Words with Fiends

The apartment was too quiet again.

Kayla Morrison lay sprawled on her couch, the hum of the refrigerator the only sound to prove she wasn’t the last person alive. The TV remote sat abandoned on her chest, Netflix’s “Are you still watching?” prompt staring accusingly from the screen. She'd worked a short shift in the morning and then had come home, changed into sweats, and spent the day binging Love is Blind. Not the best use of her time perhaps.

“Barely,” she muttered. She turned the tv off and tossed the remote aside. She stared at the blank screen for a moment, cringing internally at her reflection.

Finally she peeled herself off the couch and stumbled to the kitchen. The fridge door opened with a soft hiss, revealing mostly emptiness. She wasn’t really hungry anyway, just bored. She shut it with a sigh.

As dull as work was, at least it gave her something to do. But she felt like such a failure. Not only could she not find a “real” job, she couldn’t even get full-time hours. She was barely scraping by; she wouldn’t even be able to afford this dump if not for her roommate.

Her phone buzzed. She wandered back to the living room and picked it up. A notification in a group chat. Kim, bragging about how fantastic her new life was. That jerk.

Kayla dropped her phone onto the sofa, then immediately followed it, flopping down and groaning. Kim, and all her other friends, they’d all moved on and left her behind. She knew she was being pessimistic, but it was hard to stay positive when she hadn’t landed so much as an interview, let alone a job, after hundreds of applications.

Her parents kept telling her it had only been six months, that she just had to keep looking. And they were right, she was sure there were plenty of new grads in the same position. But she still felt like a failure. How could she not, when literally everyone in her friend group had left the city and found their dream jobs? Well, maybe “dream jobs” was an exaggeration. What really stung was that they’d moved away. She’d come to Ottawa for university and stayed because there wasn’t much demand for Communications Majors back in Digby. But all the friends she’d made here had gone. It wasn’t the lack of success that really bothered her. It was the loneliness.

Her phone buzzed again. Another group message. This time it was Peri: a photo of her and some friends in her new apartment in Toronto, playing Scrabble. Miss you all, the caption read, but at least I found new Scrabble buddies!

Kayla sighed. She would kill to be playing Scrabble with her friends right now.

Well… she couldn’t play with them, but maybe she could play Scrabble. There had to be an app for that. She opened the Play Store and searched.

Yep. There it was. Ew. $9.99? She wanted to play but not that badly.

Maybe there was a free alternative. She’d heard of one… what was it again? Words With Friends?

She typed it in, ah. Yeah, it’s free. Five stars. Nice. She clicked Install without a second thought.

After a quick install, the app opened.

Oh. That was weird. Crap. She’d downloaded the wrong game. The opening screen read Words With Fiends.

She’d forgotten the “R.”

She was about to delete it and try again, but stopped herself. It was free, and it did have five stars. She already had it on her phone, she might as well give it a try.

She clicked Start.

A chibi-style demon popped up with a dialogue box.

“Hi there! Welcome to Words With Fiends! I’m Mammon! Let’s get started with a little tutorial…”

Mammon shrank back down to reveal a game board. It resembled Scrabble, but it was immediately obvious it was different. First of all, the board was smaller, only 9×9. The bonus tiles were different too. She saw DP, TP, and PW tiles, but had no idea what they meant.

"Let me explain!" Mammon said, "Each player gets 7 tiles, each with a letter and a point value. Players take turns placing words on the board and earning points. The first player must use the middle tile and all subsequent turns must use at least one letter already on the board. Turns are timed, so hurry up, if you run out of time you'll miss your turn. The player with the most points at the ends wins!"

So pretty much scrabble, except it'll be a fast game. But what were those bonuses?

"The first player gets double word value for using the center square. As for the other bonuses...DDs might look great on a woman, but on this board it means double down, doubling the value on the letter placed on it. And DP isn't a porn category, it means double points for the whole word! Similarly TP is triple points. And for the truly **** there are PW tiles, which stands for Punishment Words. Any word placed here gets 4 times the points, but adds a punishment at the end of the game regardless of the outcome! High risk, high reward!"

Punishment? What the hell is that? Kayla rolled her eyes at the games attempt to be edgy.

Mammon then explained the “freemium” nature of the game. She’d get one free heart every eight hours, and it cost one heart to play a game. The game also had gems, which could be used to buy power-ups, and she received 10 free gems as a “welcome present.” It didn’t explain how to earn more gems, instead jumping right into a match against Mammon.

Kayla wasn't sure how it would go playing a computer instead of a person. A computer could always know the best word so it could be difficult to beat, but she'd give it a try.

She looked at her tiles. With such a small board she only needed a 5 letter word to reach the PW for a quadruple word score. She figured the punishment would take away gems or make her heart take longer to come back so she decided to go for it. FAINT for 32 points. Not bad at all!

Mammon played instantly. WOVEN. He grabbed a DD tile, but on the E of all things. Only 12 points and it left another PW tile open for her. In fact she could get the PW and the TP at once!

She played DRAWER expecting huge points, but was surprised when she only got 40.

"Confused," Mammon's cute figure asked, "Stacking bonuses is not permitted. Each word will only use the highest bonus available!"

Crap. Oh well. She was still kicking Mammon's butt.

It followed up with SPOOK for 14, leaving yet another PW tile wide open.

This was almost too easy.

Actually, maybe she'd leave it. She didn't have a great word to go there, and it would be no fun if she just blew Mammon out of the water. She decided to go elsewhere, SHOP, on a DP tile for 29 points. Her lead was building.

She expected Mammon to use the available PW tile, but he left it alone entirely. ORAL. 8 points. Reaching the edge of the board and given her a chance for yet another PW tile and a TP tile too. Was this tutorial just on easy mode?

The PW tile was tempting, but she didn't want to end up burning all her gems on the tutorial if that's what using the PW did, so she just played QAT. She had no idea what it meant but she knew it was in the dictionary and had used it to get rid of a Q many times.

Mammon played Lazy, using no bonus tiles at all, for 16.

Confetti went flying on the screen, "Congrats! You win!"

Kayla scratched her head. She won? She still had tiles left.

Mammon explained, "This fast and furious game only last 4 turns! Did you have fun? Give us 5 stars for a free heart!"

She rolled her eyes. She hated games that did that, she clicked the little 'x' to ignore the message.

Another one popped up, "For winning you get your choice of prize!"

A small menu popped up with three options

• $100 Cash
• 10 Gems
• Perfect Hairday

Cash? Like...actually cash? They couldn't...not for a free game. She was too curious though, she tapped it.

Tiny animated bills rained down across the screen, "You picked Cash! $100 has been deposited into your account!"

Kayle stared at her screen. Well that was impossible. it was a scam, it had to be. She hadn't given her banking info. Wait, shit. Had she downloaded a virus?

She ran to her laptop and opened her online banking. It was there. $100 - Words with Fiends.

She'd earned $100 from playing a free game. It made no sense. What the hell was going on?

She looked at her phone, the chibi Mammon was giving her a goofy look. Suddenly it changed to something more sinsiter and another text box popped up, "You've got your reward, now it's time for your punishment..."

Punishment? Oh right. Here's the catch to the free money...

Faint - A proper lady doesn't shout, and now neither do you. Your voice will become faint at all times.

Drawer - One of your drawers has been sealed shut.

Now Kayla was really confused. What voice, what drawer? They'd somehow figured out her banking info, but they couldn't change things in her apartment.

"Weird..." She said aloud, her voice just barely a whisper. Had she meant to whisper? "Weird...test...test...TEST!"

Her heart started to race. She couldn't yell. It just didn't work. No matter what she did she just couldn't yell. That wasn't possible, how the fuck...

She ran to her bedroom. She grabbed the top handle on her dresser and pulled...but nothing happened. She tried and tried again but it was seemingly welded shut. "Fuck." She whispered. Of course. It was her underwear drawer.

It was real. The game had changed her life. But how? And why?

She grabbed her phone again and looked down.

The chibi Mammon popped back up, now holding a tiny clipboard.

“Punishments complete! They’ll remain active until you win them away. Sweet dreams!”

The screen faded to black.

“Permanent?” she whispered.

Her phone lay dark and silent. She stared at it for a long time, wondering what to do next.

**Not quite a boardgame but I still think it fits. There did used to be a paid Scrabble app which worked pretty well, but only Scrabble GO is available now as far as I see. For the curious I am really 'playing' the game. I have an excel sheet with a grid set up and I pull the letter tiles and play both sides. This will be different from the other branch but I hope you still enjoy it**