Dazed and Interviewed

Chapter 2

Sitting in the quiet wake of the crash, I felt rather peaceful. It was over and I'd prevailed, despite the cost. There wasn't anything left to do now. My eyes fluttered, heavy with sleep I was reluctant to give into.

I knew nothing good would come of it, but I didn't have the strength to fight. My adrenalin was spent, and I couldn't even move enough to stop the steering wheel from digging into my cheek. My eyes closed slowly, brows knit in dissatisfaction.

Instead of darkness, I found a formless soft white glow awaiting me. It enveloped me in a vague sense of heat I couldn't quite match with my body. Like when I ran a high fever, all I could sense was warmth and an ebbing pain.

There was no way to keep time, and I wasn't inclined to. Caught in a state between waking and sleep, my mind was aware but disinterested. The apathetic state replaced the agonizing injuries with comfortable numbness.

As even the feeling of warmth faded from my dulled sense, I gradually noticed faint colors appearing. They began as only the lightest of tints but resolved into blurry outlines. I was looking at someone or something seated on a throne. Whether there was a meaningful difference between the seat and occupant wasn't something my mind could parse.

"Adequate," came a whisper in my mind. Without warning, everything snapped to black.

The feeling of falling greeted me when I woke up. My head swam as I tried to understand why I was looking at the world wrong. I slept on my side and knew the details of my studio apartment's left side more intimately than my parents' faces.

I was sitting up, I realized. I also wasn't at home but sitting in a high-backed office chair. All of that was weird enough on its own, but as moments ticked by, I started to remember what happened.

That I'd woken up after what happened was a surprise, all things considered. That I was sitting in an office rather than a hospital bed was also strange but less critical.

It took a couple of moments for me to get over my relief at being alive. I basked in the simple pleasure of existence, then remembered what happened. There was no way I wouldn't have been waking up in an ICU, if at all. It was time I started looking at my surroundings a bit closer.

I was seated at a beautiful desk in a comfy chair with an expensive-looking carpet under it. The guy in the robe had a nicer chair, but that was to be expected. Whoever owned the office would have the best seat. The logic was simple enough.

That all of this was floating in a swirling abyss didn't have such an obvious explanation.

"We ask for one kill. She gives us three... Including herself? Nice initiative," a guy in a hooded robe said. I looked at him. He hadn't noticed I was conscious and was still reading through a file. I couldn't see his face. He'd turned half to the side to lean on his elbow as he read.

The idea that I was, in fact, dead and this was some form of afterlife occurred to me. My last memory was a car wreck and the taste of blood. Contrary to martial arts movies, you didn't cough that up unless something was seriously wrong.

Following that thought was a profound sense of disappointment. Of all the possible forms of an afterlife I'd ever heard of, this one seemed kind of lame. I shivered involuntarily as an episode of the Twilight Zone crawled up from the bowels of my memories.

What if that was the point?

Torture was a relative concept. Even if I was in pain and suffering, a renaissance-style Judeo-Christian hellscape would probably still have exciting visuals. It would be more demoralizing to make a sad chimera out of interesting things like the abyss and mundane ones like an office.

I rejected that idea and took a deep breath. I wasn't getting anywhere running around in frantic circles in my mind.

"More than qualified," the Hood mumbled just loud enough for me to hear. His words gave me something to focus on.

"Uhm…what did I qualify for…Sir?" I asked.

The Hood gave a start, dropping the folder as he looked over at me in surprise. I found myself staring at an unrecognizable being. This wasn't a human, devil, or...anything really. What I was faced with seemed to be an extension of the abyss itself. I forced myself to blink, feeling I shouldn't look for too long.

"Well… Uhm..." the Hood fumbled as he picked up the folder. It took a few moments to gather its scattered contents.

"The terms and prize should have been explained in your invitation," he said finally. I felt like he was looking at me with curiosity. I couldn't explain why I did, he didn't have facial features, but I still felt it. Just like I couldn't decide exactly how I knew he was a 'he' in the first place.

"I didn't get any kind of explanation, though I did see an invitation," I replied. I was a little fuzzy on the details of what had happened in my final moments. Yet that message was seared into my mind.

"You went for it not knowing anything? You're quite the go-getter," the Hood said and laughed. It wasn't a happy sound but something like amused resignation.

I smiled or at least forced my mouth into the general shape. It didn't feel like I was smiling, though, which was weird. After working customer service jobs for years, I was an expert at pasting them on.

Usually, that was a dead giveaway that I was dreaming. Yet I doubted it this time. Why was a mystery, but the rejection felt instinctive. I was a semi-lucid dreamer. Being conscious during a dream wasn't strange to me.

I discreetly moved to pinch myself to prove myself wrong. I wanted this to be a dream, even if I knew it wasn't.

"You are the winner of a prestigious opportunity to establish a Dungeon in service to the forces of Chaos," the hooded abyss began. I looked up in surprise, forgetting my little test. With a sweeping gesture, cans of cola manifested on the desk. He pushed one toward me, and I accepted. I wasn't thirsty per se, but I felt comforted by having something familiar to do.

"As its core, you'll have the freedom to design it according to your taste. Complete creative control," the Hood continued. It sounded a bit forced, like a prepared speech from an inexperienced salesman. The kind whose magazine subscription you would not be buying.

He paused, catching on to my less than enthusiastic mood. Oddly, his shoulders fell, like he was disappointed, but he rallied a moment later. It seemed like I wasn't his first underwhelmed audience.

"Now, it's a very cushy position. Only it does come with quite a lot of management duties rather than hands-on killing," the Hood started again. This time his voice was a little tighter. It reminded me of when I'd had to speak about my work in class as part of public critiques. I sounded like that when I knew it was going badly but couldn't stop.

Feeling a little sympathetic, I drank my cola and tried to listen attentively. The soda distracted me for a few moments. I'd thought it was generic cola the first time, but it tasted like cherry vanilla now. It was a flavor I had conflicting feelings about, so I felt sure I'd have noticed it before.

Wait, stop. Needless distractions weren’t getting me anywhere. I focused, forcing myself to listen properly.

"If you want to be knee-deep in blood, guts, and glory, we do have a few lesser opportunities. Demon Lord is particularly popular," the Hood said.

"Did you have any questions so far?" it asked after a pause. 'They' asked. I mentally corrected myself sternly. The Hood wasn't a recognizable life form, but it was a shitty thing to use "it". He- I stopped. That was an assumption on my part. They were obviously sentient. I also knew that pronouns should be the least of my worries.

I felt calm. Way too calm.

"I know this is real, and I'm not panicking. Why is that?" I asked finally. If it weren't for the fact that I'd been like this from the start, I might have thought my drink was drugged.

"Pardon?" the Hood asked, caught off guard.

"I don't understand why I'm not freaking out," I clarified unhappily. It wasn't as if I didn't feel anything. It was just that obvious things that should be happening weren't. Like curling into a fetal position and crying in fear.

"That would be the system suppressing your feelings. Even those who come here aware of what they signed up for need a bit of help to fully adjust. So the system… let's say it helps them remain functional," the Hood explained. He held a steady tone, but he looked away and shifted uncomfortably. It was a stark contrast to his demeanor when he tried to sell me on becoming a dungeon or demon lord.

"In short, it forces you to accept this as real and prevents you from panicking about it," he continued. I took a few sips of my drink as I digested what I'd been told. I was basically under some kind of compulsion or mind control. Realistically I'd be freaking the fuck out on hearing that, but once again, I didn't.

Instead, I recalled the red letters of the invitation. Dread crept through my mind as I thought, really thought about what was going on. Even if I couldn't panic, nothing about this was right. That I could at least recognize that basic wrongness was a little comforting.

"Do I have the option to not participate?" I asked. I put my can down and pushed it away from me. I needed to focus.

My mind was still working, and I wasn't totally devoid of emotions, even if a couple weren't responding correctly. I could still make moral decisions, and so should.

The Hood looked at me but didn't respond. After staring for a moment, he opened the file he'd been reading before and started leafing through it quickly. Not finding what he was looking for, he set it aside and dug in a drawer until he found another.

He rushed through its contents only to come to a grinding halt a moment later. He stared at a sheet of paper I couldn't read then started laughing.

"Uhm… So is that a yes?" I asked. As I'd learned in customer service, always choose confident words. Particularly when you didn't feel confident. Customers could smell fear.

"I apologize. This must be very confusing," the Hood said in a gentler tone than before. He sat the new folder aside and focused on me.

"You're not wrong," I replied, feeling defensive. I didn't care for coaxing tones. They always preceded someone trying to screw me over.

"Under normal circumstances, after significant vetting, a candidate receives an invitation that explains the situation. Your case is different," the Hood continued. I nodded, readily accepting that much.

"Your passenger was the candidate," he continued. I felt an electric thrill roll up my spine. It made sense. That guy was clearly a psycho. Getting to be a dungeon probably would have been a wet dream come true for him.

"However, there's something of a glitch in the invitation system. If it detects that a candidate has encountered a superior foe, it doesn't play favorites. They receive an invitation as well, and the survivor takes the spoils, so to speak," the Hood finished.

"H-how exactly is that determined?" I asked. The system thought I was a superior foe when matched up against my nightmare passenger. I didn't know how to feel about that. Superior made me want to believe I was a better person. Still, I doubted the system was measuring positive qualities. I really didn't want to be the better potential serial killer.

"Probable outcomes of the scenario. If you exceed forty percent for possible victory, the invitation triggers," the Hood explained and looked at the folder. He flipped a few pages.

"You exceeded sixty. Many of your victory scenarios end with you beating the shit out of him with the tire iron you kept next to your seat," the Hood said and chuckled. I swallowed involuntarily.

I couldn't say the thought hadn't crossed my mind.