NIGHTMARES AND NICOTINE: ON THE JEWEL

ON THE JEWEL

If you have never went to sleep in your own bed and awoke in a strange cold metal cell before, you will never understand the depth of fear that one feels when that happens. I am not even going to try to describe it. You think of how you could have ended up there and so many options enter your mind. When you are alone, naked, and hungry in a 4x4 cell your mind really starts to wander. You start to back track along the possible paths that might have led you to such a place.

I guess you could say it all started when I first signed up for Facebook. It was there waiting for me. It knew that eventually one of the long lost or newer friends in my friend list would post their score. I was like some people at first: remembering how Bejeweled was fun and all but was merely a Tetris clone. I had what I call now, my Tetris phase. That addiction was hard enough to turn my back on and Bejeweled was certainly not going to compare to the high that I experienced when playing Tetris.

Then another friend posted their score and I noticed that this wasn’t Bejeweled, it was Bejeweled Blitz. What does the Blitz mean? It sounds like a fast paced improved version of Bejeweled. The fact that it was different just made me want to try. There are a lot of things you could do with the game to improve upon it. It was in the middle of that train of thought that I noticed the word BETA in the title.

“Sweet, it’s so new and fresh that they’re still in the BETA testing phase, I really should check it out” I thought as I clicked, on the badge declaring the high score of 140833 that my friend had just achieved.

They say that the first time you try Heroine that you become deathly ill as your body rejects. I hated Bejeweled Blitz Beta the first time too. Seeing your friend’s 6 digit high score when you have scored a measly 8544 is much like becoming violently ill to a video game nerd like me. If this chick from my homeroom in 8th grade could get over 140,000 I can certainly do better than that. Ten games later I’m screaming “What the hell is wrong with me?” while the alarms signifying my time running out echoes in my head.

“One minute? Who the hell makes a game that only lasts a minute? I have never heard of anything so stupid before.” I said as the voice of Bejeweled announced “Goooooo” on my 14th game.

It was the 20th game, just as I was about to put the shit down and move on to more productive outlets for my energy when I broke 25,000 and got my first badge.

“A badge - for me?” I must have done well. Maybe I can do better.

Maybe I can do better. That’s where it all begins, ends, and rots away to nothing. Maybe I can do better.

“Maybe you caaaaaan” the voice of Bejeweled sings in your mind.

“I can.”

“Yeeeessssss.”

“I can!”

“Gooooooooo, play with us, beat your friends, show them who is the smartest, fastest, and best at Bejewellllllllled.”

Then I couldn’t stop. I was finding myself on the Jewel first thing in the morning. Realizing, 4 hours later that not only had I not even made coffee but I didn’t have anything to eat. It’s not that big of a deal I would assure myself. I know people that have ruined relationships because they were obsessed with World of Warcraft. This is nothing like that. It’s just a stupid puzzle game.

Soon, more of my friends were on the Jewel, racking up higher and higher scores; making the voice urge me to beat them more aggressively. My family joined one by one: my sister, my brother-in-law, my Mom, and even my Dad. I think I remember selling my Dad on getting a Facebook account by saying he could compete with me on Bejeweled. I heard that my nephew had a contact high watching my sister play; urging her on like his soccer team was just about to stage a comeback in the final minutes of the game.

Then one week, my friends and I scored higher than average all in the same week and I received a notification in my email that we had the highest team score out of all players that week. We were sent to a website to claim our prize. It was that night that I disappeared from my own bed.

I awoke with not much as far as memories go. It came back to me slowly, in bits and pieces. Then the paranoia crept in. The possible answers to all of my questions rushed through my mind.

“Was I drugged? Where am I and who would do this to me? I thought of that crazy guy that I dated once and abruptly stopped talking to because I couldn’t stand the way he chewed with his mouth open. Was he behind this?

That’s just about the time the door opened and a cloaked figure entered the cell. He told me to stand and to follow him and his companion. We walked through several winding, and sterile corridors and approached a large metal door at the end of a hallway. The wet, sticky sound their footsetpes made gave me a chill and I found that I could hear the familiar clanging of jewels being cleared and hyper jewels exploding.

That is all that I could remember when I awoke back in my bed. I heard what sounded like thousands of games of Bejeweled playing beyond the door and then everything was black again. There I was, back in bed, clammy, out of sorts wondering what had happened to me for just a moment before remembering to forget and play bejeweled. That is all that I needed to do. I needed to survive, as I did before in my old life and now every chance I had I needed to play Bejeweled. Thinking of it excited me like nothing has before.

I do not know why. When I think of the why I simply remember to forget. I have glimpses of words from cloudy voices saying something about surviving. They had to survive. I was needed. My part was important to someone’s survival, something’s survival; but it’s so hard to remember when all you remember is to forget.

“Time’s Up.”