The Rose Gets Her Thorns

🌹🎮🌹

My heart sank into the pits of my stomach. The room turned hot and suffocating, my eyes went dry and red as I continued to stare at a screen with a blood red GAME OVER written on it.

The controller slipped out of my hands and landed hard on the floor. My arms rag-dolled backwards as my back pressed heavily against the chairs backing.

No sounds came out of my mouth as I struggled to breathe. Finally the dryness of my eyes was quenched with the flood of tears that overcame them.

Minutes went by as I sat alone, trying to process what had just happened through the tears. I couldn’t believe my own eyes at the lack of fight that ended our run. Ended his life. Ended my Ray.

More time passed and I overcame the paralysis of shock. My fingers scrambled across the keyboard to try and defeat the GAME OVER screen, but nothing was pushing it away. Nothing was stopping it from burning into my memory as a sign of how much of a failure I turned out to be.

“No!” I screamed as I kept hitting the enter button. “God, no! Get this out of here!”

I hit it so hard that the key popped off and fell to the floor next to the controller. The next key I mercilessly beat was the escape, but it failed me too. Then the start button, but that one was no better.

“Ray!” I screamed and slammed my fist down on the desk. “Ray!!”

I couldn’t do anything to save him. It was over and the unmovable image before me was proof of that.

“No no no!” I screamed until my throat hurt-until not a hint of air was left in my lungs. “Ray!” Then I cried and wailed loudly in agony.

*THUD THUD THUD!*

Someone was beating the front door. Probably a neighbor who heard all my screaming

*THUD THUD THUD!*

I had no choice but to open my phone up and check the door camera. It was a police officer standing there.

I had no choice but to answer. He’d gotten a call that a woman was screaming bloody murder and had to check it out, but I put on an empty, fake smile, like I always had to, and told him I was just watching a movie way too loud.

If only this had been a movie. A fiction where rewinding a moment brought back a character that left too soon. A video game where reverting back to a checkpoint gave another chance at life.

When I was alone, I curled up in a corner in the kitchen to quietly cry. How was I going to even tell the world what had just happened? How was I going to explain the disappearance of my husband? How I couldn’t get him back now because I was such a failure?

I was lost in a void of terror and loss without a guiding light to pull me from the brink of nothingness. Nobody was going to hold my hand and take me along the confusing, invisible path of defeat to rise back to the challenge. It was over.

“Ray…” I uttered.

*Ring Ring!*

*CRASH!*

There was a loud noise in the computer room. I crawled back to it and saw my phone had fallen from the desk and onto my controller hard enough to leave a big crack on the glossy surface of both items.

*Ring Ring!*

It continued to ring as if it didn’t know what had just happened, alerting me that someone beyond these empty walls was reaching out to contact me.

I inched closer. Finally the phone was in my grasp and I turned it to see who was calling…

“Teny-chan…”

She was trying to face chat. My finger was about to tap the screen, but I hesitated for a moment.

Could I face her after all this? Maybe a small part of me didn't want to because this all started with her...

No, it wasn't her fault... Someone else was the reason for everything falling apart. But still, her face was deeply connected to the mystery.

I threw the phone and fell back against the wall crying. The ringing stopped.

*Ting-a-ling!*

A little bell rang from the computer. The GAME OVER screen that had been eyeing me this whole time finally faded to a soft green. The LED lights in the PC tower changed green too.

“Don’t lose hope!” that familiar childlike voice sang. “It’s not over yet, because we can still save him!”

“No, we can’t!” I shouted. “He’s gone! I can’t save him anymore. I messed up!”

“Please, don’t lose hope. Never lose hope. It’s dark now, but I promise there’s still time.”

What was she saying? How was I going to save Ray now that he was gone?

For a moment the whole world faded. My eyes were shut tight and I denied reality. The worst had happened and now I was facing defeat.

But finally, after all the tears and pain, a little body came floating down from above. A glowing angel fluttering with fairy dust falling from her feathery wings.

She landed in front of me, almost towering enough to look down on me while I was on the floor.

“It’s not your fault. I was selfish and wanted to save my world. So please, blame me for everything. But don’t lose hope, because we can still save him.”

I couldn’t blame her as much as I wanted to. She didn’t mean this to happen, and nobody could have predicted it.

I looked up at her with pleading eyes, hopeful that her words were true.

“Can we really save him?” I asked.

“He’s not gone yet. But if we don’t hurry…”

She held out a ring, one all too familiar to me. It was the one that…

“How did you get my engagement ring?” I asked.

“Last night, when you went to bed, Mr. Roberts spawned it through my command console and said he wanted to give it to you as a gift later. I didn’t really understand it until he explained the story, but…”

I accepted the ring, then put it on my finger. The little diamond on it was glowing a hot pink color. This thing meant more to me than my actual wedding ring. Ray had done some much to make it a big deal in one of his games…

“If I found this, I know he’s still in there.” Teny-chan claimed. “So please, Lady Rose…”

I had a feeling I knew where she was going with this, and seeing this ring was enough to juice me up for it.

Getting strength in my heart, I rose to my feet and gave her a stern face.

“So how do I get inside the game?”