The school year starts tomorrow. This is an impossibility. I have moved and squished and squeezed any thought of attendance to the back of my mind. But at seven o'clock tomorrow everything would have to be unpacked.
So I push on through the desert alone. My motorbike is cherry red, and you can do wheelies by flicking the joystick in a specific way. The city is a shape on the horizon, the ground underneath my tyres uneven and bumpy.
My headphones are on, and the television points away from the door, so there is little risk of my parents finding out. Besides, I heard them snoring when I got a glass of water.
I should sleep. The boundary edge of the game is getting closer, and I have nowhere else to go. But I have to keep going, to chase away the light of the day.
The figures stand in a circle, and I cannot tell if what is on their arms is hair or feathers. This deserves investigation. A perfect reason not to go to bed.
I have to press a button to get the dialogue stated. The thick black bars that signify a cut scene envelop the sides of the television. What is strange is that the sound enters my ears, but not through the cans of my headphones.
This group reminds me of something from earlier in the game. Perhaps on a poster near the concert hall, or a news report on the radio. What they discuss is specific to myself. I know this because they describe the colour of my pyjamas.
Their deal that the night can last forever is hard to believe. The terms of this deal are even more impossible. But my options have run out. I move my character to the center of their circle, and the vibrations in the controller kick in like never before.
I travel the full length of the map three times over. The head of the gas station biker gang is dead, and the local bandits fear my name. I am a body for hire now. An assassin.
The blisters on my hands are thick and pasty like blobs of candle wax. My motorbike never runs out of petrol, and a constant snore echoes from the other room. The hair on my arms grows thicker, closer in texture to something like fur, or even feathers. And the night continues forever outside.
Line: I still cannot tell if their arms have hair or feathers on them.
