This is a short fiction story but it is dedicated to those out there who are in love and are in a long distance relationship. I have been there myself for three years before my husband (military and stationed on the east coast) and I (at the time preschool teacher and college student on the west coast) could be together for good. So until that day, continue to hold on to your love for one another and find things that you can do together even though miles apart. Can be states apart or countries apart, love knows no boundaries. Enjoy!
He sits staring at the screen, his fingers carefully tapping each key to make the character that he had created move from left to right, dodging bullets. Beside his character, a female character runs past, guns blazing and no fear in her heart. She shoots down one person dead while he makes his game character shoot another character, saving their own lives for a bit longer in the game.
Max lets out a joyous cry after the two that they are fighting fall face first into the ground, leaving behind two back packs ready for looting. In his headphones, he can hear his girlfriend, Holly, say something about finding a car so that they can get clear of that area, since they had seen other players looting the nearby homes. “Okay, yea, let’s go get a car.”
The two characters race across an open field, trying to keep low to the ground so as to not draw any attention to themselves and draw enemy fire their way. No guns shoot in their direction as they make their way into a small group of abandoned dilapidated buildings that look to be untouched. Max pushes the door open to the first building they came across and enters before Holly, who trails in behind him, keeping her gun at the ready and her view behind them so that they can’t be caught off guard by an ambush from behind. They quickly loot the house before they move on to the next, still not running into any other players out for their blood and their loot. After they have finished looting the buildings, they head outside and move to the other side of a crumbling wall to find a few cars but they have all been destroyed already. Max and Holly run further from the wall and into the tree line once they hear a car heading towards the buildings that they had just been at. They duck behind a few trees and peer out as the car slows down and comes to a stop with four people getting out of it.
“Okay, baby, let’s take them down and take their car,” Max says into his microphone as he checks his character’s gun to make sure that it is loaded and ready to go.
Holly scoffs at his plan, “Really? Babe, there are four of them and only two of us. We can…” She sighs heavily as she watches Max rush forward, shooting towards the driver of the car. She stays hidden as the four men rush her boyfriend. “Babe!” She groans and steps out from behind the tree, shooting down two of the four before the third shoots her down and the fourth kills her boyfriend, who had been crawling on the ground.
“Man! I was so close to taking the other two down,” Max grumbles as he shoves his keyboard away from him. “Okay, yea maybe that was a bad idea but they had a car.”
“And we could have either stolen it while they were inside the houses or have gone for another one somewhere else, hun,” Holly says as she readjusts herself in her chair in front of her computer. “Okay it’s time for bed so I’ll give you call tomorrow after I get off work.”
Max stretches his arms up over his head before he flops more into his chair, “All right, babe, that sounds good to me. Maybe tomorrow we can play a different game instead of this one. Oh hey how about that new horror game that we can both play and purchased a while back?” He swings in his chair back and forth as he leans his head back against the comfortable cushion on the back of his chair and enjoys the sound of her voice.
“That sounds like fun,” Holly exclaims as she closes out of the game and readies herself to turn off her computer after she said good night. “We’ve only had that game for nearly a month waiting for us to play it.” She laughs when she hears Max mumble under his breath about this and that for not having time to play it before now. “Okay then it’s a gaming date. Love you, baby.”
Max smiles to himself, “I love you, too. Have a good day at work tomorrow, babe.” He makes a few kissing noises to her before he takes off the headphones and leaves the chat that they use in order to talk to one another during game play. He sits for a while staring at his computer screen, after he has closed the game, to where a picture of his smiling girlfriend sits, taking up the background behind his folders and things. He touches his lips with his fingertips then presses the fingertips to the lips of his girlfriend in the picture on the computer screen. “Good night, babe.” He turns the computer off and sighs heavily before he stands up, carefully making his way out from behind his desk. He grabs a black sharpie pen and walks over to where he has a calendar up on the wall beside the door. He crosses off that day on the calendar with a thick black X and counts the weeks to see how many he still has left before he will get to fly out to see his girlfriend, who lives in another state. He returns the sharpie to his desk before he leaves his gaming room, turns off the lights, and heads off to his bedroom to do a few other things before he had to go to bed, since he is three hours behind his girlfriend.
