text: [Themes: A Folly, masque, ghost, palace, gender-neutral protagonist, time travel, kissing, plague, sex]
  
  > Describe the surroundings
  A cratered wasteland. Soft cheese squishes underneath your weight and smoke rises from foreboding chasms cleft into the glowing camembert.
  
  Before you a great beast is sprawled, slaughtered. It has been dead for eons and its form has decomposed to the bare bone. It is larger than any other animal, some colossus from legend, its death-grip encapsulating a lunar mountain over which it has collapsed.
  
  > examine the mountain
  You can't accurately judge the mountain's size with that monster draped over it. The proportions involved seem too fantastic.
  
  > fly
  You rise into the night sky and the moon diminishes underneath your hooves. As you fly higher you find yourself flying lower, breaking back into the world's atmosphere.
  
  This re-entry stings a little, but sooner than later it's over and you've returned to that wretched masquerade party.
  Landscape Garden
  You are standing alone on a long manicured lawn bordered by cypress trees, whose moon-cast shadows divide the grass into neat quadrants as though it were a rugby field.
  
  Below the lawn, further into the past, there is a great and gurgling fountain, and in the future you can see the palace windows alive with candlelight and merriment.
  
  > P.
  You gaze into the fountain's murky depths. Its water is stagnant and green from many years without cleaning, and unchecked lilies spill over its rim, on which a dead girl is sitting.
  
  In the future you will stand alone in a landscape garden.
  
  > examine the fountain
  You can't even see your reflection. Algae and scum have congealed into a green sludge inside the basin.
  
  > look at the lilies
  A thin phlegm coats the lilies and glistens in the moonlight.
  
  > examine matilda
  Her skin is slick and green and semi-transparent like gelatin. You can see her dead organs inside, rotten, black, and her black veins running through her green body. Her hair drips down over her face. When she looks at you, her gaze is blank; she does not have pupils or irises, only whites as slimy as a dead frog's underbelly.
  
  > look at the playscript
  Scene:
  landscape garden, evening
  
  to lamentations from the dead.
  
  Stage directions:
  inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to
  
  future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
  counter-clockwise (cc)
  wear, undress, wake up
  fly, oink (when wearing the butchered pig)
  
  > talk to Matilda
  She cannot talk to you, although her tongue is swollen with unspoken words. Only the dead can commune with the dead.
  
  > Undress
  You clamber out from the pig carcass. Now the sky is once more is the limit.
  
  > examine the script
  Scene:
  landscape garden, evening
  
  to lamentations from the dead.
  
  Stage directions:
  inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to
  
  future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
  counter-clockwise (cc)
  wear, undress, wake up
  
  > wear motley
  You don your jester's motley and potential pranks inspire you. Everything in this wide world is kissable.
  
  > Kiss matilda
  You bend toward her but then you flinch, repelled by a stench like flowers left to rot inside a vase.
  
  She stares back at you with her white frog-belly eyes.
  
  > look at the script
  Scene:
  landscape garden, evening
  
  to lamentations from the dead.
  
  Stage directions:
  inventory (i), examine (x), take, drop, talk to
  
  future (f), past (p), clockwise (c),
  counter-clockwise (cc)
  wear, undress, wake up
  kiss (when wearing motley)
  
  > Kiss kielbasa
  A kielbasa this tremendous demands a smooch equally tremendous, and you plant one with passion.
  
  > examine the windows
  Black silhouettes are poised in the yellow palace windows, and even though they aren't moving they still convey some sense of happiness. It is like you are looking at puppets for a shadow-play, abandoned but still waiting to be animated.
  
  > F.
  The palace doors stand open, but no one has arrived yet.
  
  A landscape garden stretches away into the past.
  
  In the future, guests will deposit their cloaks in the cloak room.
  
  > F.
  You find yourself lost in a forest. The trees are coat-stands draped with cloaks. Clockwise, the banquet awaits.
  
  In the past you can see the palace doors opened wide to the night. Guests are thronging through them to the masquerade, their stream bordered by footmen holding lanterns high, and foremost in this crowd is the countess.
  
  She is the jewel set in the evening's crown. Onegin has her hand, but she is not looking at him; she is looking at everybody, enchanting them with her smile. Her domino mask is lowered and you can see her face. She is more beautiful than anyone.
  
  > examine the footmen
  These footmen form a gauntlet that the guests are passing through, like statues lining a pathway. Their features are somehow both neutral and severe, statues indeed, and they are wearing silver-threaded livery. Their lower bodies dissolve into shadow because the light from their lanterns does not reach that far.
  
  > look at the cloaks
  In order to progress you have to push your passage through the cloaks. They are musky with perfume, cologne, and once you've advanced their folds close back behind you.
  
  > Kiss swan
  Always better to peck a swan than to have a swan peck you.
  
  > examine table
  It is a massive table that would seat at least a hundred were it not being upended by a cherub horde. Fortunately no one is sitting at the table. Everyone seems to have anticipated the interruption and moved away in time.
  
  > Kiss dmitri
  You steal a kiss from Dmitri and he promptly rubs his cheek to remove any residue left by your lips.
  
  "Just wonderful," he says. "Exactly what I needed. I must've
  been begging for that and I didn't even know it."
  
  > talk to Dmitri
  In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
  
  > Vorpal blade
  "A vorpal blade isn't a real weapon," says Dmitri. "It's invented, imaginary, from a poem. The most relevant stanza goes:
  
  "One, two! One, two! and through and through
  the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
  He left it dead, and with its head
  he went galumphing back.
  
  "That's why a vorpal blade is so deadly, you understand. It can cut through anything simply because it doesn't exist. When
  something doesn't exist, there's nothing it can't do."
  
  In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
  
  > Moon
  "Supposedly people act more irrationally during a full moon," says Dmitri. "More accidents happen. More people are killed. It may be superstition, but the night sky is brighter with a full moon, isn't it? Therefore people stay awake later, and that provides a larger window for mishaps. The moon doesn't change anyone. They're just as irrational as always."
  
  In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
  
  > Pig
  "It's extraordinarily difficult to butcher a pig correctly," says Dmitri. "They're like lobsters in the sense that they ought to be kept alive until the last instant before they're eaten. To that end, many butchers have great nets in their shops where they keep the pigs contained beneath the ceiling, just as a balloon vendor would use a net to prevent their balloons from escaping. Then, whenever anyone asks for a pig, the butcher just has to pop back and grab one."
  
  In order to speak with Dmitri, just mention whatever subject you'd like to hear his opinion about, or you could say farewell.
  
  > take the rapier
  You have multiple weapons you could swap with the rapier. In order to take the rapier, try dropping one of them.
  
  > drop the kielbasa
  You drop the tremendous kielbasa into the opened case on the floor, also taking the initiative to remove the rapier while you're at it. Let's see how well the countess fights with that for a
  weapon.
  
  > P.
  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 cutlass, 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.
  
  > drop the blade
  You prop the vorpal blade against the balustrade and take Ferdinand's cutlass, and already you can taste imminent victory. With a vorpal blade at your disposal, even an amateur such as yourself will be unstoppable.
  
  > Undress
  You disrobe from your jester's motley and feel decidedly less tricksterish. You won't be stealing any kisses now.
  
  > wear the pig
  You hunch your shoulders together and crawl into the pig carcass. Now the sky is no longer a limit.
  
  > F.
  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 tremendous kielbasa 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 black salon, and the grand staircase is in your past.
  
  > Oink
  You oink with determination.
  
  > P.
  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 vorpal blade, 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.
  
  > P.
  On the floor you can see a white 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.
  
  > examine the dancers
  You cannot recognize anyone behind their masks. There is a jackal in a tailcoat, and a nymph with shellfish in her hair, and an enchantress with gold orbs for eyes, and someone with marzipan skin, and an alpine maiden with a shepherd's crook, and an antlered baron, and a raven in a judge's wig, and a sequined succubus, and other masqueraders more fantastic still, but the one thing they all have in common is that their frozen gazes are condemning you: Guilty, they seem to say, guilty.
  
  > look at the enchantress
  It's strange, but when you look at the individual dancers their details warp as though you were looking at something from inside a fishbowl.
  
  > wake up
  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.
  
  > Attack countess
  It only requires a thought and you are already moving, less from your own volition than from the blade's volition in your hand. It knows your wants and knows how to meet them, and suddenly you have leapt into the air and the countess is beneath you with her tremendous kielbasa lifted to deflect your blow.
  
  There is no deflection. Your vorpal blade slices through her weapon without any resistance. You cannot even feel the slice; your blade might as well have been passing through air.
  
  "Impossible," the countess says, but that is all she has the chance to say before you are kneeling on the ground at her feet. You are still holding the blade in your hand and now its edge is buried in the lawn beneath the countess, having taken a vertical route through her body.
  She wobbles in place, reaching about with one hand as if for support, and then she takes a woozy step forward. Her bisected figure comes in half. One side slumps backward onto the lawn and the other continues standing upright, that disoriented hand still grasping in midair for nothing. It is almost as though she does not realize she is dead.
  
  You pull your vorpal blade skyward again, dislodging it from the lawn, and in the arc it makes it seems to shatter the countess. It draws her veins and tendons and her muscles along with it like a puppet yanked by strings, and she is not even a person anymore: she is a gory shower sprinkling across the garden. What remains where she once stood are only bones. They are quite bare. Vultures could not have picked them any cleaner.
  
  "Now that," says Ferdinand, "is how to win a duel."
  
  > Curtain
  A paleontologist, upon finding a cache filled with dinosaur bones, was pleased to discover that they formed a single specimen, a veritable monster. It went into the textbooks. Not until many years later did other paleontologists begin to poke at the bones and doubt this original configuration. They rearranged the bones into another specimen, and it went into the textbooks instead. Well, it happened again, with reconfiguration after reconfiguration, and new dinosaur after new dinosaur. The poor textbooks were panting to keep up. Finally the paleontologists were flustered enough to tromp back and examine the cache's location, which happened to be on a farmer's property. When they consulted the farmer about it, they were told it was a mass grave for chickens.
  
  This game has no optimal ending. It has certain elements (weapons, costumes) that can be reconfigured to produce more than twenty-five different outcomes. Some involve violence. Others do not. You can change what happens to suit your preferences.
  
  All endings will lead you here behind the curtain.
  
  > kill Onegin
  The countess? The countess? Why should you fight the countess when that bastard Onegin is undoubtedly the mastermind behind this whole charade?
  
  You're overcome with outrage and you lunge toward Onegin, and when the countess tries to intercept you with her tremendous kielbasa, your vorpal blade slices through it.
  
  Nothing can intercept a vorpal blade.
  
  The countess cannot comprehend what has happened. She is staring at the severed stump left in her hand, but you've already finished your business. The same slice that went through her weapon also went through Onegin.
  He is looking at you in horror, and you can't blame him for that, although you don't feel sorry when his horrified head pops off his shoulders like a champagne cork. A bloody geyser rises from his neck and continues to rise for far longer than it has any right to do, scattering at its pinnacle into a scarlet shower that patters down over the garden. Warm droplets speckle your skin.
  
  The countess sinks onto her knees at the sight, her gown ballooning around her. Blood is still spouting, still raining from Onegin's standing corpse, and his head hasn't come back down yet.
  
  The countess says: "I surrender."
  
  You didn't even have to ask, and a good thing too, because you likely wouldn't have.
  
  When Onegin's head finally does land on the lawn, the countess faints. You can't blame her either.
  
  > examine the script
  Scene:
  landscape garden, midnight
  
  in which the pig...
  and the countess...
  
  Stage directions:
  inventory (i), examine (x)
  attack, wake up
  fly, oink (when wearing the butchered pig)
  
  The countess is suddenly there, only inches away, but before she has the chance to strike with her tremendous kielbasa, your own sword rises to parry the blow. You did not even attempt to react; your vorpal blade did it for you.
  
  It also did much more than that. It has sliced her weapon in half, leaving the countess to stand there, stupefied, holding a severed sausage stump. She cannot process what has happened, and she never will.