Chapter 2
“Come on! You stupid fucking—” I turned the key again, willing my car to turn on.
Or the engine to roll over, or whatever the hell was supposed to happen when you put your key into the stupid hole and turned, turned, turned.
This useless pile of scrap had been on its last legs for a while, but it couldn’t die today—today was too important.
Surely whatever god was assigned to cute girls with beater cars they'd been driving since high school wouldn't do me dirty like this.
Dorothy had to have a couple more good months in her. Or, at the very least, a few hundred more miles.
I was already running late since hair and makeup had taken longer than I intended, and there was zero shot I’d make it on time if I had to take the train.
There were a lot of things in this life I was willing to be late for—doctor’s appointments, trips to the salon, funerals—but not my first opportunity to actually have a say in my favorite game of all time.
Not a fucking chance.
“Come on!” I snapped, slamming my hands on the plush pink steering wheel cover so hard I worried I’d trigger the airbag as my frustration got the better of me.
Okay, Eva, think, what worked last time?
I jiggled my keys, humming the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel, which, in theory, had absolutely nothing to do with getting the car to start, but I swear it did the trick a few weeks ago when she wouldn't start in an Omegamart parking lot.
Just as I was about to resign myself to being fleeced by a ride share, the car rattled and then let out a little clunk before the engine gargled to life.
“Fuck yeah, Dorothy!” I praised, patting the dash. "I knew you could do it, just needed a little motivation."
I didn't know what kind of person, or car, would consider Pop Goes the Weasel motivational, but as long as it continued to work, I didn't care.
Especially since Dorothy had enough check lights on that I'd affixed a piece of black electrical tape over them so that I didn't have to think about it anymore.
Watching the dash light up like a Christmas tree after a struggle like that had been demoralizing as fuck. And now? Problem solved.
She might have been an old, beat-up, smelly hunk of junk.
But she was my hunk of junk, and for the most part, she got me where I needed to be…
So long as she turned on. And with a couple of tricks or sometimes giving her a little space to relax before I tried again, that was most of the time.
I wouldn’t replace her until I absolutely needed to—not out of some high-horsed environmental principles or anything, I just didn't want to use my limited savings to replace something that still worked, like, eighty percent of the time.
Okay, fine, like… sixty-five. Sixty, if I were being realistic.
I’d been saving for the better part of a year, and at the rate it was going, the only staff I'd be able to afford to hire to help me get my studio up and running would be unpaid interns.
And I was pretty sure that interns only wanted to work for already-successful companies.
Something that'd look good on their resume, not start-ups in pre-production on their first indie title.
Somewhere like Freespire.
Though I’d been going live on Streamverse for years, I never really felt like I'd had my big break.
Even when long hours on Kill Floor catapulted me onto the front page, turning my usual viewer count from fifty to several hundred, I still felt like an industry outsider.
But as much as it was a setback, it was my strength, and I knew the experience I offered my viewership was unique to anything else out there.
At the end of the day, I was an entertainer, and I planned to leverage that as long as I could…
but I couldn't be a glorified internet proxy girlfriend forever.
Sooner rather than later, I wanted to stop playing games and start making them.
Ideally, at my own studio. Somewhere I could take my ideas from hundreds of notes on my phone into the real world.
Or as much of the real world as a girl could manage, given that video games were still on a screen.
There just weren’t many companies that specifically catered to people like me, and I wanted to change that. Girls wanted to play lore-rich, story-driven horror games as much as guys—we just wanted the option to have cute characters, too.
And pets! Yeah, that was a good idea. I’d remember that.
I was already imagining my character running around with a little bunny hopping after her as I pulled out of my parking space and onto the road, letting my GPS guide me.
As far as my dream of opening my own studio was concerned, I needed a bit more experience in the backend before I’d feel comfortable taking the leap.
Freespire was the perfect place to start.
The company's biggest hit was a competitive survival horror game called Kill Floor, where you played either a killer or a survivor trying to escape dozens of spooky scenarios with your life.
The very game that I’d made my career with.
They’d invited me to come down to their office to playtest some new maps and characters they planned to release for the next season. Super top secret, the kind of thing that required an NDA before they’d even confirm why they wanted me to come in—I was fucking buzzing.
It was pretty hard to break into the horror genre as a woman, much less get taken seriously.
And I was far from the typical horror fan with my bubblegum pink hair and wardrobe to match.
Plus, to make matters worse, at least in the eyes of the over-puritanical general populace, I also streamed on SLCK’d.
I wasn't anywhere close to as racy as Tara, but being a sex worker didn't exactly open up a lot of doors when it came to opportunities involving marketing dollars.
Fucking stupid if you asked me, what was going to sell cologne better than your fake internet girlfriend telling you that she loved it?
But finally, finally! Someone had taken a chance on me. And not only that, they were looking for my feedback and input? I wasn't going to let anything, especially not Dorothy, stop me from making a good impression.
My viewership numbers were stronger than ever.
I was winning matches like I was trying out for the pro circuit.
And, this morning, my hair decided all on its own to look absolutely perfect, the little braids decorating my waist-length pigtails adding just the right amount of texture to an otherwise simple hairstyle.
I. Was. Killing. It.
And it was only going to get better.
It took a bit longer than I would've liked to get to the studio—the gridlock traffic of the midmorning was a bit of a surprise. It’d been a long time since I’d had what most would consider to be a ‘typical job’, but like, didn't most places need you in the office by eight or nine? It was wild that at nine-thirty there were still so many commuters on the road. Luckily, the building had its own parking, so I didn’t have to mess around looking for a place to ditch Dorothy before I collected my ticket and headed inside.
From the information packet, I knew that I needed to go to the fifty-eighth floor. The elevator doors opened the moment I pressed the button, like they knew I was in a rush.
After I was ascending into the sky—and towards what I hoped was my future—I reached into my bag and pulled out my favorite lip gloss, applying an even coat that gave my mouth the perfect pink, glittery shine.
It's going to be a piece of cake, I told myself, trying to calm the nerves that had me fidgeting with my clothes in the reflection of the stainless-steel doors.
You're charming. People love you. And this will give you a chance to network and get some insider knowledge about what it's really like to run one of these things.
Everything I want wants me more.
I repeated the affirmation to myself until the doors opened, spitting me out into a row of elevators opening to the lobby, tucked neatly behind a pair of glass double doors bearing the company's name and logo—a little orange paint dab swish with thick sans serif font.
Freespire.
“Hey,” the beta behind the desk called, a pair of chunky hot pink glasses perched on the edge of her nose, and her light brown hair pulled up into a pair of slightly asymmetrical space buns. ‘Flora,’ her nametag read. “You here for the playtest?”
“Uh, yeah, sorry I'm a little—”
“Late? Don't worry, they were running behind anyway,” she said, clicking her mouse a few times. “You must be Eva, right?”
“That's me,” I nodded, tucking my hands behind my back to stop from picking at my nails.
“Perfect, here's your visitor's badge, make sure you wear that so it's visible,” she offered me a black lanyard with orange lettering down the side, the card on the bottom, in large letters marking my name, ‘EVA,’ and my—however temporary—role, ‘playtester.’
I could've screamed with excitement, my fingers trembling as I took the badge and put the lanyard around my neck, fluffing out my hair.
“Let me walk you. I know you’ve already signed the NDA, but it's best that you don't stumble into any place you're not supposed to be.”
“Thank you,” I said as she rounded the desk.
I wasn't tall, but this girl was tiny, barely grazing my shoulder as she led me through the lobby into a seating area with a couple of people working on laptops.
Windows encased the space, flooding the floor with light as we wove between couches and low tables towards a metal staircase that led to a small loft with more seating above, a half-wall separating the open-floor-plan office from the landing.
“I love your hair,” the girl said as we walked.
I nearly missed it, I was so busy gawking at… everything. The rows of desks, the glassed-in breakout rooms, and offices. And, the most impressive thing—giant, true-to-size statuettes of the Kill Floor survivors and killers dominating the center of the space.