(First posted here.)

It was a little less clear from here. Maureen’s purple hair did nothing to dull her personality. She was getting people to dance together, picking couples at random, then judging the victims’ mutual reactions with either a new match or by leaving them alone.

“She’s hilarious,” a guy named Lima said near me. He held up a glass of some new substance Maureen’s father invented in the dungeons this morning. It was syrupy and glittered at times and was a little too topaz to be digestible.

“You don’t know me, buddy,” I clarified.

Lima looked at me strangely. His eyes were all over the place and he was swaying from side to side. “I do, actually. You are Death, destroyer of worlds.” He laughed and paid homage to my scythe by bowing at it. This brought his head closer to the floor and he probably figured, what the hell, it was probably easier lying down anyway.

And so the guy did.

I looked at him and wondered whether I should do anything. I wasn’t here to socialize. I was here to kill a girl.

“Dude. Can you tell Maureen to come out here?” I said.

“Sure, but I don’t think I can walk.”

“I want to talk to her before I kill her.”

“You can’t kill her. Everybody’s tried.”

“I’m not everybody.”

“I’ve tried killing her once. I hear her blood can fuel an army. Blood of her kind, anyway.”

“‘And how did that gig go?”

Lima croaked good-naturedly. He pulled his shirt over his head and flipped himself over to show me his bare upper body. There was a metal contraption inside his chest, jutting out a few centimeters from where his flesh was supposed to be.

“Pretty cool shit, all things considered. Does it make coffee?”

“No, but it keeps me alive.”

We shared a good laugh over this and I thought, boy, did I have my work cut out for me. I grabbed my scythe.