A dead woman sleeps on the couch, breath slow and steady.

How she manages this is a mystery. It's a couch that's sure seen a lot, if 'a lot' is a kind of rabid beast with enormous claws and a grudge against couches. It's also seen numerous attempts at patching up its gaping rips with ever more hideous patches of fabric. To top it all off, it's been exposed to enough damp that its sprawls of exposed stuffing are black-green with mould. It exudes a gentle scent of must.

The rest of the room's furniture attempt to keep their distance and pretend they don't know it. On the other two sides of the gleaming coffee table are beige armchairs, their cushions thick enough to swallow small children. Grey carpet slinks from underneath them and draws to a halt in front of the kitchen's linoleum tiles, which are surrounded by a granite benchtop and the usual kitchen appliances. Refrigerator gleaming black, oven that could blind, cupboard, dishwasher, sink, drawers. No ice crusts the inside of the fridge because it has never been turned on. The oven knows no heat more fierce than the frosty room temperature. No scraps of food clog the sink. No bowls of fruit sit on the bench. Not so much as a coat of dust fills the pantry's shelves. No light from the garden bathes the windowsill above the sink because there has never been a window there.

A dead woman rolls over on the couch, pulling her duvets tighter around her.

Perpendicular to the couch, opposite the two armchairs against the longest side of the coffee table, is a mahogany TV cabinet. Like most surfaces in the room it could blind anyone unfortunate enough to look at it in full light. On it sits the blank eye of a widescreen television, and the very observant might make out padlocks on its drawers. They do not hold together two doors that would otherwise open outwards, of course. They just hang off the handles. It's the thought that counts.

And opposite the couch hang deep grey-green curtains, which cover the room's only window. In fact it's a glass sliding door, unmarked by dog claws or the inexplicable smears that pristine glass surfaces seem to grow. Were one to draw the curtains, liquid sunlight would flood the room, gilding every gleaming surface.

But it's terribly rude to draw the curtains on a sleeping dead woman. This is practically common knowledge. Darkness broods over her.

If the kind of person who sneaks into women's bedrooms to look out their windows twitched aside the curtains, they might be surprised by the iron bars latticing the glass. Fortunately this surprise would not last long as the view is much more interesting. The bars are of course a safety measure, found by multiple parties to work infallibly. Their use is completely justified. Ask anyone. Only don't, because what they don't know won't hurt them.

A safety measure against what, you ask? That's an excellent question, and it deserves an equally excellent change of subject.

How about that, there's one right now! Just look at how effortlessly the subject was changed to how now would be a good time to be the dead woman.

Would you like to be the dead woman?

Too late, it already happened.

You are now the sleeping dead woman, and it's about time you woke up. If you sleep in much longer you could be late, gods forbid! You are so utterly distraught about this that it loops right back around to not caring in the slightest. Were you anyone else, now might be a good time to examine your physique, or perhaps your background. Maybe your name or age. My, just think of all the interesting things that could be found out about you right now.

Thing is, you're not anyone else. You are godsdamn mysterious, and you will remain that way, so help you. Were you awake, you'd be expecting visitors. They're going to come whether you expect them or not so that doesn't really matter.

Ah, here they are now, two high whispers outside the door. Wasn't the door mentioned? It's barely worth considering, a boring white thing on the other side of the room from the window. Nothing spectacular about it. There's a peephole in it, which is completely irrelevant. The voices stop, and there is a jangle of keys. One scrapes as it's flailed uselessly against the lock. The knob turns. The door is opened. You mumble something about hair care products. A thin line of light creeps across the grey carpet.

Three slim, crystalline tendrils wrap around the doorframe.

A small blonde boy slips into the room, blue eyes wide in the darkness. The woman close on his heels, swart hand in his, eases the door shut behind them. She tugs on his arm and trains her Cheshire grin on him. He glares as she whispers something. Rolling her eyes, she flings out her spare hand to slap the nearby light switch. The black pits of the lights in the ceiling blink to fluorescent life, and you remain persistently asleep.

The boy growls under his breath. "If you intend to act like a child-"

"Excuse me, who's the kid here? Not me, brat!" retorts the woman at a volume closer to a yell than any excuse for an inside voice. She drags him over to the couch despite his protests, where she bends to poke you in what she probably thinks is your side. A curtain of dark hair drapes itself around her face. "Oi, get your sleepy arse out of bed! Or couch, I guess. We have work to do, you know!"

You become even more persistently asleep. Your current levels of persistently asleep are simply through the roof.

The boy sighs, picking at the diamonds in his ears with a free hand. "And you simply had to put these in, I assume. Look," he adds to you, "however attractive sleep may currently appear, time truly is of the essence. We need to get started." He stands about as far from the woman as possible.

Your levels of not caring make yet another circuit and fall once more into the zone of giving no shits. Or they would, if you were not currently asleep. So asleep. The levels of asleep here are practically astonishing. They would win awards.

"You're so useless." The woman pouts. You do not know this because you are asleep. Seemingly making a decision, she turns around and-

Sits on you.

The boy yelps as he's hoisted onto her lap. Your eyes fly open and a noise somewhere between a squeak and a yell escapes your mouth. "What the fuck, get off," you wheeze. You flail under duvets that seem to be strangling you.

"I thought you were asleep!" She cackles, wriggling to drive you further into the couch. "So asleep, right?"

"No, fuck, I'm awake, get off!" You squirm. She's laughing so hard she starts sliding off you. The boy squawks and smacks into the coffee table as she collapses onto the floor, howling with laughter. Groggily, you finally fight off your blankets and manage to sit up. You watch with a mixture of disgust and amusement the boy crawls out from underneath her and yanks her to her feet. The look of anguish on his face is pretty hilarious. While the woman attempts to stop hooting and make at least vaguely intelligible noises again, you rub your eyes. Everything is blurry and bright and loud and ugh. You would have preferred anyone but these two this time around. The woman hasn't stuffed things up for you as horribly as the boy has yet, but she's still as obnoxious as a repetitive high-pitched whine. And about as loud as one, for that matter.

"Okay, okay, I'm done," gasps the woman, flailing with her free hand as she gets up properly. "Your reactions are the best." She grins at you, oblivious to the rude hand gesture the boy is making behind her.

"I try," you mutter. Thinking is hard and you don't want to do anything of the sort right now. You wish you could go back to sleep. "How are we for time?" you ask the boy, grudgingly.

"All goods, we're ahead," he says, and then smacks his forehead with a beringed hand. Diamonds again. "Ugh. I've been studying the new ones, you see. Their slang is catching, rather like a fungal growth." He fiddles with the buttons of his light blue dress shirt.

"The new ones? Shit, you're not making me deal with them again, are you?" Were you less tired you'd work up a right beating for this one, but as it is you have to settle for a glower. You're good at those, fortunately.

"Well," he begins a little sheepishly, but the woman butts in with a swish of her pleated skirt. The fluorescent lights make its black-to-white gradient look slightly yellow.

"You bet!" she chirps, making double pistols. Gods is she irritating. "Two more to go, you know! Can't stop now. He understands this sort of thing." She jerks a thumb at the boy. "Anyway, we'd better get started!"

The boy looks up from dusting off his navy blue trousers. "Actually-" He yelps again as she vaults the coffee table and practically flings him at the TV cabinet. Swearing under his breath, he kneels in front of the mahogany and rummages in a pocket. You take the opportunity to rearrange your blankets until you become a burrito. You are one with the South American wrapped delicacy. The temperature in this room is dreadful.

The key ring the boy withdraws is bizarre, hung with five of the things made from every material other than brass. One is blueish and multifaceted, another dull orange that flashes green when it catches the light, a third deep brown with a crimson band through it. He flicks through them until one that looks speckled with murky verdigris is between his finger and thumb. He holds it up to the light, though it just seems to get darker, before grabbing a large compartment's padlock and sticking the key inside.

Click.

The woman clamps her mouth shut as he unhooks the padlock. You can't for the life of you remember why. She's probably just being stupid again.

He opens it and-

oh dear-

it doesn't end-

Then he – click – is turning the key in the lock and sitting back on the heels of his dress shoes. You and the woman let out heavy breaths. She's hugging a black box to her grey long-sleeved shirt with her free hand now; the pair get to their feet, the woman's oversized hiking boots making even deeper impressions in the carpet. As the boy shoves his keys back in his pocket she dumps the box on the coffee table. While the boy starts plugging varicoloured cables into it and the television, you recognise it as a horribly familiar video game console. Somewhere under the fog of weariness in your mind, your suspicion is lost and crying for its mother. It is far too early for this. Finally the woman chucks a controller at you and, another in her hand, flops onto the couch. The boy is dragged with her and perches awkwardly on the edge of the cushions.

"Are you ready?" asks the woman in a deep voice, as though this is an incredibly grave manner.

Unfortunately, it is.

"No," you mutter as the television blinks to a slightly lighter shade of black.

"That's the spirit!" the woman chirps, then cackles as though that's in any way funny. The boy sits a third controller in his lap and reaches over to press a power button on the front of the console. Green lights limn the circle, dancing along the box's edges as it begins to whirr. You vaguely notice the pair are no longer holding hands, but their knees are still touching. The television flickers again. Abruptly lines of code in murky green and sky blue rush across it, running tracks of light down your face.

"Gods, this is still a piece of shit. Didn't Jas find some time to fix it up a little?" complains the woman. "I mean, pretty much everything it makes is shit, but it could've at least, like, sprinkled glitter on this one or something."

"I think it did," says the boy gloomily. The woman snorts. Oh, right, Jas. Yet another one you hate. The panicked code halts in its tracks and begins to erase itself before it's shunted out of the way by an eye-bleeding menu screen. Computer geeks of the eighties would be awed. The text in its hideous indigo boxes is white.

BLAIZERT FEMERAT

BLAIZUTZA GA

Yeah, there's only one option. Of fucking course there's only one option. Why did you expect anything more? Once you press a button you vaguely remember as an affirmative, a grid flashes onto the screen. It overlays what might be considered a world map by some stretch of the imagination, both horribly familiar and completely alien. A compass of surprising quality lurks in the lower left corner, pretending it has no association whatsoever with the rest of the shitty screen. Somewhere on the far northeast of one of the biggest landmasses is a grey splodge. There's another, smaller one on the continent-or-something's western point.

"Ooh, decisions, decisions!" the woman crows.

Before you can touch the controller she's picked some tiny place in the far south.

"It's my right to choose, you useless thing!" you snarl, and she just laughs. The screen has a minor heart attack from attempting to zoom in, but manages to show two navy 'islands' much bigger against a darker sea.

"No, we're going back, fuck the both of you." You seize your controller and stare at it blankly, trying to work out where amongst the scatter of buttons 'back' is. The boy seizes his opportunity.

"Too late, it already happened," he says with far too much smugness. You realise he's already selected one of the black dots sprinkled across the landmasses.

"Oh my fucking gods!" you yell as they bicker over dot after dot, the screen spasming with the effort of keeping up. "You're doing this again?"

"Oh, you bet," snickers the woman as everything rushes in yet again. "It's all planned out, see."

"To some extent," mutters the boy. What the view is currently doing could conceivably be considered panning. The pixelated outline of some kind of structure, shot through with maroon, looms against a black background. A hideous text box appears on the screen.

GEMER KAYBWD?

"Ready to play again, Pendy?" The woman beams her shiteating grin at you. You don't take your eyes off the screen.

"No."

[YAI, KAYBWD]

A/N: Greetings, Internet! Mellifluousness here, having returned from four months' trek through the fabled Lands of Planning to bring you the rewritten Ears to Hear Us! Yes, there will be language, and in fact multiple languages.

Ah, second person! While it's not entirely within the site rules, I'm going to make the excuse that it is purely a stylistic choice and this story is not interactive in any way. Which means no OCs, no dumb character questions, no reader-submitted commands or whatever. This story is not interactive.

Chapter lengths should average four thousand words and I hopeto update every week at around this time. We'll see how long that lasts.

Confusion is understandable for this chapter because you're not meant to have any idea who these people are or what's going on. Speculate, I dare you. :D

If you feel like reviewing, I'd love it if you could be comprehensive! I'm much more interested as to what you thought about specific parts of the chapter rather than the chapter as a whole, and I do not care at all about what you think about the author's note. I'll reply to you in PM if you have any questions, unless you're on anon in which case I'll yell at you in an A/N. I'll probably reply to you in PM anyway because I like replying to reviews.

And that's about it! See you next Saturday, my loverlies. :D