Ch 12

Ben sat alone in a trailer, stewing in his thoughts. His parents, so many years ago. . . all strung out and fucked up. The last time he had seen them, they hadn't recognized him and begged their own child for money, then called him a cheap fucker when he didn't give them anything. They had died in his eyes that day, a few weeks before he saw the bodies. Sometimes, Ben wondered if they had ever been alive to begin with. Was he even alive?

Ben put the bong down and leaned back on the couch, mentally making a note that that was enough of that, thank you very much. It was around two in the morning, his trailer was on the outskirts of Hope, and silence reigned over the night. His supply of weed was virtually infinite, which he considered unfortunate, because he had a tendency to smoke about as much as his supply allowed. He turned on his computer, a moderately expensive build that could play most of the games and allowed for high speed internet access. It spent roughly a minute going through the boot-up routine, before displaying the log-in page, which required only a click and no password. Ben figured that anyone who wanted access to his computer would find it pretty much sterile of anything interesting. It wasn't that Ben was particularly good at hiding things, it was that he didn't have anything digital to hide. Who kept porn saved on their hard drives anyways? That was just asking for trouble.

He opened up Endchan and began browsing a board dedicated to discussion between people who had left the sober world behind, /fukkinbaked/. Inside one of the 'chill/groovy music' threads, he found a familiar video that looped and showed various clips from the invasion of Chechnya, with a track called 'you're hurting me baby' playing along with it. Ben leaned back and let the music wash over him, his mind adrift.

--

Ben had started the day cleaning, gripped by some unknown optimism. Through the day, the memory of the mountain had entered his thoughts many times, the way it seemed to almost be on a different frequency with it's surroundings. For some reason, he was looking forward to this party more than he thought possible.

His trailer wasn't very large, and after about four hours it was organized and spotless. It hadn't been intensive labor, more a general re-organization of his home, slowed down considerably by his tendency to take long breaks on the computer. His bookshelf had fallen into dishevelment, the dishes hadn't been done in three days. The carpet had needed to be steam-cleaned, because he was pretty sure they weren't supposed to be tan colored. Some light laundry, towels mostly. He had spent the majority of his time re-organizing clutter.

During the afternoon, Ben had been gripped with the urge to get on his computer and play a game, and ended up back on the one he'd been previously banned from.

In a way, it was a return to the roots of gaming; a midevilesque fantasy world inhabited by standard magical creatures; three base classes, warrior, mage and priest; a large number of dungeons filled with non-standard loot and monsters; few towns and even fewer cities, the rest of the world being dedicated to adventuring.

He had made it farther than he usually did in games these days, level 25, the level you could enter the first dungeon of the game, The Cave of Evil, located at the base of a mountain north of the hub city. Ben's character rode on horseback, along the roads, a boring process in which Ben kept his left hand on the WASD and rested his head in his right, eyes half closed. The developers of the game had determined that 'open world' meant a large map with things spread out really far from one another.

When he arrived, Ben didn't even bother to look at the entrance, riding straight in and beginning combat with a slime of some kind. There were a sparse number of other dungeon-divers present, but nobody was talking to one another. The Cave of Evil wasn't an extremely large dungeon, five main rooms with five different encounters, each more challenging than the last. It was a pretty standard dungeon, the equipment and treasure it dropped was guaranteed to be a straight upgrade over what he currently had on. Ben died in the fourth room, the last encounter throwing more monsters than he could handle alone. He figured it didn't matter, re-spawned and tried again.

He realized something was strange around hour two of repeating the Cave of Evil dungeon. It wasn't a particularly fun encounter, and he hadn't even started smoking yet. There was some deep-set current of force running through him, some compulsion that unnerved him and kept him focused. Ben felt something like the infant child's version of mortal terror, felt a need to clear the dungeon. His mind could not form the concept of why, or even point in the direction of consequences, yet he knew it was vitally important to succeed, no matter how long it took.

Two more hours passed that way, and the rest of the time was spent by Ben fighting the final boss, a large slime with a crown, over and over again. The game had been billed as entirely skill based, that regardless of your level or equipment, theoretically any encounter in the game could be solo'd. Ben proved the line to be true hour four, as he smoked a cigarette and squinted hatefully at the screen, watching the red HP bar of the king slime finally drop to zero. It vanished with an unceremonious poof, and left a large treasure chest with red planks and gold trim behind.

Ben moved his character towards it, clicked on it and watched it slowly open. The chest leaped forward, sharp teeth and large tongue doing massive damage to Ben's character as the mimic attacked. Ben died shortly after, and he logged out of the game after flipping off the screen. Ben stood up, blood full of frustration looking for an outlet. His attention went behind the computer, where a large pile of intermingled wires and cords rested. Ben got behind the computer and began pulling the cords apart and organizing the mess, accidentally turning the computer off in the process. He didn't bother turning it back on just yet.

When he finished, he immediately packed a bowl in his bong, examined his clean trailer with it's white carpets, and felt a crushing sense of emptiness that had nothing to do with his clean home. Ben lit the bowl and began the rest of his day.

–

Ben awoke like it was something he had planned to do, opening his eyes and sitting up suddenly. He was over the euphoric rush that smoking gave him, and had entered the foggy, want/need another bowl phase. There was very little energy he could devote to anything except watching cartoons on the internet, with the only issue being that he had seen most of the cartoons and ended up spending nearly forty minutes looking for something to watch. Eventually, when it occurred to him how much time he was wasting looking for something to watch, he turned off the computer and took a cold shower, trying to sober up a bit.

Ben had never been a fan of the jokes and verbal mechanisms surrounding the time after midnight; was the next night tonight or tomorrow night? Ben was of the opinion that sleep was the deciding factor, it was tomorrow night until he went to sleep, or the morning came.

“The stupid shit you say when you're high,” Ben said aloud, wishing he had a pet to give him an excuse to be talking to himself. Then Ben thought about it, swore, and mentally corrected himself that it was the 'stupid shit you think when you're high'. His emotions were rapidly congealing into something negative and directionless, and he considered praying and telling God what a bad job He was doing, then thought better of it and apologized. Then he remembered he was an atheist and that really put him in a bad mood.

The solution to this problem, he thought, was obviously to finish his bowl off and go to bed. After all, he was really looking forward to the party tomorrow night.