, your tongue, your skin, your bone. Even the blood running down your throat is clean and cold. The blade is passing through you, or perhaps you are passing through it, but in either case it has opened the world. That world is peeling away on either side, sliced vertically like an opening through a curtain, until you can see dark leaves overhead and smell dark earth and hear branches bending and snapping.
You are in a dark woodland clearing, the vorpal blade shining in your hand although the forest light is weak. It must be shining from within. Against your back you can feel bark. You are resting against a tumtum tree. At some distance there is a sundial, old and mossy and hourless in the gloom, standing solitary on a grass plot riddled with abandoned burrows.

You are not alone in the forest. Something is whiffling among the trees and you struggle to recall a warning someone gave you about this situation, but your uffish thoughts cannot remember the words. You have the vague sensation that you ought to be at home, preparing to broil your dinner, rather than waiting out here for whatever is advancing through the trees.

Nothing is clear anymore, but someone is supposed to kill
something, at any rate. And yet now that you think about it,
nothing was ever clear in the first place.

Its eyes are aflame and it burbles as it comes, its jaws biting, its claws catching. At least this creature isn't a countess.
action: You wear the pig
response: You hunch your shoulders together and crawl into the pig carcass (after removing your motley). Now the sky is no longer a limit.
action: You fly
response: You rise into the night sky and the moon diminishes underneath your hooves. As you fly higher you find yourself flying lower, breaking back into the world's atmosphere.

This re-entry stings a little, but sooner than later it's over and you've returned to that wretched masquerade party.
Landscape Garden
You are standing alone on a long manicured lawn bordered by cypress trees, whose moon-cast shadows divide the grass into neat quadrants as though it were a rugby field.

Below the lawn, further into the past, there is a great and gurgling fountain, and in the future you can see the palace windows alive with candlelight and merriment.
action: You examine the fountain
response: Disaster seems to dog these masquerade parties. Last time it was Matilda that they found drowned in the fountain with her hair streaming around the water-lilies. Nobody could discover how it happened. This time it will be you that they find dead on the lawn, and everyone will know how it happened.
action: You wear motley
response: You don your jester's motley (after removing the pig carcass) and potential pranks inspire you. Everything in this wide world is kissable.
action: Kiss fountain
response: The gurgling fountain is in the past.
action: You wear the clothes
response: As you shuffle into the graveclothes (after removing your motley), a strange malevolence steals over the scenery; or perhaps you yourself have become that strange malevolence. Your fingertips drip with infection.
action: You wake
response: You open your eyes.
On the Stroke
How did you ever get into this predicament? A rumor, a glove thrown down onto a dance-floor? Now you're standing in the moonlight and your knees are knocking together, although you hope that no one notices. You're still dressed for a masquerade and nothing feels quite real. Perhaps it isn't real... and all you need to do is wake up from
this nightmare.

The scene is set: landscape garden.

The cast: your second, Ferdinand, handing your weapon over; your rival's second, Onegin, handing her weapon over; and your
rival -- the countess.

"En garde!" the countess cries.
I beg your pardon?
action: Script
response: Scene:
landscape garden, midnight

in which the corpse...
and the countess...

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x)
attack, wake up
infect (when wearing graveclothes)

The countess is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?

Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.
On the Stroke
How did you ever get into this predicament? A rumor, a glove thrown down onto a dance-floor? Now you're standing in the moonlight and your knees are knocking together, although you hope that no one notices. You're still dressed for a masquerade and nothing feels quite real. Perhaps it isn't real... and all you need to do is wake up from
this nightmare.

The scene is set: landscape garden.

The cast: your second, Ferdinand, handing your weapon over; your rival's second, Onegin, handing her weapon over; and your
rival -- the countess.

"En garde!" the countess cries.
action: Infect
response: What do you want to infect?
action: Infect countess
response: You raise your arm toward the countess. That's enough.

She drops her cutlass on the lawn.

After a moment, blood wells from under her domino mask, scarlet rivers running down her cheeks. She lifts a hand to pull the mask away but it doesn't come away. It is stuck, and when she pulls harder there is a ripping sound. She cannot see what she has done, but around her eyes the skin has erupted with bubbling lesions like frog-eggs or caviar.
Now she is screaming. She sees her bloody hands. She knows that she is horribly broken. Meanwhile more blood is pouring from her every pore, drenching her gown, drenching the grass around her. Her body is melting into blood, her shape dissolving into it, until she is a shrieking heap upon the ground

Her shrieks are in the wind. Around the garden cypresses rustle and the fountain plashes as both seconds fall, bleeding with her. It is a comprehensive plague.

In the palace guests are falling too. Their shadows are erratic in the candlelit windows. You cannot picture them as real people. They are puppets and their strings have just been cut. It is a pandemonium, but it will all be over soon enough. It will end when the last reveler falls in the blood-bedewed halls, when the last screams are carried away by the breeze, when the candles blink out one by one as they gutter in wax.

And then darkness and decay and the Red Death will hold illimitable dominion over all.
action: Look around
response: On the floor you can see a red glove where it has been contemptuously thrown down, and expanding outward from this glove the world takes form. There are dancers surrounding you in a circle, but they are not dancing: they are staring at you and staring at the glove, and their eyeballs never cease staring because they are frozen.

There has been some hitch and time stands still.

A chandelier hangs overhead, candles unflickering. Everything is mirrored in the marble floor. Toward the future you can glimpse the grand staircase, where the countess is ascending with her back turned after having delivered her challenge.
action: Future
response: Ferdinand is leaning against a balustrade, her gaze cast toward the dancers in their formations below. She isn't one for dancing herself unless it's atop freshly slain enemies. Her tremendous kielbasa, which you will borrow later in your duel with the countess, is leaning against the balustrade beside her.

The ballroom is in the past now, and in the future you will look behind a polar bear.
action: Keep going
response: Dmitri's chest is pressed against the wall, arms overhead with his fingernails raking down the wallpaper. Onegin is straddling his rear, gripping his waist, paused mid-thrust with his cock halfway inside Dmitri's cunt -- or maybe halfway out?

As the countess's minion, it is Onegin's duty to carry her weapon, and right now her cutlass is resting nearby on the floor in an opened case.

The polar bear itself is at least three meters tall, preserved taxidermically in a perpetual roar with claws outspread. Traveling counter-clockwise would reorient you toward the red salon, and the grand staircase is in your past.
action: Script
response: Scene:
behind a polar bear, evening

to replace a weapon.

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to

future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
counter-clockwise (cc)
wear, undress, wake up
infect (when wearing graveclothes)
action: You wear motley
response: You don your jester's motley (after removing the graveclothes) and potential pranks inspire you. Everything in this wide world is kissable.
action: You look at the bear
response: Kappiataitok, king among polar bears in life, gathering dust here now in death. No hunt was ever greater than the hunt that felled His Majesty. It's said that thirty hunters lost their lives during the climb in crevices, and thirty more in snowstorms raging hard enough to freeze a beating heart, and thirty more when Kappiataitok emerged to find his glacial sanctum populous with infidels. They could not conquer him with spears; the ice ran red with blood from everyone; and thirty more were dead before the king rose with a roar and broke away across the floes. But he had been wounded in the ankle and could not escape, and after thirty more and thirty more had fallen to his claws, he fell beneath the aurora and never woke into this world again.
action: You talk to the bear
response: As you shuffle into the graveclothes (after removing your motley), a strange malevolence steals over the scenery; or perhaps you yourself have become that strange malevolence. Your fingertips drip with infection.

These frozen tableaux aren't going to provide very lively conversation.
action: You get the bear
response: This polar bear is much bigger than you are. You'd never be able to lug it around, and besides, you'd have little use for it.
action: You wear the bear
response: (first taking the polar bear)
This polar bear is much bigger than you are. You'd never be able to lug it around, and besides, you'd have little use for it.
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You are carrying motley, a pig carcass, a vorpal blade, a rapier, and a playscript, and you are wearing graveclothes.
action: You wake
response: You open your eyes.
On the Stroke
How did you ever get into this predicament? A rumor, a glove thrown down onto a dance-floor? Now you're standing in the moonlight and your knees are knocking together, although you hope that no one notices. You're still dressed for a masquerade and nothing feels quite real. Perhaps it isn't real... and all you need to do is wake up from
this nightmare.

The scene is set: landscape garden.

The cast: your second, Ferdinand, handing your weapon over; your rival's second, Onegin, handing her weapon over; and your
rival -- the countess.

"En garde!" the countess cries.
action: You infect yourself
response: You are already teeming with infection.

The countess is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?

Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.
action: Infect onegin
response: You raise your arm toward Onegin. That's enough.

At first it seems that nothing has happened. After all, the bastard is painted red from head to toe. It isn't immediately obvious that his pores have begun to ooze blood.

But then he notices. He looks down at himself, unable to tell where the pain is coming from, and you smile at the answer: Everywhere.
Now he is screaming. He doesn't know where to put his hands. He is stepping around as though he were stepping on hot coals because even his soles are bloody. He is a devil writhing in a pit. He is a sinner being flayed alive. His flesh is slipping from him in red slabs, splattering onto the lawn, leaving his raw muscles exposed to the nighttime air.

He has collapsed in agony, and the countess and your second have also collapsed in their own crimson puddles. It is a comprehensive plague.

In the palace guests are falling too. Their shadows are erratic in the candlelit windows. You cannot picture them as real people. They are puppets and their strings have just been cut. It is a pandemonium, but it will all be over soon enough. It will end when the last reveler falls in the blood-bedewed halls, when the last screams are carried away by the breeze, when the candles blink out one by one as they gutter in wax.

And then darkness and decay and the Red Death will hold illimitable dominion over all.
action: Infect ferdinand
response: You raise your arm toward Ferdinand. That's enough.

She knows what you've done almost before you've done it. There's nothing she can do to save herself, but that doesn't stop her from rushing to grapple your arm -- as if disabling you would reverse the disease.

You pull your arm away. It's effortless. Her grip is weak. You can't understand why you ever viewed her as a friend, as an ally, when she's just as bloodthirsty as the rest.
She does not scream when she begins to bleed from every pore. Her bald head is a red skull dripping blood. Her gaze into your face is ferocious. She won't surrender and she fights to hold herself together, but then she buckles and vomits everything onto the lawn: bile and blood.

Now she is convulsing on the ground, and the countess and that bastard Onegin are convulsing in their own crimson puddles. It is a comprehensive plague.

In the palace guests are falling too. Their shadows are erratic in the candlelit windows. You cannot picture them as real people. They are puppets and their strings have just been cut. It is a pandemonium, but it will all be over soon enough. It will end when the last reveler falls in the blood-bedewed halls, when the last screams are carried away by the breeze, when the candles blink out one by one as they gutter in wax.

And then darkness and decay and the Red Death will hold illimitable dominion over all.
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You are carrying a tremendous kielbasa and a playscript, and you are wearing graveclothes.
action: You examine the script
response: Scene:
landscape garden, midnight

in which the corpse...
and the countess...

Stage directions:
inventory (i), examine (x)
attack, wake up
infect (when wearing graveclothes)

The countess is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?

Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.
action: You examine the weapon
response: (your weapon)
You're wielding a tremendous kielbasa. It's a joke, of course, because you'll have just as much luck with this kielbasa for a weapon as you would with a sword. The countess is going to absolutely slaughter you tonight.

She is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?

Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.
action: You look at countess's weapon
response: Through some twist in fate, the countess is wielding a cutlass tonight. Perhaps it's not her typical rapier, but she's just as dangerous with any blade.

She is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?

Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.