Curstl opened her eyes, she found herself in her room of all paces.

A fluffy purple carpet, white table with a PC.

"Did I dream all that up?" she thought getting out of bed.

"Even my dreams won't let me spend time with Bony..." she sighed before stretching a bit.

It was her daily routine, she got out, got dressed up, this time she opted for a hoodie and skirt, then she went to have some breakfast, check if she had any assignments from her online course and booted up the game.

She returned to her computer with a bowl of cereal.

"I should tell the others about the crazy dream!" she thought.

As soon as she booted up the game and logged in, she found her character missing.

"What the-?!" she shut the game down and opened it once more, as expected the character was still missing.

She shut the game down again, this time launching it in administrator mode.

"Come on..." she thought.

Again, her one character slot was empty.

"Did the server get wiped?" she thought clicking the "create new character" button.

She designed her character the same way she did before, she hair, class and even the eye shape.

When she appeared in the human starting zone, she found herself back at level one, no gear, no armour and no guild.

She glanced down to the global chat.

"Adrrm: Selling mossback's kidneys, 1x = 15g"

"Kevin: You got yourself a deal!"

"Bowb: Don't bother, it's a bot."

"Adrrm: Selling mossback's kidneys, 1x = 15g"

"Kevin: Aw... he had me excited for a while..."

"Owown: STHAP!"

"Adrrm: Selling mossback's kidneys, 1x = 15g"

"Bowb: AHH!"

"It's all going as usual..." Curstl remarked.

She opened her friends-menu, it was empty.

She added some of her jGuardian members as friends.

"Alright, I'll get back to my old position in no time!" she thought,

An error noise grabbed her attention, "Friend request rejected..." the message was plastered in the global chat.

"What the?"

"Bowb: Lol, she got the friend requests rejected!"

"Adrrm: Selling mossback's kidneys, 1x = 15g"

"Kevin: Oof..."

"Owown: Why'd anybody want to play with a psychopath?"

"Kevin: Ikr..."

"Bowb: Fu#*ing psychopath..."

"Kevin: Psychopath..."

She shut the game down.

"Alright, this is DEFINITELY not happening!" she thought, she looked around seeing nothing out of the usual, no scary corner demon, no scary wolf, no undead, not even any scary vibes, it was sunny, the kind of weather horror move writers avoid because it's impossible to make scary.

She looked around, "Am I really being mind-controlled?!" she thought.

"No... that was just the dream..." she grabbed a coat and turned to leave her room, she was feeling it again.

"I have to go find somebody to talk to..." she thought.

"Even somebody working in a shop would be fine..." she thought.

She opened her front door and headed outside.

Immediately the idea came to mind, "My neighbours!" she darted towards their door, knocking on it repeatedly for a solid thirty seconds before taking a few breaths and continuing to knock on the door.

After another few tries, she put her ear to the door.

"Psychopath... psychopath..." she pulled her ear away from the door and backed away towards the stairs down, the block.

Every door was the same, the lack of a response, the quiet whispering calling her a psychopath.

She made it to the bottom of the stairs before walking out the door, her block stood amongst dozens more, cement blocks placed along the side of the road serving as a sidewalk.

A steep, grassy slope down was the road where rushed dozens of cars.

Every few meters stood a metal barrier to stop people from falling down and rolling under a car.

"Fuck... it's cold..." she stomped her way forward, every time she walked past a person she could hear their mumbling, "Psychopath..."

She made it to a small shop, it had a flat roof and was looking pretty run down.

In red, "Psycopath" was written on the sliding doors, through the large windows she saw that the shop was unlit, instead, she saw a young-looking kid, blond hair, brown shorts and a sponge*ob shirt.

"Why's some kid locked in there?!" she thought.

As she looked at him closer she noticed he looked very familiar, out of nowhere he began coughing up water, it was a trickle at first, then a stream, dirty, muddy water, twigs, bits of grass and other trash from the bottom of the river they grew up near.

She took a step back as the glass doors shuck under the weight of the water.

"THIS IS DEFINITELY AN ILLUSION!" she thought as she began to run.

"It's definitely him...!"

Fifteen years ago...

A nine-year-old Curstl was being casually teased by some of the kids from around the town, they used to hang out by an old drainage pipe it was clogged by years worth of trees and mud.

There were six of them, Curstl was the youngest in the group by a little and the oldest in the group, a boy called Jack.

"Go on! Drink it!" he was holding her over the edge of the concrete pipe and near the deep water.

"No! There's trash in the water!" she argued.

"Come on!" A few more kids joined in.

Curstl began thrashing around.

"Let me go! I'm not drinking muddy river water!"

"Alright! Stop struggling or I'll-!" They both fell in the water, luckily Curstl grabbed onto the edge of the concrete pipe before the river swept her away, she climbed back in, wet from the belt down and in a fair bit of shock.

In the distance, Jack's head was still visible in the water, he was visibly waving his arms around, coughing and calling out for his parents.

All the kids legged it, none of them could swim and none of them wanted to get involved for fear of getting in trouble.

Curstl remained, she wasn't exactly able to swim, but she was told by the parents countless times that if she ever fell in, she should just stop moving and she'd float to the top.

Within moments she rushed into the water, swimming up to where she last saw Jack, much to her surprise she was nailing swimming in the water, partially because she was swimming with the current.

She ducked her head down and looked for the boy but the water was muddly, she saw nothing.

A few minutes later she was convinced she lost him, how much further could he have gone, "Maybe he already got out?" she thought.

"He'll probably pretend he just slipped into the water, I'll tell his parents as soon as I'll get the chance!" she thought.

As soon as the realisation she was no drifting away with no swimming ability kicked in, she felt herself stop, she made it to the mini-dam.

It did little to regular the water level, it served more as a way to stop trash and wood from reaching the fancier part of the river where a lot of rich people kept their boats.

It was essentially a massive vertical grate, she breathed a sigh of relief, it was getting dark, the sun was slowly setting and she was by all means terrified, but in the end, everything went well.

That was when she felt it, a hand on her foot, she looked down, yanking it back for fear of it being a fish that touched her.

She looked down and saw the drowned body of the kid.

For the next ten hours, any and all sound was muffled by the sound of crashing water on the other side of the dam.

The reputation spread.

Whispers went around the neighbourhood, then the school and eventually the entire city.

"She's the one that drowned Jack,"

"I heard she pushed him into the water!"

"Wasn't she the one holding his head under the water and making him drink it?"

It was like Chinese whispers, except where the objective was to make Curstl more hated.

That legacy haunted her for over a years, every time she met a person from school, she wouldn't get to have the "Oh, what are you doing now, any kid? College?" she would only be met with a passive "Hey...", "Aren't you the one who drowned a kid?!" or worst of all, silence and stares.

Her parents both passed away, she didn't have any siblings, no other family she knew of, no friends, even the pizza delivery guy didn't say "thanks" when she paid him.

"Psychopath."

"Kid can be cruel, though I suppose it's better than "murderer"..."

"Psychopath."

"It's not like it's my fault he fell in..."

"Psychopath."

"How are the others any better?! At least I tried to help!"

"Psychopath."

"No one of them got into shit for what they did!"

"Psychopath."

"They were pampered like poor, innocent victims for their friend's death!"

"Psychopath."

"It's enough to make my blood boil!"

For years, she remained quiet about it, every uninformed friend, every shallow relationship, it all fell apart whenever she even began to open up.

A few people left at "My friend died when I was a kid..."

"Nah, screw this, I didn't sign up to be your therapist!" they'd laugh before leaving.

The same thing would happen to friends, "Wait, so you're the psychopath that drowned a kid!?"

"Don't make shit up, I heard you kept them underwater to stay afloat!"

They wouldn't even question the rumours.

Things changed when she decided to pick up some obscure MMO, the chanced of someone she knew infiltrating her new life would be slim to none.

"Curstl: Hello?! The tutorial level is broken!"

"Adminito: We'll get that fixed ASAP! Somebody's been screwing with the server DB in the last few days."

"Beardly: A new player? Nice!"

"Bonifacius: lol, guess I'm not the newest anymore."

"Beardly: Yeah, how's the grinding by the way? We'll need you for Doomway forty-man next week, min lv 80."

"Bonifacius: I'll get to max level sometime in the next few days!"

"Beardly: Cool, sorry for making you blaze through the levels, but you can always go exploring later, lol."

"Bonifacius: Don't worry about it, playing with you guys it the reason I joined, lol :D"

"Too many 'lols'..." Curstl cringed.

"Curstl: Anyway, what should I do?"

No reply came.

Moments later a private message came to her from Bonifacius.

"Bonifacius: Hey! If you need any help getting started I can help you out, it's a steep learning curve, but well worth the effort! :D"

"Oh god, it's the 'lol' guy..."

"Curstl: Oh, thanks! But that's not necessary... I guess I'll just look up a tutorial!"

"Bonifacius: Lol, k :D"

Curstl cringed even more.

After a few hours of searching Curstl gave up, the game didn't have a clear start, she logged in and just began walking around, she made her character and soon found herself in dying over and over again.

She didn't play many RPGs, she enjoyed platformers and more strategy games, though she wasn't any good at the latter.

"XPhaxX: No, I said invincible!"

"Bonifacius: Yes... but if you can't see it... that would make it invisible...? Lol."

"XPhaxX: ...his horse... was called invincible, so why didn't anyone see it?"

"Bonifacius: Lol, you mean invisible?"

"XPhaxX: I GIVE UP!"

"It's been eight hours... he's still up?" thought Curstl seeing Bonifacius' name in the chat.

She hovered her hand over the chat, "What should I say? Do I say anything? I guess the new me should be more... vocal!"

"Curstl: Hello again!"

"XPhaxX: Sup."

"Bonifacius: Hey! Did you find any good tutorials?"

"Curstl: Nope, I decided to just try the basics!"

"Bonifacius: Makes sense! If you need any help, just lemme know! :D"

"Curstl: Will do!"

"Absolutely not..."

A few hours later it was midnight, as expected the server was considerably slower, the global chat only getting a new message every minute or so.

"Curstl: THIS MAKES NO SENSE! I'VE BEEN KILLING BOARS FOR THE LAST HOUR AND NOT ONE DROPPED THE BOAR-HEAD!" she cried.

"Bonifacius: Did u loot them?"

"Curstl: ..."

"Bonifacius: Just right-click the corpse, lol."

Curstl received fifty boar-heads.

"Curstl: thanks TT_TT"

"Bonifacius: No worries, if I remember correctly you'll need to return them to the cathedral, not the inn where you got the quest, the quest-location-marker is broken!" Bonifacius exclaimed.

She opened the map and just like he said, the map-marker was showing the inn, but when she read the quest-log it read "Cathedral".

"Curstl: You're right! Thanks!"

"Bonifacius: It's because I was stuck running around the inn for a few hours looking for the quest NPC, I eventually read the quest description and figured out where to go, lol."

Slowly their friendship grew, as Curstl came close to max-level they would go to dungeons together, Bonifacius was glad to have someone to explore the less progression-oriented side of things in the game, while Curstl was excited to hang out with someone.

A year-long friendship built up to the point when she revealed her secret to Bonifacius, she wanted to keep it hidden, with all the fun she was having in-game it would have been all but too easy to escape reality.

Clearly, Curstl hasn't learned her lesson, because she told Bonifacius, she was ready for anything from the cold-shoulder treatment to out-right rage.

"Bonifacius: That's pretty sad, :/"

"Curstl: right..."

"Good, he doesn't seem upset... yet..."

"Bonifacius: Man, I don't know what I'd do if everyone turned on me like that... lol..."

Before Curstl even replied Bonifacius already posted another message.

"Bonifacius: I didn't mean the "lol"! " he added.

"Curstl: It's fine!"

"Bonifacius: I know! Why don't I introduce you to my guild! Most of them are pretty introverted but they're really nice!" he exclaimed.

Back in Curstl's illusion...

"Psychopath!"

After making it away from the shop she could see it, the lifeless stare of the kid from the distant river.

Followed by a massive explosion.

"What the?!" Curstl was snapped free from her dread-filled state of shock as she felt herself get grabbed from behind.

She turned around as saw, Alex, Bromy, Thal, the Vampire, Revenberry and Olivionion sprinting through the streets.

"Yo, x-boss!" Olivionion said giving Curstl a wave.

Bonifacius was the one who was carrying her under his arm like a sack of potatoes.

"Bonifacius? What are you doin-" she was cut off by him.

"NO TIME TO EXPLAIN! WE MUST MAKE HASTE, WENCH!"

Alex looked back over his shoulder.

A horde of zombies was chasing them, they were starting to devour the several humans placed around the illusion like NPCs.

"THEY'RE GETTING CLOSER!" called out Bromy carrying the passed-out vampire with visible choke-marks.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE IT TOOK YOU THAT LONG TO FIND ME!" Revenberry cried.

"How was I supposed to know your fear was to be locked in the fridge!?" demanded Alex.

"YOU SAW ME IN THE FRIDGE!" she retorted.

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST A VERY PRETTY FRIDGE!" Alex exclaimed.

"He's not lying..." Thal exclaimed.

"Thanks for having my back buddy!" Alex thought.

"Don't act like that isn't the truth..."

"AT LEAST YOU FOUND ME BY THE FIFTH SANDWICH!" Revenberry exclaimed.