liam’s lovely nights

By Chel Buffrey

When she’s near me my brain becomes the surface of a star. I don’t mean my mind, although it is consumed by her, but my actual head. It’s a buzzing hot. The meat encased is happy though. And the warmth trickles and extends out to my limbs, down my neck, singing as it falls toward my tailbone. I squeeze my fists as if preparing to defend myself from an attack but I’m not in a brawl, I’m in a chair, at work. I’m supposed to be entering numbers in the empty rows and columns. My Delia is in me and she’s getting snug. She’s making furniture out of offal. She’s stretching out on a waterbed fashioned out of an abscess. She’s touching herself.

“Liam,” says my boss. “You can do this.” He manages it weakly with a smile that constrains his true feelings. It’s a question disguised as a statement. You can do this? I nod. I type. My love whines petulantly. She wasn’t able to finish. Her data was drowned out by thousands of meaningless cells. It’s a violent act and I take an Aspirin.

I’m home at 7:10pm. I set myself down on my bed. I sigh. I take off my shirt. And I go to her. I turn on my PC, I launch Eternity City: Lovely Nights. On my last save, I was replaying our 2nd date. Delia and I are on a seemingly high-rise balcony. Her blonde hair is static but her sprite is positioned as if the wind is billowing. The background art is a rough and impressionistic glimpse at the sprawl of an urban paradise. Lights in greens, reds and blues shine to reveal its liveliness. But I’m not with those people, I’m with her.

Delia: I didn’t expect to fall in love in a place the sun won’t go.

You: You’re surprised you fell in love with me?

Delia: Ahahahaha~

Delia: No not that at all. I just moved here to start fresh and I guess I have. It’s all unexpected.

You: Are you saying you’re unhappy with me?

Delia: No! Not at all. I’m not upset. I can’t be. I can’t be.

You: You’re so sweet.

Delia: Thanks.

Delia Clarehart left after her brother died in a surfing accident. She’s as far from the water and cliffs as can be now, which she has nuanced feelings about. Her design is very ‘beach bimbo’ but the way she’s written reveals she’s really just a little mouse of a creature. That’s not to say she’s without convictions. Or flaws (that only endear you more to her). Up until she meets me and finds herself, she’s unsure of any path or life direction. She’s aimless and stupid and adorable and there’s nobody like her.

I click. I read. Click. I do this for hours. I like to savor some moments but I know most of them by heart now. Click-click-click. Our first fight (drama, tears, she burrows her head in my chest), first kiss (saliva strings, fireworks, drums of war), she thinks about going to college (I stop her, I never let go.) Clicking. Now I’m here. I’m at the end of the world. We’re holding hands, the narration says, but they didn’t draw my hand in this artist rendition. She’s looking back with a smile and an arm outstretched. She’s guiding me to an afterlife. White summer dress supermodel. Citrus queen. Girl number three.

Delia: I don’t need the sunshine, LIAM. You keep me warm.

The end. Black screen. My chest is clenched. There’s a pang in my heart. I’ve done this before; I’ll do it again. But each is a loss. It’s a new grief. It’s a new realization that I will never feel the sweetness that enraptured me at the very start. Every next time is further from the first time. I close the game. I sit still with shut eyes. Delia and I. Not the room with dust that gives the very air itself weighted burden. No constant bubbling from the toilet pipes without obvious cause. No guilty verdict. No stiff lower back that has become my biological white noise. No spreadsheets again tomorrow. Delia and I.

Tomorrow arrives with spreadsheets. “These are urgent, Liam,” my boss tells me. I click- click-click away. I wish each rhythmic clack of my keyboard resulted in his skull popping like a crunchy blood blister. I wish Delia breathed. I wish the fucking losers who draw her with poorly shaded tits and tongue lolling out understood her at all. I wish I had a successful career so I could take care of our children. The small brunette who works at the desk opposite me sends me intermittent glances as we both keep tapping away at our outdated iMacs. I hope she dies too.

I take the 545 bus home. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t like bus people and I don’t like being associated with bus people. The worst part is that they see me as just another bus person. I have to sit down and have everybody in this suffocating dip vessel look and think “at least I’m not that monstrosity with the milk-carton calves. He really does deserve that priority seat. At least that one will die before I do. Has he ever even finished inside a woman?” If I had any way of avoiding this, I’d take it. I have a good reason to be here. I’m going home from work. If anybody asked me, that’s what I would say.

But as the bus is paused in the cramped traffic of Kingsley Street, outside the unpleasantly vibrating window that I’m leaning against, I see a man outside. He has a large surplus green coat on, thick glasses and a smile with too many teeth. It’s not an insidious smile. It’s just an unfortunate aspect of his biology. I remember back when I had really started falling deep into Nights, when I was searching for anything to soak in. A desperate, anguishing sponge in an arid desert. I read his Reddit AMAs, his niche forum posting from a decade ago. Update blogs. Eventually his Facebook page. I had some hope for a sequel from Mr. Eric Bouras, @bouradev. And right now, he’s just standing there outside some bar.

I hail the driver. Next stop.

Somehow, I find that my body rushes to him. I swerve through the mass of pedestrian flesh in a huff. Early night has turned the sky a deep blue that couldn’t quite be called black and the street is adorned in marquee lights and lamps marking the evening city officially open for business. The surrealness of this isn’t lost on me. I could be imagining things. He doesn’t have a very miraculous face but I know it is him. I have been waiting for this all my life without ever having the conscious thought. By the time I arrive my face is drenched in wet. I look and feel like I’ve been waterboarded. I grab my wrist and scratch at the pulse as if there’s an off button I can’t quite reach.

“Are you @bouradev?” Did I just say ‘at’ out loud like I’m giving a fucking sponsorship?

He glances up from his phone. Recognition at the name in his eyes, then dread? Confusion? Hatred? Something. I can’t gauge what’s running through his exalted and driven mind. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing right now. Plenty of the other people have done this kind of thing before. The shame I feel isn’t real. It has no bearing on this situation. “Uh, yeah?” His smile is gracious. But so many teeth. I wonder how insecure he is. Does the crippling anxiety over his rodent-like set of behemoth fangs seep into the crevices of his creations? I couldn’t live like that.

What did I even do this for? What do I say? I can’t tell him the truth. “Your game changed my life. You’re brilliant.” But I do anyway. I manage to smile back, I think. I don’t have the best control over what my face just does.

Mr. Bouras’ eyes are big brown saucepans that dart around and then rest on me with a softness I’m not used to. He’s really, really grinning now. “Wow. Sorry. Being recognized is kind of a trip. Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m so happy Wittenoom resonated. That means…” He breathes in and attaches his hands to his hip. “That means a hell of a lot, man. Seriously. My night’s made.”

“No. I meant Eternity City: Lovely Nights. I meant the romance game.” I don’t even know what a Wittenoom is. It sounds like a slur. I know it is a game he made; I have looked upon the name when it’s appeared on my carefully curated feed. But I never investigated. The title does not conjure beautiful girls at all. Just ugly disaster if anything.

His already popping eyes just pop some more. And he laughs. He laughs right at me. Hideous white towers protruding from a nightmare maw. “Romance game! Sure, sure!” He pats my shoulder two times. “Glad you had fun, man. I’m waiting on someone. I should head in. Maybe they’re early.”

He turns to leave but yet again my body finds itself taking action and I’m blocking him and words are escaping from me like bile being drained from a clenching empty stomach. “I would have killed myself a year ago if I hadn’t met Delia.”

People continue to stroll by us on the street, some in the thralls of drunken stuporous laughter and conversation. Others lurch past languidly. One in particular smells and I think he is a homeless. I catch a quick glimpse of them from my periphery but my attention is focused on the gentlemen in front of me, and he to me. I want to cry and I am terrified to realize that it must be written on my face. Eric is startled, understandably. It is rare for men in our society to show such honest displays of emotion and I have just reached my climax of the heart not moments after greeting him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He’s so forlorn. “What’s your name, sir?”

“I’m Liam.”

“Liam, I’m sorry you are feeling this type of way. The world, life. It’s messy. Clinical depression…” He trails off, scratching the back of his neck the way teenage boys in movies do when they ask their girl-next-door to a smoothie bar. “But that game, man?”

What is he asking? What is he talking about? Why is he apologetic? “Yes. That game.” Of course, that game. “I just wanted you to know that your art has impacted me greatly. I thought this would be my only opportunity to. You aren’t from here and I saw you and, you know.” I shouldn’t have said that. Now he knows I know what city he isn’t from. He’s going to get the impression I’m some sort of freak. I need him to appreciate me and my sentiment.

“My art?” Thankfully he brushed past it. He really is gracious. “Look, yeah, thank you. But dude, I made that, like, for turnaround, you know how it is? Adult games are cheap and quick projects. There’s a reliable market. I was starting out. It was good for me. But you can’t hang up on that game, man. They aren’t healthy for the soul.”

“What?”

“I’m working on some things. That’s why I’m in town. Collaboration, exploration. I’m psyched, guy.” He gestures his open palm, urging me to shake it. “It’ll be early access very soon. Check it out, it’ll be real. It’ll be something.”

I grab his hand because that is what you do when invited to shake. To not do so would be a great insult. But I say, “I’m confused. I don’t get it.” I kind of chuckle and the pitch of the sound surprises me. “You don’t know what you made. You don’t know what you are to me.”

“I gotta go.”

“She’s from you. You’re all that’s real of her.” For just a moment, I have a thought to seize his hand again and place it down my pants and pump into his grip. But only a moment. I’m not going to think about that momentary thought ever again.

I don’t know how to describe the way he’s looking at me right now. “Listen, man. I generated the names on some website because I couldn’t think of anything. You’re creeping me the fuck out, like. I’m sorry. Was Shelia the butch one?” I can’t formulate an answer and he walks away from me. I’m left there in a humiliating grief. And the smelly strangers keep laughing amongst each other.

It’s 8:50pm when I arrive at my apartment. The toilet pipes nosily greet me. With a dry cough, I take off my button-down work shirt and admire the sweat stained into the fabric. I trace the round outlines with a finger. I sink down into my desk chair. I scratch at a bit of peeling leather on the arm that always bothers me. I hydrate myself with a fruit juice. I start a New Game.

Chel is a writer from Sydney, Australia. They write putrid things. They’re @chel_owl on twitter.