S M The Game

[Aster]

"Hey, pup," the familiar voice crackled through the phone line. Dallas, that old fuck... Always seemed like he turned up out of the blue in her life when something was wrong. "Ain't so much as heard a peep outta you in a good while, now." He was either feigning concern and ignorance, as he usually did, or had literally been living under a rock for the past however fucking long. "You holdin' up alright? Folks were gettin' awful worried when you just up and poofed like you did. Don't give 'em such a scare like that; it makes 'em come callin' me to try and get ahold of you."

There was a long, drawn-out pause, where the faux-grizzled bastard audibly slurped down another few glugs from whatever his current drink of choice was. He sure knew how to make it seem disgusting, even over the phone. "Gwaaah.... And hey, listen; come 'round the old neighborhood again sometime, yeah?" He guffawed so energetically it trailed off into a wheeze. "...bleh. You know the place just ain't the same without you hangin' around."

"You...fuck..." Aster whispered, slowly pulling the phone away from her ear as she stared down at it. "Can't believe it...of all the people, why'd mama and dad have to bother you to try and make me call them back?!" She squeezed her eyes shut, silently fumbling for the 'delete message' button. "Bastard."

 

[Aster]

Not for the first time after her time in Dante's Abyss, Aster woke up shaking from a nightmare. The kind of thing that, in most people she was sure, would have left her drenched in cold sweat. In her case, though, it just left her weakly panting and gasping for air as both of her hands took a painfully-tight white-knuckled grip on her chest fur. Her eyes were wide, still bleary from sleep, and in the dark her already frightened and racing mind made everything seem terrifying.

Heart racing in her chest, she thrashed about to kick blankets off of her, sitting upright and trying to blink away the mixture of tears and sleep fog, and remind herself of where she was.

Home. Home, now. Not at that camp anymore.

It was just her curtains rustling in the draft of air conditioning. It was just a discarded jacket tossed over a chair. It was just the mirror on the back of the door. It was just clothes hanging haphazardly in the closet. It was just...

...normal.

It was all normal. It wasn't the misty, fog-shrouded shores of Camp Crystal Lake. There were no trees looming and hedging everything in on almost all sides, rustling and sighing in the wind. There was no icy black lakeshore just out of view in the distance, holding promise of only a certain death. There were no rickety old cabins that were only waiting to be a tomb one last time. There was no masked killer stalking her and her friends, poised to kill them all. There wasn....

The taste of blood came unbidden to her mouth again, she she shivered as a reflexive, dry-heaving retch rose up out of her chest.

Her hands slowly rose up from her chest to her face, and she hunched forward, trying her best to stifle and push down the grotesque sobbing that soon enough came out against all her best efforts. It wasn't every night and every morning that she had a wake-up call like this, but... It never got any easier to manage. It never felt any less real, or like it was actually happening again.

Dying, as it turned out, was not a pleasant experience. She had technically died once, even before Dante's Abyss -- a nasty traffic accident, which according to doctors had been nebulous and precarious for a long time. Her heart had stopped several times, and she was on the verge of being officially declared clinically dead. She only found out later it was only thanks to Dallas, that colossal asshole, literally pulling a fucking gun on the doctor to keep him trying, that she pulled through in the end. That was more physically traumatic, she supposed, but she didn't remember that. She had been asleep in the car when it happened, so her only real memory of it was waking up in the hospital long after ward. It was different.

But this...she had been awake and fully aware right up until the last second. She had stepped right up to meet Jason fuckmothering Voorhees face-to-mask, knowing full well what was about to happen to her. And that feeling, of being awake when whatever passed for the thing keeping her alive, just up and flew south for the winter....it was something she was pretty sure she'd never forget. The fact that physically, in spite of everything, it hadn't actually hurt -- when Jason had buried his machete in her shoulder, or quite literally punched her heart out -- was something she still struggled to understand. It had just been one giant wave of numbness and cold.

Or maybe it was because seeing the look on Rogue's face in her final seconds, when she turned around to try and say something -- one last thing, but she couldn't remember what; some last snarky quip? wishing her goo luck? trying to tell her again to run for it? it was all hazy -- that was what hurt. One hell of a final memory, that was for sure.

 

[Aster]

"Heya, kiddo." Her dad's voice. More tired and weary than when she'd last heard it, age laying a little more heavily on his words than she remembered, but unmistakable. And also unmistakable was the worry painfully creeping into his tone. "Been tryin' to get ahold of you for a bit now. You avoidin' us for some reason?"

Her parents were...well, 'simple' was the only way she could put it. Nothing remarkable or complex about them, nothing special to note; they weren't overly suffocating or demanding in their attentions or what they wanted from her. They were down to earth and plenty nice folks, all things considered. Hell, when some of their neighbors and extended family had taken issue with Aster's life choices when she was younger -- some of them to such a nasty degree it had almost caused outright violence -- they had stuck by her and just cut all ties with the offending parties.

Relocating and entire family unit on such short notice wasn't easy for any of them, but...they'd done it. Somehow.

For all that, though, they were good people. They were simple, and not exactly geniuses or the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but...they made up for it in other ways. They were always there for her when she needed them, for whatever it might have been. Worldly advice, help when something broke down, money, just someone to talk to and vent about the world...

"Heard you went and made a fool choice, signing up for that...whatchacallit, Dante's Abyss?" her father's tired old voice sounded dejected at the mere notion. "I know you always liked that stuff, but it ain't really the kinda thing you shoulda got involved in directly. But...you did, and ain't no point badgerin' you over a choice you already made, I reckon." He sighed heavily, and she could almost see the way he dragged a hand over his face, as if quite literally wiping away his frustration and disgruntlement. "....but we're worried about you, Aster. Ain't seen or heard a word from you since ya got back from that fool competition. I imagine you're still recuperatin' after all that, but... Least give us a call, sometime?"

Hand shaking, Aster slowly brought the phone away from her ear, staring down at the screen with misty eyes. "....I'm sorry, dad," she whispered. In spite of everything, she had just known somewhere in the bottom of her heart that this -- something this stupid, quite literally throwing her life away just because she had decided to wear her pants on her head for a day -- would finally be the time her parents would snap at her. Their worry would turn to frustration during the game, and then frustration to anger when she didn't so much as get in touch when she got back.

....and instead it had been the opposite. The little paranoia demons laughed uproariously inside her head as she blinked away tears, slowly sliding her thumb to the 'repeat message' button to listen again, lowering herself down to curl up on her side in bed, the phone pressed to her ear.

"....heya, kiddo."

 

[Aster]

Getting out of bed proved, as it had every day of late, an extraordinarily difficult task. After several hours of miserably laying there in the dark, fighting down the tears and trying to remind herself it was all in the past...the prospect of facing the world just wasn't something she was really ready for. Her day hadn't even started, and she was already fucking exhausted. It was only gonna get worse from here, she knew. Every little thing felt like it was taking everything she had, and all she was doing was crawling (lot literally, thankfully) to the bathroom for a shower.

It was rough.

It had been days since she'd managed to muster up the will to do even something this simple. Barely been out of bed at all, definitely hadn't left her house...when was the last time she ate, come to think of it? A sharp growl from her stomach informed her 'too long', which made her grimace. The way her head and general everything was feeling, she didn't much feel like eating, starving or not.

But...that could wait until later. For now came the hours-long ordeal of dealing with the sometimes-obnoxious mess of her fur and hair. Beautiful as it was, and as many compliments as she had often gotten from how well she took care of it, it was awful to manage. But...nothing for it. Whatever was left of her pride would never let her live it down if she went anywhere looking anything less than her best.

When she finally emerged some time later, amid a billowing cloud of steam and moist air, she looked very much like a drowned rat. Standing there, naked and dripping everywhere, she stared through a mop of soggy hair at her fog-shrouded mirror, seeing approximately nothing at fucking all. Somehow, she was sure, that was just some kind of metaphor for the state of her life right now, but the specifics of such a complex fate-adjacent cryptic message were well and truly beyond her, especially right then. All she really wanted to do was get this over with...

What felt like hours later, she shuffled out of her room and into the rest of her 'humble abode' at large. The place was...well, pretty much the same as always. Hard to make a mess when you've barely left your room (or bed) for a week, after all. But still, the prospect of cleaning and tidying up, while it did make her inwardly (and outwardly) groan, at least gave her something concrete to focus on. She was many things, but slovenly was not one of them.

"After food, though..." she mumbled, and staggered into the kitchen.

Pawing open the fridge, she was greeted with...a thoroughly, disgustingly, heart-wrenchingly-unpleasant sight. It was mostly empty, and what was left was well and truly spoiled. She hung her head, with a grumbled series of curses that made sailors somewhere look askance at the distant horizon, she was sure. Of course there wouldn't be anything left; she had already been running low when she had made the brilliant decision to sign up for Dante's Abyss. Between the time doing that, fucking around in the pre-show and barracks, time on the island, being revived after and then wallowing her own misery for so long....

Dear Sweet Terry, it had been at least two weeks. Two weeks that felt like three times that many months.

"The fuck is my life...?" she groaned, running a hand over her face as she slammed the fridge much harder than likely necessary. She still had something around here to eat, she was sure of it, and a quick search confirmed she was right, praise be to the glorious invention of the pantry. Nothing fancy, but...hell. Canned soup on an empty stomach might as well be fine dining.

Of course...it all meant she had more to clean, and that she really did need to actually go out, now.

Life was rough, sometimes.

 

[Aster]

"Hey, Aster. Listen, actually hear me out before you just delete this!" It was the voice of someone she definitely did not want to hear. Her boss. Adrian. Ugh. It took every ounce of restraint she had to actually do as he said and wait to let him spew his drivel, though it made her screw her eyes tightly shut.

"Okay, okay, I'll be quick. So I heard from Mako and all your other friends about you entering DA this year." Great. Super. Fantastic. Of course he'd heard. It wasn't like she'd actually had the forethought to call in or anything like "yeah hey boss I'm entering a death tournament, so gonna be missing work for a few days, 'kay thanks bye!" to get permission ahead of time. It had just all been a stupid, impulsive spur of the moment choice that, looking back on, she regretted immensely. Pretty much nothing good had come out of it.

"So I tuned in to watch it when I could. And I gotta say...yikes, girl. You really didn't do so hot, huh?" He laughed at that. The bastard actually laughed.

"Oh go to hell, Adrian; I actually fucking died, you little cock-goblin!" Aster snarled, her eyes snapping open again.

"'Course, we all know that shit's staged," Adrian snorted as he finally recovered from his fit of laughing. "Leave it to somebody like Karl Jak and that Sintek or whatever to come up with something so stupid. As if anyone would ever believe people'd actually kill each other like that."

Aster really, really fucking hated her boss. How he ever got to a management position she never knew. Sure wasn't his charming personality or overwhelming smarts, that was for sure. She'd always suspected he had a mouth like a Hoover, or maybe a magical fuckhole attached to his ass, as the only options. He was definitely smarmy and quick to kiss every ass of higher management, that was for sure. Putting those lips to use doing more than kissing ass wouldn't be a stretch.

.....and now she was imagining her boss gagging balls-deep on some corporate schmuck's love wand. Super.

Brain bleach please.

"So Aster. Girl. Babe. Doll. Listen. I know you're probably just taking it nice and easy after your little brush with Crossroads-wide fame or whatever." His voice dropped slightly, into a much less amused and pleasant tone. "You know I love you, girl, but you need to stop fucking around and come back to work, if you wanna keep your job. I've been nice the past week, cause Mako was breathing down my neck and telling me you were taking the big loss rough and whatever, but don't you think you've had long enough to get over it?"

"....are you..." Aster's expression just went blank. "...are you fucking...serious right now...?"

"So here's how it's gonna be. Schedule's going out this Friday. You're gonna be back on it." The shrug accompanying Adrian's words was something she could almost see, like he was standing right in front of her. "And I'll see you for your next shift on Monday, or you can come pick up your final check whenever you feel like it."

". . . . . ." Aster just slowly pulled the phone away from her ear, staring down at it. Her face was a blank, unfocused mask. Adrian was still prattling on about whatever the hell, in his arrogant way. Her eyes were glazed over, lost behind a burgeoning film of tears, and she just weakly pawed at her phone searching desperately for the 'end call' button. She wanted to just delete that bastard's message, but she knew she'd need it later. For proof he was being such a colossal moron and jackass.

She wanted to go back to work -- she really did; most of her coworkers were great, and some of the regular customers were amazing to just chill and hang out with when business was slow -- but right now it was....it was just more than she could bear.

 

[Aster]

"You know he'd never actually fire you, right?" Mako murmured softly, from where she sat across the table. "Not unless his bosses were riding his ass and threatening to axe his ass if he didn't."

"Yeah. C'mon now, girl; you know that creep is still crushin' on you harder than a hydraulic press on youtube!" the other occupant of the little table, one Emelia Malondight, added in her own attempt to be helpful. "He knows he'd lose whatever minuscule chance he's still got to get in your pants if he kicks you to the curb."

"Ugh. Gross." Aster groaned, from where she had her face resting on her arms. "I know you're tryin' to cheer me up with that one, Mal, but...just gives me the jeebies."

"Haha....yeah, sorry." Mal sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. "I just meant that your job is probably safe even if you don't show up."

"You know Adrian is exactly the type of three day old spicy deep fried dick that's gonna spoil the rest of the dicks in the bag of dicks that would make idle threats 'cause it's the only kind of real control he has over anyone." Mako reached across the table, gently patting Aster on one arm. "So don't even worry about it. Besides, guy's a spineless coward, remember?"

Aster couldn't help a laugh at that, slowly lifting her head to rest her chin on her arms instead of burying her face there. "Wow. Joke about him being a slime, huh?" And she flashed a grin. "Classy."

"Got you to smile, though!" Emmy piped up. "So it did its job, at least!"

"Yeah, yeah..." Aster sighed, slowly pushing herself back and up to sit with her elbows resting on the table. "...thanks, you guys. I just..."

"Look, don't worry about!" Mako waved her hands quickly. "We were worried about you, alright? You take even little things super hard as it is, and this was kind of a really big thing! You died, girl; in a real awful way!"

"Honestly the fact you're not more messed up by it all is the impressive thing here!" Emmy went on, nodding her head so quickly it wobbled unsteadily on her neck and threatened to come toppling right off. "Death insurance is a real risky thing, if you get it from the wrong people; I know it was expensive, but I'm glad you at least listened and got it from the right, reputable people."

"Yeah..." Aster shook her head. "I guess it coulda been worse, huh?"

"A lot worse." Emmy nodded matter-of-factly. "Dad used to work for one of those cheap resurrection places. Their success rate for bringing people back was ninety percent, but y'know what they didn't advertise? That they only had a 13% 'complication-free' rating! Everyone else always had some kind of long-term issue, whether it was physical or mental or something else!"

"You remember what happened to Jonesy, after his accident." Mako went on gravely. "One slip-up during that construction assignment, and wham...no more Jonesy. Idiot only had the company-mandated minimums for his insurance. Two hundred coin out of pocket for death and revival insurance? He came back missing bones and with a personality disorder!"

"I know, I know!" Aster snapped, rubbing at her eyes. "And look, I'm grateful you guys convinced me to shell out for the full package to make sure nothing went wrong. I just...I'd really rather not think about it right now. Or ever again, if I can manage."

"....so, different topic then!" Emmy cut in, and reached up to pop her head off, taking it in both hands and leaning across the table, stretching her arms out with it in hand to quite literally look Aster directly in the face. "When's the last time you had a proper meal, young lady?"

"And don't give any of that 'yesterday' business, either!" Mako added, wagging a finger at Aster like a mother scolding a naughty child. "We all know you can barely cook anything to save your life, without a step-by-step recipe in front of you!"

"So spill it!" And Emmy quite literally tossed her head to Aster, making the wolf girl yelp and scramble frantically to avoid getting clocked in the face with it, and to catch it before it went tumbling away.

"For Terry's sake, Mal; don't do that!" Aster wheezed, finally managing to take hold of her friend's head and hold it up at arms' length. "Look, it's...it's been a while, alright? Day before yesterday was the first time I ate...anything at all, in a while."

"Well that just ain't gonna work!" Mako slapped her hands down on the table and stood up quickly. "C'mon, we're feeding you right; our treat!"

"....I don't have a choice in the matter, here, do I?" Aster groaned.

"Not a chance!" Emmy confirmed, as her headless body likewise got up.

"I hate you guys, sometimes." Aster just grinned, as he planted a quick peck on Mal's forehead before tossing her head back to its body.