Your Name is Gary Stu and You're Going to Die First

Read from the beginning, here. Maggie awoke on a green velvet chaise sofa. Her body had been laid here in a sort of delicate way, with her knees brought close to her chest and her hand resting on her forehead as if she'd had a bit of a faint. She was still wearing the long, cotton blue dress she had been wearing earlier that day, but her hair was newly made up and once again covered with her wrap. Her platform wedges were off and set nicely as a pair on the glass floor at the end of the sofa. She looked down at them and then lifted off the sofa to peer down below at the goings on beneath her. Whatever sort of room it was below was empty, from what she could see at least, just a white tiled room with benches and mirrors and nothing else. Maggie breathed deeply and then blinked and then looked up into the face of a tall, thin, lizard-like man. “Right,” she nodded and looked all around her at once. The room was silver and metal and space-age, littered with other green velvet sofas ...

Read part 16, here, or from the beginning, here. Brad put the car in park and turned off the engine. Linh sat in the passenger seat and Pathik was in the back. The three of them stared out through the windshield at the restaurant, Osaka-Ya, that rose up before them. “Why'd you bring us here?” Pathik asked from the backseat. They were in Brad's sedan, a 2004 Mercury Milan, silver, that had a rough ride and low tire pressure. The drive from the warehouse on the other side of town had been quick, silent. Brad had barely paid attention to the streets and all three had tuned out the constant screech of loose belts. Pathik had thought the absurd thought, as Linh pushed him into the backseat when they had all climbed down the ladder from the roof, that it was ridiculous Dick and Debra paid for everything else but to fix Brad's shitty old car. “We gotta regroup,” Brad turned in the driver's seat and looked back at Pathik and then looked across to Linh. “Get our story str...