The Bad Game Read online

  The

  Bad

  Game

  Adam Millard

  Further reading by the Sinister Horror Company:

  CLASS THREE – Duncan P. Bradshaw

  CLASS FOUR: THOSE WHO SURVIVE – Duncan P. Bradshaw

  CELEBRITY CULTURE – Duncan P. Bradshaw

  PRIME DIRECTIVE – Duncan P. Bradshaw

  BURNING HOUSE – Daniel Marc Chant

  MALDICION – Daniel Marc Chant

  MR. ROBESPIERRE – Daniel Marc Chant

  BITEY BACHMAN – Kayleigh Marie Edwards

  TERROR BYTE – J. R. Park

  PUNCH – J.R Park

  UPON WAKING – J. R. Park

  GODBOMB! – Kit Power

  THE BLACK ROOM MANUSCRIPTS VOL 1 – Various

  THE BLACK ROOM MANUSCRIPTS VOL 2 – Various

  Visit SinisterHorrorCompany.com for further information on these and other titles.

  PRESENTS

  The Bad Game

  ADAM MILLARD

  THE BAD GAME

  First Published in 2016

  Copyright © Adam Millard 2016

  Written by Adam Millard

  Edited by Daniel Marc Chant and J R Park

  Published by The Sinister Horror Company

  Cover art by Vincent Hunt

  www.jesterdiablo.blogsport.co.uk

  Twitter: @jesterdiablo

  The right of Adam Millard to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks once again to Daniel Marc Chant and the entire Sinister Horror Company crew. This book is the result of the faith you had in me, even when I didn’t have much in myself. Thanks to Duncan Ralston, Justin Park, Adrian Shotbolt, Duncan P. Bradshaw, Paul M. Feeney, Kit Power, and Rich Hawkins for the unwavering support.

  Special thanks to the staff at Ginger Nuts of Horror for being so bloody fantastic. The horror scene owes you so much, and I, for one, am extremely grateful for all that you do.

  And finally, thanks to my wife, Zoe-Ray, for putting up with me and my various psychoses. You’re the best, but you already knew that.

  For all the gamers out there. Remember, it’s up, up, down, down, left, right, left for unlimited ammo.

  “Videogames are bad for you? That’s what they said about

  rock-n-roll.” —Shigeru Miyamoto

  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good

  men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

  ONE

  Pac-dot, Pac-dot, Pac-dot… the ghosts were trying to corner him, surround him on all sides, but Jamie Garrett knew precisely what to do. He had been playing this game for far too long to simply allow Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde to get the drop on him, and quickly slammed the arcade joystick to the right and down, once again leading the flickering antagonists on a merry chase—a chase which had, thus far, lasted an hour and fifteen minutes.

  Once the level was complete, Jamie reached down for his Pepsi, which sat at the base of the hulking yellow arcade machine, and straightened back up. Melted ice had rendered the drink tasteless and unappetising; Jamie couldn’t help feel that a juice would have been more suitable for this particular marathon.

  “Right,” he said, placing the insipid drink down and returning to the machine. “Next maze…”

  All around him, other machines bleeped; rock music emerged from the speakers of the newer machines, trying to lure in gamers with their unwholesome mix of ultraviolence and fleeting gameplay, perfect for those with the attention span of a goldfish, looking to steal—and then crash—some cars or beat the living daylights out of the digital representation of a prostitute. They were popular games with the tourist children looking to cause carnage without having to deal with the consequences of actual prison, but for Jamie they were about as appealing as a trip to the dentist or a severe bout of acne.

  Pac-dot, Pac-dot, Pac-dot… “Come on, Inky,” Jamie whispered, enticing the cyan ghost around a corner, toward a pink power-pellet. “Time to turn the tables.”

  Pac-Man devoured the power-pellet; the ghosts became blue and turned around, trying to put as much distance between themselves and their yellow pursuer as possible until the effects of the power-pellet wore off. At this level, Jamie knew it wouldn’t be long, and so concentrated instead on hoovering up the remaining Pac-dots while he could.

  And then there was a click, a hiss, and the screen turned black. Jamie was faced with his own reflection, and it glared back at him with an expression of utter shock. For a few seconds he simply stood there, mouth opening and shutting like a fish gasping for air, trying to figure out what had happened, where his game had gone, how to get it back…

  “Still playing this fucking dinosaur, I see,” said a voice. It came from the rear of the machine, which went a long way to explaining what had happened to Jamie’s game. “No good for you, you know?”

  Jamie closed his eyes and took deep breaths. He wasn’t in the mood for this. When he opened his eyes again, they fell upon Calum Rowe. He was leaning against the machine, turning its unattached plug over and over in his hand, as if he was only now seeing one for the first time. His uneven grin revealed two rows of discoloured teeth; a tiny buttery cemetery which hadn’t been tended for many years.

  Jamie couldn’t speak, even though he had a thousand things to say, none of which were pleasant. Instead he stood staring at his own ghostly reflection, pondering what might have been if Calum hadn’t pulled the plug.

  A personal best score?

  All 266 levels complete?

  I could have done it. I could have fucking done it!

  “Aw, don’t look so angry, Jimbo,” said Calum, dangling the disconnected plug on its cord an inch from Jamie’s face as if it were a dead rat. “I’ve just saved you a few hours of boredom. You should be thanking me, if anything—”

  “I’m not angry,” Jamie mumbled, heart racing so fast in his chest his entire body felt the effects. The arcade was no longer a warm and inviting place; in a matter of seconds it had become cold, unnerving. Jamie itched, as if the atmosphere had been unceremoniously pumped with fibreglass.

  “You look angry to me.” Calum allowed the plug to fall from his grip. It clattered against the side of the machine before hitting the ground. “Does he look angry to you, Lee?”

  “He does,” said Lee Kurtz—Calum’s partner in crime—who had appeared at the other side of the Pac-Man machine. Lee was a lot thinner than Calum, but no less menacing. “You can tell by the way he’s chewing his lip. Reckon he wants to fight you, Cal.”

  Jamie shook his head. At least he thought he did, for it had already been shaking as if independent of him. “Lads, I just want to play my g—”

  “You do realise this machine is a hazard to health and safety.” Calum patted the side of the machine with his heavily-ringed fist. “And that anyone who plays it is a fucking geek—”

  “And a virgin,” Lee added.

  “Yeah,” agreed Calum, his cemetery teeth once again on display. “Are you a virgin, Jimbo? And your mom doesn’t count.”

  Jamie thought back to earlier that day. He and his mother had stood in the kitchen eating toast and drinking tea as Elvis’ ‘Always on my Mind’ drif
ted from the crackling radio in the corner of the room. He thought about the invite she had extended to him. “It’ll be fun. You’re always going on about how bored you are of this place, and your grannie will be pleased to see you…” He thought about how he had turned down the offer of a day-trip to Grannie Dale’s, and how his mother had stormed for the car, shaking her head and mumbling incoherently.

  If I had just gone…

  “He’s picturing his mom in the nuddy,” said Calum, licking his flaky lips and drumming his fingers on the control panel of the Pac-Man machine.

  “Don’t blame him,” Lee said. “Jimbo’s mom is fit.” He thrust his hips forward into the side of the machine. “I definitely would.”

  “Why don’t you set us up with your mom, Jimbo?” Calum rubbed at the bum-fluff sitting above his top lip. It wasn’t anything like a moustache; if anything, it only served to make the idiot look dirty, as if a decent bath wouldn’t go amiss. “We promise we’ll be good to her, and I’m sure she’d appreciate it. I bet she hasn’t had a good dicking since your dad left.”

  Lee Kurtz snorted, as if this was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Jamie gritted his teeth; he didn’t want to let these cretins win and, if it came down to it, he knew he wouldn’t stand much of a chance in a fight. He was half their size, not to mention the fact there was two of them. No, better to bite his tongue than wind up taking a kicking.

  Calum leaned in until his face was barely an inch from Jamie’s. A rancid smell—like peanuts past their best washed down with a sickly-sweet milkshake—washed over him, and he closed his eyes, as if that would somehow eradicate the evil stench. “D’ya think one of the reasons your dad walked out on you was because he was ashamed of you? As a son, I mean? The way you turned out?”

  “Sounds about right to me,” Lee opined. “What kind of a fag son plays Pac-Man?”

  Jamie bit down on his tongue, so hard that it hurt. He wanted to lash out, to slam his fist into Calum’s temple. He would get at least one good punch in, and hope the shock-factor did the rest. In that moment he forgot all about the stupid game he had been playing, about how he had wasted the last hour or so; all he wanted to do was hurt Calum Rowe and Lee Kurtz. If only—

  “Who’s unplugged my machine?”

  Jamie opened his eyes at the sound of this new voice. It was a voice he knew well and, although he sounded angry, Scottie Lipman’s sudden presence eased the tension which seemed to permeate the atmosphere.

  Calum took a step away from the machine, as if butter wouldn’t melt. “It was an accident, Scottie,” he said, motioning to the disconnected plug. “Lee tripped over it and it just came out. You might want to think about getting shorter cables.”

  For a second Scottie stood there, trying to figure out if what he was being told was the truth. He was a heavy-set man, and not one with whom to fuck if you liked the way your limbs were arranged. His bald head was the icing on a very menacing cake. Both of Scottie’s arms—thicker than Jamie’s legs in places—were covered in tattoos, however the ink had faded over the years, leaving the artwork wholly indistinct. Jamie could just about discern the shape of an anchor on one arm and the light blue outline of a pair of female legs on the other, but that was all.

  Scottie regarded Lee and Calum warily, for he wasn’t a stupid man. Far from it, in fact. Scottie knew something was going on here. Had he seen it unfold from behind the cage across the room, the place where he sat day-in, day-out, handing out change and small prizes in exchange for paper tokens? Had he sought to intervene before things turned ugly? Jamie liked to think so.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and plug the machine back in?” Scottie said, his question directed at Calum, who shifted nervously on the spot.

  “I—I’ve…”

  “I’m going to count to three,” Scottie said, unblinking. “And when I get to three, that plug better be back in its socket and Pac-Man better be running around a maze, or you,” —his hand came around in a wide arc and settled upon Calum— “and your little boyfriend here are going to be barred from the arcade until further notice. Do I make myself clear?”

  Inside, Jamie smiled. This was the best thing that could have happened. Scottie was like an angel—a guardian fucking angel—here to punish the wicked, to make them see the error of their ways. This was a good place to start.

  Calum, shaking his head, bent down and recoupled the plug with the socket. “Shit, Scottie, it was an accident.” He straightened up, still shaking his head; clearly he didn’t like being told what to do. That was how he had become such a malefactor in Hemsby; he’d got away with so much for so long, he saw no harm in it. “Tell him, Jimbo.”

  Scottie turned his attention on Jamie, though the proprietor’s countenance had softened somewhat. Jamie wasn’t scared, didn’t feel he had anything to be scared of. He wasn’t the one in the wrong here. He knew that; Scottie knew that, and he knew that Scottie knew that.

  “Yeah, it was an accident,” Jamie lied. Shrugging, he added, “I wasn’t too far into the game anyway. No harm starting from the beginning.”

  Scottie nodded, though he didn’t believe a word of it. To Calum he said, “Why don’t you and your mate leave the kid alone, huh? Go and find somebody else to pester, or better yet… piss off completely.”

  Dread crept onto the faces of the two boys, as if they had just been informed that wrestling was nothing but a choreographed fraud. “You’re not banning us, are you?” Calum said, eyes like saucers. “We spend a lot of money in here, Scottie. There’s nothing else to do around this bloody town—”

  “I’m not barring you,” Scottie said. “Just leave the kid alone, okay? I have really big feet, and on the end of those feet are really big shoes. You don’t want me to break one of those shoes off in your arse, do you?”

  Guardian-fucking-angel, Jamie thought once again.

  Lee Kurtz held up a pair of skinny arms, placatory. “We was just messing with the kid, Scottie. We wasn’t gonna do nothing.”

  “Go on,” Said Scottie, motioning to the double-doors at the front of the arcade. “Piss off. You can come back in tomorrow.”

  Calum looked as if he might protest, but then thought better of it. “Come on, Lee,” he said, never once taking his eyes off Jamie. “Let’s go to the dodgems. Barry’s dad owes us a couple of free rides.”

  Lee and Calum moved toward the door; as they went, Calum flicked out a leg, knocking Jamie’s watery Pepsi cup over. Light brown liquid spread across the floor. Clearly, Calum had meant to kick the drink, but he did a good job of pretending not to notice. Once they were gone, the double-doors swinging shut behind them, Scottie sighed.

  “I’ll clean that up,” Jamie said, pointing toward the spillage. It was the least he could do; he shouldn’t have left the drink on the floor in the first place.

  Scottie ran a hand over his bald head and sniggered. “You would, too, wouldn’t you?” He glanced around the arcade, craning his neck to see over the tops of the machines. When he was satisfied the place was deserted—it was always quiet at this time in the afternoon—he gestured to the door and said, “Throw the bolts will you, Jamie. I’ve had enough for one day, and there’s a case of Hemby’s finest cider waiting for me out back.”

  “Do you have a mop?” Jamie said as he made his way across the room. He slid the top and bottom bolts into place before turning the OPEN/CLOSED sign around to signify that Scottie’s Arcade was, in fact, shut for the day.

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” Scottie said. He was behind his cage now, rifling through his jacket pocket for something. He came out with two cigarettes, held one out to Jamie. “You don’t…do you?”

  Jamie shook his head. “Mom would kick my ass,” he said. “Thanks anyway.”

  Scottie shrugged, lit one of the cigarettes with an expensive-looking Zippo and tucked the second one behind his left ear. As he exhaled a plume of blue-grey smoke into the room, creating an instant fug, he said, “So what’s the deal with those two pricks? You don’t owe them any
money, do you?”

  Jamie walked slowly through the lanes of arcade machines, entranced by the bright flashing lights and 8-bit bleeping. “They just like to give me shit,” he said.

  Scottie snorted; Jamie didn’t know what that meant at first, but then the proprietor spoke. “You know, I’ve seen kids come and go around here. Most kids are only in town for a few days—a week at most—but you locals, you, those two fucking muppets, Barry Mills, I’ve watched you grow up. You’re a good kid, Jamie, but those two… I always knew they would turn out wrong. Their dads were no-good sonofabitches, and the apple never falls far from the tree.”

  Jamie nodded and smiled. He knew Lee’s dad was serving a stretch for armed robbery, and Calum’s dad had done more bird than Bill Oddie.

  “But you… you’re different.” Scottie emerged from his cage clutching a golden tin. As he pulled its ring, the can snapped and hissed. Froth threatened to spill over the sides, but Scottie was quick and slurped at it before it had a chance. Jamie didn’t drink—except at Christmastime—but, in that moment, he wouldn’t have turned one of Scottie’s ciders down. Scottie must have read the boy’s mind. He headed back to the cage, and when he returned, he had a second can, which he held out for Jamie. “I won’t tell your mom if you don’t. Just remember to give your teeth a damn good brush when you get home.”

  Jamie accepted the can and snapped it open. He sucked away the froth before it had a chance to spill over, and then guzzled down the frosty contents.

  “Whoa, steady on, son,” Scottie said. “You’ll be pissed before teatime.”

  Jamie lowered the can, his face contorted as if he had just bit into a lemon. After a few seconds—and a lot of lip-smacking—he said, “It’s nice.” Though it wasn’t; not really. It left a funny taste in his mouth, and his tongue was now burning, as if someone had given it the once-over with sandpaper.