SWW Productions: "GOX" Part 3: Dead Game Dead Dreams...

See me?

I see you...

MY little eye...

My brewing eye...

I am waiting for you...

KEEP PLAYING.

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There was one ingredient that was essential to aid in the suffering of the ongoing flow of a game like GOX and that was coffee.

Lots and lots of that stuff gushing down the throat it was the only way.

The spooky face that haunted the game had gone away.

There were no more eerie messages.

Greg thought it was all a hoax by the programmer - Greg was starting to believe that the messages meant nothing and that there really was no grand mystery behind GOX at all it was just a trash piece of game put together by a madman - or maybe just a man with nothing else better to do...

...Or maybe the was the dragon lady! Maybe she built the game to drive Greg insane!

It was a possibility?

The dragon lady was going to have her revenge!

O the horror!

Greg's head was hurting bad - he cursed the spiced wine - 'Darn that spiced wine! Pete's Dad put something evil in that stuff! Never again...' Greg vowed, 'never...'

And then Greg decided to get drunk.

It was the only thing to do.

But first he had to face the most miserable period of the day - 5pm dinner time with his folks. Dinner time meant emerging from his bedroom, and sitting at the table eating a cheap microwave meal and actually interacting with his family.

This was not a good thing for Greg - a man who preferred the company of pixels over real human beings.

But it had to be done.

He heard his mother call him to the table downstairs and Greg sadly rose to heed the call to duty.

It was a sad moment for Greg as he slowly stomped down the stairs towards the ominous glow of the dining room - the room where so many unhappy memories of old were stored... Like foul gases festering in a jar - that was how the dining room was to our boy Greg.

"O well let's get this over with. I wonder what kind of wonderful lecture I will be getting today from my old folks... Darn it! And here I am trying to live the best life I can in my own bedroom. I don't commit crimes... I don't cause any trouble... I just play video games! What's wrong with the world! Why don't my boomer folks just grow up and leave me be? The 1970s ended years ago! I am just a quiet well behave lad..."

'What is this I hear about you harassing an innocent woman!' his mother screamed before Greg even had chance to reach the table. 'I didn't raise you to be like this!' she bellowed on. 'I raised you to be respectful!'

"What's she going on about now? O no! Dragon lady has been wobbling her tongue! Damn it! I can't get away with anything these days!"

His mother scanned him with her hateful eyes.

But Greg didn't utter a word - no. He was far to embarrassed to speak about anything in that horrible time.

In despair mother looked around. She looked at Greg's Dad sitting across the room and snaped:

'Well! Have you got anything to say about this? He is your bloody son as well!'

Dad shrugged. He was sitting in his old wooden chair, the same chair dented by his Dad before him, dirty smoke hanging over his lips and a beer bottle in his word but not a word on his tongue. Not a word.

Finally Dad stood up and walked into the living room - quiet as a pebble - not a word.

Not a word.

'Well I am not letting you get away with this,' mother rolled on. She gave Greg a good clean smack across the left cheek of his face. 'You are going to be punished do you hear me boy?' She then smacked his right cheek. 'You are a disgrace to this family do you understand? A waster and a waste of space that is what you are! You need a good hard kick up the backside! I hope that woman you harassed contacts the police and they arrest you! A stint in jail would do you good, boy. It would straighten you out, toughen you up, make you see all the evil you have brought upon this poor family! You are a utterly hopeless case. You are addled! Why I would ground you if I thought it would do you any good. But NO! You would like that wouldn't you? The perfect excuse to spend all day in your bedroom! NO! I will not ground you! I will not make you happy! NO!' she screamed again. 'I am going to kick you out! Yeah! You are going to spend a WHOLE day on the streets outside in the real world do you hear me boy? Now get out and do not come back until tomorrow morning! You had better hope I calm down by tomorrow morning my boy otherwise - well - I might just report you to the police myself for your wicked crimes!'

Just at that moment little sister Lili fell through door. She had been away for two days with her girl friends and was as soaked as lump of soap. Without speaking a single syllable she ran over in a crouched formation and vomited right into Greg's lap. Thirty seconds later, just as the horror of what had happened was setting in, Lili's best friend Jen ran upstairs and confusing Greg's bedroom for the bathroom openly slashed in the corner of the room - soaking the carpets through and through.

Greg didn't know it at the time but his sister had saved him.

There was no way that his mother was going to throw him outside not when he was in a mess like that. He was told to put on a clean pair of trousers and after that sent packing upstairs. Mother stopped hating him for a second or three and was now turning her full attention to the other thorn in her flesh - her indomitable daughter. You could hear them shouting at one another everywhere in the house.

Back in his bedroom Greg got on with things.

He sent a message to his mate Pete which rolled with these words:

"Head on over to my place right now! I have something to show you. Bring booze - whatever is at hand. More of that wine if you can get some... You know the stuff that your Dad spiked. Bring some over. I need more of it right now. Just had a MASSIVE clash with my Mum - real BAD. Need to get drunk NOW. O yeah. Bring booze. See you in a minute."

So Pete turned up with the booze, and with a bruise.

Greg asked Pete what the business was with the broken flesh around his eyes.

'The last few days have been a pure nightmare for me, mate,' Pete replied. 'Dragon lady! She chased me down the road with a stick! She got me arrested in the end! I was locked up for a whole day! They said it was for harassment or something like that.'

'A whole day? Darn! Why is it always the good ones that get it?'

'Yeah. You have got real criminals out there, Mafia and the sort, but yet they arrest me? Damn!'

'You got roughed up good I guess?'

'Real good,' said Pete sombrely. 'I was only in there for a day but it was enough. When the lads got their hands on me well it was fists to the face and all that stuff. Then they stretched me out and kicked me in the guts. Sore all over right now, but at least I am free I guess. Free for now anyway. I need booze.'

'Crack open a bottle and let's get going,' said Greg. 'Now listen up mate because what I am about to say is life and death important. My following words relate very much to our mission. I have been playing GOX all day.'

'No way? Is that even humanly possible?' said Pete.

'It is now,' said Greg. 'I was playing it and I was getting all of these weird really creepy messages. And then they stopped suddenly. I was so disappointed. I started to think the game was a joke - a troll game. A piece of crap. I started thinking all negative, you know? I began to feel doubtful about the whole affair. I thought I was maybe looking into the game too much, and that there wasn't really a message inside the game not really. I thought I was just seeing things and that my imagine was just ticking and tricking, like it does sometimes when you are bored. I kept playing I kept clicking, all the while time was ticking. An hour ago I convinced myself that GOX was a massive lie! And then an hour ago the creepy face returned to the screen! It flickered, shimmered, there was all of this fairy dust on the screen. Spooky! And then there was this picture, look, I printed it out. What do you think?'

It was a photo of an old house.

'Looks like a house to me mate,' said Pete.

'Obviously it is! But what if this is the place where the game was made?' said Greg. 'Or what if it is the place where a possible murder took place... What if this house is the heart of the mystery?'

'Well it is something to think about,' said Pete. Pete was definitely interested in the GOX mystery. But he was also interested in booze as well.

'We have got to find this house, mate,' said Greg excitedly. 'It is out there I know it. We will catch a bus or something and go on a trip!'

'I am a bit too nervous to stray too far from my home...' Pete admitted with a stammer or three.

'Don't worry about nerves! Look at me! I am the most anxious man in town! We will get drunk first. The booze will kiss the nerves goodbye! And when we are good and lozy enough we will get up and get out! Got more wine? Here let's have a drink and celebrate to GOX!'

Pete tossed over a bottle. Greg caught it in mid air, and once the bottle snapped in his hand he read the label:

70% proof G-Juice - THIS IS THE NASTY STUFF - and in brackets (Don't drink not even if one is even mildly insane).

Greg and Pete drunk the whole bottle in one fine little sitting.

Pete wobbled home and Greg played GOX some more until the young man started to sober up.

Now it was time to ride out the THE LIVING HELL - or just hangover to others.

The most evil thing about booze was the sober effect. That thing was an unfair beast when it was ready to kick back in!

Hangovers hit Greg in the guts like a furry ridden mule.

Greg made the crawl to bed...

His bed was his dark stallion and it was time for him to ride that wild thing for twelve hours all the way through the foul underbelly of the Dark World.

Then came the shakes. And then the sweats. And then finally the hallucinations and the false awakenings.

G-Juice was notorious for giving out those quick and without mercy.

"God forgive me! Shadows in my room! SHADOWS! Demons! Why does this always happen? HELP!"

Now the real hell was about to begin - just as the darkness was setting in...

Greg woke up and saw a man with a dog looking at him through a mirror.

Greg woke up and saw monk reading from a paper.

Greg woke up and there was a witch sitting on the edge of his bed.

Greg woke up and vomited in his paperbin - that awakening was actually for real.

Greg started to cool down.

His bedroom stank heavily of urea - but it wasn't his it was Jen's... No one had cleaned his room since and Greg certainly wasn't about to do it.

No sir not that!

Greg took another sip of the wine...