“Hi, I don’t know what an Adversary is,” I blurt.

  The woman at the door is tall, lanky, bearing cords of dark seaweed-green hair draping from her head in a mop of fibers. Her face is gaunt, with sunken cheeks and baggy eyes, but it’s more of a face than the other two’s. Her body is as mineral as Adol’s or Fark’s; she’s made of cracked and interlocking pieces of pointy greenish shards, colored strikingly deep enough that I’m not sure they’re metal. Instead of skin, squarish angles of etchings cover her mineral body. Her proportions are out-of-whack, like a teenager—it’s like her body developed hips too narrow, put them too high on her body, forgot to give her any fat, then panicked and overcompensated with knobby hands and a slight hunch. It might explain why she’s wearing that orange bathrobe—or a white one? I can’t tell if that’s its natural color or if it’s just rust-dusted. But despite the way she looks, she has a smile of curiosity, a calm posture. Those half-lidded eyes promise me something—I hope it’s that there isn’t any trouble.

  Mine aren’t nearly so calm. As much as I don’t know what to think of her appearance, I bet she’s more confused by mine. I’ve been told that I always look like I drink caffeine instead of sleep, giving me constantly-wide bloodshot eyes. I try to take care of my hair—it’s in a neat ponytail right now, black, beaded in three places—but there must be strands out-of-place in my situation. I’m still wearing my favorite off-the-shoulder white top, purple mid-rise corduroy pants that everyone thinks are out-of-fashion but nobody actually objects to, and I’m suddenly aware that I’m a lot shorter than her—I’m mid-five-feet, but she’s been worked around the waist like pottery on a spinning wheel, pulling her eyes up above me. I only wear sandals. No accessories except for the purple bow tie. It’s a good day when I confuse people as to whether to call me ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’. It’s not a good day when...this happens.

  “It’s cool, it’s cool, slow on down,” she answers, her accent vaguely reminding me of Scandinavia. “How’d you get here, buddy? C’mon in.”

  She gestures behind herself and steps aside. Oh thank hell, there really are materials besides just iron and rusted iron around here—the floor is some kind of linoleum fake-wood plastic, and floor lamps light the place from all four corners. It’s one room—one single room—with a mini-fridge humming away next to an old, sunken couch, a throne strewn with beer cans and plastic wrappers. The wall-mounted television is paused, to a frame of a newscaster making an incredulous condescending face.

  “...Does that thing work?” I say, pointing to the mini-fridge.

  “Little guy holds my beer just fine.” She hooks one long big toe around the handle and pulls it open, a motion that looks placed and refined with time, and reaches in. She tosses me a can. I catch it, and it’s at room temperature. “Do you drink?”

  “Occasionally.” I walk up alongside her, and she flops backwards onto the couch, cans and plastics crinkling under her back while she gets cozy, defiant of the laws of comfort much like cats are. “I have...a lot of questions, first.”

  “Same.” She cracks open a beer of her own, and sips. “I think it’s your turn to ask one.”

  “Okay. Who are you?”

  “Telly. You?”

  “Sammy.” I don’t know if I should sit or stand; I stay on my feet and look at the frozen newscaster.

  “That short for Samuel or Samantha?”

  I’m quiet. “...That’s really the first thing you want to know about me?”

  She chuckles. “Nah. You’re right.” She kicks her feet up on a collapsed armrest; the stuffing is poking out and tickling the soles of her feet. “How’d you get here?”

  “Fark, Adol, and a couple of other people dug me out of the sand under a ‘building’ foundation.” I fiddle with the pop-tab. I wonder if the can itself is iron, too, or real aluminum. “I don’t know how I got there. I have to know where I am and why Fark is trying to vote me dead, first.”

  Telly takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes and lets her head loll back over the other armrest, and she cracks a smirk.

  “Yeah...” She chuckles. “Yeah.” One ankle crosses over the other. “You know, if you wanna get some practice, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. It’s been too long. You can kill me right now if you want. I’m not a suspicious first pick, anyway.”

  “Hold on, what?”

  “You don’t have to pretend to be a Bystander as your first act on joining the game if you don’t want to. Come on, get your bearings, Sammy. I don’t want to see any of my friends die and I’ve been here for too long. I’m okay with your first kill being me. Means I don’t have to make the hard choices.”

  My face is as screwed and contorted as a bent paperclip. “What’s a Bystander?”

  She opens her eyes again, her half-smile still present. “Still want to pretend?”

  “Please?” I beg.

  “Okay, you’re in something called Mob Rule.” She sits up and hooks an arm over the back of the couch, supported upright by aged upholstery under her armpit. “The rules are simple. One of us eight—nine now, actually, if you’re here—is the Adversary, and the rest of us are Bystanders. Every 24 hours, we show up to the voting palace and do a vote on who’s the Adversary. And the person we pick…:” She mimes a gun against her temple and ‘shoots’ it. “But the Adversary gets those 24 hours to do whatever they want. That’s what the plinths in the voting palace say. Apparently they have a secret blade that can hurt people outside of the voting method. And that’s basically it. If we vote out the Adversary, we get out of this stupid city. If we don’t, and we all die, the Adversary gets out. Only tool we’ve got to win is the vote machine.”

  I nod. “I think I get it.”

  “Yeah. Find the Adversary or don’t, and get dead.” Telly finishes off her beer.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “So how many people did you start with? If you haven’t found the Adversary yet, that means you had a lot of bad votes...”

  Telly gives a sad smile. “Sammy...no. If we don’t come to a majority agreement, no one gets voted dead, which means...”

  She picks up a remote-control, black with scratched-down buttons that have lost their labels, and changes the channel. The TV switches to an ‘INFO’ section, the sort that normally tells a person what shows are playing where and at what times. Instead, in a two-by-five grid at the bottom, I see a collection of headshots next to names. Telly, Fark, Adol, five more that I’m not really in the headspace to remember—and me, Sammy, right there at the bottom. The tenth box is blank.

  At the top, in big red text, the words ‘MOB RULE’ are shown, with a 24-hour clock ticking below: right now, it’s 20:14:28, the seconds advancing as I read. Finally, there’s another...counter. It’s up in the upper right, in the same text, but smaller. Day 999.

  “Just because it’s the game in front of us doesn’t mean we have to play it,” Telly says, and shakes her head. “I’m never, ever going to vote to kill a friend. And, y’know, every once in a while, someone really does put in a vote that isn’t Abstain or No Death. Check it out.” With a few more button presses, the info screen starts flipping back through a history of voting totals, one census per page. I don’t see what votes were cast by who; it’s just text with ‘VOTE HISTORY’ at the top, the corresponding day below it, and the people underneath.

  Day 999

  4 – No Death

  2 – Abstain (Present)

  2 – Abstain (Not Present)

  Flip. Flip flip flip. “Oh, here’s one. Fark was being a dick that day.”

  Day 999

  5 – No Death

  3 – Abstain (Present)

  1 – Fark

  She keeps flipping. “Here’s another.”

  Day 961

  6 – No Death

  1 – Cieze

  1 – Abstain (Not Present)

  “You get the idea.”

  “So you never voted anyone dead,” I say, thinking out loud.

  “Not once. We came pretty close on the first few days, but nah, we take ‘multi-votes’ seriously.” She keeps flipping, skipping through months at a time, all the way back to the double digits. Slowly, votes instead of abstinences get more frequent. I even spot, on Day 26, that an ‘Ernie’ received 4 votes, but everyone else decided on No Death, with no abstinences. Telly is quiet for a second, her sad smile growing. “...just having a nostalgia moment, sorry. Man, can you imagine...Ernie, of all people...”

  I lean onto the backing of the couch, from the other side. My hand brushes Telly’s; she takes it in her own and squeezes gently. I gather my thoughts, staring at the screen, for so long that it times out and goes back to the INFO section. Ernie—his face is a smorgasbord of green spots and baby-blue rays, stamped over lines and grooves of middle-age, rendered in sculpture of yellowish rock. He’s square-jawed, and his hair is a neatly-cut tuft of the same yellow, with any gray hairs replaced by green or baby blue. I instinctively don’t like him.

  “Did you always look like that?” I say.

  “Nope. We just slowly got ‘mineralization’ over time.”

  “Is that what it’s called?”

  “It’s what we call it, anyway. I mean, it’s done, as far as we can tell. Might be something in the food, might be something about the game. Who knows, maybe you won’t have to worry about it.” Telly smirked.

  People back home are going to realize I’ve gone missing unless I get out of here. Did I only just now get here, even, or have I been buried under sand for 999 days without realizing it? Were my friends just a dream, or were they real, and I just disappeared a few years ago and didn’t realize it? Did I even dream? I don’t remember anything under the sand. I don’t want to turn into stone.

  I have to get out of here. And apparently, I’m a Bystander.

  “...and the Adversary never killed anyone, either?”

  “Nope.”

  “So it’s you, isn’t it?”

  Telly laughs and waves her hand dismissively; her beer can falls onto the ground. “Now you’re thinking. But seriously, don’t worry about it. Welcome to the Mob Rule club; pick a house and live, you know? Either everything falls apart and the game happens now that you’re around, or it doesn’t, and the world stays turning.”

  “I’d rather have the game happen, though?” I say. “I don’t wanna be stuck here forever.”

  “Yeah? You wanna see the game happen? I’m right here, buddy. Get out your secret blade and use it.”

  “I don’t have—”

  “That’s what you have to do to ‘play the game’,” she says, with air quotes and eyes of distaste. “Playing the game means murder. Are you comfortable with saying ‘yeah, I’m okay with a person dying?’”

  “I’m not the Adversary!”

  “Doesn’t matter, because that’s what Bystanders do, too!” She turns on the couch, fully facing me, away from the television. “You throw a vote for someone to die, that’s what you’re saying to the world: ‘I want this person to die and I’m taking action to make that happen’. That’s murder. That’s attempted murder. Either be comfortable with that or don’t, and I say, don’t.”

  If only I had one new change in the world to process at a time, instead of a hundred.

  “That’s not what you’re mad at me about. What are you mad at me about?” I ask.

  She turns away, shakes her head, and makes herself smile again. “I don’t know. I can’t be okay with murder.” Telly lays back once more, her eyes closed. “Sammy, can you promise me something?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’ll ask it anyway.” She turns her head left and right, getting nestled against the armrest like a pillow. “If anyone’s going to die by your hand—maybe that’s a vote, maybe that’s a blade—it has to be me, first.”

  “Why? You said you didn’t want to see your friends die, and I get that, but...?”

  “Because it’s complicated.”

  I sit down on top of the mini-fridge, facing the television.

  “Can you promise me that? That if you’re going to make the decision that it’s okay to kill someone, you gotta go kill Telly first?” Telly asks, again.

  I am not a violent person, I’d like to think. My life has been pretty sheltered, up until...now. Maybe it still will be, if I can talk down Fark and company from voting me.

  Yeah, I really would rather stay down here than kill someone. But I don’t know if I have the right to make that decision for the other eight people. Or, if we’re deciding to leave...it’s the other seven people, at most.

  I’m getting out of here with seven people or staying in the dome with eight. I’m not accepting any other choices.

  “...I can,” I say. Telly’s feet wiggle, and she chuckles.

  “So. Do you like documentaries?”

  With life experience and more time in the practice of writing, an author learns what they like and don't like--what stories they want to tell. I wanted to tell this story at the time, 2022 through 2023, and it lay fallow until now, 2026. And it could lay fallow for longer, go through more revisions, but what I want to do with the written word has drifted from the liquid edge of tragedy and away from pessimism's infinite worst-cases. (Seriously, my stories are anxiety-brained, but this one especially.)

  I still have tales to tell, but I'm done with ones as dark as this. This is a time where it's more worthwhile to talk about heroes, kindness, comfort, and making the bastards pay for what they've done. You know the ones.

  All the awfulness that happens in this book is something I present to the world without regret. But it's going to be edgy. This is Amogus Undertale but it's Crawling by Linkin Park.