DEAD EFFIGY

I played this game once, over a period of time. I took the name Dead Effigy, made my profile picture Bill Paxton in Near Dark, all covered in blood with a shotgun tossed over his shoulder and a gleeful grin of destruction across his face. I joined alliances, destroyed cities, stabbed everyone in the back. I laughed at hateful messages, answered with scorn and fury. I was Dead Effigy, and what I brought was dread. Five thousand kills, a hundred thousand, a million. I drove people from the game with my ruthlessness. But not everyone. Hundreds of players stayed behind to defeat my rein. This was fun, for a while. Ten million kills, fifty million. Dread. Dread.

And suddenly I stopped, hid my fortress in the far reaches of the map, moved daily, changed my name, profile photo, wiped clean all chats. The realm was in an era of peace when they found me, a peace so blind they didn't suspect my past. They were kind, accepted me into their community. I listened to their stories, their hopes for the future of the realm. They told me of their lives outside the game, of their husbands and wives, their children and jobs. Of the towns they lived in, their sicknesses and debts. They told me what helped them wake up in the morning and what drifted them off to sleep. I reassured them that things would be okay. I told them things happen for a reason. I told them lies.

But now I don’t play the game. The game has changed. It has become three dimensional. And true dread doesn’t come from the screen of a phone. People can forget that. People forget that blood moves through their veins. They only think of their blood when they need a band aid. I see the bigger picture though. My game breathes.

My name is Dead Effigy.

And my kill count climbs.

SOMETIMES THERE’S NO REASON AT ALL

I want to be haunted, but by the kind of ghost that reminds me where my keys are when they're lost, not the kind I’m stuck with - this passive image that is more of a photograph snapped in whispers than a next realm spirit, doing nothing but popping up at all the wrong times and leaving panicked lovers running for the door and ghosting on me, which is a pretty shitty term because if you’ve ever had a ghost you know they never fucking leave - I’ve moved out of cities, across the country, and the thing always shows up, sometimes giving me enough time to muster up the hope that it moved on and forgot about me, only to have it appear right at the foot of my bed, my partner and I naked and wet and short of breath, so lately I've been thinking about my dad saying, You want false hope, buy a lottery ticket and start scratching, and trying to accept that this is my life - damned to the company of a preternatural do-nothing - and I really am trying, trying to normalize it the way I’ve normalized every other fucked up thing that’s happened, but it’s hard to quell the ceaselessly repeating phrase in my dad’s voice from burrowing through my brain, saying, If you have to defend your mental health, it’s often for a reason.

Alex Rost runs a commercial printing press outside of Buffalo, NY.

Twitter: @arost154