Out of This World Gaming [~ read description]

Chapter 2: Games

His eyes scanned the various titles on the bookshelf, narrowing his line of vision to easily choose what case he was going to fish from this vast collection of plastic, colorful boxes. They were all decorated in wildly unique box-art that consisted of character designs and stylized titles customized to give a taste of what potential players would be getting themselves into. 

"Aha!" He pinched a small plastic case from the tightly packed row of alphabetically ordered packages. "It took me days, but I finally got what I wanted." The youthful, masculine voice enthusiastically, but quietly announced. 

"After all this time, Zander? It's such a horrible game," scoffed a lady his age as she rolled her eyes. "Why would you want to play something like that?" 

Zander rolled his eyes in kind; here she was again with that same disapproving look each time they set foot in this place. He almost had to stop counting how many times he had to explain himself. 

"For the last time, Clover," he breathed. "Gaming culture is nothing without bad video games. Sometimes you have to experience bad ones to boost your appreciation for the good ones. Besides, imagine the kind of fortune I could resell this for. Why do you think I choose games with cult followings? I call it good marketing." 

Her expression was unmoving.  "It's called wasting your money. Why not spend your money on something actually worth your time? Like a stealth game where you have to, I don't know, use a box for stealth?"

She looked over at another shelf crowded with machines. Machines that could play almost any game, young and old, big and small; it all made her heart drop. "Better yet, we could get something that could play more modern games. My potato of a PC can't be upgraded with you spending our money like this."

"Well, I'm so sorry my job at the factory only lets us buy food and barely afford our bills," Zander spat, exasperated. "How's the streaming business doing, hm?" 

 Clover was taken aback; her streams only garnered only about a hundred viewers on average. There were donations, but the money inevitably went to making up the difference Zander's paycheck couldn't pay. "At least it's a safety net. We'd save even more money if you'd just give up on your price gouging business. You're like a greedy raccoon." 

"That's an idea, maybe I could start a loan shark housing business." Zander smirked as Clover grew further infuriated with her brother. They ultimately left empty handed except for a few obscure racing games that he would eventually try to sell for hundreds, when really he bought these games for less than ten USD. 

On their way home, their car came to a stop behind the bumper of another. It wouldn't be long until Zander would roll down his window and lean out of it to get a view of what was ahead of them. This allowed him to see a back up that seemed to stretch for almost a mile. "I knew we should've gone the other way. This is all your fault." Zander reconfigured his body in the seat to give his sister a glare. 

"My fault?" she rolled her eyes, "you're the one that chose to go this way." 

A silence followed between the both of them; an amalgam of apprehension and displeasure  hung in the air like a dense fog. Clover took a deep breath and reached towards the radio in an attempt to find answers in her distracted mind. That was, until the sounds of a little girl's screaming pierced the air from a distance. 

*       *         *      *

Within a shadowy alley flooded with the pungent odor of discarded restaurant food and excrement, a dumpster's collection of trash bags shuddered and rustled; one fell out, then three more, the muffled grunting of a little girl now unhindered by garbage bags.