A Very Simple And Crappy Adventure Game

glennmagusharvey

You ask the genie if he speaks Classical Latin.

He doesn't seem to understand you.

Instead, he lights the nearest tree on fire.

Earl_of_Sandvich

Use body language to see if the genie understands

Legionnaire

Hold up the lighter and flick it on, looking unimpressed.

glennmagusharvey

You decide to try some body language.

You hold up your lighter, lit, with a look of smug disapproval.

The genie gives you the finger.  He lights another tree on fire.

(I'm going to sign off for now.  Please feel free to continue this however you like, in my absence.)

Legionnaire

Flip the genie off with both hands

Earl_of_Sandvich

Take a nearby fallen tree and shove it up the genie's ass

Alkthash

You step away from the computer. You realize this is all well and good and silly, but you have more important things to do. You shut down the tower and power down the monitor and head to bed. When you wake up you pee for four minutes straight. After brushing your teeth you make a resolution to yourself - you will finally become a proper adult. 

The next few years are a blur of meeting generic societal expectations. Shitty temp jobs, college experiences with the appropriate level of debauchery, getting lost in a foreign city, the occasional STD and that one pregnancy scare. And that time a pregnant woman ran you over with a golf cart. But aside from this odd spikes in narrative significance, life is frighteningly mundane. You graduate with a respectable GPA and get a job as a marketing assistant.

Honestly you aren't quite sure how you stumbled into this job. It is tolerable though, but not exactly exciting. Actually scratch that, it's downright intolerable. A few more years down the line you realize you can't really point to anybody and call them anything more than a work friend. When your boss has to attend a wedding and skip out on a business conference in Oregon, you leap to go in their stead. A few weeks off at a hotel dicking around on your company's paycheck might let your pretend your life sucks a little less

When you get to the hotel you notice some signs about how they are holding a 15 year high school reunion event. You think nothing of it until a woman approaches you and mistakes you for one of her high school friends. A series of misunderstandings leads you to follow along with her and play into this charade of mistaken identity. Looking at the year book photos they have blown up for name tags, you do bear an uncanny resemblance to her old friend. Soon you are dragged along with her into what you assume was your doppelganger's circle of friends.

You keep meaning to tell them the truth but as time goes on you find you begin to like these people you are deceiving. From what you can gather your double suddenly dropped out of contact with them. It's fairly easy to keep up the lie as long as you don't get to specific and you let them do the talking about your childhoods together. At the end of your business trip you plan to go back when one of the women in your new circle of friends invites you to stay a week with her. Catch up on old times and what not. You really don't want this new feeling of suddenly being worth a shit to other people to go away so you take some time off work and go with her.

When you get to her house she reveals she always had a bit of a crush on "you" and you broke her heart back in high school. Some switch inside of both your heads flips and you start fucking like crazy. You can't remember fucking this wildly in a long time. Hell ever. In your fervor you two accidentally rip a sconce off the wall and wreck a few other pieces of furniture. As you two lie together in her bed you decide you will take this new life, even if it means you have to keep lying to the people that love "you"

The next morning you learn she has a son from a previous marriage. Well fine with you, you can learn to love the kid as your own son in time. As the years go by two new daughters are added to your family and you feel some measure of peace in your new life. For your wedding you break the sconce off the wall again and melt it down to make two custom rings for both of you. Your job at the mechanic's shop isn't exactly glamorous, but hey it's a small foggy little town in the mountains. You make enough to get by and you are surrounded by people you love.

And then one morning you wake up and realize your life makes no goddamned sense. Your life is a fucking flimsy house of cards held together with paperclips and peppermint gum. How did you manage to integrate into this new life so easily? How did you leave behind your old life and have nobody even try to look for you? Hell your job and marriage make no sense.

Soon you start noticing cars and people out of the corner of your vision. Nothing out of the ordinary about them. Really they are aggressively normal. But you keep seeing them. Which makes sense, you live in a small town. But there is something off about the way they are always in sight, but you can never approach them.

Frantic you put out a post on craigslist about what to do when you realize your life is a house of cards one gentle breeze away from falling over. You get a lot of nonsense responses but one guy asks you to meet him in a Waffle House in Seattle so he can help you out.

You're not sure what you were expecting, but you certainly weren't expecting him to have horns coming out his head. They are curly like a ram's horns and frame his gold eyes and wolfish smile rather nicely. He strikes you as some unstable medium between rock and roll sex god and massive fuck up. He drags out a cigarette as you launch into an explanation of your problems.  As the pie he ordered arrives he starts explaining things to you.

"Well it's simple really. You've pissed off the Playing Card People."

"The who?"

"Playing Card People. They are like playing cards but also people. You've been borrowing too heavily from their domain. House of cards and everything," he goes onto explain some more stuff about them where they came from and how they work. Right now you are fixated on his pie. You are pretty sure it is blueberry, but there is some weird coppery tang in the air.

"really from what you've said I'm surprised you haven't drawn down the wrath of the mist workers, borrowing that technique to hide the workings of your precious little life. Granted it might have been them who tipped off the card people, they are sadistic fuckers but indirect and ambiguous as all hell. -" something is off about that pie. The filling looks more like pulled pork than any blueberry mix you've ever seen, but the color keeps throwing you off. He toys with it while he talks, but forks in bits when he pauses to let you nod your head to his explanations.

The horned man snaps his fingers in your face to bring you back to reality. "Hey hey, you're listening right?"

"Right, right card people hate me since I accidentally stole their schtick?"

"Close enough. I'll tell you what to do to fix it," the man leans close conspiratorially and suddenly kisses you. It is not a pleasant kiss. He is rough and you can get bits of his pie in your mouth. It tastes like blood and... clay? How do you know what clay tastes like? But the strange blue meat brings those flavors to mind and you focus on them. They are less unpleasant than the way he is practically shoving his tongue down your throat. Suddenly you feel a sharp pain and the taste of your own blood is added to the mix. He pulls away and grins before spitting a tooth out into his hand.

"Huh, what do you know, you had a cavity. Guess I'm doing that extra favor for free really. Anyways, what you need to do to deal with the Card People is twofold. First you and your family have to start moving around to throw them off the trail. But keep coming back to your foggy little dump to keep the structure built up. Once every few months should do the trick. The second thing you all have to do is start wearing masks when you think the Card People are around."

"Masks?"

"Oh they are terribly simple thinkers at times. Lots of rules and technicalities, but no depth to their ways of thinking. If you don't look like you, you can't be you. Throws them off every time."

You thank the horned man for his time and he thanks you for the tooth. On the way home you stop by a haloween store and grab some masks really quick. A Nixon mask, a Hockey mask, a Domino mask, a Noh mask and a Comedy/Tragedy mask. Right as you get home you notice one of the cars and see four people idling in your parking lot. They look fairly normal, albeit with some weird body language but then you look at their reflections in your window. The Fool, The 8 of Swords, The 7 of Clubs and the 3 of Hearts are getting ready for a shake down. You hastily slide on the hockey mask and rush past them.

Inside fretting for time you tell your family to put on their masks. They do so, noticing the panic in your eyes. Seeing that your wife has the fireplace running a thought of inspiration strikes you. As they begin packing their things for an impromptu trip to your mother's house (is she still alive? you haven't talked to here since you started living this lie) you grab a poker and stoke it in the flames. As they all start to pile into the car, you take the glowing red poker and savagely swing it into the Card People. They barely have time to react and soon they are burning to crisps. You keep swinging until you are sure they are dead piles of cinders and then toss the poker aside. 

Then you calmly get into the car, buckle your seatbelt and drive off with your family. They have questions, but you insist they keep the masks on. This gets you some protests and complaints to their mother of why you are being weird, but it buys you time to think of a new set of lies to explain all of this. 

Legionnaire

And then you wake up.

You begin by telling them you are taking them all to Disneyland, and the masks are simply because you're concerned that a creepy fellow who has been hanging around you at work will see you on the route and wish to accompany you. When questioned on your paranoia, you merely shrug, and tell your family you are being cautious. Though a flimsy lie, it purchases time for the more creative parts of your brain to pick up and create a clever ruse.

MadassAlex

Alk's gonna Alk.

That was astounding. S

Icalasari

Don't forget to buy a dog for protection and name him Kaiser Willhelm

Eelektross

Ignore them, open your wallet and masturbate furiously to the picture of Spiro T. Agnew in it.

Earl_of_Sandvich

Firmly stamp your foot on the gas pedal, head towards a nearby mall while still jacking off