blogwithvalor

I just finished a long drive after a concert. My body is a little achy, showing the signs of wear and tear as I get older. It’s not too bad, but younger me would have shrugged this off without a second thought. Instead, I am stretching and doing small yoga exercises to keep myself from hurting too bad over the next couple of days.

My wife and I picked up our little dog, who was graciously babysat by my sister. Sugar, our dog, is patiently sitting next to me asking for my attention, which she has been lacking the last few days. I’m going to give her all the snuggles and cuddles I can tonight. Which means, I’ll leave my next short story for tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ve got another short that was written by my wife and me back in September 22nd of 2021. It’s not complete, as you will be able to tell by the lack of ending, but I like trying to post something everyday right now. I think once my 30 shorts are done, I’ll slow down my posts.

Enjoy.

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5 Topics: Spring, First-Person, Autumn, Past, Religious/Spiritual

I wake up on my side. The pew I’m on is stiff and cold. Right in front of my face is a King James Bible and book of Hymns. Right next to them is an old pamphlet for an Easter gathering that someone must have shoved in there during a long sermon. As I sit up, I can hear my back creak from the uneasy rest. This is how it’s been for months since I ran away from home. Wake up in this abandoned church, trying to stretch out the progressively worse back aches, search the alley dumpsters for food, and make sure to avoid the people trying to kill me.

I used to live in New York. I used to have a girlfriend. I used to have a government I.D. with gold level security clearance. But now I use bibles to keep the roaches away from where I keep the food scraps I find. Besides the basics i.e. food, shower, bed to sleep in, I miss my computer the most.

It was my escape from the world. I could be anyone I wanted. I was a top notch sniper. I would cut of demons heads with a single blow. New worlds were always just around the corner. I even shared my experiences around the world. Albeit there was only ever a handful of people at most ever watching my stream, they still came from around the globe. One of those viewers became the reason I’m hiding.

I see a rat getting too close to last night’s rotisserie chicken dumpster discovery and chuck the King James with assassin level precision right above its head. It slaps the wall and startles the rodent. As it runs off, I notice the Autumn sun is barely coming in through the stained glass window of the Virgin Mary. She turns the sunlight blue and reminds me of the bright blue skies a few months ago, before I started hiding, the day everything changed.

Springtime in New York was always a welcome time in my life. I hated the cold and once the snow melted, it felt like everything was refreshed. My government job didn’t really mind that I left a little early to enjoy the daylight a little longer. ‘As long as you get the work done’ was the saying around the office.

I took the long walk home, avoiding the subway. It was really the only time I ever got outside. My girlfriend had a dog, but she lived in her own apartment. I babysat for her, once. We’d only been dating a couple months, so I don’t think she was quite ready to start trusting the life of her pet with me just yet. I called her on the walk to ask if she wanted to go out to dinner, but she had plans with her family. Secretly, that was my hope. There was a new game out that I was itching to play and tonight felt like the right time to try it out.

Once I got home, I hit the power button on the computer tower and changed into my comfortable clothes. It seemed like every other time I’ve streamed a fighting game. I gathered 4 other players for a raid. The comment section was typical; someone would try to tell me my play style was trash, there was a bot that claimed to be a woman dropping a link that was bound to give some sorry sap 3 or 4 viruses, and the casual viewer watching a new game before buying it themselves.

Since this was a new game, the raid wasn’t going so hot. One by one, the other 4 players decided to drop out. I’d pretty much given up on the idea of completing it and started thanking everyone for watching and coming up with a dumb reason for why I was going to end the stream. That’s when one of the viewers dropped a comment offering to join me. I figured why not and told them we could give it a couple tries before I had to go. It was a good excuse to keep playing and I kept up my appearance of needing to leave in case they were just too odd.

Their username was, PixyPlayground, and I wondered if they were a girl, but they never answered any questions on personal details. They even avoided joining the stream through audio. But damn, could they play.

The first raid that I barely survived with 4 other people was a cakewalk for them. They seemed to move into perfect position for dodging and countering every blow. We moved onto the next raid, and they were they played through it just as easily. I let them take on the big bads in each while I took on all the smaller enemies. It was fun just watching them move through each battle with such ease. The whole time, they barely made any comments. Just a casual, ‘GOOD JOB <3’, after each raid.

It was 4 hours later that I realized it was already dark. I still had work the next day and decided it was time to end the bloodshed. That’s when they started getting weird. You’d have thought I was breaking up a long time friendship. At first they seemed innocent enough. They just kept asking me, ‘WHY?! 😥 ‘. But every excuse I came up with was met with some childlike response of ‘JUST DON’T SLEEP’ or ‘WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO GO TO WORK?’

It was almost 10 minutes of this back and forth before I decided that this was enough and told them I was leaving. That’s when they got angry. They started insulting me and threatening me and after reading a few of the comments, I just turned everything off.

I felt a little flustered and opened my window to have a quick smoke to relax. The smoke floated away in the cool air as I stared at the billboard that had just changed on the building across the street. I always loved the loudness of the city. Being in a sea of people is like being in a sea without judgement. Check my phone to see if Britney has messaged me. Nope. Okay,