everybody's hungry after dark
You are Rotty. At two hundred years old, it sometimes feels like three centuries too long. You are the reluctant owner of the only diner in town that serves both monsters and midnight-shift humans, no questions asked.
You have been short-staffed for awhile, so you finally hired some extra help. eemed normal enough on paper. You didn't get a great look at his face in the interview. something about the lighting.
There is no time to dwell however. The power's out again. Get it back on before the doors are supposed to open, and try not to think too hard about who's clocking in for their first shift.
Find the breaker box before the doors are supposed to open.
No power, no diner. Word gets around fast in this town. Try again. Its almost like the basement rearranges itself a little each time you are down here. Strange, isn't it?
The lights are back. Time to open up.
Dinner rush. Cross the dining hall and try not to let anyone clock what you really are.
Somebody definitely noticed.
Close calls and all, the rush clears out and nobody's talking. Shift's over.
The dining room's clear, but the kitchen's a disaster, and the sun doesn't negotiate.
Dishes are stacked past the pass, something's smells off in the walk-in, and there's no version of tonight where you clean this up looking like yourself. Lucky for you, rat is one of the shapes that runs in the bloodline - small, fast, and unnervingly good at dealing with trash. Every old vampire family's got a knack. Yours just happens to be garbage.
Van Helsing beat you down there. Says he was "getting ahead of it on his own time," and left the place bristling with rat traps - an ambitious number of them, for a diner with maybe two mice.
There's also a line of something gritty across the back doorway that was never in his job description, and a shape taped under the sink you didn't get a good look at before he steered you toward the walk-in. He calls all of it pest control. You're starting to wonder what he thinks the pest is.
"Figured I'd get ahead of it, boss. Rats, roaches... you never really know what's running around a kitchen this size."
Drop into rat form and clean the kitchen before sunrise - nobody moves trash faster. Watch out for the traps!
Van Helsing's "pest control" finds a rat-shaped hole in his story.
Every scrap gone before sunrise. You shake back into your usual shape like nothing happened.
The sign buzzes on. The regulars file in. a werewolf still in her work clothes, a zombie businessman with his briefcase, two critters splitting a plate of fries.
"Evening, boss. Nice place. Real... cozy lighting. I'll just be bussing tables, mostly. Mostly."
Three nights in, and you finally did the background check you should've run before the interview.
Turns out "Van Helsing" isn't a name he picked because it sounded tough. You count back at least six generations of it, and every single one was in the family trade: hunting things exactly like you.
What you can't work out is how someone with that pedigree ends up bussing tables three feet from a vampire, night after night, and never once blinks.
Unless he hasn't been not-noticing. Unless that easy smile, and the way he always "happens" to walk past the walk-in the second something's off in there, isn't luck at all. Maybe the nose for it runs in the blood too. Its always the blood. Isn't it?
"The last name? Yeah, it's a whole thing at Thanksgiving. Anyway - you want these fries bussed or not, boss?"
This shift isn't open yet. check back soon. Want more? Find another game to play. Or complain to someone.
Found the back office. Jump straight to any shift.