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The Gamer

A Gamer short story

By James CrawfordPublished 2 years ago 6 min read
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The Gamer
Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash

Approaching his station of dominance, The Gamer already feels the excitement of the experience. Pressing the power button to his computational beast, The Gamer happily watches his custom-built, RGB glow of his gaming tower breath electrical life once again.

Being greeted by BIOS screens, and the eventual encouragement of his operating system to “please wait”, The Gamer grows all the more inpatient. As if the machine was purposely prolonging the inevitable bombshell of dopamine.

Finally The Gamer thought to himself. It took long enough to sign on.

As further considerations of systems upgrades flooded his mind, they also left just as quickly. The system’s main UI loaded soon after The Gamer mashed his password into his keyboard. Convincing The Gamer that, perhaps, said upgrades dancing in his mind could wait a bit longer.

Pretty soon, The Gamer was immersed in his video game of choice. Well, one of his “games of choices”. Usually sticking to the genre of battle royale, there’s currently a decent handful of titles to hop between.

Unfortunately, most of the titles has large upgrades in his gaming software’s download queue. The other titles “of choice” would have to wait for another session.

Let’s lock and load The Gamer thought to himself as he joined a waitlist with other online gamers waiting to get into an active game. After an eternity later of waiting and customizing his loadout, The Gamer finally received an alert on-screen that an available session was ready.

The Gamer hurried his mouse across the screen to the large, neon green I’m ready button in the bottom-right of his monitor.

“Let’s go boys! LET’S YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET THESE SCRUBS INTO NOOBTOWN!” The Gamer yelled into his headset. Followed by some other taunts and possibly vulgar statements.

The match began. The Gamer waited for no virtual playable character as he sprinted towards the nearest house, known to have decent drop chests.

Kicking in the door, he was soon met with some bullets that scrabbed some health points as they peppered his avatar’s head and chest. The Gamer tuck-and-rolled behind a wall separating what seemed be the mud room and the kitchen.

He peeked out from behind the wall but no one was there. Waiting for a few seconds, he decided to dash into the open. Sliding behind the cover of the kitchen island, he soon realized that the player wasn’t in the kitchen or the adjacent living room.

This means, the player might have gone for the drop chest.

He hurried towards the nearby stairs heading up to the 2nd floor. Hoping that more bullets didn’t await him as he dashed behind a desk at the top of the stairs, which lead to a long hallway.

There were 3 doors, 2 on the left and 1 on the right.

Okay… here we go

His encouraging thought push his first virtual foot forward as he slowly creeped forward. Making sure the opposing gamer didn’t hear his footsteps.

The Gamer peeked into the first room. Nothing. Checked the second room. Nothing. Just as he finally crossed the doorway of the third one, he froze.

The other gamer was there. Standing still. Looking directly at him.

Not firing.

After a few seconds, The Gamer realized this fool was either too busy looking in his inventory or was AFK due to a full bladder.

Either way, The Gamer made quick work of him, especially one he realized the other player was really low on health.

Gathering the spoils of the “fight”, The Gamer hurriedly adjusted his inventory and equipped his weapons behind cover.

What a fool The Gamer remarked to himself Why would he fire at someone, grab the loot then take a leak?

“Hey guys” he said to his party “Are you guys seeing a lot of AFKs?”

“Not yet” one of his party members said.

“I mean, this pleb wasn’t even trying to hide! Grabbed the loot and just stood there like he had issues.”

The Gamer made his way to another house. A bit more cocky in his steps as a result of his elementary win with the absent player, plus his nice loot.

However, fate only seemed to leave The Gamer just as quick as a sniper bullet dug itself into his avatar’s leg. Slicing his total health points in half.

“Damn!” yelled The Gamer, followed by much more choice words as he dived into the next house’s back door. Franticly browsing through his inventory, a few health packs was found and consumed. Bringing him back to full health.

He made his way over to the main window in the living room, never leaving cover the whole time.

“Did any of you see the origin?!?!” The Gamer yelled, expecting any sort of answer from his party.

“No” one of the party members said after the other. “You down?”

“Nah, I’m good” assured The Gamer. “I’m thinking the sniper’s in the tree near the house on the upper hill. South east of me.”

“Okay” they all said at once.

Soon, The Gamer spotted his party members making their way up the hill from different directions. He soon joined the chase.

All 4 of them raced up the hill, jumping from bush to piles of household junk to decaying cars. Soon, they met at the house, check the supposed origin of the sniper.

Soon, another bullet hit one of the party members. Followed by another.

The party member was down.

“Get in the house!” yelled The Gamer as they ran inside. They all quickly made their way up the stairs to find where the sniper was camping on the roof.

The rain of bullets that met the first party member at the top of the stairs threw this hypothesis down the stairs. Along with the member’s motionless avatar.

“DIIIIE!” The Gamer ran up and returned fire while sliding to cover in one of the upstairs bathroom. The sniper returned the favor again but these bullets didn’t go anywhere useful.

The remaining two party members decided to run past The Gamer in attempts flank the sniper. One met the sharp end of a thrown combat knife, falling on his virtual face. The other was blasted into oblivion with a well-timed hand grenade.

I’m screwed The Gamer thought to himself as he reloaded the fully automatic rifle and weighed his options. He decided to simply hide behind the open door to the bathroom he was in. Perhaps spraying the sniper with ammo might let him survive a bit longer.

The Gamer also just realized that only he and the sniper remained in this match. He almost decided to rush the sniper himself, but decided not to.

Hearing soft footsteps in the hall caused The Gamer to ready himself up.

First, a hand grenade was thrown in the room. It landed at the far side behind the toilet, where the blast hardly touched The Gamer, but did launch the Toilet asset into the roof and got stuck. Only seconds later, did the toilet finally smash to bits while floating in the ceiling.

Ah… glitches The Gamer said to himself with a grin.

Second, a smoke grenade was tossed in. After that went off, the haze was quite thick but not thick enough for the sniper to camouflage his figure amongst it.

The Gamer squeezed his trigger as soon as he saw something moving past the open door. At first, he didn’t hit anything but the red damage indicator on his UI soon guided his aim towards the sniper’s location in the room.

The next two seconds dragged on, but eventually a large “WINNER WINNER” text flashed across The Gamer’s screen as he emptied the sniper of all his health points.

“WOOOOO!” The Gamer exclaimed as he celebrated for a few minutes with his party in the post-match lobby. This followed by leaving his gaming station to empty his own bladder in the real world.

He soon returned to his wating gaming rig. It wasn’t long before he was queued up in another match and continued the onslaught of unlucky “noobs”.

fact or fiction
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About the Creator

James Crawford

Just a simple Christian/techie/gamer that also goes by the musical artist name "newbjamsir" as well as "newbpcsir" on Twitch and YouTube. You could say I've got a thing for music, gaming, sci-fi, technology and writing stuff.

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