“Where am I?” you mumble, rubbing your eyes as you sit up. You don’t recognize your surroundings. You’re in an orange box, and when you put your hands on the glass before you and crane your neck to look around, you realize your little box is within a larger box. To your left and below you are a series of smaller boxes, paired arrows, and horizontal lines shaded with the colors of a rainbow.

And then you realize you don't have fingers. Your hands are pixelated clubs pressed against the glass. Below your feet is green… grass? It’s also pixelated. So are your clothes. You’re wearing brown shoes, blue overalls, and a red shirt. When you turn around, you see a blue sky and blocky white clouds.

“Name, please.”

You spin around again, looking for the disembodied, robotic voice, but nobody's there. A bead of sweat crawls down your back. What is your name? You have one… no, two. You can’t remember the first. The second is…

“Y/n?” you say, the uptick at the end of the word making your statement sound more like a question. You hear tapping on your left and press your face against the glass, trying to see what’s happening. A blinking cursor in a short, wide box to your left is spelling out your name in digitized letters.

“Farm name, please.”

Farm? No. You’re not a farmer. You can’t remember what you do, but farming isn’t it, and you would never wear overalls this tacky. Something’s wrong. Everything’s wrong.

“Time’s up. Farm name defaults to Y/n’s Farm. Favorite thing, please?”

“Red shoes!” you shout. At least you’re confident about that. You hear tapping as the blinking cursor fills a box below your name with your farm name, and then the cursor jumps to the next box down, and you know whoever is controlling this is typing ‘red shoes.’ What’s below that? A pair of arrows surrounding a pixelated cat face.

“Animal preference, please.”

You bite your lip, thinking. You like cats, but for some reason, you don’t want one. “Um… dog?”

The far arrow highlights, and the cat picture changes to a dog.

“Eye color, please.”

“For me? Um…” You rack your brain, but you can’t remember what you look like. Panic is seeping in. “I… I don’t know.”

“Randomizing eye colors.”

You hear hard objects clacking together above you and to your right. When you angle yourself just right, you can make out a pair of dice.

“Brown selected. Hair color, please.”

Brown eyes sound right, but you have the same problem here. “You may as well randomize that. I don’t know.”

“Randomizing hair colors. Black selected. Pants color, please.”

Pants? You’re wearing overalls. You shrug and say, “White?”

Sliders have been moving left and right on the rainbow lines beneath the dog picture. You can’t check your eye color, but you can see your pixelated hair is now black, and your overalls have turned white.

“Gender, please.”

“Female.” Another one you know. Yay!

You hear a click below you, and a highlighted gender icon changes from a yellow male symbol to a green female symbol. Several paired arrows are next. You’re dreading the final set of questions.

“Skin tone, please.”

Maybe it would be best to just randomize it all. “Randomize.”

“Randomizing skin tone. Skin tone one selected. Hairstyle, please.”

Then again, you don’t want to end up with a mohawk or something. “Long and… wavy?”

“Long and wavy selected. Shirt, please.”

Oh. Maybe you won’t be stuck in overalls. “Do you have something in white?”

“Plain shirt selected. Pants, please.”

“Does it have to be pants? Could I get, say, a black skirt?”

“Skirt selected. Unable to change previous color selection. Accessories, please.”

“I… I don’t know. Randomize it.”

“Randomizing accessories. Pumpkin mask selected.”

“No! No! I take it back! I’ll—”

A sound is chiming now. You look around, and there’s a flashing button at the bottom left corner of the main box.

“Click ‘OK’ to begin gameplay.”

“What? No! I don’t want to play a game! I… I…” You groan and slide down the glass to sit on your knees, eyes closed, forehead pressed into the glass. This is a fashionista’s nightmare. “Somebody help me, please!”

You called?

Your eyes fly wide open. You look around for the disembodied voice, and again, you can’t find it. This one sounds human, though. And friendly. “Um… I just woke up in this game, and I need to get out of it. Please, if there’s something you can do…”

Oh, Y/n, maybe this was too much for you. I take it you’re not a Stardew Valley fan?

“Stardew Valley?” You furrow your brow, thinking, and then you shake your head. “I don’t know what that is.”

It’s a popular indie farming roleplay game, but I’ve never played it, so I’m having to reference the wiki to write this. The prompt demands it. That doesn’t mean you have to stay in this game the entire chapter, though, and I could see my way toward helping you, if you can offer a sufficient bribe.

“What? Are you insane? What am I supposed to offer you? A pixelated dog? Oh, no, here you go. Take the pumpkin mask. I don’t want it.”

I was thinking of something more like the promise of a future treat. Do you remember my favorites?

You groan and bang your head against the glass. “I don’t even remember what I look like! Wait, wait, let me think…” A wisp of memory comes to you. You look up and say, “An iced peppermint mocha and… a chocolate croissant?”

“Y/n!” Someone is shaking your shoulder and shouting your name. “Y/n, wake up!”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” you mutter, sitting upright and opening your eyes. The world is no longer pixelated. The girl looking at you lacks unrealistic straight lines and monotone features. Her heterochromatic eyes are round, and her face is a study in curves and multi-tonality. When you look down at yourself, you’re wearing your favorite red shoe pajamas. There’s a loud sound nearby. Above you. Propellers. Because you’re in a helicopter, and Luna is the girl who woke you up, and BTS is behind the controls.

“I was so worried!” Luna exclaims. “You just passed out, and then your skin turned bright red, and—”

“What?” You lift your hand and look at it. It is indeed bright red. So is your other hand. On the bright side, you have fingers again, but your neck and face are hot to the touch. Realization strikes, and you groan. “I forgot to put on sunscreen…”

“Do sunburns make you pass out?”

You shake your head. “No.”

She tilts her head to the side. “When was the last time you ate anything? Anything nourishing, I mean. For you. I’m sure cannolis don’t satisfy a vampire’s appetite. Although they aren’t exactly a dietician’s dream for a normal person's nourishment either.”

“Um… the middle of the night. Well, early this morning.”

“You mean yesterday morning,” BTS calls over his shoulder, shouting so you can hear him over the propeller.

You frown. “What? No. I went to bed after that, and then I woke up in the early afternoon and followed my cat outside, and then you kidnapped me—”

“Sorry,” Luna mutters, dropping her gaze to her lap.

“And then we had the whole thing with the alpha, and then the mafia showed up and rekidnapped me, and then we went to that underground temple, and onto a ship, and we sailed to the ocean. It was sunset when we reached the dock. I know it was. The waves were pink because they were reflecting the sky.”

Luna shakes her head. “That was sunrise. We sailed all the way from the Appalachian foothills to the Atlantic Ocean. That takes longer than a couple of hours.”

I’ll chime in here to say that Luna is correct. Remember that time skip while you were talking to her and the mafia/werewolf ensemble was debating about how to kill you? You sailed through the night and arrived at the ocean in the morning.

You said it was sunset, though! you think in an accusatory manner.

No, I wrote what you were thinking. You thought it was sunset. I didn’t bother to correct you, but the prompt specified it was morning: ‘One morning, the ocean washes up a message. One you've been waiting your entire life to hear.’

You sigh. “Okay. Now that we have the timeline straight, I guess it’s been over twenty-four hours since I ate. Well, actually, I’ve only had one bottle of tomato juice in the past…” You add up the time since you entered the story. “Three days?”

“No wonder you passed out!” Luna scolds you. “Well, I don’t think we have any tomato juice on board, but you can take a bite. I don’t mind.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and pulls the neckline of her shirt to the side, baring the right side of her neck. “It’ll help you heal, too, right?”

“No!” You shake your head and try to back away, only to realize you’re strapped into the seat beside her. “No! I-I can’t bite you!”

“Well, you don’t have to kill me or anything. Or would you prefer BTS’ blood?” Her lips curve up into a smirk, and she glances at the back of his head. “Vampires prefer the blood of their loved ones, right?”

If your face weren’t already lobster-red from a sunburn, it would reach the same hue from blushing. “N-no! I don’t want to bite him either! A-and he needs to fly this thing, anyway, s-so we can’t take the risk that I’d drink too much of his blood! So there!”

Luna grins and leans toward you. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

In truth, the nape of his neck looks delicious. Your mouth is watering. You can almost hear the blood pulsing through his veins, and the memory of his previous head wound comes rushing back to you, bringing with it the scent of iron and copper. It’s a good thing you’re wearing a seatbelt. You’re in danger of launching yourself at him any minute. Even Luna’s correct  quotation of an oft misquoted Shakespeare line can’t derail you from your bloodthirsty train of thought.

“Y/n?” she asks.

You shake your head and tear your eyes away from BTS, forcing yourself to look out the window to your right. “A-a drug store. O-or a gas station. Now.”

“Did you hear that, BTS? We need to land and get her something to eat.”

“Great timing. I think I found a good spot to land. Hold on to your seats.”

His casual speaking voice holds layers of seduction and crimson that it shouldn’t. You run your tongue over your upper teeth, and you feel the points of your canine teeth. One bite. One little bite. What can it hurt? It’ll take care of your sunburn, too, because blood speeds a vampire’s healing process. Sweat and tears don’t work. It has to be blood.

You grip the edge of the seat and dig your fingers into it, hard enough to puncture the vinyl. You don’t even trust yourself to get out of the helicopter now. When it lands, you’ll have to send BTS and Luna to buy your tomato juice and sunburn cream—after they lock you in. Humans and vampires have an understanding and coexist well, but biting random people in gas stations is generally considered unacceptable.

“We’re almost there, Y/n,” Luna’s voice echoes to you through your hyperventilating. Are your canines growing? You’re seeing red. Your pajamas are red. Your fingernails are red. Those are supposed to be red, but the interior of the helicopter is not. And it isn’t sunrise or sunset, so the sky shouldn’t be red either. Why is the ground bathed in blood?

“You took us somewhere cold?” Luna asks, looking out of her window as the helicopter descends. “I’m not dressed for snow! None of us are!”

Cold showers work for people who need to cool their lusts. Would snow do the same thing for a vampire lusting for blood? It would at least feel good on your sunburn. You keep your eyes fixated on the red snow as the helicopter lands, imagining it’s a sea of blood and far more appealing than either of the two humans within your danger zone.

“Y/n? Are you coming inside?” BTS asks. His deep voice thrums through your entire being. Your eyes snap to his. He jumps backward, both hands up in front of him. “Um… maybe you should stay here. Luna, we’d better hurry. Y/n… we’ll be right back.”

He stumbles over himself in his rush to exit the helicopter. Luna isn’t as frantic, but then again, you didn’t just look at her like a starving animal that’s found its next meal. They lock you in without you telling them to do so. You take a deep breath and close your eyes, digging your fingers deeper into the seat. This isn’t you. You aren’t a vampire in reality, and you weren’t a vampire in Stardew Valley.

“Why did you even put me in that game in the first place?” you growl, taking a leaf out of BTS’ book.

Like I said, the prompt demanded it. I’ll tell you about it in the next chapter. For now, I want you to take another deep breath, count to ten, and envision that message in the bottle. What does that diagram mean? Think about it.

“I think I’d like to know your blood type.”

It would do you no good. I’m in reality, and you’re in fiction. Come on, breathe with me. Inhale, two, three, four; hold, two, three, four; exhale, two, three, four; hold, two, three, four; and repeat. There. Don’t you feel better? If you don’t, it’s okay, because BTS is back in record time.

“Here!” He thrusts a bottle of tomato juice at you. You snatch it and rip the lid off, chugging the whole thing in seconds. He hands you another bottle. You down it with as much fervor as the first. You take more time with the third, and then you sigh and sit back in your seat, wiping your mouth.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Um… maybe I should buy a whole case. I’ll be right back.”

He doesn’t lock you in this time, and you undo your seatbelt and climb out of the helicopter, stretching your arms over your head. The snow is white now. The sky is blue. And a couple of people are looking askance at the helicopter, which sticks out like a sore thumb in a gas station parking lot. You give them a cheery wave and stroll toward the nearest snowbank—barefoot. But the chill feels good on your sunburn, so it's fine for the moment. You pick up a handful of snow and smile.

“Deploying Plan I!”

You groan. Not again…