There were three of them. They broke the tree line a hundred yards from me and fanned out, dropping into the tall grass. The one on my right was closest, but I still had the element of surprise. I zoomed the digi-scope in on the corner of his shoulder for distance and painted my target, now I just had to wait for him to expose himself.
The rail gun was locked in position, so I pulled my head back a bit and scanned the other two. The one on the left was moving out of my field of view in the opposite direction, I could deal with him later. The one in the middle stood up. He turned his back to me. It was too perfect. Dropping my original target, I brought the gun around and zeroed in, he would never know what hit him.
I slowed my breathing, steadied my hand and waited for the lock to confirm, then squeezed the trigger slowly. Everything went black.
My heart stopped. I’d worked on this campaign for two weeks, moving my avatar into just the right position, just to be killed by someone I couldn’t see? But my viewfinder stayed black. This wasn’t game play, it was something else. I pulled up my visor, the monitor was black too.
Suddenly I was back in the crappy two-bedroom efficiency apartment, on the sticky, vegan leather sofa, with Imagine Dragons pumping through the paper-thin walls, “Thunder, feel the thunder, lightning then the thunder...”
“Creed!”
I snatched off the headset and the gloves, careful not to throw them. I’d learned that expensive lesson once. The apartment was dark, there was no familiar hum from the refrigerator. My departing roommate, Creed’s, final “gift” apparently had been not paying his half of the electric bill.
I stood up off the couch, my t-shirt clinging to something sticky on the pleather upholstery. Sticky was a good way to describe pretty much every surface in this place since Stacy had left. He was the only one who knew anything about cleaning products among the three of us. Stacy would be back in the fall, Creed wasn’t sure. Me, I had the rest of the summer to decide what do now that I had officially graduated.
I boxed up the VR gear and went to the door. An orange notice was pasted to the outside of it.
Although we made several attempts to contact you regarding your past due account, payment has not been made. Your electric service has been disconnected due to non-payment of $111.11. Payment must be received in full to restore service.
I felt something warm on my right ankle. I looked down. Pablo, the neighbor’s psychotic chihuahua glared up at me with his one good eye. I shuddered, the ugly mutt looked like a cross between a Mexican hairless and a toothbrush. He was peeing on my foot.
I started to yank away, then remembered, the last time I’d done that, I’d ended up with sixeen stitches in my ankle from Pablo’s Piranha teeth.
“Not today Pablo,” I said.
With a quick glance to make sure the neighbor wasn’t outside, I swept my foot forward, kicking Pablo, still peeing, forward, scooting across the smooth concrete until he zipped off the edge of the balcony, right under the bottom of the black iron rail. As he fell into space, both eyes popped open, and Pablo yelped. He’d been faking the blind-in-one-eye thing the whole time!
“Hey!”
I looked over the rail, Mr. Remi, the complex superintendent, glared up at me. Pablo had landed at his feet, finished peeing, then scratched dirt on Mr. Remi’s freshly polished shoes.
“You dropped something, or did you want me to add a littering fine to the rent you owe? Mr. Doe, consider this your final notice. Rent paid by next Friday. And you can’t stay there with your electric off, either. Both of those fixed in ten days, or you’re out.”
I watched the back of his bald head bob away, just a little over four feet above the pavement. He walked like a crab, side to side, the after effects of over a dozen surgeries that allowed him to walk at all. He was a good guy. I hated having him mad at me. And I hated him. He had something more than the rest of us, understood how life worked.
The metal stairs were cold on my bare feet. The Spring sun hadn’t warmed the area under the overhang of the blocky roof connecting the twelve units of my building, one of forty-two buildings, in this massive complex. I bent over and grabbed the dog, turning to toss the electric notice into a nearby trashcan.
Remi had paused at the pool and was harmlessly flirting with a group of moms. They loved him. He’d learned something, growing up an orphan on the streets of India that I wish I knew. People just gravitated toward the man. He smiled and moved on, I might have felt sorry for him, had I not seen his wife. She was tall and thin, an Asian super model type, like Padma from that cooking show.
I sat on the step and scratched Pablo’s head. He licked my hand. What was it about some people? They just knew how to navigate life. My phone buzzed in my pocket. Crap! That meant I had ten minutes to be on my way to work or be late! I ran up the stairs and into the darkened apartment, where was my work shirt? I skimmed through the various piles of laundry dotting the living room, then I remembered. It was in Creed’s room.
The door was locked. I banged my head against it. I visualized that laundry basket lying just two feet on the other side of the door where I’d seen it that morning before Creed had headed home for the summer.
“Agghhh! Why is this stuff always happening to me!” I shouted to no one in particular. Pablo whined.
My only copy of Creed’s room key was lying, where he had tossed it, in the center of the bed, on the other side of this locked door. And now, I, John Michael Doe, was going to have to crawl on my belly into Remi’s office and beg him to unlock it for me.
I thought about calling in sick, but just being fifteen minutes late would already put me on my last strike at the Home Hut, where I used my very expensive philosophy degree to navigate the existential crises involved in loading boxed home entertainment centers into the backs of $60,000 suvs for $9.50 an hour. My life sucked.
“Doe, my office.” It was my supervisor, Donnavan.
I’d managed to catch Mr. Remi and had made it to work less than ten minutes late. But, that had been happening a lot lately.
Frank Donavan was a big man. He had no neck, just a round, bald head, stuffed between shoulders the size of hams. He sat at the desk, clutching a clipboard in his gigantic hands. The thing looked tiny.
“Says here you’ve been late six times this month,” he said. He breathed through his mouth, letting out unintentional “ums” with each breath.
I’d say he was evil, but the fact is, he was incredibly fair, and good at his job, as basic as it was. He played by the rules and gave as much grace as they allowed. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had used up all my chances.
“Yes sir,” I said. “I know that leaves me with one star.”
I took off my name tag and slid it onto the desk. Everyone started with three gold stars tagged to their name badge here. Do good, they added more, screw up, you lost a star. It kept them from having to “write people up” because you knew exactly where you stood, like a game, you could only respawn so many times before you lost all your stuff. I’d gone from three, to two, back to three, and two again, in the four months I’d been there.
One big paw clapped down on my name badge and slid it across the desk, then flicked it carelessly into a round metal trash bin.
“Nope, you’re fired,” Donavan said. “Clear out your locker, dismissed.”
“But,” I sat frozen in the chair.
Sure, the place sucked, I hated it, but it was all I had. I felt my throat close around a golf ball sized lump and was nearly overwhelmed with a need to pee. My last paycheck was enough for the electric, and some food, but not the rent, and my one shot had been an advance on my next check.
“But what? You’re not happy here, you’ve shown it time and again, and it’s at my discretion when you run out of chances. Well, today is your lucky day,” he said. Then he softened a bit.
“Look, John, you’re a good kid, with an unfortunate name, but you don’t belong here. You’re too smart for my job and that’s about as good as it gets in this place. Me, I was born for this. I look like The Thing and I’m good at two things, making stuff go where it’s supposed to, and getting people to do their jobs. I can’t help you. You know there’s no future here for you, so why waste time?” he smiled and offered a hand.
“For what it’s worth, if you apply for a job that you’re suited to, hit me up, I’d recommend you. You’re a good worker, when you show up,” he said.
I felt like a four-year-old, my hand was so tiny in his as we shook.
“Uh, thanks, I appreciate the opportunity,” I muttered.
“Send Tony up, would you? And don’t be a stranger, stop by and say hi some time,” Frank said to my back as I left.
He turned to his computer, tapped a few keys, wrinkled his forehead and swore under his breath. Another good guy I was letting down today. Creed. This was his fault. All of it.
The Home Hut vest felt like it weighed fifty pounds as I hung it on the peg by the door. There was nothing in my locker.
“Tony, boss wants you,” I said.
“Oh, thanks. You cutting out early?” Tony asked.
“Something like that. Have a nice life,” I said.
“Oh, man, I was worried about that. Too bad bro,” Tony said.
I turned the key in my car. Nothing. Tried it again. My phone vibrated. I had a text.
Your last bi-weekly payment of $88 is past due. In accordance with our finance agreement, Friendly Credit Auto has remotely disabled your vehicle until such time as all payments are brought current. Have a nice day.
“Ugggghhhhhhh!” I couldn’t take it!
I stood up and slammed the door, then kicked the car for good measure. The alarm went off. People were staring. My key wouldn’t open the door.
“What are you looking at? Haven’t you ever had a bad life?” I shouted.
I wanted to check my reflection in a mirror, certain there must be a target painted on my back. What else could go wrong? What was the worst thing that could happen?
I ran down a list in my head. My automatic deposit could not go through, leaving me hungry and in the dark. My car could catch fire. My apartment could catch fire. I could get hit by a bus. I could get bitten by a werewolf. That made me laugh.
There was a Seven Eleven exactly halfway between the Home Hut and my apartment. They had a Selfpay station where I could pay the electric bill and hopefully, by the time I’d walked the other thirty minutes home, it would be back on.
I Punched in my info and ran my debit card, spending $116.61 to rent another month’s worth of electricity on an apartment I couldn’t afford. Why did it cost so much to light four rooms? I wanted to smash that machine, wanted to toss it through the plate glass window. Why was everything so hard?
“That will be, $6.48,” the clerk said.
I forced a smile, it wasn’t her fault my life sucked. It wasn’t my fault either but taking it out on her wouldn’t help. I ran my card through the scanner and picked up my sandwich, chips and drink.
“Sorry, it says card declined,” she said.
“Seriously? My paycheck was just deposited today, will you run it again?”
She pushed her lips out and rolled her eyes a bit, one eye twitching slightly. She didn’t believe me. Whatever.
“Declined a second time, got another card?”
“Ugh!” I jammed my hand into my jeans and found the corner of the ten-dollar bill I always kept folded in a tight square, in the bottom of my pocket, for just such emergencies, I tossed it on the counter.
“Could you unfold it please?” She asked.
“Are you serious? Why, is your job just too hard, you can’t handle unfolding a single bill?” I said, quietly.
“I’m actually not allowed to,” she said.
I laughed.
“Next,” she said.
The customer behind me moved forward.
“Hold on, I’ll unfold it,” I said, jostling back into position.
I unfolded the money and accepted my change quietly.
“I guess I don’t have to ask if you want to donate to Kid Care Medical?” she said, one eyebrow cocked.
“Yeah? You know what, you’re wrong. Keep it. Okay, well, maybe just keep the coins,” I said. “You don’t know me, I’m generous.”
“Right.”
My day just kept getting better.
The sandwich was stale, but at least the chips were good, and the drink was cold. I was five blocks from my house when it started to rain. Not just rain, like Noah’s flood deluge. I could barely see to keep walking and the sidewalk was flooding up over the toes of my sneakers. Well, there went $200.
I sloshed up the steps, finally home. My porch light was on, at least I had power, time for some Netflix binging. Then I heard it. A bark from inside my apartment. What was that? I unlocked the door and walked in.
There, in the middle of my coffee table, was Pablo, bits of power cord from my $1200 Optix 6000 High Def Virtual Reality headset, dangling from the corners of his mouth. By the time I finished paying off the student loan money I’d used to buy it, it would cost me a lot more. My vision went blurry. Pablo scurried off the table and ran between my legs onto the balcony, barking. I was pretty sure he said something about revenge.
“Pablo!” I roared.
I raced out of the apartment, prison or no, I was about to do things to that dog that are best left undescribed.
“There you are, Pablo,” my impossibly cute neighbor, the Imagine Dragons fan, bent over and picked up the dog. Pablo had no idea how lucky he was.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “Yeah, I saw him in the rain, so I…”
“Whatever.”
She closed the door behind her.
Back in the apartment I sank onto the “luxurious” vegan leather couch. The salesman had insisted we’d never know the difference. I sat and smelled the difference and mourned the loss of my freedom. What Pablo had taken from me was so much more than gaming gear. Once the battery was dead, my portal was closed, forever. Or, at least until I could get $189.95 for the third new power cord I’d had to buy, which, right now, might as well be forever. He’d trapped me in this place, stuck in my depressing two-bedroom efficiency apartment, with no money, no job, and now no escape. My life was ruined.