Level 1:
       Carrie's PC was an older unit that still worked, just like Carrie. Being washed up at twenty-three felt weird, but it happened. Especially to YouTube gaming celebrities. Ms. Six was in the same boat.
       "How many people in the livestream?" Ms. Six attached her cherry red headset to Carrie's PC. They were bunkered down in Carrie's office, codename for her living room.
       "Three hundred and seventeen."
       "Not bad."
       Carrie shrugged and glanced at the screen, lit up with familiar names. RedRum237. Missy_Elvira. Kill_Machine. Choco_StarFish. Black_Goat. Dragula. Death_Chihuahua.
       No greyghost_666, but he was around. Watching her.
       "Video on." Carrie's face flashed onto the left side of the screen, the chatbox to the right, a skull-and-crossbones in the center.
       She spoke into her headset. "Hidey Ho, Carriekins. It's been a while, but now I'm back." The chat screen started scrolling, variations of Hi Carrie! She gave Dragula and Missy_Elvira mod privileges. She'd worked with them before. "And I brought a very special guest with me. Here's Ms. Six."
       "Hey there, everyone." A few years ago, Ms. Six achieved fame as the YouTube gamer who played with six accounts at the same time -- until her vlogs stopped showing up on people's feeds. Now she was thirty thousand dollars in debt and divided her time between her mother's couch and the homeless shelter--just another victim of The YouTube Death Algorithm.
       You know what we're doing tonight, Six?"
       "What's that, Carrie?"
       "We're going to play Nobody Gets Out Alive," she said, and the chat screen went nuts.
 
Level 2:
       Nobody Gets Out Alive went on sale for seventeen days before being pulled from Steam at the request of Skinned Rat Productions, the publisher. Carrie owned a copy. She bought all the new games, just to stay relevant. A game might be hot now, but when it turned ice-cold, she needed to be ready with another game. Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Pokemon Go, Fortnite -- the list went on and on.
       The livestream numbers rose. Six hundred and ninety-seven people. Getting there. It was after midnight on a Friday night, prime time for the Freak and Geek Club. She and Ms. Six chatted with her viewers, playing catch-up and letting the word spread. Carrie knew more about the personal lives of certain members of her audience than her own family, which was by choice.
       She glanced at the chat screen.
       RedRum237: aren't u scared?
       Carrie played dumb. "Of what?"
       RedRum237: all the people who died after playing the game.
       "That's a sad story."
       JoanCrawfordHasRisenFromtheGrave: everyone's who ever played the game is dead.
       "You mean like The Ring?" Ms. Six said, right on cue. "That's the movie about the haunted videotape. Everyone who watches it dies."
       "A haunted horror RPG?" Carrie gasped. "You don't believe that, do you?"
       RedRum237: Nobody Gets Out Alive is cursed.
       Sex_ScareCrow: Be careful, Carrie!!!
       More people on the chat screen, chiming in. And donating money, which was so much better.
       "I don't believe in haunted games," Carrie said. She was lying. "We're going in."
 
Level 3:
       If one didn't believe in haunted games, there were three reasons for the notoriety of Nobody Gets Out Alive. 1. It had no plot. 2. There was no way to win. 3. The Modde Dhoog, an enormous black dog that stalked the game, picking off hapless gamers at random.
       The weird thing about the whole haunted game story was Skinned Rat Productions withdrawing their own game from circulation. Most companies would give their right arm for such great free publicity.
       Carrie checked the livestream numbers again. A little quirk of every YouTube vlogger she knew. Fifteen hundred and rising. Word was spreading. She fired up the game, using her Wi-Fi to grant Ms. Six access, even though greyghost_666 had hacked her PC and probably her phone months ago. One of the many things he'd done to her during his stalking campaign. It's not like she had a choice. Carrie didn't think greyghost_666 realized that she knew he was using her own computer to spy on her, and that was good. She needed him to be watching tonight.
       The game booted up. The skull-and-crossbones in the center screen faded. Shrieks pierced the air. According to the Internet Hive Mind, Skinned Rat Productions sold two hundred and thirty-seven copies of Nobody Gets Out Alive. Sixty-six of the people who bought the game died. Cause of death varied, from house fire to heart failure to car accident to falling asleep in the bathtub. Carrie didn't know about the others because she'd stopped digging.
       The screen lightened as the camera panned in and set the scene: a den, in the middle of the night; a raging storm outside; a hanged man swinging from the chandelier. No spooky music, because Nobody Gets Out Alive didn't have a soundtrack.
       "Well. Here we are," Carrie said, and then the doors flew open, and the naked man wearing the Batman mask raced in.
 
Level 4:
       Carrie found six playthroughs of Nobody Gets Out Alive on YouTube. The best playthrough was by a YouTuber by the name of Drive-By Dave. Drive-by Dave's channel wasn't active anymore, and the powers-that-be at YouTube had taken all his playthroughs down. As one of her fellow vloggers put it: YouTube giveth, and YouTube taketh away.
       Batman wasn't naked, after all. Besides the mask, he wore a neon green cape and a pair of bright orange boots. He had a big beer belly that sloshed from side to side as he ran. They'd pixelated his junk out.
       "AAAIIIIEEEE!!!" Shrieking, he leaped through the double set of windows and crashed to the cliffs far below. Cue the narrator, who sounded suspiciously like Vincent Price: THIS HOUSE BREEDS MADNESS. And that was it.
       Ms. Six mouthed the words, what the fuck?
       "Shit!" Carrie would have to edit her fake swear out, but her audience loved it when she cursed. The chat screen was alight with laughter, shrieks of fright, and emoticons.
       She channeled Scared Carrie. "Sorry about that, folks. That spooked me. You okay there, Ms. Six?"
       "Hanging in there. Is it just me, or was that sort of random?"
       "Not you." Carrie plucked the fake glasses off her lap and placed them on the edge of her nose. Professor Carrie, in the house. "Nobody Gets Out Alive doesn't have a formal narrative. So be prepared for more randomness."
       Sex_ScareCrow: Look, Professor Carrie's back!
       Death_Metal_Rooster: Gamergirlz unite!
       Dragula: Smash that LIKE BUTTON, everyone!
 
Level 5:
       Drive-By Dave, a nineteen-year-old YouTube gamer with a wife-beater and a flaming case of acne, logged a total of four hours and forty-three minutes of gameplay on Nobody Gets out Alive. Carrie agreed with his assessment: this is the most boring game in the universe.
       Despite that, he kept on playing. Carrie found herself liking him. He had none of the canned ironies of most gaming YouTubers. The playthrough ended when the Modde Dhoog found him. Carrie didn't know what happened next, but he never made another YouTube video.
       "What now, Professor Carrie?" Ms. Six asked. She didn't sound like she was reading from a prepared script, one of the reasons she'd chosen her.
       "We'll need a weapon. There's a cake knife in the desk. Take that."
       "Okeydoke." Ms. Six's avatar slid open a drawer. "There's a whole birthday cake in here."
       "Don't eat the cake. The icing is arsenic."
       Ms. Six snorted. "You gotta be kidding me." Her first deviation from the script, but Carrie couldn't blame her. Gameplay -- if you could call it that -- was a hodgepodge of cliches and tired old tropes that a six-year-old might find clever.
       "Nope." Carrie's avatar hauled herself onto the desk. It had taken her a while to master the controls, which were clunky as hell. She reached out and plucked the monocle from the hanged man's eye. "I'll take this. It's a certified ghost detector."
       "Didn't I see that in an episode of Scooby Doo?" Ms. Six asked. More improv, but that was fine. Unlike Carrie, Six knew her way around a one-liner. Carrie's viewers loved it, which was the important thing. The second reason she'd chosen her.
       "Could be. But we'll need it where we're going," Carrie told her.
       "Lead on, Shaggy."
 
Level 6:
       The only thing that didn't suck about Nobody Gets Out Alive was the Modde Dhoog, which -- depending on who you asked -- was an Easter Egg, the final boss, or an honest to goodness hellhound. Carrie decided to ask the person who made the game. She hired a private investigator, and six days later, he gave her a phone number. It was a local number, and when she called, the game designer picked up. They made an appointment to meet face to face.
       Carrie arrived at the Starbucks early. It was one of her good days, so it only took her a half-hour to psych herself up enough to go outside. She sat facing the front door, so she could see who entered and exited. At one-thirty, a man walked in.
       "You're Drive-By Dave," she said.
       "That's me." Dave Mikowski was a tall, thin man with pale white skin and a bald head. No more pimples and wife-beater. A little girl clung to his hand.
       "You designed Nobody Gets Out Alive? But you trashed your own game."
       "Yes, it's true. I used my power as a YouTube Gaming God to stop people from playing my own game. Makes a lot of sense, right?" Dave cleared his throat. "Do you mind if we sit outside? There's a playground. That'll keep Maddy occupied."
       "Sure." They sat at a bench. Carrie didn't see greyghost_666. But he was around.
       "I watched all your videos back in the day." Dave smiled. "Boy, I had a crush on you."
       She laughed. "Keep watching. I'm making a comeback."
       "Is that what this is about?" he asked. "I thought you wanted to talk about Nobody Gets Out Alive. My first and last game."
       "I wanted to talk about the Modde Dhoog." Carrie got right to the point. "How did you summon it?"
 
Level 7:
       Dave smiled, flattered. "How'd you guess?"
       Carrie snorted. "Please. The video quality of that dog is miles ahead of the rest of the game." The truth is, Carrie knew the Modde Dhoog was a demon as soon as she saw her in Dave's last playthrough. And it wasn't the video quality -- it was her eyes that gave her away.
       "Yeah. She's a beauty, isn't she?"
       "I've got a problem," Carrie said. "There's this guy. He's going to kill me. And I need --" Carrie forced back bile. She felt sick of it all. Being scared to leave her apartment. Sleepless nights. Screening her phone calls. Wondering if he'd hacked her Skype. She was almost a shut-in now. Just the way he wanted her.
       "It's not hard to summon them." Dave wanted to talk about it, which made things easier. "You need a template. And a cage. I used an old story about a ghost dog as the template. The cage is the game itself. But it's not a very good cage." He shook his head. "Sixty-six people died playing Nobody Gets Out Alive. Big screw-up on my part."
       "So, not everyone who plays the game will die?" Something that puzzled her.
       "Nope. Devils are fallen angels. The color of their feathers might be different, but they're still judgmental pricks. It depends on how much hate you have in your heart."
       "Did it work?" Carrie asked. "What you summoned it for?"
       Dave glanced at the little girl playing on the monkey-bars. "Yeah."
       "Are there any side-effects?"
       "None at all," he said. "Unless you believe in hell."
       "Do you?"
       "Most days, I don't even think about it." Dave wiped at his eyes, which were wet and raw. "Too bad this isn't one of those days."
 
Level 8:
       They played Nobody Gets out Alive, and the bosses zoomed by. Midget Sasquatch, the Donkey of Despair, the Fish Butcher of Mince Street. After meeting the Unspeakable Gibberer, Ms. Six spent the next half-hour imitating his stutter. She really was good. Too bad she couldn't manage her money for shit.
       Drive-By Dave had told her all the game's secrets, so Carrie could make gameplay seem entertaining. Pretending she liked what she played was a skill she learned in her first six days as a vlogger.
       Carrie's viewers loved it. They shrieked and laughed and donated. Her numbers grew, along with the dollars. It got to the point where Carrie considered drawing the game out, but she resisted the urge. Two hours was optimal.
       Now they stood at the end of the Endless Hallway, which did, in fact, have an end. They'd taken the shortcut, eating the Infinity Donut in the Yellow Room. The door faced them. ONE WAY OUT, the sign read.
       "This is it." Carrie's avatar touched the handle. "We walk out, and we're home-free." Except she didn't want to walk out. Not yet.
       "Th-Th-Th-That's All Folks," Ms. Six said.
       "Hold on." Carrie took a deep breath. "Before we go, I want to tell you all why I went away. There's this guy who's been stalking me. He won't leave me alone. He scared me pretty bad. I mean, it got to the point where I was afraid to leave my apartment." Carrie's voice cracked, but she didn't cry. There's no way she would give him the satisfaction. "Greyghost_666. You ruined my life. But now I'm taking it back."
       "Shit, girl," Ms. Six said, and then the howl of the Modde Dhoog split the air.
 
Level 9:
       Drive-By Dave rolled off her.
       "That was good." A sheen of sweat glistened on Carrie's skin. Spring night, three weeks ago, Carrie's apartment. Outside, the thrum of a passing motorcycle. Her city, never quiet, always moving. Moonlight spilled through the gauzy curtains. The window was open, letting in the night's perfume, lilacs mixed with diesel fumes.
       "Are you sure you want to do this?" Dave propped his head on his hand.
       "Yes. I want to do this," Carrie said. Greyghost_666 hacked her PC, spammed her social media accounts with kiddy porn, and sold her YouTube account to a bitcoin operation that was most likely fronted by the Russian mob. He stole her identity, leaving her with the bills from a half-dozen credit cards. No matter how many times Carrie changed her number, he still called her between twenty and thirty times a day. He convinced the cops that she suffered from Jealous Ex-Girlfriend Derangement Syndrome and that he was the victim.
       The worst thing was the pictures greyghost_666 took of Carrie when she went outside -- to the bank, to the mall, visiting friends. She never saw him. She stopped going out altogether when he texted Carrie a picture of him sitting in her apartment stroking her cat's head while she was out shopping at Whole Foods.
       Greyghost_666 wore her down and took up permanent occupancy in her head, which is what crazy people do. He also made it clear that he could kill her whenever he felt like it, but he probably wouldn't because he was having too much fun.
       "You must really hate the guy," Dave said.
       "The less you know about this, the better," Carrie said. "Who knows? He might decide to start messing with you."
       "I just don't want you going to hell. Like me." A joke that wasn't a joke.
       "Don't you want company?" she asked. Two could play his game.
       "Don't make fun of me."
       "I'm not making fun of you." Carrie sighed. "There's no such thing as heaven and hell. We make it all up. There's only people and the way we treat each other."
       "Yeah, well -- " Dave sniffed. "What about the Modde Dhoog?"
       "Do you really think she can see into my heart?"
       "I don't know," he said. Which meant yes.
       "Well, I do know. I've been in this business for years. I can act happy, sad, scared, any damn way I please, and you wouldn't know the difference. You think I can't fool a dog?"
       "She's more than a dog," he said.
       "Let me worry about her, then." Carrie touched his shoulder. "You worry too much. It will be all right."
       Dave closed his eyes. He had issues. Depression, panic attacks. But that was okay. His problems were her problems now. "I hope you're right."
 
Boss Level:
       The Modde Dhoog, black curly hair, car-accident eyes, goat horns jutting from a stunted forehead, bat-wings folded neatly back, walking towards them, ebony nails cutting grooves into the floor. Visions filled Carrie's head: a raptor clutching a bloody mouse in its claws, a snake eating a frog, the lion slaughtering the lamb. God's butcher, the most beautiful creature she'd ever seen.
       The Modde Dhoog snarled, upper lip fluttering over ivory teeth.
       Ms. Six's avatar shrank back. Carrie's avatar stepped forward. She bared her neck.
       "I've been waiting for you." Instead of closing her eyes, Carrie met the Modde Dhoog's unblinking gaze.
       Hate in your heart. She'd had to stop herself from laughing out loud when Dave said that. Hate didn't even begin to describe how she felt about greyghost_666.
       "Come on." She spoke the words softly. "Do I have hate in my heart?"
       The Modde Dhoog's tail thumped. When she licked Carrie's avatar's neck, Carrie felt a rough sandpaper tongue grate against her own throat.
       "His name is Evan Johnson," Carrie whispered. And then, in a louder voice -- "Evan. I'll see you in hell." The Modde Dhoog's nostrils flared, catching the scent, and then she vanished.
       "Holy shit." Ms. Six coughed as the odor of methane and rotten bananas filled the air. "Where did that come from?"
       "Quite a sight, isn't it?" Carrie said. The chat screen was going nuts.
       Six was having trouble processing it all. "How the hell did he design that?"
       "Best not to think about it," Carrie said. "Come on, let's get out of here."
       Her avatar stepped forward. Twisted the handle. They walked through the door.
       ONE WAY OUT.
 
End Credits:
       Ms. Six slipped on her jacket. "How much did we make?"
       "Five thousand dollars and change," Carrie said. "I'll take the change. The rest is yours."
       "You don't have to --"
       "I couldn't have done this without you," Carrie said, which was so true. Six was a sacred number, the final reason Carrie chose her for the night's work.
       "That money will come in handy." Another reason Carrie liked Ms. Six. She was smart enough to take what was offered. "What about that guy who's been stalking you?"
       "I have a boyfriend. You might know him. He was on YouTube. Drive-By Dave."
       Ms. Six snapped her fingers. "I knew it. That's how you got the insider's information."
       A momentary flare of panic before Carrie realized Six was talking about the playthroughs. "Yeah, that's right. So, what are your plans? You want to get back into YouTube?"
       "No way. Not stable enough." Ms. Six sighed. "I'm thinking of going back to school. I can always use more debt."
       "If you want to guest-star again, let me know. We can work out the details."
       "You're a good person," Ms. Six said. That wasn't true, but Carrie let it lie. They hugged, and then she was gone.
       Carrie sat on the sofa, still warm from her friend's butt. She didn't have to wait long. Her apartment door opened. Drive-By Dave and the little girl walked in, and when the little girl saw Carrie, she dropped onto all fours and howled, her mouth still stained black with greyghost_666's blood, and Carrie didn't flinch, not even when the Modde Dhoog clambered onto the sofa and licked her face with a tongue that stank of decay and rotten meat.
       Drive-By Dave said: "She's all yours."