I once worked at a net cafe, 24 hour place, used to work in the afternoons and do the Saturday night shift, sounds like a great job for a kid in school... but it wasn't. It was terrible... we had guys coming in, withdrawal symptoms clearly showing. In my first week, their was a knife fight over the last PC in the place, leaving one man seriously wounded.

And the rage... oh god, the rage when one would die. They would break anything close to them, frothing at the mouth, and finally collapse into tearless crying. What's worse, when a healer had a party member die... twice the brawls turned into riots.

And the smell of the place... jesus, I can never get it out of my nostrils. Unwashed bodies sweating fluids of near pure caffine, of chips, nibbles and cheep arse party food as well. I had a bottle of vodka most nights, used to wet a rag and hold it to my face. Even thinking of it now makes me want to throw up.

And when their time ran out, oh man, when their time was up... I had a man try to give me his wedding ring for more playtime half a dozen times, each time, out of pity, I would take it then give it back to his wife, and each time he would come back and try to exchange it again. Others would beg, cry, scream, or even threaten, in one instance I had a blood filled syringe pulled on me.

And when their bodies failed from days gameplay with limited sleep and a diet based from the 7-11 next to us? I remember making the calls to the families, telling them their loved one had finally stopped.

The only reason I kept working there was Bill. Me and Bill where mates in kindergarten, but somewhere he went wrong. I could still see that childish face I used to play with behind the hollow eyes, sunken skin white as a sheet. Hands like spiders, nails dirty and overgrown that fit into groves on his mouse and keyboard. He was rake thin, I used to feed him whatever I could get down his throat between mana regen times. I tried moving him onto other games, when I uninstalled WoW and put in Last Chaos, trying to wean him off at his families request... well, Bill looked small and weak, but I still bear the scares to this day. He was like an animal, you could have caged him with a PC in fount of him and he'd make the wildest ape look tame. He spoke in grunts and 1337, soft growls when he was angry. It was a horrify and fascinating process watching him descend further into addiction.


Then oneday, Bill stopped coming... I asked my boss, the other addicts, they said nothing. I called his mother, father, brother, his ex, old teachers, anyone who cared or would care that he was gone. I check the other cafes, the other seedy gaming dives, the hospital, the morgue. No luck.

Still, I kept working the afternoons and the Saturday night shift.

I found him four weeks after he disappeared when I dropped my pepper spray in the maintenance shaft.


It was Bill alright. I don't know if he dropped something in there, collapsed and died a quiet death, or if he crawled into that hole like an animal does when it knows its time is done. Or if my manager found him that way one morning, and just dumped him there... but by the time I found him, the creatures that dwelled there, living off the dropping of the addicts, had eaten him to the bone.


I quit the next day. story by, -|SK|-PR (aka Rouge)