The Game

Part - I

The alarm clock rang, it was 6 in the morning. Aman woke up with a jerk. For a moment or so he was not sure about the day, month, year or even his own identity. It was a deep sleep for him.

The past couple of months were hectic for him at work. Multiple projects with nearby deadlines. He had really stretched at work to complete his deliverables. With the workload getting lighter, he had a sound sleep last night.

He decided to lay down in his bed for a couple of minutes before getting up. He brushed his teeth, took a cold shower and made himself some black coffee. He had a bad habit of starting his day with caffeine.

He went over to his balcony and sat down in his low height wooden chair. There was a side table with yesterday’s newspaper on it. He picked it up and decided to give it a read. After reading the headlines he decided it’s better not to start a day with depressing content.

His flat, a simple 1 BHK, was on the 13th floor, so he had a very good view from his balcony. The muddy cricket ground where a group of teenagers played during the evenings to the high rise apartments that were being constructed at a distance. There was also a local coconut tree plantation near the ground. Combining all these scenic beauty with the rising sun gave a peaceful feeling to any observer.

He sipped his coffee while looking at the scenic beauty that was in its full grandeur in front of him.

“God is truly the greatest painter”, he thought to himself.

He had taken a few days’ holiday from work to take some rest. This very thought made him very relaxed and composed. He knew he did not have to rush today from getting his morning chores done to beating the city traffic to reach the office. He felt like he had all the time in his hands.

It had been months since he had last played on his computer and he had promised himself that he would rekindle his gaming enthusiasm after his workload gets lighter. Today was the day. He wanted to use this holiday to just play on his computer and chill at home.

After sitting on his balcony for an hour or so, he went back to his room. It was already 8 o clock. He decided to have his breakfast first and then embark on his gaming journey.

Aman was a good cook. He immediately cooked his favorite breakfast - light toast bread and some scrambled eggs. There was some coffee left, he took that as well. After having his stomach full, he decided to start the gaming adventure.

His computer table looked dusty, he took out a dry cloth and started dusting the table and its contents. Dust flew here and there.

He switched on the computer. With a quick sound ,the system booted up and within a minute or so the CPU fan was hitting its max speed.

Aman couldn’t help but notice the small details that were reminding him of his past days, the numerous gaming stickers on the monitor, the RGB keyboard and mouse that he brought with his savings to enter an online gaming competition because he felt that gave him an edge, the huge anime themed desk mat that he with great effort bargained from a local shop and on top of that an external joystick that he got specifically for playing FIFA on his machine. A breeze of nostalgia swept through him.

Even though he had spent a lot of money on gaming and had devoted countless hours to games, he was never skillful in them. He wasn’t bad either but not great as well, just average.

He just realized he didn’t know what to play. He browsed through some of the games that were already installed on his system. Football, first person shooter, puzzle and racing were the genres he had. He decided to give everything a try.

After an hour or so, he was bored. None of the games got him excited. With every game he just played for a few minutes and then closed it. Aman felt sad. It seemed he had outgrown games and this is something he didn’t want to do. There was a time when things like playing games on a computer, going out with friends, playing cricket gave him joy. Now it all felt normal only. There was no passion or excitement for it. Emotions were getting sucked out of his life. He felt a void inside him.

Suddenly he caught himself getting caught in a loop of thoughts.

“No matter what, I will rekindle my gaming passion today”, he said.

With that new enthusiasm he quickly opened Google and started searching for games online.

Again the same pattern repeated, he just didn’t feel like playing anything that came up in the search results.

Half an hour passed. Aman felt exhausted. He could feel his passions and interests slowly fading away into the dark.

Suddenly while scrolling through countless pages, he came across a link that read

“A game that is cursed”.

The title piqued his interest. He opened the link. It was a link to a discussion forum. There were too many comments in the forum. Aman was already exhausted. He quickly skimmed through the comments to see whether the game was legit or some online scam.

“Great, scary, realistic, don’t play, cursed”, he muttered as he briefly read the comments.

At the footer of the page, there was the link to the installation file.

Aman pondered for a while. Although he didn’t read the comments completely, he did see some negative comments on the forum. He wasn’t sure whether he should play it or not.

He gave a sigh and closed the tab. It just wasn’t worth it. He convinced himself that he didn’t download it because it might contain viruses.

He went back to his bed and stretched himself on it. Work had really exhausted him. He could feel that. It drained his mind and as a result he was just not interested in anything anymore. It made him a machine.He could slowly feel himself getting drowned into a bottomless ocean. He closed his eyes and was caught again in a whirlpool of thoughts.

With a jerk, he woke up again from his bed and went straight to his chair and then to the forum where he saw the game and then clicked on the download link.

“I am doing this no matter what”, he said to himself