Gem Catch

Gem Catch was the current addiction. Play it until your fingers bleed, until your skeleton turns to rust. He was playing the game online the night of February 10^th 2009. The game had him so deeply entrenched into the computer screen that the noise was missed entirely.

The thud was quiet but resonating. It was 3am before his eyes parted from the screen. It could have been longer but nature's call had become too strong. As he waddled to the bathroom he crossed a hall. A window to the outside world sat at the end of the hallway. Moonlight poured through it, illuminating the black splattered glass. If it hadn't been a full moon, he'd have missed the details of the splatter entirely. He moved slowly towards the window-some instinct inside flaring up with caution.

The shape outside was stiff, jagged, and unmistakably human. The white light of the night showing the eyes to be vacant and somewhat screaming. His brain took several minutes to process those eyes and the face of his son. It burned into him: the tilt of the boy's neck upon the ground, the almost artistic spray of blood flecks turned black upon the window pane, the sickness made evident in the most foul of ways. Gem Catch being one small innocent symptom in a whole life on not being where he should have been. He cried.