The Leveller - Julia Durango Page 0,25

run. Not much. I need to get back to the Landing and restock, but how?

“Inventory!” I yell, and arm myself with a laser gun.

I whirl around and pop her three times. It’s like shooting a water gun at a piranha. Totally ineffective.

I keep running, but I’m lost again now that I’ve taken my hand off the right wall to shoot.

Damn damn damn.

I toss a grenade behind me. The banshee only shrieks louder.

I don’t even notice the dead end this time until I run smack into it.

I feel a frosty stab of pain enter between my shoulder blades, like I’ve just been impaled by an icicle.

She steals my heart again.

I do the same thing twelve times in all, with slight variations. Each time, I try another weapon from my inventory on the witch. Gladius sword, rappelling gun, machete, more grenades. I might as well be battling whipped cream or clouds, only not so fluffy and pleasing.

Twelve times the lights go out, twelve times her ghoulish face appears inches from my own, twelve times I try to kill her with something, twelve times she doesn’t die, twelve times she screams “RUN!”, twelve times I run like my pants are on fire, twelve times I get lost, twelve times I feel her arctic claw reach inside my rib cage and rip my heart out.

Twelve flipping times I want to give up and yell out my return code frequency. But I’m not a quitter. I remember when I was little, maybe eight years old, and I was playing a Zelda game on Dad’s old Nintendo. It took me twenty-eight attempts to beat Ganon, the final boss at the end. I remember begging my dad to fight the battle for me, but all he said was, “Keep at it, Nixinator. Each time you try, you sweeten the victory.” And it was true. That twenty-ninth attempt—that successful attempt—was so incredibly delicious that I jumped on my bed for ten minutes afterward out of pure happiness.

As I prepare for my lucky—ha ha—thirteenth try, I tap into my inventory once again and try desperately to think of some trick, some new thing, something “out of the box” to defeat the Hag of Olay, but once again I don’t have time to think. The lights go out and the ghoulfriend’s in my face again screaming “RUN!”

I haven’t even armed myself this time. I access my inventory and grab the first weapon I can get to. I look down to find the potato gun in my hands. Oh for God’s sake.

It’s so absurd I start laughing. I look right into the banshee’s red eyes and only flinch slightly. I’ve looked into her hideous face so many times now I’m getting used to it. Might as well skip to the chase at this point, or skip the chase altogether, as the case happens to be. “Go ahead,” I say, sticking out my chest. “Just rip it right out.”

We both stand there for a moment—technically, I guess, the banshee floats—and engage in an intense staring contest. I am really good at this game, honed by hours of matches with Moose during eighth-grade study hall. I blow a puff of air into her eyes, and her icy eyelids flutter. “Made you blink,” I sing, mainly to amuse myself while I wait for the heart snatchery that is to come.

Only it doesn’t.

The banshee backs away from me and the lights go back on. I remove my night-vision goggles and see the white wall swallow her up until only her face is showing . . . her horrible, witchy face, which slowly transforms back into my favorite, smiling, well-moisturized lady.

“CHECKPOINT COMPLETE,” says the soothing robotic voice. “CHECKPOINT COMPLETE.”

I’m almost too stunned to move.

I don’t know what happened back there, but I’m pretty sure I can now add Blinking Contest Goddess to my college applications.

A door in the white wall slides open and I see what looks like a room full of Meeple on the other side.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter, stepping tentatively across the threshold and looking around in wonder.

Yep. I’m in a bar.

Not just any bar either, but a really swank one populated by happy, beautiful Meeple, sitting at a long, glossy counter and raising shiny glasses at each other. They all look fabulous in a sort of half-retro, half-exotic way, like we’re at some kind of tropical sock hop. Some of the Meeple are speaking English and others are speaking Spanish, I think, unless it’s Italian. Or Portuguese. Obviously I