We are, “together”

Shut and secure, with headphones placed safely and tightly on both ears, disconnecting them from the outside world but placing them strictly in another. The wide, black, curtains were neatly tucked around the window, blocking any distraction of the passing of the day. Just the digital clock in the corner of the screen reminded them what hour it was. What day. Month. Because it’s been months since Alex left. Since they grew into that gaming chair, moving just for the main three necessities: food, toilet and sleep. But even the last one managed to catch them at their desk. Their eyelids would shut, suddenly, leaving them with their cheek slapped on the keyboard.

Their parents were desperate. Their mother cried and yell at them from the other side of the door.

Hannah knew how Alex felt.

They talked, a couple of times, through the chat. Her eyes fooled her as well and closed unexpectedly, once or twice, but she didn’t have balance. She fell on the floor, not even waking up at the impact. Fainting, more that falling asleep. Falling to the side and staying there for some time. But she didn’t have the mother crying under her door. She was alone, she told him, living of what they left her when they died.

Alex thought it was convenient.

She thought it was, too.

Just Ricky thought it was a bit insensible.

But Ricky seemed more family oriented. He choose the character of a healer, they are softer. Less driven to the battle, more to the safety. He knew it. He knew even before starting to create the character. But there are no good rankers without a healer. You die and you revive, and the more you die and revive the more your opponents freak out.

But Ricky couldn’t talk with his family. They were sleeping at night, he was awake. During the day it was the opposite. Sometimes his little sister would wake up and come near his door and tell him what happened at school. She’d brought snacks and water.

“You’ll get dehydrated,” she said. And she was probably right.

Every single one of them, though, loved their solitude. All of them, all the same, hated it as well.

Because Alex knew that it wasn’t the same. The people out there and them. They opened the window a couple of times, to breath in the freshness of the air and a faint smell of gasoline from the street nearby. Different. It was different than their stuffy room, adorned with empty red bull cans and empty packs of crisps. Plates that their mother brought them and left under the door that they’d sneak inside and forgot to leave out once finished. She started to give them the paper ones instead. Many of them were piled on their bedside table.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t escape. They were scared of escaping. It was all a matter of dull and anxiety. Fear and emptiness.

Ricky was hiding. He was a good healer, it was in his character. Hiding from his father and his friends, but he never told anyone. It was hard to admit that the words managed to cut deeper than a fist in the face. Or that he was afraid. Afraid to break down in front of them, admit his defeat and crawl at their feet. Avoid the lost, he’d say, and run if you can’t win. He couldn’t. There was no possible outcome where he would see himself victorious. And hiding wasn’t a victory, but at least he didn’t have to run.

And Hannah was alone. She could wander around her house, making the dust mites as she passed. She’d clean once in a while and she’d lay on the wooden floor, staring at the lamp above her shaking softly because of the movement of the fan. There were no chances that it would fall. It was new and hooked in properly but yet, maybe it would. Because she was alone in there and she was alone out there as well. And she was glad that her mother wasn’t crying but at the same time the though made her feel like crying.

They had each other in the chat. They were covering each other’s shoulders during the fights. But that was all that they had. Four walls and a fluttering connection.

The fear and loneliness was what drove them together. Frustration and anxiety glued them together, in front of their screens, reflecting the colours in their irises, hiding their presence behind their lifeless avatars.