I am so sorry that this took so long to get out. I'm not as young and free as I used to be, and that I've reached that part of my life where I want my writings to be profitable. Between my physically demanding job and my other pieces of writing which I would love to sell, I left myself with little time to work on this piece of fiction. That doesn't mean I won't try and finish this piece; I just hope you, the reader, can understand my situation.
If you like this story, please check out "The Disastrous Chance Noir", available for purchase on Amazon. I'd really appreciate it if you, the reader, buy it, as it allows me to continue telling stories like this. Thank you.
The Disastrous Chance Noir:
Andreus Lyon had long been an admirer of his father, and his father before him, and so on. He loved the stories his mother told to him in his childhood before she passed away. Stories of knights and kings, of honor and chivalry, a time where the world was enchanted with the souls of societies. Stories of Roland, the Prefect of the Breton March, of how he bravely stood his last stand.
Yet Andreus does not live in those times. He lives in modern Paris, a city gone to ruins. A place whose people does not share his veneration of the old culture and its old glory. And he has no chance to prove himself to be someone who could live up to the dignity of his forefathers.
Until chance happened and bestowed upon him a mysterious ring that can enhance his physical capabilities. His strength became equal to ten men, his foot as light as a feather, and his eyes as sharp as the owl or the cat hunting prey in the night.
And when he met a certain baxter who has been terrorized by the local gang, this was his chance to prove himself that he would've been just as noble and brave as Roland.
How many times has it been? A thousand and one? A thousand and two? Ten thousand and one? Ten thousand and two? Did it matter? The searing fires that burned his flesh were the same as it ever was. Reaper of the breathing air in his lungs, sower of the undying brimstone.
Deliver him, deliver him, Eugene begged for the thousandth time, deliver him from this evil. Whatever god that was up there in the sky, please just make this all stop. What punishment was this for? What had he done to deserve this? He had never killed anyone, he had never molested anyone, yet he was suffering this as if he had done those heinous crimes.
The only possible thing he could imagine to be his crime was leveraging his position of power to wrestle more advantages out of the business deals he made. But still, that was standard business practice; the other parties knew what they were signing up for. It wasn't his fault that he predicted some company's stock prices would fall and acted accordingly. It wasn't his fault that he picked up under-valued things to add to his portfolio and sold them at the peak.
If being a savvy businessman was indeed a crime, then fine him some money. Not this.
If it was something else, please just tell him. He could not think of anything else. Tell him so he could change into whatever it was that the higher power tormenting him want him to change into.
"Please welcome to the stage, Eugene Ramsey!"
The crowd starts to cheer in unison, loud and proudly. For the thousandth time. The fires were gone. For the thousandth time. Eugene's heart jumped at the sound. For the thousandth time. The spotlight zipped through the audience to find him and welcome him to the stage. For the thousandth time. Novak was already on the stage, beckoning him to come up and face him in a game. For the thousandth time.
"Shall we begin?" Novak said.
Eugene meekly made his way on the stage.
[TURN 1 Raymond Novak LP/8000 Hand/5]
"I set one card face-down and end my turn."
[TURN 1 Raymond Novak LP/8000 Hand/4]
The first couple of times it was the same deck as he played in real life. But then, it began changing. First, just a card here and there being different than the one he drew in real life, but then as time went on, the cards began changing entirely. Eugene had no idea what Novak was playing this time. Could be Cyber Dragons, could be Labyrinth…
[TURN 2 Eugene Ramsey LP/8000 Hand/5 — 6]
His hand was absolutely trash. He drew the Hieratic Seal of The Sun Dragon Overlord of all the cards in the world. A level eight normal monster with absolutely no attack or defense points. There wasn't a Trade-In in his hand to make use of the monster, dooming it to stay in his hand until he could find some way to use it as a discard fodder.
Hieratic Dragon of Tefnuit was a level six monster that Eugene could've special summoned from his hand if only Novak summoned a monster on his first turn. But no; one set spell or trap card and he was done. What could it possibly be for Novak to be so confident in it?
"I summon the Hieratic Dragon of Eset without tributing."
[ATK Hieratic Dragon of Eset: LIGHT LV/5 Dragon/Effect ATK/1900 — 1000 DEF/1200]
"Then I tribute Eset to summon Nebthet."
[ATK Hieratic Dragon of Nebthet: LIGHT LV/5 Dragon/Effect ATK/2000 DEF/1600]
"Eset summons the Seal from my deck when it's tributed."
[DEF Hieratic Seal of The Sun Dragon Overlord: LIGHT LV/8 Dragon/Normal ATK/0 DEF/0]
"I then activate Summoner's Art! I can—!"
A card pried itself out of my deck pile without his interference. It was another copy of Hieratic Seal of the Sun Dragon Overload. Really? Was this the only target in his deck? He had at least hoped for a Pendulum monster which he could've activated as a spell card. What the hell was he supposed to do with three useless vanilla monsters with absolutely no attack or defense!?
The extra deck glowed. The answer presented itself.
"I shuffle all three copies of my Hieratic Seals to summon Hieratic Trisolaris Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis!"
Descended came three orbs of radiant light, swirling around each other, closer and closer until they all came into one. In a blinding flash of the fiery suns' power, emerged a powerful dragon clad in golden armor. Wings spread wide of its incandescent light, eyes glowing of plasmic bursts of intense eruptions.
[ATK: Hieratic Trisolaris Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis: LIGHT LV/10 Dragon/Fusion/Effect ATK/4200 DEF/3700]
Now he was the one with the three headed dragon, and this bastard with an open field. When Hieratic Seals were the only materials used, Trisolaris was unaffected by Novak's card effects! "Trisolaris attacks you directly!"
[TURN 2 Raymond Novak LP/8000 — 3800 Hand/4]
YES! YES! THIS WAS ACTUALLY THE CLOSEST EUGENE MANAGED TO GET NOVAK'S LIFE POINTS TO ZERO! FINALLY, AFTER A THOUSAND TRIES!
Except for that nagging feeling at the back of his mind. This was the closest Eugene managed to get Novak's life points to zero. He's won over a thousand times; why would this time be any different? He couldn't have just taken that damage for no reason. Was it perhaps that the set card wasn't supposed to affect his monster at all, but a player himself?
"I special summon Guardian Slime by the damage you've dealt to me."
Out seemed like azure blood pouring out of Novak's mouth upon the earth began to take form, merging forth into a swirling, flowing liquid. Black, horse-like head with gold ornamentation and a long, flowing mane. Submerged in a viscous purple and shades of blue, pulling the creature into its vortex.
[DEF: Guardian Slime: WATER LV/10 Aqua/Effect ATK/0 DEF/0]
Oh no. Eugene did not like where this was going.
"I set one card face-down and end my turn."
[TURN 2 Eugene Ramsey LP/8000 Hand/1]
[TURN 3 Raymond Novak LP/3800 Hand/4 — 5]
The slime slithered and climbed upon its own body, reforming until it became some humanoid with large horns on its head and large spiked gauntlets as hands. The purple and the blue faded away until all that was left was the gray, dark metal.
[ATK: Egyptian God Slime: WATER LV/10 Aqua/Fusion/Effect ATK/3000 DEF/3000]
But it didn't hold its form for long, as the creature crumbled under its own weight and was received by the cracks in the ground that began to grow larger and larger. Until the earth split in all directions before a towering demon burst forth, out of the fiery chaos. Clad in dark, caerulean armor, adorned with intricate, crystal-like patterns. Eugene could easily be squeezed to death by those two massive, clawed hands extend towards him. If not by hand, then by the horns of its head as those pair of glowing red eyes screamed to him that it wanted to ram him through. Overwhelming power and menace, ablaze with fiery destruction.
[ATK: Obelisk the Tormentor: DIVINE LV/10 Divine-Beast/Effect ATK/4000 DEF/4000]
It's alright… it's alright… his monster still has two hundred more attack points than Obelisk. For a second there, Eugene feared the Winged Dragon of Ra, since it had a support card that would've allowed it to have well over six thousand attack points.
Then, Novak played another card: Divine Evolution.
[ATK: Obelisk the Tormentor: DIVINE LV/10 Divine-Beast/Effect ATK/4000 — 5000 DEF/4000 — 5000]
Oh no.
"When Obelisk attacks, you are forced to send one monster you control to the grave."
Bypassing his monster's unaffectedness…
"Obelisk attacks!"
The demon gave him only one second to brace himself as the giant fist came swinging at him. His own monster who was supposed to protect him disintegrated and abandoned him to a fate Eugene had never felt before. The giant fist, impossibly massive, collided with his body with a sickening crunch, the air itself had been knocked from his lungs before he could even gasp. For an instant, there was no pain—only sheer, mind-numbing shock as the world seemed to freeze around him. Bones rattled, joints straining under the immense pressure, his entire frame compressed in a way that felt unnatural, almost unreal.
Then came the sensation of flying—no, not flying—hurtling. Flung through the air like a ragdoll, tossed without effort by the colossal force that had struck him. The wind screamed in his ears as he tumbled, his vision blurred by the sudden motion, the horizon twisting wildly. Time stretched in that moment, each second drawn out as the pain began to register, a deep, crushing ache spreading through his chest and ribs, radiating to his limbs. Every nerve screamed in protest, as if his body was being pulled apart, piece by piece, by the sheer power of the blow.
Phantom fire burned his skin, the friction of the air stinging against his flesh, but the worst pain was the weight—the immense, unrelenting weight of the punch itself, akin to being pressed beneath the heel of a mountain, bones creaking, muscles tearing.
[TURN 3 Eugene Ramsey LP/8000 — 3000 Hand/1]
"I END MY TURN!" Novak's words boomed across the cosmos to communicate his intentions as the demonic god sent him so far apart that Novak was only a speck of dust on the horizon. Not Obelisk, however, that monster was large enough to look like a regular sized human to his eyes when it was miles away.
[TURN 3 Raymond Novak LP/3800 Hand/4]
Eugene could not summon the strength nor the will to get back up and draw a card from his deck. And why bother? Divine Evolution was not an effect that lasts until the end phase, it was permanent. On the next turn, Novak will blow past any monster he puts forth to defend himself and suffer those fists of fury. And when his life points reaches zero, it was just going to be another loop. It hurts…
Please just tell him what he did wrong, Oh God up in Heaven…
"I—I confess to God," Eugene quietly sobbed out. "I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, through, my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…"
Perhaps trying to figure out himself was what his Tormentor wanted. But he just couldn't. Nothing came to his mind. He could not repent of what he did not know.
"But—but I promise You, God…" Eugene meekly glanced up to Heaven. "Whatever it was that I did, I'll surely atone…"
God wants hospitals? He'll use his wealth to build five of them! God wants shelters? He'll fund ten! Schools? Twenty! Whatever it was He wanted, Eugene will do it! He only asks that God will save him from this eternal anguish! He'll convert!
Deliver him, deliver him, Eugene begged for the thousandth and one time, deliver him from this evil!
"Get up."
Eugene's ears perked. His strength suddenly rejuvenated and he could use his arms once again to push his torso above the ground. Eyes scanned left and right, but there was no sign of anyone else being there. Perhaps he was hallucinating. Ha… hallucinating… inside a dream, no less…
"Draw."
There it was again! That voice! Was it God!? Was it truly God!? Does this mean He has marked this to be the end of his torment!? Alright… alright! He'll do it! He'll do it! Mark his words, he'll do it!
[TURN 4 Eugene Ramsey LP/3000 Hand/1 — 2]
"Now that you have a monster on your field and I don't, I'm allowed to special summon Hieratic Dragon of Tefnuit from my hand!"
[ATK: Hieratic Dragon of Tefnuit: LIGHT LV/6 Dragon/Effect ATK/2100 DEF/1400]
"Then I activate Advanced Dragonic Tactics! A tribute of one dragon on my field allows me to special summon two normal ones from my deck! And if Tefnuit is tributed, I can summon a third one!"
[DEF Hieratic Seal of The Sun Dragon Overlord: LIGHT LV/8 Dragon/Normal ATK/0 DEF/0]
[DEF Hieratic Seal of The Sun Dragon Overlord: LIGHT LV/8 Dragon/Normal ATK/0 DEF/0]
[DEF Hieratic Seal of The Sun Dragon Overlord: LIGHT LV/8 Dragon/Normal ATK/0 DEF/0]
Out came a glowing light from his disk once again. The final answer beckoned him.
Ascended went the three orbs of radiant light, swirling around each other, closer and closer until they all came into one. In a blinding flash of cosmic radiance birthed a dragon of gold and red. Heads of three and wings of plenty, sharp as run of any blade. A dragon manifest of photons' will, gathered by a hand of omniscient design. His champion cometh to rescue the damned, terrifying as the angel who has come for the firstborn.
[ATK Number S107: Galaxy-Eyes Hyper Tachyon Dragon/3: LIGHT RK/8 Dragon/Xyz/Effect ATK/4500 DEF/3800]
"When my dragon is summoned, all cards you control are shuffled into the deck!"
By the wingbeat of his beast, the indominable Obelisk was blown into nothingness.
"ATTACK!"
Lightning crackled one second before the dragon's three heads fired their concentrated burst stream of pure neutron energy, hurtling directly at Novak, eviscerating everything in its path. The asteroids could not have done what his dragon had done with its army of thousands. Disintegrated, vaporized by the sheer heat and force of the attack. Its roar was bound to be deafening for hundreds of light-years away, shaking the emptiness as the stream surged forward. The brilliance of the blast was overwhelming; nothing could withstand the wrath.
Something was yet amiss. It brought him no joy to finally see his tormentor extinguished.
[TURN 3 Raymond Novak LP/3800 — 0 Hand/4]
/-/
Weight.
This must be what he was feeling: weight.
Something heavy was pressing down on his body like an anchor, pinning him to the bed.
Bed. This was a bed. It felt like a bed, it was cushioning him like a bed, it must be a bed. A bed full of tubes running over his body. He could feel some of them going up his nose and running down his throat. Needles. He knew what they felt like when he was so used to them pricked into his skin as the doctor would draw his blood in every annual check-up.
Move. Move, he commanded his limbs. They respond not. Did he forget how to move? A dull ache seeped into his muscles, stiff and unused, and his joints throbbed with an unfamiliar tightness. When he tried to lift his hand, it trembled in slow motion, weak and shaky, barely making it off the bed before falling back, limp.
And the beeping.
His eyelids felt thick, pushing against something invisible just to open them. Once opened, he bathed in soft light, but even that was too much for his eyes, which struggled to adjust. Blinking slowly, he shifted his gaze, taking in the sterile environment—a hospital room. Tubes and wires indeed trailed from his arms, feeding into machines that beeped softly beside him.
Uncomfortably so, when he finally felt the ticklish tube that went up his urethra to collect his urine into a bag that the nurses would regularly change out.
The bag which a nurse was changing out right now.
He tried calling out to her, but his dry throat betrayed him pouring in phantom sand to suffocate any words coming out of his tongue. Barely more than a rasp which she didn't hear. The air felt thick in his lungs; he had forgotten how to breathe deeply.
That was not stopping him. "Hhhh…"
She still did not hear him.
"Hel…" He rasped out. "Help…"
Her attention perked up. She thought she was hearing something that wasn't there, by the look on her face. Searching left and right in case she wasn't hearing things, and her eyes finally upon him. "Oh my God, are you awake?"
"Y—yes…"
"I'll go get the doctor!" She rushed out of the room, forcing Eugene to contemplate and alleviate this annoying acute pain in his brain all alone.
Time. What time was it? How long have these contraptions been working within his body? How much time has left him behind? The last thing he remembered was seeing that meteor hitting his private plane and the grabbing and screaming of his lover and his sister. Everything after that was only slow and groggy, trying to pull memories from a thick fog.
Sidney! Cassandra! What happened to them!? Eugene summoned all his strength and jumped out of the bed, but then instantly tripped onto the floor as his strength left him a couple of seconds later. As he glanced down at his body, the reality of his fragility struck him. His skin had grown thin and pale, stretched thin over bones that seemed sharper than he remembered, his hands thinner, veins more pronounced. The muscles beneath were wasted and feeble; his once strong legs now questioned if the idea of standing, let alone walking, was something it could comprehend.
"Mister Ramsey!" The doctor bolted in, helping him to his feet. "You shouldn't be walking so soon after waking up! Come, you must rest properly before you attempt such things."
"Sidney… Cassandra…" He weakly sounded out, slowly regaining his voice. "Where…?"
"They're fine, Mister Ramsey, they're fine." The doctor soothed.
Eugene did not have the strength to even look up at the doctor's face to see if he was lying or not. And when the doctor laid him back onto the bed, the seduction of dreamland tugged at his consciousness. A seduction he was too weak to resist.
No! He must endure! How could he go back to sleep without confirming their safety? But the doctor was just going to bother him relentlessly with questions about how he was feeling, where does it hurt in his body, count the number of fingers he was holding up, et cetera. Eugene feigned his sleep.
"Mister Ramsey?" The doctor called. "Mister Ramsey, are you asleep?"
Eugene waited until the doctor gave up and left the room, presumably to fetch assistant staff. Eugene slowly got out of his bed this time, forcing himself to get accustomed to his weak body and used the stand holding the bag of intravenous fluids flowing into his bloodstream as a walking stick.
Slowly… slowly… careful not to trip again going down the hospital hallway; each step tentative, testing the strength of legs that had long forgotten how to bear his weight. The hospital gown clung to his thin frame, the fabric brushing against his skin like paper.
The hallway teased him by stretching on endlessly, a quiet tunnel of white walls, muted voices, and the occasional beep of a distant machine. His hands trembled slightly as they gripped the metal rail along the wall, his knuckles pale and tight from the effort. The sound of his feet shuffling across the floor was all he could focus on for a moment, his heartbeat still unsteady from the strain of waking up after so long.
As he neared the nurses' station, the front desk came into view—a small island in a sea of motionless corridors. A nurse sat behind it, typing away at a computer, oblivious to Eugene's approach. Finally, he reached the desk. His hand hovered above the counter for a moment before he placed it down, the cool surface grounding him. The nurse looked up, her expression changing from routine indifference to mild surprise as she noticed him.
"I—" Eugene started, his voice rough, almost a croak. He cleared his throat, forcing himself to speak more clearly. "I need to use the phone. I want to make a call to my family."
The nurse nodded, perhaps recognizing the look of disorientation in his eyes, and handed him the receiver without question. He took it, the weight of the phone heavier than he expected.
He made a call to his mother, but she oddly did not pick up. She didn't have a job, and she didn't need a job; she should be available at all times. He tried a second and third time, but none of them connected. So, he tried his brothers and sisters; same story, with fifth and sixth tries all failing to connect.
What was going on? Were they at some sort of important event at the moment?
Sidney! The doctor said she was fine, right? He tried her number.
"Hello?" She answered.
"Sidney!" Eugene's heart was overjoyed at hearing her voice again. The doctor didn't lie, she was indeed fine! "Oh, thank God, you're okay!"
"I'm sorry, who is this?"
Eugene was taken aback by her question. She didn't recognize his voice? All those times they've been together through thick and thin; surely, she would've instantly recognized it by now. It must be the number! He wasn't calling from his cellphone.
"Sidney! It's me! It's Eugene!"
She gasped. "You're awake!?"
"Yes! Oh, thank God you're okay, Sidney! I don't know what I would've done if you didn't survive that plane crash."
She said nothing.
"Sidney? Can you contact Cassandra and the rest of my family for me? They're not picking up and I can't go anywhere until the hospital clears me. I don't even have my phone, I'm using the hospital's."
"Eugene, Cassandra…" She hesitated. "…she… she and I haven't been talking."
"Why? Did something happen between you two?" Eugene panicked. "Please, do it for me, I need to know that she's safe too."
"Eugene… Cassandra is still in a coma. That's why we haven't been talking."
Eugene froze, the phone pressed tightly against his ear. No, no, no, don't panic. She was in a coma, not dead. With any luck, she'd be waking up soon just as he did. "What about my family? Can you tell them that I'm alright now?"
"Eugene." The sorrow in her voice. "They're dead. All of them. Killed in a traffic accident. I'm so sorry."
Eugene stood there, the phone gripped tightly in his hand, as the voice on the other end spoke words that didn't seem real. His breath caught in his throat, suspended somewhere between disbelief and the dawning weight of what was being said.
"Can—can you—can you tell my family—" Eugene stuttered mindlessly.
"They're gone, Eugene." Those words hit his head as a sledgehammer would, reverberating in his skull, but his mind couldn't process them, couldn't piece them together into something that made sense. His family. His entire family. Gone.
His vision blurred, the sterile hospital hallway warping at the edges, tunneling until all he could see was the phone in his hand and the vague silhouette of the nurse behind the desk. The world had shrunk to that small, suffocating space, where reality was slowly crashing down around him.
"No… no, that can't be right." His voice trembled, barely more than a whisper, a desperate plea to the voice on the other end, as if they could take it back, as if repeating it would somehow undo the truth.
The phone slipped from his ear, dangling in his hand, his fingers suddenly numb and cold. He could hear the faint, tinny sound of the voice still talking, but the words didn't reach him anymore. His chest tightened, his heart thudding painfully against his ribs, each beat more labored than the last, like his body was rejecting the reality of the moment. He couldn't breathe. The air around him felt thick, heavy, like trying to inhale through water. His throat clenched, dry and raw, as he struggled to hold back the sob that threatened to escape.
He staggered back a step, his shoulder brushing against the wall, the coolness of it grounding him for just a second before the tidal wave of grief began to surge forward. His mind flashed to their faces—his mother's warm smile, his father's strong, reassuring presence, his siblings' laughter echoing in the home he had once known. Gone. Every memory stabbed at him like a knife, the realization sinking deeper with each passing second.
"How… how long have I been asleep?"
"Eight months."
He wanted to scream, to tear the phone from the wall and hurl it across the room, to do something—anything—to rage against the path fate placed him on. But all he could do was stand there, frozen, his breath ragged, his body shaking uncontrollably. The tears came without warning, hot and unrelenting, spilling down his cheeks, blurring his vision further.
His family. His home. His life. It was all gone, ripped away while he had been lying in a coma, oblivious.
He felt the nurse's eyes on him, the faint murmur of concern in the distance, but it was all background noise now. All he could hear was the deafening silence where his family's voices should have been.
He returned to dreamland.
10/02/2024
