wahbegan:

I’m playing Death Stranding. Instead of a game over screen, a montage of every human death ever captured on film starts playing, from Vietnam footage to pornographic snuff films purported to not really exist. It’s unskippable. I turn off my console and TV to no avail. I unplug my TV. It keeps playing. There’s laughter in the background. The sky has turned black. It’s been playing for 8 hours. I go to bed at 2 am and wake up in a cold sweat at 4:03 with Hideo Kojima standing over my bed with a tire iron. His eyes are glowing. “M…Mr. Kojima, please! I didn’t mean to, PLEASE!” But it’s too late. The tire iron is already rushing towards my face.

I wake up on my couch with a start, looking at the opening menu of Death Stranding. I must have dozed off in front of the TV and had a nightmare. I’m already forgetting the details. There’s no new game button, only a button that says CONTINUE. I never started playing. There’s a scar over my left eye that wasn’t there when I fell asleep. Next to the CONTINUE button is a simple ticker, reading ATTEMPTS. The number next to it is 47. What was that dream I had?