text: [Themes: A Folly, masque, party, Edgar Allan Poe, time travel, sex, midnight, surreal]
  
  > Look around
  On the floor you can see a red glove where it has been contemptuously thrown down, and expanding outward from this glove the world takes form. There are dancers surrounding you in a circle, but they are not dancing: they are staring at you and staring at the glove, and their eyeballs never cease staring because they are frozen.
  
  There has been some hitch and time stands still.
  
  A chandelier hangs overhead, candles unflickering. Everything is mirrored in the marble floor. Toward the future you can glimpse the grand staircase, where the countess is ascending with her back turned after having delivered her challenge.
  
  > Future
  Ferdinand is leaning against a balustrade, her gaze cast toward the dancers in their formations below. She isn't one for dancing herself unless it's atop freshly slain enemies. Her tremendous kielbasa, which you will borrow later in your duel with the countess, is leaning against the balustrade beside her.
  
  The ballroom is in the past now, and in the future you will look behind a polar bear.
  
  > Keep going
  Dmitri's chest is pressed against the wall, arms overhead with his fingernails raking down the wallpaper. Onegin is straddling his rear, gripping his waist, paused mid-thrust with his cock halfway inside Dmitri's cunt -- or maybe halfway out?
  
  As the countess's minion, it is Onegin's duty to carry her weapon, and right now her cutlass is resting nearby on the floor in an opened case.
  
  The polar bear itself is at least three meters tall, preserved taxidermically in a perpetual roar with claws outspread. Traveling counter-clockwise would reorient you toward the red salon, and the grand staircase is in your past.
  
  > Script
  Scene:
  behind a polar bear, evening
  
  to replace a weapon.
  
  Stage directions:
  inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to
  
  future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
  counter-clockwise (cc)
  wear, undress, wake up
  infect (when wearing graveclothes)
  
  > wear motley
  You don your jester's motley (after removing the graveclothes) and potential pranks inspire you. Everything in this wide world is kissable.
  
  > look at the bear
  Kappiataitok, king among polar bears in life, gathering dust here now in death. No hunt was ever greater than the hunt that felled His Majesty. It's said that thirty hunters lost their lives during the climb in crevices, and thirty more in snowstorms raging hard enough to freeze a beating heart, and thirty more when Kappiataitok emerged to find his glacial sanctum populous with infidels. They could not conquer him with spears; the ice ran red with blood from everyone; and thirty more were dead before the king rose with a roar and broke away across the floes. But he had been wounded in the ankle and could not escape, and after thirty more and thirty more had fallen to his claws, he fell beneath the aurora and never woke into this world again.
  
  > talk to the bear
  As you shuffle into the graveclothes (after removing your motley), a strange malevolence steals over the scenery; or perhaps you yourself have become that strange malevolence. Your fingertips drip with infection.
  
  These frozen tableaux aren't going to provide very lively conversation.
  
  > get the bear
  This polar bear is much bigger than you are. You'd never be able to lug it around, and besides, you'd have little use for it.
  
  > wear the bear
  (first taking the polar bear)
  This polar bear is much bigger than you are. You'd never be able to lug it around, and besides, you'd have little use for it.
  
  > check what you're carrying
  You are carrying motley, a pig carcass, a vorpal blade, a rapier, and a playscript, and you are wearing graveclothes.
  
  > wake
  You open your eyes.
  On the Stroke
  How did you ever get into this predicament? A rumor, a glove thrown down onto a dance-floor? Now you're standing in the moonlight and your knees are knocking together, although you hope that no one notices. You're still dressed for a masquerade and nothing feels quite real. Perhaps it isn't real... and all you need to do is wake up from
  this nightmare.
  
  The scene is set: landscape garden.
  
  The cast: your second, Ferdinand, handing your weapon over; your rival's second, Onegin, handing her weapon over; and your
  rival -- the countess.
  
  "En garde!" the countess cries.
  
  > infect yourself
  You are already teeming with infection.
  
  The countess is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?
  
  Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.
  
  > Infect onegin
  You raise your arm toward Onegin. That's enough.
  
  At first it seems that nothing has happened. After all, the bastard is painted red from head to toe. It isn't immediately obvious that his pores have begun to ooze blood.
  
  But then he notices. He looks down at himself, unable to tell where the pain is coming from, and you smile at the answer: Everywhere.
  Now he is screaming. He doesn't know where to put his hands. He is stepping around as though he were stepping on hot coals because even his soles are bloody. He is a devil writhing in a pit. He is a sinner being flayed alive. His flesh is slipping from him in red slabs, splattering onto the lawn, leaving his raw muscles exposed to the nighttime air.
  
  He has collapsed in agony, and the countess and your second have also collapsed in their own crimson puddles. It is a comprehensive plague.
  
  In the palace guests are falling too. Their shadows are erratic in the candlelit windows. You cannot picture them as real people. They are puppets and their strings have just been cut. It is a pandemonium, but it will all be over soon enough. It will end when the last reveler falls in the blood-bedewed halls, when the last screams are carried away by the breeze, when the candles blink out one by one as they gutter in wax.
  
  And then darkness and decay and the Red Death will hold illimitable dominion over all.
  
  > Infect ferdinand
  You raise your arm toward Ferdinand. That's enough.
  
  She knows what you've done almost before you've done it. There's nothing she can do to save herself, but that doesn't stop her from rushing to grapple your arm -- as if disabling you would reverse the disease.
  
  You pull your arm away. It's effortless. Her grip is weak. You can't understand why you ever viewed her as a friend, as an ally, when she's just as bloodthirsty as the rest.
  She does not scream when she begins to bleed from every pore. Her bald head is a red skull dripping blood. Her gaze into your face is ferocious. She won't surrender and she fights to hold herself together, but then she buckles and vomits everything onto the lawn: bile and blood.
  
  Now she is convulsing on the ground, and the countess and that bastard Onegin are convulsing in their own crimson puddles. It is a comprehensive plague.
  
  In the palace guests are falling too. Their shadows are erratic in the candlelit windows. You cannot picture them as real people. They are puppets and their strings have just been cut. It is a pandemonium, but it will all be over soon enough. It will end when the last reveler falls in the blood-bedewed halls, when the last screams are carried away by the breeze, when the candles blink out one by one as they gutter in wax.
  
  And then darkness and decay and the Red Death will hold illimitable dominion over all.
  
  > check what you're carrying
  You are carrying a tremendous kielbasa and a playscript, and you are wearing graveclothes.
  
  > examine the script
  Scene:
  landscape garden, midnight
  
  in which the corpse...
  and the countess...
  
  Stage directions:
  inventory (i), examine (x)
  attack, wake up
  infect (when wearing graveclothes)
  
  The countess is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?
  
  Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.
  
  > examine the weapon
  (your weapon)
  You're wielding a tremendous kielbasa. It's a joke, of course, because you'll have just as much luck with this kielbasa for a weapon as you would with a sword. The countess is going to absolutely slaughter you tonight.
  
  She is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?
  
  Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.
  
  > look at countess's weapon
  Through some twist in fate, the countess is wielding a cutlass tonight. Perhaps it's not her typical rapier, but she's just as dangerous with any blade.
  
  She is suddenly there, only inches away, and her cutlass slices through your kielbasa and sinks promptly into your neck with a horrible crunch. Those were vertebrae, weren't they?
  
  Bringing a sausage to a swordfight was the last mistake you'll ever make.