{"id":498,"date":"2014-02-25T02:33:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T09:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/?p=498"},"modified":"2014-02-25T02:58:30","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T09:58:30","slug":"the-minotaur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/?p=498","title":{"rendered":"The Minotaur"},"content":{"rendered":"

First chapter of what will probably be a long short story, or a short novella. Horror genre, though nothing disturbing like limbs being ripped off or such. Maybe like a Stephen King type of horror. There will be errors in this like missing punctuation or words or weird and incorrect grammar. This is just a rough draft. If you dig it, let me know. <\/strong><\/p>\n

CHAPTER ONE<\/strong><\/p>\n

May 3, 1986<\/em><\/p>\n

Billy Jacobs arrived at the Circle-K ready to play. He had two full hours to kill, and he planned to unlock wizard mode on The Minotaur again. As he looped the braided stainless steel cable through his bike\u2019s frame and front wheels, then around the frame of the bike block, he replayed in his mind the one and only time he\u2019d ever achieved wizard mode. Three weeks ago today, as a matter of fact<\/em>, offered his brain while another part of it helped him clip the Schlage padlock to the anti-theft cable. Borah wasn\u2019t a hotbed of criminal activity, but if his mom ever found out he\u2019d left his bike unlocked, she\u2019d ground him from it for a month or more.<\/p>\n

Billy stood up and adjusted his backpack, light for a Monday, even for him. For the last two Mondays, he\u2019d burned through twelve dollars in quarters, The Minotaur greedily gobbling them down then laughing at him in its most insulting tone. Screw you, dude<\/em>, he thought. I beat you once. I\u2019ll beat you again<\/em>. From all around him came the booming laughter of The Minotaur, making him visibly jump just as he opened the door to the convenience store. Billy stood still for a few seconds, wondering if he\u2019d been hearing things. He decided he\u2019d psyched himself up so much for today\u2019s play that he was just letting his imagination get to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, squirt, in or out,\u201d Jimmy Garvin called to him from behind the counter, an issue of Jellies in his hand.<\/p>\n

Billy\u2019s wonder at whether the laughter had been real or not was broken by the clerk, and the mostly naked girl on the cover of the magazine. Billy had wondered more than a few times why the magazine was called Jellies, but when he asked Jimmy, the only answer ever given was wait a few more years, kid<\/em>. He entered the store and headed straight to the counter, a five dollar bill already in his hand. He slapped it on the counter as if he were a cowboy outlaw in a rough and tumble saloon.<\/p>\n

Jimmy put down the magazine and turned to the kid at the counter. He squinted at the kid and rested his hands over his hips, as if waiting to draw down in the middle of a dusty street. Billy stared at the older boy with steel in his eyes, not even flinching when Jimmy surged forward and snatched the money off the counter, feigning a punch to his face.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou gettin\u2019 brave, kid,\u201d Jimmy said in a drawl, banging on the register until the drawer popped out and he could make change. \u201cHow much you gonna lose today?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI only need two dollars today,\u201d Billy said, his voice calm, sure of success.<\/p>\n

Jimmy paused in the middle of stacking out five dollars\u2019 worth of quarters on the counter. He looked at Billy, who only nodded at him. Jimmy made a show of removing twelve of the quarters from the counter, making sure to drop them loudly into the register. He never took his eyes off the twelve year old kid on the other side of the counter as he thumbed three dollar bills out and laid them next to the quarters.<\/p>\n

Jimmy knew Billy Jacobs from the neighborhood, which meant the whole town. Borah only had a few thousand residents, and it felt smaller than that to anyone who had grown up within its sphere of influence. He knew Billy mostly because of the story of Billy\u2019s father dying when the cattle truck he was driving got T-boned by a Pacific FreightLine locomotive carrying sixty-four cars behind it. He knew about the kid\u2019s mom, a woman who seemed to have lost her mind after the accident. She\u2019d become weird, and because Billy had only been six at the time, her weirdness had begun to shape him.<\/p>\n

The kid had a round face, though he wasn\u2019t chubby in the least, a dusty baseball cap turned around backward on his head, and a t-shirt that always had a professional sports team and logo on it. Jimmy tried to remember if he\u2019d ever seen the kid wearing any other kind of shirt. By the time he realized he hadn\u2019t, Billy was long gone, finding his way into the game alcove near the back of the store. Weirdo homeschooler<\/em>, Jimmy thought to himself, deciding he\u2019d remember that later tonight when he got together with his friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d Jimmy called out to the kid just before he disappeared behind an old Asteroids Deluxe arcade cabinet. Billy stopped and looked back. \u201cYou forgot your Coke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot today,\u201d Billy said, gone from sight a second later.<\/p>\n

The clerk frowned, trying to also remember the last time the strange little kid had only asked for quarters without first grabbing an ice cold can of Coca-Cola from the cooler. Jimmy\u2019s stoner brain thought it could recall one time it had happened, and only a couple of weeks ago. The memory became stronger when he saw in his mind the flushed, frustrated, nearly enraged twelve year old stomp through the store after The Minotaur ate his last quarter.<\/p>\n

But the kid had also been\u2026 elated? Confidently furious? Righteously defeated? Jimmy stifled a cackle as he filed those away for later on as well. He\u2019d joked with his buddies about how Billy had acted like a junkie without his fix, but thinking about it now, it seemed more like The Minotaur had gotten to the kid. The Minotaur did weird things to some of the people that played it. The kid wasn\u2019t the strangest, but he was the pinball machine\u2019s most frequent customer by far.<\/p>\n

Billy Jacobs rounded the Asteroids Deluxe machine and almost bumped into the man standing in front of The Minotaur. He glared at the man\u2019s back, a suit of some kind made out of black cloth. As if in response, the suit began to wiggle back and forth, then it shot out right at him before rocketing forward. The triple ding of a multiplier target being met hit his ears at the same moment the man\u2019s exaggerated howl of triumph did. Billy stepped to the side just in case the man had to dance his way through another bonus.<\/p>\n

He looked around, annoyed that he would have to wait for this adult to finish the game before he could plug his quarters into The Minotaur. He could always play the Asteroids Deluxe game, but it was older than he was, and wasn\u2019t very interesting. On the other side of The Minotaur was Mrs. Pac-Man, which had been slightly interesting until he\u2019d figured out the pattern. It was boring to stand in front of the machine for an hour and be able to follow specific patterns on each stage to always win. The randomness of the stainless steel balls within The Minotaur, however, had no pattern.<\/p>\n

He looked at the backbox and almost snorted at the man\u2019s pathetic score. Billy decided he wouldn\u2019t have to wait very long after all, and gave the pinball machine a loving wink to let it know he, Billy Jacobs, a pinball master, a wizard even, had come to conquer it once again. Mondays had become his day with his secret love after the older delinquents had driven him away on most of the other days. The older kids clung to The Minotaur as if it were a dope dispenser, and though Billy had never taken a drug in his life, he understood the connection.<\/p>\n

They always smelled like some kind of sour cat urine, had bloodshot eyes, and though they weren\u2019t aggressive unless they\u2019d been drinking, they loved nothing more than to mess with the younger kids. He\u2019d taken his turn as the object of their juvenile torment, shamefully remembering how he\u2019d finally burst into tears after two hours of being the away<\/em> in a game of keep-away. One of the older kids, Dennis, had thrown the baseball cap on the ground and spit on it, calling Billy a fuckin\u2019 crybaby<\/em>. Then the kid with the full beard, Todd, said some ugly things about Billy\u2019s father, hoping to make him cry some more. Billy had held it in until he\u2019d made it two blocks down the street, sitting on the curb, his bike in the gutter, crying like he hadn\u2019t cried since his dad\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n

Mondays were free from all of the torment. He wondered if the juvies maybe had to go meet their probation officers all on the same day, which made him laugh out loud.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell hello there, son!\u201d the man in the suit said loudly, making Billy jump.<\/p>\n

He looked up to see the man\u2019s face only inches from his. He blinked, and suddenly the man was back to doing his little dance in front of the pinball machine, trying to use some kind of partially-physical psychic power to make the ball go where it was needed. Billy blinked again, annoyed that the man hadn\u2019t lost his ball yet. He smiled to himself as he had a little fantasy in his mind of the man stepping aside to watch him play, and having to stand there for two hours or more as Billy tore The Minotaur a new one.<\/p>\n

That fantasy branched into a slightly different one, this one his imagining how he was actually going to beat the game and unlock the wizard mode, a bonus round that had multipliers that would make the high score use every available space in all of the score boxes just to display it. The Minotaur was, according to everyone, which was everyone in Borah that frequented the Circle-K, the hardest pinball game ever created. As far as he knew, there was only one person, Zach Traynor, one of the juvies that was on probation for the fourth time in his young life already, who was anywhere near as good. And as far as he knew, Zach Traynor had never unlocked wizard mode.<\/p>\n

Billy leaned back against the Mrs. Pac-Man cabinet, adjusted his baseball cap slightly, then jammed his hands into his pockets. The Minotaur roared in fury as the man completed a 10x multiplier, hitting all six of the drop targets on the right side of the playfield. He stopped himself from vocalizing his disdain, not impressed in the least, recalling hundreds of times he\u2019d been able to crank the multiplier up over 100x. He looked up at the man\u2019s face, but he couldn\u2019t get a good look at it. In fact, he couldn\u2019t remember what the man looked like, even though their faces had been within inches of each other for a few seconds.<\/p>\n

He shifted slightly, trying to get more of a view, but the man\u2019s face seemed like a mass of boiling clouds, except his facial features were stark and had definite shape. Billy blinked and looked back at the pinball machine, wondering again if his mind was getting too psyched over the upcoming game. He chanced a quick look again at the man\u2019s face, but this time it seemed both perfectly blank and like a crazy grin he\u2019d seen some of the juvies have after smoking their dope.<\/p>\n

\u201cDammit!\u201d the man shouted, slamming his hand down on the protective glass top, a ring on one of his fingers making an even louder clacking noise.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey now!\u201d Jimmy cried out from the counter. \u201cDon\u2019t make me come over there and toss you, little dude.\u201d Jimmy estimated that he spent almost one third of his shift yelling at the kids of all ages who tried to abuse the game machines.<\/p>\n

\u201cApologies!\u201d the man said, but he was looking at Billy, a curious expression on his face, a face that was free of distortion finally.<\/p>\n

The two stared at each other, neither replying to whatever Jimmy had mumbled back at the man. The man\u2019s face began to shift again, melting into smoke and reforming into dozens, hundreds of different facial features. One second the man was black, a bushy afro and a scar running from his right eye down to his jaw, the next he was an old white man that hadn\u2019t shaved in a couple of weeks. The strange man\u2019s eyes were the most frightening, shifting from blue to red to gold and back again, almost glowing from inside his skull.<\/p>\n

Billy took it all in, but his overpowering need stuffed it all away as unimportant. \u201cAre you done?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cBilly Jacobs!\u201d the man practically screamed, as if meeting a long-lost (and rich) relative for the first time in decades. \u201cJust the young man I was hoping to see!\u201d<\/p>\n

Billy paused, hand halfway out of his pocket with two quarters resting between his fingers. \u201cDo I know you?\u201d he asked cautiously. Are you finished?<\/em> is what he really wanted to ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u2026 no, I guess you probably don\u2019t,\u201d the man said with a huge aw shucks<\/em> grin. He leaned in a little too close to Billy\u2019s personal space. \u201cBut I sure as shit know you!\u201d He leaned back quickly, then did a formal bow. \u201cI hear you\u2019re just about the best Minotaur player around these parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHmmm,\u201d Billy said noncommittally. Why the hell won\u2019t this guy get his ass out of the way?<\/em> he asked himself. I just want to play, not be your friend<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Billy Jacobs,\u201d the man said, leaning down slightly again, his voice too loud in the little alcove, \u201clet me introduce you to\u2026 me!\u201d The man laughed, a sound that almost matched The Minotaur\u2019s evil chuckle before it took away all hope by opening every floodgate that could eat your last ball. \u201cMy name is Arthur Coombs, and I’m from parts on down south, pleezdameetcha!\u201d He held out his hand to Billy, the grin on his face even larger than before.<\/p>\n

Something finally broke into that place in Billy\u2019s brain that could only process data pertaining to The Minotaur, and gave the outstretched hand a careful look. He looked at Arthur Coombs\u2019 face again, and the instant it began to shift around again, he knew he had no intention of shaking that hand. Billy didn\u2019t know exactly what it was about the man that frightened him so much suddenly, but the feeling of his bowels clenching like he had a painful gas cramp and his bladder trying to uncork and spill its contents into his jeans made him queasy.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026to meet you,\u201d Billy mumbled, trying to keep from soiling himself. GO AWAY!<\/p>\n

Arthur Coombs, didn\u2019t look offended at all. In fact, he looked downright maniacal. \u201cWell, Billy, I myself am just about the greatest pinball master in the entire world. The world<\/em>, Billy. Not just Dirt Clod, Idaho. Some might even call me a wizard.\u201d The way Coombs said it made it sound like it was either equal to being labeled Jesus, or being called a murderer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard about you, how you are also a master, maybe even a wizard. And so I\u2019ve traveled to the middle of nowhere to challenge you to a game of The Minotaur.\u201d Coombs waved his left hand back and forth a couple of times, two quarters appearing between his fingers when the movement stopped. He did the same with his right, two more quarters appearing. \u201cI\u2019ll even cover the cost,\u201d he said, his grin so bright that it almost hurt Billy\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSure.\u201d It was the only thing Billy Jacobs could say, his desire to play The Minotaur still greater than his fear of whatever the man in front of him was.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First chapter of what will probably be a long short story, or a short novella. Horror genre, though nothing disturbing like limbs being ripped off or such. Maybe like a Stephen King type of horror. There will be errors in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[182,183,84,69,180,33,184,185,181],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angrygames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}