Porusam is famously divided into four concentric “rings”. There’s the Industrial ring, that’s where a lot of the factories, farmlands and a small forest reside. The factories lead to the east side of Porusam being incredibly hazy and almost hidden. One level beneath the ring you have the residential ring. The residential ring gets increasingly expensive as you go further into the city and is where we find our group today. One level further you have the corporate ring. This is where the high rises and office spaces are all located. At the center of the city, you have Porusam village, the place where it all began. Of course, Porusam village is completely gentrified by this point, but the area is a thick network of narrow roads and densely packed houses and shops. This is where the underground markets are located. You could get a rifle, cocaine, and ivory, all in the same stroll through the right place in the village. The metro network is the nervous system of the city. There are trains running through each ring of the city, and several trains running around each individual ring.

The trio emptied out from the bar and started climbing up to the metro station.

The metro station smelled of dry urea, which wasn’t atypical in the slightest. The stench seemed to be coming from the general direction of a sleeping, seemingly homeless and hooded figure, perched upon the end of the steps. The three walked up to him expecting him to move but only ended up getting a closer look instead. The man had a head the shape and texture of a crescent moon. Pale as could be, and covered with crater-like blemishes all over his face and arm…

It just occurred to them that the man only had one arm. A minuscule detail compared to the poor guy's face. The man woke from his nap.

“You…” said the man, “You’ve come back for more haven’t you. You bitch-face.”

“Bitchface?” said Ritika, “Who even says that?”

The man ignored her.

“You don’t even remember, do you? I can read it in your vacant and Godless eyes,” said the man, with a whimper in his voice, “You tackled me, held me down, stole my metro pass, and pissed yourself.”

This was highly atypical. Protag woke up this morning with the knowledge that he had never been in a fight, let alone fought someone for their metro pass.

“You mugged a disabled, homeless man, and pissed yourself?” asked Rohil, mainly for emphasis, but not without a hint of genuine curiosity.

“I’m not homeless,” said the man.

“Fuck that, did he have this pink thing on him last night?” asked Ritika.

“No, he didn’t have that thing on him yesterday. I think I’d remember something like that. Can I at least have my metro card back?” asked the man.

Protag shuffled through his wallet once again, but couldn’t find anything that came close resembling a metro card. The realization that he mugged a man finally dawned on him. The knot returned to his stomach. Was he really that evil. What was he supposed to do here? Making amends would be a start, but the empty pouch of leather in his hands would beg to differ.

“Can I borrow 200 bucks?” asked Protag as he turned to face Rohil.

Rohil didn’t protest too much. Nobody likes looking like a dick in these situations, and Rohil was determined to be the smallest penis he could be. Protag handed the 200 bucks to the man and went on his way. This would be fine of course, but Rohil understood that this just meant that Protag was going to be asking for money at every chance possible for the rest of the day. He also knew that murder was frowned upon in civilized society, and ultimately not worth the trouble.

After paying for the metro and getting on the sparsely populated Sunday train, Protag and co sat down, Rohil and Ritika on one side, and Protag on the other. Rohil kept thinking about the 200 bucks, and the additional 100 that he spent for the train. He wasn’t going to get that money back. He stared at Protag for a solid five minutes and watched as the idiot tried to adjust his sentient hat. Maybe he should’ve had an intervention for Protag a long time back. Still, he felt obligated to help at this point. Plus, it was clear that Protag wouldn’t survive three minutes without him. He’d never get that leech off his head. He’d never live it down if the moron went completely brain dead just because he didn’t feel like stepping out. He was definitely Protags only hope, and his past misdoings, if one could even call them that, made him feel an obligation to the poor bastard.

Still...those 200 bucks. He didn’t grow up like Protag did. Protag came from the uppermost crust of society. Protag didn’t have to work that hard. He didn’t even pay his own rent. Any money he made was spent on liquor, and the rest was paid for by mommy and daddy. Rohil came from outskirts of the Industrial ring. He took night classes as a sixteen-year-old, learning how to code, just so he could make as much as he did now. He worked his ass off for every ride he had taken into the city. It would take a day of hard labor to collect enough money to ride a metro like the one they were on, and Rohil did it every day while Protag slacked off at his cushy private school.

Rohil decided to make an effort to drop his train of thought and focus on what he did have. He turned to Ritika and smiled. She leaned up against him. Protags incessant vomiting had led to neither of them getting a good night's sleep. He looked up at the aluminum ceiling, hyper-aware of Ritika’s head resting up against the side of his shoulder. This was the key to his stability. As long as he stayed centered around her, thought of all this like a really strange date, everything would be just fine. Rohil pulled away from his meditation to realize that they had almost reached.

“Alright, let’s head,” said Rohil, breaking the silence, and they all got up with him and got ready to see what this next place had in store for them.

This next place wasn’t a bar, at least not to anyone who didn’t already know it. It was just the back of a high-end fashion store called Kale. Just the type of douchey place that didn’t belong in the industrial ring but had enough “fuck you” money to do it anyways. The three found themselves at the mouth of the shuttered store. There was nobody in sight and no way to move forward with their quest. They needed to reevaluate their next steps.

“Okay, so we’ll come back tomorrow when they’re open and ask them about this thing,” said Rohil, as he turned around, “Hopefully that won’t be too-”

BANG!

Ritika kicked the shutter with all the strength she could muster up.

“Dude, what are you doing?!” yelled Protag.

BANG!

She struck the poor thing once again.

“You can’t just go around kicking on shutters, they’ll send security or something!” exclaimed Protag.

They decide it was best if they left as quickly as possible. No point in getting banned from the area altogether. As Rohil dragged Ritika away from the shutter, they heard a crack and their obstacle was lifted away from it’s anchored station. The soft humming of Club music came whimpering out of the shop.

“Thank fuck you’re back, we’ve been waiting for 16 hours or something,” said a voice in the shadows. “We’ve got a game to finish.”

Protag was confused. Nobody else was. He had obviously begun a game. Somehow. With no money, no noticeable charisma, and no chance of winning in a game that involved some level of thinking.

The man noticed the puzzled and ever so slightly annoyed look on everyone’s faces and decided to step out of the dimly lit storefront and into the light. His calm voice didn’t match his build. He towered over the crew and stood in a navy blue and well-fitting suit. Hung around his neck was a hot pink tie, and his left wrist was wrapped up in a watch that was worth more than all of Protag’s toes combined. He introduced himself as Mehtab and filled everyone in on what had taken place 16 hours ago. Protag had admitted he had no money to play with but had done so pantsless. This impressed the coked out people at the small venue, for some strange reason or another, and they gave him a pair of jeans from the shop. He still had to buy into the game with something of equal value.

“So what did I put up?” asked Protag.

“See now I get the feeling that you wouldn’t finish the game if you knew, so I’d rather we go in there and play us some Texas Hold’em,” replied Mehtab.

“Yeah, we’re not going to do that shit, how about you just tell us about his hat here,” said Ritika, slightly annoyed by the tall man.

Mehtab looked down at her, cracked a smile and said,” Yeah those aren’t the rules here, how about we just walk in and finish our little game.”

Mehtab gently slid his jacket back to reveal a holstered gun.

“Did you get that I’m threatening you? This is so Lethal Weapon right now, I did the whole reveal thing,” said Mehtab, with a shit-eating grin on his face.

Everyone nodded in sync and followed the man inside. As they went through the closed store, the faint music grew louder. The leech hit its head against the doorway as they all entered the back room. Protag thought about how that shouldn’t happen. The leech seemed to be getting bigger but weighed about the same as always. About nothing. Protag didn’t feel it strain his neck or anything. As interesting as the leech was, they all had much bigger problems to worry about. Namely, a man with a gun making Protag play a Poker game after Protag had bet an unknown amount. Sundays were the best.

They entered to see a crowd of people passed out on lavish sofas and trashy mattresses. It was a strange juxtaposition but interior design choices weren’t a pressing matter either. Gun. Poker. No shooty.

One battle tested circular table lay in the center of the room. The table was surrounded by a velvet rope and perfectly preserved, awaiting Protags return. Mehtab unhooked the velvet rope, sending the brass hook swinging down a hitting the pole that supported it with a loud clank. The clank was loud enough to stir up a dazed and confused group of people into paying attention to their new guests. Most took one glance at Protag and stood up in anticipation. A few even stepped into the ring. A middle-aged man, an elderly woman in thick glasses and a young girl with a pixie cut took their seats at the table.

“Fucking finally,” said the elderly woman. “It’s been three days!”

Nobody bothered to correct her.

“So, Torn Undies, raise or fold?” asked the young girl.

“Can you give us a minute, please?” asked Rohil, and pulled Protag aside without waiting for an answer.

“So what’s the plan here, man. You think you can win this game?”

“Yeah sure,” said Protag,” Just one tiny doubt.”

“What would that be?”

“How, exactly, do you play poker?”

Rohil couldn’t find the right words to say if they bit him on the ass.

“Times up,” said Mehtab.

Protag sat down in the one empty seat, his hands unsteady. The bright side of everything was that they couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or not if he didn’t know it himself. Protag snuck a peek at his cards. A 5 of spades and an 8 of diamonds. He looked at the three face-up cards in front of him. A 3 of hearts, a King of spades, and an Ace of hearts. He didn’t know an awful lot about poker, but he knew that he was probably screwed. Protag had an idea. What if he just showed them the cards? They can’t say he lost if it looks like an accident. Protag glanced at the hilt of the gun that was sneaking out of Mehtab's jacket. This was a bad idea, but it was an idea nonetheless. Protag kept trying to talk himself into doing it, and then he did.

A loud sneeze echoed through the room, waking up all the people, that came to the epiphany that poker was boring after an all-night rager, and went back to sleep. Protag had sneezed a sneeze so eerily fake that a low budget porn star would be ashamed of his acting. All of everybody’s cards were lying face up, and all the faces surrounding them were affixed to Protag.

“Okay, get up,” said Mehtab.

“It was an accident, man, I’m so sorry, really,” said Protag, but it was useless.

Mehtab lifted Protag up from his T-shirt, and Protag did as much as he could to comply. The entire group followed Protag and Mehtab as they went into the alleyway behind the store. From the alleyway, they walked into another shop. AS the back door opened, Protag was hit by the most uneasy stench. The kind of smell that rams itself up your nostrils and lives there for the coming weeks. It was putrid and decaying and that’s when Protag saw the fleshy bodies hanging from metallic and rusty hooks. He saw the deep cuts down the abdomen that, and the remnants of the dried blood that had exited their corporeal casing. Protag broke down.

“Please, I’m sorry. It was just a sneeze I swear!” he cried to deaf ear ears.

Rohil and Ritika were separated from their friend by about a dozen onlookers and trying to shout at Mehtab, but the fear in them prevented them from doing that earnestly.

“Dude, relax, they’re pigs. You know. Oink oink etcetera,” said Mehtab, casually.

Protag stopped his whimpering and started to really focus in on the bodies. They were at a butchers shop, although that itself didn’t quite put Protags mind at ease. They walked through the gallery of death, and past slabs of pig meat where tattoo artists in training had tried their hand at the craft, and onto a cutting floor.

“So you had bet your toes. We’re gonna need at least one of them from you right now,” said Mehtab, as if he wasn’t suggesting an amputation for shits and giggles.

“Uhh, Ritika!” Protag shouted. He wasn’t quite sure why he called for Ritika, but he felt like he knew she could help, but she couldn’t.

Mehtab drew his gun and made Protag sit down. One of the men from the club took off his right shoe, pulled his sock off.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” thought Protag.

“Beds,” thought the leech.

“Okay, this will go easier if you stop squirming,” said Mehtab.

“Hey guys, let's just relax, which one of us hasn’t made a rash and drunken decision here?” asked Rohil. “You can’t possibly expect-”

“It’s too late for all this,” said Mehtab, “We’ve got to give the audience what they paid to see.”

He pulled out a steel butcher's knife and lined it up with Protag’s big toe.

“He man,” said Protag, “let’s all calm-”

SNAP!