Chapter 4 - Degradation

Still, it was food, and not noodles for once, even if it was a rancid piece of food.  However, she was feeling a bit out of it, drowsiness starting weigh down at her eyelids. The game in front of her had become a chore once again, and all of her replies were starting to blur together. However after a bit she suddenly got a pop up.
 
“You’ve been invited to a group. Accept?”
 
There was a certain curiosity in trying to play the game as an actual game. But why would they invite someone obviously trying to sell gold? With her curiosity taking the best of her, she clicked the green icon, unaware that she had momentarily read the Chinese symbols as accept almost naturally. 
 
The entire team roster appeared on the side of the screen, all of them legitimate looking asides from her own.  It seemed none of them had their general chat activated, or at least they did not notice it. Maybe they were new? A message appeared in blue party chat font.
 
“Hello, can you help us with this boss please?”
 
Marisse could see her character still spewing out spam in general chat, but switching over to party she found she could type without interrupting the program apparently. 
 
This guy was an idiot for asking a spam-bot to do anything but spam… And that gut feeling she’d developed told her why he was so stupid. However, she ignored it in favor of the warm sense of… Was it acceptance? That this guy was so desperate or so new he’d reach out to her, an-... 
 
Marisse had to take a step back - this was just a game. She shouldn’t feel honored or whatever because someone asked her about this. Besides, she never played many games back before she was kidnapped, this whole thing was beyond her. 
 
“yes i play bad”
 
It was the gist of what she wanted to say, so he aught to understand. All she’d really gotten down was how to move and how to talk… And given that she was a spam-bot that could be banned at any time, he shouldn’t really expect her to stay around long - she certainly didn’t. 
 
Chewing off another chunk of that terrible ‘candy’ bar, she responded to another whisper while she was at it, this one another inquiry and resulting ping of her clock. If she could work and play, then it… At least, was something that could break the monotony of dealing with such idiots. 
 
Her character seemed to be some sort of beastman with a big sword, so she guessed she could be of some help. While she followed this weird group she’d been brought into, she fiddled around with the pair of glasses she’d been given. Why did they think she needed them? She could see just fine, and it wasn’t like they expected her to be anywhere too far from the computer to read it, or do anything that involved her seeing anything from a distance. 
She confirmed this by looking about the room, making sure all four walls they’d so graciously provided for her were clear. 
 
“I never had the problems with my eyes.” she says, stumbling over her words a little. Putting them back in the box, she gulps down the very last of the bar, washing it down with water and holding her nose - it wasn’t exactly something she wanted to taste, rather than just eat. If she didn’t know any better, she’d swear it was medicine…
 
The USB drive was more of a curiosity than the glasses. What could it have on it? More instructions? She… Did have that note that came in the box, too, but she couldn’t read it. The also had the note that always came with her first package of the day. For all she knew, there could be porn on the drive. With a shrug, she traces her finger along the side of her laptop until she finds the slot for it, plugging it in. She’d get to that when she was done with… Whatever this kid needed. 
 
Moving her character forward, she realized there had to be at least twenty different skills on her screen for her to use. However, while the icons were just images, when she hovered her mouse over them the descriptions were all in Kanji.  There was always clicking randomly about and hoping that just having her additional support as another member mindlessly bashing at a monster would be enough to pull them through of course. Marisse felt her eyes burn from all the screen time today and the encroaching weariness. They had not burned like this before, the changing woman unaware that it was just another side effect of her regimen of drugs were reworking her eyes. Had she looked more closely in the mirror, she would have seen how her iris color had moved deeper into the shade of brown, becoming muddy and uninteresting.
 
“That’s ok, I’m just happy to get some help. Thank you very much. So all we need to do is go over here and fight Ur’lok Zhul. Do you know how to fight him? You’re going to need to manage his threat, but I think if you just out DPS him, we should be alright. Are you new to this game too?”
 
The person sent a few messages after that, stringing along statements with the fluttering speed of a keyboard pro. It quickly overwhelmed Marisse and her inability to keep up with the text and understand its meaning. However, she was able to follow him towards what looked to be a big trollish looking type. A couple other people were watching it, and after a moment their names appeared in the party list. 
 
“Ahoy there!” 
 
“Hey.”
 
“Hi guys, I got some help this time!” The original invitor typed back to them.
 
“Um, dude, are you a bot?”
 
The other players gathered around here before the other new member spoke up too, “Yeah, he’s totally spamming the chats right now. How did you get a bot to join us?”
 
As she tried to follow what was going on she found herself leaning in closer to the screen, her back hunched as she felt her stomach press against the side of the table in an effort to get a better vantage of the text. There was another pop in her back, the woman’s vertebra shifting slightly as if she had just ratcheted herself into this position, her back now found this type of posture worlds more comfortable than sitting upright. But, she likely would not have noticed at this point anyway.
 
“not bot real people” she typed back to assure them. It was… Weird getting a hang of all of these icons, trying desperately to figure out what they did simply by what they looked like. 
 
“Flying sword? Fast sword…?” she mumbles, tilting her head and squinting to look at some of them. “Aagh, I’ll just test on boss.” Marisse looks away from the screen, only feeling the hot stinging of her eyes as they fell upon much cooler scenery, falling upon the bed. “Mmmh… Maybe work all day has bad sides.” Rubbing her eyes, she looks back to the screen, moving her character around in front of the speculative players. 
 
“i spam yes but i real”
 
Her fingers catch over the keyboard, stopping for a moment. Could she… Try to signal for help? Looking to her door, then looking to her clock, she considers telling them about herself… For all of a few moments. No - she couldn’t. She needed to stay off of JadeTech’s radar for a day or two… Maybe even a week so that they wouldn’t suspect her of pulling anything.
 
Her first day, they had to expect her to run - anyone would, when they found themselves in the kind of position she’d been put in. Her second day was shitty too, because she had no idea what she had to do! They had to expect that, didn’t they? Now, her third day… She was working with them! All they’d see was a good little spammer and wouldn’t have any clue she’s trying to escape… Right? 
 
She just had to drop the right hints and bide her time… And of course, collect the rewards they gave her. With a smile, she leans back over the keyboard. 
 
“we fight boss???” she sends off. “i help but new and bad play”
 
 “Yeah, we’ll fight now. Just make sure to do as we say.”
 
The enemy was not that though, it seemed that, if anything, she had been placed into a low level zone and her character’s innate level had substantially bolstered her damage to offset her ineptitude with the controls and skills. As such, and fortunately for her, the fight really wound up just being a matter of hitting buttons as the monster swung around from time to time. After only a few minutes the thing was dead, its body collapsing to the floor and her character putting away its weapon. 
 
While short, there had been a bit of excitement in it. No wonder people found games fun. That was a nice little bit of action. She found herself grinning, not able to see how the laugh lines that formed from the expression were much more noticeable than before as she did so. The heat of the computer had already begun to make her sweat again and that griminess was slowly but surely returning as she sat there. 
 
“Awesome!” The original kid said as he looted the enemy. 
As the fight ended the characters turned towards her own again in a quirky way to signify they were addressing her.
 
“Thanks for the help.”
 
“Yeah, but still, **** you for spamming!” 
 
The original kid spoke up again, “Yeah, sorry, but I hate spammers. You steal from people. We all just reported you.” 
 
What? No, they would not just ask for help only to report her after she had served her purpose. There’s no way that someone would be that low. But, sure enough, after a couple of minutes she got a notice pop up, “You have been reported for spamming, this is strike one of five.”
 
Then another, “You have been reported for spamming, this is strike two of five.”
 
And another, “You have been reported for spamming, this is strike three of five.”
 
They really did it. The little bastards! Marisse  could feel her blood pressure rise. But before she could type anything to them, they had all left group. It did not matter anyway, had she tried to say anything afterwards it would have just gotten filtered through the ignore function. Feeling the burn in her eyes and the ache in her head and bones, she knew bed would be the only real solution here. 
 
Turning off the computer the room went dark and quiet. The only noises she heard were the muffled noises of the people next door, who also seemed to be quieting down, and the sound of her own breathing. The only sources of light in the room now was the white slit that crept from underneath the door leading out into the hallway, and the orange wedge that cut at a diagonal from the window and onto the wall just above her bed. Moving towards the bed, she slipped under the thin covers and turned to her side. 
 
There was one good thing about being tired, it made any bed comfortable. 
 
As sleep made itself known to Marisse, a slight hissing sound could be heard from the vents in the room, that misty haze pouring over her once more. Unlike the previous times, which had served as a punishing mechanism, this time it was more of a chemical bath. Her pores still dilated from the warmth of the shower water, the gas flowed into her relatively easily, soaking through her skin and into her lungs and throat, entrenching more changes into her bit by bit as a result.
 
Marisse coughed from time to time as the inhalant worked into her lungs and throat, tickling across her voice box. Her vocal chords thickened, her voice box swelling slightly as bits of her feminine cadence was chipped away, leaving her voice huskier and more warbled. Inside of her lungs, the drugs burned across their inner lining, cutting at her lung capacity and, with it, her ability to use her body for much cardiovascular work. No more running for Marisse. While she could breathe fine, each breath had become shorter, her lungs a bit less efficient than they used to be, effectively negating any cardio work she had developed throughout her life and further encouraging the sedentary lifestyle she was learning increasingly more towards.
 
That candy bar continued to wreak through her digestive system like a dirty bomb down an alley, the other chemicals in the substance damaging her stomach and intestines and making her belly gurgle ominously. Indeed, the candy bar had not only dumped a load of calories into her and shattered a significant part of her metabolism, but it had scraped through her digestive system with the same effect years of poor eating would have accomplished, making her easily bloated and gassy, usually churning up from her gut and out her mouth, as noted by the soft belch she let out as she turned from her sleep.
 
The gas continued to hiss throughout the entire night, changing her in many other ways, bit by bit, hour by hour, until the following morning. 
 
The morning. Marisse had no way of knowing the last time she’d actually seen the morning sun - sure, she knew the last time had been her first day here it’d been early morning, but during her long, drug-induced forays into dreamland there was no telling how much time had passed since then. 
 
Though it was morning, the sight of her dingy little room was no less bleak that it’d been in the dark of night. How closely-packed the walls of the building she was housed in and the one beside it were stifled the rays of sun rising in the east. Perhaps it wouldn’t be until midday that she’d actually get to see it. 
 
This, however, was of no concern to her just yet. Marisse was indulging in a luxury she’d long gone without: dreams. Her medicated slumber simply up and tossed her into a sea of delirious black, uncomfortable and deathlike. However, entering sleep of her own volition seemed to put her in a much more comfortable state, her mind fertile ground to develop something to keep itself occupied. 
 
Her dream was simple - she was outside, in some sort of plaza, or campus that she’d never seen before. At least, she thought she was. Marisse didn’t look like herself, and though there weren’t any mirrors, it was just a persistent feeling that she was in someone else’s body. People were moving around her, but always seemed to be too far from her for her to reach out to them, too far to touch or talk to. She could hear them talk, hear them shuffle around, but even in the crowd she felt alone. She didn’t do anything else, simply sat in the center of her dreamscape until it all seemed to fade and…
 
“Snnnrk.”
 
With a snort, Marisse returns to consciousness, leaving behind any semblance of grace she could bring with her. Her arms were splayed out, her hands feeling dry, both legs were open and one leg was curled up. Her blanket seemed to be half off of her body, only covering her crotch and legs, which were pretty much covered already. Before she even opened her eyes she reached down to scratch at her tummy, which both felt and looked a bit… Puffier than she remembered, not to mention more stubbly. 
 
She smacks her lips briefly, regretting it a moment after - her entirely mouth felt sore, like she’d just visited a dentist or something. Whether it was the gas, some of the ‘candy’ she didn’t exactly swallow, or simply having gone so long without giving them proper attention, her teeth not only looked a fair bit dingier, a fair bit more yellowed than her previous pearly-whites, but had slightly shifted about in her mouth. In some cases, gaps were more noticeable, in others, the teeth seemed too close for comfort, seeming like they’d come in at an angle. A more noticeable gap rested between her two front teeth. 
 
The first voluntary word that escaped her aching mouth was an ever-so-eloquent “Aaah, fuck.”
 
Almost audibly, her tired eyes open. They seemed misshapen - a fair bit closer to the almond shape of a woman of Asian descent. It’s a momentary shock to her to see the same ceiling from yesterday looming over her. It was more familiar, but by no means less foreign. Her hand moves from her belly up to her hair, running through it and gripping her head. The headache was the first foreign thing that had greeted her upon awakening, though it didn’t quite feel as bad as yesterday. 
 
“Nothing pills of two cannot repair.” she grumbles, sitting up.
 
Big mistake. She felt like a plastic bag full of water that’d been turned upside down and the air bubble inside of it had shot straight from the bottom and up to the -
 
“Brrrrap!” 
 
A blush shot across her face, the loud, malodorous expulsion a far cry from the usual, muted belches she was used to. It reeked of the greasy noodles she’d been stuffing herself with and copper; a weird chemical smell. Was it something she ate?
 
“Likely.” she grumbles, patting her stomach, which seemed to respond with a gurgle of hunger “Eew. I must cut the hairs on me… After food.” 
 
It was weird - where was her wake-up call? Usually they banged on her door and said something… Oh, yeah, “Jiāofù.” she recalls. Did this mean they didn’t drop off her package yet, or was she just up early…? 
 
Marrise lethargically rolls out of bed, her fall from the creaky spring mattress bringing her into a crouch, which she takes her sweet time recovering from due to the clouds of headrush blinding her… But, even as it clears, her vision is a bit blurry. Finally on her feet, she stumbles to the door, rubbing one eye to clear the haziness from it. Curiously, she opens the door to check for her package for the day.
 
While she had gone to sleep that night of her own free will, it did not result in much more rest than before. If anything it was almost a “hard” type of rest, where she simply switched off, dreamt like she had been starved somehow, then awoke to find time had passed. Of course, being gassed for a solid night had its effects too, and that achiness and headache only entrenched themselves more overnight. It was so constant in some respects Marisse was almost finding it to be a default state of late.
 
It seemed that the night had only continued with the heat, perhaps only fading ever so slightly. As such, Marisse’s sheets were soaked in sweat and the stink of her body wafted about and clung to her like a well believed rumor. Her mouth was not only sore, but had a sort of filmy, grittiness to it that made it feel especially unclean, like she had fallen asleep with a mouth full of food. The sensation persisted even as the weight of sleep lifted somewhat. However, that lethargy had only grown worse over night, and while she might not have noticed it yet, that grogginess and fog headedness was unlikely to ever fully leave her again, always skewing her judgment and forethought notably. 
 
The door leading out into the hallway groaned loudly as she opened the door, the poor thing looking like someone had rammed into it a few too many times, the hinges rusted and slightly askew as well. Instead of imagining someone trying to escape however, Marisse could not help but think that maybe the last tenant had too “wild” of a night, making her legs rub together a bit as she bent out of the crack between the ajar door and its frame. Speaking of her legs, the friction of her growing hair seemed more profound than last night, that stubble having spread substantially while she was asleep like ash accumulated in a smoking household’s various ashtrays. 
 
She could feel that stubble running over her flesh as her legs brushed together, the hair thickening the closer it got to her crotch, as if it were the epicenter of the whole mess. But it was not just her legs. A thin happy trail of dark bristles had begun to form upwards, dancing from her crotch and over her softened middle towards her belly button. If she did not shave that off, there would be more more midriffs for her. 
 
The nearly naked woman chuckled at the thought, snorting loudly almost instinctively, unaware that her nostrils had broadened and her nasal passages having become less efficient, making them quite noisy when too much air was sucked through them at once. 
 
Outside there was a package already. Had she slept through the noise? Maybe she had grown used to the rabble from the neighbors. Inside were the usual contents, except this time there was even more noodles, booze, and pills than before, as well as two candy bars at that. Her stomach gurgled at the sight of all of it, the food having grown on her a bit overnight. It seemed like it was going to be another usual day for her...wait no, this was not usual! She huffed at the mental outburst, pissed off at how easily complacent she felt today. 
 
Her rapid exhale almost sounded like an animalistic grunt, but that was lost on her, as she herself was lost in her own thoughts. She… Was struggling to find a balance in this situation. She knew full well she couldn’t afford to panic like she did on the first day because she’d make a stupid decision to save herself. She couldn’t be as scared as she was on the second day, because she’d just be paralyzed when she had to do something… And she knew she couldn’t be as complacent and docile as she was feeling today, because that’d only put her deeper in the hole of helplessness that these people had begun to dig for her. 
 
“Can not accept, but must act too.” she mumbles, looking at the bag of food in her hand. Well, there’s nothing she could do on an empty stomach… Especially one that felt more empty than normal. As she shut the door, carefully as to not damage it further, a rush of air followed it that wafted the foul smell of her room past her - how stale it was, foul, saline, and… Eggy. The last ingredient in the cocktail of foulness came from somewhere she didn’t know… At least until she stifled another burp. 
 
“Gas…?” she muses, looking down at herself, then to the food. She grimaces, looking back to the door. “Asshole. I bet they mean this to occur.” 
 
With as muggy as her room was, sitting back down in the chair made her feel like it’d only been a moment since she’d sat on it prior. It was a bit sticky from the torrent of sweat she’d worked up last night and terribly warm as well… God, they couldn’t at least give her some AC? 
 
“Maybe…” she begins, looking at the window overlooking the wall of the building beside her. “They give condition air if I work?” No, no, she couldn’t think that far ahead… If she truly wanted something from them, she’d keep working until she got it… And that wouldn’t end up well for her at all. 
 
A problem arose as she hefted up her heavier bag to set it on her table: she didn’t have any room to put it down. A few empty boxes of food sat around, as well as crumpled paper bags, the ‘reward’ box, and the stack of stuff she didn’t want to use. The glasses, the can of air, the vodka, the cigarettes, and the cards. Surely they had to have some sort of trash pickup… They wouldn’t just let her fill this room with garbage. “Even if room is garbage.” she thinks, chuckling to herself. 
 
Marisse makes a bit of room by tossing everything she didn’t want to keep into a plastic bag and setting it beside her fold-out desk, leaving it open for the stuff for today. The sole bottle of booze was joined by the ones she’d received today, as well as the cigarettes. The food… For as much as she knew it’d mess with her system if she ate all of it, her stomach barked at her to chow down. Who was she to disobey? She set one box and a water bottle next to her laptop, booting it up. The notes that came with the bags and box she set underneath the computer… For later. She felt she was catching on to this language of theirs… And they wouldn’t give her these notes if they didn’t want her to read them.
 
When she was looking at the kanji-filled screensaver, she felt a pang of anger rise up within her, her bushier brow furrowing. While she’d put it out of her mind so that she could get to sleep, she couldn’t help but think of what’d happened to her last night… How those pigs treated her. The stupid moderators, the treacherous members of her so-called party…! 
 
She raises a hand to stop herself - this was exactly why she went to bed. All she needed was a good night’s rest… She’d wake up calm, but they’d still be stupid pigs! She was the better woman. The better person. The thought brought a smile to her face, acting as a weak sedative. 
 
Grabbing her bottle of pills and popping two into her mouth with a drink of water, she moves her mouse over to her start menu - her first order of business was to check out that USB drive they gave her. It was still plenty early yet - she could take a moment or two to check those out because of how much she’d gotten done last night. She wasn’t done, but well enough along. She’d just have to find another program to use today… She’d already risked eliminating those games as a method of getting her work done. Laying low for a while seemed to be the best course of action.
 
A vertebrae in her back popped as she tried straightening up after sitting down at the desk, only to fall back into the slumped posture, the slouched look both making her look even more out of shape and unrefined, but also more comfortable than keeping herself in “proper” position. Who gave a donkey’s ass about that stuff anyway? Outside in the hallway the stink of cigarette smoke lingered, carrying into the room when she had closed the door.
 
The thought also made her guffaw at her “witness,” completely missing the mistake in her vocabulary as she turned back to the task at hand. Her voice was almost masculine in its huskiness, all the grace and delicacy of her former cadence butchered by whatever was happening to her.  As her body continued to change since she had arrived, she was indeed looking increasingly more oriental, a hybrid of what she was and what she was to be, but it was not the graceful, lithe, refined look Westerners might picture when they thought of the Asian beauty. Rather, Marisse was increasingly looking more savage and earthy, the look of a woman likely more Mongolian than of the eastern genetic heritages, her almost swollen facial features belying rough utility than grace or even efficiency. No, she was becoming the person people would hide away, the type of woman that would work well behind the shield of the internet, her heart and mind slowly perverting to match the disgustingness that her body was acquiring and then more so as perverse and nasty flashes of witticisms and mentalities wormed out and bloomed in pockets of her personality.
 
Those belches seemed to be coming in more frequently as she woke herself up more, her stomach now being kicked into gear by her desire to eat breakfast. It did not take long for her to start to feel bloated and gassy from the noodles once she would start, but her damaged digestive system would kick into a storm of churning and glorping as it worked through the starch and lack of nutrients to further fuel her corruptive transformation. However, as she let out that first belch from the last night, she felt a twinge of something else, a slight flutter in the pit of her chest. The chemicals working throughout her brain were still actively rewiring her mind, and in this case, it was cross wiring the part of her brain that mistook fullness for sexual pleasure, the few, but slowly accumulating, nerves already corrupted sending a flicker of pleasure into her from the noxious eruption. This was also the same for the addictive parts of her brain, which had swollen substantially, forming more acetylcholine receptors, pleasure receptors that respond most notably to nicotine, making that small exposure in the hallway quite potent in the poor woman’s brain.
 
The USB clicked into place and opened a document browsing window on the screen. Inside the window was a series of folders, all written in Kanji. That air of familiarity lingered, the symbols seeming to carry an almost innate sense of meaning to her. Looking over them she clicked on the one that spoke to her the most.
 
Inside were a series of images. They looked like newspaper clippings and forms. Clicking on the first one so that she could just use the arrow key to cycle through them all, she glanced at the first one and saw it was actually in English! The article was small, it looked like it was the kind that would be buried deep in the paper.
 
MARISSE SANDERS FOUND DEAD ON CALIFORNIA COAST.