cathartic
**************************
Dave dragged his feet through the hall. He was tired, and he had a small but constant headache that would not allow him to think. He had no idea how someone could be so tired from a desk job. Of course the meeting had not helped. Or the new employee messing up every half hour. Or, well, any of the dozens of other problems that were slowly piling up at work.
He did not bother to change out of his work clothes, and simply flopped on the couch. He leaned back as far as he could, feeling the blood pounding in his head. He should deal with that. Some headache medicine or something. His limbs refused to move from their sprawled position. He heard footsteps.
“Hey, Dad.”
Dave did not bother to look at the speaker. His teenage son, Chris had emerged from his room to seek sustenance in the form of a can of soda. Dave muttered something like a reply. He knew he should try to put on his dad face. But his boy was 16. He knew that even Dad had his off days.
“Something wrong?” Chris asked.
Dave sighed. “Never get older, buddy. It’s not fun.”
Chris shrugged and went to return to his room. But he paused. Dave could see him looking over his shoulder.
“Hey, Dad, if you want, I can bring my Xbox out here and hook it up to the TV.”
Dave actually managed to sit up. Chris damned near worshipped that game system. To make the offer was among the most generous things he could do. It was a shame Dave had never been interested in video games. But he could humor the boy.
“You know what? Sure. Might as well find out what you like about it so much.”
Hooking it up was a lot easier than doing such things when he was young. Two cables, one to the TV, one to the power strip and it was done. Chris turned it on and navigated through the various menus. Dave could only keep up thanks to his experience navigating similar menus with the streaming services the family used.
“Okay, this is a good one to start with.” Chris said, handing Dave one of the controllers.
He studied the plastic devise as his son gave him a brief overview of the controls. Then the game started. It was a simple shooter, with each of them controlling a different character. Chris guided his avatar through the digital environment with practiced ease. Dave kept running into random objects.
He had no idea how anyone could find these fun. He had always gravitated towards more athletic forms of recreation, which was less viable now that he had a family and a job. And just moving a bunch of pixels through a fake city was not entertaining. Then the first enemy appeared.
“Come on, Dad, get ‘im.” Chris said enthusiastically.
“Uh, okay, so I just press this one, right?”
Dave pressed the button, and his character fired his weapon. The enemy fell after a few shots. Dave nearly froze. When he saw the digital body flopping down in a spray of simulated blood, something stirred inside of him.
More enemies slowly emerged. The father and son duo mowed through them easily, as the boy assured him these were easy enemies. But that was enough. Dave found himself becoming engrossed in the game, but not for the same reasons his son was.
He found himself picturing the faceless digital enemies as people he knew. People he would never lay a hand on in real life. His boss. The new guy. The coworker who thought he was too good for the rest of them. Even their neighbor who could not stop his dog from barking in the middle of the night. He used the game to unload everything that had been building up inside of him.
All the stress and exhaustion he had had no real way of relieving came pouring out of him and into the controller. It was not gone, really, but it was lessening. Draining away a little more with every shot his character made. With every enemy defeated, he felt a little lighter. A little more like himself, instead of the tired sack of meat he had been.
The two of them kept playing until they heard a click on the door. Dave’s wife came through the hall, looking much the same as Dave had when he entered.
“Hey, Mom.” Chris said. She gave a halfhearted greeting to her son and went to change.
“This game have three players?” Dave asked.
By the time she came out wearing baggy, formless clothes, Chris had finished retreating a third controller. He offered it to her as she got closer.
“Hey, Mom, want to play with us?”
**********************
Hey, remember when people blamed everything violent on video games? Yeah, that was kind of dumb. Glad the people who think that have mostly gone quiet these days. Of course, that only means they've been replaced by other kinds of stupid, so maybe it's not that great after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment