Page 65 of The Staircase in the Woods

But she ignored him and pushed past. Then she said to the other two, “This isn’t a regular house. It’s not a haunted house. It’s agame.”

37

Ludonarrative Dissonance

They all sat down again on the white leather couch as Lore stood there and told them again: “This whole place is a game.”

That earned her confused looks.

Hamish said, “What?”

“This place. This…experience. It’s a game.”

“Yeah, we heard you,Lauren,” Nick said, suddenly angry. “You can’t call it that. You can’t just…you can’t justsaythat and make it true. It’s not a fucking game. It’s serious. You’re a hammer, so everything you see is a nail, but—”

Owen interrupted:

“She’s maybe not wrong.”

It was his turn to get the looks. Even from Lore, who seemed shocked he was agreeing with her. Which was fair, becauseOwenwas shocked he was agreeing with her. But again, she wasn’t wrong.

At least, not entirely.

“It’s not a game,” he said, “but it’slikeone.”

Lore snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “Yeah. That.”

“Think about it. We come here from another place, through—not a portal precisely, but a staircase that functions as one. Kind of like the moongate in the ring of stones fromUltima. Then we get here and it’s like—”

“It’s likeZork. Or any of the old text adventures from Infocom. What’s the opening?West of House. You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door—”

Owen joined in, said the rest with her:

“There is a small mailbox here.”

He remembered it well—he and Lore used to play games like this all the time. They’d play them sometimes together, in the same room. Or when on the phone with each other until two, three o’clock in the morning.Zork, Ultima, Wasteland, Elder Scrolls, Bard’s Tale, King’s Quest, Space Quest, Maniac Mansion1 and 2, all the PC games that made them want to make games, too, or tell stories, or makeexperiencesthat other people could join. Of course, only Lore really got to do that part, didn’t she? Owen found that dark core of bitterness inside him rise up like acid in the back of his throat. He choked it back down.

“It’s like that,” she said, “or likeBard’s Tale. You have a room, you have things in the room, you have your exits—”

He continued on, staring darkly at her. “And if you go the wrong way, if you make the wrong choice, you’re eaten by a grue. Game over.”Just like it was game over for me.That thought turned in his head like a screw.

“I don’t know what a ‘grue’ is,” Hamish said, looking confused.

“Yeah,” Nick said, “we weren’t nerding out and jerking one another off with this dork shit, okay? Me, Ham, and Matty were getting stoned like proper kids.”

Lore gave him a look like he’d just spit in her soda. “Nick, we used to play D&D every Sunday. You were there. We took turns being the Dungeon Master, you dick.”

“Yeah, but we gothighwhile doing it.”

“No, but see—” Owen jumped in. “Even with D&D, it’s like that, too. The grid paper, designing dungeons, choosing which door to go through, finding monsters, avoiding traps—”

“This isn’t a fucking game, man!” Hamish bleated. “Okay? This is fucked.” He stood up. “Nick’s right. Let’s pick one of those doors and just walk through, let’s just keep moving, okay? I say we pick a direction and we hard-charge it until we find the way out. It’s like going ona hike and getting lost. You pick a direction and you walk until you find a highway or some shit.”

Lore barked a bitter laugh. “That’snotwhat you do if you’re lost in the woods, Ham! If you get lost in the woods, you pick a spot and you stay there. You shelter in place, same as you’d do in a storm or a zombie apocalypse. And this isn’t the woods. Those doors? Don’t go in a straight line. Right now, one seems to go to a bathroom full of broken mirror glass and the other to a—a dark bedroom. And we can’t go back through the closet—”

“The way is shut,” Nick said. “Where we came from is gone again, and there’s no door. It’s just a wall now.”

Hamish buried his face in his hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

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