Doomriders, awaken!

You’re a gamer?

Donny threw on his least wrinkled shirt, went downtown to the San Jose Police Department, strode up to the front desk, and said, “I’d like to turn myself in.” The officer behind the desk didn’t seem impressed by this declaration, instead he walked from behind the desk to a room marked Staff, and when he’d returned a few minutes later, he was stirring a cup of coffee.

“What would you like to confess, son?” said the officer.

“My name is Donny O’Doyle, and I’m here to confess to a murder.”

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Donny was the middle child, and although he never admitted it to anyone, he felt neglected. So, when he left the nest for the big bad world, he was pleasantly surprised to find there was no real change to where he fit on the loneliness spectrum; he was still depressed, but no more so than he had been.

Most nights, Donny played his favorite game on his Soulvision-Plug: Deathkiller 4: Doomriders, awaken!. He’d been a fan of the game since its first installment, but Doomriders was on a whole other level. The graphics and sound were so intense that sometimes—when the blood sloshed about in his mind—he felt like it wasn’t a game at all, like he could feel the plasma sticking to the bottom of his socks. It was thrilling.

Jenny lived across the hall. She had a round face and brown eyes that reminded Donny of a cup of coffee sitting in the sun. He wanted to ask her out, but he was broke; the Soulvision-Plug wasn’t cheap, and with the dismal tippers at Café Cubano, he was already on a strictly ramen diet. So when she came over, saying, “Would you mind if I hung out here for a bit while the plumber installs my new sink? He’s creepy.” He happily invited her in, offering her store brand cola and cheese slices.

“I’m good,” she said, then gasped. “Is that a Soulvision-Plug?”

“Yes,” said Donny, folding his arms, then dropping them to his side, then placing his hand on his hip. “You’re a gamer?”

“Please tell me you have Doomriders?”

Jenny was close to him now, touching his arm, and it felt as if he were standing next to an electricity pylon; the hairs on his arm stood at attention, and so did other things…

“Um, hell yes I do,” he said, running over and picking up the neural connectors from the coffee table.

As he plugged Jenny in, he breathed in her sent. Vanilla, yum.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” she said with glee.

He flipped the switch, and her eyes widened.

“This is so damn cool,” she said. “What do I do?”

“You look for Doomriders—but be careful, if they see—”

“Ahhhhhhhh!” Jenny screamed, digging her nails into Donny’s arm.

Donny reached over to pull the plug from the wall, but Jenny’s grip held. She was smiling. Her pupils dilated and a strand of drool stretched from the corner of her mouth down past her chin.

“Leave it,” she said. “I got this.”

Two hours later, Jenny got a text from the plumber saying that her sink was finally installed. As Jenny walked unsteadily across the hall to her apartment, Donny could still see the wild look in her eyes. He rubbed his own eyes and decided he’d gamed enough for the day and went to bed.

The following day, Donny felt great, and he felt even better when he realized that Jenny had left her pink scrunchie on the bathroom counter. He brushed his teeth, grabbed the scrunchie, walked across the hall, and knocked on Jenny’s door. He tapped his foot along to the beat of a song blaring from inside Jenny’s apartment. After a moment, the door opened to a sleepy-eyed Jenny standing in the doorway, covered from head to socks in blood, holding a coffee mug that read, “Every day is Caturday.” She spoke, but the song was too loud to hear what she’d said, the singer repeatedly shouting “TV party tonight!”

“I can’t hear you!” Donny yelled, pointing to his ears.

“It’s Black Flag!” she shouted back.

“But…the blood—what happened?”

“Plumber!” Jenny said with a shrug.

“Damn! Okay! But why?”

“Must have been the game!”

“What?”

“I think it was the game!”

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Thank you for reading Doomriders, awaken! I just got an email from Tipper Gore thanking me for illustrating the dangers of this burgeoning new media.

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