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PART I

Darkness embraced me as I entered exhibition hall three at the Oakenford Games Convention. Excited, disembodied voices chattered around me while my eyes adjusted to the dim light. I was surrounded by posters and booths that advertised the latest in role-playing games and paraphenelia. Vendors sold foam swords and leather armour for the upcoming LARP event and cos-players paraded the hall, some sword in hand, others hand in hand and pushing baby strollers.

I exhaled slowly. So far, so good.

Nobody seemed to take any notice of me, so I tried to relax and flipped through the latest issue of Dragon Magazine and White Dwarf at the book sellers. One main feature read Uncommon loot for high level players. I turned to the later pages and read a comic strip by Phil Foglio. It made sense and I laughed out loud; louder than you would normally do from a comic strip and the vendor cast me a suspicious glance. I bought the magazine and walked away from the booth, clutching it tight. On the cover page, a muscular barbarian, a red dragon and a Valkyrie with very large breasts beckoned me to open it and take a second look. It's still there I convinced myself, and then turned the pages to Uncommon loot for high level players.

Told you!

I began to whistle and headed into the open square. The food court was nearby, tempting me with promises of spicy kebab and mugs of mead from draught. It had been so long since I had last bought my own meal, and I strode across the floor, proud as a king, towards a hand-painted sign on the sales cart that read:

Kebab and Blood, Five Euros.

An icy shiver crystallised down my spine and I stopped midstep. No, no, no! I prayed and blinked. When I opened my eyes, the sign read Kebab and Coke, Five Euros.

A mistake -an honest mistake. These things happen in the dim light and all the excitement. I had read the sign wrong, but I had to make sure. The sweat from my hands had dissolved the print on the magazine cover and the barbarian's face was now an unrecognisable smear. Please God, I thought. Don't let it have changed on me. Once again, I turned to the same feature article, but this time it read:

Uncommon death for low level traitors.

I gasped and threw the magazine into the nearest wastebasket. I had been at the Oakenford Games Convention for less than an hour, and now I realised that coming here was a mistake.

"There he is!" cried a woman.

I just wanted to dive into the nearest corner and hide myself in the darkness. I hoped the woman was real, and that she meant someone else, but I could not see anyone pointing or gesturing at me.

"What is he doing here?" said a man.

"He shouldn't be here", replied the woman. She sounded concerned.

"It's too dangerous."

I leaned up against an exhibition armoury and felt the coolness of plate metal pressing against my forehead. It felt good, for I was sweating profusely and felt panic on the rise. There was no doubt: I was having an attack.

---

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia seven years ago. I was eighteen and one confused mess of voices and things that weren't there.

I was a pretty normal teenager until I turned seventeen. I've heard voices since I was five or six; sometimes a single word called out from nowhere, but nothing to be alarmed about.

Then, one night I woke up and heard someone talking. It was three in the morning and I thought that my parents had left the television on, when they went to bed. The house lay in darkness, but when I turned the lights on, the bulbs didn't illuminate the living room very much. Everything was still cast in shadows and the light was dim and dreamlike. The TV set was off, but the voices still kept talking. I couldn't make out what they were talking about, although I thought I recognised the words. The language sounded vaguely like English, German and French all mixed together, but I couldn't make out any whole sentences. I figured that my parents had watched a movie in foreign, possibly Dutch before heading off to bed, and the TV set must be on the fritz.

The voices began to make me feel uncomfortable. Even though I did not understand the words, I felt that they were somehow malicious, and judgemental. There was definitely something wrong about them, so I unplugged the TV set from the wall socket and expected the noises to stop. Only, they didn't. They were just as loud as before and I felt that their anger was directed at me. I went back to bed and closed every door behind me to get away from the voices, but even though I hid beneath the duvet, the voices kept talking. I was frightened, but somehow I managed to fall asleep some time later.

The next morning the voices were gone, and I told my parents about the TV and how it had kept me awake. My dad turned the set on and off a few times, but we found nothing wrong with the picture or the sound. Finally I wrote the whole thing off as a strange kind of nightmare and just hoped that it wouldn't return.

A few months later, the nightmare returned and stayed with me for the next seven years. I heard voices that could not be traced to the TV anymore. They were as real as any other voice around me, and I could swear that the people talking were standing right next to me, but when I turned around there was no one there or only someone else engaged in another conversation. At first, the voices made no sense, but gradually I began to understand the words. Most of the time, the voices talked about me, making comments on what I was doing. Then they began to criticize me and my actions.

"Useless!" one voice would say, "he's useless."

"Why is he even alive?" asked another. "If they knew, they would all hate him."

I began to see things that I was told weren't there. I saw large bugs crawling the wall, and living shadows where the sun shouldn't cast any. The letters on magazines and books rearranged themselves into new sentences, most of which involved death. Shortly after, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and this introduced me to a new world of interesting pharmaceuticals.

Thorazine, Haldol, Loxapine, Trilafon, Mellaril, Navanem, Stelazine. All names of my new best friends for the next seven years to come. One by one they would stay with me for a while, put a stop to the voices and the sights, until I grew tolerant to them and I moved on to the next name on the list.

---

Here I was, seven years older and panicking on Kisantex. I was still hearing voices on the new medication, but the voices were not as angry or aggressive as they had been before. They didn't command me to do things, or criticize my every action, but seemed to be content with forming a sort of commentary track to everything I did.

I shouldn't have gone to an RPG con of all places. The dim lights, the crowd and the _walking dead_cosplayers fucked with my mind and everyone around me gradually turned zombie-like. Their faces were gaunt and everyone stared at me with empty eye sockets.

Shit! The pills are not working anymore. I was panicking badly and just needed to escape the crowd and get some fresh air.

I ran towards the nearest fire exit and flung myself though the door. I was in a concrete basement corridor that branched off every thirty feet or so. Clear green arrows showed the way out and I stumbled ahead, just wanting the hallucinations to stop and leave me alone. I heard a loud noise like a thunderclap that sent echoes through the corridor and kept looping in my mind until the feedback turned into a high-pitched wail. I bolted and almost crashed into a tall figure in a grey suit that stood unmoving in the corridor. He was as real as any person, but his face was horrible and deflated, and his hollow eye sockets leaked bloody tears. I tripped as I ran past him and caught my shoulder on the end of a pipe that protruded from the wall. I winced and cried out in pain and almost fell flat on my face. There was another loud thunderclap in my mind, and the wall launched an army of grey flying creatures. I rounded a corner and found two figures sitting on the floor. Both figures were human, and one had a zombie face with very large eyes. The other looked like a regular human. I stopped and looked at the odd pair. The human had short red hair and a short cropped red moustache and a goatee. A pair of glasses, framed in silvery wire dangled aimlessly halfway across his face. His eyes stared, but not at me. Instead his gaze seemed fixed at some point in the ceiling. The zombie creature was kneeling down and held on to the human. Its mouth formed words that I could not hear. "They are all zombies," I screamed and tried to drown out the noise in my head. I put both hands to my ears, but it did little to stop the noise. "Then you'll need this," said the zombie and offered me a short, magic wand.

Hallucination or not, I just wanted to get away from this place.

"Don't take it!" said the male voice in my head. "It's too dangerous."

"He must take it," said the female. "It's poison."

"Shut up!" I screamed at the voices. "Shut the fuck up, and help me for once."

"Then take it," said both voices, and I accepted the magic wand. The zombie made a strange howling noise and pointed a bony hand towards the end of the hall where I had come from. The tall creature that I previously bumped into had rounded the corner and was sliding through the corridor towards me, holding what looked like a snake in his hand. There was another thunderclap, and the snake hissed and flicked a forked tongue at me. It spat a stream of poison at me that hit my leg, and I tumbled to the floor.

Poisoned! I cried, the snake poisoned me. I got to my feet again and crawled the last few feet towards the exit.

---

I was out in the sun and the light blinded my eyes. I stumbled up a short flight of stairs with a leg that wouldn't quite carry me.

"The snake bit me," I shouted at the passing convention goers, then I fell and could not get back up.Come on, the snake was only a hallucination, I tried to convince myself. I have had hallucination dogs bite me before and it hurts just like a real bite, but it normally goes away when I blink.

Two men grabbed me by the arms and tried to help me to my feet. I recognised them as convention security by their clothes and their badges. Everything was back to normal and people looked human again. The only non-human creatures within sight were the usual cosplayers dressed as elves and kitsunes that you find at any RPG convention. I was relieved that the attack was over. I'd visit my psychiatrist first thing Monday, and try to get some other medication, cause this one sure as fuck wasn't working.

"You're not going anywhere, buddy," said the guard. "Not with that bullet in your leg." I looked at my leg, and with the hallucinations dispelled, the wound was clearly not a snakebite - I had been shot.

---

"I really don't know what to tell you," I said to the officer sitting across the table from me. "I have schizophrenia and I was hallucinating bad in there."

"A man was killed in there. Shot," said the officer. "He was shot with the same gun that put a bullet in your leg. Hallucinating or not, you are our only witness to the murder."

"Zombies," I cried. "I saw everyone turning into zombies. Guests, guards, the three people in the fire exit corridor. When I have an attack, I can't tell what's real and what's hallucination."

"You mentioned three people?" asked the officer.

"The tall guy with bleeding eyes who shot at me, the one who screamed and gave me a magic wand, and the normal looking one."

"Could this be the normal looking one?" The officer slid a photo towards me. It was a portrait of a friendly looking man with short red hair, red beard and wireframe glasses. It was the same man I had seen in the basement. I nodded at the officer.

"His name was Kendall Duran", he said. "Ever heard of him?"

I shrugged.

"He went to the Oakenford convention to promote a board game he designed; something called "Future Battalion."

"I didn't have the time to look at too many games before I panicked."

"So," said the officer. "We've established the identity of the victim. We still need to figure out who the third person is."

I was afraid to look at the photo again, in case the face came alive. I already heard voices hiding in the sound of the cooling fan just waiting to break free, and my leg hurt from the stitches. I desperately wanted to go home and hide.

"There is one major problem, though" said the officer. "You may not recognise the murderer.

-but he knows exactly what you look like, and he knows that you're a witness."