From the Ashes

It took Curt forever to figure out how to pull his TV away from the wall, and the cords were so tight that they kept coming undone as he worked. He cursed and panted, the agony in his back at a solid seven. All this bending and wrenching was a young man’s game, and he hadn’t been a young man for a long time. 

“You’re not gonna have a heart attack, are you?”

Abra, his daughter, was slumped on the sofa. Her thick-black eyeliner, dark clothes and purple-streaked hair made her look like an extra in a Slop Bucket music video, not that she’d know who Slop Bucket was. What did sixteen-year-olds listen to these days anyway?

“Maybe,” Curt panted, “unless someone was willing to give me a hand.”

“No, thanks.” Abra shook her head. “I don’t do manual labor.”

He chuckled. “So your mother tells me.”

“Very funny, Dad.”

She was holding her phone, a huge green thing covered in stars, suspiciously close to her face. 

Curt frowned at her. “Are you recording me?”

She nodded. “For posterity!”

He rolled his eyes and went back to his work, praying she wasn’t planning on sharing it online. The last thing he needed was millions of millennials commenting on his fat ass.

When Curt found his old Fenix 32 in storage, he wanted to leave it there and forget about it. He might have, too, if Abra hadn’t been there. She insisted they take it back to the apartment and see if it still worked. She was into “vintage tech,” as she put it, but Curt thought she just wanted a good laugh at her old man’s expense. 

The challenge was in hooking the Fenix up. His TV didn’t have the right connectors, so he had to run out and find a converter. Luckily Abra had found a video that showed exactly what he needed; maybe the internet was good for something.

He finished daisy-chaining the adapters to the TV, stood, and set the Fenix on the stool he’d grabbed from the kitchen. He considered the dumpy beige box before him. Once upon a time it was the pinnacle of technology, but now it had all the ascetic appeal of a fax machine.

Abra leaned forward and grinned. “Is it ready?”

“Yep,” Curt replied, “just one more thing.”

He pulled a gray cartridge from the box beside him and set it in the Fenix with a click. The label, curled and faded, depicted a knight in cybernetic armor facing off against a fearsome dragon. The title, “Starsword: Wayward Warriors,” was embossed in metallic font above the scene. Just looking at it brought back a flood of memories, which was exactly what Curt was afraid of. 

He sat down on the sofa next to his daughter, the cushion buckling due to his bulk. He handed her one of the two controllers and noticed she was stifling a giggle.

“What?” he asked.

Abra pointed at the cartridge. “Are you sure there’s only one game on that thing?”

“Yeah,” Curt replied. “Why?”

“Because it’s huge!” She gestured to it like a conductor. “Look at it!”

Curt shrugged. He didn’t expect her to understand. Her phone could play thousands of games at the touch of a button. She didn’t know what it was like to only get one game a year, if you were lucky. She didn’t know what it was like to deal with a lot of things. That last thought made his chest tighten.

“Um, earth to Dad. You in there?”

Abra leaned over and pretended to pound her fist on Curt’s head.

“Cut it out,” he said. “You’ll knock something loose!”

“There’s nothing in there to knock!”

He laughed. “Just do the honors, will ya?”

Abra gave him an animated salute. “Roger, captain!”

She leapt from the sofa and hit the POWER button on the Fenix. After a long moment, the screen flashed to a green grid with the words “Fenix 32” in the center. The font was lined with rivets, and shimmered like steel.

There was one save slot waiting for them on the next screen under the profile name “Froghead.” 

Abra laughed. “Froghead? Is that you?”

Curt nodded. “Yeah, it’s my childhood file.”

“That’s so cool. This thing’s like a time capsule!”

“Yeah, I guess.” Curt scrolled to the “DELETE” icon at the bottom. “We’re gonna start a new game so we can—”

“Wait!”

Abra put her hand on Curt’s controller.

“What’s wrong?” He asked. 

“Are you really going to delete it?”

He blinked. “I mean… yeah?”

His daughter gestured to the screen incredulously. “But that’s, like, your history, Dad! It’d be like erasing the past!”

Curt sighed, thinking about how wonderful that would be.

“Abs, we need to erase it if we want to play.”

“But look at all the time you spent on it!”

Curt looked more closely at the file: “CITADEL, CHAPTER 12, 99.9%, 137.3.”

It was the last stage, in the last room, at nearly a hundred-percent completion. The final number reflected the hours played. Curt felt a cold dew form on his forehead.

“It’s at the end of the game, right?” Abra asked.

“Yeah,” Curt said quietly. “It’s probably still saved at the final boss.”

Abra frowned at him. “Wait—you never finished it?”

He shook his head. “Nope.” 

“Seriously?”

He nodded. Curt had spent over a hundred hours of his life playing that game only to never get that last percent. 

“Why? Was it too hard?”

He shrugged, and felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. He wasn’t sure if he didn’t remember why he stopped playing, or if he didn’t want to remember. Either way, thinking about it made his heart race.

Abra clapped her hands together, pulling Curt back into reality. 

“Let’s do it!” she said. 

Curt raised an eyebrow. “Do what?”

“Let’s finish Froghead’s adventure!”

“Abs, it’s the last boss.” Curt’s whole body was throbbing. “You don’t know how to play, and I haven’t touched this game in years.”

“It can’t be that hard!” Abra held the controller to Curt’s face; the motion made him dizzy. “This thing’s only got two buttons!”

She nudged her father playfully in the elbow. “C’mon, Dad, Froghead deserves to see his journey come to and end! Don’t you want to help him make that happen?”

The look in Abra’s painted eyes was both pleading and inspiring. Ignoring the growing apprehension in his gut, he gave his daughter a weak smile. 

“Okay, but if we can’t do it after, say, ten tries—”

“Twenty!” Abra interrupted.

“Fine, twenty tries.” Curt chuckled, sending a surge of pain through his body. “If we can’t do it after that I’m erasing the file.”

Abra gave him a hearty salute. “Roger, Captain Froghead!”

Curt moved the cursor back to Froghead’s file, took a deep, labored breath, and hit the “A” button. 

The edges of the TV blurred and rounded as game screen warped and spun, shifting like a magic 3D picture. Nausea gripped Curt’s stomach as he realized it wasn’t just the screen that was changing, but the entire room. The eggshell walls of his apartment turned into knotted wood paneling and the floor went from gray carpet to a familiar hard cement under his feet. 

The last screen of Starsword appeared on the TV. A small, square-shaped figure with blonde hair and white armor was standing in a massive temple. Ivory pillars filled the dimly-lit room, and a long crimson carpet cut a path to a set of arched doors. 

This was it. This was where Curt’s journey ended.

He hit the “B” button and a gridded menu appeared. Froghead, the little blonde hero, was at level ninety-nine, and all his stats were maxed out. It took months to get him that strong and Curt hoped it was worth it. 

Switching over to a menu marked “ITEMS,” he scanned the list of potions. Froghead was holding the max amount of Ultralixers, Life Ethers, and Stormtonics; it had to be enough to beat the final boss.

Curt quit out of the menu, sending him back to the temple. He pushed “up” on the controller and the blonde hero moved toward the arched doors. 

Something told Curt to stop, to turn back, but he kept the button pressed until he was through to the next room.

A click. A door opening. Not in the game but from above. Curt’s stomach dropped. What time was it?

The little blonde hero reappeared in an ocean of stars. He was in outer space, standing on a floating pillar of rock.

“Curtsy?”

A voice from upstairs, feminine yet raspy. 

“Curtsy!”

He took too long to answer.

“Down here,” Curt called flatly. His stomach spun like a washing machine; he had no idea what was coming next.

The stairs creaked and groaned as a tall and slender figure entered the basement. Her features were bathed in shadow, but Curt would know that wild, stringy hair, and those piercing eyes, anywhere.

“Looks like you were down here all day, as usual,” the shadow said. “Did you go outside at all, or was it too much effort?”

The music swelled into an epic series of bleeps and bloops as a menu appeared with four options: attack, defend, magic, and item.

The shadow crossed her arms. “Did you at least do the laundry?”

Curt selected “defend” and pressed “A.”

“Hey!” The shadow snapped her fingers. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

The taste of acid filled Curt’s mouth. His eyes met the shadow’s, which were wide and ablaze with fury.

“Did you do the laundry?” The shadow asked, annunciating each word.

He decided instead on “attack,” and pressed the “A” button.

“You didn’t ask me to,” he replied.

The shadow jabbed her finger toward the laundry room. “Seriously, Curt? You have eyes! Do you think I want to come home after working all day and do laundry too? You have no consideration for me.”

“I would have done it if you’d asked me to.”

He went to the “item” option and selected an Ultralixer.

“Don’t bother,” she replied. “I’d rather do it myself than suffer through this attitude of yours.”

The shadow marched off to the laundry room, leaving Curt with a swirling stomach. He exhaled, sank into the couch, and tried to make himself small.

He selected another Ultralixer, but the shadow stormed back in before he could confirm it. Her eyes were ablaze with fury.

“You know, Curt, I work all day and come home to a pig sty! The least you could do is one load of laundry! You treat me like a second-class citizen!”

A dull ache crawled up Curt’s arm. He selected “attack” knowing full-well it wouldn’t be enough. “I don’t know what that means.”

“No, you wouldn’t know, because you spend all day down here with this game! It’s no wonder you never know what’s going on around here!”

The pain in this arm got stronger. He began to sweat, his breath growing shallow. He hit “A” on the Ultralixer, but it didn’t work.

“I’m sick of being treated this way!” the shadow said. “I don’t deserve it!”

The pain moved to his chest. His vision blurred. With no other options, he selected “defend” and curled himself up, but the shadow got right in his face.

“This is abuse, you know that?” She was screaming, a harsh, echoing sound. “I’m a prisoner in my own home because of you, you ungrateful—”

“Stop!”

A voice broke through the shadow’s tirade, startling them both. The grip around Curt’s chest loosened, and a message, one he’d had never seen before, appeared on the screen: “PLAYER 2 HAS JOINED.”

Abra! Curt had forgotten that his daughter was beside him on the sofa. 

She leaned forward, her controller gripped tightly in both hands, facing the shadow. 

“You can’t talk to him like that!” she said. “He’s just a kid!”

What did she mean? Curt hadn’t been a kid in decades. Why would she—

He suddenly noticed his reflection in the TV screen. The person staring back from the dark glass was smaller, thinner, and had a lot more hair. The eyes, however, were his. Impossibly, he was eleven again.

The shadow glared at Abra, its eyes a fierce and fiery red. “You don’t know what it’s like! He never helps me! Never!”

“If you want his help you need to ask for it,” Abra said. 

She hit a button on the controller and the shadow reared back, wincing. As Curt’s breathing slowed, he marveled at how strong her attacks were.

The shadow regained and clenched her fists. “I shouldn’t have to ask! He’s old enough to take responsibility!”

“Maybe,” Abra said, “but you can’t expect him to know what to do unless you talk to him! Yelling’s only gonna make him shut down!”

The pain in Curt’s arm was nearly gone now, with only a lingering numbness remaining. Whatever Abra was doing was making him stronger and the shadow weaker.

The shadow fell to one knee.“I’m just so tired. I’m so tired of doing everything on my own.”

Abra approached the dwindling shadow and knelt before her. “I get it, but you can’t treat him like an adult. It’s not fair. He’s not your roommate, he’s your son.”

The fire in the shadow’s eyes dimmed. Just before it vanished, it gave Curt one last look, a weary smile on its face.

Abra dropped the controller, turned to her father, and took his hands. “You’re gonna be okay now. You’re gonna be okay.”

His daughter’s words echoed over and over as the room grew brighter and brighter. Curt found himself on his back with no memory of falling. The room was so bright now that all he could see was white.  

“Dad!”

Abra appeared above him. Even through the halo of light outlining her, it was obvious she’d be crying. 

She gripped his hand like a vice. “Are you okay? Talk to me!”

“Your makeup’s running,” is all he could think to say.

She laughed and rubbed at her eye with her free palm. “I’ll fix it later.”

A man in a white shirt appeared beside Abra. He held a pen-light in Curt’s eyes. “Curt, my name’s Jimmy. You’re in an ambulance.”

An ambulance? When had that happened?

 “You had a mild coronary episode,” Jimmy continued, “but you’re going to be okay. How are you feeling?”

A “coronary episode?” Was that code for “heart attack?” If so, he should’ve felt terrible, but he didn’t. He felt light, lighter than he’d felt in years. He felt…

“Good,” he said. “I feel good.”

Jimmy nodded, “Good, that means the meds are kicking in.”

He checked Curt’s vitals and turned away, leaving he and Abra to themselves. She kissed her father on the forehead.

“Did we win?” Curt asked in a whisper.

Abra laughed. “Yeah, just before you keeled over. I called 911. I was so freaked out I thought they’d need two stretchers!”

Now it was Curt’s turn to laugh. “Thanks for your help, Abs.”

She gave him a coy look. “For beating the game, or calling 911?”

“Both, I guess,” he replied.

“You’re welcome.” 

Curt put his free arm, the one not covered in wires, around Abra. It was, of course, an illusion. His daughter certainly saved him from dying, but there was no way she defeated the shadowy memory of his long-dead mother.

“How’d you learn to play like that, anyway?” he asked her.

“Therapy,” she replied with a smirk. 

~End~