Hello once again R.L. Stein Story Club members. I'm Ivy, your host with the most,

and curator of those strange and often scary tales from the hidden vault of R.L. Stein.

Today is another chilling tale. So get your game on story club members.

This story, which will give you a dose of virtual reality, is a tale I call

Stay Alive from the Dead.

Ricky Lane was a game master.

He downloaded and played video games all day long.

Well, after school anyway.

During the summer, though, he could spend all day doing it. His father,

Rick Sr., told his son that games aren't reality. They won't amount to anything. You're

only wasting your time on virtually nothing. Ricky ignored his dad. He was always saying stuff like that.

Ricky loved totally immersive virtual

reality gaming, and as he was going through the game possibilities, there was a brand new one that

struck him called Stay Alive from the Dead. It was a zombie-slaying game. In addition to playing

video games, Ricky loved all the movies and TV shows that were undead-related.

He liked seeing how the characters survived in those impossibly dystopian worlds.

Ricky downloaded the game and played it.

He liked to stay alive from the dead because it superimposed unreality onto his own reality.

As he wore the headset, he had to fight off a zombie horde that attempted to attack his house.

The only thing that Ricky had to defend himself was a super-soaker water rifle armed with a gallon of special tonic called Dead Be Gone.

The stuff looked like lime-flavored Gatorade.

In the game, as he blasted zombies with the stuff, he'd have to find locations where he could

...