So I found out about a guy named Yvon, I'd say that it's creepy that he doesn't give his last name... but I don't even give people my real first name. (Maybe that makes us both creepy...) Anyways, I get in touch with him and tell him I need a spinal injury (from that fungal zombie bitch) healed. Well, he lives in France, and I can't afford airfare or get a passport, but he assures me that he will fly me out to him and heal me free of charge. I get a little worried when I hear him say that I will have to do him a "favor", (my skeez alarm is a little sensitive after that orange leisure suit guy) but he assures me that it will be supernatural in nature, not pornographic so I relax a little. The problem I'm still worried about is my grandfather catching wind of me via getting a passport, but you gotta do what you gotta do. So two and a half weeks later I've got an expedited passport, and a week after that I'm on a flight to Villedebourbon France. The entire time I'm a little freaked out about my grandfather's goons black bagging my head and stuffing me into a van or something, but it hasn't happened yet. It does get kinda freaky (not like that, don't be a perv) when I get to France. Yvon is a nice old Frenchman, but his "Gift" involves grafting organic plant matter to the injury to repair it. So now I've got some leaves or some shit (hope it's not bark...) attached to my back. At least those French classes I took in high school proved useful...

Good Glorious Goddess have I actually been gone for a month?! Jeebus, I missed my buddy Carnifex. I wish I could have brought him back some chicken, but I digress...

On my way to the airport, something about the driver, or something in the cab just gives me the willies. I think it was the driver, she was almost swan-like in her beauty to be sure, but it was just... unsettling. She smiled at me as I left and said something beautiful and Slavic that I have no idea what it meant, I just smiled and waved as she drove off. I shrugged it off but the whole airport felt weirdly drafty, but I made it to the boarding gate fine. Or at least I thought I did, they took my ticket and I walked into the boarding tunnel-thing and suddenly I found myself walking right back into the airport's front doors!

Now I'm panicked. I think I'm going to miss my flight and be stuck in Russia. I book it through security, and they're chasing me through the terminals... and suddenly I see this weird old janitor smile and wave at me. I mean this guy was ancient, I don't know how he was working at all at his age, had to be a centennial. I get caught and dragged into some interrogation room and I think I'll be seeing Johnny again sooner than I'd like.

And then I'm falling through the front doors of the airport terminal... Russian bastards just walk around and over me. I get up, I look around, and then I check my pockets. I've still got my ticket and my phone shows that it's still just after when the cab dropped me off. So now I'm thinking that I'm lost in time, but at least I can make it to my flight on time... if I can figure out how to actually get on the plane. So I go through security all regular-like trying to figure out what it's going to take to get home. But predictably I go through the boarding gate and I'm back in the front doors.

I check the time, and sure enough, the time reset as well. So while I'm waiting to get checked through security I think about what I know about this airport. Then I remember the old janitor. So I went to the bathroom where I saw him standing in front of as I got chased through security. Right as I'm going in thinking I've missed him he's on his way out and he greets me, amused, as if seeing me reminds him of something funny. Unfortunately, there's a language barrier, to him English is just as much gibberish as Russian is to me. Eventually, I figured out that he knows some German. Turns out he was a low-level officer in The Battle of Stalingrad.

And suddenly I'm just inside the front doors of the airport terminal! And that's how I figured out there's a time limit as well. So fast forward through security, I go find the ancient janitor, and when I do he greets me in German. Great, he remembered. Wait, he remembered! He's the only other person (as far as I know) who knows that time is resetting. We talk amongst each other, both of us speaking secondary languages, so it's slow going, and he's secretive. But eventually, he admits that he's a wizard.

Times up, front doors, security checkpoints, bathroom break, old wizard. So now I skip straight to the point. He tells me that I've been trapped by a Vila in a Groundhog's Day loop. Duh. (Queue Billie Eilish music.) Well, ok, I don't know what a Vila is, but everything else... So I ask him what a Vila is. Apparently, Vila are Russian nymphs and pixies who come from the spirits of beautiful women who died before their weddings and tempt men into dancing at midnight until they die of exhaustion. They also transform people and/or are associated with transforming into swans and other animals. That's when it clicks. The cab driver...

Front doors, security checkpoints, bathroom break, old wizard. So I ask him how I get out of this and get home. Apparently, I'll have to confront her directly and find the source of her power. Supposedly, she should be somewhere inside the airport, like in the most central area of the airport. So I go to find the map and right as I do...

Front doors, security checkpoints, bathroom break, find the map. So at this point, I find out that Russian maps for the public are fairly obscured, only showing what they think travelers need. So now I have to figure out where the actual center of the airport is... Fuck.

Front doors, security checkpoints, sneak around, set off and alarm, chased through the airport, dragged into interrogation room, front doors, security checkpoints, sneak around, make it in employee's only areas, get spotted, chased, dragged to the interrogation room, front doors, look for cab swan girl in the interrogation room, front doors.

Then it dawns on me... She's in the cab, she may make her way to the center of the airport at some point, but she starts out in the cab just like I start in the front doors! I burst through the front doors and spot... forty billion cabs... this is an international airport... what was I thinking?! I look through cab windows one after the other but to no avail.

Times up, front doors, burst out the doors, and run past several cabs before starting to check. Then I spot her in a cab, and she spots me too and winks at me. Times up.

Front doors again, burst out the front doors, beeline to the cab, and jump in the front seat, lose my shit. Yell at her in various languages, she doesn't know any of them but she seems hurt... Times up.

Fast forward, front seat. I can't talk to her, she doesn't want to be yelled at. I'm at a loss. Times up.

Time to take a new tact. Go see the wizard. He reminds me that they are women who died before their wedding, and implies that maybe I can find her a strapping young man to kiss her. Something clicks. Times up.

Back to the front doors, back out the front doors, into the front seat. She looks so sad... yet glad to see me again. So I kiss her, she barely lets me break the kiss. And suddenly I'm on the plane on my way back to America, and I've had my first kiss.

Carnifex is gone, along with the van that was our home. I am back "home", not at my parent's house but at my Grandfather's. I've been talking to my brand-new psychologist lately. Sure I'm not telling them many details, just about how I feel weirdly compelled to play fair and not cheat in any way since I had a weird dream about cheating at an arcade. They suggested I start small, solitaire, shit like that. Work up to no-stakes poker and blackjack or Monopoly, you get the idea. Weird that I have to do this, but I have to keep my mind clear for what's coming next. Can't let myself get killed for not taking any advantage I can. I didn't even want to hire extra help at first....

I am investigating my brother's recent activities, I think he might have caught ghoul fever. I need to be sure. I've lined up some assistance, I want to be sure I can do this and Carnifex can't be there to help this time. God, I miss him. At least "Luck" agreed to help, maybe she'll be my new "Russian swan"... Head in the game Annie. He's killing girls out there, targetting ones that look like me, carving my name into them. He's not my brother anymore, he's a slasher. It's time to do what I do. He's survived in the past but now I've got Gifts too, where I didn't before, and I'll still have friends. It would be easy to get overconfident, can't let myself do that. Since he was my brother Tim's teeth have sharpened, so have his fingernails, and his flesh has gone grey and pallid. Over the last few months, his mind has started deteriorating. He's repeating phrases, and singing crazed melodies, and his obsession with me has increased. Grandfather's research needs him, I'll give him this one, but he's not coming home alive. Grandfather prefers the psycho, I'm not giving him a chance to name him his successor. Once he sees that I was better anyway, he'll forgive me. The inheritance is mine brother. I will be the Empress of this little empire, and when I am...