Inside: a single Imp. Not hostile. It sat in a child’s chair, the kind with the little desk attached. On the desk was a lunchbox—a Doom lunchbox, the one from the 1994 shareware release.

The shotgun felt wrong. Its sound file had been replaced with a dull, wet thud—like meat dropped on linoleum.

“entity[player] is not dead. entity[player] is not alone.”

And in the static of my monitor, just before sleep: the flicker of a green arrow, always one room behind me.