CHARACTER CREATION by Zaq Cass

Originally Published in Judith Sonnet presents: SCREAMS

After nearly a week working on it, Max was finally done. Monster Madness had promised the most expansive character creation ever offered in a game, and it did not disappoint. As someone who put hour upon hours into Sims characters, his Fallout character, and every other game that let him be anyone else, Monster Madness had sucked Max in with its nearly endless options for his character. Anything and everything was on the table.

At heart, Max was a perfectionist. Video games were an escape, a chance to be somebody else, and he knew that if he was in the middle of a mission or trying to craft something and he noticed anything he didn’t identify with in his character, he would regret his choices. Clothes and hair could be changed in the game, but the base look was permanent. He had to get everything exactly right, just the way that he wanted to be.

First, he had made himself. The best way to be someone else was to adjust how he already was. It took a while to get the sliders right, to figure out the right angle of his slightly hooked nose, and get his awkward posture correct, but his effort had paid off in the end. From there, he started changing things. He was constantly being made fun of for his short stature, for his pallid skin and saggy old-man hands. He got pushed around, unable to defend himself with his frail, slim body. He made the character taller, more muscular. Tanner skin. Hating the sandy brown hair he had inherited from his father and the thinning dryness he inherited from his mother, he changed the hair to white, making it longer and more voluminous. He added a sleek tattoo that he wouldn’t get in the real world, as his fear of needles was too strong.

Max searched tab after tab, finding horns, wings, and accessories that spoke to him as somebody he wanted to be. He had been exhausted when he found the partially burned skeletal hands, choosing them as a laugh, the most opposite of his naturally wrinkly hands. Looking over the entirety of his character from every angle, he couldn’t help but think the skeletal hands fit the vibe he was going for.

His game data told him that he was pushing eighty hours playtime, and he hadn’t even made it to the actual story of the game. Without the right character, it wouldn’t be worth it. Deep down, Max knew that. He wanted to be fully immersed, to be the person he wanted to be rather than stuck in the body he was given. Anyone could play a basic character or someone that they just added a few things to. To utilize the character creator fully and be who you truly were? That’s what it was meant for.

Double-checking all of his choices, he thought to himself that it was absolutely worth the time he sunk into it. The part of his brain that fed his perfectionism sighed in relief, and finally happy with the result, he hit “complete.”

The screen immediately went dark, and he waited with a lightness in his chest that reminded him of the night before Christmas. Character creation aside, Monster Madness was supposed to be the greatest game of all time. It had options upon options, and every choice a player made actually mattered. He waited for the screen to light back up, but nothing happened. The lightness in his chest turned to dread as he clicked his mouse and pressed random buttons on his keyboard, but there was no reaction.

“What the fuck,” he murmured, trying to get any reaction from his computer. He dropped down under his desk to see if anything had become unplugged, before he was taken aback by a strand of white falling into his eyeline. Sitting back on his calves, he grabbed a hold of the strand, holding it away from his face. He could feel the tug at the root of his head, signaling that it was indeed attached, and grabbed some more. White. His hair was thick and wavy and white as snow.

“What the hell?” he said. He stood up and was making his way to his bathroom to look in the mirror when his side started burning. He ripped off his t-shirt, watching fine lines start forming on his ribs as thousands of tiny pin pricks pressed into his skin. The sharp sting was too much for him to handle, the scent of ink wafting from him as he stumbled toward the bathroom, rubbing at his ribs.

Looking into the mirror, he could see his new white locks forming a mane around his face and the tattoo continuing to form on his ribcage. He could feel each push of the invisible needle into his side as the lines appeared, the stinging numbness reminding him of a particularly bad sunburn. He gasped from the pain, watching in awe as the tattoo kept forming, then suddenly, his head began throbbing.

Sweat dripped down his brow as his body temperature increased, a pressure building up in his forehead, and he watched in the mirror as two bumps formed under his stretching skin. He placed his hand against one of the bumps, trying to push it back in fear as his vision filled with stars. Against the pad of his fingers, the skin of his forehead began to split, and a hard bone started pushing against him.

The black horns broke through the skin, the smell of copper hitting his nostrils as blood pooled down his face. The holes in his forehead stretched, the thick bone of the horn pushing out quickly, stretching the exit wider until they rested fully erect from his head.

As he gripped the sink, trying to push through the throbbing headache made from the eruption of the horns, his spine locked up tight and then began to pull. His bones cracked and popped as his vertebrae pulled apart. His shins and joints followed suit, locking up and stretching away from each other, causing him to grow. His muscles tensed up and started to stretch against his bony figure, pushing against the skin and splitting it in various places as his body got used to his new stature. He watched as his skin grew darker, mending the splits in his skin as if a needle and sewing thread were patching him back together.

The sour taste of bile filled Max’s mouth, and he stumbled away from the sink, trying to catch the wall to stop himself from passing out. He took deep breaths between his yelps of pain, trying to push through, when the smell of burnt flesh came in tandem with a searing pain over his right eye. He brought his hand to the pain, feeling his skin bubble as the brand he had chosen in the game formed from his eyebrow down to his check. It had looked cool in the game, but the sweat from his fever mixing with the bubbling sear of his skin added to the pain of the freshly made wound.

Max finally gave up trying to stay upright as his stomach started distending, stretching, and sloughing off, muscle and organs exposed to the coolness of the bathroom. His dinner of chips and pop made its way up his throat, forcing him to vomit into the pool of flesh and blood on the floor below him.

As he tried to hold on to his abdomen, his mind blank and vision blurry, he knew what was next. He had spent five hours deciding on what abdomen plate he wanted for his character. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to get a handle on the situation, and waited for the inevitable.

Sharp scales slid from his exposed nerves, overlapping one another and digging into his body. The sharp slices felt like a knife digging into him. The dragon scales gleamed brilliantly in the game, but the only shine on them now was the dripping tissue they ripped off as they came in. They continued to overlap and tighten around his stomach, finally stopping the blood for pouring out but causing a new wave of nausea to overwhelm him. He tried to stop himself from puking again, but as he brought his hand to his mouth, the next transition began.

The fever that had covered the entirety of his body slowly started moving into only his hands. Simultaneously, his hands ignited in flame. His skin sizzled and popped, blisters forming in sections only to rupture, pus dripping into the mix of bodily fluid he knelt in. He screamed as his skin melted, dropping off his hand in ribbons. The fire dissipated, but the feeling remained, causing his heartbeat to pound against his temples. Looking at his hands, he could see the skin was sloughing off, hanging by threads.

His left hand having gotten the worst of it, he took his right hand and gingerly placed it around his wrist. Not wanting to vomit again, he looked away as he slowly degloved the hand until the melted skin fully peeled off. His middle three fingers were fully skeletal, with the remaining two only having a bit of flesh still attached.

Once the skin had been removed, he felt some relief. He wrapped his skeletal hand around his right hand and repeated the process. The skin peeled off slower, getting caught on the end of his middle finger, but with a sharp tug and a yelp of pain, he managed to remove the rest of his flesh from the bone.

Relief washed over him for a moment. The blood had stopped seeping from his new horns almost immediately, and the burning from his eye brand dulled into a small pulsing feeling. Breathing heavily, he looked down at himself. The dragon scale over his abdomen finally finished with weaving itself into place, and the tattoo along his ribcage finished forming as the feeling of a thousand needles stopped, replaced with a cathartic numbness.

The blood and vomit he knelt in had mixed into an emulsion of liquids, his peeled hands laying on top, and he forced himself to look away before he added more to the pile. He reached for the wall and pulled himself up, trying not to look toward the mirror. He knew what was left and wanted to get out of the small confines of his bathroom.

Barely making it to the doorway, he could feel the pressure in his shoulder blades starting to grow, and he gritted his teeth together, causing the canines to crack. He could hear the sound of the teeth in his head as they broke into two. He reached into his mouth and pulled out shards of teeth as well as the spicules in his gums as the pointed fangs started coming in to replace them.

His shoulder blades finally cracked as two sharp rods quickly shoved out of them, the sounds of ripping nearly drowned out by his screams. He dropped once again to the ground as the metal wings kept coming out, slicing rivulets of flesh as they protruded from his body.

He could feel the root of the metal wings that remained inside of his body fusing to his bones, cracking through the hardness of his shoulder blades as they bolted themselves in place. As the exterior portion finished making itself and snapping into place, Max finally passed out.

In his unconscious state, his body started fixing the damage, sealing off the wounds and stopping any more blood from escaping his body. His wings stretched behind him as he lay face down on the floor, the full wingspan bumping into the walls of his room. He continued to lay there, breathing shallow and ragged, as the adrenaline started to fade from his body.

From what sounded like miles away, a sharp ping made its way into Max’s mind, stirring him. Groggily, he slowly made his way to his feet and looked at the computer, which had lit back up.

Congratulations! Your character is complete!

The pain had disappeared completely, and as Max focused, he managed to control the metallic wings behind him. Grinning to himself, he started thinking of the people at school who had always made fun of him. He flexed his new muscles, appreciating strength he was not used to.

“Yeah,” he said with a smirk on his face. “This will do nicely.”