Glitch's Tale

 Hello my name’s… Vincent, yeah that’s right Vincent. I know I have to write this down, the others’ are all written down. Well, I assume so… Wow, I never even thought about how many might not be written down… But, now, I need to tell you all this. It’s really important, I can’t skip out on it just because it’s hard, just because it’s hard to re-live these memories. But, here I go, for the sake of solidarity.

 Anyway, I suppose I should tell you that I’m a “90’s kid” but I realy not. I mean, I was born in ‘86 but I kinda missed a lot of it. You see my parents weren't the most understanding of folks, and by the time I was old enough to remember anything I was already in the town I grew up in. I never knew the name of it, or anything really, just that I had to take a bus an hour and a half to get to school. My grandmother lived in the city my school was in, and I would spend the day with her a lot of the time.

 I never understood it, I never understood why I didn’t know anything about what the other kids talked about. While they talked about their shows and games, I worked at school… That’s what my parents wanted, so that’s what I did. But I finally figured it out when grandmother gave me that game, that game my parents were unwilling to touch, that first japanese copy of pokemon green.

 From then on that was my life, my every waking moment I could was spent playing that game. The soundtrack entransed me and I played it on full blast with my headphones, and that was just the first. Soon my pockets were full of games, games that I bought with money I stole from my parent's pocket and when that was found out it was my first time in the hole.

 You see, good old mom and dad were… a bit off I guess you could say. They didn’t even understand the warning and they had built a bunker for 2000. The whole town had pitched in, and I guess I never questioned it until then. But it was then that I was there, with nothing but bread and water, for what I had done. It was because of that that I realised that my parents were not one’s to mess with, so I began to steal from the other people in town. They often saw me, but I guess they were afraid of my parents because they never said a word.

 As my game library grew over next few years, my grades steadily, if extremely slowly, degraded. I lost my perfect score, although I kept attendance, and I was slowly spending more and more in that unfinished pit. I don't really remember when I did it, or even why, but finally I palmed a GBA as I was going in. Just one game, a new copy of pokemon ruby, a brand new world that I just had to explore.

 I suppose that was my downfall, my final punishment, because that day I was distracted when mother came in. Mother, who I now know was the cult leader that controlled my home town, was furious. So furious that her blow to my forehead knocked me out, here blow that I never saw coming. I guess… I guess that was my downfall.

 It took me a while to come to, and when I did I was plunged into such utter darkness that I thought that she had blinded me, but I still tried to explore. It took me a while but I finally found something else. I guess mother decided to leave something… I felt it up and I found a button, and with an experimental press I found it turn on to be a bright screen. It was, strangely enough, a television, not something my mother would have approved of.

 Well, at least I had a grainy sort of light. Looking around me I found myself surrounded by stuff. My stuff, everything that had been in my room. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a scuttering form and hunger took over me, and I felt an overpowering hunger. My memory cuts out their, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in front of the tv, with warmth in my mouth. A coppery warmth that made my stomach growl, but I gave up on it after a while. Instead I began to search through my stuff, finding my piles of crappy and obscure game titles and consoles.

 The consoles were all still plugged into my tv, every one of them, in the way I used to. Well, I had nothing better to do so I began to play. I played, and I played, and I played, and I lost track of time, of everything but the games. Until… well, until I was done. Until I had played every one of my hundreds of games to a completionist position. Until I was satisfied. Until I was left drooling at some wall-chicken in Castlevania, and I heard a sound.

 A rustling sound, from a corner I had ignored for so long… and as I moved towards it my eyes adjusted, adjusted to the darkness so quickly. I saw a rat their, another rat, and before I could think or stop myself I had attacked. Quick as lightning reflexes I had trained for so long struck out and I was soon licking my lips of blood. I felt them, my teeth. They were no longer normally human, no, they had grown sharp. My canines elongated to perfectly tare threw my latest snack.

 For the first time I was thrown into a panic, for the first time I questioned my own life. I rushed, looking around the now almost iluminated room for the lightswitch, until I found it and used it. But no it didn’t work, not a flicker, nothing. ‘It must have been faulty wiring, right?’ I thought franticly, looking back at my games and tv. ‘I mean my games are working and-’ but my thought was cut off by a realisation, none of it was plugged in.

 This realisation put me through a tumble, I had no idea what was happening, but I had to go on. I had nothing else I could really do. Slowly I began to look around, trying to find anything else of note. Since I could see in the limited night I was able to easily see the whole place, rather small as it was at the time. The one corner I had… caught the rat in was full of food, all of which appeared to have been ravaged by my snacks brethren. In an alcove next to the food their was a pair of bunk beds, and beside that was a computer terminal. All of this was across from what appeared to be pile of my old stuff, and the bricked up entryway.

 With nothing else to do, being as completely bored of my games as I was, I moved over to the computer. It was rather old, looking like a model my father had swapped out from the year before my unfortunate incident, and it turned on like my consoles with what appeared to be no power. It was plugged into a cord in the wall, and as my fingers flew across the keyboard in instinctual strokes I found out what it was. I was jacked into an old military node, and from there I was quickly able to access the net. Apparently one of mother’s people had made it as easy to use, having pretty much the default interface I had seen a thousand times in the computer lab.

 Once I got onto the internet I started by searching for games, and by the computer’s clock I spent a good two days before I found youtube. It was their that I finally found out, that I finally found out that I wasn’t alone. It was their that I found out about Ben and BRVR. It was then that I knew that this was the next level, the next game for me to play. I imagined how I would continue in a game, cyberspace was obviously the next step, and before I knew it I was here.

 So, this is a challenge. Ben, I’m coming for you, because you seem to be the boss of this level. I will do what I can beat this game like I have all the others, no matter the cost. This was the best way I could think of to send this directly to you. Through this teller of tales, this investigator of our stories, listen now and hear me.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"> 22xander (talk)

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> (ok, so each of these separated by a double return could be a separate story in my opinion but I wanted to put them all together to make it easier to read.)