Running up my neck, heat warmed me despite the cold wind’s caress, likely from the stress of following that hollow in a dress.

  She was easy to find, but the fact was that I almost blundered right into her as I spooked through the various backyards of the neighborhood. She was standing so quiet and still that I had taken her for another piece of lawn furniture. Fortunately, she neither saw me nor heard my oath of surprise. She wasn’t like the last lady, jittery and mumbling to herself, and she had ceased her random knife slashing. She just stared at the pale light streaming from the void of the moonless night sky with those hollowed eye sockets and mouth drooped agape.

  I did what I do best and slinked behind her back. Bereft of anything else, I hefted an inscribed garden rock in hand and delivered the “Home Sweet Home” end of it into the back of the hollow’s skull. Ramming it with all the force of my weight and strength behind it, I expected the thing to crumple, but the creature didn’t fall, and instead let out a pathetic squeal of fright as if I’d struck a random, innocent woman in a senseless attack. I didn’t swing again as the thought crossed my mind that not all of these poor, eyeless wretches might be mindless.

  Hesitation almost cost me my life.

  The hollow spun around and swung a kitchen knife in a wide arc as she did a pirouette. If the blade had been a little higher, its edge would have slashed across my throat, but since I had a height advantage on my opponent, her counter attack merely made a shallow cut on my upper chest.

  Neither of us would get a second surprise attack.

  I grabbed the hollow’s wrist and held on for the life of me as she tried driving the point into the soft meat between my neck and shoulder. It was a gamble, but instead of fighting the supernaturally strong woman for her blade, I used the rock still in my right hand as a bludgeon to the side of her head. The creature’s blank expression never changed, even as my stone caved in her skull at the temple with three frantically delivered strikes.

  With barely a sigh, my opponent slumped into my arms, dead as the stone in my hands, but light as a feather. Even with her burnt out eyes and half a ruined face from my attack, she was a beautiful dame, all black hair and long limbs. She didn’t have eyelids to close, so I set her down as gently as I could, face set toward the sky she had seemed to love so much.

  A glint broke my attention from the dead beauty and I picked up the hollow’s kitchen knife, examining my new weapon. I thought the blade was glowing for a moment, shining pale-yellow with an ethereal light, but it was only the moonless moonlight streaming from above and in an instant the magical blade became mundane. Yet magic or not, this blade was far from common. It was one of those fancy custom jobs, the kind rich chefs bought for thousands of dollars. From handle to blade it was one solid piece of stainless steel and the knife edge looked like it was sharp enough to do some serious damage.

  The stinging sensation of something leaking down the edge of my shirt attested to that.

  It was a superficial wound, thankfully, but also a grim reminder that I was playing for keeps with these freaks. When I got the blood to stop flowing, I edged back to the cul-de-sac and found my two other playmates walking in circles around the block.

  That would be a problem.

  Smacking one of these things from behind with a rock was one thing, but taking on two at once was asking for it. I’ve been on both the receiving and delivering end getting jumped and in my thirty two years of life, I’ve never seen a two-on-one end in any other than the guys with the most numbers winning. It did not matter how big the man getting jumped was or how much mojo-jojo karate he knew. While you’re focused on one, the others take the opportunity to get you from behind.

  I needed to even the odds further in my favor.

  The vibration in my long coat pocket, now noise free, alerted me to a new message from my invisible observer. The message was short and to the point, like usual, but confusing. No surprise.

  “You should level up.”

  There was no reason to play dumb. While I wasn’t a huge gamer, I knew a thing or two about them. I swiped open the “stat” app on my phone and looked at the stat screen again. There wasn’t a big “level up” button, but small addition signs were next to every stat. I figured that in conjunction with the little notification that said I have one skill point available, then I could increase the number of any stat by one.

  What did they mean though?

  There were seven stats total: “physicality, reflex, intuition, vitality, agility, tenacity, and education”. The acrostic was not lost on me, stats saying what they will about my education otherwise, but even if I had an intuition as tuned as these numbers suggested, I was still somewhat lost. What was the difference between physicality or vitality? Reflex and agility? Aren’t those things basically the same?

  I had to dig back some in my memory, to my nerd days back when I was a corpo night security guard. One of the other guys had been big time into tabletop RPGs, so I joined a small group of them for a couple weekends of roleplaying. I chose the barbarian of all things, talking or making skill checks was not my thing when I just wanted to relax, and smacking bad guys with a club was much better. In that game’s system there was strength and dexterity, alongside will and endurance. There used to be more, but I guess the game designers had whittled it down over the years to appeal to a broader audience.

  Hmmph, I could see why.

  “Vital signs, vital signs,” I didn’t know strictly what vitality meant, so I started murmuring the word I knew that sounded similar. So if those were connected, then vitality probably had to do with my health and if strength was a common stat for game systems, then that was probably physicality. The other stats started to fall into place from there as I sounded out the words I didn’t know. Reflex was probably how well I reacted to things and agility was how fast I was.

  That just left intuition, tenacity, and education, but if the other stats were physical, then these three were mental. Intuition was my gut, tenacity is how much I could suck it up, and my education stat could take a walk for all I care. Sure, I skipped out on High School when I was sixteen, but how would knowing the capital of Nevada help me fight these hollow eyed monsters? This was stupid, but I was still curious, so I clicked on the addition sign next to “reflex”.

  I wished the person on the other end of the phone had warned me.

  It was like that feeling when you fall asleep on your hand and it wakes up all prickly and stinging until you get the blood back flowing, except the sensation was all over my body and ten times worse. From the tips of my toes to the every strand of hair on my head, I felt something coursing though me. I’d have screamed if I could have opened my mouth, instead my jaw clamped down so hard that I thought my teeth would crack from the pressure. Lucky for me my tongue was out of the way or I’d be talking a whole lot less.

  I rode out the wave of pain as best I could, I’d been subjected to getting shot with a stunner before as a part of my PI training, but even then this still sucked. When the worst of it passed and sensation started to return to my fingers and toes, I gasped for a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Still not able to stand, I scrambled back from the edge of the house, away from the cul-de-sac and into the backyard. Fortunately, those hollows hadn’t stumbled on me while I was incapacitated from leveling up my reflex stat or else I’d been easy dinner.

  Getting back to my feet was a little shaky, but I couldn’t sit on my derriere forever. Besides, I wanted to see if I felt any different. I tried jumping up and down a few times, did a couple squats, but aside from the usual creakiness that started to affect my joints when I hit my thirties, there was no noticeable change.

  “All that, for nothing?” I guess I should not have gotten my hopes up over some stupid video game mechanic on my phone, but I’d been expecting at least a little something-something. Well, if leveling up was not going to help get rid of the two problems shuffling around the cul-de-sac, then I’d have to handle it the old-fashioned way. Make it up as I go.

  Now, I could rush one and try my best to shank it to death before the other one joined the tango, but I know that if I tried that, then I’d have a ticked off hollow jumping on my back like white on rice. Besides, those things were strong, if the two female opponents had been any indication, then I’d have better luck wrestling with a gorilla. Something about losing their humanity must have unlocked their bodies’ potential, the same way a crack head can keep charging you even after you mag dump into their guts.

  I needed more supplies.

  Well, in this little cul-de-sac alone there were six houses. As long as my two friends stayed outside, then I had free reign to break in and help myself to whatever loot came along. Maybe there would be something to help me. A gun would be nice, oh so nice, but there was a fat chance of that since the big confiscation of ’53. Nah, I’d just have to look and see.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  The house with the backyard where I got my knife was first on my list and as fortune would have it, the back door was unlocked. My luck stopped there since I did not find anything of note that might help me kill those hollows. It was a single woman’s house, there were only two bedrooms and one of those had been converted into a home gym. I knew the chick was single since she had pictures of herself plastered all over the place. She had visited the coliseum of Rome, ran with the bulls in Spain, and even made one of those million-dollar trips to the lunar colony. She was a world traveler and she seemed so familiar. I thought she was the woman in the backyard, the one I had just slain and taken her knife, but that hollow had been young and in the prime of her life. The woman in the photos was aged, silver streaks marred her black hair and wrinkles claimed the youthful surface of her face like encroaching topographical lines on a map.

  Maybe it was her daughter I had knocked upside the head outside, but the uncanny resemblance made me uneasy and honestly a little guilty at the thought of the blood now on my hands. A queer flight of fancy took me and I went back outside, to the woman in the dress, and I carried her to the bed of that house. There wasn’t anything else for me to scavenge, so I left the dead woman there, surrounded by photographs that I was increasingly sure was her as I compared the lifeless visages. Even the best revitalizing treatments can’t make a person look so naturally young again without some telltale sign, but the resemblance was uncanny and I had more violent things on my mind and so I left that mausoleum without looking back,

  The next three houses were similarly empty of anything useful, though I found a dog pooper scooper that had a solid wood shaft that would have made for a good improvised weapon but I had my knife and left the scooper behind. It was the fifth house that I finally found a kid’s room with something useful, but flowing from empty house to empty house made me careless. The consequences of which made me learn that I should have read the quest text on my phone more carefully. It had read, “slay the four remaining hollows of Jensen Court”, which to me had meant the three hollows in the Cul-De-Sac and that first one I had sharded in the neck with a plate.

  But I didn’t get that quest text until after I killed the first hollow.

  There was one of those remote controlled cars in the child’s room and on seeing it, inspiration for taking out the remaining hollows came to me. I ran into the room, thinking that it was empty from the quick visual scan I took in the hallway and bent down to pick up the miniature vehicle. An angry huff and the creak of the door moving behind me saved my life.

  I leapfrogged forward from my crouched position and felt something brush through the hair of the back of my head. It was the end of a ballpeen hammer and holding it was a male hollow, face contorted in a snarl and raising it for another strike. I was still crouched on the ground, he had the height advantage, but I was still gripping my knife. If I couldn’t dodge his next blow, then I’d have to trade as best I could.

  The hollow swung in an overhead arc, but I stabbed forward like a Roman solider utilizing his gladius. A quick, straight jab is almost always faster than an overhead attack, so not only was the space where the hollow’s hammer landed was my back and not my head, but I got the kitchen knife’s blade sunken deep up into my enemy’s groin.

  I’d expected the man to yell or shrink back, but getting sliced in somewhere so dear hardly seemed to phase him. His hammer still struck with the full force of the hollow’s weight and would have paralyzed me had it hit my spine. Instead the hammer’s round point struck the meat under my shoulder blade and spiked a white hot jab of pain through my torso. I was too amped on adrenaline to let that stop me from attacking again, likewise the hollow was reeling back his arm for a second strike. The next exchange would be the last and decide who walked out of here.

  I hit him first once again, but this time the hollow did not get to strike back. My second attack ended with the kitchen knife sticking in the man’s throat, blade inserted through the front and ending in the tip poking out of the other side. There was no life to watch fade out of my opponent’s eyes, just two pits of darkness. The creature staggered back and collapsed, a doll with its strings cut and a man put to rest from his invisible torment.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid…”

  With my foe defeated, there was only one person left to take my excess anger on and that was myself. The hairs on my back were still standing on end, like I’d dunked a whole pot of coffee at once, but the pain was flaring up on my back where the hollow had hit me with his hammer. It felt like the worst muscle stitch I’d ever had in my life, but thankfully moving my right arm in a rotation did not make it flare up. I yanked my knife out of the hollow’s throat and wiped the black goo on its clothes, it wouldn’t mind anyway, just like it wouldn’t have minded that I raid the bathroom for a little pain meds.

  I was hoping that there might be some aspirin or something, but to my surprise this house was filled with some serious dope. The dude had everything from A to Z, acetaminophen of course, but also codeine, Dilaudid, morphine, and everything in between. I’d kicked down plenty of crack houses before, driving out freaks so that the land could be refurbished, but even those places had opiate reversal agents like Narcan on hand in case of an overdose, but this cat didn’t have any at all.

  I was tempted to take a crank of the good stuff, just to get rid of the pain, but I didn’t want to be goofed up and have my face ripped off by one of the big uglies roaming around. Even sober, my reflexes had barely been enough to dodge that hammer earlier.

  My reflexes.

  I was a jumpy guy, saved my bacon on more than one occasion, but I’d been on another level back there. Maybe there was something to that stupid leveling up after all. Whatever, my back screamed at me again and tore my attention away from navel gazing. I needed to pop some pills.

  I made momma proud and steered clear of the opiates, a thousand milligrams of acetaminophen would have to do for now. My liver wouldn’t like it, but it’d have to take a rain check. Imagine my disappointment when the water from the bathroom faucet didn’t turn on. Didn’t stop me from dry swallowing the four pills, but it would have been nice. I was really starting to dislike Hopeville.

  Back at the kid’s room I retrieved my hard won prize of an RC truck, but on seeing the dead hollow again, another idea seized me. I picked up the fallen hammer and tucked it into my belt, while also searching the house for duct tape. Fortunately, my hammer striking friend had a thick roll of the sticky stuff and on grabbing it, I doubled back to the pooper scooper from earlier and broke off the flimsy shovel end of the scooper so that there was only the stick. Taking my knife, I duct taped it to the end of the stick and the end result was a homemade spear.

  It was time to take this fight to the streets.

  Someone must have been watching over me, since both hollows were where I had left them, muddling around under the cul-de-sac’s street lamps. My plan hinged on a fresh pair of batteries slapped into the remote car’s controller and so I put the RC car on one side of the edge of the cul-de-sac and then circled around the other side. I was afraid that I might be too far away, but my hopes jumped up when the little car started moving at my direction. It was awkward to control at first, but I got the handle on the thing after a minute of testing. Fortunately, neither hollow seemed to notice the little car buzzing in circles on the sidewalk until I purposefully aimed it at the hollow that was as big as a truck.

  The remote controlled car smacked the creature with all the force that a small piece of plastic going five miles an hour could and this seemed to finally catch the monster’s attention. The big lug tried stomping down on the miniature car, but I’d already sent my toy speeding away from the hollow. Enflamed by this hit and run, the hollow gave chase to the toy, down the block and all the way to a parked car in the street. When the little car went under the bigger, real car, the hollow did not pause and dived in like a hawk for does for a rabbit, yet the big oaf was not nearly so majestic as one of those birds of prey and appeared to get stuck, legs flailing and no progress made getting out.

  Now was my chance.

  I darted out of the bushes and charged the lone hollow still under the street lamps of the cul-de-sac. This one had not even noticed that its compatriot had left and only noticed me at the last possible moment. As it saw me charge it tensed and threw its arms wide, but I jammed the tip of my spear straight through the hollow’s gut and pushed the creature back several feet with my momentum. Yet it still stood and did not lose balance.

  The hollow swiped for my face, but on seeing that it could not reach me with the range my makeshift spear provided, it did something a normal man would not do. It grabbed the spear that was still lodged in its belly and started pulling itself along the shaft, towards me. It was fortunate that I had another weapon.

  Left hand gripping my spear and holding the hollow back, I used my right to grab the hammer off of my belt and deliver a blow to the hollow’s face. The injured muscles on my back protested and my swing terminated in a soft blow on the creature’s cheek. A soft blow with a hammer was still a blow with a hammer and enough to make shards of broken teeth come sputtering out of the monster’s mouth, but not enough to dispatch it. With its own right hand, the hollow grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and tried drawing my face towards its gnashing, broken teeth, but a second hammer strike landed right on its temple and ended the struggle.

  I had not planned on that fight taking so long, but luckily the other hollow was still stuck under the car, squirming to reach the RC car. I did not play any games nor did I play fair. I stabbed the hollow in its exposed lower back repeatedly with my spear until it stopped moving and I ended it’s fruitless hunt. This final kill also ended mine.

  After I killed the final hollow, my phone started blowing up with notifications.

  “Quest Completed! 500 resonance awarded!”

  “Level 3 attained! Shop unlocked!”

  “New Quest!”

  On top of all those notifications, my phone started ringing from a call. I answered immediately and heard the woman’s voice again, “Congratulations, you’ve leveled up.”

  “Hey, talk to me, what’s going on?!”

  Of course, she hung up.

  I was alone, knee deep in the dead on a street in the middle of what I could only guess was Hell. Sure, I had won the battle for Jensen Court, but the bright lights of the rest of Hopeville beckoned. This fight had only just started.