Computer Games

Computer Games

Crouching behind a twisted chunk of metal, I waited for the mortar blasts to subside. As soon as I could not hear the thunderous roar of explosions, I ducked out of my hiding place and ran up the beach. The whining ring of a bullet sounded through the silence, and I looked to see where the gunner was hiding. The enemy locked another bullet into the chamber and fired his scoped rifle. The bullet met flesh, and I fell to the ground.

Only minutes before Willis and I had been sitting on the couch, listening to loud punk music. It was too hot outside to do anything, and the flies were out anyway. Inside was cooler and more hospitable, but boredom had set in. "Day of Defeat?" asked Willis in a muted drawl. "Yah," I responded, and bounded up the stairs. Within minutes, Willis and I had booted up his computer, connected to the internet, and logged onto a clan server of Day of Defeat. Suddenly we were not in the messy upstairs of Willis' house, but on a virtual battlefield, slowly working up towards an enemy encampment up the beach. In a matter of seconds I was killed by an enemy sniper, who was carefully protecting his team's base, Willis took over, choosing a more accurate rifle over the clunky machine gun I had chosen.

Willis' computer desk was a heap of gaming equipment and disks. On the shelf above the desk, a row of outdated games were lined up with surgical precision. The old games were never used, so they were never out of order. Below the shelf, on the desk, lay a stack of new games, their wrappers and cases, handbooks and strategy guides. A PC Gamer magazine lay in among the countless piles of demo disks Willis had picked up here and there. Rising from the mess was the brand new Elements 19-inch monitor, emitting a cold, bluish glow. The keyboard sported a custom key cover, changing the standard set of keys into the control panel of a complex helicopter, and the W, A, D and S keys-- the keys which are commonly used to control a character-- were smudges and worn down compared to the rest of the clean new keys. The brand new high accuracy optical mouse glowed a dull reddish color, and sat on top of a cat-theme mouse pad Willis' dad had bought.