He brought the pistol up to shoulder level, let his right hand fingers wrap smoothly around it, put

the palm of his

left hand on the butt for support. The gunwas light in his hand as he swung it from left to right, clearing the perimeter
while he zoomed into the grocery store.
He’d been through this before, but he still tensed as he slid through the store’s shattered glass door. He went
over the mission’s specs in his head: at least 30 perps in the store, plus three employees still inside.
Bang bang bang, three to the chest. Reload. One had jumped in front of him as he stepped through the diaper
aisle. Next aisle, canned goods, three perps, one holding a knife to a hostage. His arm glided from left to right, bang bang,
two in the chest, perp down. Bang, headshot. Reload. Last crook on the right with the hostage: one to the leg,hostage
runs, bang, headshot. Reload.
He went through the rest of the grocery in the same methodical manner. Bang bang bang, reload; bang bang
bang, reload; bang bang bang, reload; it was a rhythm that he’d developed over the years. Cutting down the perps gave
him a rush, but hisadrenaline got pumping whenever there was a hostage to save.
As he went through the cashier’s counters he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears and feel the pistol
getting slippery from his sweating palm. One more hostage, he thought.
Bang, ugh, he’d taken a hit. A thug had popped up from behind a counter withthe hostage. While the woman
struggled against him the thug raised his arm to takeaim again. Bang bangbang, reload.
ALL HOSTAGES SAVED. He smiled, put the pistol back in his holster and wiped his palms on his pants. He
watched onscreen as his statistics were tallied: Hits Taken: 1; Hostages Saved: 3; Shots Taken: 105; Hits: 97; Accuracy:
92%. Not bad, he said to himself.
He left the machine and paced around the empty arcade trying to decide what enemies he’d face next. He took
the nylon string necklace that served as a key chainoff. In his right hand he played with the master key, sliding it through
his fingers. With it he was the master of the arcade; with one turn of the key he could become Spiderman or Cyclops, a
World War II pilot, an F-1 racer; or he could take up a gun and shoot down secret agents, terrorists, terminators,
zombies, dinosaurs. He played almost all the games, and the games where there were people to save drew him most.
He put the key into the slot, turned it, and put the key back around his neck. His hands slid onto the keypad;
right hand fingers crawling over the buttons, left hand wrapping around the joystick. Staring into the screen he could see
his reflection at first, but as the game started he felt his image fading, replaced by the action onscreen.
__________
He couldn’t remember what drew him first to the arcade anymore. He couldn’t remember what, but he
remembered well when.
He was seven, walking down the street with his father. All the stores on the street were brightly lit, except for
one that was dark black with flashing lights. Passing it he could hear explosions and clanks and booms and pops and
bangs and pows.
They went in and he walked through the aisles of the arcade peering up and barely seeing the screens. The place
was full of boys hunched over the machines tapping away at the buttons and swinging joysticks, their bodies twisting to
the unusual rhythms of the games they were playing.
His father brought him a chair to stand on so he could reach the keypad. With his father standing behind him he
began his first game, Space Invaders. He died quickly, his spaceship crashing against alien ships. His father put in another
quarter. He died again. Then another. And on his last quarter the coin slot jammed.
He stood there on the chair tapping buttons wondering what was wrong while his father went over to the store
keeper. He was a burly man who wore a nylon necklace around his neck where a key hung. The man turned to face his
father, then started to walk over, taking the necklace off and letting the key wander through his fingers. The store
keeper came to the machine, bent over, put the key into the hole below the coin slot, and the machine started up again.
He could still remember the machine, the ridges on the key, and the awe he’d felt as the game started again.
With a turn of a key this man had control of the entire arcade. The storekeeper held the power and pleasure of all these
games in his hand, or on that string he wore around his neck. The only thing that he couldn’t remember was what the
man looked like. Although all those other memories remained vivid, that of the man’s face seemed to have just faded
away.
He wondered why he couldn’t remember that man’s face. It was just as if his presence was a flicker. Occupying
space, but just momentarily there, then gone from his memory with just the residue of presence but no form. He felt he
should remember what the man looked like, despite his not really knowing him, because he spent many of his days at
that arcade for the next few years. Still the flicker that was the man’s face escaped him, to fade into the recesses of his
memory, then to naught.
__________
He used to dream of disappearing. He would stare at a mirror, looking first at his reflection, then through it, until
finally it seemed to him that the reflection was no longer there. That he was no longer there.
His mother caught him staring at the mirror once and asked him why he was doing it. When he explained that he
wanted to disappear into the mirror she grabbed him by the ear, told him to forget that foolishness, and sent him out of
the house toplay with the neighborhood kids.
But he never got along with the neighborhood kids. They were loud and rowdy and rough and pushed him to the
ground and made fun of his scrawny body. They’d bump him aside or leave him behind and he’d head home, wait for his
mother to work on some chores so that he could grab a mirror and bring it to his room without her noticing. Then his
father brought him to the arcade, and he found the worlds that he was destined to inhabit. Where the mirror made him
disappear, the machines took him away, brought him to different places, made him different people, important people.
Bang, bang, bang, reload he’d fire his gun rhythmically at the machine as he watched the flicker of the shots and
feel himself slowly fading into the screen.
__________
Don’t you want to make something of yourself? What are you doing with your life? Don’t you want to be
someone in this world?
But he didn’t have to be someone in this world, he would tell himself as he zoned out of his parents’ sermons.
They would yammer on about him throwing his life away,but he would only think of the many worlds he had conquered,
worlds where he was real, where he was someone.
And when the rest of his family migrated to another country he’d broken ties with this world. There was no one
here to keep dragging him back. He dropped out of school,moved into a room near the mall, and started working as a
shopkeeper at the arcade.
That key that he had been longing for since his first visit to the arcade was now his. He wore it around his neck.
He would fondle the string around his neck, tugging at it so that the key would slap against his chest. Then he’d take the
necklace off and slide the key through the fingers on his right hand. He’d enjoy the cold metal’s jagged edges cutting
against his skin. With it he was master of this galaxy, holding power over all the different worlds with a mere turn of the
key. It was all his, this was where he belonged.
For a few years he lost himself in the arcade. The only things bringing him back to the world where he didn’t
belong were the occasional calls, letters, and packages from his family abroad. Then he met her.
__________
She went to the arcade every Sunday with her family. She had two younger brothers who played Dance Dance
Revolution, Tekken, Street Fighter vs. X-Men, Marvel Super Heroes, Capcom vs. Marvel, and House of the Dead on the
video game machines. She would join them sometimes to play F-1 racing or Skeeball and Basketball to get tickets so that
they could earn the minimum number to bring home the cheap plastic toys that the arcade offered in exchange for
tickets.
He hadn’t seen her as more than the usual arcade visitor until he saw her in a Sunday dress that reminded him
of the pink dress worn by Princess Toadstool in theDonkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. games. He remembered being
Mario climbing through those pipes up past that evil gorilla or hopping across the bridges and stomping King Koopa’s
spiked shell to rescue the Princess. He saved her, he won her back, and she loved him for it.
After that day when she wore the pink dress her face was embedded in his memory, the graphics in the games
changed and morphed to resemble her. She wasthe woman thanking him for rescuing her from the zombie in the House
of the Dead; she was the woman being held by the perp in the grocery store; she was every woman in every game who
needed his help, who needed to be saved. And every time tha the cut a victim loose or wrenched a hostage free she
would thank him, feel her skin touching his, feel her breath warming his neck, feel her thighs rubbing up against him.
He dreamed of touching her. The only things that touched his hands long enough so that he could remember
how he felt were the cold plastic of the keypad buttons andthe harsh metal of the joystick. But as he lay alone nights he
would think about her hair, his fingers passing through the locks down to her neck. His hands would go from her neck to
her shoulders and he would bring her in close to him, allow him the now alien sensation of flesh against flesh, warmth of
another against his own. She would bring him the things the arcade could not.
 She brought him back to the world. Though he would find her in his electronic kingdoms, he knew that she was
around and there was something that the real world could offer him, something for him to desire that the games could
not give, something real, something he could feel.
Years had passed with him not noticing as he lost himself in the games, but now he was counting days again. The
games he played, the worlds he unlocked with the key werenot his real life anymore, but now they had become ways to
pass the time until she came in on Sunday and he could watch her carry her brothers or slide into a car racing console.
He would hope every time that she put a token into the machine that it would jam and that she would call him
over and he would come over and turn the key and grant her her game and then she would talk to him and then...but it
hadn’t happened yet. So he waited.
__________
She came in on a Friday. He was ecstatic to see her, happily surprised that his wait to see her hadn’t had to last a
week. It was after lunch and there weren’t manypeople so he watched her with her friends.
They were in their school uniforms, the girls in mustard colored dresses and the boys in blue pants. He
remembered when he was in school and would head straightto the arcade after periodical examinations just to stay
there till it was dark out, as heassumed they were doing.
He was throttled back into the present when he saw her, his Princess Toadstool holding one boy’s arm. That boy
was every villain that he shot down, every perp henabbed, every demon he vanquished. His eyes locked in on the couple,
and he waited forhis chance to storm the castle and pull the drawbridge out from under this King Koopa.
The wait wasn’t long, because at one of the gunning games he lashed out at her. She had leaned over and held
King Koopa’s arm, which made him lose his aim, miss,take a hit, and get a game over. He threw the gun down so that it
hung by its metalliccord, turned to face her, and started calling her st*p#d , a waste of time, and a mistaketo have even
hung out with.
And that’s when he came in, sliding between Princess toadstool and King Koopa.He nudged her back a bit,
although she could barely move as she fought to keep hercheeks dry. Then he faced King Koopa, who was wearing a
green sun visor and spikyhair. He felt the urge to stomp the boy, but instead grabbed him by the collar and ledhim out of
the arcade and handed him over to the guard.
He came back to his Princess Toadstool who had succumbed to King Koopa’sattack and he held her hand and led
her to the back room where she could sit down.He stayed with her there, not knowing what to say so not saying
anything. He justabsorbed her touch, felt the contact coursing through him. This was how it felt, herealized. He had
saved someone, had rescued, had been a hero, a protector.
He stayed with her that way, silent as she sobbed into his shoulder, until her friends came to get her. As she was
leaving she thanked him and he told her that henoticed that she came in every Sunday. She smiled and told him that she
was flatteredthat he had noticed. Then he said that he’d see her Sunday, and she smiled and left.
_________
The night after and Saturday he didn’t play any games. He played with the key inhis hand, wondering what he
needed it for now that he had the power to save peoplewithout it. He didn’t need to go into the games to be a hero
anymore; he’d alreadysaved Princess Toadstool.
He waited anxiously for Sunday when she would come in. And he watched heras she came with her brothers.
They went to the usual games that they played, and hewaited for her to call him, to come to her rescuer.
The boys moved from game to game and she followed them. Then they went over to the skeeball machines to
try to win tickets. As the machine they were playingin spewed out fi ve tickets a boy came over to him and said that a
machine had eatenhis token, would he go over and please fi x it.
He left them there at the skeeball machine, and went over to the other side of the arcade. He checked the
joystick and keypad of the game that they boy had led him to, thenused his key to register a credit. As he straightened
up, he bent over again, and wanting toshare his happiness, gave the key another twist so that the boy got a free credit.
When he got back to the skeeball machine they were gone. He felt the key aroundhis neck suddenly fi fty
pounds heavier and weighing him down as he struggled tokeep his neck up looking for them. Then one of Princess
Toadstool’s brothers came upto him and told him that his sister was calling him. The boy pointed to a racing gameso he
went over.
She was sitting in the machine holding onto the steering wheel. She told him that it had eaten her token, so he
bent into the machine and gave the key a twist. Thenhe smiled up at her. She smiled back at him. He waited for her to
recognize him, toremember what happened Friday, what he’d done for her. She just gave him a blanksmile and thanked
him for fi xing the machine.
 _________
He spent the rest of the day in a daze. He felt as if his body was becoming a blank,taking up space but having no
matter. She hadn’t remembered him, hadn’t recognizedhis face, hadn’t known who he was. And as those thoughts
played like a looped reelin his mind he felt that no one knew him. No one bothered to notice who he was.He was not a
person; he was just the key that he held. People only approachedhim, only acknowledged his presence when they
needed a turn of the key. Who was he then? And how much of his identity lay in the key.
He felt that he came alive only after a turn of the key, when he was in a game.
He could feel himself fading, knew that people were looking past him, seeing only the key that hung around his
neck. So he waited until there was no one left in thearcade.
He waited until he was alone so that he could turn the key and come alive again.
This wasn’t the world for him, and as he turned the key he knew which one was.
He stared into the screen, watched as his face began fading away, waited until it had disappeared. And as he
saw the game start and he wrapped his right hand fi ngersaround the pistol and put his left hand up to the butt he felt
himself coming alive. Ashe approached the grocery store and started fi ring, bangbangbang, reload, he couldfeel himself
gaining substance, not being a blank anymore.
In the morning the guard came to fi nd a gun hanging from its arcade machine. A copy of the arcade’s master
key was stuck in the machine’s slot. He fi gured thelast man working the night shift had forgotten it so he returned it to
the arcade’sowner.
The owner asked if the guard had noticed the late shift worker leave, the guard said he hadn’t. He assumed that
the boy hadn’t shown up for work, shrugged hisshoulders, and thought to himself that it was time to call up the agency
for anotherguy. He thought about the boy who’d worked for him these past years. The peculiarthing was that he
couldn’t even remember what the boy looked like.
Later that week, the owner had to replace one of the machines in the arcade.
Since that night the boy hadn’t shown up he’d been having a problem with that machine the guard had found
the master key in. It wouldn’t accept tokens, and thegame would go on from start to end, with the display following a
distinct rhythm: bang bang bang, reload.