Dungeon Crawler Carl
Matt Dinniman
Dandy House
Copyright © 2020 by Matt Dinniman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. No incel goblins or show cats were harmed in the production of this book.
Edited by Cheryl Dyson
Cover Illustration by Elartwyne Estole
https://www.artstation.com/elartestole
Cover Design by Toby Dinniman
Interior Illustrations by Erik Wilson
http://www.erikwilsonartgallery.com/
Thanks to all of my readers, especially those who have stuck with me through all the years. And I would like to toss out an extra-special thanks to all my Donut Holes over on Patreon.
Especially:
T B, The Human, RinoZ, Mike Dirks, Macronomicon, Nah, Drew Gilmour, Zorathis, Jesse Tyner, Attonranden, Whale, Simone Berntsen, Jack Barrett, Timothy D Theis, Jamie Wahls, Derek Allen, Eric Lee, James Van, Austin Gibbs,
&
Your Mom.
Rome will exist as long as the Coliseum does; when the Coliseum falls, so will Rome; when Rome falls, so will the world.
The Venerable Bede
1
The transformation occurred at approximately 2:23 AM, Pacific Standard Time. As far as I could tell, anyone who was indoors when it happened died instantly. If you had any sort of roof over you, you were dead. That included people in cars, airplanes, subways. Even tents and cardboard boxes. Hell, probably umbrellas, too. Though I’m not so sure about that one.
I’m not gonna lie. You guys who were inside, probably warm and asleep and dreaming about some random bullshit? I’m jealous. You’re the lucky ones. You were just gone. Splattered into dust during the transformation.
It was a Tuesday, and the calendar had just ticked over to January 3rd. A terrible winter storm had descended on North America, and half the country was buried in snow and ice. In Seattle we didn’t have too much snow that night. But it was well below zero, which was unusually cold, even for January.
I’m sure in other parts of the world where it was warmer and not in the middle of the night, many more people survived. Many more.
I also bet most of them were probably wearing more clothes than I was at the time of the incident. And those assholes were smart enough not to go into the light.
Me, I didn’t have a choice. Like I said, it was below freezing. I was outside. And I was wearing boxers, a leather jacket, and a pair of pink Crocs sandals that barely fit me.
I was also holding a crying, scratching, squirming, and spitting cat named Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. She was a tortoiseshell, Persian cat worth more than I made in a year. My ex-girlfriend called her Princess Donut for short. I just stuck with Donut.
So let me back up about ten minutes. I won’t bore you with too much backstory, but some of these details may be important.
My name is Carl. I am twenty-seven years old. After a stint in the US Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech, fixing electrical systems for rich assholes and their party boats. I, up until a few days before this started, lived with my girlfriend in our apartment in Seattle.
Her name was Beatrice. Bea. She went to the Bahamas for a New Year’s thing with a bunch of friends. She didn’t tell me her ex-boyfriend went along with her on the trip. I figured it out pretty quick when I saw the picture of her sitting on his lap on Instagram.
I don’t like drama, and I don’t deal well with it. Whether she was actually cheating on me or not, it didn’t matter so much. She’d lied. So I called her up, and I told her we were done. I promised I’d have all her stuff ready for her to go when she got back. No drama. No fuss. But we were done.
She’d asked her parents to come get the cat, but they lived on the other side of the Cascades, and nobody was getting through any of the passes with this weather. So I promised I’d look after her until Beatrice got back.
So, let me tell you about Donut the cat. Like I said, she’s one of those fluffy, flat-faced cats that look like they need to be sitting on the lap of a Bond villain. Bea and I shared a two-bedroom apartment, and one of those rooms was dedicated to the cat if that tells you anything. More specifically, the room was devoted to Donut’s Best-in-Show ribbons, her Best-in-Breed ribbons, and the countless trophies and framed photographs of her sitting on a table, looking all fuzzy and pissed off while Bea and a judge stood behind her. Bea probably had fifty of the pictures. She’d won a mess of ribbons and trophies and photographs pretty much every time Beatrice took Donut to an event. And Bea took that damn cat to a show almost every weekend.
Her whole family was into raising and showing Persian cats. Me, I didn’t really know much about that whole cat show world. I didn’t want to get too involved. Like I said, I don’t do drama.
And let me tell you something about cat people. More specifically, cat show people.
Actually, never mind. Fuck those guys. All that’s important is Bea and Donut were a part of this whole world I didn’t want anything to do with.
I never considered myself a big fan of cats. But, if we’re being truthful here, I liked Donut. That cat did not give two shits about anybody or anything, and I could respect that. If Donut wanted to sit on my lap while I was blasting away on Playstation, then she sat on my damn lap. If I tried to pick her up, she hissed and scratched and jumped right back up there. And then she looked at me with a squished face that said, what’re you gonna do about it?
I’d been tempted, more than once, to throttle the thing. But I’m not an asshole. Plus, I could respect the little monster’s tenacity. Some of my buddies would give me crap about it, me spending all this time with a fuzzy cat that was probably worth more than I would make in a year, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed having that ball of fuzz sitting in my lap.
One of Beatrice’s ironclad, this-is-not-negotiable rules was no smoking in the apartment. So after our fight and breakup, I’d made a point of smoking as much as I could. I know, immature. But it was freezing outside. Donut didn’t seem to like the smoke too much, and the smell clung to her hair. So, as a compromise, I would crack the window when I smoked.
So when I woke up at about two A.M., having been startled awake by a dream, I decided I needed a smoke. I pulled out my pack, cracked the window, and I lit a cigarette.
Donut, who had been sleeping right next to me on the bed, decided at that very moment that she wanted to—for the first time in her feline life—go outside and explore. She jumped up on my shoulder, and she leaped out the second-story window onto the tree outside my apartment. Just like that. I’d had that window open dozens of times over the past year, and she’d never even given the window a second glance. But tonight, on the coldest night of the year, the furry asshole decided to Lewis and Clark her way out of the apartment.