I lived in a cluttered, one-room dormitory single in a huge old poorly-modernized factory. The furniture was rickety and falling apart. My desk was so covered with stuff I couldn’t sit at it. There were two drawers full of chocolate bars. I had just woken up, but I sat there and ate one anyway while I tried to decide what to do with myself. It was a Sunday, I was groggy, but I wanted to be writing and could barely get to my computer. So I started cleaning up a little.

I went out into the hallway with a pile of stuff—mostly papers I didn’t need, a few odd pieces of wood—a decent armload. Just a start. It was huge out there—high, peaked ceilings, and many piles of old-looking junk, furniture, equipment that looked to be left over from this building’s time as a textile factory in the nineteenth century. Everything looked like it had been painted and re-painted over and over in the same icy whites and pastels. I found some recycling bins, unloaded the papers, but somebody had moved the dumpster.

My neighbors, other dorm residents looking somewhat too old to be in college—older than me and all women—started coming out with their own heaps of junk. A couple of maintenance people bustled past us, showing obvious disinterest in helping us out, pushing big gray cloth bins of more junk. Apparently it was cleaning day, though I hadn’t heard anything about it. Our little knot decided to follow them, assuming they must know where the dumpsters were. One woman—she was cute, like a frizzier-haired, un-made-up Liz Gorinsky—had more than she could carry and I ended up taking some of her stuff, including a lampshade I wore uncomfortably over my head.

A rickety wooden ramp led from one huge room to another at a slightly different level. We turned corners, meandering around junk heaps. There was no uniformity at all to the layout—lots of little nooks with doors in them or half-painted-over windows looking on dusty, unused sections of the building or areas clearly restricted for maintenance. Outside it was a cold fall morning, bright, with the light passing through thin clouds of moisture, lighting up attractive planes in the sides of buildings and the streets.

I’d never been in this part of the building. I had a pretty good sense of how to get back, I thought. I wanted to get back to writing. Cleaning out the dorms with fifteen ladies had not been the plan.

We came to a cluttered cafeteria and the ladies decided to take a break for breakfast. They piled their junk on top of the heaps in the room adjacent and went to get trays and sit down. I politely took my leave of them, saying something more or less intentionally flirty to Liz, which they all laughed about and I denied. I went back looking for my room.

I couldn’t find it. I think I tried to take a shortcut to avoid some of the meanderings, through a half-painted-over door and up a back stairwell that only had three stairs between each landing. I found myself in a long, narrow, obviously unused kitchen, done in beige and mauve tile, with appliances that looked like they dated from the 40s or before, all heavy wrought iron. This stuff, I thought, must have been for feeding all the seamstresses, or maybe the boarding school students back in the day. I hurried on, decided after awhile it would be faster to float horizontally rather than walk so I wouldn’t have to dodge the appliances. But there wasn’t a lot of maneuvering room.

I noticed as I hovered over them that some of the burners on the stoves were still on. This frightened me—clearly nobody had been using these rooms, so my conclusions were either that some ghosts were fucking with me or some transient was using the stoves for heat, a dangerous prospect, but understandable given how cold it was.

Then I floated over some fake flickering LED candles set up in old candlesticks on a little kid’s tea-table. That really freaked me out. I slowed down, landed on my feet. Now I just wanted out. Outside. I figured I could walk around the outside of the building until I got to something familiar. There was a half-painted window next to me, but everything in here was so classic and historical-feeling that I didn’t want to just break it despite my distress. I saw a door leading into a brighter room, tested the handle. It turned.

I sat up from an uncomfortable position in a musty wooden chair. Must have dozed off for a nap. It was still bright out, but the room was darker inside. It was cold. I had taken off my shoes and was wearing only a hooded sweatshirt. I did have a pair of gloves with me, but I wasn’t wearing them. There was frost on my fingers. I struggled to pull on my shoes so I could get the gloves on and stuff my hands in my pockets, but they were numb and I was having a lot of trouble. I had decided I would try one more door, and if that didn’t lead me outside, I’d smash the window.

As I fumbled uselessly with the shoelaces, I woke up.

An oppressive organization of squat, evil steampunk bureaucrats ran an underground arcade. It looked like the inside of a sub: decorated with lots of fat, riveted pipe-fittings and thick portal windows, none of which actually opened on the outdoors. They did have some artificial sunlight fluorescents. They also had miniature sentient robots and these horrible bio-omniphages that were like slimy white knobby pac-men with teeth, which they used to power their most terrifying weapon, a twenty foot tall black rubber tyrannosaur torso and head glued onto the end of a bus. The head was mobile, quite agile, and literally capable of eating metal.

I belonged to a small underground resistance group. We had made considerable headway against the bureaucrats by cannibalizing their own technology, to the point that we had begun infiltrating their ranks with tiny robot spies and had assembled a giant bruiser of an attack SUV, heavily armored, with a battering ram and anti-personnel devices. Our goal was to exploit a limited form of interplanar portal technology we had discovered (mostly used by the bureaucrats as part of arcade games) to assassinate their leader, the devious Professor.

Unfortunately, we were discovered. It turned out the bureaucrats had a tiny robot spy of their own. They raided our lair. We barely escaped to the SUV with our lives and led the tyrannobus on a merry chase across the desert wastes mad max style, smashing up underlings and robots and wreaking havoc among their infrastructure in the process. But finally the tyrannobus caught the SUV in its jaws. We hit it with everything we had, ripping open the rubber body and revealing the creepy omnivoracious pac man maggots which spilled out over everything, ate through the SUV’s armor like jello and would have eaten us if we hadn’t scrambled out of our protective suits and scattered on foot.

One by one, my allies were captured and taken before the Professor to be interrogated. I, meanwhile, managed to make my way back to the safe house where we’d stored the limited portal device. Activating it, I was able to watch as the Professor, from his laboratory command center, orchestrated the capture of my allies. I readied the projectile weapon we had assembled from scrap (which resembled an ancient matchlock rifle that fired empty shell casings) and pulled the trigger–but it didn’t go off. This alerted the Professor to my presence. He was laughing at me and monologuing, working to shut down the portal as I struggled to repair my weapon, when I woke up.

Dreamed I was Phil Lesh, bass player for the Grateful Dead. I could play like him, fingers straying across frets and strings in insane syncopation, notes unplanned-for spilling out across melody and rhythm. I could sing like him, slow and strong and impossibly deep, with just a hint of twang. I even wore those trademark red-white-and-blue wristbands keeping back the sweat—though I noticed the base I was playing had only five strings instead of six. I was standing onstage at a festival show, playing an impossible reunion set with Bobby, Mickey, and yes, even Jerry himself. We played four or five songs in perfect, organic, group-mind unison, voices in a harmony rich and old with scratch and creak, Cryptical Envelopment, The Other One and Wave to the Wind.

Then we took a minute to breathe. Jerry went off stage for a minute (maybe to do a line) and while we waited I stood there noodling away, dropping that deep, heavy E note so it ballooned out without end across the undulating crowd. Mickey and Bobby bantered away about what to play next, then Bobby turned to me in his big new bushy Jerry beard and said, “Hey, let’s play ‘Friends’—you remember that one, one of mine? A new one.”

Then it all started to unravel. I remembered who I was—me. “Uh, yeah,” I said, with Phil’s voice, “I think so.” And fiddling away with the strings, I somehow managed to break one. A thick, immensely sturdy bass string snapped and fell away. Bobby and a couple of techs swarmed over with a new one. I fumbled it on, clumsy, cursing myself, and then suddenly there was Jerry, smiling, gently showing me what I’d done wrong, twisting it taut. He slung on his guitar, plugged it in.

“Let’s do ‘Sunshine of Your Love’,” he said. A song I actually know—me, not Phil. Though of course I’m sure he knows it too.

I ran through that crisp, smooth bassline a couple of times in my head. Then I let my fingers follow. The rest of the band fell in, and we were playing.

“It’s getting near dawn…”

I woke up with a song in my head.

When it started I had stumbled unwittingly on some clandestine preparations for an unspecified reconnaisance op, non-military in nature, but with a ready-for-anything air. They were outfitting their operatives with gear, and mistook me somehow for a member of the team. So I got a bunch of black clothes and a frame pack and an earpiece that kept malfunctioning and spitting static in my ear. Maybe it was meant to brainwash me, I dunno. Anyway, I pulled myself together to the degree that I could and got out of there, figuring they’d find me out sooner or later.

Outside the clinical white rooms and corridors of the organization was, of all things, a bustling urban shopping center, convoluted mishmash of Norwood, Northampton, New Orleans, Amsterdam, Boston, every remotely urban setting I’ve ever been lost in. And I proceeded to get lost. And addled as hell. There was a variety show going on involving pirates and audience participation in an upscale restauraunt I wandered into. All I wanted was to get away, but I stumbled backstage and got the cops called on me. I fought two cops in brutal fashion–couldn’t even understand why at the time, except that I was driven by the need to get away. Somewhere in the static whisperings of the earpiece I had come to the conviction I had superpowers. That I could produce energy blasts from my hands. It never materialized. At times, I even thought I had a purpose.

All I wanted was to find my car and get away. The crowds kept getting more and more difficult to navigate. Every time I turned a corner and entered a new square it looked familiar, I thought I had finally gotten un-lost. But then I walked across the street to where I thought my car would be, and it wasn’t, and I didn’t know where to go next.

PS. I am using a more link, so those of you reading this in syndication are mocked.

My squad of space marines clustered aggressively around the entrance to the crashed escape pod, laser blasters at the ready. I was in front, nervous as hell, toggling the safety switch on the stock of my rifle back and forth from stun to kill, stun to kill. All this had happened before. The pod would open, and the alien being inside would get off a shot, and the little guy standing next to me, just as green, just as jittery as I was, would die. Setting off a chain reaction that would foment interstellar war.

A hiss of decompressing air as the pod came open like a pair of steely jaws, lips receding to reveal gums and teeth, teeth separating to reveal the pod’s banks of controls, and a chair. In the chair sat a scabrous red alien in an utterly submissive posture, motionless, undoubtedly afraid, its expression unreadable.

Seconds clicked past in which the events of the future flashed over and over through my head, such that those seconds seemed immeasurably longer. The lieutenant was saying something, some soothing words, trying to allay the inevitable confrontation, but I couldn’t understand him, could think only of the blast that would come any second and burn Nick to cinders.

And then I couldn’t wait any longer for it to happen. My thumb pushed the safety to kill, my finger depressed the soft trigger and held it down as a crackling, undulating pulse like the blast of a Ghostbusters proton pack turned the alien’s head into a smoking crater. Another, shorter burst went off to my left, striking the alien’s hand, which had jerked towards the controls–Nicky had followed my lead.

The lieutenant bellowed for us to stop, but I had already relaxed my finger, and the rest of the squad was cheering as I watched the tendrils of smoke spiral up from the blasted remains of the alien’s skull. Then the lieutenant was screaming more orders I didn’t understand, and the rifle was pulled out of my hands. I was clapped on the shoulders a hundred times and lifted and pushed so that the pod and the alien corpse were removed from my sight, and all the time I was thinking about how this hadn’t solved anything, Nicky was alive but interstellar war was assured, and now I was the cause of it.

The lieutenant’s face filled my field of vision. He knew what I knew, I could see it in his expression. Yet he congratulated me, me and Nicky, told us we were heroes, that we would retire from the marines as heroes and never have to fight again. “Take the rest of the day off,” he said. “You boys need to relax. You’ve earned the chance to relax.”

Then Nicky and I were stripping out of our uniforms and getting into civilian clothes, rubbing the ashy stains of the blaster discharge from our fingers and faces. Then we were walking together off the base and into the mall next door. “See you later,” he mumbled to me, and wandered off. I went into the crowded pub, meekly waited my turn at the bar and asked the man to give me his favorite of the many unfamiliar cask beers on the chalkboard menu. He must have seen something haggard in my face, because he sat me down in a secluded place at the back of the bar, put a beer and a loaf of soft, sour bread in front of me and left me alone.

Out in the mall there was a celebration going on, a chorus of ladies in silvery flowing garments singing patriotic songs as they rode up and down the escalators. Before I knew it the bar had emptied out and the barman was shaking my shoulder to get my attention, saying he was closing up to go celebrate. I wanted more beer, but I got up off my stool and stepped out into the cheering, singing crowd, packed so tight that I couldn’t get by, I just stood there in a corner by the escalator as the silvery ladies of patriotism and victory danced past, and I wondered if Nicky felt as bad as I did. I wondered if he knew he would have died. If he thought it was worth it.

A broad, crowded city square. Spices on the air, the smells of barbecue. Fried plantains served in the peel from a vendor’s cart. Uneven cobblestones. There is a breeze, a sense of open water nearby, a cool palate of greys and blues punctuated by the bright colors of people’s clothes. I feel no sense of claustrophobia, yet the buildings and awnings crowd in so close I can’t see the sky.

At the west end of the square is the opera house, a breathtaking, intricate marriage of baroque and neoclassical styles. Staggered clusters of pillars, three-tiered and set with alcoves where larger-than-life marble figures in robes lounge together discussing philosophy and art like the figures of Raphael’s _School of Athens_. I lean over the rail at the edge of the curb and stare at them for a long time, astonished, more moved than I have every been by anything in the Old World. What a pompous idiot you’d have to be to criticize this place as the product of crass colonial aspirations. There is more earnestness in this facade than in that of the Coliseum.

But I stir. My attention wanders, and I follow it. There is so much more here, all so different, new. I am so glad to be back.

My cousin Luke lives in this city. His apartment is only a few blocks away, on the tenth floor of a high-rise overlooking a strangely monastic tropical garden. Moss everywhere. Weeping willows. A plaque, bearing a dedication describing the rigors undergone and good works achieved by students attending a convent school in Peru. A peaceful place, especially at dusk, with the warm light from the windows of Luke’s building trickling from above. He lives alone, in a narrow, ascetic room with his bed built into the wall behind a lightweight cotton curtain. I was there last night; I slept on his floor. Now I am trying to find my way back.

Instead I take a right, a left and a right and find myself in a cul-de-sac among the back streets of the city’s Little Tokyo. An asian dude in a black running suit gives me a suspicious look as I make my way past his posse towards a spiral staircase, vaguely recalling a shortcut somewhere above opening onto Luke’s street. But as I lose myself among the cloudy veils of laundry lines and sharp looks from old ladies on balconies, I begin to have my doubts.

Suddenly I hear my sisters calling from below. “Hey, Boon! What are you doing up there? How did you get all the way over here in Little Tokyo? We’ve been waiting for you!”

Sheepishly, I begin to make my way down again.

I never make it, but awake instead.

But then he is backing away, moving on to the next car. He must be some kind of greeter. So I shrug off my unease, collect my cane from the back seat and lead the way up the embankment to the tower.

The stairs are rickety, skeletal, shifting and creaking in the dry wind. The desert surroundings, washed out by the sun, share their palette with grimy, moss-covered sandstone. Those we pass keep a tight grip on the railings. They all seem to have lost something in the course of the ascent, dropped it over the side or lost it through the gaps between the steps. They ask us if we’ve seen any of these lost items. We haven’t, which is odd. Unless someone is collecting them up and ferreting them away after they fall.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought my cane. I try to remember whether I locked the car.

At the next landing, five or six stories up, I lean out over the rail. Below me the sandy-haired young man is tampering with the driver’s side door of the car next to ours. “Hey,” I shout. “Stop that!” The young man looks up.

The wind rises. The tower rattles and begins to shake. From somewhere above us comes the creak of shifting metal. A section of iron scaffolding tumbles past us toward the ground. The whole structure is coming apart.

“Down the stairs. Back down the stairs, quick!”

The tower lurches under our weight as we turn and rush back the way we came. In my hurry the cane flies out of my hands and slips through a gap. I can hear it clang and ping against the metal as it falls. Giant pieces of the tower dislodge themselves all around us. The sky opens above. Each time we round another flight and glimpse the parking lot, the sandy-haired young man remains frozen in place, gazing up, his arms at his sides, while around him the other tourists are piling into their cars and pulling away.

The wind and vibrations cease the moment we set foot on the solid concrete of the tower’s foundation. In fact there isn’t even any wreckage on the ground. The tower is intact. Nobody else seems to notice. They’re all still fleeing for their cars.

I turn back, look around the base of the tower for my cane. I discover the entrance to a hidden room underneath the stairs. Inside I find not just my cane, but a half-dozen others, as well as umbrellas, handbags, sets of keys. I stoop and enter the room, reaching for my cane. There are footsteps on the stairs. The sandy-haired man blocks my path. His expression and stance make it clear he has no intention of allowing me to leave.

The kleptomaniacal magician closes; we circle. A shadow crosses his face; when he emerges he has changed and grown into an enormous, shaved-bald mongoloid man, proportioned like a professional wrestler. His immense hands flex eagerly.

I flip the cane in the air, catch it again by its slender black shaft, the better to make use of the knotty head as a club. As I do so, I realize a transition has occurred in my own physical form: I am completely comfortable and unsurprised to discover that I have become Erin Hoffman: an agile little woman with a long, whiplike ponytail, a hard, faintly amused expression and a waist-length black cape.

The mongol lunges; Erin whirls out of his path and backhands him across the face with the head of the cane. He stumbles, then recovers, comes at her again. There is a dull thud as her next blow catches him square in the temple. He stands immoble, seeming to stare off between the gaps in the iron scaffold at the desert sun. The cane blurs in the air, thumps into his skull a third time, and he topples backwards into the sand.

I propose a last distraction: an afternoon hike into the hills. Lisi and Sara and I walk in the lead, my father and Udi behind, everyone else straggling along at their own pace. It’s hot; fern and blueberry bake in the sun along the trail, filling the air with heavy, tangy sweetness. The light washes out colors; pupils narrow down to pinpricks. Lisi’s curls gleam like a halo. My walking stick is slick with moisture from my palms.

After a mile, slabs of red-brown standstone begin to emerge from the brush of the hillside. I point out whitish scorings in the faces of the slabs: lines and circles of unknown meaning, appearing more and more frequently as we progress. “Petroglyphs.”

We turn left onto a side trail, ascending steeply now. Beads of sweat roll down my temples. Lisi and I pause to debate the nature of a peculiar set of glyphs; I recognize them as recent forgeries: four English words inscribed in a tall, narrow mirror script. I have walked this way before; a vague memory of the astonishing profundities that lie ahead is only beginning to arise in my thoughts–yet I know implicitly, the moment I set eyes on this particular stone, that the strange array of inscriptions to be found in these woods is representative of a phenomenon unheard-of anywhere else upon this continent–a seat of ancient North American learning and culture continuously occupied since before the era of the conquerors. Lisi is understandably incredulous. But a gasp and an exclamation from Udi and Sara interrupt our argument.

On the trail ahead of us is a hulking, weedgrown structure of adobe and standstone, like an Anasazi ruin lifted from the deserts of the southwest. Awed, disbelieving, yet half-remembering, I lead the way forward, through a long, arched corridor, open on one side to shadowed woods scattered with boulders.

A doorway opens in the left wall. Beyond it, a stairway leads steeply down into a dim, high-ceilinged room like the nave of a Spanish missionary church. At the foot of the stairs, the room is a ruin; the stone walls are bare; drifts of dead leaves cover the floor. But the sounds of muffled, distant conversation pull my attention to the right. Through another entryway I can see into a larger room, furnished in thick persian rugs and woven tapestries, where craggy-faced, raven-haired gentlemen in comfortable clothing lounge in upholstered armchairs, discussing esoterica in muted tones. Parchment-colored light filters down through lofty windows. And beyond this quiet study, I can glimpse a room wider and brighter still–a room dominated by books.

I turn to my family, who stand dumbstruck around me. “This,” I tell them, “is the Library of the Wampanoags”.

Like a tour guide, I show them single-file through the study and into the stacks. Wonderful, ancient, moth-nibbled books overflow the three-story shelving, drifting into immense heaps across tables, bins and floor. Every book is bound in cloth or leather, yellows, browns and muted reds–there is not a single work here less than twenty years old. The aisles and tables are fairly crowded with the strangest array of researchers; dusty miners, trappers, native men and women of clear eyes and inscrutable expressions. The air is full of the soft buzz of whispers, pages turning, pens and pencils scratching paper. We receive strange looks, some curious, some hostile.

I realize our time here is limited; I lose interest in the tour, let the others wander off to browse. There was a book I found, the last time I was here–a book no other library I’ve ever found has carried. I had never expected to see this place again. I had nearly forgotten it. And that book–well, if I could only have ten minutes to skim through its pages…

Alas, I am allowed no such chance. A frontiersman beside me snarls and grabs my arm; he draws a revolver. My gaze tracks frantically across the shelves, but already they are falling away, fading, washing out with light.

I awake.

After a good half-hour of fleeing from the guns like monkeys with our heads cut off, I figure this out. I make my way down through the holds, encountering pockets where other refugees have already gone into hiding. The pirates appear to have targeted a lot of cruise ships in the seventies, as mostly everything down here is in the vein of yellow polka-dotted canvas suitcases covered in mildew. In a cache beneath a false floorboard beneath the very prow of the ship, however, I discover somebody’s hoard: several dozen oversized kitchen knives, a couple of utility razors, a crowbar and a couple of bottles of Bass ale. I choose one of the razors and a heavy, serrated bread knife. I of course lay claim to the beer, but distribute the rest of the weapons among my fellow stowaways.

Possessed of a newfound self-assurance and disregard for my armed enemies, I am soon to be found lounging in a cargo sling dangling from the yardarm, an empty beer bottle cradled in my lap, trying to pry the cap off a second bottle with the blade of the razor. John and Nick and their crew stand around on deck, guns against their shoulders, cursing me roundly.

Alas, when I get the second bottle open I find it has been compromised by age and sea, full of foamy white mold.

My shiv-toting compatriots arrive from below decks; a brief battle ensues. I tumble from the comfort of my hammock for fear of flying bullets, and barely manage to save myself from the waves by grabbing onto an open porthole as I plummet past the hull. The breadknife and the last of the beer tumble out of my lap and disappear with a splash. I duck through the porthole, back into the safety of the hold.

Above the sporadic sounds of gunfire choke to a stuttering halt; either the mutinous assault has been subdued, or the idiots are finally out of bullets. Either way, the contest is now rather moot. The damage has already been done: the shooting has irrevocably compromised the hull and the hold is filling steadily with froth. The last stragglers of the kitchen-knife clan scramble to salvage what they can of the cargo, then slosh with their spoils across the swiftly tilting deck towards the hatch that leads topside.

I, however, am in need of a weapon to replace the one I lost. I take a deep breath and plunge underwater, heading for the deepest innards of the ship.

Close against the keel, in a broad, low-ceilinged space now gray and murky with the inrushing sea, I take my sweet time, rummaging through more rotten suitcases, piles of spare timber and tackle. The lack of oxygen, the fear of drowning, is only an abstract concern. This is dreaming–here I don’t need air to breathe. Alas, I make no more opportune discoveries. I don’t know what I was hoping for–a nice, compact nine-millimeter would be useless now anyway, soaking wet. I settle on a five-iron from a rust-encroached set of golf clubs, kick free from the flotsam and head back the way I came.

My head breaks the surface back in the forward hold just in time for a wet, rending crack as the rotten wood of the hull tears asunder. Light and sea spill in through the hole and beyond it, I see–

“Land! We’re coming up on land!”

A jagged shoreline of pines, broken up by rocky outcrops, sliding by fast. I grab hold of a trailing rope and swing out onto the hull’s outer surface. Up on deck everyone is shouting and scrambling about pell-mell, wailing about how we’ll be smashed against those rocks. The pines slide away and suddenly there’s a marina in sight on shore not fifty yards away, pristine white pleasure yachts bobbing at anchor, and a crowd of people sitting at some quayside restaurant all standing up and waving. I pitch away my hard-won golf club, get a good grip with both hands on the rope and kick off away from the ship, out over the water. “Swim, you idiots!” I shout, then let go of the rope, plunge in and follow my own advice.

Somebody pulls me out of the water onto the dock. “What the hell’d you do that for?” he asks.

“Are you kidding? That ship is a wreck. It’s going to sink any second.”

“Doesn’t look like it to me.”

I turn, and he’s right. From here the ship looks as though its still on an even keel, moving along at a decent clip despite its lack of sail. The people on deck don’t look happy, though, and even as I watch the ship lurches, the stern lifts up out of the water and the whole thing starts to slide down beneath the surface. People are leaping off like mice.

“See?” I say. “I told you.”

In the absence of moderators or DMs, the adventuring and combat systems were based on a set of tradable cards printed with objectives and spells and combat regulations. These cards also functioned as currency; accomplishing an objective was worth certain stated quantities of gold and XP.

On my first attempt I rather made a mess of things; my objective was to retrieve some pulsing blue orb from the hoard of a rival band of adventurers who were hoarding it. The card was worth quite a lot, but what with my clumsy misunderstanding of the rules and my general roleplaying rustiness I severely fucked up my group’s chances, leaving Tobias, if not the rest of them, rather resentful.

I vowed to improve.

I returned the next night with a newfound resolve and a black cape lined in red silk slung over my shoulders. Again my allies made sharp remarks about my poor performance, though Finlay, being a good leader, remained diplomatic. I kept silent, resolving to prove my worth by actions, not words. Our objective that evening was an ambitious one: to infiltrate and loot our rival band’s very lair: an expansive set of apartments next door to a popular and thoroughly raunchy cabaret theater.

As our band made its way through the evening’s crowds, I jostled my way to the front, paying only half attention to their debate of the strategies of frontal assault and subterfuge. Being the newest member of their band, I knew I was the least recognizable, and relying on my high charisma and dashing black cape, I figured I could infiltrate and scout their stronghold without their ever catching on to my malicious intent.

In retrospect, I should have given my fellows more credit and let them in on my plan. As it was, I assumed they wouldn’t give me the chance, and anyhow they’d probably still be arguing by the time I got back. Alas, I failed to anticipate how well my ruse would work.
I was making for a side entrance to our enemies’ compound, running over plausible excuses for my intrusion in my head, when one of their number reached over the railing of a low balcony to pluck at my cape. I recognized her: a low-level witch draped in flimsy black gauze (played here by Natalie Portman), who, by her dress and demeanor, seemed to have taken advantage of her proximity to the cabaret by offering her services as a lady of the evening.

She invited me to join her. Not wanting to seem too eager, I declined. “I am going to the cabaret,” I told her. She made a pert face and released me.

I strolled on to the cabaret box office and made brief perusal of the bills pasted in the window. Then I returned to the foot of the stair that led to Ms. Portman’s aerie. “This evening’s show has already sold out,” I told her.

“What a shame,” she said, and held out a hand.

As she led me in through the balcony door, I craned my neck behind me to search for my allies in the crowd. They were nowhere to be seen.

Our arch-rivals’ lair resembled one of Tufts’ Hillside Apartments. Every available surface was cluttered with pizza boxes, empty two-liter soda bottles and fake weapons. A television flickered in the common room; a few of her housemates lay sprawled on the couches, oblivious to our presence. Realizing I was as-yet unarmed, I plucked a plastic basket-hilted dagger from a countertop and slid it through the back of my belt.

Natalie’s room was actually on the ground floor; at the top of the stairs she turned to me, wrapped her fingers in my cape. “So I hear you’re a burglar,” she said.

“Not tonight,” I answered. “Tonight, I’m a kidnapper.” I lifted her up in my arms and carried her down the stairs.

Near the bottom, an enormous foam-sheathed broadsword leaned against the wall, as tall as Natalie herself. I set her on her feet and reached back to grab it; just as I did so she caught me by the other wrist and pulled me into her room.
She kissed me.

My response might have been more convincing had there not at that moment been a loud crash, followed by shouting and the clash of plastic swords. Over her head, through the half-open door, I saw Charlie and Toby and the rest of my crew battling their way past. Apparently they’d chosen the brute-force option.

Natalie pushed me back towards the bed. I sat down, resting the broadsword on the floor between my legs. The plastic dagger in my belt dug into my back. She got down on her knees, wrapped her hands pornographically around the hilt with an utterly mischievous expression on her face.

Then the door swung wide, one of her housemates toppled through it to the floor with Toby roaring on top of him, and I started awake.

It was quarter to seven. I went back to sleep, and found myself seated in the lair of my own adventuring party with Charlie and Toby. It was morning, with sun streaming in through the windows. They were about to critique a short story of mine. I was nervous because basically what I’d done was a complete retelling of one of Toby’s old stories. But we never got the chance to discuss it, because just then another member of our party burst in with some kind of security tape of what had happened the night before. It showed the melee in Natalie’s room, just after I had woken up. It showed me pulling the dagger from my belt, grabbing Natalie around the waist and slitting her throat. Absurdly bright red blood flooded everywhere.

I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. I had no memory of what I was seeing, and I couldn’t believe I would have done such a thing. We fell to arguing. Every few minutes somebody else from the group would arrive and the argument would escalate. Before long everybody but Charlie was shouting themselves red in the face.

Then Natalie herself came in, and there was silence.