The world was yellow. I looked around and saw Jay standing still, looking as if she were talking, but got frozen mid-sentence. Next to her was Patti, who had finally started to pee. Everything was frozen in place, and a yellow hue surrounded it all. I looked around and also saw Joey's face, still peeled off and hanging on the grass. I heard a noise of movement from behind me, and I turned to find the giant, floating head of Jessica standing there. Well, she wasn't a giant, floating disembodied head anymore, but instead she was a normal, human-sized woman. She was unmistakably Jessica, though, with her too-tight ponytail, her eyes crazily wide, and that very tight smile of hers. She was wearing a black Misfits shirt with the Fiend Skull on it, and she also wore some torn jeans. I let out a yelp and hopped back upon seeing her. I backed away, and she took a few steps closer.
"Wooooooo", Jessica said, her voice was low and sounded like she worked at a haunted house.
"Holy shit! Are you a ghost?" I stammered. Jessica stopped at my question and looked at me while tilting her head to the side.
"No, silly. I'm not a ghost. I'm real. Want to see?" She quickly shuffled towards me, and I fell backwards on my butt as she did. Suddenly, Jessica stood over me and her arm stiffly reached out and started touching my face, squeezing parts, and feeling the entire surface. Her fingers even went up my nose at one point, and I think she dug around in there a bit. I was so confused and just stared back, frozen in my shock. After a moment, she stopped touching my face and she shoved her hands in her jeans pockets. She just looked at me without blinking and smiling her huge smile. The silence was making me uncomfortable, and I began to talk.
"Okay, you're-" She cut me off quickly, kneeling and pressing her finger to my lips, quieting me.
"Yes, I am as real as it gets, Max. You have to understand, I had to see you, to touch you." Her eyes closed, and she let out a vibrating breath. "Smell you." Her eyes opened to look at me, and then she slapped me. It was surprisingly hard!
"What the fuck did I do?" I exclaimed.
"I'm only helping you this once, Max." She said sternly with some anger in her voice. "When you make your two class choices for the flip, choose Patchwork and Skinrunner." With that, she turned around and started walking towards my house. She threw a card over her shoulder at me, and it landed between my legs. I picked up the card and it read, "GET INTO JAIL FREE". The hell was this? It was smooth and metallic like the token and the opaque wall. I finally stood up and looked towards my house to see that Jessica was now walking towards me, and she held a bundle of my clothes in her arms.
I looked at her incredulously and said, "Are you stealing my clothes?"
"I love you, Max, but this is getting ridiculous. You're hot and then cold. I need some time."
And with that, she popped out of existence with my clothes, and the world was no longer frozen in yellow. Patti was now peeing in real time, and Jay was finishing her sentence. "It could be worse!" She trailed off at the end and noticed I was no longer in the same spot as when the race choice was finalized with the yellow zap. She looked around and saw me standing to her side. She eyed me up and down and nodded approvingly, but she also seemed a little confused by my location change. She shrugged it off and Patti finished her business and came up to sniff me. I just looked back at them. Then I remembered I had changed my freaking race! What was it again? Bone something? I checked my pockets until I found my phone, and I pulled it up to my face to unlock it when I saw it. My hands and arms were bleached white bones, like a freaking science room skeleton.
"Ahhh!" I yelled. My first thought was if my fingers would even work on my phone? I tapped the screen frantically, and to my surprise, it worked. The screen came up and I saw my phone was under 10% battery. I forgot to charge it again last night. Normally, I did that at work, but right now I needed to use the camera. I clicked on the camera icon, and it opened up facing outward. It showed Patti on the screen, but to my surprise, it didn't show Jay. She was standing right in front of me and next to my dog. Was she a possible vampire, I thought? It sounded stupid, but nothing was happening that made any sense. I filed that thought away to ask about later. I found the icon to flip the camera around, and I gave it a tap with my bony index finger. The camera flipped around, and I saw myself finally. Staring back at me was a bright white skull with a mohawk spiked up. I just stared and stared. I was moving my phone around to look at all the angles of myself. It was all bone. The skull face was surprisingly emotive, I noticed, with my eyebrows furrowing and my mouth making shapes. I even pulled my shirt down a bit by the collar, and I looked down and saw my ribcage, which was empty except for a heart made of bone that was beating. I was going to ask Jay about that when Jessica's floating head reappeared above.
"Sorry, I'm back. We can continue now!" Jessica then stared off to the side, and despite her whispering to someone off-screen, it was still loud as hell for this next part. "What? What? Okay. Okay! I'll do it now." There was a pause. "I had to pee! Whatever." She looked back center and continued in a normal volume that was more befitting of a god-sized head. "Okay, some of you forgot to choose your race, so… you have to melt now." Her eyes let out a few zaps that struck many miles away from me, and it was way fewer melting rays than the first time. When it ended, she cleared her throat before continuing.
"Congratulations, everyone! You're almost ready to start playing! Next up is choosing your class! This time, you will get five minutes to select two choices and flip for it. If a class is not chosen at the end-"
"You will be melted," I quickly said. Jay let out a little chuckle, and I looked at her while smirking.
But Jessica looked off to the side again and talked with some unseen person. "What? Really?" She turned back to the center and resumed her regular speaking voice. "Okay, so if you don't select a class by the end of five minutes, you will automatically be assigned the class of Sleeper Agent." Jay said "damn" under her breath to that. Jessica continued, "The timer starts now!" Her head disappeared, and in its place, it now said SECOND FLIP: CLASS. The walls once again showed a timer that started counting down from five minutes.
"Let's open your game screen again, Max, and choose." I lifted my phone again to look at myself some more and was getting lost in what I was seeing.
"I'm a skeleton and I'm just supposed to be okay with everything and go along with this," I finally said.
"You don't have to be okay with anything. I'm just making sure you don't get stuck with Sleeper Agent, because that would be really bad." She took a few steps closer to me. "So let's open that screen, okay?"
I turned my phone off and put it in my pocket. I then pressed my thumb to my palm, and I looked at Jay in her weird, octopus eye and asked, "What's a Sleeper Agent anyway?"
"Most of these classes are not static. So they change every time there's a new Maze. Sleeper Agent, however, is a constant, and they say it's a joke class, but really, it's a punishment. I don't know what you call it here, but on my planet, some people were born with a condition that caused them to fall asleep suddenly. Sleeper Agent is like that, except it kicks in when you're in danger. So you pass out in front of an enemy, and they usually just eat you or something."
I made a weirded-out face at that as my game screen popped up. The screen showed the X and O at the top with blank spaces underneath. Below that was a selectable class list for my race, which was Bone Ranger. I began to scroll and realized that this list dwarfed the previous one substantially. Thousands and thousands of weird ass class names scrolled by as I flicked my finger against the screen. I saw one called FAST FOOD EMPLOYEE, and I stopped at it. I clicked on it, and a small info box came up.
CLASS: Fast Food Employee
DESCRIPTION: Armed with a spatula and dead dreams, they serve lukewarm food and hot rage faster than any mage can cast a spell.
STATS: Shown upon selection.
SKILLS: Shown upon selection.
SPELLS: Shown upon selection.
"Clicking on these classes tells me nothing, Jay. I thought there would be stuff like a fighter or mage, not a fast food worker. There are also way more options than I had for race. And…" I looked over at the number wall real quick. "... I have two and a half minutes left to choose? How the fuck is that fair?"
Jay nodded. "Yeah, it sucks, Max. They don't tell anyone anything until after selection, and I think that's how they want it. They want all this chaos."
"This is really dumb and shitty," I said.
"It is. Just know, when you do choose, I will receive a lot of information about your class and can help you from there. For example, after your race selection, I received an information packet detailing it fully for me."
"What does it say?"
"You really need to pick your class first, Max."
"I'm doing it. Now tell me, please." I said as I began searching for the classes Jessica told me to choose. Hopefully, she wasn't fucking with me as well. I found the class PATCHWORK, and I dragged it under the X.
"Okay, let me pull it up on my screen," Jay said. She tilted her head forward, and it appeared she was looking at something. She said she couldn't see my screen earlier, and I guess I couldn't see hers. One of her tentacles stretched out to swipe at what I assumed was her screen. She leaned forward as if reading something and said aloud, "Bone Ranger: A skeleton who talks way too much, doesn't need sleep, and is still salty about never getting to eat food. It also lists your traits and attributes, but I'll tell them to you after class selection. Less than a minute now to decide, Max."
I looked at the wall and let out a little exasperated sigh. This shit was getting outrageous. I kept scrolling and found SKINWALKER. I dragged it under the O. My screen now flashed the word FLIP, and I held my arm out in the position to do it.
"What did you choose, Max?"
"Patchwork and Skinwalker. Do you know them?"
She shook her head. "Nah."
The clock ticked under thirty seconds. I gave Jay my best sassy look and tilted my head downward while looking at her. "This is dumb, and you're going to answer some questions after this."
"Yes, yes, I will. Now please, flip the damn coin!"
I flicked my arm up, and my little token popped out of my palm and into the air. It was flipping over and over, and it landed back in my palm. I looked down as the final countdown beeps started. It was O for Skinwalker. I felt my body tingle for a moment, and the timer ended. I didn't feel different, but that didn't mean much. I turned into a freaking skeleton and didn't notice that. I looked at my hands and arms, and it was still just bleached white bone.
"Okay, it landed on Skinwalker. What now?"
Appearing as if I personally called for her, Jessica popped back up in the sky. She still looked crazed with her wide-open eyes and toothy smile. Her eyes looked around for a bit, and two shots of a rippling blue light came from her eyes. She cleared her throat and said, "Oooh oooh ahhh! So many unique classes were chosen! I'm so excited to see this year's Maze Twenty! Before we begin selecting biomes for your zones, I will explain a bit of the game! For more details, just ask your game manual afterwards. That's why they're here!"
I looked at Jay, and she looked back, giving me finger guns in acknowledgement.
Jessica continued. "Maze Twenty is a PTG, or Peaceful Transition Game. This has been devised by the Selarian Life League to restart your society by thinning the population and preparing you for life in the League! That's so cool, they did that! So, how does Maze Twenty work, you might ask? Let's learn together." Jessica's crazed smile somehow got wider and more sinister-looking at that.