Well, shoot, you’re a vampire now, that’s embarrassing. How do you feel about it?

>It bites

Oh, you’re a funny one, that’s good, you’ll need that sense of humor. You’ve got a lot of time to fill now. Guess you’d better start figuring out your situation.

>drink blood

Jumping right in, I see. Cool, cool. What blood, chief?

>i

you have: no blood

>get blood

What, from the ground?

>look

You’re waist deep in a well. You can just see the moon way way up at the top of the well. You don’t know how you got here, but it’s probably pretty good you’re immortal, because that fall looks pretty bad. Oh, and the well is full of blood. That’s convenient.

>drink blood from well

Now you’re getting it! Okay, you drink the blood. It’s pretty gross and you don’t like it!

>fuck

I hear you.

>climb well

The stones are far too slippery to climb.

>jump

Summoning every ounce of your undead strength, you leap with all your might. You maybe get up to your knees before splashing back into the blood pool.

>turn into a bat

You think about it really hard and come to the conclusion you have no idea how to do that.

>turn into mist

Oh, you’re a reader, too! That’s great! It doesn’t work, but keep at it for a couple of centuries, maybe you’ll figure it out.

>uh

Want a hint?

>yes

There’s no way out of this well, I’m afraid. This isn’t a puzzle so much as a philosophical conundrum. What good is eternal life if it consists of nothing but survival? Looks like you’re going to find out the long way!

>quit

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

NO. WELCOME TO DARK.

The ground opens beneath you with a roar and you tumble down into the hot depths of the earth. Hands of granite slow your fall, then open wide. You grab at them helplessly; gravity sucks you down like a banquet of oysters.

You come to an open space where your screams echo and die in vastness. You fall raggedly silent. Heat buffets you from side to side; your head rings with it. You catch fire; the light from your crisping, crackling body lights a vast and moving plain, dark shapes of beasts curling and snapping upon it. One of them, greater than the rest, raises a blurred and monstrous head and fixes you with ill-matched eyes. You are a cinder, a brief flare of nothing, and it hunches deformed shoulders together to reach for you. You scream, still burning, as that shifting, protean claw draws you in.

You are caught on a palm the size of a city block. It lifts you up, glares at you through the ragged pupils of a squid. You tremble and flake away; you have run and dripped like a candle but somehow you live on, in perfect, unendurable agony.

“My little fly,” it whispers, “my untruth. Welcome to Dark; what will you do?”

You come to a door set in the side of a mountain. No road stretches behind you, no forest looms. You have crossed a rolling plain of waving grasses and lurking ticks to find this stony shoulder. You open the door and enter in.

You are in a great hall, full of smoke and confusion. A movie plays, showing a darkened hall, full of smoke and moonlight. You make your way between rows of snarling beasts. A lion, sumptuous in maroon velvet, its mouth smeared with blood, grabs your arms with human hands and stares into your face. Breathes heavy and sour, like new beer, weeps and gnashes its teeth.

You are hung with seaweed, festooned with barnacles. You are the risen sea, come to spread despair among the menagerie, to break open the cages. The music jerks and shudders to a stop. The band, talons, claws gouged deep into wood and brass, snap their instruments in horror. A banner unfurls above your head:

WELCOME TO DARK. WHAT DO YOU DO?

A great and wild emptiness fills you like a wind. It roars forth when you open your mouth and swallows the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky. It crackles from your fingers and devours the land, the trees, the beasts of the field. It bellows in your ears, plucks at your eyes, drags at the hem of your more than majestic coat. It knows your secrets, which are three, and mighty.

You are the smell of the ocean, the humus, the quiet darkness at the back of the cave. You are inward. You are the mystery of numbers, the shape of the future. You are the racing heart of time.

You awake to find yourself balanced on the edge of a cliff.

Clouds veil the ground, but far away you can hear the slush of the sea. You are in a garden on a cliff’s edge. There is a lion.

You are flying through the air, borne on the lion’s breath, flying without wings. You have made promises: of discovery, of protection, of revenge. You are clever, you are canny. You are at home in the dark. You keep a gun close and a bottle closer. You are never deceived. You are always in balance. You sleep with everyone you want.

You touch down on a plain without landmarks. Sparrows cover the sky in great numbers. Their bodies for an instant come together in towering letters:

WELCOME TO DARK. WHAT DO YOU DO?

You cut yourself on the broken glass as you pull yourself through the window, shallowly in several places on your arms and quite deeply on your left knee. You put too much weight on it, put too much trust in the stiff denim of your jeans, and long fingers of glass peeled apart fabric and skin and found the bright ocean underneath. It’s almost painless. You make a bandage out of your handkerchief and tie it as tight as you can. You remember hearing that there’s an artery in your knee, or anyway a lot of veins.

You’re pretty sure that it’s night. The sky is empty of stars, but flickers dully red like the last embers of a fire. It’s windy out here on the street, cool and blustery and uneasy, bits of paper washing against the shuttered store fronts and plastic bags trapped in the weirs of trees. You keep catching suggestions of movement out of the corner of your eye, black shapes that dart from building to building and might be either more paper or people hurrying home ahead of the storm. You know there’s a storm coming, you can feel it in the wet weakness of your left knee.

The wind blows one of the papers into your face, and you grab it out of the air without thinking. The light welling from your hands gives you just enough light to read:

Welcome to Dark. What do you do?

It might be an advertisement for a night club. It might be many things.