“I’m just a lone cowboy with a defaulted loan,” blared a country singer from the CD player. Marlo cast a weak shadow onto the dashboard. “Looking for a rich gal to pay the bill for my phone-phone-phone …”
The CD skipped. The spindly, sandy-haired man frowned.
“That music was bumming me out, anyway,” he said as he ejected the disk and tossed it out the window.
“Hey,” the stout, sullen man said next to him. “That’s littering—someone has to pick that up.”
They glanced at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter. Their short-lived mirth was quickly consumed by the undertow of mutual melancholy. A deep-gray storm cloud passed in front of the sun. Marlo’s hold on the truck weakened.
Can’t … let …
A wave of shadow bore down upon her, blotting out the sky.
… go!
Marlo tumbled out of the truck, rolling across broken shards of sunlight and ultimately resting in a crisp clump of shade provided by a trio of newspaper boxes. The dark, darting shape of a monstrous bird streaked across the asphalt. Marlo looked up but couldn’t see anything in the sky above.
“Weirdness,” she murmured with a note of distress as the shadow slurped down the sewer. She backed into the shade of the newspaper boxes.
Must be seeing things … but what else is new? she sighed to herself. I’ve got to get those letters to Mom, but I’m less than useless as a roving, sad-making smudge. Her eyes traveled to one of the newspaper boxes above.
THE FREE WEEKLY GENERICAN-DO SPIRIT
SENTINEL X-PRESS TIMES
GENERICA GAME CENTER GETS GHOSTLY GIFTS
By Monk Ashland
A collection of overhauled Psychomanthiums—rare “mirror-gazing” and “apparition” chambers reputed by assorted nut jobs and fruitcakes to be conduits to the spirit realm—has just been delivered to Generica’s hottest (and only-est) new game spot, Fragopolis. The artifacts have been scrupulously refurbished and donated by Las Vegas–based, religious-themed gaming company Virtual Prayground. One of these Psychomanthiums was purchased from Topeka’s now-defunct supernatural sideshow, the Paranor Mall, to help owner Lester Lobe with his extensive legal costs. Two months ago, Lobe’s establishment served as the grisly scene of nearly barred lawyer Algernon Cole’s death at the hands—or illegal jellyfish beans—of cult leader/claims adjustor Ervil LeBaron, otherwise known as the Guiding Knight of the Subordinate Chapter of the Lower Midwestern Sect of the Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship (K.O.O.K.).
Lest you think that you can now feed quarters to a machine to help you facilitate reunions with deceased loved ones, think again: These chambers have been converted to stunning, state-of-the-art gaming booths.
Fragopolis, Marlo puzzled as she reached into her shadow-pocket to pull out Baron Samedi’s list.
2. Fragopolis, 646 Spawn Boulevard
Hmm … maybe if I can figure out why I’m supposed to be haunting an arcade, I can figure out some way of getting back Dad’s love letters and THEN get Mom and Dad back together.
After spending most of the day hopping sun splotches and stowing away on accommodating bus and car shadows, Marlo finally made it to Fragopolis: a bustling collage of glare and noise that strobed like a Grand Mal Christmas. The arcade’s flickering dazzle made it hard for Marlo to navigate. She had to hopscotch from streaks of light to irregular shadows: The light gave her shadow-self purchase in this disorienting place, while the brief, skittish shadows gave her split-second pauses to collect her thoughts. It was exhausting, like competing in the Twister Olympics.
She felt like a peripheral ghost here, not even able to give any of the bleary-yet-twitchy gaming geeks a proper “boo.”
I don’t know what the big deal is about haunting people, Marlo thought as she skated along flashes of light thrown onto the floor by the eclectic assortment of video games. A kid playing Grand Theft Otter picked his nose next to her and, of course, wiped his booger off underneath the game. You can’t really scare anyone, and all you get for your trouble is to see how gross everybody is when they think no one is looking.
Marlo soon grew bored. Then she noticed a group of kids—mostly boys—swarming around a half-dozen large gaming booths.
Marlo gasped as she saw the Gothic neon writing blinking on the side of the booths.
COMING SOON
HECK: WHERE THE BAD KIDS GO
THE GAME
DALE E. BASYE was many things now: rich, famous, unfortunately tattooed.… But of the many things he was, there was one thing that he was very much not. And that was happy.
Soaking in his marble hot tub, his freshly spray-tanned back resting on the solid-gold question mark snaking up the side, he drained the last of his acai-berry-spirulina-caviar smoothie and brooded.
He had it all:
1. A McMansion in the most coveted gated community in Las Vegas—Avalawns at the United Estates of Nevada. It was a high-security neighborhood for the suddenly startlingly rich, fastidiously designed to keep out the kind of people who the residents had been only last week.
2. A prosperous career on the cusp of becoming a bona fide brand.
3. A brand-new trophy wife—former Uzbek supermodel Goldie Grrr, premodeling name Fatma Dijakameli. (Dale’s former wife, through hurled words and plates, had expressed her considerable disinterest in wasting her life as some sort of human “prize” occupying Dale’s metaphoric mantelpiece.)
4. Two trophy children leased from local talent agency Tykes ’R’ Us and even a trophy pet: a purebred shar-pei currently undergoing plastic surgery to have its tail shortened, its ears lengthened, and a full-body face-lift to tighten up its droopy, wrinkled skin.
With all of these trappings of wealth, why did he feel so hollow inside? Success was all that he had ever wanted, but now that he had it, he felt as if he had spent his life playing some kind of shell game, a sleight of hand where—thinking that utter contentedness was hidden under the halved walnut of fame—he found himself mystified, and somehow cheated, when he came up empty-handed.
He inhaled a deep abdominal breath just as his Tuesday-Thursday therapist, Dr. Crustes, had taught him. Dale thought that perhaps doing an inventory of the extraordinary events leading him to this hot tub of steaming ennui would help him find the “hole” in his life … like psychological plumbing to discover where his love of life had leaked out. He could simply hash out things with his Monday-Wednesday-Friday therapist, Dr. Virago, later that afternoon, but she was mainly for mother issues, and this nagging emptiness didn’t seem to have that unique “mother-inflicted” quality to it.
Shortly after the “unpleasantness” at the Paranor Mall in Topeka, Kansas—where Dale had been lured by a pubescent psychopath named Damian Ruffino with an equally psychotic yet oddly inspired book idea about children sentenced to an otherworldly reform school and a flaky lawyer had been poisoned by some nut-job cult leader—Dale had seized an opportunity amidst the chaos. More to the point, he had seized a manuscript amidst the chaos. Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go. It was a travesty of a story relying far too much on puns and cleverness and not enough on a compelling plot and believable characterization. But it had possessed a certain irreverent charm about it, and Dale, his ability to generate fresh ideas long since stranded like a broken-down car in the middle of the Mojave desert, desperately needed something original to plagiarize until it was his own.
Guilt had briefly nibbled at Dale’s conscience, lazily, before moving away, unnourished. But the boy had intended for Dale to ghostwrite the story, and he had indeed done so—only the “ghost” had decided to take full-on demonic possession. Besides, the boy, Damian, would have enough to worry about, what with his religious death cult disbanded and his odd, temporary home—an ex-hippie’s paranoid delusions turned into a museum of modern artifice—shut down pending legal investigation.
Dale had then shopped the reworked manuscript around until Picatrix Publishers—known for their handling of the patently unpublishable (“If It Sho
uldn’t Be on Shelves, Then We Put It There”)—snatched it up after a bidding war as bloodless as a pacifist thumb-wrestling match. Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go hadn’t exactly set the bestseller lists ablaze, though a sizable percentage of its meager sales were attributed to easily offended church groups who purchased multiple copies specifically for public burnings.
Just when Dale’s dreams of success seemed dashed against the rocks of reality, he had received a call from Virtual Prayground Technologies, makers of religious-themed video games designed to engage, entertain, and ultimately scare the vestments off gamers so that they’d lead more virtuous lives. The company had already enjoyed several colossal, break-out successes such as Protestant Evil, Immortal Combat, and Seventh-Day Adventurists, making them one of the most influential, and wildly profitable, gaming companies in the world. The company—in particular the intensely irritating VP of engineering, Phelps Better—was intent upon purchasing the exclusive rights to a video game version of Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go to inaugurate its upcoming chain of immersive arcades. Dale felt he had no choice but to entertain an offer. And, upon hearing (and instantly accepting) the ludicrously generous offer, he found himself entertained to the tune of 10 million dollars.
The rest had been a blur of failed relationships, failed investments, and failed private pilot’s license exams. He hardly wrote at all anymore. He spent most of his time either inundating himself with needless luxury to fill the void inside or attending regular meetings with Virtual Prayground to review the latest game developments. Speaking of which …
Dale looked at the clock—a one-tenth-scale model of Big Ben in his McMansion’s inner courtyard.
Almost time for my meeting with—sigh—Phelps Better, Dale grumbled inwardly. There was something about the man that aggravated Dale on an almost molecular level. Just being in his presence was like having his psychic fur rubbed the wrong way. But, as Goldie’s hearty spending and Dale’s recent passion for gambling—a hamster wheel of a pastime in that he gambled to relieve the stress of his money woes, which only created more money woes, therefore more stress to gamble away—took their toll on his bank account, he needed his Virtual Prayground “creative consultant” stipend more than ever. Dale toweled off, then shaved in front of the mirror, which was specially warped and tinted to make himself appear younger. He stared at his manipulated reflection, trying to connect with the person he used to be. It seemed that with every meeting, he strayed one step farther from where he felt comfortable, giving in to bizarre game modifications, artistic compromises, and ethical concerns that on their own didn’t seem like such a big deal but when strung together made him feel as if he had lost his way in the dark wood of error.…
Typical, Dale thought as he waited outside the grim Virtual Prayground industrial office park just off the Las Vegas Strip, fuming at his Zapple EyeWatch. Always forty-five minutes late. Somehow even when I’m forty-five minutes late on purpose …
A flaming red Mazda Miata sports car roared into the parking lot, the grating din of talk radio pouring out of its stereo. The car raced past a teal AMC Hornet and into the handicapped parking space right in front of the entrance. A spry, insectlike man with a yellow power tie and pale-blue polo shirt tucked into khaki chinos hopped out of the sports car.
“Better luck next time, Mahaffy,” the man chuckled at the other driver, whose windshield sported a handicapped sticker. “Get it? Because of my last name?”
The man, Phelps Better, stuck out his hand as he walked up to Dale.
“I’m Better,” he said with a disingenuous smile overcrowded with large teeth, like the bleached-white tombstones of an exclusive graveyard just for giants. “Get it? Because of my last name.”
“Yes,” Dale grumbled as he tried to free his hand from the man’s viselike grip. “And I’ve gotten it every time you’ve made that joke.”
The driver of the AMC Hornet hobbled by, scowling.
Phelps Better winked his beady black eye at Dale, as if they were coconspirators in some hilarious prank. He walked into the Virtual Prayground offices with Dale close behind.
“Sorry I’m late,” Phelps Better said before winking at the pretty receptionist, who managed a forced, obligatory smile in return. “I’ve been securing the delivery of the tricked-out Psychomanthiums—the gaming environments—to all of our Fragopolis arcades. Some are already functional, while the others are just there to create intrigue.”
Dale walked alongside Phelps, unable to shake his irritation at having been kept waiting.
“It’s just that I have better things to do than—”
“But the reaction is phenomenal: presales admissions to an arcade game, no less. It’s unheard of.”
“I’m a busy man—”
“And if my calculations are correct, Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go will be the biggest video game of all time before the week is out.”
Dale stopped abruptly in the hallway as Phelps continued his strut through the drab hive of cubicles like some kind of royalty.
Biggest video game of all time.
Dale really didn’t know much, if anything, about video games. The closest he’d come to playing a video game was trying to get the aerial on his old television to actually get a signal. But he knew that the words “biggest” and “all time” would make him somehow historic.
Phelps slapped a series of backs, chortled loudly about nothing in particular, and essentially assaulted a gauntlet of dispirited, uneasy underlings through the intimidating bluster of his affronting personality. As he reached his corner, the office resumed its usual, reassuring hum of idle banter.
“Hey, Pops, I don’t have all day,” he called out to Dale. “I’m a busy man.”
Dale emerged from his stupor.
“Right … sure,” he said as he trotted toward Phelps’s office.
Somehow, he did it again, Dale thought. Flustered me with some vague yet irresistible promise of wealth and acclaim. Now I’m forced to endure his unendurable awfulness. As usual.
“Close the door,” Phelps said as he eased into his overpriced Herman Miller chair, requisitioned just after the last round of layoffs. Dale obliged, then sat down.
“Foosball?” Phelps said, pointing at the large foosball table crammed into his office. “I don’t play much,” he lied. Phelps played at least four hours a day so that he could best any employee unfortunate enough to agree to a game. “But if you want—”
“I don’t play.”
“I didn’t think so,” Phelps replied with a dismissive snort.
“Now, about my—”
Phelps held his finger up as he typed on his laptop.
“I’ve got to launch a salvo of threatening emails, warning of further ‘restructuring measures’ if our overworked staff doesn’t meet our next impending, highly unrealistic deadline,” he snickered, his black eyes shining flat like buttons. “Textbook middle-management productivity technique.”
At least Genghis Kahn had the guts to be overtly evil, Dale thought. This guy just rots the lives of all around him gradually like fungus on a toenail.
“Okay,” Phelps said, his laptop snapping shut like the jaws of a crocodile. “The ad spots for the game—‘Play the game that plays you’—have really caught on. Throngs of children—and I literally mean throngs—are lining up to play the first full-sensation arcade game. It’s, dare I say it, a sensation.” He smirked, no one quite tickling his funny bone as thoroughly as he. “And—this is brilliant even for me—I’ve set aside some of our advertising budget to secretly fund a group called AGHAST.”
“AGHAST?”
“Adults Galled by Heck and Such Things,” Phelps clarified. “A coalition of parent activists who want the game shut down.”
“Shut down? But it hasn’t even really debuted yet … not officially.”
“Exactly. We’ve been feeding the parent groups that protested some of our other games certain concerns about Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go gleaned from our internal testing. Reports of mild, to u
se the medical term, zombification.”
“What?!” Dale exclaimed.
“Lethargy, twitchiness, and an overwhelming urge to play the game as much as possible,” Phelps continued. “Not a far cry from what happens to habitual gamers, only with Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go, the addiction is more acute … and almost immediate. We couldn’t have asked for a better gaming side effect. But by helping to stoke the ire of these parent groups, pooling them together into one, then giving them money for high-profile campaigns, I’ve turned this supposed ‘negative’ into the ultimate ‘positive.’ ”
Dale shook his head. “I don’t follow.”
“Of course you don’t,” Phelps laughed, again rubbing Dale’s psychic fur the wrong way in a steady, disrespectful rhythm. “You’re old. You’re a writer. You’re lucky to be along for the ride.”
“But it’s my—”
“See, with AGHAST’s help—causing mass parental outcry—we’ve virtually assured the game’s success with its intended demographic. We’re practically daring kids to play this ‘dangerous’ game that their parents can’t stand.”
Dale wouldn’t openly admit it, but this was a brilliant marketing move.
Phelps’s face crinkled like a sinkhole, as if all his disagreeable features were about to be swallowed up by his prodigious nose. If only. He unholstered his smartphone and scanned its touch screen.
“I’ve got to respond to this,” Phelps said as he pulled a sheaf of papers from the top of his desk drawer. “It’s our new tech consultant for the game, Mr. Nikola. Some mysterious contractor from somewhere. He doesn’t seem to sleep. I’ll get these crazy messages at all hours.”
“I’m not sure about all of—”
Phelps tossed Dale a Virtual Prayground pen/laser pointer.
“You need to sign these,” he said, barely acknowledging Dale’s presence as his thumbs tapped away on his phone. “Standard liability contract.”
Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck Page 13