William’s Game

A computer screen glows in a darkened room, shades drawn against

the noonday sun. The screensaver is stuck, again, so much going
on in the main frame memory that there aren’t enough jigagiggles
of processing power left to wag lines that are supposed to
gyrate and squiggle. A flat line is all there is, frozen stiff
and straight.

William rolls out of the bed that he occupies when he isn’t

playing fantasy video games or acting another movie role. He
takes a swig from a plastic bottle found on the floor, its
mostly spilled contents, squishy, on the shag carpet under his
feet. Muddy mineral water, chocolate milk, tomato juice. It
all tastes the same, laced with taurine and ginseng, lightly
carbonated, with Aspartame. He rolls deodorant under his left
arm and feels his chafed skin burn. Fifteen days, or weeks, or
months, without showering. He passes by an open closet to stare
out of the bedroom window.

Bright reality reflected off San Francisco Bay sears its way
past his glazed eyeballs, and he has to close his eyelids
against the sight even before he snaps the window shade back
down. The burning afterimage is still visible as he sits down
at the computer for another session. Another screenplay to
memorize, another escapade into fantasy games, another thousand
dozen clicks on the mousepad. He beams himself down, Nanu Nanu
style, into anytown America.

He lands. A lonely alien in a dark alley in Boulder, Colorado.

A place so imaginary that nobody could have dreamed it up. A
place where Mork and Mindy never could have committed indecent
acts in public. A town so whitewashed that the shadows that
envelop this alley off the Pearl Street Mall struggle to be
pale. Pale white shadows, the color of straightjackets in a
psycho ward. Pale white shadows of a mentally constructed
darkness, like dreams of shadows in a drug induced nightmare.
A sheen on the ground ahead of him glistens. It looks slippery,
like black ice, but at the same time appearing as sticky as an
open faced peanut butter sandwich. A trickle, and then a
rivulet, leads to the source: a rusty pipe jutting out of a
brick wall where brownish red liquid drips out, making a drip
drop noise so loud that William has to turn down the speaker
volume.

Faded letters on a brick wall. The Rocky Mountain Chocolate

Factory. Etching barely visible through layers of pixels that
create the illusion of vines, mold, and mildew. Everything is
moldy and mildewy in this alley that fills with music that
vomits from nearby night hotspots. The alley leads straight
West, toward the Rockies, to a dim red light that pulses like a
beating heart. William takes a few steps forward and the the
virtual of this reality seems so real that it almost overwhelms
him. He gasps and reaches for a pillbox that isn’t there.
Props in some other Saturday Night skit he never acted.

His feet squish through thick gooey mush, like wearing

comfortable slippers that have been worn far longer than
intended. He feels no desire except to walk, automatically
forward, because forward is the only direction he has ever
walked without acting out a role. Forward towards those Boulder
foothills that always beckoned but that he never managed to
reach. He stumbles and steadies himself with a rope that dangles
from a building whose side facade has become an urban climbing
wall. He passes a garbage bin on the left, stuffed full with a
kayak, long and gleaming, its oars pointing leeward and
starward. The SS Minnow, abandoned by its owner, who has given
up the dream of the World Kayaking Championships and taken an
executive job at Google.

A middle America as recognizable as any other shazbot town. An

Ork, as much a home to humans as swimming pools are homes to
killer orcas at Seaworld. A Noah’s Ark with a sign that says,
“Only breeding pairs.” A place as welcoming as the soup kitchen
across Canyon Boulevard with a sign hanging from the doorknob.
“Condemned, by order of the Boulder County Public Health
Department.”

The beaming pulsing light at the end of the alley pulls him
along, pulling and pulling him like a fish on a line until his
vocal chords are yanked clear out of his gullet. William
squeals, an uncontrollable shriek as loud and shrill as laughter
coming from a drunk hyena at a comedy club. He hears a
rhythmic thumping, like the pounding of a fist on a hollow
bedroom door.

“Daddy. Aren’t you coming out today?”

“I don’t think so, Zelda. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Zelda steps into the dark room, incandescent as an avatar.
“Can’t I just open up the shade? Give you a little light?”
“You are my sunshine, Sunshine.” Half sung, half spoken. He
kisses her and pats her toward the still open door that slowly
shuts with the sound of an interminable click.

A menu appears on the screen, bringing him back to the pulsing

red light and the decision that has to be made. An open closet
door and a choice of instruments: a belt, a gun, a razor blade.
A belt seems trite, too obvious. The gun, too loud, and messy.
The razor blade will suffice.

“Please don’t take my sunshine away” he hums, then a quick jab

into the pulsing red light and the gush commences, rushing down
these Boulder alley walls like a summer flash flood buoying the
kayak and bouncing it along like a dead log, sweeping past
ropes where urban climbers may have sought refuge. Dangling,
sinewy ropes, dripping a thick red blood, too slippery for
anyone else to grab hold and climb to safety. The Rocky
Mountain Chocolate Factory, walls washed with blood running six
feet up the crumbling foundation, its drainpipe still dripping
its chocolate ooze into an expanding sea of cherry red.