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Gregory Demetrios didn’t get many nights off. Ever since Nelli had become Baron Griffith, his nights had been full. He was more or less now her head of security. It paid ridiculously well. All that hazard pay was adding up. If he lived long enough to see retirement, Gregory was going to die a wealthy man.
In the meantime, he had a little extra money to play with. He was able to buy nice clothes and a nice car. Nelli had insisted on both. When he represented her, he had to look good. He couldn’t help but want a little something just for himself though. He decided to invest in a new gaming PC. It gave him something to entertain himself with on one of his very few nights off.
Tonight was one of those nights, and Greg knew just how he wanted to spend it: wasting time with cold beer and video games. Greg cracked open a beer, turned on the PC, and loaded up Dead by Daylight. It wasn’t a game he played very often, but it was one he played well when he did. It used to be his go-to when he tired of first person shooters.
He put his headphones on and took a few swigs of beer as he waited for the game to finish updating. He wrinkled his nose. Beer didn’t taste as good as it used to. Few things did, after tasting Nelli’s blood. He sighed. Fucking blanks and their fucking addictive blood. It’s how they snag people. It was how she snagged him. Well, between death or survival, Gregory was going to take survival every time. Even if that survival meant he was now technically what they called a “ghoul.”
It wasn’t such a bad life. It paid well, at least.
Gregory soon got into a killer game. The lobby wait did not take long, considering it was well after midnight. He supposed lots of people must be up late gaming on this server. As Ghostface, Greg crouched into the tall grass on the map and started his hunt. His potential victims, the four survivors, were random strangers on the internet. One by one, over the course of the next thirty minutes, Gregory hunted and hooked the survivors, sacrificing them to the mysterious Entity who was at the centre of the lore in this game. Things were going well until it came down to the last survivor. They were running a very stealthy Nea Karlson build under the username “minotaur777.” Try as Gregory might, he simply could not find her.
“Where the fuck did you go?” he mumbled to himself as Ghostface stalked around the map. “Ah! There you are!” He had spotted her, and now the race was on to the escape hatch.
Minotaur777 beat Greg to the hatch by mere seconds. Greg chuckled, happy with how the game had gone. He was even glad one had gotten away. Minotaur777 had played a good game.
“GG,” Greg typed into the post-game chat.
Minotaur 777 sent a “gg” in reply.
A sudden thought occurred to Greg. He felt like playing some survivor games now, but they were always better when played with friends. He wasn’t in touch with his old gaming guild any more, but maybe this stranger on the internet would play with him. He could ask. No harm in that.
“Want to swf with me?” Greg typed, hoping that Minotaur777 hadn’t left the chat yet.
They hadn’t. “Sure,” they replied.
Greg added them to his friends list and set up his microphone. He hoped that minotaur777 wasn’t a douche. If they were, he could always block them. It was no skin off Greg’s nose. He entered a shared survivor lobby with minotaur777 and turned on his mike.
There was a ping notification as minotaur777 entered voice chat. Greg hopped in right after.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Greg asked, friendly but brisk.
“Going fine,” minotaur777 growled.
Greg, who had been clicking through David King’s bloodweb, paused. His eyes widened. He knew that voice.
“Wait, do I know you?” he asked.
“Probably not,” minotaur777 said.
“No, I know your voice,” Greg insisted. The more minotaur777 spoke, the more sure he was. “Did you ever work with the LAPD or something?”
Minotaur777 sighed with a heavy growl. It made the hairs on the back of Greg’s neck stand up. “No. Now are we going to play, or should I block you for asking too many annoying questions?”
“We can play. Sorry, I just… I know your voice from somewhere. Never mind.”
Gregory and minotaur777 soon got into a game. They worked well enough together as team mates. Against Legion on the Hawkins Laboratory map, they were soon the only two survivors left. They stealthed and snuck their way around, successfully evading the killer and finishing generators. The entire time, Gregory could not shake minotaur777’s voice. He knew he knew it from somewhere. Not the FBI, not the Inquisition… someone he had met more recently...
It hit him as the game ended and his and minotaur777’s characters ran through the fog. He knew where he had heard that growly voice before.
Fuckin’ blanks…
“Hey, um… feel free to block me if you want but I think I’ve figured it out,” Greg said. He finished his beer with a grimace.
“Figured what out?”
“Where I know you from. You’re um… you’re one of Nelli’s friends, right?”
Minotaur777 growled again. It confirmed Greg’s suspicions.
And ‘minotaur’ because of that fucking labyrinth fucked-up impossible maze thing he lives in. Shit.
“I’m not her friend, but I do know who you’re talking about,” minotaur777 said. “I guess that means you are who I think you are.”
Greg glanced at his screen name and sighed. He had meant to change it away from the joke name he had put in a few months ago, but had forgotten to. He was currently “MrDaffodil.”
“Did my stupid screen name give it away?” Greg asked.
“Kind of, yeah.”
Greg opened another beer. “So, Jasper, what do we do now? You want to keep playing?”
Jasper was quiet for a few seconds as he considered this. “Do you want to?”
“Actually, I… I kind of do,” Greg chuckled, surprising himself. He didn’t like Jasper, and he knew Jasper hated him, but at the moment, it was more like they were just two dudes playing video games. “I’m trying to have a quiet night, first one in a long time and… I don’t have a lot of friends to game with any more, so if you’re down for it, yeah, we can keep playing.”
“Sure. We can keep going for a little while,” Jasper said, “but if you piss me off, I’m DCing.”
“Same,” Greg grunted with a smile.
“We’re not friends,” Jasper snarled.
“No, I know we’re not. I completely agree.”
“Just… so long as that’s clear,” Jasper muttered as he readied his character up to play another round.
Greg readied up too. “Yep. Perfectly clear.”
Friends or not, Greg got the impression that this ugly blank body may be in the same lonely boat that he was. He missed playing games with his high school guild. Work, keeping the Masquerade, and being nocturnal had been hell on Gregory’s social life. He could simply forget about dating. He doubted that Nelli would let him date at all. He cringed, picturing her going after any poor mortal who might take an interest in him. She was pretty possessive of him, and though it creeped Greg out, there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He was in too deep.
Thinking about Jasper though, Greg remembered Nelli telling him something about Eva leaving, and the last time he had seen her, she had been with Jasper. They looked like they had been close. Nelli had been unable to get any information about it from Jasper, so far as Greg knew.
“So uh… how’s bachelor life treating you?” Gregory asked. It felt forced and awkward, and he didn’t imagine Jasper was going to share much with him. It was worth a shot though.
Gregory wasn’t surprised when Jasper immediately shot that chance down. “Let’s keep it to game chat. Keep our personal shit out of it.”
Greg nodded to himself. “Sure. Got it.”
They got into a game not long after that, and soon were both distracted with repairing generators and running for their lives.
Hours passed, though it didn’t feel like it did. Eventually, Jasper told Greg their previous match was going to be his last game. “I’ve got some shit to do before I sleep.”
Greg checked the time. It was almost four in the morning. “Shit. How’d it get to be so um… early? Late?”
“It happens,” Jasper muttered.
“Well… thanks for the games minotaur777,” Greg said, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
“Sure, Mr Daffodil,” Jasper snickered.
“Hit me up again if um… you need some co-op or whatever, I guess.” Gregory blinked. He hadn’t meant to say that, but it had spilled out. For a second, he had forgotten that his team mate was a blank body, and a disgusting one at that. It had been so easy to forget though. In game and in chat, Jasper had just seemed like another gamer.
“Sure,” Jasper muttered. “Good night.”
Greg opened his mouth to say something else, but minotaur777 had logged off. He sighed and took off his headphones. He was torn. He had gotten the night off wasting time and playing video games he had wanted, but it hadn’t been the escape from the stupid, mixed-up Kindred world he had assumed he was going to get.
Tired and in an odd, mixed mood, Gregory shut down the computer, went to the bathroom and went to bed. Fucking video game playing blanks… and fuck him for having fun playing with one. What was his life, anymore?