The fog machines were powerful and plentiful enough that their product was visible from outside as a dull grey haze that coated the building. Levi mused to himself that it was like going to a rock concert, only it smelled significantly better.
Lazer World was familiar territory. Blacklights, neon lights, strobe lights... regular lights. They did have a few normal LED bulbs here and there so people wouldn't trip over one another. Lawsuits and all that. Its muggy interior was filled with people as young as five and as old as their mid-forties, running around. From arcade games to VR stations to the main attraction itself, the Lazer Park, a simulated battleground of winner-takes-all laser tag. Highest score of the round gets 1000 tickets, highest score of the day gets their face on a wanted poster on the wall. The floors were sticky, and the place smelled like low-quality pizza.
Please no running, jumping, climbing, name calling, cursing, or physical assault.
Rosa emerged from the fog like an angel through the clouds, parting it with her stride. Levi grinned and his heart thudded away in his chest. She was wearing fairly typical casual wear. Some mid-thigh length jean shorts (Rosa hated the word Jorts) and a loose-fitting white tank top for maximum freedom of movement. The white fabric glowed violet under the blacklights.
She was a Valkyrie, ready to take flight and vanquish all foes on the glorious neon battlefield of the blacklit-
“Levi, you payin’ attention?” Rosa asked with a chuckle. “Glad you made it.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” he sighed, taking one of Rosa’s hands in his. He rubbed his thumb over the top of her hand, feeling the soft skin. She always had such soft skin... What kind of lotion did she use? He bet it was good lotion. It smelled nice, a little bit like peaches.
Rosa let out that musical laugh for him and his smile broadened a tiny bit. “You’re going to regret that sentiment after I absolutely demolish you in revenge for last night,” she cautioned him.
Levi's smile shifted into an awkward half-smile. “I really am-”
“Buh buh buh, none of that! I know you are; I know it must have been important, and I know you weren’t trying to hurt me,” she interrupted, waving her hand around. “I get it. Life is life sometimes. You’re a good guy even if you like to think that you’re not. Now, the sooner we’re situated the sooner you can make it up to me, yeah?”
Levi’s smile returned to one of sincerity and he nodded. That sounded like a plan to him.
“As you command m’lady,” he hummed with a soft bow.
“This place is sci-fi themed, not a Renfaire,” Rosa admonished as they made their way towards the check-in counter.
Behind the counter was a very bored looking teenager with a mess of black hair and a single shining silver piercing in his nose. Levi never knew someone in such an odd and exciting place could look so thoroughly unamused, but he supposed that once the novelty was gone it would have to happen eventually.
“Hello and welcome to Lazer World, where galactic domination is just a laser blast away. Can I interest you in our season pass? Just $200 per pass for unlimited laser tag all year long.”
The teenager had a droning, listless voice, one that matched the dead-eyed look he was giving them. Judging by the bags under the kid’s eyes he’d been working quite a lot lately. Maybe he was a college student?
“Just two night-passes please,” Levi said, fumbling out his debit card.
The teenager processed their transaction and handed Levi back his card, along with two glittery plastic pass cards that granted them access to the Lazer Park.
“I wish you luck in your future conquests,” the teenager drawled monotonously.
“Uh, yeah, thanks,” Levi said with an awkward chuckle. He led Rosa away from the counter and into the seating area where families had arranged their things to stake their claims on the shiny metal surfaces. Levi managed to hunt one down that was unoccupied in one of the far corners of the room and helped Rosa into a seat.
“Can I get you anything?” he offered to her. “A drink, some pizza, anything like that.”
Rosa pondered this for a moment, pressing her finger quizzically to her chin. “Well, there is one thing... I could use a kiss I think.”
Levi felt his face flush the tiniest bit and he nodded. Leaning over the table, he placed a kiss first on her forehead, then on her lips. Quick things, but they drew a smile out of her all the same.
“That’s funny,” she mused. “I wasn’t aware we were having a two-for-one sale on kisses today.”
“You had a coupon,” Levi replied evenly. He nodded at his own words.
“Musta been pretty lucky to get a coupon for kisses,” Rosa laughed.
“I must be pretty lucky too, considering you cashed it in with me and not some other weirdo,” the man purred in reply.
“... Let’s go play laser tag you utter goofball.”
“Lazer War,” Levi corrected with a smirk. “And I’m your goofball, you brought this upon yourself.”
She laughed again and nodded as she pulled Levi up to his feet. “My goofball, that’s right.”
The Lazer Park’s entrance was a long tunnel lined with cords of dim blue lights. Overhead a series of alarm lights spun, one after the next, into the depths of the complex. At the end of the hall an attendant sorted new arrivals into even groups, keeping track with a clicker in his hand. Prospective players would be sent to either the red room or the blue room. Therein they would receive an explanation of the Park’s layout and a safety briefing before being allowed to buckle themselves into their combat vests and prepare for war.
They were pointed to the blue room.
“The Lazer Park,” explained a salt and pepper haired man in a mock military jumpsuit, “is a three-story urban environment. Enemy minefields choke our movement here and here,” he gestured to two red patches on the map, the safety zone outside the red team’s base. Anyone in a blue vest would immediately have their vest shut off if they passed that threshold.
“Key points of control are here, here, and here. Capture these points by having more active vests in these highlighted areas than the opposing team. Get hit three times and you’re out, you’ve gotta go back to your base and reactivate your vest. You can get extra points by blasting enemy combatants, so don’t neglect choke points.”
He paced from one side of the map to the other while pointing with his stick. Levi and Rosa sat perilously close together on one of the long benches that sat across the back of the small room, knees touching. They’d heard this a million times in the past and Levi was so bored of it he couldn’t help but notice that the instructor’s glasses didn’t have any lenses in them. Part of the costume then?
“Finally, there are two machine gun nests, one on either side of the map. They can be disabled by shooting the target points under them, but be careful. You have to find a way to get up close to disable them...”
“I bet,” whispered Rosa, “I get double the points that you do.”
“No way in hell,” Levi hissed back, but in a playful manner. “You’ve never beaten me by double before.”
“I was never trying before. I was being merciful.”
“Merciful my left nut, I’m not that bad at this game.”
“Just for that, gonna be more than double. My treat,” she grinned. Levi thought her face resembled that of a leopard right now, eyes sharp, teeth barred. He had to admit... it was a little bit sexy.
“You’re on!”
“...or climbing on the equipment,” finished the man up front. “That concludes our briefing. Good luck cadets!”
Everyone stood and made their way to the vests hung on neat hooks on the far wall. With a series of clicks and a loud clamor of shuffling people strapped the glowing blue light packs onto their backs and looked experimentally down the sights of their blasters. You had to hold onto them with two hands for safety reasons, otherwise they wouldn’t fire.
They stepped out into the battlefield, fog rolling around their feet. Speakers played simulated battle sounds all through the complex and hidden orange lights flashed behind corners and on the rooftops of the miniature buildings to mimic distant explosions. They were a ragtag group. They’d gotten merged with a kids’ birthday party, so there was a gaggle of six- and seven-year-olds, plus one of the parents from that group, Levi and Rosa, two teenage girls that seemed a little bit too close to be entirely platonic, and a man built like a middle school PE teacher. That is to say, poorly.
Nevertheless, they made their way to their base. A little console stood in the center of a protected circular area with its own green lasers shooting off in every direction. When a team member got knocked out, they would return here where their vest would be reactivated by said green lasers, allowing them to return to the fight.
The beginning of the match was signaled by a loud tone and Levi and Rosa immediately made their way to the first machine gun nest. Each one was placed so it controlled one of the points, with the middle control point not having one. That meant it was almost impossible to win without controlling at least one of them. Levi took up position at the plastic glowing machinegun and began letting off a stream of laser bursts down towards the control point as a cluster of six- and seven-year-olds waddled up to the point in their blue vests. The point chimed as it was captured.
Rosa left Levi there to do some hunting of her own.
A small cluster of kids who looked to be about twelve or thirteen years of age were approaching the point now. Levi waited until they put themselves in the open, then mowed them down with a concentrated volley. They must have been new to Lazer World and unfamiliar with how quickly the machine gun nests could dispatch mass assaults. As for Levi’s team, their only casualty was one six-year-old that didn’t seem to understand that he was out until one of the other kids told him he had to go back to the start. The boy grumbled but stormed off towards the home base again to get reactivated.
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Each game lasted 20 minutes with a 10-minute intermission between each. Levi had paid for three games and fully intended to play them all. In the first game, the one where their team had half of a birthday party, their team got utterly smashed. Rosa still had the highest single kill count though. The woman was a monster with a laser blaster, that was for sure. Still, it wasn’t quite double Levi’s score. She insisted that she would pass that milestone in the next game.
The second game went better for their side but worse for Rosa. They were playing against an older group that apparently had some experience, and so it wasn’t quite the bloodbath the first game had been. She grumbled and groaned about not being quite good enough and Levi, like a good boyfriend, rubbed her back and encouraged her. She would do better next game and finally demolish him two to one like she wanted.
They sat out a game to eat soft pretzels and watch some of the groups bowling. Levi had his sights fixed on one particular cluster of bowlers. They were almost color coordinated and the almost-ness of it kept drawing his eye. A rough bouquet of purples, blues, and burgundies, smattered on the tiles of the bowling alley. Blues and reds and violets flashed overhead and a 3D rendered bowling pin cheered every time someone rolled a spare.
To be frank, the group wasn’t bowling very well, but they did look like they were having fun. The only one doing well was a man who must have had thirty years on the next eldest in the party. Every time he was at the lane he rolled a strike or a spare.
You go grandpa.
“Lazer War in t-minus three minutes. All combatants make your way to the Lazer Park,” boomed a voice over the intercom in a digitized voice. Rosa and Levi climbed to their feet and Levi managed to muster the bravado to take Rosa’s hand into his own. How adventurous of him.
Back to the Lazer Park, this time on the red team. Vests on with clicking buckles. It was a pretty good mix of ages and sizes on their team this round, with the notable addition of two teenage girls that looked a touch out of place. They had clearly been dragged along for a birthday party for their little brother or some similar occasion, but they seemed to be making the best of their circumstances regardless.
Out into the battlefield once again, Levi was rounding corners, rifle at the ready. He buzzed happily, Rosa a few steps behind. Essentially, he was a human shield, there to soak up any quick shot laser bursts that might fly around a corner. Once they had gotten over their surprise and put a few imaginary holes in Levi, Rosa would tap them three times in rapid succession and send them all the way home to their base to recharge.
It was a good system, albeit one that didn’t help Levi’s “kill” count much. Rosa seemed to be enjoying it though, and that was what Levi cared about most.
They split off at a branch in the halls, Levi going left to clear out that half’s machine gun nest and Rosa going right down the steps to actually disable the gun itself. His footsteps were quiet on the carpeted hall floor, body crouched down low to keep his profile smaller. The red flashing lights of his vest reflected off the bare concrete walls, creating a red aura around him as he moved through the corridor. Levi paused and stood fully upright, staring at those dancing red lights.
Flashing at the end of the hall.
Why was one of his teammates down there? He thought he and Rosa were the only ones coming this way.
Red eyes, pulsing, watching, staring.
Levi took a step back. Then another. His breathing quickly grew shallow, then turned to gasps, then great heaving gulps of air.
He couldn’t breathe.
It was like he was being strangled without being touched. His heart slammed away at his chest like it was trying to crawl free from the bonds of his ribcage and escape, escape those red lights, those red eyes watching him.
He stood in a railyard, blood smattered across his chest and his face, drooling down into the ballast of the tracks. He stared down a tunnel and, at the end, a brilliant light, getting larger and larger, threatening to swallow him whole as it grew.
He leaned back against the wall, putting his arms over his head to try to regain his breath. But it wouldn’t come.
He stumbled back, his feet getting tangled in the rail ties.
His eyes watered.
His legs shook.
He couldn’t breathe.
It was getting closer.
They were getting closer.
He was getting closer.
“That’s it,” his dad said, a big man with rough hands. “One after the next. Look for another foothold.
“I know, I know,” Arthur muttered, feeling around the rockface for an outcropping that would support his weight. The smell of the redwoods drifted through his oversensitive nose and he sneezed, nearly losing his footing in the process.
“That would be a dumb way to die,” his dad commented from below.
“Shut it,” Arthur huffed, trying to hide the grin growing across his face.
A hand placed itself on Levi’s shoulder and his head snapped over to look at Rosa. Her lips were moving, so why couldn’t he hear her? Why couldn’t he hear his Rosa? Had he gone deaf?
The woods faded away. The stone of the cliff seemed to dissolve into the fog of the hallway.
“Levi,” her voice said at last. It was like she was at the far end of the hallway, calling to him, trying to make him hear her.
“Levi, you need to calm down. You’re having a panic attack Levi. Levi!”
She refocused him, brought his darting eyes back to her face. Her voice seemed a touch less distant now.
“Pay attention to me right now Levi. Look at my breathing. In and out, just like me,” she cooed. She took his hand and pressed it to her chest, just under her collarbone. She made him spread out his fingers, made him feel the rising and falling of her breath.
“That’s it, deep breaths, as deep as you can Levi. Just like that. Good.”
She brought his hand up to her cheek and held it there, leaning against it. “There he is. There’s my handsome Levi. Welcome back...”
“I-” he sputtered.
“Shhhh, not yet. Let me enjoy having you back,” she sighed, giving him a small, sad look. “Ooh that was scary. My sister used to have panic attacks just like that... They’d happen without warning; it took me years to figure out how to calm her down.”
Despite himself, Levi felt tears coming to his eyes. Dammit, he didn’t want to cry in front of her. He didn’t want her seeing that... any of that. And he didn’t know if he was crying because he was scared, because he was upset... or because he was just so damned happy she was there to ground him, to keep him in place.
His breathing was still uneven, but he didn’t feel like he was suffocating anymore. He rubbed her cheek with his thumb, closing his eyes slowly. Rosa closed her eyes too, smiling that sweet smile of hers at the contact.
“Rosa... I’m sorry... I ruined our date,” he paused, scowling. “Uhm... again.”
“No, you didn’t. Don’t start feeling guilty,” she pouted. “Come on, let’s get out of here. This has been fun, but I don’t mind pampering you a little, you seem like you need it.”
“Rosa-”
“Shush! Not an option. You wanna make me happy right?”
“I... yes,” he sighed softly. “Of course I do.”
“Good. Then do whatever I say,” she grinned, flashing teeth.
Levi and Rosa exited the Lazer Park early, leaving their vests on the racks and ignoring the somewhat befuddled face of the instructors in the equipment room. Levi did catch Rosa scowling up at the screen displaying her kills briefly, but she made herself look away so fast he almost didn’t.
Levi held Rosa’s hand tight in his own as they weaved their way through the mixed crowd of people in the main space of the building, through clouds of fog and mingling children. The doors slid open in front of them and they were out, out of Lazer World, out into the cool crisp autumn air once more.
“... So Levi,” Rosa began hesitantly. “What happened?”
Levi stiffened a little bit at first. He wasn’t sure how to answer that question without sounding as unhinged as he felt.
But then he relaxed. This was Rosa he was talking about. He didn’t need to worry.
“I... have been having some pretty surreal nightmares lately. And when I was in there for just a moment it was as if something from them had,” he paused for a moment to genuflect through empty air, “come out of my nightmares and stood in the hallway across from me. I realized pretty fast that I was just seeing things but it was too late by that point. And then I guess I had a... whatever that was.”
Levi didn’t feel entirely comfortable confessing that it was a panic attack. Or, rather, he was only willing to go so far as to say that it could have, maybe, possibly, been a panic attack. But he wasn’t a shrink, and he wasn’t qualified to diagnose that kind of thing. Or at least that’s what he was telling himself in the deep spaces of his mind where he was actually capable of introspection.
Rosa squeezed his hand.
“Have you ever had anything like that happen to you before?”
He had. And worse.
“No, no, haven’t had anything like that happen...” he trailed off, looking at the dented door of his car as they approached. “You probably think I’m a nutcase.”
Rosa snorted in a very unladylike fashion. “Of course I do, but that’s got nothing to do with this. You’re my nutcase, just like you’re my weirdo, and my goofball. But this isn’t you being crazy. It sounds to me,” she sighed, “like you’ve been having a rough time and you need a hand.”
“I don’t know if I would go that far,” Levi mumbled.
“Okay Levi, then talk to me. Tell me what you would say is happening.”
Levi glanced off to one side, his free hand clenching tight. He couldn’t. He couldn’t risk chasing her away, telling her about all the crazy things in his head.
The crazy things outside of it.
He was silent for a few moments.
“Can we talk about this some other time Rosa? I was sorta hoping to salvage this date,” he confessed sheepishly.
Rosa looked at him. Her eyes were more green than usual as the artificial neon lights of Lazer World reflected in them. She studied Levi carefully, examining him, peering into his soul in a way no one else he knew could. He hurriedly took her by the shoulder and pulled her in for a kiss.
The kiss escalated.
He had her up against the side of his car, her arms around his back. Her scent was dangerously intoxicating. Roses and sweat and a touch of pizza grease for good measure. It tickled at his nose.
They paused in place, Rosa looking up at him.
“I guess we can talk about it some other night... As long as you’ll talk to me about it...” she said poutily. Her cheeks looked just a touch heated.
Levi couldn’t help but feel a sense of deep, twisted satisfaction. That had... worked better than he had anticipated.
“Would you be opposed to me inviting you back to my apartment?” he hummed in her ear, trying to fight off the anxious twitching in his chest. He could be sly when he needed to, and he definitely needed some slyness on his side right now.
“By all means,” she hummed, hopping off the hood of his car. Levi opened the passenger side door for her and she climbed inside, fidgeting a touch to get comfortable on the old seat.
“Sorry about the upholstery,” he chuckled. “I keep meaning to have it replaced but then I have to get all my junk out of the back. I got all that stuff in one big thrift store run and I haven’t sorted through it since, fuck knows what’s back there.”
Rosa tossed him a slightly disapproving look, but climbed in all the same. It didn’t really bother her that it was messy, just that he was being too lazy to clean it up.
The engine grumbled unhappily to life under them.
A quiet, intimate car ride. A hand on a thigh. A soft smile at the road stretching out ahead of them. Headlights flashing off the road signs.
No red eyes.
No blinking moon.
No train tracks underfoot.
A normal trip home, just like thousands of other couples were sharing all over the country right now.
The car shut off as they pulled in front of the apartment complex. Levi stepped around and got Rosa’s car door. Then they ascended the steps to the apartment and, after some fiddling with the keys, the little red door with golden numbers on the front popped open.
They proceeded into the apartment’s main space as Rosa snickered. “Last time I was here I daresay it was even messier,” she mused.
“I dusted!” Levi chimed happily. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of her hand, as if letting her go would be an end all its own.
His apartment smelled gently of the product he put in his hair in a vain attempt to tame its bouncing unkempt strands. The air was fairly stale, and so Levi moved to crack a window open. He frowned at the wall of the twin building just a few feet away, and then shrugged.
That had to be a fire hazard.
There was a creak behind them and Levi glanced back, half-expecting to see his cat in the doorway, at last manifesting where he could see it.
Derrick stood there, a black silhouette with hands spread in a non-threatening gesture.
“Now Levi, stay calm...” he said in that deep, deep voice.