Did you know that one centimetre of skin on your hand can carry up to 1,500 bacteria? Make that more, if you don’t wash your hands every ten minutes like I do. Multiply that by ten, if you have a disgusting job like working on a farm, working with kids, or working in a nursing home.
Even my friend, Adam, standing in front of me is probably infested with germs. A walking time bomb.
Germs can kill you if you’re careless. I don’t want to die.
I reach into my bag for an antibacterial wipe to impulsively rub the skin on my hands. I wish I could rub the intrusive thoughts away with them. Adam sees me doing it and smiles ruefully.
“Want one?” I ask, handing a single wipe to him
“Thanks!” He grins and quickly brushes it across his hands, though I know he’s only doing it to make me feel better. He’s been my best friend since nursery and has even followed me up to the tech college. A different course, but at least I don’t have to sit on my own in the cafeteria at lunch. We’ve been walking home together since secondary school, through the busy city centre and to back to the nice, normal suburban road that we both live on.
He puts the used wipe in his bag carelessly. Inwardly I flinch but say nothing.
“The group’s going to Club 10 this Saturday, you coming?”
“Probably not.” Not with all those unwashed bodies dancing and pushing together in one humid space. Death, with the smell of hairspray and cheap perfume. I notice Adam looks disappointed and a wave of guilt washes over me.
“No worries!” He says, a bit too brightly for me to not worry.
We walk through the busy city square, past the mini market and the takeaway shops. People are bustling around, getting things set up for a Friday night. Adam is chatting away about something funny that his teacher said today. I’m too eaten up with shame to listen properly.
I hear the beggar though, before I see or smell him. He’s approaching people passing by, grabbing their clothes desperately and spouting some nonsense about demons… His voice is shrill and panicky, his clothes ragged. A woman in front of us shields her two young children protectively and shouts something back about ringing the police.
Adam stops in front of me, and begins to reach for my hand to pull me away, but the strange man sees us pause and begins shambling in our direction. As he gets closer, I see that the fingernails on his filthy hand are long and yellowing. Bile rises in my throat. I can’t let him touch me.
Adam abruptly pulls me down a side alley, and we run forwards, past dustbins, litter and piles of cardboard boxes, eventually emerging into a little street that I’ve not seen before. I don’t hear the man following us, but even so we jog a little until we are far away. Panting with exhaustion, we both eventually stop to look around.
A good moment to pull out my wipes again to clean the part of my hand where Adam grabbed me. I hear him gasp, and I tense again, thinking he has seen the screaming man emerge from the alley to chase us. But it’s something much more mundane…
“A game shop? No way!” He points towards a shabby window across the road. The lettering is peeling off of the ‘GAME ON’ logo sign above a rather sparse display. I’m not one for games anyway, but it looks a bit naff. Adam is more easily pleased though. He rushes across the road to peer inside, nose pressed against the glass like a kid at a sweet shop.
“A closing down sale! Soph look, they’ve got merch too. How come I’ve never been here before?” He pauses, obviously wanting to go in, but knowing that the dust and the shabbiness will put me off from entering.
“It’s cool, I’ll come in with you,” I reply, and his face lights up like bloody Christmas has come early. I feel guilty all over again.
Mustering my courage, I step into the fusty air of the shop as Adam bounds off to his favourite section, RPG’s. The shopkeeper is a little Asian man, who is busy painting a tiny plastic model of a dragon with its wings outstretched. He smiles as we enter, and I give a shy wave back.
The shelves are stacked haphazardly and seemingly with no order. The itch in my brain wants me to take them all off, reorganise and clean them all. I try and push it down. Adam is sifting through a bargain bin with a look of intense concentration. Three games are already tucked under his arm.
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I’m peering at a display full of models similar to the one that the shopkeeper is painting, when I hear Adam take an intake of breath. He holds up a game box with all the reverence of a pope touching a holy relic.
“A special edition? No way. No way,” He turns to the man behind the counter “How much?”
The shopkeeper looks up momentarily from his little art project, “Five quid. And it’s fifty percent off of the rest of the stuff in here. Go nuts.”
Judging by the way my friend’s face just lit up with a maniacal glee, this is a good price. We exit the shop ten minutes later with a bag full of games, and a very happy Adam. He’s babbling on about the special edition of the game that he picked up, and I try to listen, but all I can think about is getting home to take a hot shower. The man in the shop also kindly gave us directions to get home, seeing as we’d never come across this street before. It’s only a little out of the way really.
“What’s so special about it?” I ask, after Adam pulls the same game from the carrier bag for the umpteenth time.
“It’s amazing. The art style, the gameplay. I’ve got the platinum trophy,” he adds, proudly.
“So you’ve already got it at home then?”
“Well, yeah…but this is a special edition. I’ve never seen this cover before! Must be rare or something. Hang on, Soph, give me your antibac wipes a minute.”
I hand them over, pleased and also worried that he seems to have picked up my habits. He spends the last few minutes of our walk home cleaning the case, the disc and the booklet inside thoroughly. I’m impressed.
I’m not so impressed when he hands me the game, just as I reach the gate to my house. His eyes are bright with excitement.
“I know you don’t like games-“
“An understatement.”
“But just try it ok. This one reminds me of the Gormenthinger books that you like so much”.
“Gormenghast, Adam. It’s called Gormenghast, and it’s a classic.”
“Well, this one’s classic too. Try it, please,” he asks again. “I can even help you out through the multiplayer system…And you can ring me when you try it tonight!” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively and I give in.
“Alright, alright. I’ll try it, I promise. Thanks, though I’ll have to hijack my brother’s games console for the night.”
We say goodbye, and I watch him jauntily jog on ahead to his own house down the street. Well, at least I could make him happy with this stupid game. I look at the name on the cover. Bloodborne. Huh. Definitely not sounding like something I’d really enjoy.
*
One shower, and one tense dinner with my parents later, I hear a chime from my phone. Adam.
Tried it yet?
I’ll load it up now. I reply, groaning aloud. Well, I guess it is Friday night, and it’s not like I have anything better to do. I clean the game again, and grab my box of wipes before creeping down to my brother’s lair in the basement. He’s away at university, so I have free reign to use his treasured games room for as long as I like.
I flick the light switch and glance around. Huh, not nearly as bad as I thought. There are neat, well-organised shelves of games, a fairly clean sofa and a large wall-mounted TV. It’s nice, once you adjust to the gaudy anime girl posters on the wall. They seem to grin suggestively at me as I turn on the tv, wiping over the remote before I do so.
What console do I need? I text Adam
PlayStation, Sophie! He messages back within seconds.
Er, which PlayStation? I can almost hear his mental frustration as he texts back a single digit.
4!
Oh good, I feel stupid already. The machine whirrs to life, and I carefully insert the disc of Bloodborne inside. As it loads, I appreciate the quiet of the basement room, hearing only the pitter patter of rain and the occasional sound of a car passing outside. I can’t hear my parents either, a blessing, really.
Ominous music starts, alerting me to the fact that the game has loaded. Fantastic, it already sounds scary. Three options appear on my screen, with the image of some kind of character against the backdrop of bleak architecture.
-NEW GAME
CONTINUE
LOAD GAME
I press the first option, using the controller, and it begins to vibrate violently. A sharp, electric jolt of electricity runs through my body, and suddenly my vision goes black.
*
I’m lying on something hard, and everything hurts.
I open my eyes, panic already threatening to overwhelm me. The room is dark and cavernous, with shelves upon shelves of glass vials, jars, books – unfamiliar again to me. I’m lying on, a table? I think. But I can’t move. There is a dark red substance pooling across the floor, something that I do recognise, and am immediately afraid of. Blood.
A man’s voice echoes from somewhere in the room, but already my vision is fading to black again as the panic really gets it’s teeth into me. I don’t understand the words that he says to me; my mind is screaming in torment, drowning out and coherence in his speech. This is a nightmare, it has to be. Wake up Sophie. Wake up.
I close my eyes. I breath slowly, to regulate my racing heartbeat. The man is using alien words like Yarnham and blood ministration. I try not to listen, and instead focus on the concrete, now steadier rhythm of my heartbeat. I must have fallen asleep. This is just a weird-ass dream.
“You must make a contract”.
The voice echoes inside my head. I put my hands to my ears and shake like a dog with fleas, trying to get it out.
“CHOOSE.”
Like some weird force is compelling me to, I open my eyes against my will. The world is black, but in front of me are some floating words. No, options is a better word for them.
As I read the floating text, a creeping suspicion begins to dawn on me…
I’m inside the game.