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DOOM MAGNETIC!!! - CHAPTER ONE:
THE BROTHERS CRUNK
William Pauley III
“You’re facking crazy, man! There’s no way you actually believe the shit that’s coming out your mouth, do you?” asks Divey Crunk, as he stirs a pan full of sizzling beef, onions, and green peppers. His thick Cockney accent curls over his words as he speaks. He places a lid over the pan as it heats and tosses the spatula on the countertop.
“What’s not to believe, Div? Alien Storm is the perfect game to compare Slime World with! They practically mirror each other!” says Pete, a large American man wearing clothes that are easily two sizes too small for him. He is wearing a bright red Members Only jacket, even though it’s summertime and they’ve been baking in a van, without air-conditioning, selling breakfast burritos for the last four hours. He wipes the sweat from his brow with a wad of napkins lying next to the condiments rack and places them back before anyone notices.
“Mirror each other? How so?” Divey folds one of his arms over his chest and cups his hand over his mouth, a gesture he often does just before launching physical attack.
“Come on, Div, think about it for a second. The storyline in Alien Storm is the basic ‘aliens come to Earth and we’ve got to blow them up and shit’, and—”
“My point exactly!” Divey interrupts. “The storyline in Alien Storm is completely unoriginal! It couldn’t possibly be compared to Todd’s Adventures in Slime World! And I’d like for you to notice that I’m referring to it by its proper name.”
“Holy shit, man,” Pete’s jaw drops open. He looks over at Reynold, who’s sitting in the floor playing with his Game Boy. “Dude, your brother is fucking insane. How did you survive growing up with this cock?”
Reynold shrugs his shoulders, not breaking his gaze from the Game Boy. He’s never made it this far on Lock and Chase before. Every level feels like the end to him. He feels like today just might be the day that he finally beats it.
“You know, Div,” Pete says. “Just for that, I’m going to continue our conversation referring to Alien Storm as simply Storm, just to bug the piss out of you.”
“This is hardly a conversation,” Divey says, turning his back to Pete, pouring jalapeño sauce into the skillet. “You’ve yet to make a single valid point. I may as well be talking to the facking spatula.”
“Well, I’m trying, but your rude ass keeps interrupting me!” Pete’s voice is loud and rattles the steel walls of the van.
For the next few seconds, all that’s heard is the sizzling of the burrito sauce on the stove and the sound of the squeaky tennis shoes of the burglar in Lock and Chase, as he pockets diamonds while running from the coppers.
Divey turns back to face Pete.
“Are you going to make your goddamn point or not?”
“Let me ask you this, Div. Do you think an American astronaut crash-landing on an alien planet is an original storyline?”
“No, but I wasn’t referring to that particular aspect of the plot when I said it was original. I was talking about how the hero, Todd, has to trek his way through the bowels of a slime planet using only water guns and cleansing agents to fend off his enemies. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to the bullets-to-brains approach most of these video games take these days.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that. I’m not saying the game isn’t cool as hell, in fact, I’ve always enjoyed it, I just feel like we’re getting a bit sidetracked here. I thought we were arguing over whether or not Slime and Storm were good match for a SEGA double tournament.”
“I don’t feel like we’ve sidetracked at all,” argues Divey. “That’s exactly what we’re talking about.”
“You know, I don’t think you buy into half the shit you’re saying to me right now. I think you’re just bored and want to fight. You’re not even arguing, you’re just contradicting everything I say.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you fucking are. You’re a sad, pathetic little man.”
“Whatever, Pete. We can agree to disagree then.”
The pitter patter of the Lock and Chase sneakers seems to grow louder as the conversation dies.
“Jesus, Rey, how much longer till you’ve beaten that thing? You’ve been playing all morning, man,” says Pete.
Reynold shrugs his shoulders again. “I dunno. Should be close. Don’t talk to me. You’re breaking me facking concentration.”
Pete sighs. “I’m in fucking hell with you two.”
Divey tosses a few tortillas in the oven and sets the timer for one minute. “You know, you’re never going to beat that game. The developers made it to where it goes on for infinity, using random sections of other level’s labyrinths, pieced together so that the levels all seem brand new to the player. It’s all recycled rubbish. Oldest trick in the book.”
“What? Are you serious?” Reynold says, looking up at Divey, but only for a second before his eyes bounced back to the game. He doesn’t want to believe what his brother is saying is true. Too much of his life has been invested in trying to beat that game. It has to finish sooner or later. It must.
“What? I’ve never heard of that,” says Pete. “Why the hell would they do something like that? There’s no motive. No advantage. That just seems pure evil to me.”
“Actually, Petey boy, there is a very big advantage to this strategy,” says Divey. “You see, video games like this are designed with the arcade in mind. If the designers are lucky enough to attract the attention of players amongst all the other games in the room, then they surely don’t want them to play a single round and then leave. They want to sink their claws into them. Pull them in. And what better way to trap a gamer than to make them feel like they aren’t good enough to conquer the game? The gamer falls for it every time, emptying quarter after quarter into the machine until they’re pulling their pockets inside out, desperately trying to find one last coin to finish it off. It’s an addiction. Worse than heroin, probably. The developers are too cheap to redesign the games for home play, so they just copy the code of the arcade versions, which, in turn, make the play-at-home versions just as impossible. But hey, at least you’re not wasting all that money in the arcade, right?”
“Well…bloody hell,” says Reynold, tossing the Game Boy down on the floor. “That’s facked up, man. They’re taking advantage. This is me facking life.”
“Ah, Rey, don’t listen to him. He’s full of shit,” says Pete. “This is the guy who thinks crash-landing on an alien planet is an original concept, never done before.”
Divey whips the spatula against the countertop with a sickening smack, causing Rey to flinch and cover his hands over his face for protection. Divey holds the spatula up to Pete’s second chin, as if he’s about to flip his face sunny-side-up, and says, just above a whisper, “You’ve got it all wrong, man. That’s not what I said at all.”
There’s something sinister brewing in Divey that Pete had never personally witnessed before this very moment, something demonic in his eyes, and even in the way he speaks. However, Pete’s a big boy and Divey’s just too small of a man to take seriously.
“Look, I get it, alright. You’re saying that the water guns and shit are unique. Okay, I’ll give you that, but let’s think about the other shit you use in that game: bombs, slime guns…fucking diamonds! Come on now, diamonds? You’ve got to be kidding me. Diamonds are in at least eighty-five percent of all video games, man. At the very least.”
“Whoa, did I hear you mention slime guns? How are slime guns not unique?”
“Slime guns? Are you serious, Div? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one of the bunch. You have to know that that shit has been done time and time again.”
“You’ve got to be facking kidding me! Name me a few then? Can you even think of one?!”
“Well, right off the top of my head… um…Ghostbusters 2…and ah…”
“Uh, excuse me, guys,” interrupts a man standing outside the van. “Is my food done yet? I’ve been waiting a long time. I’m kind of in a hurry.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Sorry about that,” says Divey, scooping up a pile of meat, peppers, and cheese sauce onto a hot tortilla and handing it over to the man. “Here you are, chap. Sorry about the wait. Enjoy!”
The man takes the burrito over to the rack of condiments and pours a healthy amount of hot sauce over the entirety of it.
“Anyway, so if you don’t agree with my choice of Alien Storm being an adequate pairing with Slime World, then what, dare I ask, would you choose?”
“Easy. Bio-Hazard Battle.”
“Shit, yeah. I’ll give you that. That’s a good one,” says Pete. “What about you, Rey, what would be your choice?”
Reynold is digging through the cabinets, looking for some sort of entertainment. “Uh…shit, I don’t know…maybe something like Robot Wreckage…or even Technocop.”
“Robot Wreckage?” says Pete. “Yeah, I could see that one, but Technocop is more a Streets of Rage or Battletoads/Double Dragon-type game. I’m not so sure I agree with you there.”
“I think Technocop would be the perfect game to match up with Todd’s Adventures in Slime World,” says Divey. “After all, you don’t want the exact same type of game to be paired up with it. You need something that compliments its style, not copies it.”
“And there you go, fucking contradicting me again…”
“No, I’m not, I just don’t agree with your logic one hundred percent of the time. That’s all.”
Pete waves him off and digs into his jacket pocket, pulling out a bottle of Pepto Bismol. He looks over at the man pouring hot sauce on his burrito. “These guys, they’re giving me a fucking ulcer. You best be careful with that sauce, else you’ll be chugging some of this too come a few years from now.”
He twists off the cap and takes a swig. “So how about you? You got an opinion on the matter?” He thumbs back to the Crunks who are now scraping off pans and washing dishes.
The man folds his burrito and takes a bite. “No, not really, bro. I don’t really get into all that computer game nonsense.”
Pete eyeballs the man’s oversized backpack. “Ah, an outdoors man, I see. Where you headed?”
The man seems a little confused. “Uh… we’re…I mean, I’m headed to Black Fuji.”
“Huh, Black Fuji? You don’t say…” Pete glances over at the calendar hanging by the cash register. “Funny you say that, cause that’s exactly the direction we’re headed. If you want a lift, we’d be happy to drive you there. We’ve got plenty of room.”
The man smiles and shakes his head. “No, no, thank you though, man. I appreciate it, but I couldn’t ask you to do that. I don’t even have any cash on me or nothing.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Free of charge! You’d actually be doing me a favor. I could use a little change of company, if you catch my drift.”
The man looks back at Reynold and Divey who are now arguing over which Battletoad is more skilled in hand-to-hand combat. They do not agree.
The man is silent for a few seconds before finally accepting the offer.
“Great! Hop on in. You can set your pack down over there, if you want.”
“No thanks, bro. I’d prefer to hold onto it.”
“Sure, no problems there,” Pete says, eyeing the pack in silent wonder. “Ah, so I guess I should probably introduce you to the guys then. What’s your name? I didn’t catch it.”
The man climbs up into the back of the van. “My name is Gusto Geraldo Herrera, Jr.” Divey and Reynold look over at him as if they haven’t noticed that this is the same man that has been standing outside the van for the last twenty minutes. “Sup, guys?”
Reynold and Divey nod their heads, barely acknowledging his presence, and go right back into their argument.
“That’s Reynold and that’s Divey. They’re brothers,” says Pete. “Reynold is cool, but kind of a spaz. Divey is brilliant, but impossible to talk to. Actually, both of them are a challenge to hold a conversation with…for very different reasons.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Gusto says. “And how about you, man? What’s your name?”
“I’m Pete. I’m the only normal one of the bunch,” Pete says, with a laugh.
“So…have you ever been to Tokyo?”
Paid subscribers! The next chapter of this story will be posted on May 9th! Stay tuned for Leoric.
The Brothers Crunk
© William Pauley III, 2011
All rights reserved.
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