Matryoshka

Zuzu woke up. The circle over her head glowed a healthy, full orange. She stretched, enjoying just being in bed, turned over to go back to sleep. GET UP. “No,” muttered Zuzu. GET UP. She snuggled back under the covers. GET UP. Zuzu sighed, got up. The orange circle followed her as she wearily rose.

She had to go to the bathroom. MAKE COFFEE. Zuzu frantically gestured, pointed at her groin. “No! I have to pee first! Come on, I really have to go!” MAKE COFFEE. Zuzu’s legs inexorably propelled her away from the bathroom and towards the kitchen. She looked longingly at the bathroom as she passed.

She pulled the coffee tin down, added the grounds to the filter. “Damn it!” she screamed as the hot urine ran down her legs and onto the kitchen tiles. “I TOLD you.” Wearily she looked at the circle over her head. The healthy orange had degraded into a dirty brown color.

MOP FLOOR. “What about the effin coffee????” she muttered. MOP THE FLOOR. “I’d like to shower first, now that I don’t have to pee anymore,” she called out and tried to head to the bathroom. “Come on, this is just so gross,” she pleaded. MOP FLOOR. “Fine,” she said, pulled out the mop, cleaned up the mess; waited expectantly. TAKE SHOWER. “Thank you!” Zuzu called out, heading towards the bathroom, showered, saw the circle fill up again with a soft, glowing, healthy light.

There were no current impulses….”Guess HIM’S at someone else’s house,” she muttered. Good. Gave her a little time for peace and quiet.

She made her coffee, looked out the window at the blood red sky and devasted landscape, wincing. The giant rats were already knocking over the garbage cans. Looking across the street at the Beakin’s place she could see the spiders were sniffing around, trying to find unlocked doors. It was already starting out to be quite the day.

Rotting Harold shuffled up behind her, holding a newspaper in his disintegrating hand. “ Says here Sue Ann was sent to the swimming pool last night,” he gargled in his dead voice.

Zuzu spun around on her rabbit slippers. “No! HIM killed Sue Ann?”

“Executed.”

“What the hell did *she* do??? She was a sweetheart!” Zuzu fought back tears, thinking about whatever IT was, throwing Sue Ann in the community pool and then removing the only ladder. She pictured Sue Ann swimming for her life, then, maybe hours later, drown in exhaustion.

“What did *any* of us do?” asked Harold, holding his jaw in place while he talked. “Spiders coming this way,” he commented, “All the doors locked?”

“Yeah.” Zuzu sat down despondently.

DO YEE HAH.

“It’s back,” said Zuzu. “And it wants us to…”

“I’m just so sorry, Zuzu. I realize just how gross I am…”

Zuzu smiled, wouldn’t tell him, could never tell him, how much the touch of his rotten hand revolted her. “It’s ok. It’s not your fault.”DO YEE HAH.

Wearily, Zuzu and Rotting Harold headed up to the bedroom, fell in bed together, in a false passion neither of them felt. DO YEE HAH.

“Fuck you; we’re already doing it!”

Rotting Harold whispered to her, “Don’t get HIM upset…remember Sue Ann.”

As they thumped together in bed mechanically, a single tear escaped Zuzu’s eye. Harold gently brushed it away. Zuzu stared at her orange circle and waited for it to be over.

Another day passed. GET UP, IT said.

MOP IT UP. (on this day HIM didn’t even let her shower)

MAKE DINNER.

DO YEE HAH.

Another day passed.

Her circle was very dirty. When it turned black, she’d die. Maybe this was the day. Good.

Rotting Harold pointed at Zuzu’s circle; a gentle reminder she needed a shower desperately. IT had been controlling Zuzu mercilessly the last few days, hadn’t let her go to the toilet, let her sit in her own mess.

TAKE SHOWER. TAKE SHOWER. TAKE SHOWER. USE TOILET.

Thank God, whatever IT was got the idea, apparently didn’t want Zuzu to die.

After dinner, Harold pulled back the curtains. “IT left us alone for a while….the Big Circle is over the Seibold house.”

Zuzu joined him, drinking coffee.

“I think they made the Seibolds unlock their door.”

“No….they’ve got kids…”

The mammoth spiders broke into the Seibold’s home. Rotting Harold got a kitchen knife and shambled out the door. “Hang on! Help’s on the way!”

STAY.

Zuzu tried to get out the door to save the Seibolds.

STAY.

They got Becky Seibold first….tearing off her apron and impaling her with their giant poison fangs. Becky screamed in horror, but then the venom took over and the only thing still alive were her eyes, darting in panic. They met with Zuzu’s through the window….Zuzu could not save her, could not hold her hand, could just stand there, frozen in place. One by one the family went to the Graveyard, first Becky, then Ben, then little Tasha, then Ben Jr.

STAY.

Finally, when the Church of the Orange Circle simply appeared one day and everyone was forced into it.

YOU WILL SACRIFICE ONE DUPI TO ME PER WEEK.

Zuzu whispered. “What is IT talking about? What’s a sacrifice?”

“What’s a Dupi?”

“I think he means us. One of us has to go into the pool per week.”

“Something has to be done.”

But nothing was done. Until one day, while Zuzu was playing Teeny Tiny People and having a frustrating time getting her little avatars to do what she wanted—some days it seemed like they had a mind of their own—“Oh, come on….just get up out of bed….you had plenty of sleep,” Zuzu muttered at her avatar…she typed irritably, “GET UP. GET UP. GET UP,” a message pinged at Zuzu She had an email! Zuzu opened it. “I know a way. Come find me.”

Attached was a map.

So Zuzu and Rotting Harold set out on the road.

They waited for HIM to be busy with yet another family, then took off in the dead of night, past the snoring giant spiders….past the dozing rats….The sky was black even at midday but they pressed on.

It took three days to get to The Shack Beyond the City

An old crone waved them in, peering fearfully at the sky. “Come in quick.”

“I emailed everyone,” she said, smiling. “You were the only ones to respond. Look, she said, I think I know a way to stop IT.”

Zuzu leaned forward. “Wait. You know what HIM is?”

The crone nodded eagerly. “I got an email…

“Ok,” she continued, “This is very….complicated and…well, weird. You know the town drunk???”

“Sure!” said Zuzu. “Elon Musty.”

“You know how he’s been saying for years that we’re a…simulation???”

“Yeah. DT’s are a bitch. Sometimes I think the poor guy is better off drunk.”

“Well,” said the Crone. “Guess what. He was right all along. We’re not real…we’re a simulation, a DUPI.”

“That’s what HIM calls us,” said Zuzu.

“That’s what we are. Look,” said the Crone, and handed her a pamphlet.

“DUPIWOLD!” screamed the cover. “Program your DUPI, breed your DUPI, love your DUPI to death.”

“I….don’t understand…we live in a place called DUPIWORLD????”

“We live in DUPIWORLD…we are DUPIS,” said the Crone. “We’re just ones and O’s. We are computer code in someone else’s game….”Zuzu knew about computers. She had one and could email her neighbors…could play Teeny Tiny World.

Zuzu stood, staring at Rotting Harold. His eyes widened. One almost dropped out. He caught it, returned it deftly, shrugged at the news.

“But it doesn’t mean we can’t fight back…” The Crone held up a shining golden, heart-shaped pendant. There was an orange circle in the middle of it that glowed soft and warm in the candlelight.

In her other, arthritic hand she held a doll. It was a simulacrum of a teenage boy. Zuzu didn’t need to ask. In her heart, she knew this was the HIM who had tormented them all for so long.

“This little asshole’s been playing a video game,” said the Crone. “It’s a massive game, and modders have been sharing their towns and cities and they just did an update and it made the system glitch out and towns have been overlapping each other by accident. This modded necklace will stop the heart of anyone who wears it.”

Rotting Harold spoke. “All right then. So we get rid of HIM. If it works—”

“It will.”

“What happens to us?”

The Crone smiled, pulled out a book. “Guess what else crossed over??? She held the book up. It had a title of two words. They all smiled.

Cheat codes.

She slipped the necklace over the head of the teenage doll and smiled.

“If HIM’S human, how would that even work?”

“Did I say he was human? And there’s a problem beyond HIM, but I have a plan for that, too….”

Two weeks later….

Spring had come to Dupiville. For as long as the residents of Dupiville wanted. Handsome Harold stretched his smoothly muscular arms out…grinning at Zuzu who smiled sleepily back. Daffodils were in bloom, the air was heavy with the scent of magnolias….Zuzu kissed Harold’s ear quickly, and jumped out of bed. She had to go to the bathroom. She went to the bathroom.

Richard Blum walked into his room, turned on his computer. the DUPI he had made to be God of the DUPIS was dead. The code was gone. There was no bringing him back. “Crap. Well, I guess I could always just reprogram another one…”

Blum fired up his Dupiworld game….”Let’s see what they’ve been up to without their Lord of Chaos. Wow….”

He surveyed a world that had gone from a bleak, blasted landscape to a world filled with flowers, birds…the zombie guy had transformed into a handsome man…Elon Musty sobered up and was building a rocket to get to Mars…the Crone was now a hot barista chick...no, just…no…he wasn’t going to let his Dupiworld be just some sickeningly sweet Disney-type kingdom. “Sorry Zuzu and Harold….tough titties….you’re going back to the black my dears…”

He began pecking away at his keyboard, making changes, when he got an instant message:

“Hello. We, the residents of Dupiworld, have taken over your game.”

“Whaa? Blum started laughing….what kind of update was this??? He typed back: “Sorry, but…no.”

“When Dupiworld glitched because of your evil –and shitty-- modding, it gave us access to your financial accounts, your private accounts, your Internet searches, your email accounts. Please believe us when we say we will have the exact same mercy you showed us if you don’t leave us alone, Richard Blum. Or should we call you HugeYummyDick409?”

A series of pictures flashed across his screen. He looked nervously at his bedroom door. Becky would be up any minute.

“Understood?”

Richard’s finger hovered over the delete button.

Another message pinged.

“Any deletion of Dupiworld will result in a series of viruses that could perhaps be of a serious annoyance to you, HugeYummyDick409.”

“You’re not real. I don’t believe a fucking word you say.”

“Check Dupiworld.”

Richard looked back at his Dupiworld screen. The Crone held a tiny laptop. Her screen showed several screenshots of his nether regions. She was sending them as an attachment to Becky.

Richard thought, shrugged, typed quickly. This was insane. “ Don’t do that. I don’t know what the hell this is, but….I can just…not play the game.”

“Thank you, HugeYummyDick409. Enjoy your life.”

Richard, hands shaking, closed his instant messaging and Dupiworld. He had to piss.

MAKE COFFEE.

Richard, frustated, yelled. “Come on, man…not fucking right now. I gotta go! He checked the shamrock hanging over his head. It had gone from a vibrant green to a dark brown.

MAKE COFFEE. MAKE COFFEE. MAKE COFFEE.

Richard made coffee.

The End