Scene 1
You punch the doorbell at Milos’ apartment and then instantly regret it. The bell sticks, and the whole panel crunches inward like you just jabbed a dead tooth. Sick. Your finger comes back sticky.
The door yanks open before you can wipe it on your jeans. Milos stands there in full nocturnal glory: black hoodie zipped up to his jawline, cheap neon-green sunglasses even though it’s dark as a crypt in the hallway. He’s cradling a can of Monster like it’s a newborn.
“Bro,” he says, “get in here. You gotta see this.”
You step inside and instantly lose your sense of direction. The living room is soaked in blue and pink, LED strips curling around every exposed surface—window frames, ceiling cracks, the inside lip of the Ikea couch. Every light in the place is off except the screens. There are so many screens.
Milos drags you through the haze. “Look. Look, look, look.” He’s vibrating with excitement, shoves the Monster into your hand so he can use both arms to do a grand presentation sweep. At the center of the darkness, his gaming rig. Three monitors, all different sizes, stacked like a digital Stonehenge. On the desk, a PS5 sits naked and prideful on a sprawl of controller wires, Monster tabs, and those tiny silica gel packs you’re not supposed to eat. The chair is an ergonomic throne built for someone who plans to die in it.
“You get the GPU in?” you ask, just to say something. The Monster can is warm, half-drained. You take a sip to kill germs.
Milos slaps the side of the case. The thing lights up with rainbows. “Told you, dude. Look at these frames.” He drops into the throne and gestures for you to take the sad little folding chair beside him. You do, almost falling because one leg is shorter than the rest.
He boots up a game—some ultra-violent battle royale with graphics set to “Just Fuck My Eyes Up.” Immediately, both monitors start having a seizure. Milos grins, mouthful of overbite and Monster.
He hands you a controller. “Stay over,” he says. “Seriously. We’ll be up all night. Time flies.”
You laugh, but there’s a weird catch to it. “That’s what I’m worried about,” you say.
Milos cackles. “Exactly,” he says, with a kind of feral joy.
Behind you, the air mattress is half-inflated and covered in what looks like the contents of a failed DoorDash experiment. Milos’ bedroom door is closed and taped over with “PRIVATE SERVER—NO SYSADMINS” in electrical tape.
You look down at the controller in your hand. The plastic is greasy, already warm. You think about leaving. But the lights, the screens, the Monster—they’re all humming a lullaby. You squeeze the trigger. The game loads up. The next six hours disappear like a click.
Milos is right. Time flies.
Scene 2
It’s just one round. It’s always just one round.
You queue up together. Milos narrates the lobby trash talk out loud—impersonating the trolls, making fun of the tryhards, screeching random catchphrases like a crow with Tourettes. “Ligma balls, you fossil!” he yells at a digital avatar that’s probably a twelve-year-old in Wisconsin.
The game drops you both into a pixelated meat grinder. You’re instantly dead. Milos lasts longer, but when he gets sniped he howls and punches the air like he’s losing at the World Cup.
“Shit. One more, I swear. Gotta avenge that disgrace.”
You run it back. The cycles blur. Kills, deaths, bad jokes. The Monster supply starts at a six-pack; within an hour it’s down to two. Milos’ hands are a blur on the mouse and keyboard. He’s hunched, elbows dug in, eyes wide and red, whites gone yellow under the LEDs.
At some point, the pizza arrives. You don’t remember ordering it, but the smell cuts through the cave like a blunt force weapon. Milos grabs the box and eats standing up, his controller never leaving his grip. Grease dots the keys. You feel your arteries get tighter with every slice, but you’re not even hungry. You just want to win a round.
The clock on the microwave says 1:06 a.m. You blink, and it’s 2:19.
“Bro,” Milos says, “we are in the fucking zone.”
He’s right, but not in the way he means. You feel like you’re watching yourself play, arms moving on autopilot, thoughts tunneled into just the next game, the next match. Milos’ cackling is background noise. The room smells like Monster, BO, and a weird spicy-sweet perfume from a vape someone left on the shelf last week.
You’re tired, but the game doesn’t let you rest. Every time you die, you’re back in the queue in seconds. When you win a round, it’s not even satisfying. Just relief, then the urge to chase the next one.
You glance at Milos. His jaw is clenched so hard it trembles. He hasn’t blinked in a while. There’s sweat under his eyes, making little LED rainbows on his cheekbones.
You think: This is fucked.
You also think: I could keep going forever.
By the time you check the clock again, it’s 4:03 a.m.
“Shouldn’t we sleep?” you say, your voice sounding dry and far away.
Milos doesn’t look up. “You can if you want,” he says. “But the queue never ends.”
His thumbs are raw. There’s a little blood on the A button.
You close your eyes, just for a second. When you open them, the sun is coming up, thin and sharp through the gaps in the blinds. Milos is still playing. The game is different now, some new map, same violence, same loop.
You wonder if you’ve ever really slept here.
Scene 3
The next time you wake up—if you were ever really asleep—your mouth feels like you’ve been chewing sandpaper. Your head is a balloon. Your phone is dead, but when you jack it into a cable under the desk, it buzzes back to life and starts vomiting notifications.
Forty-three unread messages. Seven missed calls. It’s Tuesday, not Sunday.
You stare at the date for a long time, unable to make it fit inside your skull.
“Hey,” you croak. Your voice is broken, dry as old chips. Milos doesn’t answer. You look over and see him locked in, headset on, lips moving as he trash talks into a void. You doubt anyone’s really on the other end anymore.
“Milos,” you say, louder.
He finally looks at you, or maybe past you. His eyes are cracked and red, with a weird sheen, almost metallic under the LEDs.
“What?” he says.
“What day is it?”
He shrugs. “Dunno. We’re on a win streak. Time’s fake.”
You try to stand up, but your legs are wobbly. You haven’t pissed in at least eight hours. You stagger to the bathroom, passing by the air mattress, which is now just a rumpled sheet and a crust of food wrappers. The hallway looks different than you remember. Narrower. Colder.
When you finish and come back, Milos hasn’t moved. He’s glued to the chair, clicking away, sweat pooling under his chin. The Monster cans are gone. The pizza is gone. There’s a weird smell now, sour and electric, like old batteries and fear.
You think: I should leave.
You go to the door, but there is no door. Just a blank wall with another strip of LED lights running the perimeter.
You press your hands to it, feel nothing but drywall and a faint, constant vibration. You turn around, panic clawing up your chest.
Milos is watching you. Not smiling, not laughing, just staring.
“You’re not gonna get out that way,” he says. “It’s fine. No one’s looking for you.”
You blink. “I—what do you mean? I have to go. I have practice, and school, and—”
Milos interrupts, voice flat: “Life? Bro. This is life.”
He gestures at the glowing screens. The sounds of gunfire and digital screaming fill the room.
You try to scream back, but your throat is raw. The lights are too bright, the colors too sharp. You shut your eyes but the afterimage is burned in.
You realize you can’t remember what the outside smelled like. You can’t remember the last thing you ate. You can’t remember the last time you saw sunlight that wasn’t filtered through cracked plastic blinds.
You open your eyes. Milos is still there, frozen in mid-game, a statue of hunger and obsession.
You look at the controller in your hand. You realize your own hands are shaking.
You hear yourself say: “One more round.”
Scene 4
Milos holds out the other controller, like he’s offering you a life preserver.
“Stay,” he says. “Play another round. One more. You’ll feel better.”
You stare at it. The plastic is still oily from your own hands. You can hear the fans in the gaming rig, whining and frantic.
You back away, pressing yourself to the wall.
“I can’t,” you say. Your own voice sounds alien. “I can’t forget everything.”
Milos smiles, and it’s the saddest thing you’ve ever seen on a living person. “Then you’re braver than me,” he says. He sets the controller down, but doesn’t let go. Just stares at the screen, waiting for you to cave.
You don’t.
You look around the room, wild. The walls are LED static, the windows blacked out by layers of tape and boxes. But behind the mountain of old game cases on the shelf—maybe just a trick of the eye, maybe your last shot at freedom—you see a little red EXIT sign, faint and flickering.
You lunge at it, scattering empty cans and greasy wrappers. You shove aside the game boxes, claw at the drywall, push through what feels like a film of static electricity.
The sign leads to a hole, a narrow crawlspace, tighter and colder than you expect. You crawl forward. It feels like you’re moving through wet concrete. The glow of the LEDs fades behind you. The only sound is your own heartbeat.
When you break through to the other side, there’s nothing. Just a blank, humming dark. No more games. No more voices.
You take a breath. It tastes like dust.
You don’t know where you are, or what comes next. But you know you’re not in the cave.
You hope that counts for something.
—
Some people drown in their memories.
Others drown in forgetting.
Either way—you disappear.