(I’ve updated my avatar for the duration of this play-through! Should you be reading this after the cats have resumed their normal place by my name, it’s shown below.)
> PUSH SHACK
You set your shoulder to the corner of the shack and give it a shove. The whole structure slumps, then leans, then falls over with a sound of splintering wood and tearing tar paper.The walls fall back and outward, somehow not falling onto the (what is that?) stone altar that once stood inside the shack.
A swathe of milkweeds are knocked down, and a cloud of dust drifts up from the shadows, seeming to turn more solid in the sunlight far above.
“Knocked down…” Oh no; it happens just that easily. The lyrics of a song pop into your head unbidden: I get knocked down / But I get up again / You’re never going to keep me down!
> LISTEN
You hear nothing unexpected.> I
You are carrying:
a giant milkweed leaf
a dog-eared book
a pull-string doll
a glass jar containing an insect
a half-full styrofoam coffee cup
a familiar gold wristwatchAn earworm is lodged deeply in your head.
> X EARWORM
You have a strange and terrible fancy that an earworm is attached to your brain with a thin tendril.The earworm is seemingly resistant to all forms of interaction, and simply acknowledging it gives it strength:
I get knocked down / but I get up again / you’re never going to keep me down! Well, Chumbawamba is still stuck in your head.
[Author’s note: messing with the earworm is entirely optional. Not that I would try to dissuade you from it!]
> SING
Your lips sing along, almost involuntarily, to the earworm in your head:He drinks a whiskey drink / he drinks a vodka drink / he drinks a lager drink / he drinks a cider drink! Damn it, Chumbawamba is still stuck in your head.
Look, the earworm-as-harmful-sensation/metaphysical parasite thing is pretty amusing, but it strikes just a little bit too close to home for me to mess around with much. It’s an optional puzzle, and it mercifully confines itself to this one spot, so I’m going to let 1/84th of Naomi’s spectrum of existence just live with the damn thing.
> X ALTAR
A six-foot long and three-foot high altar of pale green stone, polished smooth. The sides are humped and bulged, suggesting poreless coral. The top is flat, and bears a shallow impression in the shape of a human body, with a slightly deeper cavity at the top for the face.
~I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS~
> LIE ON ALTAR
You get onto the stone altar.You lie down, settling your body into the impression and your face into the cavity at the end. Is it even you doing this? It feels like the most natural action in the world.
As you press your face down into the cavity, you feel something wet; your skin has met a tangle of slimy, orange strands that were growing inside the cavity.
Your face turns numb. You are overtaken with convulsions, and the involuntary flailing of your limbs causes you to fall from the altar. The numbness spreads down your neck and across your torso as you lie frozen, body askew, at the base of the altar.
It takes but a few hours for your whole body to be sheathed in wet, orange strands.
Your breathing slows as your lungs gradually fill with fruiting bodies. Perhaps the slime reacts poorly to tears, as the last part to be overgrown with mold is your eyes, though eventually, as dusk falls, blurred orange tendrils knit themselves together at the edges of your vision. Their intricacy strikes you as ghastly and beautiful all at once.
*** Death, Slow and Awful ***
Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command or TAKE BACK the action that sealed your fate (for when UNDO is not enough)?
>
A not-so-fun fact: during Cragne Manor production, our coordinator Jenni found her home tainted by black mold such that they had to evacuate the building. Then, they had to evacuate the next building in which they tried to take up residence, because they were now unwittingly a vector for mold transmission.
The prevalence of this topic on the group’s Slack channel was such that this game features—at an even higher frequency than one might ordinarily expect—various malicious molds, fungi, plants, and other terrestrial antagonists originating from outside the animal kingdom.