Fear And Loathing In Camelot

Warning! This is pretty long. So all you "TL;DR" fags, just GTFO!

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FEAR AND LOATHING
IN CAMELOT
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By Jeremy
(Ninja From NASA)
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Right now, boredom and soberness are plotting to take over my reality. My mind has been targeted, and Sid and Alice waiting in my fridge are my only hope of breaking free.

I'm every day normal guy Jeremy, the Ninja From NASA, and today is the weirdest day of my life.

The following takes place
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between Sid P.M. and Sober A.M. …


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January 20th, 2007.

1. THE REIGN OF THE PURPLE MANEATER

I was playing Starfox on the Nintendo 64 when the Purple Maneater started to prey on my mind. The plane I was controlling began to look really, really contorted, strangely peculiar. Smaller and smaller it shrank until I began to sway with the movements of Fox McCloud’s Arwing. Then the sounds rose to a feverish, yet enjoyable pitch. I remember muttering to no one in particular, “Someone tell Falco to shut up,” before breaking off in a fit of whacked giggles.

Bobby sat by my desk comfortably using my laptop. When I looked at him, I thought slowly, the guy is hulked over my computer, and started laughing again.

“Are you tripping already?” he asked. I described how it felt in disjointed words and sentences that didn’t really make sense but seemed to at the time. It sounded a lot like, “Just a box…” I asked him if his hits were taking effect, but no dice. He’s made of stronger stuff. Mary won’t bruise his mind at all, no matter how many times he takes in her essence. Only Alice D or Sid can really knock him flat on his ass.

“Hey, Einstein, I’m on your side!” Falco hollered shrilly from my TV. I turned my attention back to the TV and started shooting down my blue-clad teammate, watching in ecstasy as he pulled up to the sky, his Arwing smoking and stuttering, and whooped in joy as he grumbled out, “Shoot! I’ve gotta back off.” I’ve shot Falco down, not the enemy, and now his ship’s in the docking bay.

The Purple Maneater had really gotten its britches into my brain— really starting to chow on my mind. My mind felt like it was bending, a bit, like the yellow skin being peeled off a banana. That tickle in the back of my mind became more pronounced: Everything started to swim, so I tried focusing on the floor which did nothing but make me think there could be a snake under the rug somewhere… but that had to be just my delusion. It became insufferably hot in the room— like someone had shot the thermometer all the way up to HOT AS HELL so I left, feeling as if I stumbled into a horror movie set into the hallway. But the paintings situated on the walls managed calmed me down considerably. I settled for watching them, smiling gently as they seemed to move, freed from the constraints of reality. Everything took on a surreal haze, my eyes focusing and glossing over everything at once.

I went to my parents' room to do my business in their bathroom. This small journey stretched out to become an adventure, a strange and wonderful odyssey. I could’ve easily just crossed from my room to my bathroom right next door but I remember thinking that my parents’ bathroom lights were brighter and that their wall-mirror was much, much friendlier. When I finished my business, I made my way back and saw that Bobby had changed the game consoles and was playing Castlevania. I didn't much mind. Starfox demanded too much focus from me anyway. I went on my computer, doing nothing very important in particular, just going to my TRIPS folder and goggling at the strange and wacky GIFs I've saved for just this occasion. Bobby still wasn't tripping, poor guy; it's been 20 minutes...


As if reading my mind, he stopped playing the Castlevania he was on, switching to the old school Castlevania. This started to work on him enough for the Purple Maneater to give Bobby's mind a visit, and he started swaying with the game, wholly focused on Simon Belmont whipping his bony enemies into submission. Bobby started talking without even realizing it, cockily insulting the bony enemies, and winced visibly as if in great pain whenever they managed to nick him.

He fell into the warped universe I was stumbling around in, suddenly joining me on my trip. It took the guy 20 minutes to finally get into the zone. Bobby let me play Castlevania while he went to my computer again, looking up pictures and ogling my porn folder. I goggled at the screen, gape-jawed, as Richter Belmont shot up the ceilings with his super-jump, up and up again, crashing his head into the ceiling. My trajectories were damaged, stunted, and I was lost. Bobby called me over to look at this one .jpg pic of this cute Asian chick in a pink bikini and said that her hair was turning shorter and longer when he stared. When I stared at her, however, her boobs started to grow bigger, her muscles becoming horribly defined, her skin slowly turning green. I thought she was becoming a hulk of some sort. It kinda grossed me out. I stopped staring, looking at other pictures. But then my uncle, my grandpa, and grandma chose that time to arrive home from my dad's workplace.

I had some semblance of an idea, and ran to my parents’ room to get my mom’s back massager, a green arm thing that had a cartoon-style Mickey Mouse fist on the end of it. It was my gift to her for Christmas, since she’s always had back problems. I turned it on and pressed it on the back of my head, which made my entire vision double and triple strangely. It didn’t work on Bobby, though.

Playing Mario 64 got us in hysterics, but I realized that we had to calm down and stop tripping if my relatives were around. So we tried our best, but we kept goofing off in my room, throwing shit. I pounded my fists on the desk, raving illegibly, stopping only when my Terminator 2 poster fell off the desk. Bobby helped me put it back on, but we were both becoming seriously wasted. Our trips were gaining effect and power. Then Bobby's girlfriend arrived.

2. THE GREAT MARIO BALL GLITCH

It was old Mario who took care of us. While my sister was getting ready to drive us to Camelot, and Bob's girlfriend was being a little mellow as opposed to before, we started up Mario 64 in search of that certain glitch that made it stop playing whenever I paused. We went to that ocean level, chortling like maniacs when Mario made his usual heavy Italian-accented quotes, and started to swim in the game. This was when Bobby tripped out for real, staring in amazement as Mario started swimming his way around the place. He started to feel the water and the music, diving into the game. I took over, and started talking to Bobby’s girlfriend about our trip.

"Listen,” I said to her. “Our trip is one amazing thing.” I noticed I was speaking more to the plastic Mario ball in my hand than to her. “We're not crazy or idiotic; we’re not like Charles Manson giving that stuff a bad name, we're just being delusional freaks that find everything funny. It’s like— it’s more like Fear and Loathing, more like Hunter S. Thompson and his fatass attorney. We’re just… just tripping the light fantastic, so don’t worry about us— HOLY JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS THAT— HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!”

My insanely dilated eyes were glued to the TV, watching in stark fascination as Mario was curled up into a ball while swimming. It was a glitch, and the best one ever. The Mario ball I got from McDonald’s was on the floor. I snatched it up, pressed it right next to the Mario ball inside the television, rolling in the waters, and we completely lost control. It was too much, too much by far. Bobby and I craned our heads up and bellowed laughter at the ceiling.

“AM I HALLUCINATING, BOBBY, or is that real?!” I shrieked, pointing frantically at the TV, then to the plastic Mario ball I clutched madly in my hand. Bobby looked to his girlfriend for confirmation, and she nodded, the glitch was real. It was real, but dear God it was the most hilarious thing we ever saw. I finally took up the controller and let go of the swim button, and Mario snapped back to normal on the screen. Our laughing jag fizzed out. I went to get my sister so we could go, and when I got back, Bobby had set up my Mario ball with my mom’s cartoon fist back massager, making it look like Mario was punching directly at us.

It was the most genius thing I ever saw.

3. SEAN BEAN MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER

We decided to go for Camelot to play in the arcades. However, before that, we had to prepare and plan outside of my house which didn’t do too good because we were tripping our balls off as my sister and Bobby’s girlfriend watched on. Bobby kept laughing at me when I voiced my concerns in a very confused, panicked tone: “We gotta go, I don’t want my grandpa to see us, I mean, it’s my grandpa—” It was a very hideous notion, having my strict grandpa see me tripping my balls off, so we got in our respective cars fast (My sister driving me, Bobby’s girlfriend driving him). Bobby pointed the way to Camelot while my sister, driving, and I, slumped on the passenger seat gawking at the color-trails and soaking sights, followed.

On the way to Camelot, I saw that everything looked the same. The houses and stores we passed looked just like the next one we arrived to, and vice-versa. It started to really creep me out, as if we were stuck in a never-ending loop that would continue until eternity. I felt my chest bubbling in utter, complete dark fear, along with the realization that roared in my brain like a river dam breaking loose:

I CAN SEE FOREVER.

Then I saw the billboard for the movie: The Hitcher. What happened next was completely unexpected, totally unrelated to any of the things I was thinking about. That billboard snuck up on me. As I looked at it, I suddenly found myself in a crowded theatre, with many people cramped in their seats. A box of popcorn lay on my lap. I obediently ate some of it, chowing down and relishing the taste as I watched the legendary type-cast villain Sean Bean cruelly dispatch the hapless teenagers and poor bastards who found themselves in his way. Sean Bean used a plethora of bladed and blunt weapons, killing them in ways only Jason and Freddy could think of, with the sort of restrained panache that would turn Hannibal Lecter green with envy.

“Why did you kill them?” One of the characters desperately demanded. Sean Bean carefully looked at him, answering nonchalantly: “Why not?”

I blinked, snapping back into reality. My eyes observed that I was still in the car, being driven by my sister. I wasn’t in a theatre watching The Hitcher. I had briefly hallucinated the whole thing just by staring at the billboard as it passed by. But what about the people muttering amongst themselves in the theatre? What about the seat in front of me which I had propped my feet upon? What about the popcorn I had been eating? What about Sean Bean?! All in my mind, my brain calmly reminded me, cold logic settling in. Just the Purple Maneater talking.

Then what about the killings, the witty dialogue, Sean Bean’s deadpan character? What about Sean Bean’s nonchalant, deadly quote, “Why not?” I realized that Bobby had told me about The Hitcher before we started this trip, and sat back, disappointed but exhilarated that I had hallucinated— truly hallucinated— an entire movie… in less than a couple of seconds.

My sister made one last turn, following Bobby’s girlfriend’s Toyota as it slipped into the parking lot facing a giant, faux-castle. We had finally arrived at Camelot.

 

4. IN FRONT OF THE GATES OF CAMELOT

Bobby and I stumbled out of our respective cars, talking excitedly amongst ourselves, while being trailed by his girlfriend and my sister. Entering past Camelot’s wooden gates had been akin to stepping foot into another world, a dimension where furniture had been transformed magically into beeping booping things with futuristic display screens. Then I realized those were arcade machines. Bobby told me about the lion outside of Camelot, the one on the sign, and how he had gawked at it, convinced that it was real. Appreciating this exciting tidbit of news, I told him about The Hitcher, and how I imagined the entire movie in my delusion in a span of about 4-5 seconds.

We found ourselves waiting in line for Time Crisis 4, but the guys ahead of us weren’t doing too badly so they wouldn’t be dying anytime soon. They had plenty of money to blow on the game, so we were kept waiting until Bobby’s girlfriend started complaining like she always did (I am sure when she was born, she had been crying not because babies always do that, but because she didn’t like how cold it was in the womb).

“We’re very hungry,” she whined, pointing to my sister who did not look hungry at all. I rolled my eyes, glaring at Bobby as to say, “I told you so, moron. She’s gonna keep bitching our entire trip out.” Bobby shot me a reassuring look which did not assure me at all, and responded by going to the coin machine to cash in his tokens. I handed him a few bucks to cash in also, but let him keep the change. When Bobby’s girlfriend badgered us enough, we caved in and decided to eat a large pizza, especially since Bobby was hungry as hell, seconding his girlfriend’s notion for food. I just wanted to play some games, but went along with the crowd.

4. HORROR OF THE HORNY DOWNS AND EMO KIDS

Getting that pizza was hell. I mean, literally HELL. It took Bobby hours to order a pizza because he was tripping on the clerk’s front teeth, which protruded out rather far below her upper lip, giving her the surreal look of a human rabbit. I sat down with my sister and Bobby’s girlfriend, who managed to complain about Bobby on every single little thing he did. I didn’t care about listening to her bitch out Bobby whenever she took a breath, so I stared at the wood on the table, amazed at how it seemed like someone was shining a light on it, rapidly illuminating the surface all over the place like a searchlight searching jerkily for a faster-than-fast criminal escapee.

When Bobby finally returned with the pizza, his girlfriend managed to whip him into submission by making him get more shit for the food: The napkins, the utensils, the cheese packets. She ran him back and forth like a pack mule.

When I noted that she had legs and could get the stuff herself, she shot me a withering glare, snapping back, “Men are supposed to do everything to make sure a girl’s meal is prepared and ready!” Then we dug in. Or at least, we tried to. Bobby pulled back his hand, stinging from the sudden slap his girlfriend delivered upon it.

She shrieked at us, “GIRLS EAT FIRST!!!!” My sister fidgeted nervously as bobby’s girlfriend took up her pizza with deliberate slowness, torturing her by letting each second pass slowly by as she took the longest time to set the fucking pizza on her plate. Then we dug in—

But wait, we couldn’t just yet! Bobby’s girlfriend kept us at bay from the pizza; we had to wait until my sister got her salad ready to eat. When Bobby tried to protest, “I AM HUNGRY!” His girlfriend only slapped his hand, telling him to sit back down. I groaned, willing my sister to hurry up with the cheese packing on her salad. Then everything was fine, and we dug in…

BUT!

No, no buts. She finally let us eat. Bobby grabbed most of the pizza while I humbly took two slices, eating them quite easily. It felt very, very strange going down my throat. I had a visual of the inside of my throat contorting and stretching to accommodate the food being forced down into it. Then I shook my head. That wasn’t something I wanted to think about while I was eating. When I was finished, I sat back to watch the painting on the wall ahead of us, some sort of golf course, it seemed like. But when I watched it long enough, it continued to warp, twisting in shape, looking as if it were dripping down to the ground, like a door to another dimension—

“What are you staring at, Jeremy?” Bobby asked me, his mouth full of pizza. I told him about the painting. But even though he tried, he couldn’t see anything other than a boring golf course. However, he could see colorful flashes of light blooming in and out of his vision. Both our trips were different, but our vibes were similar. I continued to stare at the painting, sighing in fascination as the painting turned black as if someone was burning it up and charring it into a little black ball. But it kept on its frame, dripping and dripping until it turned red, warping into a familiar shape resembling the Coca-Cola logo but instead of Drink Coca-Cola, it said, “I Drink NOZZ-A-LA!”

It was the nerds that ruined it. Or retards. My trip was reaching its peak, topping the zenith, so I’m not very sure if they were Down’s Syndromes, or just weird-looking nerds. But since my brain was soaked with Sid, it sure looked like a Downs couple making out with each other. At first, I had no idea they were there. I was too focused on that wonderful, fantastic painting. Then Bob kept tapping me and saying, “Look at the nerds! Disgusting shit!”

I looked, and made up my mind never to do that again. But Bob kept pointing, mentioning them, which irritated the hell out of me. I mean, they’re in love. Let them be in love, you know? Let them do their thing. Who wants to see a couple of horny retards making out clumsily with each other, much less ruin their fun? Not me. Let them make out until their tongues fall off, was my say. I just wanted to look at the painting behind them. Two emo kids, both looking semi-gothic, with their studded wristbands, creepy pale makeup, and weird hair that looked like it was cut by a lawnmower, started sucking face with each other… RIGHT BEHIND THE HORNY DOWNS. It was like a horror double-feature from hell, KISSING NERDS FROM PLANET DOWNS followed up by WRIST-CUTTERS IN LOVE.

And the worst thing, the emo kids were standing— making out, blocking the painting I was staring at! I didn’t know whether I was having a bad trip or not. It sure felt like it. After a while they finally left, but the painting’s power wore off on me. I patiently waited for Bobby to finish eating while trying to get the trip back in the painting. I turned to see Bobby waiting impatiently for me, the pizza completely finished, while I stared at the painting. The painting’s power was finished, so we got up from the table, leaving my sister and Bob’s girlfriend to talk amongst themselves while we made our way to the Time Crisis 4 arcade machine, ready to shoot some digital criminals.
(Man, I really hate the post limit...)

 

5. JACK BAUER VS. OCELOT

Time Crisis 4 loomed in our vision, foreboding, mechanic, and evil. Walking up to it, I got the strange sense it was mocking us with its… gameness. Can you handle me while tripping? It seemed to say through its pulsing dual-screens. Can both of you shoot while reality warps and bends around you? While your mind hallucinates the wildest things when you need your focus the most? Can you handle my sheer power? We paused in front of the arcade machine, seeing it hulk over us like a haunted house ready to be breached through the front porch by two breathless little kids on a dare. Do you dare? It seemed to ask us, its mechanic tinny voice becoming greedy. Do you DARE?

Bob slipped in 4 tokens. I put in 4 tokens. He picked up the blue light-gun on the right. I snatched up the pink light-gun on the left.

Oh yeah. We dared.

The game began, but not before a long introduction sequence on how to shoot. I waited, tapping my foot impatiently as it replayed clip movies of my main character (who looked insidiously like a Japanese CGI-rendered Johnny Depp) ducking and shooting: Press the foot-pedal to duck and reload your weapon— point and shoot the light guns in your hands to kill the digital criminals running and shooting at you. While under cover, pull the trigger to change weapons from Pistol— Shotgun— Machine Gun— Rocket Launcher. Keep your eye on the ammo… and your life. You have only three lives. You may gain more by passing each level. There will be a 4-way Battle Mode where you will have to move your gun to the left or right to fight criminals rushing in on your blind side.

We kept on tripping. My vision started to blur into a watery haze. For Bob, he felt wired up, as if he was about to launched headfirst into a frantic gun-battle. Which he was.

The intro went along on the same vein, boring me and Bob out of our minds. First, we found ourselves stepping on the pedal to hurry up the introduction. It didn’t hurry. Then we tried shooting the screen, which yielded naught. Then we set our guns back on their metal sleeve holsters and waited patiently. The intro in-game movie started to play, showing two slick-looking dudes walking in a mall— presumably our characters. The camera switched to their Point of Views, separating between Bobby’s screen and mine, and we watched as hordes and hordes of enemy soldiers came rushing out of cover to take us down.

What occurred afterwards would’ve given John Woo a million wet dreams.

Immediately after the flash of white, and the God-voice commanding both of us: “START!” We were thrust instantly into a flurry of bullets and warfare. The soldiers fanned out as we approached the escalators, steering clear from the soldiers rushing up the stairs. We shot them down easily, then we split up. Bobby took care of the soldiers on the right side, while I started on the soldiers on the left side.

My vision began to haze once again, like I was looking at a distant oasis in a steaming desert with no visible end. I could see the surroundings of a cool, air-conditioned mall being shot up changing right before my very eyes, the steel-blue wallpaper crackling and peeling away to reveal brown and white brick-layer and woodwork, transforming into the old alleyways of a gunslinger’s heaven. It turned into ye olde western town, complete with SALOON and BANK.

The soldiers were no longer soldiers, they were the members of the enemy posse, growling and spitting and wielding their revolvers and shotguns, roaring for my blood. Crazily, I thought of The Quick and The Dead and summoned the only one who could really fight them all with one eye closed, from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: the character Cuthbert Allgood. In that heated instant, I was wearing Cuthbert’s hat, his get-up, I brandished his ‘beer-barrel’ revolver. I could even feel Cuthbert’s rook’s skull necklace around my neck, ‘The Lookout,’ thumping wildly across my chest. I muttered below my breath: "As for gunslingers, Roland, I am here. And we are the last!"

A growling man popped out of cover, I sent a .45 lead pound screeching straight through his skull. He went down easily, and two more came to take his place. One refused to go down gracefully, so I fired at his legs two times until he tripped, then fired at his chest once, sending him crashing back into his comrades. But then a bullet struck me, the screen cracking in a flurry of red, causing me to grit my teeth in anger. Bobby, my comrade behind me, seemed to be doing quite well. So well, in fact, that his jacket and his movements, the way he carried his gun, looked exactly like Jack Bauer from 24.

I had a ludicrous thought at that moment, "What the fuck is Jack Bauer doing in a western town like this?!"

One gunslinger caught my eye… a gunslinger clad in fire-red, his hat tilted to an angle that suggested that the brim was steel. He pointed his revolver towards me with a gesture that spoke of extreme arrogance, using one hand instead of two, and I realized that this was the red soldier, the one to tag first if he ever popped up. He fired at me and I barely ducked, really felt the bullet shearing by my cheek… whilst the rest were from the spray-and-pray school of shooting, this one was a veritable deadshot. Two seconds later - he wasn't. And wouldn't be a deadshot on anything else, for that matter, unless you counted dying. The guy got that down pat.

Now they were ducking behind the SALOON, sneaking their way around to my location, thinking that they would not get shot to death if they did so. Each of them made the mistake of popping out in an attempt to get me in the clear while I was still out of cover. Oh, it was clear, alright - a perfect clear double-tap that blasted him back to the wall like the bitch he was.

Meanwhile, Bobby was having his own battle, yet it was a million years away from my sort of trip. While I imagined myself in a western gunfight, he imagined himself as a SWAT team member fighting in a hostile terrorist takeover. Behind him, his teammates yelled and fired at the other soldiers, wearing guerrilla soldier uniforms. The enemy soldiers wielded AK-47s and Ruger pistols, shooting wildly at Bobby as he ducked into cover. Bobby was in the zone— he was not merely playing the game, he was doing very much like I was doing right now, he was in the game. He held his gun solidly; his posture that of a commanding officer showing the recruits how to fire a pistol in the shooting range.

While my addled mind was screaming at me whenever I looked at him: JACK BAUER IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU! He did not think of himself as Jack Bauer. Instead, he was a SWAT member, wearing a gas-mask, a TAC-vest with flak padding, he held a standard GLOCK, and had a radio on his chest blaring out commands and orders. The men behind him were backing us up.

When he looked at me, he didn’t see Cuthbert Allgood with his beer-barrel revolver cockily shooting down the other gunslingers easily on his side, he saw instead Metal Gear Solid 3’s young, brash Ocelot, sneering cockily at the dying soldiers and hand gesturing his way across the battle. Bobby focused on his own fight, gunning down the soldiers with military-precision double-taps, blasting them as soon as they popped out of cover. When a red-soldier sneaked out of cover, intent to put him down where he stood, Bobby locked his gaze on the red-soldier and tagged him twice in the legs, taking away the soldier’s danger status, and shot him easily in the head. A yellow-clad machine gun soldier angrily jumped up over the turnstiles, spreading his bullets wildly like a second-rate Vulcan Raven. A second later, his boots were still flopping in the air, his body having been shot back and pulverized by the force of Bob’s Glaser-tipped bullets.

He heard on his radio the extent of his teammate’s battles through his delusional miasma:


“RUTGER-4, room is clear!”

“We’ve got trouble here, sir, requesting backup!”

“Request confirmed, sending backup.”

He saw me, Revolver Ocelot, fighting alone, dancing in the deadly ballad of bullets and explosions, easily eluding the death crackling around me. I had been shot twice, thanks to lapses of judgment, and only had one life left. Bobby had two left, having been shot back in the haze. He started to make SWAT hand signals, one for “go” and one for “stop.” The teammates behind him nodded, put their hand on Bobby’s back for him to guide them past the corridor with millions of enemy soldiers peeking madly out. Behind them, they shot them down, backing him up (Although it was really me by his side doing all the shooting and not his nonexistent teammates).

Unfortunately, he saw that I only had one life left, and took it upon himself to “help out.” I understand that he was tripping his balls off, pretty much too far gone to really separate reality from delusion. His idea of helping me out was to start silently doing SWAT hand signals, tapping me constantly in the heat of the battle, irritating me enough to look at him to see what the hell he wanted. My focus dropped considerably, my grim panache of dealing death from a plastic barrel shut off, the way a steady stream of water would shut off when the faucet handle is turned.

I kept trying to regain my focus… only one life left… and we made it to the next level, barely. I told him to cut the shit; I had only one life left. I couldn’t deal with his tapping, it became too distracting. Then when the next level started, the bastard started tapping me again… only this time for the tokens.

I was baffled, almost offended. Tokens?! He had plenty. If I recalled correctly, I gave him the rest of the tokens; he had over five dollars worth of tokens nestled safely inside his right jacket pocket. But here he was, next to me, tapping and demanding coins. I felt the linings of my pockets while dodging bullets with one life left— I had none to give. Seriously, what was Bob’s deal?! He started losing focus on the fact that he wasn’t getting tokens from me. His military-precision double-tap fire petered out into a shaky, amateurish aim. He got hit, losing the rest of his lives while I still hung there. He couldn’t even focus, he didn’t take into consideration that he had even more money; he wanted those fucking nonexistent coins in my pocket. But he had the rest of the money. I had none.

When an enemy soldier’s shot almost took me by surprise, barely dodging the graze, I yelled at Bob, “NO, I DON’T HAVE IT!” He gave up unexpectedly, slinking away to sit on the stairs, waiting for me to be finished. He tripped hard, laughing at the way I had yelled at him. When I yelled at him, it made him feel suddenly like a little kid being shouted out by a full-grown old adult, like an innocent man in a courtroom being pointed out by a huge prosecuting attorney, “I DON’T HAVE IT!”

The way I said, “DON’T” took hold of his mind, yanking vigorously at his funny bone. He found it absolutely hysterical, the emphasis I put on saying, “I DON’T have it,” specifically, the T at the end of the don’t.

In his mind, what I said was: “No, I don’T have it!”

Not too soon after Bob had died, I didn’t make it. I had been blindsided by a lucky shot, taking my losses like a man. I went up to Bob. We had this weird argument about the life system in the game.

He grumbled, “You took all my lives.” Confused, I said, “How did I do that?” He was completely convinced that I, by some kind of power, managed to usurp the lives he had left in the game. There was no possible way I could do that. We argued over it until I told him, exasperated, that no, we had not been playing fucking CONTRA.

6. THE END

What happened afterwards was a veritable whirlwind of frenzied activity and roaring triumph. In the withering cloud of “coming down,” Bob and I have seen a great many things: Including broken Sniper Scope arcade machines, short Mexicans banging wildly on Street Fighter 2 arcades, Hunting 2000 shotguns that didn’t work for shit, 911 2— the offspring from my old nemesis 911 from the cinema ages, fat grumps who wanted to kick your ass so badly in Guilty Gear XX that they came back for a second helping after you whipped them good, relentlessly cheap-shotting you until you gave up out of frustration, letting them have the win… then the same fat ass would go onto the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 to show off his combo glitch skills with Cable, Mega Fag, and Cocksucker-Do-Ken.

We played and played, and soon the hits cooking inside our brains started to wear off. The Purple Man Eater saw fit to release us to the world of soberness once again, and although we missed it, we looked back on those memories fondly, being driven back to my house by Bob’s girlfriend and my sister. When they went to sleep, Bob and I talked loud and long about hours long past, filling up my room with shouts of dedication and decadence: “Remember that rabbit-tooth girl—”

“—HOLY SHIT, THAT MARIO BALL—”

“—and you were all ‘my grandpa, my grandpa’—”

“—remember those horny retards kissing each other, and the emo kids came in—”

“—and you were like, “NO I DON’T HAVE IT!”—

And as we chatted for hours, the sun came up and a new day arrived and all traces of the Purple Man Eater wilted from our minds, the tantalizing memory of incredible trips ready to be remembered the next time we would meet…

Fin.​

 

what is TL;DR ???

 

"Too Long; Didn't Read." Last time I posted this up on another forum, I got a shitload of those responses and nothing useful.