undefeated king of the lounge room -short story

Undefeated King Of The Lounge Room

Burning eyes caress the television screen as nimble hands run across the familiar black terrain of the Sony’s control pad. The boy playing nestles down into the brown fabric sofa, feeling and hearing his spine click refreshingly into alignment. The room with its thick green carpet smells of stale wine, cigarettes, pot and cat piss. All depending on where you sit. The smell doesn’t really assail the nose but rather just reflects total relaxation. It whispers words of encouragement at your slouching in your ear, and like the old Chinese guy that does shiatsu outside south bank, runs it’s hands in a gentle chopping motion across your shoulders.
The boy playing rests the controller on the glass topped coffee table in front of him and runs a hand though his ratty daffodil yellow hair, the dye a few weeks old showing a few good centimetres of brown regrowth. He pours himself another glass of wine from the eight dollar cask that sits at his side like an ever faithful cockerspaniel, looking like a crazed parody of an old hunting print. On the roof a ceiling fan revolves around slowly in a clumsy arc. Projecting it’s twirling image onto the bottoms of upturned cd's, so that laying on the floor amongst the rubbish and junk they look like they are playing.

He was the undefeated king of the lounge room. He clocked medal of honour two in just a day and a half. He could get 80,000 for a single trick in Tony hawk one, before manuals. He’d beaten 16 people consecutively in Jedi masters. He had all the game. Some days he did do things outside of the house. He had taken up boxing training and did it everyday for two weeks until he decided to buy knockout kings for the playstation instead. He could clock that, in a real canvas ring he couldn’t even parry a decent straight left.

The dregs of the warm wine rippled in the glass as a plane flew overhead. Outside the window a single dark brown tile slide off the roof and landed with a soft thud on the yellowing grass. There was a running bet about that window. If someone would masturbate out of it at three o’clock when the trade school three doors down was just finishing, they would get a cask. As yet no one had gone for the title.

Someone on the opposite couch was searching in between the seats for a wallet. Lately he’d been thinking that maybe there was more to life than just playing videogames. That maybe it was time to start doing other things, but no path was ever clear, he always doubted the worth of anything he undertook. Like maybe he was no good at it? And what’s the point in doing something if your no good at it.

He was in a band but they didn’t practise much. Not because they couldn’t get organised, they were all sitting in this very lounge, drinking, or demanding next go, or talking to a girlfriend in Melbourne or France on someone else’s phone. It was just that every time he wrote a song, he compared it to the words of his hero’s. Little by little comparing it to this, dissecting it with this person advice, this persons opinion, it seemed pointless to even try. What he really needed was a sign. Just one little sign to tell him that it was worth it and not a waste of time. Then he could go full steam ahead for world domination.

The control pad shook as on screen the French spy was getting filled with sub machine gun slugs from a likely looking kraut. A few more tiles slipped passed the window as the house began to shake, another plane flying over. Suddenly the beautiful black playstation, seven hundred and ninety dollars on finance, exploded in a shower of plastic, sparks and powdered roofing plaster. Resting comfortably in its place, half embedded in the thick green carpet, a gigantic and semi frozen six kilo meteor of human shit.

Every head in the room swung to look at the smirking face of Joel, who had told them not last week about airline passengers shit getting frozen to the undersides of high altitude planes, then dropping as it thaws. He just nodded ‘ your insurance, if you had any, wouldn’t cover that either. They never cover ‘acts of god’ or other weird shit like that’ he said giggling and pointing at the multi shaded and roughly brown lump. The boy sat with the controller in his hands that now seemed like it was plugged into their unwelcome houseguest. ‘what do we do now?’ he asked as another plane in the lunchtime rush roared overhead.

His bright red guitar bounced from the shaking wall and, trying to get his attention, smacked its machine heads soundly into his temple. He stared at the offending instrument that deposited itself headstock-wise on his lap, a thought dawning on him, growing slowly in his mind as he looked furrowed brow at the guitar. He stood up triumphant “hey! I’ve got an original Nintendo in my room! Lets play California games’ he hollered as he ran from the room. Someone lit up a stick of cheap incense as the smell of shit began to slowly fill the room.