fine, i have 
a hacksaw. 
open up your 
playstation. cut it 
into three pieces: one 
for my living room,
one for the “foresaken bone yard,” 
and one where i’m stuck 
inside the jewlery box, spinning
                                                spinning 
                                                     spinning 

I started playing Behaviour Interactive’s asymmetrical survival horror Dead by Daylight determined to be a Killer, to menace four Survivors until their blood ran out. Then I did what only the worst hunters do: I saw myself in my prey. Drawn more to the pheasant than the gun, I invested hours in my Survivor, but I wasn’t fully satisfied until I spent $20 on making her look like me, giving myself the opportunity to watch my doppelgänger cling to life.

Before I embraced microtransactions, me and Feng Min, the character I most often play as, were different. DbD lore establishes her as a “fierce e-sports competitor”; I have never drank Monster Energy in my life. One of her unique Perks makes her “apt at handling machinery.” I, however, once accidentally filled the dishwasher with liquid soap. If we were both walking down Orchard Street, we’d enter different restaurants (I’d go into the one that didn’t have Monster Energy), but nothing could stop me from shyly equipping her with my black hair and bangs, my laced corset, and my plaid skirt. 

Or, not my hair, not my skirt, but their reflection. “The Soul condemned to be; / Attended by a Single Hound— / Its own Identity,” Emily Dickinson writes. So I trapped myself in Dead by Daylight’s unending danger willingly—I wanted to endure without crumbling.

In reality, I’m bound to fall apart. “A Soul admitted to Itself: / Finite Infinity,” Dickinson says later in the poem. Feng Min’s hair will stay the color of a snowman’s eye until I pay $10 to change it. Mine, at 25 years old, is starting to incorporate silver strands. I survive most of my days, but the stakes are always uninspiring. Make money, lose money. Create a mess, wash my hands. 

Dead by Daylight’s in-game stakes are higher. Someone’s coming to get me, they have a blade, or they’re that sex freak from Hellraiser. I’d like to believe I could handle that, or that I could handle anything.

Behind my PS5 controller, I don’t have to believe—I do it. I make Feng Min/mini-me repair defective generators, crouch in stalks of wheat, and sprint toward the exit if my team and I manage to open it. My heart beats fastest when I’m pulling other Survivors off sacrificial meat hooks, making myself vulnerable to attack, or getting sacrificed myself. 

When a Killer stabs me twice, Feng Min sinks to the floor. They throw me over their shoulder, and her skirt pulls up while I perform a quick-time struggle. My heart sputters.

In that moment, she looks like a photo I love, “Hiding in Garden,” which Bettina Rheims took of Reese Witherspoon in 1996. Witherspoon seems to have been pushed onto the grass. Her hair forms a gold nest, tangled in the bushes, and, because she's wearing only a paisley bikini top and spread-open chiffon skirt, you want to see her as a delicate soufflé. But I always notice the metal in her eyes. She’s looking at something out of frame, and she’s going to deal with it. 

We’re women, not victims. To my irritation, when Feng Min gets hurt, she starts to snivel. I make her fix the generators, anyway. I heal. I’m alive. I play another game.