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………………………………..it was really weird that he wanted to put that headset on.
Normally, if this was your average, everyday headset, it wouldn’t be weird at all. That was what the things were made for, after all; to be worn so you could experience the wonder that was virtual reality. The most immersive form of gaming in the world. He’d done it before, gaming was one of his favorite pastimes and he would admit he had dabbled in VR in his time.
What made the temptation weird was the story behind this specific headset.
From what he could piece together, it was one of a limited series put out by some old company called C&A that went belly-up in the late-90s. The story, which sounded more like an urban legend, was that the company was developing a new kind of video game to release along with their new VR headset, as a way to help promote the new gadget as something revolutionary, something that had never been seen before.
Not a bad idea, in principle anyway.
But supposedly, things had gone very wrong.
The story went that once they were almost done with the game, the head developer was supposed to try the headset in a private test. Then, the day the test was supposed to happen, he just……………..disappeared.
Nobody saw him for days, and the next statement to come out of C&A was that the guy had unfortunately died from a sudden heart attack, and because of that, the company were going to shelf the product until further notice.
If that had been it, it might have been the end of the story. Just one of those terrible things that happened that led to a project being shuttered.
But conspiracy theorists latched onto what had happened at the same time.
Three other prominent members of the game design team disappeared at the same time as the project lead, and a leaked company report showed that the three of them were also supposed to be watching and taking notes during the initial test. C&A managed to get the document off the internet reasonably quickly, but enough people had seen it that it caused some rumblings.
A week or two after the company reported the lead’s death, they reported that the man’s widow, who was one of the additional three missing staff members, had officially been reported as missing to the police, and made vague remarks of her possibly having suffered a nervous breakdown due to the death of her husband.
Despite its intention, that remark only raised people’s suspicions.
The further comments, about how the two others had unfortunately been found dead from an unspecified accident, only raised people’s suspicions further.
The fact that the authorities refused to comment on anything else related to the additional missing C&A employees, with even the simplest of questions being brushed aside, made those suspicions rise to the moon.
A few years after that incident, the company, whether because they poured too much money into their newest project, or because they had suffered too much bad publicity and public suspicion, was officially bought out and the heads retreated into an isolated, but reportedly comfortable, retirement.
The thing that actually brought down the company, however, didn’t disappear so quietly.
C&A already believed what they were selling was going to be a hit, and had already jumped the gun on producing more headsets even before the prototype was done testing. Thanks to some lucky looters finding an abandoned warehouse full of the headsets, they ended up in circulation through……………..mostly unofficial channels.
Every once in a while, someone found one of the models in an old C&A building and sold it as a piece of video game memorabilia or for other people to take it apart for the precious minerals in the computer chips.
Personally, he had gotten his through the first method.
His old one had broken and he didn’t want to dish out the money for a new one at an electronics store, so he bought this one from an acquaintance of his for 75$.
He had never worn it before, though.
A lot of………kooky stories surrounded this line, with the most popular saying that there was something wrong with the electronics in them and that anyone who put one on would have their brains fried by the electricity. That was what a lot of people said happened to the missing employees.
A few others said that it was a path to immortality; that C&A had secretly been working on consciousness upload and that anyone who used the headsets would be permanently uploaded to the game that was being developed.
From there, the stories only got weirder and more outlandish, and the ones he had already listed were fantastical enough in their own right.
Consciousness upload?
Really?
This thing was made in 1995! Even now that was a distant, sci-fi idea instead of even being close to a reality!
And as for the headset frying the mind of the wearer, that was probably just some tech phobic, pseudo-scientific theories instead of anything real.
He knew big corporations were ‘complete and utter evil’ and whatever bullshit people liked to say to seem educated, but they weren’t stupid. Who would actually make a headset that had enough juice to destroy someone’s brain?
That was a bit more than just corporate neglect and veered more into complete stupidity.
So no, he didn’t really believe in those stories………………………………….why was there a long line right after the statement as if there were more to it?
There wasn’t!
He didn’t believe in those old creepypastas! There wasn’t a shred of evidence to them!
Ok, sure, the whole disappearance thing was true, and it was totally suspicious, he could admit that, but the company probably didn’t like the way the game was going and had those guys killed. That was a simpler explanation than whatever half-baked theories had been churched out by losers who were desperate to contribute anything to the brand new, shiny internet.
……………………………………………………well, there was that one newspaper he had seen.
It was how he first fell down the rabbit-hole of those urban legends about C&A’s headsets, actually.
He usually didn’t read newspapers, but four or five years ago, he saw a rack of them at his favorite coffee place one morning with the most………enticing headline.
Local Real Estate Agent’s Body Found, Headset Melted to her Face
C’mon! If you had seen something like that, your morbid curiosity would make you pick it up too!
There were pictures, surprisingly enough, usually the families of the deceased declined to have stuff like that splayed out where everyone could see.
The woman, someone named Elenor or Elizabeth or something like that, had supposedly found it in a house she was going to try to sell and had stolen it, trying it on one evening, probably just to see what was on it.
They found the body two days later, when her boss went to her house to see why she hadn’t gone into work for the last two days.
In the present, while he was still staring at that headset he had put on the coffee table, he grimaced as he remembered the picture.
That woman, Elenor/Elisabeth, was a redhead, and he had thought the most gruesome thing when he first saw the picture of her body.
It was that the color of her hair now perfectly matched the color of the red hot, angry burns around the headset.
He had seen some violent things before but the way the burnt face flesh seemed to have almost melted onto the dark grey metal of the device? The point where the red burns became black and charred at that point where the skin met the metal? The fact that the rest of the body had already decayed a bit, making the image even more disgusting?
It was the second goriest thing he had ever seen in his life.
The only thing that beat it was………………………………something that he didn’t like to think about.
Anyway, the paper mentioned that the headset was one of those ones from C&A, and that send him down the rabbit-hole that led him to learning all about them.
When he had purchased the headset himself a few months ago, he had hesitated and almost called the deal off when he learned what company had made it, the image of that woman’s melted face flashing across his mind.
But he bought the thing anyway, telling himself that it was probably just an electrical error in that specific headset instead of a literally fatal flaw in the whole production line.
After all, like he said before, making every single headset in the line powerful enough to fry someone’s brain was just utterly moronic. Much more likely it was just an isolated incident.
And yet, he had still never put on the headset.
While a part of it was because trying something new was the last thing on his mind lately, another part of it was that every time he looked at it, that image of that dead body flashed through his mind again, making him hesitate.
But today, he was really tempted to just throw (probably misplaced) caution to the wind and just throw the thing on. Despite everything that had been going on the past few months, despite the chance that putting on that device could kill him, despite all of that, he really wanted to try that thing on.
He was really bored today and was in the mood for something new, something that might help take his mind off of……………..things.
So he sat up straighter from his spot on the couch and leaned forwards, putting his hands on his knees for a minute before motioning to grab the headset.
Just as his hands met the sides of it, he heard the sirens.
“What? No. NO!” He jumped up to his full height, which was quite substantial if he were being honest, and raced over to the window, opening two of the blinds with his fingers and peering out.
The peaceful, quiet road that his farmhouse’s driveway connected to now had at least four cop cars racing down it, sirens blaring.
Towards his house.
“FUCK!” He shied away from the blinds and back to the couch, digging in the couch cushions until he found a pistol.
He stared at it for a second before groaning.
“What the hell is this peashooter gonna do?!” He asked himself frantically. “They probably have shotguns or machine guns and even if they don’t, there’s probably gonna be like, twenty of them!’
Was he exaggerating?
Probably.
Did he recognize that in the moment?
No.
His head veered between the window and his gun for almost a full minute before he ran a hand through his long dark hair and hissed out a panicked breath.
That had to be something else he could do! There had to be!
Maybe if he moved now, he could grab some of his things and rush through the back door. It wasn’t much of a plan, but maybe it would-
“James Edward Locke!” A booming voice came out of a megaphone. “This is the police! We know you’re in there! Come out with your hands up!”
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
He dropped the gun, stumbling backwards, though he caught himself before he fell.
It was really over now, wasn’t it?
“You are under arrest! We have evidence that implicates you for vehicular manslaughter, as well as for hacking, theft, the ownership of illegal substances, and……….a whole lot of other crimes!”
He let out a humorless laugh. Seems that not even the boys in blue could keep track of all the mischief he had gotten up to in his twenty-two years on earth.
“We already know you’re in there, James! We aren’t going to leave! You have five minutes to come out, or we’re coming in. And don’t try the back door! We have men stationed there as well!”
The man let out a watery chuckle, tears beginning to go down his face.
He had really never thought he would get caught.
He honestly didn’t.
Yet here he was, about to be handcuffed, thrown in the back of a car, and locked up as he watched while the cops threw away the key.
All because of the one crime he actually didn’t mean to do.
All because……………………………………………………….
He wouldn’t think about that. Not even now.
He would keep it out of his mind until his trial, where the prosecution would probably show the jury all of those pictures of the dented hood stained with blood and brains, the broken and bloody bike, and the……………………body.
Fuck. He was screwed, wasn’t he?
There was no real way out.
He looked towards a small mirror with a disgustingly ornate frame. One of the many pieces of furniture from when this place was owned by his great-uncle, and one that, like pretty much all the furniture, he didn’t take down because he couldn’t be bothered to.
He looked at his thin but otherwise fairly handsome face that was obscured by a scruffy beard and deep bags under his eyes from the many sleepless nights he had suffered through. His long dark hair went down to the nape of his neck and was really unkempt and noticeably oily.
All and all, he wasn’t exactly in the best shape for a mugshot.
He recognized a split second after he thought that, in a rare moment of self-awareness, that he had really skewed priorities.
He shuttered out a breath and let himself fall back to his seat on the couch, putting his head in his hands.
How long had it been? A minute, at least. Maybe two.
He had less than five minutes left in his life as a free man.
……………………………………or maybe not.
Maybe he could make it so he wouldn’t be caught.
His head perked up, glancing towards the area on the floor where he had dropped the gun.
What was that old phrase that every cliche criminal said in the tv shows?
‘You’ll never take me alive!’
He frowned, blinked, and contemplated the idea he had never seriously considered in his life before.
Well, no matter what he did, his life was already over, right? It was just a matter of how.
He craned his head slightly, so he could see the weapon on the floor. He bit his lip, stared at the black piece, and considered it in the way the truly desperate consider something drastic when they are out of options.
He just stared at it, thinking, for what felt like forever.
Then he heard a distant crash from somewhere near the front of the house, like someone kicking a door open.
What happened next, what he did next, wasn’t born of conscious thought or deep contemplation, there wasn’t time for any of that. It was pure instinct and clarity.
He recognized within a second that he had wasted all his time.
His eyes darted around the room like the trapped animal that he was for two seconds.
He saw the headset and a flash of the memory of that picture went through his head.
In that split second, the animalistic part of his brain that was in control of his actions associated that complex piece of machinery with death.
A moment before the faint shouts of cops clearing each room met his ears, he was holding the headset, then slamming it down on his head so hard that it was surprising he wasn’t dazed by it.
Or maybe he was and the adrenaline was making him ignore it.
Despite surely having been months since he had plugged it in, the screen flickered to life. It was a white void with nothing but a black circle icon with two mismatched eyes on it, staring back at him.
“DO YOU WISH TO CONNECT TO THE CIRCUS?” Popped up in a text bubble next to the icon.
Not truly contemplating the words or the strangeness of the request, he thought yes over and over, desperate to escape, even if that escape was in death.
The thought was all it took.
(———————————————)
He sat bolt upright, hyperventilating. He put a hand on his chest, an instinctual gesture meant to feel his surely-thumbing heart.
But he felt no heartbeat.
He looked down at his torso, and realized he was now in a pair of pink overalls, the exposed part of his chest showing a short coat of purple hair. The hand he had pressed against it was a yellow, cartoonish glove connected to an arm also covered in purple fur.
Actually, his entire body had a cartoonish aspect to it.
“What the #!&*?” He whispered before throwing a hand over his mouth. He moved it just the slightest bit away from it after a moment. “What the %$!#?”
The hand slammed back onto his mouth.
Almost on its own accord, his other hand reached up to his eye level and grasped at the air in front of it, trying to grab and pull off something that was no longer there.
He kept grabbing blankly at the air for a few moments before both arms slowly slid down to his sides.
He blinked, too stimulated to react at all for a moment.
Then he tensed as he heard someone’s laughter.
His eyes went to an area in front of the stage, which he recognized somewhere in his overwhelmed mind that he was sitting on the edge of, which seemed to consist mostly of a chessboard-style black and white patterned floor.
He saw two figures strolling across it, both as cartoonish as he seemed to be.
The one in front was an anthropomorphic frog with light green skin, rosy cheeks, large eyes crinkled in amusement, and a pink bow tie. It was a bit hard to tell from the distance that separated him from them, but their facial features seemed to indicate they were female, or at least feminine.
The one trailing shortly behind her was a chubby clown dressed in a loud yellow suit with blue and red accents, and a conical hat with the same color scheme. His face seemed to lack a nose, but he had huge red lips turned up in a snicker, and black dot-like eyes that seemed to have closed.
The clown was, oddly enough, also carrying a giant white bag with a bright green dollar sign on it, like one of those bags a robber took from a bank in a cartoon.
“Kaufy, I just………..I just think it’s a bit silly, is all.” The frog said, smiling fondly. “The adventure is over, we clearly won, what’s the point in rubbing it in the other’s faces?”
“It’s not gloating, Ribbit.” The clown insisted in a deeper voice than one would expect. “I just think it makes a good prop! Every time someone says ‘change’, or ‘cheddar’, or even if we see a cow, I’ll bring out a wad of cash from it!”
The frog looked at him with a deadpan expression, the clown just smiled at them.
“A cow?”
‘Kaufy’s’ smile faltered and he looked confused.
“You know; money is moolah, cows say moo, moo-lah?”
The frog’s deadpan expression returned in earnest.
Finally Ribbit rolled her eyes and huffed, but from a mile away you could tell it was filled with fondness.
“What are we going to do with you and your absolutely, horrible, terrible, crimes-against-humanity puns?” She asked rhetorically, shaking her head.
“Aw, you wound me, Ribbit!” The clown threw a hand to his chest melodramatically.
The two broke down in laughter for a moment.
“Uhhhh, hello?” He finally asked, after watching the whole exchange numbly.
The frog’s head snapped up and she stared, shocked at the figure on the stage. The clown didn’t notice originally, but after a few more chuckles, he looked up when he realized his friend wasn’t laughing anymore, then followed her line of sight to the stage. Once he saw what she did, his lips tilted down and his eyes widened as well.
Nobody said anything for a few moments.
“Huh.” The clown finally said. “Well, I guess with three, we could finally make that improv troop we were talking about.”
Ribbit turned to stare at him, aghast.
“Right, right.” He winced and put his free hand, the one not holding the bag, up. “Wrong time for a joke, I know.”
Ribbit turned back towards the stage that the new guy was on and cautiously took a few steps towards him.
“Hello.” She said simply before opening her mouth again to say more. She then closed it immediately, not knowing what to say next.
There was a brief silence that stretched between the three characters, with the frog not sure what to say next. They had never been in the position of welcoming a new person to the circus, after all. The rabbit just staring at them blankly certainly didn’t help their nerves either.
“Maybe it would just be better to rip off the bandaid?” The clown, who had been watching from a distance the whole time, called to the other character.
“…………..yeah.” She nodded, her eyes to the floor in thought. “Yeah, maybe that’ll work.” She turned her gaze solely to the new player, whom was still sitting down but they nonetheless had to incline her head up to look at him.
“Ok, no easy way to say this; you just entered the ‘Amazing Digital Circus’.” She said with an eye-roll. “I’m gonna guess you put on a headset?”
Jax stiffened, remembering how he had made the decision impulsively, how he had slammed the device onto his head, and how he had agreed to connect himself to the circus. The odd thing was that he couldn’t remember anything after that.
Realistically, not a lot probably happened between putting on the headset and waking up here, but he still felt as if something was missing.
As he mulled that over, Ribbit took his sudden change of posture as an answer.
“Yeah.” She grimaced at him. “I’m gonna cut to the chase here, we all did that, and we can’t take them off. So, uh…………………you’re kind of……….stuck, here.”
He turned his head the slightest bit and blinked.
“Yeah, we, uh, we don’t know how to leave.” The frog continued, looking downcast at the floor.
The rabbit turned his gaze to the clown, who had just been watching all of this with a nervous look on his face.
“Where did you get that?” The new player asked curiously, tilting his head while one of his hands pointed at the giant bag of money over the clown’s shoulder.
“What?” ‘Kaufy’ asked dully, not understanding the drastic turn that this conversation had taken.
“That bag, where did you get it?”
The clown’s tiny eyes went back to the digital bag, the back to the rabbit.
“Uh, well………it was from our last adventure.” The clown explained. He paused before he elaborated further. “Uh, it’s kind of hard to explain right now but, there’s this guy, Caine, who is like an AI that controls the circus. He makes these little simulated adventures for us to go on; so that we don’t lose our minds and all. Last one was a Cops and Robbers kind of deal, me and Ribbit were the robbers.” He gave a little shrug. “We won, by the way.”
The rabbit tilted his head slightly in thought, not saying anything to the point where it was very concerning.
Suddenly, just as Ribbit was about to ask him if he was ok, his pupils dilated enormously, so that they stretched from the top of his eyes to the bottom, and he grinned, he grinned a grin full of mischief and hints of mania.
“So……………………….I’m trapped somewhere……………….with no rules. A prison where I can do anything I want.”
Ribbit looked to the clown, concerned, but the other character just shrugged, not really getting what the new guy was talking about.
“Uhhhhhhhh, I guess, technically?” She responded, after thinking over whether there were actually any rules in the circus and not really coming up with any.
“…………………………………………hehe. Haha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” The rabbit began to laugh maniacally, falling backwards onto the stage, holding his stomach, his laugher so full of mirth that he quickly ceased to make sensible noises and just laughed and laughed and laughed.
Because he had tried to kill himself to escape prison, and he just ended up in a different one!
On its own, that would already be the darkest irony he had ever heard of, but there was more!
All the terrible things about prison; the control, the strict discipline when you stepped out of line, and the lack of freedom? They weren’t in this one!
Stealing was allowed and he would bet that violence and reckless driving and, hell, maybe even drugs, would all be allowed too!
He could do whatever he wanted now!
That wasn’t prison! That was heaven!
Ribbit had slowly begun backing away from the new character, making her way back to where she was standing next to Kaufmo, who was likewise just staring at the purple rabbit that had just appeared.
Neither of them really had any idea how to respond to this.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Kaufmo asked her out of the corner of his mouth.
“That one of us should keep an eye on this guy while the other one gets Caine, Ragatha, Wormo, Marina, Kinger, and Eep?” Ribbit responded, also through the corner of her mouth.
“What?” Kaufmo blinked at their friend. “No, I was going to suggest that we start a betting pool on how many days it’ll take him to Abstract.”
Ribbit stared at him, blinked, and then glared at him.
“Kaufmo……………………………..can you just cool it with the dark humor? I know it’s how you deal with everything and all, but this really isn’t the time.” She put so much disappointment into her tone in that statement.
“Ok, fine.” He conceded quickly before glancing back at the still-hysterical rabbit. “But do you disagree?”
The frog glanced back at the man, whose limbs had begun to flail around as he continued to laugh madly.
“………………no, not really.” Ribbit turned back to the clown fully and pointed a finger over at the new guy. “He is so toast.”
(———————————————)
The cops found Locke’s body just as it had spasmed one final time and began cooling.
They had seethed and swore and called the man a coward over and over, but eventually they calmed down and followed the protocol.
Pictures were taken of the scene, then the body was carefully moved out of the house.
Locke was set on a cold metal table and the coroner, an older man with hawk-like features and wisps of white hair, pulled on his gloves and started by removing the headset.
Not to mention the blackened, burnt skin that the device took away with it.
The coroner, whose name didn’t matter, had seen a lot of things in his career. He had also done a bit of research on those C&A Headsets when he had learned what he would be dealing with today, so he had a vague idea of what to expect.
And yet, his eyes bulged out of their sockets when he saw what was left of James E. Locke’s upper face.
Most of his upper face, the parts that were close to where the headset touched his face, had been burned off from the electricity, leaving crimson, angry burns. At the point where the metal had met the flesh, there was a rectangular outline of blackened skin, almost hauntingly perfect in shape. What was inside of the shape, negating the torn and bleeding areas where the skin and flesh had come off with the device, was more angry red flesh, so burnt that there were only a few layers of it left stretched over a clearly-visible skull.
The eyes were the worst part.
At least…………..what was left of them was.
The eye sockets were half-full with yellow, milky pus; the only remnants of the windows to the soul after enough electricity to kill ten men had surged through them into the brain.
When the coroner turned the young man’s head from side to side, in order to check where the burns ended, the small pools of pus jiggled in their pits.
The man, who had developed a gallows sense of humor in order to deal with his job, privately mused that they resembled the wobble of gelatin while it was still in the mold.
For the next two weeks, the gelatin in his home refrigerator that he sometimes had as a healthy treat would go completely untouched.
He looked down at the man, this young man who was only twenty-two who had appeared to know that the C&A headset would kill him and had shoved it on anyway. This young man who had effectively committed suicide rather than be arrested.
He felt sympathy for this corpse.
But then he remembered what this man was, and what he had done, and the emotion quickly passed.
In the end, James Edward Locke had gotten exactly what he had deserved.
At least, the coroner hoped so.
After the bodies he had torn apart to help solve cases, the man wasn’t much of a believer in God or an afterlife; but he hoped, in that moment, that there was.
That way, perhaps there would be a bit of justice, as little comfort as it would be, for the family of that poor girl.
Before he got out his instruments and got started, he felt as if he needed to tell the cold corpse that. For no reason other than self-satisfaction.
“………………………………………….If anyone deserves the fiery pits of Hell, it would be people like you.” He murmured to the body.