childhood memories

The tiny apartment was quiet when she finally threw the door open. Her roommate wasn’t here right now. Probably working. That was just fine, she would just have to see it later. This was a fucking miracle, this fine. A gift, given to her by Gaia to give her the spark of joy she so needed to push through this awful haze. Thank you, mommy. Thank you thank you thank you. A vampire will be punched in your honor tonight.

The cartridge was set, delicately as she could manage, in the sitting room next to a positively ancient-looking CRT screen which had the requisite console sitting on top of it. She hurriedly prepared herself a bowl of the leftovers from last night’s dinner experiment (needed more curry powder) and stared at the bottle on the counter. She knew she couldn’t pour herself a drink in good conscience after being struck with such good luck. But at the same time, now she was very acutely aware of her dependence. Now she knew that if she didn’t, it would potentially not end pretty.

Fine. But Gaia is watching. She growled at her own hands as she poured the glass and took a sip. The anticipation of the tremors melted away and she relaxed physically, even though mentally she hated herself. Somehow, some way, she was going to break this habit. It just… wouldn’t be today, apparently.

She returned to the sitting room and put the cart into its console, before settling deep into her cozy, eye-searing dubstep nightmare couch. For as much as she knew it looked awful to normies, it was unbelievably comfortable. She loved it for both reasons.

The game turned on successfully, presenting her with the odd title screen featuring an alien invasion upon an old-timey street, obviously digitized from an unknown photograph. The War Against Giygas, presented nowhere else on any of the outward packaging, and a far cry from the advertising campaign used to… “promote” the game. What a weird decision, she thought, but it was the mid-90s and that was all the rage. Or so they thought, given how rare the game actually was to find. Seriously, wow. What a stroke of luck.

The characters each were named as she always used to do as a kid. Herself, her sister, an artifact from a time that was over now. Then two names to fill in the blanks. When she was young, they were just silly names she thought were funny, but as an adult it felt wrong not to also use people she knew, no matter how few those might be. Reva and Zerah would be coming on this adventure, she decided. The dog was named after a childhood pet she only faintly remembered these days, and her favorite thing was always music.

Everything looked to be in order. A placid smile crossed her face as the game began, soothing her heart in a strange way she couldn’t quite place. That sort of nostalgic joy, she supposed, of turning on an old childhood favorite. Even her sister had liked this game, back then. She didn’t seem to like much anymore, but at least there was still the memory. These days, memory was really all she had. Of back before her change. Her, Anya, and…

… and their mother.

Immediately, the mood turned somber. She hadn’t asked for the game with the big, fancy box. Their mother bought it with commission money for the two of them when they were just learning to read. An RPG was a bit much for two three year olds, but she was more than willing to read it to them. At least to start with. She backed off more once they got older and were able to read on their own, but she’d still watch sometimes. Despite what they came to know later, it wasn’t like they were unloved. Quite the opposite. Zora liked to think that deep down, both of them knew that. She sure did, and it made not being able to call her anymore all the harder.

As she went through the motions of the start of the game, her eyes drifted over to an old picture frame hanging on the wall, somewhere in the middle of a dozen or so pictures of Reva’s family. The one she stared at balefully was the last one that they had taken together before everything happened. Despite everything up to that point, for a moment, they looked genuinely happy.

… Wait. What was that?

In the picture frame’s reflection there. It looked like someone moving. But she didn’t see anything? She looked behind her just to be sure, but no one was there and she didn’t hear anything. Shit, was she starting to lose it? It might have just been a trick of the light.

Yeah, that was probably it. Don’t let it get to you, and everything will be alright.

Two hours passed. By now, her eyes were half-lidded with semi-conscious sleepiness. Rare for her, to be certain, but not unwelcome when she actually felt relaxed for once. Twoson, where the big problem was the neighboring town’s weird blue cult. Crossing the valley to go rescue her next party member, the girl named after her twin. Barely even thinking, at this point, but that was okay. Turning off the brain meat was nice, and she didn’t need to drink to turn it off. A meditative state of sorts.

One that she was, of course, shaken out of the second her character set foot where she needed to go. This… didn’t feel right at all. She didn’t remember Paula giving an impassioned speech about the dangers of being sucked into cult thinking. That definitely was not in the game as far as she knew. This was supposed to be the part where she told the player about Mr. Carpainter and gave them the Franklin Badge, wasn’t it? Where did this talk about abuse and disassociation come from? This was a little bit too real for her comfort.

Someone had fucked with this cartridge somehow. She didn’t know why they would fuck with such an extraordinarily valuable game, and it definitely wasn’t a reproduction cartridge as far as she could tell because there were still minor marks of age on it. But this seemed… way too impassioned to be just anything, and this seemed to be the only thing wrong. ROM hackers didn’t tend to do that too much. More things would have been changed. Right? Whoever did this was horribly upset about this part of the game, unless anything else was wrong.

Now, she was compelled. Now she needed to keep playing. She needed to know more.