“hey, chance.”

“that was a good session, wasn’t it?”

“have you seen caleb anywhere? i’ve got to tell him something.”

“thanks for helping me getting him out of there. couldn’t have done it without ya.”

“wanna play a round of russian roulette? i promise it’ll be quick, plus the gun isn’t loaded. you go first.”

he couldn’t get those words out of his head no matter how hard he tried. all the words spoken by itrapped, all the sentences that should’ve hinted at a darker premonition as to what their friendship was leading to, now were replayed over & over in chance’s head, creating him his own personal hell. he was supposed to have forgotten all about itrapped long ago, long before now, yet why did his mind still force chance to recall every single memory he had about itrapped? it didn’t make sense. he didn’t want to remember itrapped. he didn’t want to remember what he’d done. he didn’t want to remember that fateful night where, despite itrapped promising chance that the revolver had never been loaded, was just so— but chance’s luck had managed to bail him out of the situation. itrapped hadn’t been quite so fortunate. itrapped had picked up the gun when the one single bullet in the cartridge had been put into place, ready to fire. he’d raised it to his head & pulled the trigger. immediately after, itrapped gave a sudden sway as blood shot out from the other end of his cranium, before slamming down face-first onto the table they were playing on. chance could only look on in horror at the scene in front of him—his best friend, dead, after shooting himself in the head with a revolver he’d just promised wasn’t loaded. chance’s memory didn’t go much farther on from that point, as his mind wouldn’t allow him to recall the countless sleepless nights he had while he was fuelled with the recurring nightmare that itrapped had put the bullet in the gun intentionally…& that it wasn’t supposed to have been used on him in the first place, either.

a few years later from then. chance for forsaken. how, exactly? he couldn’t remember for the life of him how—& neither did the rest of the survivors he was stuck with. well, not necessarily “stuck”. he liked them, even the outcasts like the manic two time & depressed 007n7. he often hung out with everyone, including the outcasts, even if two time had attempted to stab him that one time when he tried to show off his new witch hat to the group…but there was this one survivor that chance couldn’t get his mind off of no matter how hard he tried— noob. noob, the frightful. noob, the coward. noob, the survivalist who had somehow managed to make it this far in the forsaken land without getting blinded in their other eye with nothing more but the help of a burger, a bloxy cola & some potion that turned them into stone. something about noob just caught chance’s attention in all of the wrong ways, excluding the one good one, & chance couldn’t figure out for the life of him why, up until his recent revelation. while gazing remorsefully at an old picture of itrapped, chance’s gaze had flickered up to noob as they entered the cabin from another scavenging run. that’s when he’d realised it— itrapped looked like noob. noob looked like itrapped. the difference was practically nonexistent in their colour palettes—yellow skin, blue shirt, green trousers. even if noob couldn’t have been any more different than the moody & arrogant itrapped, chance couldn’t help but see itrapped in noob every time he laid eyes on them, which often led to some unintended staring. well. whatever. chance wasn’t supposed to be thinking of this right now. he was tired, & yet his mind was racing with all of these thoughts about itrapped & noob. he was lying over a desk in the cabin lounge-room, arms folded as his face was hid in them, trying to rest before his team inevitably went on another run to get resources & maybe fight some killers. he couldn’t have been any more oblivious to noob’s presence loitering behind chance.