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THE CHRONICLES OF FINALGAMER In He Ran

"Time is a game played beautifully by children." Heraclitus of Ephesus

Awakening with a start from the last thing he remembered before passing out, the raptor scrabbled on a ruined red carpet, frantically trying to cling onto something to escape an imaginary horror. Looking around shakily as he felt the chill of night, he calmed down and peered at his surroundings. From the interior, he could guess he was in a large and once splendid mansion, now in some state of ruin considering an upper floor with large crumbled pathways. He found himself directly underneath a broken skylight, coloured glass fragments lying around him in beautiful technicolour pieces. "Oy...hope that wasn't me, looks real expensive." Standing up to get his bearings as he unruffled his orange slacks, he realised this was a large main hall, with stairs on either side leading up to upper floors, as well as a window on ground level with a table near it to sit on the windowsill. A few cups of tea had been left abandoned cold. The carpet was old and made quite a meal for moths. It had the perfect setting for a Victorian murder mystery. "Hello!?" He shouted to the hall which echoed his voice back slightly. "Helloooooooo!?" A chill of wind flew from above, which made him look through the window to his right to see a pine forest entrenching upon the mansion grounds, clotting the night horizon. He could barely see the sky but saw enough to see that clouds had covered it. "Never seen a place like this before. Feels really old too." He took one direction to walk in, through a door behind him that was closer than the other across the hall. Darkness greeted him as he opened the door, a corridor stretching out into a black dot within the night, impossible to see yet beckoning curiosity. James walked forwards anxiously, wondering if anyone lived here, or if he even wanted to meet them. Being alone within the semi-darkness did not scare him as much, what with his finely tuned sense of sight and smell, but all he could smell was dust and ruin.

Walking down the hall, he noticed a few doors to his left and began to investigate them one by one, the first raising his curiosity with the sound of a dripping tap. As expected, it was a bathroom, separated into two rooms by a single wall and another door in front of him, with a sink and mirror to his right firmly non-dripping. Opening the second door, he heard the dripping turn louder and saw only a bathtub, white yet filmy, wrapped around with a shower curtain. The dripping turned louder, loud enough to pierce his head and make him beg to turn off the tap with every passing second, even with his head no longer experiencing the headache from Dream Land. He walked forwards closely, the sound seeming to tempt him towards it, gently gripping the curtain as if it was made of silk, tenderly between his claws to pull it open to one side. What he saw made him pull back with disgust and hold his nose hard. "UUUUGH!" Whatever water was in there had turned into blackened ooze, full of the flakes of human skin, dandruff and possibly urine judging from the scent of it that had turned weak over time. It didn't make James feel any better at seeing the crusty-edged liquid. "Jesus fuck what the hell's wrong with these people!?! God I hope nobody's living here, that's just disgusting." Stepping away from the bath, he quickly headed out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him to walk onwards to the next room. The next room was a lot nicer-looking. A bedroom with two well-preserved beds, with elegant silk covers and fluffy mattresses almost like sponge cakes, so beautifully satin that he didn't want to touch them for fear of upsetting their perfection. Clearly someone took a pride in bedmaking to such an extent to make it an art. Moving his attention away, he saw a couple of dressers. One to the side of the door on his right, with something bell-shaped covered in a red cloth on top of it, the other directly in front of the door against the opposite wall with a mirror and a small picture frame.

The mirror had surprised him at first when entering the room before he realised what it was, slowly walking towards it. He could see only the door behind him still open with the corridor outlined round his body, like an aura of darkness. He realised that he hadn't looked at himself in a mirror for a long time and peered closer at his face and chest. Markings were everywhere, some numerous and too small to notice, others large and slicing across him. Then he saw something out of place on his body. Bite marks. "Wait...when did I get bitten? Maybe Ridley...no he didn't bite me when...uuuuugh...did he?" After shuddering to himself in trying not to remember such a painful memory, he noticed one particular bite mark that was prevalent on his neck if peered close enough, noticing several repetitive bites similar to each other on him. "The fuck? When did that happen!? Hhhffff...calm down James, you're panicking over nothing, you got marks, they're healed, who cares." He spent a good while gazing at himself in the mirror, directly into his clear emerald eyes, now worn down by his travels. If they could even be called that. "Look at you James...you're fucking wrecked. You look like an ex-convict, you dunno where the hell you're going, you're stuck in a creepy old mansion with bathwater that smells like ass...what are you doing? Where are you going?" He was interrupted in the middle of his pointless self-dialogue when he imagined a shadow behind him suddenly flicker past the doorway, turning around with paranoia heightened. "Wha!? Hello?" The door remained ajar, the hallway still dark. He imagined a presence behind him, turning away to walk towards the door. But even as he walked to it, he still felt a presence BEHIND him. Turning around again and again like a dog chasing his own tail, his heart began to beat quicker. "...you're getting paranoid. Stop it."

Breathing deep and trying to relax, he looked back at the mirror and noticed the picture frame more properly beside it. It had been smashed, the crack specifically upon two possible human faces, now rendered unrecognisable within it. "Jeez someone got dissed bad." He then headed over to look at what was covered by the cloth on the other dresser, pulling away dramatically as if revealing a magical trick, only to find a birdcage. Empty. The only sign it had been used was a shed feather or two of a greenish-blue. With nothing else, he noticed another door to the left of the beds, along the wall where the mirror laid upon. Entering the next room, he saw it to be a living room of sorts, nicely filled with a sofa, a fireplace with a creepy painting above of two ghostly-looking faces that he immediately chose to ignore, an old-looking television with knobs and an aerial, and a wardrobe. A large window with red curtains was immediately left of him, the rest of the room to his right. Wanting to take a break and think things over, he sat down on the sofa, sighing and coughing slightly at the dust that rose from the cushions, gazing around at the room and lying back to let himself relax a little. After a few minutes of mentally energising himself, he got up and investigated the wardrobe only to find strange old clothes. Then he looked towards the TV, curious in its archaic design. He leaned down to the screen and gently tweaked the largest knob to the on position, making the screen flicker from its dark mirrored reflection of the room to chaotic snowy static. At first, nothing seemed to be on, no matter how much he fiddled with it, the signal completely non-existant. "Well, not like I was looking for anything to watch anyway."

He was about to turn away when he started to hear a voice from somewhere nearby, somewhat faded and crackly as if from broken reception. Logically looking back at the TV, he could see the faint silhouette of someone just barely discernible. The voice turned louder and it seemed to be arguing with itself. "Don't- - - - - -see- - - - -not me! I am- - - - -shadow- - - -true self-" "The hell is this?" He peered closer at the image hoping that it would become clearer, but he was only greeted in return by a horrific smile from the TV. A huge row of teeth shaped like a golden boomerang, lipless, the face behind it some sort of anomaly with two black eyes with red slits, all supported by some kind of thin limber-looking grey frame with a red scarf. James was immediately thrown backwards by some unknown force, and banged his head dull against the sofa, seeing the images of the TV fade away while rubbing his head in confusion. "Wh...wha...nngh..." Trying to ignore the sudden face of the TV that had blasted him away, he got up and left the room completely through another door beside the wardrobe, finding himself back in the corridor once again. The door of the room with the two beds was still left open by himself. He made his way further down the corridor in the direction he'd been going before. Past the hallway was a small square room with two doors to his left and another straight ahead, as well as a window to his immediate left which showed again darkness, though he could make out something like a courtyard or garden area. Heading straight onwards, he found another large hall, similar to the one he had been in before, but this one had a collapsed upper floor making it pointless to go up the stairs here. He did however note the main entrance right in front of him. Running towards the door heedlessly, he grabbed the handles and tried his best to open them, tugging as hard as he could, only to find them rigidly locked. "Dammit." He sighed with resignation at being a fool to even think a creepy old mansion would have its front door unlocked, and it looked too sturdy to break down, with no windows facing the front that he could see. As he turned to walk back, he heard someone run past him, very close by. He didn't even feel someone run past, but he was sure he heard it, a pattering of footsteps. Turning around quickly, nobody was behind him, and nobody was in front. Paranoia reared itself in his mind more, trying to wonder if he was truly alone here, or if his imagination was being mischievous. But he heard it again, the sound of someone walking near him, and he couldn't see the owner even though his hearing told him he was looking directly at the source of the sounds. "Alright, that's enough! Whoever the hell's out there trying to scare me, show yourself, NOW!"

His slight fear was being replaced by irritation as he soon saw, or rather heard, part of the source, with a solid thunk into the frame of the door behind him. Turning around, he saw the door had been stabbed with something. A large rusty pair of scissors, or possibly garden shears, at least four feet long, the blades curving like crooked scimitars from the handle to where the tips crossed, one over the other. James was confused, yet felt a deep sense of foreboding about them and didn't dare approach them. He walked away a little scared and tried to maintain his calm, but the moment he turned away, another sound came from behind, the shink of a blade being scraped along something. Turning quickly back, the scissors had disappeared. And then he heard it again. Shink. Shink. Shink. Shink. Whatever was making that noise was now circling around him like a lion. Keeping his guard up in case he had to fight, he snarled at the invisible opponent. "Stop taunting me you little bitch and show yourself!" He soon had his wish granted, but not in the way he wanted. Hearing the sound from above as well as footsteps, he looked up to see a shadow with a huge pair of scissors leap from the stairs and plunge down towards him. His reflexes saved him as he dodged to one side to get a good look at his foe.

It appeared to be a small boy, possibly 10 years old, wearing odd clothes that would fit someone from the 18th or 19th century. A white ruffled collar was around his neck, and he had a hideously warped little face in a permanent grey frown like an African mask. His feet clacked with black pristine buckled shoes while wielding his scissors menacingly, which were almost his own height. "Jesus kid, what the hell's wrong with you!?! You coulda killed me, wielding those things like a fricking toy, those things are seriously dangerous! Now put those things down and go find your mum or dad or whoever else is in this place so I can talk to them, okay?" The boy said nothing, still waving side to side. "Hey, you deaf or something!? GO. GET. AN ADULT. PLEASE." Despite his forced politeness, there was still no comment from the boy. Sighing in frustration he walked away from him. "Fine you don't wanna help, then don't, I'll find an adult and goddamn are they gonna-JESUS!" Hearing the running sound of shoes behind him, he had dodged just in time to not get skewered right through the chest by a pair of scissors, turning around to back away from the boy while keeping an eye on him. "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!?! YOU A FUCKING MENTALIST OR SOMETHING!?!?" The boy ran towards him again with the pair of scissors held high, and James dodged it easily enough to try and punch the kid in the jaw. But he didn't even seem to register the hit when he swung the scissors back towards him with surprising strength and control over it. Dodging less successfully and with a cut on his shoulder, he pushed the kid and tried to punch him once more, but still it didn't seem to slow him down as the scissors were swung yet again without any sign of slowing down. Soon the raptor decided to just try and wrench the scissors from his grasp by force, grapping the collared hands and wrestling to take control of them. To his surprise, he could barely even take them away from the child, who just pulled back and stabbed James with a few murderous inches into the left shoulder.

Screaming in pain, he pushed his attacker forwards so the scissors were pulled from him, before he tossed the weapon to one side still in their owner's grip, and elbowed the boy square in the face to throw him off balance before running away. His left shoulder was cut deep, bleeding somewhat with a gash clean through it, his right hand clasping it desperately as he ran as fast as possible to outrun the boy. His left arm felt as if it were starting to wither and die, the nerves crippled in it to an extent, hanging low as he looked back to see the scissors glinting at the end of the hallway. It encouraging him to run desperately faster back to the foyer he woke up in. Seeing a door at the other end, he furiously sprinted towards it and through a hallway with a door to his right and another door at its end, only to find himself in some sort of barn with a car parked inside it. He jumped into the largest of hay piles littered around the place, trying to calm down and make sure that the boy hadn't chased him here. Waiting several minutes as he struggled to maintain his breathing, safer in the knowledge that a raptor could easily outrun any human hopefully, he checked to see nobody around, and left the pile of hay. Brushing the hay off him, he examined his wound. While it didn't bleed as much as James had expected due to the lack of arteries in the shoulder, the nerves were crippled and his left arm was painfully deadened for now.

He still had some control over his arm but it was very stiff and painful, as if it should be in a cast, forcing him to try not to move it. Wanting to stop any bleeding or infection, he tore off some cloth from the right leg of his slacks, and made a bandage as best as he could do, the orange shimmering slightly in the bare light of the house. "F-f-fucking psycho...the hell's wrong with him, crazy little bastard kid stabbing my fu-HU-aah...ohhhh god my...aaaagh..." The pain became so intense he went on his knees and closed his eyes trying to force his tears back, whimpering to himself as quietly as he could, shaking with the throbbing pain. He remembered a pain like this before which his right arm itself remembered, via some slight phantom pain from the time he'd broken it. All he could do was try and suppress the bleeding, it was the only thing he knew what to do in first aid. Struggling to keep his mind off of his shoulder, he looked at the car in the barn-turned-garage. It was a boxy-looking brown thing, of an old design that James did not recognise, but he assumed would be from the 20th century due to its rubber wheels. Regardless, he found the vehicle to be locked, and decided to try breaking into it with a shovel propped up on a wall, next to a small ladder that led up to a large shelf where more hay was. "I just gotta...get outta here...and...wait..." As he wielded the shovel with one hand, preparing himself to break one of the car windows open, he realised something rather stupidly obvious. He could leave anytime he wanted with his teleporting. "Pffthah you're such a retard, James." Bonking himself on the head with the shovel and trying to laugh to feel better, he put the tool to one side and decided to focus on teleporting like he did before, thinking of something, anything, to get out of here. "Alright...let's get out of here...come on...think..."

Focusing entirely on a single word and essentially praying to get out of the mansion's world to another, he tried to make his mind work in opening up a portal, struggling harder than before, murmuring deeply to himself. "Come...ON! NNNGH! Do it for fuck's sake..." But something was wrong. Somehow, he couldn't be able to open a portal. James was focusing and doing it all correctly, but the portal just would not come, not appearing at all. After a few minutes, he gave up with a headache. "Goddammit, why didn't it work this time!? I did everything right, the thinking, the word, the wishing, it didn't open! It was like it wouldn't come...I mean...why didn't it work?" Trying to ignore it, he took the shovel up once again, deciding that if anything, he was now armed against his opponent. And while he had a personal rule of never beating down on kids, he did have one exception to it. Kids who were REALLY bad, bad enough to be tried for prison at least, received the fullest extent of what he and Sarah once called Rex's Law. "Rule number one, you get what's coming to you. Rule number two, I give what's coming to you. Hah, Sarah liked that, even thought it was from one of her old movies. Hmmm...." With his new weapon, he headed out of the garage back down the hallway to investigate the door he had passed, opening it to find a kitchen, much to his delight. The kitchen was very sparse, with a cabinet, a worktop, a sink and oven lining only to his right. Various utensils on the workplace were now covered somewhat in dust, a fridge in the far left corner and a double-doored freezer at the far right corner of the room. Feeling a little peckish, he decided to open the freezer. A calendar was on a wall to the left of the freezer beside a drinks cabinet, which caught James' eye as he noted it to be September 1995. "Huh...that's pretty damn far back." Ignoring the date, he opened the freezer. Inside was a clustered hive of meat, hanging from hooks all the way down a dark walk-in corridor. His mouth watered, not even questioning their freshness as they were clearly frozen still. All he needed was a fire, or get one of the ovens to work, and he had a little dinner to himself. "Mmmmm, come to raptor..."

Grabbing a not-too-large portion from a frozen pile on the floor more for the sake of his shoulder, he closed the freezer and put the meat slab on a worktop while he checked the ovens. He hadn't actually ever used an oven before, but he didn't care about the state of the mansion enough to want to be too careful as he checked the heat of one working oven, and carefully put the meat inside on a tray despite his bad arm, closing it up and letting it cook. As he waited for the meat to thaw and then cook up, he pondered to himself. "Wonder what the deal is with this place? And that freaky li'l bastard who cut me...shit that reminds me... He quickly checked his wound, seeing that the cloth was starting to seep a little as he quickly looked around for a suitable replacement, before coming across a cupboard with several dusty dish towels within piled up. Grabbing one and flapping it clean of dust, he took off the bloodied cloth and threw it into a bin before quickly tying the thicker cloth around his still slightly bleeding wound as best as he could, using his teeth and hands, whimpering at the sight of it. But he whimpered moreso at how his arm throbbed, as if it'd been punched dead of all feeling. "Fuck...huh...huuh...hope I don't bleed to death, he fucking wrecked it...I'm gonna kill him...he wanna play with scissors, I'll cut him up real good..." He let his anger mask his pain, the pain still throbbing as the blood controlled itself easily, but he knew at some point he would have to get some proper medical attention to fix his shoulder. Sitting on the floor near the oven, James rubbed his face with one hand, trying to think on how to escape. "Maybe it was a mistake, maybe I can't focus when my shoulder's hurt that much...I'll just eat something, find a place to hide, heal up and try again, yeah thassit. I can outrun that freak no problem."

He became impatient when he realised that something of a half hour had passed with no indication of the meat thawing, continuously checking it, sitting for so long on the floor that he felt his rear turn numb. Admittedly, he knew he had never done this before and therefore had no idea how long it took. Sarah never cooked with an oven either. "Damn, just realised, neither of us knew how to cook from an oven. Didn't even have one, just made it ourselves or microwaved it or get takeaways...pizzas usually...damn I could go for a mushroom and pepperoni now, mmmmph...wonder if Sarah ever cooked back home with her family. Pfft, it's California, they have everything done for themselves probably." He let himself reminisce about the times they ate, remembering one particular meal that was to die for. It wasn't even theirs for starters, Sarah had managed to "find" a credit card from some money-splurging asswipe and the two hit the town, dressed up in their best clothes thanks to a friend who ran a tailor's, and did pretty much everything a rich person could do on a credit card. First Sarah bought herself a fancy looking ring, James got a cool looking pendant. His mouth started to murmur out his personal thoughts to stave off the silence. "Hah...I forgot about that thing...wonder if it's back home in my room still. Used to wear that thing for like months before I got a li'l annoyed with it...hmmmm..." He thought upon the other moments of that glorious night of riches, the highlight of such being when they went to a fancy restaurant and ordered half the menu, eating away down to the shine of the plates. "Mmmmph, god that was delicious stuff. Lemon Meringue Pie, Lobster Sauvee...saw...Sauvignun, whatever, Risotto, oh man she went crazy for the risotto, she'd never wanna eat anything again other than that damn risotto...hehe...god, the meat...meat...fuck when's it gonna be ready!?" He checked once again, and the meat was still uncooked and pale, snarling at it as if trying to scare it to well done, and failing to do so as he banged his head against the cupboard beside it in frustration. "I just wanna eaaaaaaat...huh?"

Having sat there for so long, he should have realised he would have eventually been discovered by the one he was hiding from. The door to the kitchen slowly opened, and he stood up with such a start that his shoulder suddenly flared in pain making him wince. A whimper would follow that when he saw the scissors appear around the door jamb. "Oh fuck..." Grabbing his shovel, he shook with panic as the boy walked into the kitchen, its ghoulish face unchanged, but clearly delighted to see his next victim standing alone with nowhere to run. "Oh yeah, you found me, good fucking job kid, you wanna try and cut me again huh!?" James clanged his shovel against the cupboard, ready to get dangerous. "Come on then, I'll fucking cut YOU up kid!" The boy charged at the raptor in a stumbling run, making James dodge to one side as he took this opponent more seriously a threat to prepare himself, slamming the shovel into the humped back, yet nothing seemed to register. He tried again only to be countered with another swing of the scissors that sawed clean through the wooden handle as the boy turned around. Panicking at his weapon failing, he quickly grabbed a meat cleaver from a nearby knife rack as the biggest and nastiest looking thing he could use, and waited for the scissor-wielding child to charge once more, dodging yet again and slashing the cleaver into his back. Yet again, no sound of pain came from him, only the clear SHUK of a cleaver jamming itself into flesh.

Ignoring how his foe managed to seemingly not feel pain at all, James got ready to expect the swing of the scissors and ducked around it to try and hack the body again, this time at the side of the waist, clearly cutting a deep wound with all of his single-armed strength. And yet still the boy made no indication of pain. With only the slightest of faltering in his movements, the scissor-wielder swung back once again, catching James' head and leaving a grazing cut above his right eye. "ARGH FUCK!" Backing away with one of his eyes obscured by blood dripping from above, he left the cleaver inside the boy, clearly sticking out of the waist horizontally and yet he didn't slow down. James grabbed a bonesaw, only to realise that frankly, if he wasn't going to have enough time to hack through one of those limbs, it was a useless weapon. With an idea in his head as he felt heat nearby, he circled around to the oven, putting one hand behind himself on the handle. "Come on, I ain't scared of ya, Scissorboy! What's the matter, you can't even cut me like paper, how the fuck you even THINK you're gonna cut me!?!" Purposefully trying to goad the boy into charging, his plan was successful as James dodged immediately as soon as he charged, pulling the oven open and watching the scissors just thrust into the heated depths, making the boy tumble into the oven, aided by James to the side kicking his rear in. "GET IN THERE YOU LITTLE BITCH!" Crazy with rage, he slammed the oven door repeatedly upwards trying to either break the boy's legs or stuff him into the oven, failing to do either but causing enough apparent confusion to his foe who was struggling to get out of the oven, with James stopping him from doing so. He continuously slammed the oven door hard upwards until his shoulder felt it would explode into flames from the searing pain in his muscles. Soon, he felt the kid stop resisting and collapse, his upper body cooking away inside. "Ha...hahah...there, fucking dead...yeah you better be fucking dead, I just wasted like an hour on that fucking meat." He was about to leave the body half-stuffed in the oven, feeling exhausted but victorious, when he realised something of this particular scenario. "Wait...hahaha, nah, he wouldn't...mmmnngh..."

The scenario he was in reminded him strongly of old horror movies that Sarah had watched with him. The masked killer with a huge bladed tool chasing someone through a dark house, trying to kill them for no reason. His youthful paranoia argued with his logic, until he realised that considering what he had been through in the past year or so, logic was not the best thing to rely on. What if this world had rules like those of horror movies? What if there really was no way to KILL this masked murderer? Eventually he decided to just not take any chances, and grabbed the body's legs to drag it from the furnace and into the walk-in freezer, noticing that it had a handle on only one side of it. "Yeah, lessee you get outta this one, freak." Shoving him and the scissors so tightly gripped in his hands inside cold storage, James closed it tightly as possible, wishing he had something to prop against the door or find out truly if there was no way to open the freezer from the other side. But then he remembered there did exist such freezers that could only be opened by pulling, even when not locked, and decided to chance it. "If he's dead, he's dead. If not, well he'll freeze to death then, hehehe." He would have been more sympathetic in the fact he was trying to commit murder upon a child, but the fact this boy was not only clearly trying to kill him, but also strong enough to ignore being cut deep with a meat cleaver twice, made him feel less guilty about anything of the sort. That wasn't a kid. Whatever it was, it was definitely not a kid. And with that thought in mind, he left the kitchen to explore elsewhere in the mansion.