Page 63 of The Staircase in the Woods

No other door in that one, and no window.

Nick grunted, closed the door, then wandered off without further commentary. Lore stood there for a moment, staring at the doors with a sharp twinge of fear and suspicion. Then something caught her eye. Something back at the bookshelves. One pop of color on a low shelf.

Afamiliarpop of color.

It was her book.

The one she’d written ten years ago.

It wasThe Crazy Bitch’s Guide to Game Design,a title she loved then, hated now, and had almost gotten her canceled on Twitter about five years back when everyone was trapped in their homes during the pandemic and was bored and vengeful and looking for any taste of blood in the water to excite them. They said the title was ableist and misogynist and it probably was, but like Grandpa Simpson said,It was the style at the time. And all of it was based on how an early meeting with an Activision executive had him ranting at her that she was a “crazy bitch” and her ideas about gaming were “pretentious trash” and “full of avant-garde horseshit.”

After that meeting, she vowed to do her thing without the help of some fucking megacorp, and she raised some capital and went on to make her own game—The Robot Relationship Simulator, which was less about robots and relationships and more about navigating trauma and how you infected others with your own bullshit, like a computer virus spread from person to person. It was really hot for an indie game, in part because (at least, this was her theory) she made it so you could romance and fuck different robots, and games where you could romance and fuck the other characters were always going to be a winner.

Soon as they announced it was on the ballot for best indie game at the Game Awards, who came swanning into her DMs but the same Activision exec, Kevin something-or-other. Or maybe it was Kenny? Whatever. He wanted to hire her and, by the sound of it, wanted to fuck her, too. She told him to eat nails. He sent her a photo of his cock as, what, revenge? Enticement? She posted the DMs to Twitter, and it caused a huge shitstorm—she outed him, a guy whose name she couldn’t even remember, and not only did a lot of other women say he’d done similar tothem,but then women started naming names of other rapey scumfucks in the industry. That snowball didn’t just get bigger—it made a hundred other snowballs, all rolling downhill, all growing larger and larger, crushing anything in their paths.

Thing was, it didn’t change shit, not really.

The men who got called out had to spend some time out of the industry, but they came back eventually, just at other companies. Like priests shuttled from church to church after they diddled a kid. And women didn’t suddenly get hired in record numbers. Furthermore, all Lore got at the end of it was just more harassment from Gamergatey chodes who pretended to be serious “devil’s advocates” who were “just asking questions” but who really just wanted to slut-shame women and keep them from getting their cooties all over their Important Men Games. You know, the ones with the guns and the bouncing-tit physics.

So Lore wrote a book. Because she was angry, and because yelling about stuff on social media didn’t do anything except make her life worse.

That book wasThe Crazy Bitch’s Guide to Game Design.

And here it was, on this shelf, in this place.

It felt like—

Like a message.

But whatwasthat message, exactly?

Lore reached for her book.

—

“You okay?” Hamish asked Owen as he stared at the fish tank.The knife. It was there. It was just fucking there.Yet now it was gone.

“Oh. Yeah. Just—just peachy. You?”

Hamish laughed a little. “Oh yeah, man, fucking great, this has been a really killer vacation. Love this Airbnb Nick picked.”

Owen chuckled—a small, dark laugh. But a real one.

“Yeah, this is pretty messed up.”

“I…I shouldn’t have come here, man, I shouldn’t have left my family, and I should have never set foot on that staircase, and I did, and then—then you came after, and I wish I had stayed behind because maybe then you would’ve stayed and we, you and me, we’d still be okay—” He tried like hell to hold it back, but a single gulping sob came out of him like a gasp of agonal respiration.

Owen thought,I would’ve gone anyway.

Because Lore did.

“Ham, listen. It’s not like that. You and I being left behind wouldn’t have made it any better. That would’ve been its own kind of hell.”As it has been since Matty went away.Owen shrugged. “Maybe this is the only wayout. You don’t have to be sorry.”

“Nick does,” Hamish said, in a low voice.

Owen’s gaze flicked toward Nick, who wandered back to the closet door that they’d come through. He gave them each lifted eyebrows, then pulled the door open a few inches and peeked in. “It’s just a wallnow,” Nick said. “The way we came is gone.” He bared his teeth. “This fucking place.”

Owen and Hamish said nothing.

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