The Longest Game is an Occult Pulp Noir serial. To begin at the begin, or find your way around, see the Table of Contents.
Early afternoon: the rain god continued its drunken bender, roaring fitful torrents as it ruminated over the worst day of its life.1
Chapter 6A is now available, Chowder and Sin. You can always navigate the Table of Contents, or peruse the latest newsletter, //SHADOW.SAFARI//4.25
Eddie Brewster leapt from his seat at the beach, coin in hand. His vision went dark, ears deaf to the storm’s din. The thousand incensed little slaps of rain had ceased, leaving his wool suit wet in the silence. The red glow of a first-person shooter dimly outlined a slumped form across the empty game table. Otherwise, the arcade was empty.
“Beat it, buster! Ya think you can beat Bingo Bango Bongo?” a mechanical voice challenged in the dark. The automated enticements of an electronic game, Brewster realized.
“I’m gonna get you! -- ouch!” screamed a plastic gator, answering the arm-wrestler. Then quietude, the ambient hum of a hundred electric machines.
Brewster knew better than to linger in a place like this. The spirits were restless here in the dark. He shot off without a second glance, the same way he’d come earlier that morning before sitting down for the game of his life. The adrenaline of what he’d accomplished was just setting in. His hands shook from more than the cold.
The door chimed as he exited, passing a wire birdcage full of plastic eggs and a talkative clockwork bird. “I love the sound of money,” it enticed.
The warlock had set off for his Heart’s True Desire, which awaited him in the storm.
Though he had promised to be elsewhere, Brewster couldn’t help but stop at Edelweiss Cemetery first to sink his coin into the sodden soil. The Rat King could wait. He knew there was no need to hurry per se: the earth was not freshly turned-- it had been years. But with his prize in tow, every moment was another wasted.
Edelweiss (technically the city park) was built upon a great hill overlooking the north bank of the River Drink, the lighthouse just in view. Usually the trek from downtown to the necropolis would require a streetcar. Instead Brewster walked, strolling in and out of shadows until he arrived at the front gate. Somehow it had only taken a minute as he drifted through the in-betweens.
He was unworried someone would see a man emerge from nothing. On a day such as this, the living do not mourn the dead; As a rule they do not tend the flowers until the following fair morning, granted the flowers have not washed away. But Brewster was not of the living anymore. Not quite.
“‘Dead dreams,’ quothe Puncatillo. ‘Fester, fester, fester vast.’” Brewster’s muttered poem dropped flaccid from his upper lip to his lower, a breathfull of egg-sulfur reek stuck under his nose. The smell was awful enough that he dropped his nervous recitation of Four Philosophers. Something inside him had gone rotten.
The burial plot sat among the trees and other well-kept markers with a resplendent view of south downtown across the valley. Brewster dropped his knees to the soft muddy moss, drawing the pale gold from his breast pocket and pressing it tight to his bluing fingernails. He stopped to examine it for the first time. “A curious thing,” he told himself.
The color was not quite right and the pale yellow alloy seemed softer than typical gold. The embossed profile of a king was identifiable only by the crown above a faded face. Opposite, the relief of a city encircled by a serpent with a tail caught in the mouth. More like a dog catching its tail than dining upon it.
“Heads and tails, indeed.” He flipped the coin and wedged it into the soil among the well-kept daisies, never checking the result of his toss.
“I love the sound of money,” chirped the mechanical bird, back in the darkened arcade. “Here comes your present!”
Brewster woke up on the couch from a fitful nap, disoriented to the sounds and smells in his home. The sunlight filtering through his blurry squint meant the storm had passed, or it was the day after. He blinked, clearing his vision.
When he’d gotten home and collapsed, Brewster felt no hope. His Heart’s True Desire, waiting for him when he next woke? It was like waiting up for Santa. He could never sleep on Christmas, and yet his body finally demanded its toll, and sleep was found.
Staring at the ceiling, Brewster smelled the char from book on the stove. He’d sacrificed his favorite possession, his Four Philosophers, in order to find the Byzantine and win his prize. That much had not been a dream. There was another smell, too. Eggs over easy. Bacon. Orange juice. The smells of someone who loves you enough to flip you two pancakes. A lump rose in Brewster’s throat.
There was a blanket over his body. That was new, too.
And the sounds also harkened back Christmas. Turning his head, he saw saturated green pixels on the television. Zelda: A Link To The Past. He didn’t even own a Nintendo, not for decades. The coin had done it all.
His tears obscured the figure of the boy sitting on the floor, couch as a backrest.
“Tom?” he croaked. The boy paused his game.
“Hey, morning breath. You smell, Ed.”
It really is you. “I’ll brush my teeth, and then let’s go see Mom, okay?”
Seeing the wild gale of auburn hair, the mischief in those green eyes, Brewster realized how much he’d forgotten. The ten-year-old nodded while side-eyeing his game of Zelda. “How about you eat your breakfast first, Ed. Then we’ll see Mom?”
Brewster looked to spread on the TV tray. He’d been willing to kill for just one more day like this. He might as well enjoy it. “Missed you, Tom.”
Tom unpaused his game, the retro music resuming. “Missed you too, little bro.”