244 - Go UPSTAI--- no. Console WIDOW RAT.

The stairway beckons, a shining beacon lighting the way out of this hole. You take a step towards it, then another, but each one is another step through quick setting concrete. You can feel a pair of eyes on you and while the way out gives you every reason to leave... the eyes have it.

You turn back to the rat widow, those tiny eyes selling a sad story as old as that Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Stop me if you've heard it before. Two newlywed rats frolic in a damp, dark cellar. One is killed by a falling soda jerk. The jerk pays off the cops with some game pieces and gets away scott free. It's the kind of thing you see every day.

You kneel down. The widow turns away, but your warm hand on her face stops her mid-movement. A small shutter runs down her rattus lividus spine. She stares deep into your eyes, her own are nothing more than milky black seas. You sigh. "It's a tough life, kid."

The widow nods weakly, her cheese-fed curves shaking with the sobs she dare not let out.

"We'll find the guy who did this," you say, your uncooperative face belying the irony. You were that sap that did this. An accident, maybe, but you're only alive because that dirty rat met his tiny reaper. But you mean what you say. You want to make this right... but where can you find someone to take the fall?

A sad sack of bones rolls down the stairs, the back of its skull busted open. You recognize him immediately, confronted as you are with your own mortality.


You've... found the murderer (kinda) and he's been brought to justice (in a way). You turn back to the rat widow, but she's gone, scurrying off back into some hole in the wall.

You stare at yourself lying dead on the floor. Man. Your own flesh and blood. Well, no, but your own bones.

The back of Rhys O'Skellington's head is busted open. And this looks like murder.


>Explain YOURSELF