I open my eyes and am struck by the thought that I don't know where I am. I investigate my immediate surroundings. They are dark. My mind swims. My head tries to follow, and I realize that my face has been buried in a pillow.
I am in my room. It is dark, but not of its own volition. The blinds have been drawn, the door shut, a towel wedged into the crack between it and the floor. Through the gloom, I spy a large, hand-painted sign hanging lazily from a thumbtack-supported rope in front of my sole, small window. It reads, in bright red paint, "GO BACK TO SLEEP."
Always one to question signs written in my own hand, I sit up in my bed. I am comforted to realize I have slept in my bed and not, as is too often the case, on the floor, supported only by wrinkled, half-on clothing and a near-empty bottle of liquor. In fact, as my eyes adjust to being open, I notice the room is immaculate and tidy, which leads me to suspect my mother has broken in and cleaned the place while I dozed. I am about to call and berate her for intruding on my disheveled independence when another thought strikes: What time is it?
I glance over at my clock radio, which proudly boasts that it is in fact 11:47. But questions still linger: AM? PM? And what day is it? What month, even?
I need a calendar. Cal-en-dar. The word sounds funny, even in my brain; it is a word from a different world or someone else's life, a place full of events and plans and schedules. A place where the passage of time is not marked by the rise and fall of a dirty laundry pile. A scary, cold, unwelcoming place. A place, I am afraid, I now inhabit.
I reach over to my end table, beyond the suspiciously dusty clock radio, in search of my cell phone, which legend has it counts some kind of cal-en-dar as one of its many unused features. As I do so, the LED numbers cast enough light on my hand to make it recoil in horror from itself; it is covered in hair, nails stretching out far beyond any reasonable amount of growth. I bathe my other hand in the soft green light and it, too, is furry and long-nailed. I gingerly stroke my chin and discover I have a long, ZZ-Top-style beard cascading down from it. I dare not look at my pubic area.
I break out into a cold sweat as a single question loops in my mind: "How long have I been asleep?"
Desperate for an answer, yet wary of what I may discover, I leap out of bed--stumbling briefly as I adjust to the length of my toenails--and flick on the light switch. The bulb in the fixture above me hisses and rattles and pops, before exploding in a shower of sparks that very briefly catches my beard alight. I crawl back over my bed and rummage around the end table until I do find my phone, which offers no answers, its battery having died long ago. Frustrated, I throw it against the wall, from which it rebounds nonchalantly and lands safely back onto my bed, flipped open, mocking me with its blank expression.
I hop back off the bed and throw open my bedroom door, expecting to be bathed in light. Instead, more darkness. Curse my basement apartment! I silently cry. I am happy to remember I do in fact live in a basement apartment, and that my name appears to be Patrick, if the hand-written sign across the hall from my bedroom door is to be believed: "YOUR NAME IS PATRICK," it says, in the same bright red paint. Again, I am suspicious, but I have no reason to doubt it.
I advance down the hallway to the small kitchen, which, like my bedroom, is dusty yet tidy. With hibernation fueling my hunger, I open the fridge to sate it; this turns out to be a bad move. A pizza box beckons me closer, but upon throwing it open I am greeted by a surly face, eyebrows made of onions, a mouth of pepperoni, and teeth of what I swear is calcified bone but who would put that on a pizza? The pizza face snarls at me and bellows, "What? Come on, punk, I dare ya!" I slam the fridge shut. How long would it take a pizza to grow a face and develop vocal chords? I try to do some quick mental arithmetic, but my bowels don't like the sound of either of those words and urge me to visit the toilet post-haste. I do so. Unlike hand-written signs, I have learned from experience it is highly unwise to ignore your bowels.
I emerge, some time later, from the bathroom, having taken care of all my hygienic needs. Clean-shaven, nails shorn, and aerosol can of air-freshener depleted, I calmly move back into the kitchen, eager to start my day, first by figuring out exactly what day it is, and then hopefully moving on from there. I gingerly crack open the fridge door and politely ask Pizzaface if he can toss me a can of Coke; he obliges with a grunt, and though he whips the can out at me with unnecessary speed, I politely thank him and leave him to his privacy. I crack the can open and take a long, gluttonous gulp; it is delicious. Coke, unlike pizza, is indestructible. And they say it's bad for you!
My eyes having adjusted, cat-like, to the apartment's lack of light, I walk calmly over into the TV area, where I sit down on the couch to the accompaniment of a cloud of freshly-disturbed dust. My laptop lies quietly on the coffee table, sleeping peacefully. I am loathe to arouse it from its slumber, remembering my own rude awakening earlier, but this mystery needs solving. I lift the screen, and am greeted by another hand-painted sign, this one reading "I HOPE YOU'RE SITTING DOWN." I double-check to confirm that yes, I am sitting down, and I remove the sign from the screen and press the power button.
I sit. And wait. I sip some Coke. Still sitting. Still waiting. The laptop sputters and rumbles as it awakens from its sleep. I wish it would go faster, but I must be patient. I can empathize with it, after all. I, too, am a heavy sleeper. Apparently.
Finally, it is finished, and as my desktop appears I hover the mouse over the time display in the bottom corner and discover...
September. September? September!? September!
I run a song from my childhood through my head, a song about the months of the year. Which one sounds the most familiar...?
April! April. That sounds good. So, April, May, June...it must have been...five months! Five! Five months. How can I have slept for five months? Wasn't there something I should have been doing?
A panic grips me. I run down the list of things that I hold dear. It is a very short list. In fact, it is far shorter than the list of things I think I should probably hold dear, but aren't really gripping me at the moment. Employment? No, that's not it. I'm pretty sure I missed a few family birthdays, but that's fine, there will be others. My own birthday? Ha, don't make me laugh! A wedding or two? Graduations? Perhaps. But I'm sure a belated greeting card will smooth things over. What is it that is gnawing at my soul like a hungry beaver? What is it I have neglected to do? What is it that the world will have been missing?
At this point I notice on my desktop a singular icon, right in the middle of the screen. It is labeled "IMPORTANT!!!!" It is a generic icon, with no hint of what opening it will produce. With some trepidation, and a sip of Coke for courage, I hover the pointer over it and double-click.
A window opens up, like a web browser, but different; more sparse and unassuming, with not a drop-down menu in sight. A miniature 3-D model appears in the center of it, a series of tiny interlocking bluish-green lines, spinning away in front of a deep black background. I cannot for the life of me identify it. I search for a zoom tool but find none. In fact, there seems to be no way to interact with it at all. Slowly, I realize it is getting larger, albeit in no great hurry. It spins at a constant speed, gradually increasing in size. I notice it is somewhat triangular in shape, with a large, rounded bottom, tapering off at the top, but not to a point. In the middle of it, on one side, there is a large sort of bump, but what it represents I cannot tell.
I decide to give it some time, to study it as it rotates. As I do, my mind wanders. It appears to be in search of something. Normally, I would be hesitant to let it do so, but in this case, given my circumstances, I figure it can only lead to good, even if the information it recalls is horrifying. At least it would give me a reference point.
Instead, all it seems to come up with is "metal." I don't see how that helps.
The model on the screen has now approached about an inch in height, and there is definitely something familiar about it, but I cannot quite place it. My mind begins to wander again, and I implore it to do better this time. It ignores me, returning only: "usurpers."
Maybe it meant syrup, I think. I do feel like pancakes.
I turn my attention back to the model. It continues to grow, steadily, menacingly. My palms begin to sweat. My back begins to ache. I set my Coke down gently onto the coffee table. I put my hands to my chin. My eyes are glued open, focused on the screen. Something horrible is about to happen, I can feel it. My mind races, desperately, either to resolve this mystery once and for all or avoid doing so at all costs; I cannot tell. It is beyond my control. It continues tossing nonsense at me: "hands," "soccer," "skin," "flame," "future," "alive," "fiends." None of it makes any sense. The model on the screen grows larger. I prepare to cry, for no reason I can think of, but whatever it is it feels like a good one. Then my mind tosses the word "program" at me and I physically repulse; the 3-D model now spins into a recognizable shape, and I let out a girlish, high-pitched scream, and immediately wet myself.
It is a nose. A large, malformed, hideous nose. A "bleeder," as the medical professionals say.
And I know whose it is.
I let out an agonized, near-inhuman wail. Why have the gods cursed me so? Why was I not allowed to slumber? Why awaken me to such unspeakable horror?
And then, strangely, a calm, washing over me like baptismal waters. My mind slows down to a steady gallop, its synapses firing on all cylinders now. I sit up, ignoring the pungent wetness settling into the couch beneath me, and direct my web browser to Your Mom's Favorite Blog. And there it is. The reason for my awakening. The cause of all my anguish. The bane of my existence.
Eric Walkingshaw speaks.
He speaks of board games and their designers, of physicality and highfalutin. My blood boils. How dare he? I could have slept forever, but now this? This!? My peace disturbed and my pants wettened for an essay on the new version of Risk?
My mind gleefully throws another word at me: "revenge."
I get up from the couch, walk back down the hall, and re-enter my room. I move to the closet and, reaching up to the highest shelf, pull down a dilapidated, dusty cardboard box labeled "That Which Shall Not Be Opened." I place it down on the carpet and disobey my own handwriting, opening it, and removing the contents within. It is a board game. It is Risk. And in small letters in magic marker, written in a shaky, childlike hand, just below the picture of a 19th-century cannon, are the words "Property of Eric Walkingshaw."
I scoff. I take the cover of the Risk box and toss it contemptuously aside. I remove the board and unfold it, its color-coded continents staring up at me from the ground. I take out an army of plastic star-shaped soldiers, and starting with Australia, I spread them around the map, piling groups of them along continental borders except between North and South America where that cunning little bastard always has a truce with someone. After a short time, my task is complete; the board and its contents now represent, in fine detail, the state of Eric Walkingshaw's army, on the cusp of victory, only a single enemy soldier standing in the way of total victory, holding on for dear life in Irkutsk.
I remove the attack dice from the box and place all three of them into my mouth. I hold the two defensive dice in my right hand. With my left, I undo the button and zipper of my pants, and I crouch down over the Risk board, over Eric's massed armies, over the zenith of his military campaign, and with a great grunt and straining of muscles I unleash an atomic bomb of shit over his strategy-game world.
Beads of sweat dotting my forehead, I raise my right fist, clutching the defensive dice, high into the air. I swallow the attacking dice in one decisive gulp, and my victory complete, I shout to the heavens, "LEGACY!!!!!"
Your move, Walkingshaw.
