by Eric Vall
“Plenty of times,” he argued as his character hit the ball once more. “Especially in college when you were sloshed.”
“Huh, I don’t remember those,” I snickered as I finally caught up to Kevin’s character.
He leapt up into the air for the ball, but I was able to cut him off. I pressed up on the joystick and “B” on the controller, and then I flicked the stick right. My character appeared on the opposite side of the Ultra Ball, and I lashed out at it with my regular attack.
Then my controller vibrated, and the ball exploded. My character lit up with the same ectoplasmic glow that had encompassed the ball, and the background of the screen dimmed.
“Shitshitshitshitshit!” Kevin gasped as he tried to move Turga out of the way.
But it was too late. I activated my finisher.
Power Clone 6 summoned a giant ball of psychic energy into his hand and then unloaded it into Turga at point-blank range. It seemed to enter the giant turtles body for a moment, but then it blasted him backward off the screen completely.
There was an explosion sound, and then the familiar bright green letters popped up onto the screen.
“Game!” I celebrated along with the announcer on the monitor. “And that’s what happens when you take on a power gamer, my friend!”
“Come on,” Kevin argued as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Best two out of three?”
“I’ve already beat you twice,” I reminded him. “In fact, I--”
My challenge was cut off by the sound of loud throat clearing behind us.
We whipped around and saw our shift leader, Renee, standing there with her arms crossed over her chest.
My heart fluttered when I saw her, and not just because Kevin and I were goofing off on a tester system during work hours.
Renee was one of the most stunning women I’d ever seen. She had dirty blonde hair she kept up in a messy ponytail, a hairstyle that put all of her beautiful features on display. Her sexy lips were pouty and thick, covered with a deep shade of red lipstick that nearly matched our uniforms. Her hooded blue eyes were so bright they nearly shimmered, even in the drab lighting of our store, and they were narrowed in amusement. The blonde manager was wearing the same standard, bright red button-up shirt and khaki pants all Carmichael’s employees had to wear, but she was able to rock it like none other. The shirt fit snugly around her medium-sized breasts and left very, very little to the imagination.
“What have I told you guys about playing Ultafighter while at work?” she groaned.
“Uh … not to do it unless you were in on it?” Kevin lied, but he only drew a death glare from our superior.
“Nooooo,” Renee chuckled, “don’t do it. What would Darren think if he caught you guys playing video games on company time?”
“I dunno,” I joked, “he never leaves his damn office for more than ten minutes at a time anyways, so it’s all irrelevant.”
Darren was our fuckwit of a manager who suffered from severe “Napoleon” syndrome. Everybody knew the type. The kind of guy who peaked somewhere in high school and was now a fat, balding, middle-aged man who runs a second-rate electronics store as a career. Instead of trying to, say, lose some weight and go back to school or try to better himself, he let all of his frustration manifest itself in fits of anger.
Then again, I couldn’t give him too much shit for where he was in life. This was my full-time job right now, too.
But hopefully not for long. My Twitch channel had been growing by the month and, if it kept going at its current rate, I could eventually quit this awful job and stream full-time.
“Get back to work, gameboys,” Renee ordered us with a wink, “there’s an old lady over there who needs help picking out a present for her grandson.”
“I’m on it,” Kevin sighed as he snapped the controller back into its port.
The dark-haired man sauntered off to go help the poor woman, and Renee and I were left alone.
Maybe this would be my chance to finally ask her out on a date? I could instantly feel my face growing red as I stumbled over my words, and I tried not to stare at my boss too much as I cleared my throat.
“Is there something you wanted to say, Tony?” she asked as she raised an eyebrow.
“I, uh--I was just wondering if, uh … ”
“If what?” Renee said with a half smile.
“Excuse me?” a lanky teenage boy cut us off. “Where are your guys’ headphones?”
“Tony here can take you to them!” my shift leader exclaimed in her best customer service voice. “Can’t you, Tony?”
“Sure!” I said with completely fake enthusiasm. “Follow me.”
Son of a bitch.
Would you want to grab a cup of coffee sometime? A single sentence. It’s that fucking simple, but I always seemed to freeze up when I try to work up the courage to ask her. I could interact with these customers all day long, talking about trivial shit like camera specs and upcoming video games and graphics cards. I also interacted with thousands of people at a time during my Twitch streams as I kept them entertained for hours on end.
Yet, all of my motor functions froze when I tried to talk to Renee.
I was totally living up to the whole “gamer” stereotype of not being able to talk to beautiful women, and I fucking hated it.
“Right here, sir,” I announced as we entered aisle C7. “Carmichael’s Electronics has every single type of headphones you could ever want, and then some. That’s the Carmichael’s guarantee.”
Ugh. You could almost hear the trademark in that last phrase.
The young man looked around at the huge wall of headphones in front of him as he scratched his chin in confusion.
“What would you suggest?” he sighed. “I don’t even know where to start, honestly.”
“Well, it all depends on what you’re using them for,” I explained. “Are you just looking for something for tunes? Or do you want to use them in a studio setting or to play games or what?”
“Gaming,” the kid confirmed with a snap of his fingers. “Definitely gaming.”
“Nice,” I nodded, “I do a lot of gaming myself. You a console guy or a PC guy?”
“I have an Xbox, but I’m definitely more PC,” he explained.
“Ahhhh.” I grinned and walked over to a pair of headphones on the rack. “If you’re into PC gaming, then there aren’t any better headphones than these.”
I pulled the box off its hanger and then handed it to the kid.
“Yikes!” The boy gulped when he saw the price tag. “Do you have anything cheaper? I work at 7-Eleven, dude.”
“We do have cheaper options,” I continued, “but the SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless are about as top of the line as you can get. Its got superb sound and mic quality, a really long battery life, and it’s really, realllly well built. And the best part? It can be used on both your console and your PC!”
“I do like the sound of that … ” the kid admitted.
“Look at it as an investment,” I said happily. “Have you ever thought about doing live streams or anything like that? Because I’ve got a pair of these bad boys, and there’s nothing else I’d ever want on my ears while I’m streaming.”
Suddenly, the boy’s eyes lit up with recognition.
“That’s where I’ve seen you before,” he gasped. “You’re TerribleTony89!”
“Not so loud,” I joked, “I don’t want to make a scene here in the store.”
“What are you doing working at Carmichaels?” the boy continued. “I would have figured a guy like you would be making bank on Twitch. By the way, your last League of Giants stream was legendary.”
“Thanks,” I mused. “As much as I love gaming, I’m not really at the point yet where it pays my bills. But, have no fear, TerribleTony89 will keep streaming until his dying days. In fact, I was gonna do a short Cyberpunk Battle Royale stream in a few hours, once I get off work.”
“And I’ll be watching it,” the teenager chuckled and th
en gave me a little salute. “Thanks for all your help!”
The kid whipped around and then dashed off toward the counter like a bat out of Hell. Sure, he probably would have been fine with a cheaper alternative, but those things really were an investment.
“Somebody’s workin’ the commission hard today,” Kevin whistled from behind me. “That’s gotta be what, like, thirty extra dollars on your next paycheck?”
“We don’t make commission,” I reminded him.
Kevin let out an awkward laugh as if he thought I was joking, but then he went silent.
“Wait, are you serious?” he gasped. “All that pushing to get little old ladies to buy the Progamer edition of the Gigabit 7 console has been for nothing?”
“We’re hourly, Kevin,” I sighed. “Your paycheck’s going to look the same whether you sell one Gigabit 7 or fifty.”
“Huh,” my friend said nonchalantly, “and here I thought my sales degree was actually coming in handy.”
“I wish we made commission,” I admitted, “that thirty dollars could pay for a full tank of gas. Or a fancy dinner.”
“A fancy dinner for one, maybe,” the lanky man joked as he slapped my arm.
“I don’t really have anyone else in my life right now,” I retorted. “It’s just me, myself, and I.”
“Why don’t you ask Renee out, man?” Kevin prodded. “She’s a total babe, and I’ve seen the way you guys look at each other.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I shot back in a defensive tone.
“Date my boss?” the dark-haired man laughed. “Not in a million years. I tried that once, and it didn’t work out. Do you have any idea how awkward it is to have to see your ex five days a week, for eight hours a day?”
“Is that what happened with Serena?” I asked. “I thought she got promoted and moved to another store.”
“Likely story,” Kevin chuckled. “Probably an elaborate cover to hide the fact she was falling for me all over again.”
“Mhmmm,” I sighed as I rolled my eyes. “I’d totally date Renee. She’s really smart, ridiculously pretty, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders. It’s just … I always tense up around her. I get super nervous. Feels like my body is rejecting her or some shit like that.”
“Body’s rejecting her?” my friend snickered. “What is she, a donated kidney?”
“Damn, dude,” I gasped. “That was really fucking dark.”
“Not as dark as your mood is gonna be if you don’t ask her out,” he shot back. “Now, get over there and talk to her!”
“My shift ends in like, ten minutes,” I sighed as I glanced at the clock. “Do I really want to start that whole situation right now? Besides, what if she says no? That’d make things ridiculously awkward between us.”
“If I can work with Serena fucking Thompson for a full year after we broke up, you can handle a little rejection,” he promised. “But there’s no way in Hell she rejects you in the first place. What woman wouldn’t want to be with a dude that’s got five-thousand subscribers on Twitch?”
“You jest, but I’ve been making almost eight hundred dollars a month on top of what I make here,” I explained.
“Great,” Kevin chuckled, “so you can take her to Olive Garden instead of McDonalds.”
“Ha, ha,” I retorted. “Just wait … someday I’m gonna get my big break, and then I can spend my days doing better things than explaining to middle-aged women why they shouldn’t buy an M-rated game for their six-year-old child.”
“I’m just sayin’,” my friend argued. “Don’t let this be one of the big ‘what ifs’ of your life. Sometimes you gotta grab the rhino by the cajones and hold on for dear life, ya know?”
Kevin was right. There was no good reason why I hadn’t asked out Renee yet. I needed to grab this rhino by the “cajones.”
“Alright,” I announced, “I’m gonna do it.”
I clenched my fists, turned to the back of the store, and then began to head toward the manager’s office.
“Atta boy, Tony!” I heard Kevin call out from behind me.
I was gonna do it. I was going to take some initiative in my life and talk to Renee. I pictured it all vividly in my head. I would march into the office, tell her I wanted to talk to her about something, and then I’d ask her out for dinner. She’d say yes, we’d go out and have a good time, and then, well … we’d see where things went from there.
I walked through the pair of black rubber doors that read “employees only” and then snaked through the concrete hallways until I reached the main room that acted as our company’s office space. My heart was thumping in my chest as I reached for the door, and for a brief second I wondered if this was a bad idea.
Then I took a deep breath, reached out for the doorknob, and opened the door.
“Hey, Renee?” I asked as I entered the room. “Do you have a minute?”
Once I entered the room, though, my heart sank into my stomach.
Renee was nowhere to be found.
Instead, behind the desk sat Darren Byers, with his feet propped up on the desk. In the corner was a small color TV playing some sort of sporting event, and it was obvious my manager was watching the game instead of working. The stocky man lowered his feet, leaned forward in his chair, and furrowed his brow.
“Renee’s already left for the day,” Darren growled, obviously annoyed I was interrupting his TV watching. “What do you need, Tony?”
“I just, uh--” I started.
“You just what?” he interrupted. “You just wanted to come into the boss’ office like a big, bumbling ape and bother me with the problems that are too complicated for your tiny brain to comprehend?”
Now, I remembered why I never came back here. This guy was evil incarnate, and everything around him seemed to get sucked into his black hole of bitterness.
“It’s nothing,” I mumbled. “I’ll ask her tomorrow.”
“Oh yeah, about that,” Darren blurted. “I need you to open tomorrow. Ryan quit on me today, something about how he wanted to be ‘respected as a human being’ by his boss or some nonsense like that.”
“I’m not supposed to come in until noon tomorrow,” I sighed.
“What’s the matter with you?” my boss growled. “It’s extra hours. Since when do Carmichael’s employees turn down extra hours?”
I clenched my fists and bit my tongue as hard as I could. This guy was a total fuckwit, but he was still my boss, and I needed this job to make ends meet.
“Fine,” I finally spat. “I’ll be here bright and early at six o’clock. Now, can I clock out?”
“Clock out?” Darren scoffed. “You still have five minutes left on your shift. Wait until five, and then you have permission to leave. Jesus, kids these days … ”
I turned around and stomped out of the room before I could hear any more of his bullshit rant.
Essentially since that meant I was working an extra-long shift tomorrow, and I couldn’t stay up late doing my Twitch stream like I’d planned on. If I had to be here at six, then I needed to be up by four-fucking-thirty in the morning. That meant, once I left here, I’d only have enough time to commute home, eat dinner, and maybe, just maybe, have a chance to do a mini-stream.
Fuck this place.
“How’d it go, man?” Kevin asked as I walked past him in a huff.
“Great,” I said sarcastically. “Not only is she gone for the day, but now I’m working extra tomorrow!”
Kevin’s flat features contorted into a cringe as he let out a long, empathetic “Oooooooo.”
“So, not good?” he asked sympathetically.
I walked over to one of the empty cash registers, punched my employee code in, and then hit the “clock out” button. Darren be damned, I was leaving five minutes early.
“See you tomorrow, Kevin,” I called out as I headed toward the door.
“Later, dude,” he answered.
The commute back to my apartment was as uneventful as it normally was. I ho
pped onto one of the King County Metro buses, swiped my pass, and then plunked down in one of the empty seats. The guy I liked to call “Crazy Cameron” was at the back of the vehicle, as usual, mumbling to himself about government conspiracies and UFOs and all that fun shit.
Another typical day in Seattle.
It was about a twenty-minute bus ride to the stop nearest to my apartment, so I leaned back in the chair and tried to decompress after the long day I just had. Before I knew it, I heard the driver announce my stop, and I jumped to my feet and hurried off. From the stop, it was a five minute walk, but then I finally came upon the building I called home.
The building was one of the newer complexes in this part of town, built to accommodate all the young people who were moving here in the late 2000s. It was a light gray brick building with patches of bright colors slapped onto the wall every few dozen feet. The entire complex was only five stories tall, but it stretched nearly the span of a whole city block.
I walked through the entrance, past the main lobby and to the elevator. I stepped inside the tiny metal box, pressed the button for the third floor, and watched as the doors snapped shut behind me. As soon as I arrived at my destination, I fumbled in my pockets for my key. Finally, I came upon apartment 209F.
Home sweet home.
I opened the door and was greeted by my self-proclaimed “bachelor pad.”
The apartment was a studio with only three rooms: a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room that doubled as a bedroom. It was really all I needed right now, and it was one of the cheapest options available in downtown Seattle.
It was pretty sparse on the furniture front as well. I had a full-sized bed that sat in the alcove just off to the right, directly across from a mounted TV. In the living area were two small blue chairs I’d found at Goodwill, along with a tiny brown coffee table I’d fished out of my complex’s dumpster.
Then, off in the corner, was my baby.
Huddled to the side of the TV was a large, black desk with some red detailing. Atop the sleek piece of furniture were three of the highest-quality monitors that money could buy, alongside a mouse and keyboard that lit up with a deep, neon blue. I had a small HD camera set up just behind the monitors, and before them sat my own Artis headphones and a professional-grade microphone.
