Corpse and Sword
At a loss, I invited myself over Nick’s; his wife was working in the university lab all day, and he had only planned on playing video games. “Sounds perfect,” I said over the phone.
Their Hyde Park apartment reminded me of their old one in Detroit: gouged wooden floors, window views of back alley intestines, a spare room littered with synthesizers and drum pads, a near empty bookshelf. The dark clouds and the rain made all this feel like a tomb.
Nick was playing Dark Souls III, a grim game with churches of moaning undead, cities of ash, and enemies made from bones, black pus, and goat’s heads. His character was Nasari, an amalgamation of his wife’s name and his. I asked if Sarah ever watched him play.
“Not really,” Nick said. “I thought making the character look like her would get her involved, but I was wrong. She doesn’t understand why anyone would play such a difficult game where you die over and over.”
I saw Sarah’s point. A mashed-up ball of corpses rolled back and forth across a narrow hallway. Beyond that waited giant rats covered in open sores, hooded ghouls wielding scimitars, and mobs of skeletons. The goal was to beat the skeletons across a wooden bridge, then cut the
Sitting in a tattered easy chair, Nick leaned further in with each death until only the very edge of his ass was supporting his entire body. He talked about the lore of Dark Souls as he played, the world’s geography, the gameplay mechanics, the differences between the sequels. I listened and followed up with inane questions to keep conversation, but eventually I closed my eyes, stretched out on the couch, and tilted my face toward the window, the heavy cloudlight barely shining through my eyelids. I tried to relax, at least for six hours.
My efforts were such a success I almost dozed off. I asked Nick if he had any coffee. “Good timing,” he said, putting the controller down. After dying so many times, he was frustrated enough to snap the disc in two. A door in their kitchen led to a wooden fire escape, another feature that reminded me of Detroit—all my apartments had fire escapes, sometimes with platforms big enough to serve as a deck, and on summer afternoons I’d sit outside in a plastic white armchair while people cut through the alley below with wet towels on their heads.
“Those are new,” came Nick, nodding toward a fat stack of security blocks next to the door. “Landlord had to put them up after we got robbed.”
I had no idea.
“I went out for a bike ride and didn’t lock the window. When I got back, the whole place was trashed.” He carried both cups of coffee back to the living room, ducking slightly beneath the door frame.
“They stole all my video games and a couple DVDs. My old laptop. A cheap synth. Some records. Nothing irreplaceable. At first, we thought they took this $1,000 fencing sabre Sarah has, but they just left it on our bathroom floor, taking costume jewelry and a few opened lotion bottles we had on the sink, instead.”
“Sarah fences?”
“No, but her Mom did. It’s mostly a sentimental thing.”
Nick continued playing as he told me what little he knew about the robbery as Nasari made her way through a swamp with ugly frogs. A neighbor’s security camera caught glimpses of the thief. He wore a bright pink polo and entered through the kitchen door shortly after Nick left, using the open window to reach around and unlock the deadbolt. The strange part, though, was how long he had stayed in their apartment compared to the few things he stole—for just under an hour the thief stayed there before leaving with a garbage bag full of video games, costume jewelry, and opened bottles of lotion.
“How creepy,” I said, sitting on the couch with my legs crossed, sipping coffee, my mind finally engaged. “You were being watched, he knew how long you’d be gone.”
“I know. I can’t think about it for long.” Nick concentrated on the game only halfheartedly now. He and played and beaten Dark Souls before.
I lived in an apartment that was robbed, once, too, I told him. Years ago, in Detroit. On moving day, I loaded boxes in through the wooden steps of my fire escape while my neighbors across the alley, a group of men only slightly older than myself, watched me from their deck,
“After the first break in, I stayed with my parents,” I said. “It didn’t feel right knowing people had been there without my permission, people I didn’t know. When they came twice more afterward, there was nothing left to steal, and they simply ransacked the place. At that point, it didn’t feel like my apartment anymore. It was practically theirs.”
“Exactly,” said Nick. “It’s like a folktale when someone breaks in, like the burglar is a monster, not a person. They gain power over you, they’re playing by a different set of rules—they’re doing things you’ve never dreamed. At first, the best option seems to be waiting patiently for someone else to interfere, hoping the police catch them.” At this, our eyes briefly met in recognition and doubt.
“Of course, there are other options,” he continued. “You could try stopping the thief in their tracks. Install an expensive alarm system, board up your doors and windows, never leave the house, but then you’d be living in fear, not reassurance. So, you might consider buying a gun, then. You could shoot them dead, you could stand your ground. But anyone bold enough to break in while you’re home probably has a gun of their own and is expecting confrontation, if not hungry for it. Maybe you’d be the one on the wrong end of a bullet.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“No option is a guarantee, in any case. You’ll eventually slip up. You’ll get lazy, you’ll forget. You’ll realize if someone wants to break into your home, if someone wants to kill you, they can. They will. There’s nothing stopping them from doing so—only punishment after the
What about justice, I asked. What about closure.
“There is no justice,” Nick responded. “As for closure, I don’t want to say something so weak as ‘what he stole from me was peace of mind,’ but that’s what he did, and nothing could return that to me. Instead, I’m left with the threat of return. He might come back, wanting more than opened lotion bottles this time. I wake up constantly now, checking the locks on our doors and the latches on our windows at all hours of the night, always using the bathroom as an excuse. Sarah wants me to get my prostate checked. I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a 2x4 in front of the kitchen door, and I’ve been thinking of buying a gun, too, despite everything I’ve said, but that’s nearly impossible in this city, and besides, having something like that in your house only invites trouble.”
He sighed. I wasn’t sure what to say. It sounded like he was exploring his options. We listened to the now light rain on the window mixed with the ambient sounds of the game: screams, growls, moans, chains. I’d felt weak after I was robbed, too, I wanted to tell him, and wished I had done things differently instead of deserting to my parents, done something more aggressive, but before I could speak, Nick cut in:
“The point is, my life has changed beyond what was taken from me. The burglar made me realize that. I’ve spent my life as an idiot, following a set of rules I thought would keep me safe and breaking them when they didn’t feel necessary, like leaving my window unlocked on a
“When I came back from my bike ride and saw our door swinging from the hinge, I was scared. I must have stood outside for five minutes, too afraid to move, too afraid to yell. When I saw that bright pink polo on our neighbors security camera later that night, I was so angry I could have killed him. But if I saw him now, out on the street, I don’t think I would do anything at all.”
Nick quit the game in anger. He kept dying to the Dancer of the Boreal Valley, a large, thin creature that wore a veil and stalked the arena with its back hunched over, moving like water, holding two swords. The boss looked a bit like Nick, actually: tall and gangly. I could tell it wasn’t entirely his fault that he kept dying—the game kept glitching out, the camera stuck in a tight corner.
“Why wouldn’t you do anything?” I asked, surprised. I hadn’t thought of my burglary in years, but dredging it up now, I found myself still angry.
“I wouldn’t hurt anybody over something like that when it comes down to it. It wasn’t anything personal, and it was my fault. I shouldn’t have left the window unlocked. The damage is done, like I said, and chances are he’ll never come back. I’m just feeling paranoid.” He paused. “There is a third option. My only option, really—not thinking about the crime at all. Not buying a security system, not getting a gun, just forgetting. That’s the only way I can win—no, not win. Recover. The only way I can recover. Even if they catch him, which they won’t, I’ll ask
“Anyway, I need to run to Whole Foods,” Nick said, slipping his feet into Nike’s without bothering to put socks on.
Outside, the rain had spread into a fog, and with every block I wiped water off my lenses. In front of a church, a man set up a folding card table and sold small bottles of essential oils, lotions, and sticks of incense. We talked more about Dark Souls while I resisted calling Amethyst and checking in on her appointment.
The storyline, as Nick explained, is complex and fractured. What’s certain was the game took place at the waning edge of an age. A mystical fire, the source of all life, and thus the source of all death, was fading, upsetting any semblance of cosmic balance. No one, including you, could permanently die. Not by bow, bullet, disease, or germ. Not by sword. Everyone was constantly resurrected, and this unending cycle drove people mad—they went hollow, the game called it, and lost all sense of interiority, becoming mindless beings. The player’s job, Nasari’s job, was to find the mystical fire and either permanently end the age or give it the fuel needed to continue.
An oracle implies that all of this has happened before, the decline of an age, the fading of the fire, the erasure of death, and that no matter what happens at the end of the game, whether Nasari decides to extinguish or rekindle the flame, there will come a point when everything comes again, an eternal reoccurrence.
“It gets me in a real depressed mood,” Nick added with a laugh. “Things start looking bleak, like life is out of your control, and the bad times will never end.”
I couldn’t disagree with him, though I said nothing. My thoughts resisted focus as I worried about Amethyst’s appointment and wondered if, like Nick, my peace of mind was also missing, that I just didn’t know it. We passed Uncle Joe’s, a Jamaican restaurant. The first time we visited Nick and Sarah after they had moved, they treated us to a meal there; I got the jerk chicken, Amethyst the jerk catfish. A bucket of iced Red Stripes sat in the middle of the table. As we drank beer after beer, the restaurant filled until we were shouting over the others beside us. At one point, Sarah’s mom was brought up.
“How did she die?” I’d shouted. I had always assumed it was cancer, the vague assassin, but I never knew. Under the influence of the cold Red Stripes, I thought knowing the real reason would bring the four of us closer together.
“ALS,” Sarah said, with an inscrutable look on her face. After a beat, she continued telling whatever story I had interrupted.
The Whole Foods near their apartment was tiny and cramped, stuffed into the lower corner of a massive parking garage. Every shelf had a blue Amazon Prime sign with special discounts. Nick made a path straight to the bagel case, and I followed him in a half-daze. I grabbed a box of strawberry bars for Amethyst on the way, her favorite.
There was only one cashier at the front, and their line was long, despite the store feeling empty as we had moved through those desolate aisles. We continued talking about Dark Souls as we waited, but soon moved onto other topics, such as whether either of us wanted children with our wives.
A man buying a thin packet of deli ham got in line behind us. He looked unwell and wore discarded parts from Halloween costumes, like a plastic army helmet and what looked like an empty katana scabbard, though I may have just been seeing things that were on my mind. You get used to these types in a city, and at first, I paid him no attention. Soon, however, a smell creeped in: old piss, a sweet, musty smell that made me want to throw up. I stepped as far away from the man as I could, but after picking up the scent, I couldn’t shake it. I told Nick I was going to put the strawberry bars back, that I didn’t want them after all. Once away, I hovered in an aisle until I saw Nick pay for his bagels and met him by the exit doors.
The sun was setting, though the clouds hadn’t cleared, making it gloomier than ever. Sarah would be getting off soon, Nick said, which was fine; Amethyst should be done with her appointment around the same time. He waited with me while I smoked a cigarette on the sidewalk before leaving. We watched people walk by, on alert for anyone in a bright pink polo, anyone with a sword.