The Gaming Outpost

Five year old Roger, with the gum-twisted hair, rocked violently and defiantly on the horsie in the corner of the outdoors play yard just short of the wooden wall. Susette, not Susie, was negotiating a trade deal between two of her dolls as she sat on the wood chip covered ground. Mick was hanging upside down in the small swing, picking his nose, and Jeremy with the auburn hair that had so many grown women complimenting him wishfully was hanging to my skirted leg as I leaned tiredly up against the outer door, with him crying and spreading boogers on my swaying skirt, because Roger was a meanie who would not let him play on the rocking horse. I patted him on the back, and told him he would get a chance in a few minutes, which made Roger glare at me. I matched a five year old’s fury with my calm implacable stare, and he of course wilted and went back to rocking even more furiously.

I had the late evening shift at Leetle Tykes, for which I got paid a mark more an hour, and the parents paid fifty percent more. Yes, it is unfair. But in this universe its nearly impossible to get a job without certifications, except for the lowest paid jobs, and the owners practically felt it was their moral duty to mess over their employees.

It was, your fault, for being an immoral scum that you had not saved enough to get a cert, and therefore let me punish you. Nobody said that, but that is what they acted like. Which made it hard for the inter-dimensional visitor who did not come supplied with gold from some universe where gold is used as building material.

Sigh. Part of my frustration is that the locals were not all wrong. I had been unwise in not preparing a verse-out bag of easily portable valuables to get me restarted in another universe. So when that aircar ran me down, I arrived with a credit card that had no account in this world, and a silver crucifix I refused to sell because Patrick, Saint Patrick to some, had given it to me in yet another universe.

“Roger, off.” I said. He ignored me. I stepped toward him. He ignored me again.

I opened my mouth to command, and Roger flew through the air toward me, and I caught him instinctively.

A black edgeless shape with a bald, shiny head, and a cruelly taloned, yet human hand crouched upon the rocking horse. It was far too large for the horse to hold, let alone without the foundation moving, but such happened.

Other shapes, with heads oozed over the wooden walls to my right and left. Our tiny walled haven with the single lamppost had been invaded.

“K-Kids…” I began, but with no need. Already, Roger, Jeremy, Susette, and Mick were behind me, burying their faces in my ruffly, long jean skirt. They did not know what It was, but they knew beyond thought that It was bad, very bad.

Whimpers rose behind me, and the various beings settled themselves in impossible perches on top of toddler toy equipment in a half-circle of death.

“Give us the children, and you can live.” The leader on the rocking horse hissed. And in that moment, I understood what Tadeusz had told me. Better to face a trained warrior than a woman protecting children.

Everything in my vision turned a pale shade of red, and only the certainty that if I lunged to attack, I would be leaving my kids defenseless held me back. I wanted, no needed, to stick my fingers into the being’s eyeballs, and twist them around. After that, I would really get going.

I said something very rude that my good, church-going mother would no doubt have applauded after she got over her shock that I knew such words.

“Well, if its to be that way, then, so be it.” And the leader began to unwind, to stand, impossibly tall, and moving slowly, like a snake preparing for a sudden strike.

And I realized another thing Tadeusz had told me. Be careful of who you fight. Fight something that eats you, and it may become a verser. And while you save one world from a monster, you may gift the multiverse with an undying fiend. He sounded grim, as if he spoke from experience. Later, when I asked the Psientist about this, he nodded, his eyes bleak.

So I could step away from these kids, and perhaps save the universe from an immortal dimension travelling vampire. No, no, I could not. I could no more step aside than I could fly.

My mouth was dry, but my fists were balled up, and ready to go for a crossed X defense of my throat. I thought the thing would go for my throat, a one-strike kill. This seemed to fit his theatrically polite style.

Maybe I could punch him in the ribs, if he had ribs, after I blocked the first strike.

And then Susette thrust her arm out.

“Barbie protect us.” In her hand, she held out Barbie.

The thing reared back just a touch, and then smirked.

“Your goddess has little power child.”

And that was when I flipped out Patrick’s cross. This time, the leader truly flinched. But as he looked at my face, he began to smile.

“A pair of crossed sticks does not halt me, child. Even if I can smell the stink of a righteous man on the silver bars. Otherwise, we would not be able to abide the letter ‘t’ in lowercase.”

He laughed cruelly, and the others laughed with him even as he seemed to soar higher while his feet kept on the ground.

“I, little ones, am a god, worthy of worship. Do homage to me, and you may live.”

“Liar.” Mick said softly in my skirt.
“Meanie.” Jeremy and Roger said together also softly.

“Oh well. One cannot expect much from the Children of Adam. They were formed of second-rate clay.”

The cheap insult got to me. No, I doubt God had used second-rate clay by the riverside to form us. I thought he would use the good stuff.

“That’s….” I paused. “Silly.” My face was scrunched up in thought, and I found my tongue was free. Some polite respect was gone.

“No, go away.” I ordered.

“Make me.” The leader suggested, and I began to gather my will, my personal charisma for a decisive blast, much as on occasion I dealt with Roger in one of his very bad moods. And then I realized that would not be enough. I was not thousands of years old. I had not seen Adam with my own eyes, or implored the Lord of Hell for power over my fellow man in the days before the Global Flood. Even as a verser, I was only a hundred years old. If Tadeusz, or Di Vars were here, then they could handle it, but I could not.

Shrinking back, I saw the leader expand forward, taking one large step off the rocking horse at me.

“You are nothing.”
“Help. Us. Save. Us.” The kids whimpered, and I swung my fist, and hit the thing in the nose, or what was left of its nose after a few thousand years. It snapped his head back, and for a moment, he seemed startled, but then he laughed.

“Spunk, but no might.” He stood face to face with me, and the kids trembled behind my legs.

“Jesus.” Susette cried behind my leg.
“He cannot save you now, little morsel.”
And again, I felt the falseness. He could. I believed He could, even as I knew many times He did not.
So for lack of anything better to say, I spoke my thought.
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” The leader breathed death and decay into my face.
“Bad breath, halitosis.” I murmured, and the leader raised his hand back in a fury with talons glistening in the lamplight. He would gut me in a single strike.

“You don’t know the power you trifle with.”
“And neither do you.” My mouth said before I thought, and indeed I realized it had to be so. If God were God, then only the complete idiot would take him on, unless said idiot thought God was not who He claimed to be.
“Fact is, He can save me right now.”
The leader laughed, coughing up chunks of graveyard dirt to spatter on my blouse. I felt certain that he was right to laugh at me, but the pure clear logic of what I had said still stuck in my mind. A drive to be annoying touched me, and I spoke again.
“No, no, and no, Mr. Vampire.”
He grasped me about my neck with one bony hand, and squeezed so that I squeaked.
“Now is your God going to save you?”
I had little faith. I could not call down lightning, nor ask for rain. But I knew that God could save me, if He chose. I didn’t really expect Him too. I expected I guess that God would say, you died in faith, good on ya’.

So as things got black, I was very surprised to hear Susette, darling Susette, cry out delightedly “Barbie!”

And then a voice like an orchestra, but low, spoke.

“No, child, I am Raphael.”

And then I saw the leader pulled off my neck, and as I staggered to my knees, I saw a woman, nine feet tall, glowing with enough light to be seen a county away, holding the leader’s skull in her left hand with an expression on her face much like one would use when you found your cat had pooped on your bed. The she closed her hand, and his skull collapsed and he was gone.

“Not your day to die for your faith, and your God.” She said to me. “You’ve taken one more step on the faithwalk, but its a long road.”

I nodded, and Susette charged her, and grabbed her about the legs.

“Barbie!” She cried, and I saw the Archangel Raphael roll her eyes, and then smile.

“All right, you can call me Barbie, okay, Susette.”
“Okay.” Said a very small voice clutching the archangel’s legs.

The next day, my boss was hired to a Real Job, and I got her job for two marks more an hour. And my parents told me of the weird and wild dreams their younguns had had of the arrival of Glowing Barbie to drive away things they could not remember, but were bad.