Mr. Brittle
That’s when I saw it: the newest pinball machine.
You always knew it was the newest one, being kind of quarantined from the others in the back, very shiny, not grubby from the fingerprints of other losers trying to make a name for themselves in the arcade. This was untouched. Untamed. Unknown. Well, at least until now.
The machine was called Mr. Brittle. And from even afar, I got the goosebumps.
It looked like something out of Reanimator meets Videodrome meets Night of the Creeps with a dash of Scanners for that cerebral stuff. Finally…. Something of my fancy! This was true-blue B-movie horror schlock mixed with my mastery of pinball, and I almost splooged all over the floor.
Let me back up for a moment, though…. Peanuts and pinball: that was my shit. Seriously. Not one kid could pull me from both unless they bribed me with Playboy and Hustler, and even then I’d honestly get kinda tired of all the boobs after awhile. I mean, what good was it? — you couldn’t feel ’em in your hands, man!
Sure, I generally was a dweeb, but I had no problem with that. I had a big brother who treated me like shit, and I wasn’t very popular in school unless I had a bag of weed in my pocket. I slept in class mostly, and then gym would come around; watching the chicks was about the highlight of my day every day, I admit. But the best part of the day — that absolute climax —
That was hittin’ the mall and making my way to the arcade.
I lied: I had one more vice of mine, something not many other kids my age would get into, but I guess it came with the territory in this goth trip, wearing black all the time…. horror flicks. Shit, that was my opium. Sadly I couldn’t get that — and pinball — at the same time. And it pissed me off.
I take it back — they had some stuff in the arcade, but none of them would last long:
I’d get the real goods with the Creature From the Black Lagoon pinball table, A Nightmare on Elm Street table and more like that, but no matter how you looked at it, the so-called “blockbusters” would push all of those great machines into the back burner, because the fact was pinball was about lights flashing and balls crashing.
Star Wars (loved it, too, honestly), Indiana Jones, Back to the Future: that was true pinball. But why couldn’t they just get some Halloween Michael Myers in there, for damn’s sake? Sure, that stuff was bloody as Hell, but it wasn’t like they needed to go all out with the mechanics (although that would’ve been cool).
I got the gist, though: we’re kids, we can’t be “exposed” to that shit (even though we’d always sneak in the theater anyway, grab my popcorn — and peanuts, of course — to watch the latest slasher flick). So, naturally, when it came to arcades, Atari and Nintendo, the games were, well, tame. That was why honestly I never got into the coin crunchers with the buttons and joysticks anyway, because I wanted something that allowed me to fuckin’ bash the machine just to get the ball going where I wanted it to —
At least until the machine would tilt, of course. Stupid.
In fact, I once got banned out of the arcade because I kicked a machine, playing freakin’ Joust. Bastards. So video games? Nah. I’d just stick with pinball. You could try and tilt it but not get in trouble for it, because the tilt punished you anyway!
Nevertheless there was something about snapping that ball at the right time to hit the ramp, rolling into the bumpers, slammin’ out a few thousand points and cinching the multiball. And it wasn’t about trying to ‘finish’ the game. It was always about beating your own score (or someone else’s score!).
Technically, this was a game that never ended. Unless you were a talent-less hack.
Needless to say, at times I’d fear the worst in my escape, coming back to the same old shit that I killed with jackpots and knew every inch of the table like the back of my hand, and my passion would grow stale. But then a new machine would show up for me to conquer, and I’d be back in the hot seat. Durations for that to happen often took maybe a month to three months for something new showing up, placed in the arcade to amass a following — with me on the front line, of course.
I killed it all: Black Hole, Centaur, Black Knight, Flash Gordon, you name it. I murdered them. If the tables would explode, they’d go out like nukes, mushroom clouds in the sky. No doubt you’d see my name at the top, number one, with anywhere between 70,000,000 to 100,000,000 in total points.
Days would go on repeat and sometimes rewind, trying to pass the time away at that place of commerce, flashing lights, colors and all you can eat at the food court until Mom would chase after me, picking me up and bringing me back home for me to sulk in my room. And then the best thing would happen —
Summer. A time of reckoning.
Sneaking out of the house during the weekday to immerse myself in the gaming heavens with blips, blinks, and finger blisters. Mom would always know where I was, of course.
It was July. We had just celebrated Independence Day. Not too sure what the big deal was, except fireworks were pretty cool. Long story short, I just itched to press those buttons, watching the flippers snap.
The next day I had asked Mom if I could get to the mall before it would close…. After all, I had been keeping tabs: I thought there might be a new machine there for me to try out. She said yeah, sure.
Grabbing my skateboard, I had rolled down sidewalks, streets and alleys to get there with just minutes left. My heart would pound more and more, the closer I got to the arcade.
And wouldn’t you know it: that arcade was virtually empty. But still open, and that whole time I was just inspecting Mr. Brittle from front to back and reviewing the plunger, holes, bumpers and all the crazy ramps.
The overloaded sounds of the arcade and ’80s rock vibrating my head totally infected me from top to bottom as I was blown away by the artwork, merging something from classic B&W monster movie shit and the more slasher stuff I was a bit more used to, and we were talking nasty rolls and levels here:
Put it this way: if all pinball machines were roller coasters, this would be one of the newer ones that were, like, upside down, hanging your feet or something — something bat-shit crazy. My fingers instantly tingled.
From what I could gather of the voice-overs in the table, Mr. Brittle was a mysterious kind of man you didn’t want to mess with. He wore a fedora. The artwork didn’t show much of his face except for his freakin’ white eyes on the dash of the playfield. I had to admit: they were haunting. Especially the montages of melting kids with oddly over-extended bony arms. Once I completely immersed myself in the spectacle of the entire table, I realized I was looking at some sort of killing field in Hell. Bad-ass.
I didn’t pop a quarter quite yet as I wanted to really examine the mechanics, see what it would take to hit a multiball or something. What were the requirements for a jackpot? Simple. You had to lock your ball three times, and then three ramps would activate as jackpots for a multiball — that’s when all Hell would break loose.
As I looked closer, I got wind of the story a bit more: Mr. Brittle was like a demon of some kind, I gathered? In the guise of a guy, of course. But he prayed on innocent kids, infecting them with some drug designed to make their bones brittle; and when these kids would collapse, he’d suck the marrow out like it was life force, making him that much stronger.
Shit…. That’s deep. I had to admit I was a bit shocked that the mall allowed this kind of machine into the arcade. I wasn’t complaining. I dug it as the newest endeavor in my pinball career to conquer, arguably the best one in the industry so far. Truly I was stunned.
I popped a quarter in. First thing I noticed were the lights behind Mr. Brittle’s white eyes, flashing…. And the voice-over rang within:
“Hiya, little one….” Little one, I thought, funny. “Ready to meet Mr. Brittle?”
I wondered: never hearing about this on TV puzzled me. Or movies. Or the radio. But maybe it was an original project.
The voice-over then said: “Time to bend and break.”
— Like an aerobics instructor or something. I heard a touch of that rubber-band bullshit with hair ties, tanks and glitter, but only just a little bit. It was enough to be a little jarring.
“Bend and break. Okay.” I said. I tried not to laugh.
I plunged the ball and let loose, watching the silver sphere dance around the bumpers and already racking up some points. I didn’t know how but the colors and lights seemed to melt into each other, and it was utterly fierce, phantasmal. Or maybe that was the fact that I was just a bit tired, having skated all the way at night to the mall just to play in the dark among the flashing lights.
Yay for not having seizure problems.
After what felt like ten minutes of playing and measuring the limits of bumping the machine on the right or left to knock the ball back up to the flippers when sliding out on the sides, though, I noticed something odd….
A weird ‘disconnected’ feeling.
Let me be the first to say that I wasn’t on a road to Catatonia or something. The drifting feeling was typical when playing pinball as you get lost in the blinking lights, and most of the time you even lose track of time. In fact…. I wasn’t exactly 100% sure I had been playing the Mr. Brittle pinball table for ten minutes. It was just a guess.
This sensation seemed more…. Intense. I again chalked it up as a byproduct or remnant of the flush feeling after skateboarding all the way to the mall. That wasn’t something I did often, just to play pinball. This night, though? It had to be a game-changer of experiences for me — all alone in an arcade, no one else around, surrendering to the titan of nothingness that was a hopeless existence, and my fingers became utterly grafted onto the buttons —
Like I was part of the machine.
I would be a bit more alarmed had it not been the enjoyment of seeing Mr. Brittle’s face flashing constantly into my eyes as I hit my first multiball — and still on my first ball, in fact.
I was a firm believer that when a machine did that — all the flashes, blinks, blips, sweeps of light — it was like an entity from another world communicating with you. Sort of like downloading integral information into the fabric of my brain through my eyeballs! Seriously…. I could literally feel my pupils dilate and tremble. If someone had hooked me to an EEG or whatever it was called, those lines would be like tremors causing quakes, man.
Before long, though, the music around me — not within the pinball table — began to, well, melt. You know what I’m talking about, I bet: it was like those sounds got hot, set on fire, choking like when your walkman sinks to the bottom of a pool, and you hear everything slow down. And blip, blip. Blip. Or like dripping?
Like something dripping…. From my ear. Something wet. Yet I wasn’t compelled to check on that, because maybe it was a leak in the ceiling, especially since it had rained yesterday; and besides I was having too much fun playing Mr. Brittle like a fucking champion. Shit. And the elaborate ramps and twists, thinking they’d scare me….
Second ball. Wasn’t fast enough in bumping the machine to keep the ball from sliding down. But I had already accumulated about 20,000,000 points anyway. That was when I felt my ears pop. Like I was on a plane or something. They’d then ‘fill up’ with weird air pockets, you know, pumping your head into a balloon, and for some reason the world around me began to rotate —
But I kept pumping the flippers. Focused. Concentrated. Beads of sweat rolled down my nose. Oh, maybe that’s what was in my ears.
Mr. Brittle spoke again…. And I didn’t know I had the thoughts: but it seemed a bit out of ‘character’ for him:
Can you hear me?— He said. Loud and clear. But still pixelated, like a bit of a robotic voice-over.
Sure can, I thought.
Then he said, I can hear you.
….Okay?
All of that being said while still plugging away, trying to ignore the bloated feeling in my head. I even got a little dizzy and started sensing other ‘wet stuff’ dribbling out of my nostrils. Thicker than sweat, it felt.
I can hear your heartbeat.
Ummm…. Okay.
Damn it. Third ball. I was slacking. Ball dropped straight through, and it was like I wasn’t paying any attention. My score had racked up another 30,000,000, though; and I was almost certain I hit the mark for top score of all time.
At that point, I had hit a cornerstone, and many of you might know what that is: you begin wanting to stop….
It was like you were done. Satisfied. Complete. You didn’t need to finish it out in the hopes of getting more points, and you even felt as if just ten more seconds of playing would engulf you in strange madness. To make it worse, you were at the fucking precipice of a crazy conflict: you wanted to stop, but also couldn’t; you had to keep going. Just to see how far you could take it.
The urge to keep punching the buttons was stronger than I had ever felt before. Slamming the balls into bumpers, and Mr. Brittle’s eyes flashing into my face even brighter than before — I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was stuck in a void that was a bit alien to me. Perhaps even a little eerie.
I came close to a ball-out a couple times. But somehow I felt Mr. Brittle himself shielding me from the end. Keeping me on that electronic life support where you could even hear your heartbeat inside your ears, pummeling the damn drums in a sick symphony of perilous darkness, yet serene and tranquil.
More wetness from my ears, pooling and then rolling down my lobes into the crevices of my neck: I resisted wiping but ached to shelter my skin from the moisture, whatever it was. Couldn’t tell. But more and more poured and boiled out, muffling the sounds and sending me spiraling into a stupor. My eyesight blurred just a bit, yet synchronized with Mr. Brittle’s flashing eyes, and his repeated words over and over andoverand over and overandoveragain —
I can hear your heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat.
“What the fuck is going on….” I said.
Heartbeat.
Ball out, almost. But I kept flipping. But why? I’m done! I’m done! No more!
Heartbeat. Heartbeat.
Stop, damn it!
Heartbeatheartbeatheartbeatheartbeatheartbeat —
Like ripping glue from skin, I peeled myself away from the buttons, staggering back…. Heaving. I felt like my chest was going to burst like a xenomorph fucker found its way into my cavities to gestate and shatter my insides. Instinctively, I covered my ears — for no immediate reason. Feeling the wetness, I brought my hands in front to me to see the crimson redness with more of that wetness pouring out of my nose —
Shit.
Racing out of the arcade, I rushed to the bathroom in a frenzy still hearing Mr. Brittle in my head as if he was…right behind me. Chasing me.
“Time to bend and break. Bend and break.”
He kept repeating it in my head (had to be all in my head, what the fuck….). By that time, the fervor, hyperventilating into my lungs plunged me into a lactic acid trip like I was running the damn mile in gym only ten times worse, but — sweet! — there was the bathroom door.
Blasting through to let the fluorescent flood around me, the shocking look of me in the mirror froze me like how my Nintendo games would glitch and give me Hell, except I couldn’t blow any oxygen into those so-called brain chips, or my eyeballs, to solidify and dry out the fear —
Bend. And. Break.— Mr. Brittle said.
Before I could even reach for the faucet to wash all the thick blood from my nose and ears, my bones began to…crack. And as much as I wanted to scream…. I couldn’t.
Limbs contorted freakishly. Savagely. My damn collarbone protruded out. I felt like I was being shoved into a trash compactor or something.
No. Stop. Please. No. No. No, no, no.
I then felt my neck crack. Everything went dark. With no sign of light to come.
Tom took a good look at the slightly torn missing person poster on the wall.
Adam Johnston. That was his name.
In a blink, the image dismissed itself from his eyes, moving forward in the space that was the mall.
Heading to the arcade, Tom in his single digits, stuck in elementary, was on a shopping trip with his Mom, but Tom knew he had at least a half-hour in the bleeding lights of Q-Bert, Tron and a couple Mario brothers.
Sliding right in with his sneakers blessing the carpeted floor of an age-old arcade of big black machines, he made his way to the far back — and saw that Mr. Brittle pinball table. Sitting solemnly in a corner.
Amid the frantic sounds, Tom took his baseball cap off, turning it around and firmly fitting it onto his head. The air got thicker somehow. And Mr. Brittle was truly brighter than the rest, flashing intermittently with voices from another world, it seemed, trying to “reach out” for anyone to play.
Tom grinned a bit. He loved pinball.
Pinball previews were easy to watch — gave you a gauge to see what to expect, not to mention the highest scorers of the table. Surprisingly…. There was only one high score.
1) ADAM — — — — — — 74,629,582
The digital display flashed constantly with his name. Tom thought it was weird, the passing thought that he just saw that name before…. A few minutes ago, maybe? No worries.
Once you were in the arcade, that was it: you were in a new world. Everything else didn’t exist. Nothing else mattered. Especially when you pulled out that first quarter.
Tom reached into his pocket. Time to play.
