The Arcade

We could hardly wait – it was going to be so awesome.

Dale’s grandpa finally bent and gave us that loan we’ve been struggling to secure for over a year. He said if the place fails, Dale can just write it out of his inheritance, call it quits, come to his senses and get back to his calling as his brother’s farmhand on the family ranch.

After all those years of dreaming, after a year of being rejected and of having to come up with other dreams – we had it. The key.

We used to love this place back when we were kids, it was the local hang out. It’s where I had my first kiss and where Dale beat the all-time record on Pac Man. Everyone in town was bummed when it closed. Some kid from one town over broke his leg playing DDR, they said, and he sued the old man so badly that no insurance company was willing to cover the place anymore.

A lot of rumors were flying around about what really happened and why it was open one day, and all boarded up with a “No Trespassing” sign the next.

Some people said the old man was using it as a torture chamber, because his victims couldn’t be heard over the humming and beeping of the ever-droning arcades; where screams for mercy blended in with the shouting of the computer-generated phrases by computer-generated characters.

There were other rumors of occult activity, mafia debt and drug raids. Everybody wondered, but nothing else ever came out about it. We just watched it sit untouched, boarded up, and forgotten.

Maybe the truth was the old man couldn’t afford the electricity, or maybe broken legs really do sky rocket the cost of insurance -- which since, with time and with the change of title, had gone down a significant amount.

Still, it was a wonder he never sold it. And the only way we were able to obtain it was through his nephew, who was now in charge of his estate, selling off everything for way below market value just to have them off his hands.

He must had finally died. He’d been a salt and pepper, gray hair old man back then, I’m surprised if he’d lived this long.

From the outside it looked almost the same as we remembered, save for a bit of weathering on the black painted façade. The technicolor mural, though peeling in a few intentional looking places, stood mostly intact, along with the bench I smoked my first cigarette on.

“Enjoy yourself it’s later than you think” hit harder now than it did as a kid, looking down at the same golden plaque that had always laid in front of that bench.

The “No Trespassing” sign was long gone, but the still boarded up windows conveyed the same message clearly on their own.

We began to peel away at the barricade in front of the entrance door with a crow bar, board by board we grew closer to seeing the state of our destiny.

And with the turn of the key…

It became apparent that the boards had not been effective in conveying that same message.

There were piles of old, musty blankets piled in corners, crushed beer cans, crusty socks and broken glass littered the floor and a faint smell of piss permeated the air, already thick with dust.

“Fuckin’ great!” Dale said, meaning exactly the opposite. Neither of us were thrilled.

I told him that I’d take care of the floor if he’d take inventory on all the machines, fire them up see how many still worked.

And so we got started.

I could hear Dale hooting and hollering over the noise of every machine he turned on, with a couple beeps and “Player one!’s” I could hear the victory in his voice as I gathered piles of garbage into one of the garbage bags we’d brought along.

As the noise grew, so did our excitement. He’d really left us everything, from Donkey Kong to the original Terminator shooting game to all kinds of pinball, Street Fighter 4 and even the cursed DDR machine.

After a while the hooting and hollering turned to shouting and insulting.

“Goddammit! Fucking homeless pricks!” I heard him yelling.

More piss, I assumed. I hoped nothing worse.

“Why the fuck break the machines? You’re sleeping in here for free, like, why not respect the property?!”

It was worse in a different way. Someone had snapped off all the knobs of the machines in the farthest, darkest corner of the arcade. Where all the “bad kids” used to hang out and do things that could only be done in the dark.

Whoever had been in here since had scratched up all the screens except for the ones they’d smashed in completely.

What the fuck?

We began pulling the machines from the wall, unplugging them and lining them up, for either repair or disposal, we’d see what the repair guy could do in the morning, but for now, I’d shovel up the dust along the wall, behind where they once stood.

And then,

Painted black like the wall and flat with it, a tiny keyhole revealed the outline of a door surrounding it.

I called for Dale. Did we have another key? Did the nephew say anything about this room? Did any of the kids back then?

He rushed over full of excitement, the key leading him to the front door.

“It’s gotta be the same key as the front door. This has got to be the master key. He didn’t give us anything else.”

It wasn’t, so we decided to pry it open.

It took a bit to even work the crow bar into the gap between the door and wall, it was so tight.

He pried and pried, wiggling the crow bar with all his might, but it wouldn’t budge.

I saw a video on how to pick a lock once. Using two bobby pins was the trick. No idea where they came from, but they worked.

And with that, and a giant rush of air, like into a giant jar we stepped, nearly banging our heads on the ceiling as we realized how low it was.

It was dim, with yellow movie theater lights glowing overhead, dark red patterned movie theater carpet below – and a red velvet curtain standing before us.

The adult game section. We could have figured.

Dale was the one to pull the curtain open, revealing a stair case rather than an array of erotic pixelated women or the inviting eyes of the strip Keno girls.

There was another door at the bottom.

Dale descended, crow bar in hand. But before he could even begin jimmying the crow bar into the jam, the door flung open on its own.

And there was a screen, not the size of a true movie theater, but rather a home theater, with 2 seats before it, strangely vintage looking VR headsets set on the end tables next to them on either side.

Dale looked for a switch, then found it’s plug unplugged and plugged it in.

Static, just static.

I had to excuse myself while Dale dug around for a remote. I was growing claustrophobic as the static began to rattle my ears, deep down through to the muscles in my neck, penetrating my throat as I stood in that little room.

I headed back upstairs to keep cleaning and taking stock, unmoved – or unnerved—by the discovery downstairs.

I finished sweeping up most of the dirt around that corner then turned my attention back to the broken machines. Of course, there wasn’t much I could do about the smashed screens but I grabbed a bottle of Windex and a towel hoping to buff out some of the superficial scratches and maybe make some of the less damaged arcades presentable enough to turn on.

I sprayed a bit directly onto one screen, wiping it, expecting to feel the cloth catch and drag over the torn plexiglass. But I felt nothing.

I could see they were scratched. And not lightly. This particular one looked as if someone had taken a pick axe to it, dragging it back and forth like the needle on a record player, tearing into the glass over and over. And yet it was smooth to the touch.

I looked closer. And I noticed something so strange.

I called downstairs to Dale, asking if he had any theories, if he’d ever heard of such a thing happening to antique arcades, that the screens would become scratched from the inside. He didn’t call back.

He wasn’t making any noise at all, and the static had silenced so I ventured back down into that room wondering if he’d figured the thing out.

As I descended the stairs, as the screen came into view, I grew to recognize a face I knew in sentiment. A salt and pepper beard, and curled mustache. Salt and pepper curled eyebrows. And kind eyes, now sad.

“Player two!” he called to me, loud and in arcade fashion, but almost regretfully.

The room was empty now.

I knew the old man on the screen.

But worse still, I knew the man next to him. Dressed in boxing garb, stuck posed with arms up as if ready to fight, bouncing to the rhythmic arcade sound track while looking around frantically, as if in hopes to escape, it was Player One: Dale Jackson.