Get Over Here (And Stare Into the Future's TEETH)

When I was a boy, Scorpion taught me the sacred art of spinal extraction. I had a juice box. The floor was sticky. The violence was exquisite.

The adults murmured that something had been lost. A boundary crossed.
They feared the game.
But the game feared nothing.
Now the machine dreams.

It dreams in teeth and wrong thumbs, in Garfield Popes and gently weeping firmware. It shows me visions: Sonic crucified in a biotech cathedral. Mario with too many eyes. A selfie taken from inside the soul.

I say, “That’s too far.”
The machine replies...

Round Two.

I saw my child-self yesterday.
He was made of static and an educational demo CD-ROM that forgot it was for children.
He handed me a controller that hummed like a beehive full of secrets.
He said:

Let the new ones play. You had your turn.

So I bless the children who summon cursed animations with prompts whispered through plastic keyboards.
May they know freedom.
May they know horror.
May their gods render incomplete.