The Sad Skinhead

When you spend enough (that is, too much) time playing a computer strategy game, its invasion of your head spreads beyond the conscious and reaches even your dreams... or even beyond. And so here, back in his seat at the Café Cuculia ("Why I am I back at the Café Cuculia," he fleetingly thought), Klaus was back once again to torturedly playing the gray of Rise of Rock City. *We* don't play it, and we don't want to play it, because we don't want to be like Klaus. Fortunately it's fictional, so the risk is small. But let's keep our tour of its boundaries brief all the same. Just in case! Somebody might invent it!

The player, as a Magetaurist Lord dispossessed of the city he used to rule, aimed to take full control of Rock City, while still making sure that it still Rises. (As otherwise *every* team in the game loses.) Through Synthomancy, Riffchantment, and seven other schools of rocked-out magic - through legions of deadly musicians - they struggle for supremacy over the city.

But really, in practice, it's all about careful beancounting, over and over and over again. Squeezing out one more point of Electricity, or Coolness, or Power - or any of the other main resources of the game, from each little plot of land, from each little character in the city district their Magetaurist Lord controlled, and above all out of the Lord themselves.

And that's exactly what Klaus was doing in his head when the Sad Skinhead plopped into the opposite seat of the two-seat table Klaus had deliberately picked in order to remain alone.

Or rather, not quite. Klaus was trying to...

...save the game.

Trying to save the game in your dreams (or in ego-death sitting at the Café Cuculia) is definitely the most tortuous part of playing a strategy game in your dreams, because you can't. Do. It. Obviously. Since you're not, you know, on your computer. But your dream-mind struggles and struggles to do it all the same, because goddammit, it's been such a struggle to make progress in the game while dreaming with your mind all fucked up, and/or you've got to do it because your brilliant dream-mind has implemented the perfect-solution!

But you fail. But you keep trying. Your mind spins. Sometimes it wakes you up. But Klaus couldn't wake up.

"But if you're just going to keep mumbling to yourself I swear I'll punch you. Faggot. Even though there's no point. I can't even kill you. Kikes. Niggers. Tacos. Can't kill 'em. Already dead. Can't kill 'em." The Skinhead's mind spun.

When Klaus was aware enough to think, he didn't like fascists very much. And when he heard fascist bullshit, it angered him enough to wake him up. "What the fuck did you just say," he snapped, startled, his greasy black hair swishing around his neck.

The Skinhead, on the other hand, was inured to it all. To it *all*, all. For all his provocative words, he himself couldn't be provoked anymore. He wasn't just blabbering; what he said really was the torture of his afterlife. He moaned of it to every new victim he could find. And yet, with the reality of the situation hammered into him with every painless, non-fatal punch and kick he delivered to his racial foes, he really was gradually entering, year by year, a rather laid-back, Zen-like state. If sad. Give him a century or two - or the right push sooner - and he could be OK.

As you read this from their faces from halfway across the Café, your mind transported here by daydreaming, Alan Thicke next to you takes his hand off Florence Henderson's shoulder and points, shouting.

"Werewolf!!!!!"

You see him. A furry man-beast. "Wow. Really. Werewolf," you think. And then he wolfs out.