The Wards (Novella #2) Read online

  "The Wards" (Novella #2)

  By: Alan Ryker

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Table of Contents

  PART 1

  Elizabeth eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark room and the bright monitor, but they still watered a bit and she dabbed at the corners as she watched her wards. She scrolled through them quickly, looking for one in particular. The monitor settled on a room she had built especially for that one Ward. A tiny room. Almost as small a room as possible. The floor was approximately two-feet square. The walls were blank all the way to the ceiling. There wasn’t enough space to take a single step in any direction, though in her little torture room, her Ward could turn. There was no way to sit down, let alone lie down. Sleep was possible if one could sleep standing slouched against the wall, but her Ward couldn’t. She sometimes stood relatively still, only twitching, tremors jolting through her stick-thin limbs. Often she spun, her face in the air, howling. Usually she howled, her mouth an “O” of perfect torment.

  Elizabeth had caught her at one of her still moments. She twitched and stared up straight into Elizabeth’s face. Elizabeth knew the woman couldn’t see her slouching on the other side of the monitor, her face the only thing visible, hovering in the darkness. Her Ward couldn’t see Elizabeth smile, but Elizabeth held her gaze anyway, wouldn’t be bullied. Wouldn’t be shamed, either. She did to them as she saw fit, and who were they to question her?

  The Ward broke, began spinning in her two foot square, howling as her limbs spasmed from the constant tension. Elizabeth had won the battle of wills, and basked in the tormented expression on her Ward’s face, even though it was her own face. She and her Ward looked almost exactly alike. Maybe that made it better. She thought there must be a subconscious component to why this was the Ward to make it into the torture room.

  Then with a click, the outside world stabbed brightly into her eyes like white-hot ice picks.

  “Are you seriously still playing this game? Am I going to have to lock your computer up again?”

  Elizabeth stopped rubbing her eyes, ignoring the painfully bright light to stare wide-eyed at her husband where he stood in the doorway.

  “No. Don’t. You can’t…” She was about to get angry and stopped herself, began to go on pleadingly and couldn’t. She was a grown woman who could do what she wanted in her free time. But that wasn’t the reality of her situation, so she reconsidered pleading, croaking out meaningless syllables at each turn of her spinning brain, her mouth a stuttering “O” of despair, tears building in the corners of her eyes. He’d taken her computer before. She swore it had almost killed her.

  “Jesus, calm down.” A look of shocked concern had initially replaced the annoyance, but then had slipped away as she sputtered. She saw that she was doing more harm than good to her cause. Now he was thinking about how irrational she was acting, that this made her a child who needed to be forced to do what was good for her. She wasn’t a child; she was twenty years old, an adult. Yes, he was twenty years older again than that, but that didn’t make him twice as adult. You didn’t get more adult than adult.

  She closed her mouth. She stopped the tears. She made her eyes cold. She even calmed her breathing. Once she’d managed that, the cold, calm exterior moved deep, became real. “What do you want?”

  “It’s quarter past eleven. I’ve been waiting in bed for you. Some of us have to get up in the morning.”

  “I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, too.”

  “What, playing your game again? I get up at five to get to the gym before spending all day at work. All I ask is that I get the six hours of sleep that makes all this possible.”

  He swept his arm around, to indicate the entire house, though the guest bedroom that doubled as Elizabeth’s dressing room was the only portion visible, and it was a mess of clothing and makeup.

  “You can go to bed whenever you like,” she said, holding onto the coldness, her only good tactic. He was a lawyer and twice her age, and she couldn’t beat him in an argument. This approach gave him as little to work with as possible, as few words to twist.

  “I was in bed, Elizabeth. I can’t sleep without you. Especially some nights.” He gave her a little grudging smile, as if he were willing to bury the hatchet. Elizabeth knew he wanted to bury something else, and that she wouldn’t get any peace until he did.

  She couldn’t argue, but this was better. This was leverage.

  “You’re not taking my computer again.”

  He clamped his mouth and she could see his quick mind figuring out how to manipulate the situation to put himself back in control. She looked at him while he was distracted inward. He was a nice looking guy. No, he couldn’t get as cut as the guys her own age she saw at the gym, but something about his mature physique was also attractive. She liked his chest hair, and he kept in good shape. His hairline had receded farther, but it had been receding when she’d married him two years ago, so how could she complain about that? Besides, she really didn’t mind.

  What she didn’t like was feeling coerced into sex, especially when she was engrossed in The Wards.

  “Come to bed tonight and have a nice dinner ready for me tomorrow when I get home and we’ll call it even. I mean, those are almost the only things I ask from you anyway, so.”

  She gave one grudging nod and stood.

  He started to turn away, then turned back and said, “Aren’t you going to turn your computer off?”

  Elizabeth pressed the power switch on only the monitor, and the woman in the torture room continued to spin unseen. “No, I’ve got things running.”

  David shrugged and started down the hall.

  Elizabeth followed slowly, stepping lightly as always, still thinking of her spinning, screaming ward. She wondered why she liked it so much. She’d thought there was something wrong with her until she’d joined a Wards forum and found that pretty much everyone’s second house was a torture house. Still, she asked herself why as she lifted her nightgown over her head, pulled down her panties, and slipped into bed, where David was already touching himself as he watched her.

  Elizabeth wasn’t tired and didn’t want to go to sleep, she wanted to get back to her computer. But David—who seemed to be oblivious to her when she actually wanted his attention—could tell when she was waiting to be disobedient. After he’d had his orgasm, he lay back breathing hard and appraising her.

  “You look agitated. Here, take this.”

  He gave her two Valium and his glass of water, then lay with his big arm over her. And soon she did sleep, though it was a drugged sleep in which she suffocated in molasses-thick dreams of The Wards.

  PART 2

  Elizabeth opened one eye, then snapped it shut as the bright light of late morning assaulted her consciousness. She was hungover, damn David. Pulling the thick comforter up and ducking her head under she slept again, and it didn’t feel like drowning.

  When she awoke the second time, she tossed the blankets away resolutely and discovered it was two o’clock. He bitched at her all the time to get her house chores done, but he pulled shit like this. He loved setting her up for failure, loved having her always chasing after his standard and never attaining it. It made him feel like he was in control.

  She threw her legs over the side of the bed and wriggled her toes in the thick pile rug. There was one thing that could get her out of bed on a day like this. Without showering or brushing her teeth, dressed in a loose fitting nightgown, she padded to her dressing room and her computer and her Wards.

  She had three families, and she checked on all of them and gave them all tasks. She used the small amount of money she’d saved up to buy a fancy couch for her main house, then, having nothing left to do until
her Wards finished their self-improvement, she finally headed for the shower.

  Lifting the lightweight gown over her head, she looked at herself in the large mirror. She was still beautiful. Even with dark circles around her tired, monitor-burnt eyes, even with the tiny bit of belly she’d started getting that she’d never had before and that always set off a bombardment of promises, curses, intentions and self-loathing thoughts that battered at her until she either went down into the basement gym and ran on the treadmill until she puked, which no longer took very long, or pulled her legs beneath herself and ate a bowl of ice cream in front of the computer.

  She grabbed her stomach. Pinched it. Twisted it. It wasn’t much. David hadn’t even really started complaining about it. Not really. He made jokes that the baby would do worse, which caused a different part of her psyche to begin bombardment.

  She let go of her fat. It didn’t drop and droop. It spread back across her stomach, just a softness, now blotchy red. It was hard to move her eyes away from it, but she did, to things she liked more. Long smooth legs. Nicely flaring hips and a small waist. Breasts that still stood perkily on their own. Her mother had told her that with tits her size, once she hit twenty she could say goodbye to walking around the house without a bra on, but that had been months ago and she saw no evidence of drooping.

  She should go get on the treadmill.

  Elizabeth took the band out of her long blond hair, letting it flow across her shoulders and back. It tickled. She flicked it back and forth, enjoying the sensation, then took her brush to it before getting in the shower.

  She didn’t look so bad, except for that stomach. That useless little paunch.

  Dressed in a ratty pink robe David hated and with a thick towel wrapped around her hair and twisted on her head, Elizabeth went back to the computer to see how her Wards were doing. They still had some time left on their tasks, and she watched for awhile, but then decided to leave them to it unsupervised, opening a browser and her forums.

  She’d thought she was weird, when she became obsessed with The Wards. She thought the things she had them do were weird, the way she obsessed over their lives for weeks and then ruined them in an instant, the way she nurtured them until she hated them, then abused them.

  She’d never considered joining a community of other players until she read a magazine article about people who made a living designing custom items for the game. The search for these led her to The Wardens, the largest unofficial Wards forums, and it was a week before she resurfaced for air, and only after David had threatened to take her computer. Before that incident she had nearly convinced him to buy her a laptop computer, but after seeing how addicted she was he told her that she’d never sleep if she could play her game lying down, so he refused. She was saving money to buy herself a tablet that could run the game and access the forums, but it was silly because she knew that he’d confiscate it the first time he saw it.

  On the forums she found that her pattern matched most players: the first house was a model of her own life with small improvements, diligently cared for. The second was a darker place, when the game had gotten routine and the boundaries had to be tested. What would the game makers let you get away with? A lot, it turned out. Most anything a person could imagine. And Elizabeth, though she had never discovered an artistic talent or interest, had a very good imagination. That house was her dark secret, but it turned out that it was one she shared with most players. The third was the dream house.

  That’s what she was focusing on today. She was in a farming forum, researching the latest tactics for getting money faster. Her house was still unfinished after months and months and she wanted it done, was getting bored with it. Construction continued even though she’d installed a cheat hack that generated ten free items a day, which freed her money up for construction. She’d felt guilty about it, but then she reminded herself that it was her dream house and she was expected to do whatever was necessary to attain it, and second, it was just a game, nothing to feel guilty about.

  Of course there were the moralists, no better than trolls, worse because they actually meant it, who would drop into the cheat threads to condemn them.

  It’s meaningless if you cheat. How does it even make you happy?

  It’s meaningless anyway; it’s a game!

  It devalues the work the rest of us put into it. I hope your computer melts down.

  I hope your face melts down, Elizabeth typed. Then, fearing intervention by the mods, she added a smiley with its tongue sticking out to the end, to show she was being playful.

  She was still reading tactics for boosting her money production when her computer dinged. A private forum message. Opening the folder, she saw it was from a person she’d never spoken with or even seen, Teh_Wardens_Warden.

  Do you really want to unlock The Wards of your dreams? I saw you talking about silly little cheat codes. This is the real deal. This is how you live your dreams. Interested? Click Here

  The message sent a chill through her, tightening her nipples beneath the pink robe.

  Who are you?

  She waited for a reply. The person must still be sitting there. She’d responded in less than a minute. Some people were like that, though. She’d get a text from her sister, respond as quickly as humanly possible and yet her sister wouldn’t look at her phone for the next three hours, during which time Elizabeth would relentlessly check for messages.

  As she waited, she hovered her mouse over the fresh, unclicked, blue-underlined link. She’d thought she’d seen it all, every cheat, every hack, every method for milking extra out of the game and attaining her goals more quickly than the programmers intended. What could this be?

  She clicked. It was barely a decision.

  The link opened a new window. The Wards stood there, the ones invented by the company, Walter Ward, Cathy Ward, and little Bobby and Suzy Ward, but they flickered between the well-dressed, smiling, waving family and a more sinister, less-cared for, torture house version that the company had certainly never endorsed, even if it allowed for it. The Wards oscillated between their normal state and a darker one, filthy with sunken cheeks and circling flies.

  A small notification window snapped open and Elizabeth realized that files were being downloaded, and at a quick pace. Names composed of long strings of letters and numbers raced by as they materialized out of the ether onto her hard drive. She’d expected a page that explained the hack. She hadn’t authorized a download, except that’s what opening that link seemed to have done.

  She flicked the mouse to the X and clicked it, closing the notification window, but it snapped back open in another corner, file names racing by even faster, an unintelligible blur.

  She closed it. It opened again. Closed it. Again. Her heart was racing, beating so fast her hand wouldn’t do exactly what she wanted, betraying her by fumbling when she needed quick response. She tried to close the flickering portrait of The Wards, but they refused to leave. Desperate, not knowing what it would do to her computer as she’d been warned to never turn it off while it was working—and from the sound of the whirring hard drive it was working very fast—she reached down and pressed the power button.

  Nothing.

  She remembered it was a soft power button, basically meaning it instructed the computer to shut down when it was ready to. She needed to hold it for some ridiculous number of seconds to cause a hard shutdown when the useless old machine froze.

  She didn’t have time for that. Dropping to her knees, she pulled the computer to her and turned it, exposing its back, then grabbing the power cable. Just as she was about to pull the plug, the hard drive stopped whirring like an empty blender set to “liquefy” and went silent.

  She looked to the computer monitor, hoping to see… She didn’t know what. Something that would indicate that everything was fine. That her firewall had shut the door on whatever malicious code she’d let in.

  The Wards crowded together, dirty faces pressed against the other side of the glass, a n
ew window into her home. They stared at her, each with different hungers in their simultaneously cold and expressive CGI eyes. Walter Ward’s lips were pulled back like a wolf’s, and she followed his eyes down.

  In falling to and crawling along the floor, her knees had gotten caught up in her loosely tied pink robe and pulled it open, the panels now framing her nude body. She tried to yank it shut but was kneeling on all the slack, and finally fell backward in her attempt.

  Gripping the sides together, twisting them around each other until her knuckles hurt, she looked back to the screen.

  The Wards were gone. The regular browser was back, as if she’d never clicked the link. She got to her knees, then to her office chair which she’d propelled several feet away in her scramble to the floor.

  The browser showed her message folder, but there was no message from Teh_wardens_warden. No virulent link.

  That didn’t make any sense.

  She clicked around. She searched for his user name, but could find no evidence that he was a member of the forum.

  For just a moment she thought maybe she’d imagined the entire thing. But no, she didn’t have an imagination that good. She’d been told that repeatedly in high school and proven it with the pattern of her life.

  Feeling she’d dodged a bullet, she moved the mouse to maximize The Wards. They should have made some progress despite the chaos.

  But the game wasn’t running.

  Elizabeth minimized the browser and went to click on the icon on her desktop. No desktop icon. Her heart began to pound.

  She opened the Start Menu. No icon.

  As her heart rattled her ribs, her vision began to darken around the edges, and her breaths became shallow and useless.

  She opened the program folder and looked through all of her installed programs. Nothing. No trace of The Wards or the many expansion packs she’d installed. It was all gone.

  Hundreds of hours. All of her effort. All of her dreams. Gone, with the click of one bad link.