Clear Skies Over Milwaukee Chapter 1 : Not So Good Day At the Arcade.
(btw this has not been beta read)
“Good day for a run, we’ll have some perfect clear skies over Milwaukee with a high of 98 degrees and a low of-” The radio made a buzzing noise before changing channels and playing music. The arcade was full today. It’s always like this Sunday evening. A crowd of excited kids and teenagers barged in to celebrate the weekend. Jess herself was playing one of her favorites. The joystick and buttons were controlled perfectly by her hands. They had a huge smile, their eyes reflecting the screen of Street Fighter 2. Her colorful button-down shirt over their yellow and orange T-shirt somehow worked. Her hot pink shorts did not even stand out in their outfit.
She had a high score on most games in the arcade, mostly because her parents owned the place. When most kids could only play for a few tries depending on how many carters their parents gave them at the time. The energetic fifteen-year-old could play for all her heart's desires. Sure, her house was a 30-minute drive away from town, but that meant nothing when their parents were always at the arcade with them, giving her unlimited access to all her favorites. The sounds of her character hitting kicking, and beating the kid next to her were exhilarating.
“K.O!” with an immediate celebratory pose from Jess, the kid started crying. Her adrenaline from the victory subsided. His eyes were watering and his loud crying made Jess regret hitting that super cool pose.
“Hey kid, sorry… um. Hey! here.” Jess had extra coins on their person. She could always get more anyway. They put the coins in the kid’s hand. “Here, you were close to beating me!” He wasn't. “you deserve them.” The child was still crying and ran to where his mother was. The mother looked at Jess in a way Jess could not understand, subsequently the middle-aged woman turned her back, her child in her arms. Jess’s anxiety rose like water over a hot campfire. Should she have given more coins? Should she have simply let the kid win? It was only a kid. She didn't like losing but the kid had feelings too. The other kids at the arcade were judging her, right? God, she was so stupid. Made a kid cry today, such a good day at the arcade Jess!
She felt the eyes of the guests stare at her, watching their every move, every word, every push of a button. The anxiety was killing her from the inside. Before they ran out, they went to the coin machine got more coins, and speed-walked to a game in the back of the arcade. Inserted 2 coins and her mind went back to work. Pushing buttons, playing the joystick, watching the screen, watching the characters brawl, doing anything to keep her mind clear. A blank mind is a better mind Jess though. Oh wait, she wasn't thinking at all. It was just her games and their hands.
As she won more and more tickets, and ran out of coins. The place became soon almost empty. The fewer eyes the better. No more watching the screen, Jess went to the prize counter to give her father the tickets.
“Sweetheart, did you want to get anything today?” He asked cautiously, aware of his teenager's demeanor.
“No not today…” Jess planted my butt down on the floor in front of the counter to finish some homework. The arcade was about to close and there were two people left in the Arcade. One of them was a young mechanic trying to repair one of the games. Jess remembered playing that game only once as a kid. Nobody could beat it, but they did. It’s one of the only victories that they have that no one else can beat. No one was able to repair it. When playing it, it felt like her mind was completely blank. True nothingness. She was nostalgic at that, no game could beat it. It was a unique one too. But Jess couldn't remember what it was about or how they beat it. The second she beat the new arcade game, it broke indefinitely. No mechanic could ever repair it. ‘It was too complicated’ they used to say.
But that teen always tries. They always come back to try and finally fix the devil's machine, even so, the screen has never once come back to life. Sad really.
Jess wondered if she could get that feeling back, no one watching, the feeling of emptiness. The feeling of no eyes. Constantly having eyes looking at her was exhausting. She thought about playing the old Pac-Man game. Hearing the familiar music, Pac-man’s eating noises. Thus, she tried, listening to nothing, blocking those pesky thoughts away.
Suddenly she felt the blankness again complete relaxation. Then she heard it.
‘Maybe if I could redirect the power to this wire. It might turn on this button-’
“What?” She whispered to themselves.
‘Be with people, there's no one here anymore. If you want to be a person be with people!-’
‘At least this place is so empty, it lets me experiment with this technology.-
The emo boy and the young mechanic were now the only people in the room. Her father left to join his wife.
‘ ‘Since no one can find out I’m-’ ’
The two looked at Jess with confused expressions. The shock of what they had heard left a long silence in the room. Jess had a good look at the two of them. The Mechanic had, at a closer look, ashy gray skin. Their long blond hair was dirty from staying on the floor for so long, and their red button-down shirt acted as a dress, the utility belt was used to define their waist and black tights made them look smaller than they were. They also wore a bandana covering their forehead with sunglasses that covered their eyes. The bubbly teen couldn’t see their face properly and never did when they went to repair the game.
Jess realized that they recalled the mechanic's voice. They were the alien thing!
The emo boy was tall but smaller than the mechanic. He had straight black hair that covered his eyes. With his black hoody, the chain at his hips, his dark jeans, and eyes with tints of purple underneath them he was that practical definition of emo. He had an expression of concern, not concern for Jess, but with how Jess was looking at him, he knew his secret was out. His eyes a weird color-
Jess sputtered “Y-you’re a- an alien and he- he’s immortal!?” She was flaying her arms, pointing at things close to where the two were standing but never pointing directly at them. The other two tried to do two very different things faced with their secrets known by this small teenager.
The grey-skinned ones got on their knees and began begging “I’ll do whatever you want, just please. I b-beg of you don’t tell anyone!” Their eyes filled with tears, and honestly looked extremely pathetic.
The other teen-ish boy went bolting in “If you tell anyone, you’ll bet your scrawny face you’ll end up six feet underground!” He approached Jess with beast-like ferocity. Trying to grapple the tiny lady, however, the tiny hands held his arms together. Jess’s body jumped up and down in excitement.
“Oh My GOD! That’s cool! I didn't even know that kind of spooky stuff existed! Oh and Aliens, wait aliens exist too? That's awesome!” The boy in black quickly put his mouth over the girl's face, forcing them to shut up.
He looked back at the half-alien. He was surprised at the existence of extraterrestrial beings. After the rage, he became confused. How did this dumb-looking teenager know exactly what he was? He needed to find out how they knew straight away. He dragged the two left in the arcade in the bathroom in the back of the arcade. His unnatural strength carried the two over his shoulder.
Jess was hitting their face, berating themselves for acting that way. They surely hated her now. The emo kid was so mad… She and the gray-skinned mechanic were thrown on the floor, the black-haired kid began pacing around the bathroom talking to himself. The sounds of his shoes tapping the floor repeatedly filled the small toilet room. The sounds do not have any echo. The room felt cramped, and a feeling of claustrophobia hit all three of the teenagers as well the awkwardness. The silence, the walking, being in a dirty toilet in the back of an arcade, all things that would make this secret revealing situation even more awkward.
Jess felt bad for screaming out their super personal secrets, like what kind of person does that? She should've stayed quiet, she reasoned. The boy stopped in his tracks and turned his whole body to look at Jess in the eyes. “How did you know?”
The neon-colored teen had not considered finding the reasons for that knowledge herself. To focus on the two super cool people she had met the minute prior. “I don’t know, I wanted to feel… I don't know and then I heard voices coming from inside my head, and then boom! They said what you guys were, and then I figured out it was your voices.” They got up quickly from the dirty floor.
“You read our minds?” The half-alien asked. They also stand, cleaning their clothes off with a few wipes. They looked around a head taller than the boy.
“Yeah… I guess I did. I had no idea I could do something like that! I have to go tell my da-” she tried to run out of the room. The boy grabbed her wrist stopping her in their tracks. With pleading eyes, he whispered.
“You’re going to rat us out like that?” Jess felt the eyes watching her again, judging, telling her it was better if the town knew what they were. Should she trust these strangers? Well, they wouldn't be strangers if they knew their names, right?
Instead of leaving the bathroom, she walked to the wall, turned, leaned on it, and asked “I'm Jess nice to meet you! What’s your name?”
germansingergirl
kaledo-art
origamiaround
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
