Survival Horror

**Survival Horror** is an InCryptid short story. It is fourth in the Antimony Shorts but can be read as a standalone. It takes place after the events of Midnight Blue-Light Special.

## Synopsis

When Antimony heads for her cousin Artie's place to spend the day reading comic books and avoiding the rest of her family, she's expecting a peaceful afternoon. She's *not* expecting a hostile video game to try to kill them both. But sadly, when the Price family is involved, unexpected threats from seemingly innocent and unlikely places are pretty much par for the course.

If they want to survive the day, Annie and Artie will need to navigate a maze of riddles, puzzles, and irritating programmers, all of whom seem to have approached their game design with one goal in mind: to wipe two of the youngest members of the extended Price family off the face of the Earth.

It's going to be a marathon session, and this time, if you die in the game, well. You die for real.

## Plot

As Antimony reads comic books in Artie's room, he starts up a new game he installed called *The Jester's Prison*. The lights suddenly go out, and they're trapped in a dark pocket dimension, unable to move from their positions when they started. A video of a female cuckoo tells them the rules of the game, and warns that if they fail any of the puzzles, they will be imprisoned along with the Jester, Robin Goodfellow.

Artie and Annie solve a few puzzles, and then realize they can ask the cuckoo to for a "gift". Artie asks her to leave, which she does. Annie has a flash of insight and suggests they try hitting the "escape" button. It works, and they're released back into the real world. Seven hours have passed, and both of them are exhausted. They explain what happened to them to Artie's parents, and Jane makes a few calls. She confirms that hidebehinds in Silicon Valley were involved in developing the game, but dissuades Annie from going to California to punch them. Artie leaves an online review of the game, letting everyone know that it's evil.

## Characters

* Antimony Price
* Arthur Harrington
* Jane Harrington-Price
* Ted Harrington

**Mentioned**

* Thomas Price
* Sarah Zellaby
* Elsinore Harrington
* Angela Baker

## Field Guide

* Incubus
* Cuckoo

**Mentioned**

* Hidebehind
* Robin Goodfellow

## Locations

* Portland, Oregon
	+ Harrington-Price home

**Mentioned**

* Silicon Valley, California

## Organizations

**Mentioned**

* Covenant of St. George

## Continuity

* Sarah is still recovering from her injuries.
* Antimony mentions Thomas being trapped in another dimension.

## Trivia

* Antimony mentions the Covenant banishing Robin Goodfellow to another dimension, implying he actually exists.

## Quotes

* **Jane:** Even if we could convince your parents to let us take you to California for the sole purpose of punching people, I can't get the time off work.
 **Ted:** Your brother would probably let us take Antimony to California in order to punch people. He'd view it as a bonding exercise.
 **Jane:** No one is crossing state lines in order to commit assault today, all right?

* **Antimony:** I hate nonviolent solutions.
 **Artie:** Even the X-Men sometimes resolve things without punching. *[Antimony glares at him]* I mean, punching would be better, we should really go with punching.
 **Ted:** See, look there, Annie got her way without punching you, clearly diplomatic methods can work.

* **Antimony:** That's it? Just 'uninstall the evil software'? We don't even have to kill a chicken?
 **Ted:** Why would you? It's not like you installed Windows 7.

### Epigraph

* **Alice Healy:** "Some things are mysteries not because they are impossible to understand, but because when they stood up and said "Get out," the sensible people all did as they were told. Not everything needs solving."

### Pop Culture

* Antimony references nerdy topics such as X-Men, the Addams family, and the SyFy channel.
* Antimony half-jokes that Artie's room smells like Yankee Candle, a company whose products are known for their overpowering aromas.
* Robin Goodfellow, the character in the video game, is another name for the trickster fairy Puck from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

## References

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee\_Candle
2. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck\_(A\_Midsummer\_Night%27s\_Dream)