Cecilia took Matthew to the Estate’s sprawling gameroom. Despite the casual title, it was more of a full-fledged arcade than a man cave with a pool table, jam-packed with brand new arcade machines imported at great cost, illegally, from Japan. Neon signs dotted the private paradise’s dark purple walls, and the beautiful, clashing noises of fifty attract modes running at the same time on as many cabinets was mesmerizing. In an otherwise sterile and overly fancy home, this dot of loud, flashing excitement was a breath of fresh air all the inhabitants relished.
Street Fighter Three: Third Strike was Cecilia’s favorite game here, and over the frequent visits they’d made in the past couple of days, Matthew had taken quite a liking to the Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix cabinet. It required much more coordination than Cecilia believed she had, but Matthew was an absolute natural from the start. He finished a set and hopped off the machine, barely panting after playing three of the hardest songs back-to-back. Though he was unfazed, he grabbed a water bottle he’d set next to the pads and chugged it all in one massive, extended gulp. “I still don’t understand how you do that,” Cecilia commented, her jaw slack in amazement. “I can’t even watch the arrows when they get that fast.”
“The whole time you’ve been practicing Third Strike to beat Gerald, I’ve been practicing this to beat those songs.”
“So you memorized the charts?” she asked.
“No, no,” he replied, “it’s more like… I’ve built up the skill set it takes to play at this level, bit by bit.”
“I don’t think I could ever do that,” she replied, bashfully.
“And why not?”
“I’m just… I’m clumsy,” she said, laughing sadly and nervously adjusting her glasses. “I can barely even walk down the stairs without falling down some days--”
“Try it,” Matthew said, gesturing to the behemoth of a machine. Its flashing arrows, neons pulsing with the beat, and surreal Eurobeat soundtrack did demand attention, and Cecilia had to admit that they called to her like a siren’s song.
“I’m going to suck at this. You’ll laugh.”
“I would never laugh at you for doing your best at something,” Matthew replied defensively. “I don’t want fear of failure to hold you back. You’re such a bright and talented girl and you succeed at anything you apply yourself to. I won’t force you to play it if you dislike it, but you’ll never know if you like it until you try it.”
“You sound like a drug dealer handing out samples at a school,” she retorted.
Matthew guffawed in spite of himself. “You got me. Maybe DDR is a drug, and maybe I’m addicted. But I promise, the only side effect if you do get hooked is a healthier heart, a slimmer waistline, not that eitherof us need that, a vigorous sense of self-”
“Yeah, yeah, alright Gerald,” she chided him playfully, “I’ll try the game.” She climbed onto the pads and took a deep breath, steeling her nerves and excitement. “Do I hold on to the bar?”
“You can,” Matthew shrugged. “Makes balance easier. I usually do. But you look even cooler if you don’t.”
“I’ll worry about style points once I know how to play the damn thing,” she replied. She immediately tensed up, instinctively expecting to get reprimanded for cursing, but Matthew didn’t seem to care at all, his grin only growing wider.
“A most valid point.” He explained the basics and helped her pick an easy song. A very, very easy song. She nailed it perfectly, so he next selected a song most would consider easy but that nobody could consider a tutorial. She aced that one too as he applauded, getting an A rank at the end of the song. “See, I told you you’d be good!”
“It’s nothing compared to what you play on here,” she said. “I was barely moving compared to you.”
“Yeah, well that’s not a fair comparison. I didn’t do this will my first time.” She looked at him with doubt, but he nodded sincerely. “Yeah, for real. I passed that one, but not as good as you. I got a C.”
“Give me a challenging one,” she chirped, high on adrenaline success.
“Are you sure?” he replied, cautiously selecting a track one difficulty level higher. “This one isn’t really a beginner level song, and I don’t want you to be discouraged--”
“I can do it,” she replied, her brilliant orange eyes burning with determination.
“I have no doubt you can, little lady,” he replied, chuckling. He hit start on the song, and she held the safety bar tightly. The arrows came fast, but her little legs moved faster, nailing almost every note. She cleared it with a B, impressive given the brutality of the game’s rating system.
“Great job!” Matthew shouted with a celebratory guffaw, giving her a double high five. Sweat poured from her face and her breathing had quickened drastically, but now she was riding on the waves of victory.
“I want to go again. Harder songs. Let’s do this.”
“At least let me get you some water first,” Matthew replied. “Hydration is the key to--”
Their celebration was cut short: the door to the game room slammed open, a massive silhouette looming in the doorway. Cecilia flinched subconsciously at the sight as the man stomped in. William Blackmore was lithe, but he was strong. His fists were like bricks. Cecilia knew this from experience.
“I see two violations of rules,” he boomed. It wasn’t a scream--his baritone was naturally boisterous. His fury was calm, a river of boiling blood beneath an arctic surface. It was even more terrifying when he seemed in control of it, because this meant he was planning every single event that would happen next in succession. “Would you like to tell me what they are?” He stepped further into the room, two gacha Cecilia had never seen before flanking him: they were identical, like floating greek statues of beautiful young women, in living color unlike their ancient counterparts but entirely motionless in their unsettling and measured hovering. They were each holding something, but Cecilia couldn’t quite make it out.
Cecilia panicked. Her throat closed up. Her pulse ran ragged. “F-Father--”
“Make that three,” he quietly added.
“M-Mister William Blackmore, Sir,” she continued, cringing as she corrected the third infraction. “I d-don’t believe I know what rules they were, or I wouldn’t break them. I never break them on purpose, you just never tell--”
“If you were a good Christiangirl like your mother, I wouldn't have to tell you,” he hissed. “Christian,” she had learned, was his way of saying “white.”
“W-well, I’m not my mother, so--”
“Rule one. The gameroom is for my real children.” They both knew he only had Gerald, which made this wording all the more scathing. “And rule number two--” he approached the machine with disgust, his sharp face coiling around itself in a contorted, devilish grimace as he saw the wretch’s inferior sweat splattered all over his finely polished machine, “--you, my little stepthing, are not to shed on my things. Come now.” He stepped back and motioned with one finger for her to kneel in front of him. “Existentia, my discipline stick,” he demanded, and one of the uncanny floating women hovered up to him and handed him a wooden baseball bat. Cecilia trembled, tears leaking from her eyes, choking back her vocalizations of horror as he sized up the weapon. “This is an extra grave offense, so it will carry an extra grave punishment,” he said, solemnly. She trembled harder, trying to hide it. He lifted the bat up slowly, she put her head down and closed her eyes, and then--
--it didn’t come. No pain. No bat. No way… something he hadn’t planned?
She looked up to see Matthew standing between them, holding her stepfather’s wrists to hold him back mid swing. She’d never seen William so angry: veins erupted across his forehead like pockets of escaping magma, his skin turned fire red, and his Satan-esque goatee contorted in blind rage.
“I wasn’t aware my daughter had a gacha,” he said blankly. “There’s one other rule she knows well and that it’s time you learn, one star trash. ”
“Run,” Matthew commanded Cecilia. The girl didn’t ask questions, nodding and racing from the room. William didn’t even try to stop her. She was small potatoes. A little bastard girl not knowing her place was nothing to him compared to the affront he’d just experienced.
“That rule,” William continued, practically snorting with each word now, “is that nobody, and I mean nobody,on God’s green goddamned earth, is permitted to touch William Blackmore and retain his or her hands. If you had any doubt of the power I wield, boy, you will soon be without it by the time this hour has passed. Or, as you will see it, as this day has passed.”
One of the two arcane gacha guarding William did something unseen and Matthew found himself unable to move. He couldn’t even close his mouth after uttering his final plea to Cecilia. It was like he, and only he, had been frozen in time. After what felt like minutes, he realized that he wasn’t frozen, exactly. Time had not become a block of ice, but a nearly frozen stream, the stray drops trickling ever so slowly by him.
“Take him to the kitchen,” William boomed. The words took two minutes to form in Matthew’s ears, and he barely managed to parse the elongated phonemes at all. As the twin gacha holding Matthew in place guided him along with her to the doorway of the gameroom, he saw the other one hand her weapon to William Blackmore upon his request. It was a large, sharpened, glistening butcher knife.
Matthew watched for hours as they briskly led him to the kitchen. He had never known true terror before this: being led to a makeshift torture chamber, paralyzed, so slowly the trip across the Estate is maddening by itself... and all that with the knowledge that whatever horror was wrought on him, he would experience every second of it as a minute, every minute as an hour.
Cecilia retreated to her room and stared dissociatively past a battered NSYNC poster on the wall. The door opened a while later, and she instinctively backed up to her headboard, recoiling from the very sight of her stepfather. His facade was different now, though. He looked defused calm, like a volcano that went dormant after a massive eruption. His face conveyed no emotion except for a hint of satisfaction. “I will allow you to skirt the rules this time,” he said softly. It was clear from his tone he felt this was deeply and unfairly merciful towards her, and that he was making a great sacrifice to say this.
Her father stepped out of the doorway and motioned for one of his gacha to toss something into Cecilia’s room. She gasped as the groaning, crumpled heap of Matthew was suddenly sent slid across her hardwood floor, slamming his head into the wall. She couldn’t see at a glance what had done the damage, but the gacha was bleeding profusely, leaving a crimson trail behind. “If you can put him back together, you can keep him,” her father finished, hints of a self-satisfied grin twitching across his face. He felt positively Christlike for making such a generous decision, and it showed. Cecilia felt sick, but she did not dare show it. William Blackmore dropped a squishing freezer bag full of blood and chunks of flesh just inside her doorway, then returned to his office. Cecilia gagged, but did not cry, silently walking to the door and closing it.