Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Ginger
Is my head pounding from dehydration due to crying myself to sleep, or is someone pounding at the door?
I wake with a start, grabbing onto the armrests of my gaming chair.
The pounding continues. “What the fuck?”
Then comes the shouting.
“Ginger468! I’m here! Are you okay?”
My stomach is in my throat.
Nobody—not a single human being other than the person behind Grak—knows my username in Deadsky.
And that voice is most definitely familiar.
But that can’t be right.
I must still be asleep.
Groggily, I make my way to the outside door that I never use, because the steps are covered with snow and ice.
Do I answer the door? It seems like a really dumb move. At the same time, if he keeps carrying on like this, he’ll wake up my mom, who needs her sleep because she goes for treatment tomorrow. Also, I have a particular quirk that makes me morbidly curious. Call it the opposite of survival instinct.
Okay, so I’m dumb. But not that dumb. I reach for my brother’s old baseball bat that I keep by the door, just in case. We get a lot of customers wandering around, and sometimes even in the middle of the night. It’s one of the drawbacks of living where you work. You never know what you’re gonna get.
I grip the baseball bat in one hand, place the other on the doorknob, and twist.
Well, if I’m about to get murdered by a weird stalker from the game, at least my family will get to be on Dateline.
Dammit, my sister had better fucking call Dateline. True crime is the one thing we still have in common.
What stands on the other side of the door is, incredibly, like a real-life version of Grak from the game.
As impossible as it seems, someone has copied his entire look, and he’s here. It’s three a.m., and I’m face-to-face with an eight-foot carbon copy of my friend.
This is the sickest joke that anyone has ever done to me, and I’m furious.
“Who the fuck are you?” I whisper, my voice shaking as hard as the bat in my hand.
“Hello. You are Ginger? I am Grak.”
It sounds like Grak. When he opens his mouth, two small tusks appear to be jutting up from his bottom row of teeth. This is wild. He’s even wearing very lifelike green paint on his skin and wears a furry kilt. On his feet are fur boots.
As cosplay goes, it’s impressive. And also completely fucked up.
“Who are you and how did you find me?” I demand to know.
The man in front of me blinks. “You know who I am. I wished to be with you, and you wished for me. And now I am here. Well, that’s the short version.”
It sounds like Grak. He even uses words like Grak.
I can’t think straight. All I know is I’m freezing to death, standing here in the doorway.
“What do you want from me?” I say. “I don’t have any money.”
“Money. I didn’t come here for work. I came to be with you. My wife.”
I’m now feeling lightheaded and strange, and the bat in my hand feels impossibly heavy.
My vision blurs.
My knees no longer seem to work.
And my fight-or-flight instinct is replaced with an overwhelming need to sleep and reboot my entire consciousness.
Well, I fainted.
Now that I know the feeling that precedes it, I can tell someone before I hit my head on the floor.
But wait…it doesn’t feel like I hit my head or injured myself at all.
My eyes slowly open, and I find that whoever decided to prank me about Grak is still here.
I’m lying in my bed, and the big green face hovers over me.
I scream, which only makes Grak’s face close in on me.
“Ginger468, your screams will awaken your mother. She is upstairs, is she not?”
“Don’t hurt my mother!” I beg, bordering on sobbing.
Those heavy brows draw together. “I would never. I swear on my honor.”
I blink rapidly and finally accept the voice. It’s undeniably him. And I remember now that I’ve told my gamer friend almost everything there is to know about my family. He knows I live in my parents’ basement and that my mom is sick.
How could he do this to me? How could he use all this information to track me down? Why? To what end?
“Grak? I thought you were my friend! Why would you do this to me?”
He seems confused. “Catch you when you fall from faintness? This is what friends do.”
I grunt and try to sit up, but he has one big hand on my shoulder.
I slap it away. “What are you doing here?”
Grak smiles. God, the costume is super elaborate. The ears. The horns. The warrior bun. I’d be impressed if this were a fantasy gaming convention. But right now I’m too overwhelmed for that.
“You are unwell. But don’t worry. I will take care of you. Let’s review. You invited me here, and I came here on one of Santa’s sleighs.”
“So, you’re pranking me, and you’re a crazy person. Great,” I rasp.
“Ask me something only I would know,” Grak says.
“What?”
“Are you hearing me?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“Ask me a question only Grak would know,” he repeats.
I stare at him, running through different scenarios in my mind. I won’t call the police. He may be messing with me, but I don’t think he’d hurt me. Should I scream and wake up Dad? The last thing I need is my overprotective father shooting first and asking questions later.
Still, there’s something kind and sweet in his eyes, if delusional. This is definitely the person I’ve been gaming with.
“I…I can’t think,” I say.
He nods and says, “Very well. Your favorite dinosaur is a triceratops, and your favorite Christmas movie is A Muppets Christmas Carol.”
He means well. I can see that now.
But that doesn’t mean I should let my guard down. I don’t want to involve the police. I just want him to get home safe to his family, even if he doesn’t like that idea. Someone is looking for him, I’m sure of it.
“Okay, Grak,” I say. “It’s you. I believe you. Can I sit up now?”
He beams at me, and it’s the most beautiful smile, even with tusks that jut out from his lower set of teeth. He lets me sit up, and I cross my legs on the mattress. His massive form makes the springs sink so low that I can hear the box spring groan underneath.
“I don’t understand why you need to wear this costume for me. Or come to me in the middle of the night. Are you worried someone is looking for you?”
His heavy brows draw together. “No one is looking for me. I came to you because you’re my wife and you said you felt ill. I’m here to take care of you.”
“Take care of me, how?”
“I do what orcs do when they gain a wife.”
Uh oh.
“Which is what?” I say, humoring him until I figure out what to do.
“We prove our worth with feats of strength and endurance. And then we wait for the wife to confirm or repeal the marriage.”
I relax a little and smile. “Feats of strength such as…”
His face falls, and he looks at me sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck with one of those giant green mitts of his. “Well, for example, I crash landed into your pretty sign, and I carried the pieces around until I found your wood shop.”
“You what?”
“I fixed the sign and put it back up easily. Your father’s woodshed has seen better days, but it is well organized and nicely equipped for an average human.”
I gasp. “No one goes into Ron Allman’s wood shop. You can’t do that.”
“Oh. Well, if I fix the roof, will he let me continue to demonstrate feats of strength and skill?”
“Grak, I don’t think you understand. Ron Allman doesn’t let me, or Mom, or any of my siblings set foot in the wood shop.
He himself hasn’t set foot in there since Mom got sick, and now everything is covered in a layer of dust, and he’s not going to use it again until she’s better. Do you understand?”
“No.”
For a minute there, I almost bought into the whole real-life orc thing.
I cover my eyes with the balls of my fists.
“Ginger468…”
“Just Ginger.”
“Just Ginger, does your head hurt?”
“No, I just can’t believe I’m letting you fuck with me the way you’ve been fucking with me in the game.”
“Fucking with you comes later, after feats of strength and endurance. And now that we’re out of the game, I can speak more plainly.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. After I prove my worth to my wife, I pleasure you with my tongue until you are satisfied. Then and only then is the marriage sealed forever.”
I peek through my fingers. “Marriage? It was a video game wedding.”
“In my world, we simply speak our desires to be married, and we are married. Then the bride has the option of undoing the sealing if she is not impressed by her orc’s ability to provide. Both in material ways and in the realm of the marriage bed.”
I can’t help it. I have to know more. “Fine. Sure. Whatever. And what about the wife? What does she have to prove to be worthy of marriage?”
“Nothing.”
I bark a laugh. “Nothing? Come on.”
“All orc females are prized beyond precious jewels. They live as queens of the North Pole, second only to the elves, of course, and Mrs. Claus. Our females created these rules.”
I’ve heard enough. “Don’t tell me. You keep them all pregnant and barefoot in your little orc huts, where they cook and clean and do the laundry and raise the orc children, and pine after your giant dicks while you’re out hunting.”
Grak blinks at me. “I would not tell you that because it’s not true. Females are smarter, that’s why they are in charge of making the rules. Child raising and domestic duties are shared.”
Okay. As a made-up society goes, I hate it less.
But wait, I got him. “What about two male orcs that want to be together? Or two women? Or, what if you have an orc that doesn’t fit any of those norms? What do you do then?”
He shrugs. “It is up to them individually to prove their worth. The only tradition that matters is that. Strength and sexual prowess are prized above all things, no matter what category. Well…”
“Well what?”
“I left one thing out. Even above those things, the most important thing to an orc is family. If you have a family, even if you never find your mate, you will never be alone. Families are extremely important when finding a mate.”
Grak has me feeling guilty about that one. “But wait,” I say. “What about you? Won’t your family miss you?”
He sighs heavily and looks down. “As I’ve said, I have no family.”
Clearly, this man is tortured. So tortured that he has blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. So much so that he’s crafted an extremely elaborate and convincing costume, from the tusks in his mouth to the fur boots he wears on his feet.
Well, I’m going to help him. Somehow.
“Okay,” I say. “I believe you.”
His sad face transforms into a hesitant, hopeful smile.
“But first things first. You need to take off that costume and show me the real you.”
He blinks at me, appearing surprised. “Is that a ritual of humans? You examine…everything?”
“Yes. We have to be real with each other,” I say.
His tusks gleam in the low lights as he smiles.
Slowly, Grak comes to standing and turns away to face the wall. He pulls his feet free of the furry boots. Wait …wait just a damn minute. His feet. They are huge. Bigger than Dad’s. Way bigger than Thomas’s. There’s no way…
Next to go is the leather belt and satchel he wears over his kilt, and then the kilt itself.
And there’s nothing underneath.
Not a seam, not a zipper, not a stitch or a hook or anything to indicate that this is a costume.
“Uh…” I babble as my brain short circuits.
Grak looks at me over his shoulder, and my eyes finally accept the whole picture.
The white tusks, the dark eyes full of longing, the pointy ears, the heavy brow, the ridiculous thighs, and the broad, muscular back.
And the backside. The orc has a jiggly, jolly, bowl-full-of-jelly ass.
I mean, there is a real live orc in my room, and he has a dump truck back there.
Oh…my god.
I swallow and try to speak, but my throat is a desert.
Grak turns around to face me, and holy mother of yule logs.
“Should I begin the feats of strength now?”
“This can’t be real life,” I rasp.
It just can’t be. There’s no way I’m looking at a real orc in my basement apartment. There’s no way that I’m staring at an orc’s cock, and that it’s even bigger and better than I imagined in my pervy little brain, in all of its mesmerizing, veiny, ridged green glory.
“I am real,” Grak says.
“Holy shit…breathe, Ginger,” I say, feeling faint.
Finally able to meet Grak’s gaze, his face softens as he realizes something. “You are tired, Just Ginger.”
Shaking my head, I say, “Is it okay if I just freak out for a few more minutes?”
“I’ll allow it, Just Ginger.”
“Ginger. Just say Ginger.”
He nods. “You are tired and surprised to see me. I shall show myself out and I will prove myself tomorrow.”
I register what he says. “Out? Out where? It’s freezing!”
What am I saying? I can’t let him stay with me, because he’s a real monster. And yet, where is he supposed to go?
“I cannot sleep in your room tonight. Indeed, some mates are so looking forward to being alone together that they skip over the feats of strength, but I ask you to honor this for me. Since I have so little to hang on to when it comes to an honorable orc ancestry.”
Of course. I get it, even if I still can’t fathom that this is real.
“Wait,” I say. “Where will you go if you can’t go home?”
“I had not thought that far ahead.”
“There’s no heat, but there’s a cabin in the woods with a fireplace that works. And you can take this sleeping bag,” I say, going to retrieve my old sleeping bag from the closet.
“I will find the cabin you describe.” He takes the sleeping bag and kisses me on the forehead, his hand brushing the side of my neck.
My body tingles at this brief contact, even if my brain is still buffering that I’m in the presence of a real monster.
“I chose a wise and kind best friend and wife. Thank you.”
I feel stupid and guilty for letting him leave.
But I see what he’s doing. Beyond the tradition thing, Grak can see I’m overwhelmed, and he doesn’t want to force himself on me.
And I already really like that about him.
Somehow, he really is like the person I know from the game, and it’s going to take all my strength to stop blurring those lines.
Then again, I’ll probably wake up tomorrow and discover that this has all been a dream.