Games

    The two boys worked on their project. Their creative thinking professor challenged the class to come up with a game, one that would be interesting and fresh. Sitting in the dorm room they shared, Ryan and Todd began to collaborate. Ideas passed from one boy to another, each one turning the other down. 
         “We have to look at this from a different angle,” Todd quoted their professor after an hour passed and they still had no idea what they were doing.
         Ryan spun around in the swivel chair he had moved from his desk to Todd’s desk, “okay, why don’t you tell me how exactly to do that. I hate this stupid project, why couldn’t the professor have come up with something better,” he complained.
         Smiling, Todd began to write in one of the notebooks he had on his desk, “Well the thing that would draw most people in would be the title. If we come up with an interesting title, we can build our game from that.” Todd continued to write in his notebook, “Rule number one in almost any sort of art form should be that the title is one of the most important things in a project,” he said almost absent-mindedly.
         Ryan stopped his spinning to look at Todd, “so why don’t we tell me what you have in mind then.”
         Todd passed his friend the notebook, “the title needs to grab peoples attention as their eyes glance past a dozen other games on the shelf.” He looked to Ryan, judging his reaction to the title he had written on the paper, “now I know how out there it seems, but you know it will stand out.”
         After reading and re-reading ‘How To Kill’, Ryan began to laugh and asked, “so would it be something like ‘Clue then?”
         Todd knew Ryan was a follower. Just by looking at the guy anyone could tell he just wanted to fit in. He had that long shaggy hair, hanging down in his eyes and over his ears, razor cut giving it that mess sort of look, just like everyone else did. He dyed it black because everyone else thought it looked cool like that, and no matter what it always seemed to look greasy. His clothing was always whatever was popular at the time. This year he sported the vintage look. Todd knew Ryan would go along with his ideas because Ryan always did what a strong personality told him to do.
         Todd ran his fingers through is own shorter and neatly gelled hair before opening his desk drawer and pulling out a phone book, “part one, how to pick your victim. It will be an easy system; we give them cards with names and a short bio on then. Make them shuffle the deck and draw a card. The person they draw is the one they kill.” He grabbed some note cards and began to write the name, phone number, and addresses of twenty different people. After that he shuffled the deck, “why don’t you pick a card,” he said holding the cards out to Ryan.
         “Hayden Brookes, 1608 Oakwood Drive,” Ryan said holding out his card, “now what?”
         After thinking for a few moments Todd said, “next our player needs to figure out the location he will kill the victim at.” Todd stood up and grabbed his keys, “get your coat.”
         Ryan grabbed his coat from the pile of folded clothes he kept on his desk and slipped it on, “where are we going?”
         “We need this to be a hands on research project to make is as realistic as possible. What was that guys address again, we need to check out where he lives?"


                                          The Next Morning
         Todd sat at his desk writing into his notebook, listening to Ryan snore. He picked up a shoe and threw it at Ryan, trying to wake him up.
         Stirring a little and mumbling some sort of threat under his breath Ryan sat up, “dude we followed that jerk all night. It’s six in the morning. I really don’t want to be awake right now.” He lay back down, but after a few minutes of failing to go back to sleep he sat back up. “Did you sleep at all last night?”
         The scrap of lead on paper was the only sound heard for a while. Ryan was about to give up and attempt to go back to sleep when Todd said, “following that guy around gave us the location of the crime scene for our game. Not to mention it let us come with how to determine the time of death for our game,” he stopped writing to give a glance over to his friend, “and no I did not sleep. I wanted to keep the same creative juices flowing, stay on the same track.”
         “You’re a freak,” Ryan said, lying back in the bed again.
         “I figured you would want to be awake for the next step of our game. How to determine the method of the murder,” Todd said.          
         Ryan moaned a little before rolling out of bed and moving to look over Todd’s shoulder at the notebook, “I would really rather go back to sleep,” he said, “but I guess you really want to finish this thing.”
         “We just need a few ideas, then we attach each method of murder to one side of a die. When someone rolls the die, whichever method faces up will be the way they kill their victim.” Todd spun around in his chair to face Ryan, “have any suggestions on methods of death?”
         It only took Ryan a few second before he started naming off possibilities. “There is shooting them of course. Stabbing, strangulation, running them over with a car, oh and setting them on fire might be a sort of cool option.”
         Todd wrote those down on a small square of paper and then glued them onto the die he had. He handed the die to Ryan, “alright, just give it roll, lets see what you get.”
         Ryan took the die and rolled it, “strangulation, very cool if you ask me,” he smiled at the results.
         “Great, that means Hayden Brookes dies in the parking garage of the gym, in the afternoon, by strangulation. We still need more research. Meet me at that parking garage around one o’ clock, after your class,” Todd said standing up, rubbing his finger against his eyes, “I need a shower.”


                                        1 p.m. Parking Garage
         When Ryan saw Todd’s green Honda Civic in a parking spot of the garage, he parked his own car and got into his friends, “okay what are we doing here?”
         “Yesterday, Hayden lets the gym around 1:30. He should leave at about the same time today I hope.” Todd said staring out the window of his car, watching the car they had seen Hayden get into.
         “Yeah, so what man.”
         Todd pulled out a think piece of rope from his back seat and handed it to Ryan, “when you see him, you sneak up behind him,” he had to stop speaking because Ryan started to yell.
         “No way! Are you insane? There is no way we can do this! We will go to prison,” Ryan said, looking frightened at this point.
         Todd patted his friend on the shoulder, “its okay. Everything is going to be all right. You just need to calm down a little,” after he finally got Ryan to stop yelling he went on, “listen, you have to do this. It’s like a confidence roll or something. We need this to finish the game. Whichever player capable of successfully killing their victim first wins. You drew this guys name; he is yours. You have to do this or you lose.”
         “Todd, I can’t do this. What if he runs off? I mean he looks a lot stronger then I do, what if I’m to weak to kill this guy?” Ryan asked, the sweat rolling down his face.
         Todd opened his glove compartment and removed a small handgun, “then I will shot him. Don’t worry buddy, I’m here for you.”
         Ryan took the rope in his hand, and waited, looking over to Todd for reassurance every few minutes. Todd nudged him when he saw Hayden, “there he is. You can do this. Just keep the rope tight after you get it around his neck, he will be too surprised to try to fight you off.” Ryan got out of the car and snuck around so that he was behind Hayden. He waited until Hayden was almost to his car, and then he jumped at him struggling at first to get the rope around the man's neck. After a few minutes of fighting, which felt like hours of agony to Ryan, Hayden Brookes lay dead at his feet.
         Todd got out of his car and walked over to Ryan, “great job man, I told you that you could do it,” he said, patting Ryan on the back.
         “I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Ryan said, unable to left his eyes from the body.
         Todd just smiled at Ryan, “you’ll be all right. Come on let’s get out of here.” He started to walk back to his car.
         Ryan followed him, moving slower then his friend, still unable to believe what he had done. He heard Todd open his car door and started to move towards his own car, just remembering that they had arrived in separate vehicles.
         “Hey,” Todd said. When Ryan turned to look at his friend, he heard the explosion from the gun, grabbed his stomach, and collapsed to the ground. “Looks like I win buddy. You hesitated, and I drew your name. Sorry about that.”
                                             

                                            The Classroom
         The professor handed Todd his evaluation of the game, “interesting Todd. I found it a little disturbing, but interesting all the same. You also could have done more development and research, but I gave you an ‘A’.”