Game Over!

Guess that’s the end of me wanting to be the ultimate champion of Pac-Man. I don’t even know if the screen really says I lost -- the words are jumping around all over my vision. God, it’s way too loud, can’t they (the manager) turn down the volume of people in an arcade at two o’clock in the morning? It almost reminds me of all the honking in rush hour.

Seriously, Alex, your drunk, gay ass had to choose to go to the twenty-four hour arcade when you could’ve gone home and went to bed?!! (Is it just me, or is my drunken thoughts even louder than everybody in here?)

Jesus fucking Christ, you’re having a conversation with yourself, again? Why even bother when it won’t even answer me? Why can’t I handle anything? Right now, I can’t handle each beep and boop, or however you want to fucking describe every fucking game in here! Right now, I want to at least handle two things: find Ben, then go home and go to sleep!

. . . I stare deeply into the screen. Holy shit. I don’t know where Ben is.

Oh God, I’m going to overload. Because of these exact reason: 1. I lost at Pac-Man. 2. I can’t handle a fucking thing right now. 3. My head feels like it’s going to explode from looking at this damn screen for too long. 4. I’m pretty sure I’ll break my hand and the controller-thingy-ma-bob if I squeeze any longer. Now, last but DEFINITELY NOT FUCKING LEAST: 5. WHERE. IS. BEN?!

Now, I feel like I’m going to explode. I have that whole “T-minus ten seconds before lift off” thing stuck in my head. Except it’s not going to be “lift off,” it’s going to be “my fucking body turns green and I destroy this place with my new super powers just to find Ben!”

God, I’m a fucking mess. Here goes nothing. Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . . Seven . . . Six . . . Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One. Be prepared for the unleashment of The Incredible Angry Drunken Alex!

The chair topples to the floor as I jolt right up. (Now, at least a fourth of the chattering has silenced in the lane I’m going to be attacking soon.) Before I know it, my sore hand collides with the top of the arcade-boxy-thingy while the other points at the screen.

“This game is rigged!” I yell out of my mouth before even noticing it opened.

A hand -- that is not my own -- falls to my shoulder blade. “N-now, there’s no reason you should have such a grudge against a game. Right, Alex?” A nervous, yet familiar voice says softly into my ears.

That voice . . . silences all unbearably and unnecessarily annoying chatter; it completes my satisfaction