1. All Right, All Right, All Right
ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT
Oscar imagined that when other people grumbled about an insufferable boss, they weren’t referring to a twelve-foot hunk of skinless muscle and bone dripping venomous saliva on the broken stone tile of an abandoned churchyard.
But then, most people didn’t get to play video games for a living, so maybe Oscar should grumble a little less.
The bloodcurdling scream of his perishing character cut through the relative silence of his apartment, but he’d died so many times, Luigi never even perked up anymore.
The cat had grown as accustomed to the sound of Oscar’s failure as he had to the whining of the fridge and the ticking of the clock above the kitchen sink.
Oscar set the controller down on his couch and picked up his phone, scrolling through the notifications, the useless reminders to drink water and squeeze in a few steps to reach his daily goal.
You can still make it to 10,000 by the end of the day, said the optimistic app mascot.
“Talk to me when you’ve just had top surgery, bud,” Oscar mumbled. He scrolled past, his heart picking up pace at the sight of the green icon of his messaging app.
Lina: How’s your morning? Look what I made!
Oscar felt a little guilty about the disappointment he felt at seeing her name. It wasn’t Lina’s fault he’d been ghosted by the one guy he’d actually liked in months. Maybe he shouldn’t have expected a stranger he’d met one time in a clinic to actually text him.
The picture made him smile, at least. Lina’s manicured hands were wrapped around a large round dish covered with oat and chocolate chip cookies—Papa’s recipe.
Oscar: Yum! Using this pic in my defense when my boss sues me for baking during working hours!!
Lina: Papa approves!
Oscar waited for the picture of their father that would follow, two thumbs up with his eyes crinkled and his messy hair all over the place. A few weeks before he died.
“Back to it,” Oscar said to no one in particular. He put down his phone, rubbing the soft velvety fur between Luigi’s ears and stretching his thumbs as he prepared for another grueling round against the boss he hadn’t been able to beat over the last week.
This gig had been a real godsend for his recovery.
Summers for Oscar usually meant bussing tables, washing dishes, and mopping floors, none of which his doctor had certified him for, and those weren’t the kinds of jobs that gave extended sick leave.
In the fall, Oscar would have to send the Digital Games Assistant Prof the most expensive bottle of whiskey he could afford, just to thank her for getting him the interview in the first place.
Right now, though, his thumbs ached, and his frustration had reached peak levels.
How many days in a row was he supposed to sit through the same line of dialogue, the same part of the soundtrack, the same death sequence?
It wasn’t like he could put the game on mute and listen to music.
Suffering the same things over and over again was part of beta testing, and Oscar already knew what feedback he would give once he got through this impossible level.
Most people didn’t have twelve hours a day to master their gaming skills, and certainly not the patience this ugly fucker snarling at his character required.
Two rounds later, Oscar was just about ready to give up and head into the kitchen to start baking cookies. His day was far from over, but he could always claim his eyes had started burning. There had to be some allowance for stuff like that, right?
“Come on, let’s give it another go. What do you say, Lu?” Oscar said to his stretching cat. He envied him the flexibility, but things were already far better than they’d been just a week before, so maybe Oscar should be grateful. This was everything he’d ever wanted, after all.
Yawning, Oscar waited for his character to respawn and started making his way to the churchyard, repeating the character’s line word for word.
It was a well-written script; he’d give them that.
But maybe the writers hadn’t been told players would be hearing it seven thousand times.
Oscar supposed even that Robin Williams speech from Dead Poets Society would become eye-roll-worthy if someone forced him to listen to it seven thousand times.
He’d bet money he’d still be crying while he rolled his eyes, though. It had been Papa’s favorite film.
“Die, fucker,” he muttered, despite the fleshy monster being several hits away from its demise.
Oscar grumbled as his phone came to life. The vibration scared Luigi off the couch, and the path he conveniently chose cut right across Oscar’s lap, obscuring his vision long enough to take two major hits. His glowing phone screen tore his attention away, opening him up for a third.
A message request.
Odd. Oscar shook his head. He’d look at it later; probably someone from the gaming server, wanting him to join a campaign. They had a cartoon avatar. Oscar’s eyes snagged on their username.
CowBoy0705
Although Oscar was more partial to Jack and Ennis, an image of Matthew McConaughey wearing a cowboy hat crossed his mind, and now Oscar could no longer think about the man without imagining a young kid dramatically running across a cornfield, even though Lina had said a million times that never happened in the actual film, and when Oscar thought about that scene he’d made up, he remembered Timothée Chalamet, and then he’d start thinking about an Italian summer of queer love and bike rides.
Even though Oscar didn’t know how to ride a bike.
Nor did he have a boyfriend, and given he was already twenty and didn’t want to be the Oliver of the North Italian summer situation, he couldn’t foresee any of this happening.
Fine, Cowboy, you win.
Oscar had never been very good with curiosity.
He’d ruined at least four Christmases as a child, begging to have his gifts early because he couldn’t wait to see what he was getting, only to throw a tantrum when there were no surprises on the day.
Papa would always find something interesting to give him: a sheet of stickers, a special Oscar-only bottle of bubble bath lifted from that week’s shopping and wrapped in silver paper, and one time there’d been magic chocolates that made wishes come true.
Oscar still closed his eyes and thought of something he wanted when he had a Hershey’s Kiss.
A scream tore out of the character as Oscar abandoned his controller and picked up his phone, clicking on the avatar. It was cute and cartoonish, with a flop of dark red choppy hair, freckles, and chunky glasses over large, exaggerated blue eyes.
“What the hell, why not?” Oscar pressed the fat, oblong ACCEPT button and studied the empty conversation screen for what felt like several minutes. “Oh well.” He’d never really had that big of a crush on Matthew McConaughey, anyway. Oscar was more of a Jonathan Bailey kind of—
Oscar’s stream of thoughts was abruptly cut off by the appearance of three bouncing dots, buffering the return of his stalled heartbeat.
The freezer whined behind him as it tried and failed to make ice cubes for his diet sodas.
For the however-many-days-Oscar-had-lived-here in a row, he’d had to resort to refilling the plastic tray like any other person with a fridge their own age.
CowBoy0705: Hi! Didn’t mean to slide into DMs like this. Just wondering if you’re “Oscar” Spike?
Spikey: It’s Oscar, not “Oscar.” And it says Spikey, not Spike. Who’s asking?
As the three bouncing dots reappeared, Oscar’s stomach punched in for its shift, reminding him of its existence as it tumbled in his body.
The only person in the online space who knew that Oscar and Spike co-existed in one body was Lucas, his long-term long-distance gaming friend.
Lina would never apologize for something like sliding into a DM.
And Grandma wasn’t likely to have that username.
Or be on one of the gaming servers. Although Oscar would put nothing past that woman.
And she did like Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain.
It left him with one plausible answer that stopped his breathing.
While he waited, his respawned character stood at the oak tree, the deceptively serene soundtrack playing in the background, as though the character wasn’t about to be slobbered on and rent apart.
As though Oscar wasn’t about to pass out from sheer anticipation.
CowBoy0705: Well, I’m “Aaron” Aaron. I don’t know if you remember me. I promise I’m not a creepy stalker or anything.
Oscar’s heart became the gymnast he never could be, much to his mother’s chagrin.
Spikey: Sounds like something a creepy stalker would say…
Shit, Spike. Oscar couldn’t believe he was trying to be smart right now.
As though it were remotely funny that this asshole had ghosted him or that Oscar had been looking at his phone waiting for a message to pop up like a lovesick schoolboy for weeks, more concerned with the person he’d met before his top surgery than the grueling healing process that came after it.
This time, he didn’t wait for the bouncing dots.
Spikey: I have a faint recollection of who you are. With my busy social life, it’s hard to keep track of all the people I meet in clinics and such.
CowBoy0705: You’re even funnier when you’re not about to go under the knife.
Spikey: What can I say? I have honed and perfected the art of deflective humor as a defense mechanism for all my childhood and queer trauma.
CowBoy0705: Seems like you have. Do you also do avoidance, by any chance?
Spikey: That sounds very much like a you thing.
CowBoy0705: Hey, I’m the one who tracked you down.
Spikey: To feed your inner stalker. You must be feeling so proud.
CowBoy0705: Relieved.
CowBoy0705: :)