text: [Themes: modern]
  
  You, Miccy2000 the best MAG zombie game maker in the history of forever who is not full of himself and IS very modest, wake up. You were gonna go to the movies today and see Silent Hill, the new horror movie based on the hit video game. You wake up.
  
  > get dressed and do your hair and put on deodorant and get your phone and stuff
  You do all that... stuff. You get dressed and brush your teeth and get your mobile phone.
  
  Pick up the phone and by clicking on it, and then click the link below.[Themes: horror, horror]
  
  I see the boat from far away in the fading twilight.
  
  The waves are heaving as I draw closer. It's a big yacht—one of those hundred footers that rich businessmen can rent just to have a party.
  
  I pull alongside and look up at the bulk of it. The Sable Rose, the boat's called. The sea rolls and tosses me like a lost lover.
  
  There's a ladder here.
  
  [Author's Note: Hi folks, welcome to my first storygame. More story than game, really, but I hope you enjoy.]
  
  > climb the ladder
  The place I'm at is called the Sun Deck. There's a group of deck chairs here, and a Jacuzzi that is green and gunky. This place looks dead.
  
  I turn left. There is an open door, leading to a downward staircase.
  
  > The hallway
  I'm in a hallway. It's surprisingly clean and well-lit. A sign says Upper Deck.
  
  To my right is what looks like a bar—it's got high stools bellied up to a counter, and some fancy-looking cocktail glasses in a mahogany cabinet. To my left is a TV room, with leather sofas and a movie-screen sized TV. The end of the hall is darkness.
  
  I hear a noise coming from that way. Soft thudding, like footfalls. Too big to be a rat, and they don't usually have those on boats like this anyway.
  
  A stowaway?
  
  > go into the bar
  He was awoken out of a sound sleep by the footsteps in the hallway upstairs. This made him angry until he realized what it meant. Someone had found him. Someone knew he was still here.
  
  He momentarily wondered if this had to do with Marisa's last transmission. But that was crazy, of course.
  
  Either way, he couldn't let this person—these people—he couldn't let them find him.
  
  He couldn't let them find out what he's done.
  
  He struggled to extract himself from the heavy blankets he had layered ove himself--he was always so cold these days. They could be coming down from the hallway anytime. He thought about using the ventilation duct in the master bedroom suite where he was sleeping, but he decided the one in the stairway, though riskier if someone were coming down, would be a better bet. There was a way to get up to the Sun Deck from there.
  
  He made a break for the stairs.
  
  > go on
  The bar is as you would expect—top shelf liquors and furniture exactly as cheap as a rich person can buy for their million dollar yacht.
  
  There's nothing interesting here.
  
  > go back into the hallway
  The hallway is surprisingly clean and well-lit. A sign says Upper Deck.
  
  > go to the end of the hallway
  The sounds have stopped by the time I get here. Now I hear them in the walls.
  
  Creepy.
  
  This end of the hallway is dark, but I can make out a set of stairs going downward.
  
  The stairs spiral down into a formal living area with shiny hard furniture and expensive abstract art. Not nearly as nice as the TV room. An open porthole lets in the sea breeze to lift the blanket of stillness.
  
  Straight ahead is the kitchen.
  
  > go into the kitchen
  The kitchen has black and white checked floors and shining, stainless steel appliances. Every surface is clean and bright.
  
  There's a knife in the middle of the floor.
  
  The light slicing off the blade makes me shiver. Is somebody threatening me?
  
  The room ahead is darkness.
  
  > go into the next room
  The deck chairs were close enough to the doorway that he could hear anybody coming up those tinny stairs in time to hide. Now he reclined on one, turning things over in his mind, shivering against the cold in his body, trying to figure out a course of action.
  
  He'd made it up to the Sun Deck without getting caught by the intruder, even with his stupid mistake of grabbing the knife on his way through the kitchen. It had been a momentary flash of bad inspiration which caused him to run over to the butcher block, thinking he might be able to take care of this problem right off the bat.
  
  It had flown out of his hand as if it had branded him, making a noisy clang on the granite floor that made him wince with adrenaline. There was no time—he had to get up the vent! He'd run through the living room and disappeared through the hole like a hunted rabbit, getting the screen on just in time to hear a pair of footsteps start down the stairs.
  
  Well, at least he knew this person was probably alone.
  
  His mind grabbed on to this idea, of being alone, and he cast it back to think about Marisa. Marisa and the whole crew—Steve, Joe, Tina—who would never get to go to another party, or dance late into the night, or eat or drink, or take a test or take a shit again. He'd heard Marisa speaking into the radio; he'd heard her last transmission—then he'd done the unthinkable.
  
  He was sorry, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
  
  Nothing except take care of the problem with the intruder.
  
  > go on
  The room is lit only by the dim evening light coming through two portholes. I feel the wall for a light switch. It flips on. I'm in the master bedroom suite.
  
  The king bed in front of me is rumpled. The sounds, the noises, even clean and scrubbed rooms start to make sense.
  
  I'm not alone.
  
  My eyes are drawn to a picture on the nightstand. No frame, it's just standing there propped up on the lamp. It's a guy and a girl. They look happy, like lovers.
  
  I pick it up and turn it over. Steve and Marisa, it says.
  
  > go back to the kitchen
  In the kitchen, the knife gazes up at me.
  
  A sudden thought occurs to me—the stowaway's been here a while. He—she?—could be crazed. Dangerous.
  
  He could find my boat.
  
  I close the bedroom door behind me.
  
  > take the knife
  The heft of it makes me feel safer.
  
  > think of what to do next
  He paused, remembering that he'd left the knife in the middle of the kitchen. What if the intruder found it? What if he, or she, or it—it!—had already found it and was making its way up to kill him now?
  
  He thought again of the group, how they'd gone off on the boat without him. And how it would be their fault if he ended up getting killed now. Sure, he might have made some dumb mistakes, but they were—Marisa was—the reason he'd been living on this shithole boat for the past month.
  
  He decided that was uncharitable. But he still needed to account for the fact that the intruder may have the knife.
  
  He turned left into the TV room, where the vent would take him back down to the master bedroom.
  
  > go on
  I hear a noise behind me, coming through the bedroom door. I consider my options.
  
  > go back into the bedroom
  The room is almost black with night.
  
  I reach for the light switch. I find a hand there instead. The voice I hear is full of desperation and fear: "No! You can't find out! You'll never take me!"
  
  Then I feel a deep thud on my skull along with a crack which rings through my ears. At the same time I bring the knife up between the person's ribs.
  
  I can hear him laying on the floor, groaning in pain. Probably not a mortal wound for me, but as my consciousness edges into blackness, I wonder what I could have done differently. I wonder if I could have learned more about the story of what happened here.
  
  It certainly seems as though this is....