When I was a child, I used to love watching my dad play games on the family computer. It was a nice break from school and housework, even more so after he and mom divorced. It was our routine to stay up late sitting in front of that old wooden desk, him controlling the character and me pointing out the details he missed and where to go next. 

We played many games like this, at first starting with relatively simple platformers that were appropriate for the whole family, but eventually we delved into strategy, then into historical fps, and finally into survival horrors.

Amongst these titles, there was one game. One game whose name I don’t remember anymore, but one that absolutely fascinated both of us. An exclusion zone filled with murderous monsters, radioactive anomalies, artefacts and relics far beyond human comprehension.

The graphics weren’t great, and the AI was silly to say the least, but the atmosphere….The stories that we would make up as we progressed through the game, the characters we would meet, the monsters we had to run away from…That exhilarating feeling of adrenaline as a mutant jumpscared us in the middle of the night so badly dad fell off his chair and almost broke the PC.

Those were the good days.

But all things come to an end. As I grew up, I realised that dad was pushing himself too hard. He had always been the type of man to put his own worries and tiredness aside to make sure everyone else around him was happy. Mom knew this, and took advantage of him for a long time. When she left, he was….It was like something inside of him broke and was never put  back together.

Finding work was hard, and the stress was piling up. He would pass out on the desk in the middle of our play time, sometimes even close his eyes and have micro-naps in between loading screens. 

It got so bad that even a kid like I could tell he was forcing himself not only to keep food on the table, but to be a good father as well.

So I decided I would help. I started learning how to cook. How to clean. How to make life just a little easier for him, and once I reached my seventeenth birthday, I started working too. Part-time only, obviously, but it was still a relatively decent help for a two-person household.

But his health didn’t improve. Maybe it was his broken heart, or all the accumulated stress at work, but eventually his body gave up.

Four years ago I lost my dad.

I lost my best friend in the world.

And for a while, I lost my happiness along with him.

I am twenty-five this year, and recently I got into a car accident. A car accident that ended up with me hospitalised for almost an entire month. I was lucky not to be paralyzed, but the hospital fees….I would need to start selling dad’s things to find the money. 

When I was starting to panic, one of the nurses told me I still had the option of suing the man that ran me over. It was a tough choice, and the chance of me losing the case was still significant, but I’d rather take my chances than get rid of all those memories that I held so dear in my heart.

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I never knew who exactly ran me over since I was unconscious for the two weeks right after, but would you imagine my surprise when I saw the same boss that always pushed me and my co-workers into massive crunches and unpaid overtime clearly gunning it through the street without a care in the world in his oh so expensive car?

The footage alone, nevermind the past charges he had managed to slip under the rug before this incident, were already condemning enough that my lawyer almost laughed at how simple the whole process was.

I won the case.

And the reparations I got from it were….Outstanding to say the least. I would need to pay for a wheelchair since I wouldn’t be able to walk for a few months after being discharged from the hospital, but this….This covered much more than just that. I could live comfortably for the next few years if I just hung onto the money wisely.

Needless to say the lawyer got a little bonus and the nurse also had a small gift waiting for her when I was finally allowed to go home.

I decided against hiring a caretaker since my apartment building had decent security and it had multiple elevators so I wouldn’t have trouble moving around too much. So I just wheeled myself home with a smile on my face.

Dad was probably laughing his ass off in heaven at the face my ex-boss made when he was told he’d be serving actual jail time for running me over and just escaping the scene, on top of financial fraud and a few more charges I wasn’t very clear about. By the time I reached home, everything was still settling in my mind, so I wheeled myself to bed and just laid down for a while. Thinking.

“I have a lot of free time left before I need to go back to work….I could take a nice vacation huh? Maybe some hot springs….The beach sounds nice, but I can’t use a wheelchair in the sand very well….” It was while I was thinking on what to do that my gaze slowly drifted to the door opposite of my own. Dad’s office.

“Oh.” The idea hit me.

I could….Play some games instead. The doctors did say some physical activity would be fine but I should stay at home as much as possible, and what better way to have fun at home than to play games? Technology had advanced way further beyond the old PC my dad had from the era of his own father.

I was too little to realise just how old the games we were playing actually were back when I was a kid, but it was now 2057, gaming tech was way beyond screens.

I looked at the new balance in the bank app on my phone and made some rough estimations in my head.

“Oh……That’s…Not as much as I expected.”

Quickly, I searched through the internet the actual stores that were stocked on what I wanted. A full-dive virtual reality helmet. As I said before, technology was way further beyond just regular screens and keyboard inputs. And a decent helmet wouldn’t even cost a third of the money I got from the demand.

“Looks like I’m playing some games then.” I smiled, looking up at the ceiling.

Multiple photos were taped to the otherwise dark surface. A few posters of old games we beat together, a few photos of me and him going out and having a picnic by the side of an abandoned road. Mind you, it had been a little creepy to go there, but the views….It was beautiful. The type of beauty even a child could understand.

A roadside picnic….

“I wonder if….” I typed a few more keywords into my search and found something incredible.

That old game….No, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same art-style or the same developers, but it had the same vibe. The same atmosphere, although it was a different world it was….It was as if I could dive back into those memories I made with him.

I didn’t worry about the price anymore. I added the game and the helmet to my list and brought them right there and then with no hesitation. Even if it was a bad game, even if it was clunky or unpopular as the original had been, I already knew I would absolutely love it. 

“We’re going back there, dad. Maybe it’s way scarier now, so you better prepare yourself alright?”

Needless to say my voice was left alone, floating inside that room as lonely as I had been these past few years. Working for a black company leaves no time for friends, nor girlfriends or boyfriends, hell I had forgotten how long it had been since I had actually talked to someone aside from the convenience store a few ways away from home and work before the accident.

Maybe this was also a good opportunity to make some friends. I’m sure dad would’ve said something about staying inside too long and that I should touch some grass.

I knew where that comment had come from, but it still felt weird having your dad talk to you with old memes from thirty years ago huh?

For the rest of that day, I simply laid there in bed, too tired to move really, and eventually drifted off into the realm of dreams. I had a nightmare actually, something about some cultists? I couldn’t quite remember, but it was creepy as hell.

Very on-brand for the experience I was looking forward to though.