Dead Pixels

The first thing Ruby could sense was the man’s breath. The scent of a clove cigarette—with Caesar salad dressing. He stood behind her, breathing heavily, as though he had walked a long distance at an anxious pace.

It was approaching that magical time of evening in the mall. Ruby watched the orange crush sunset give way to cobalt through the glass-paneled windows above. It was full night in this cathedral of commerce. At quarter ‘til eight, she could start packing up the kiosk and prepare to go home.

But Ruby wasn’t quite there yet. There was still one more customer to attend to.

She figured the man had stopped at the food court on the way to the kiosk—and maybe that explained the smell of spices. But when she saw the harried, demonic look on his face, she knew right away: this guy wasn’t the food court type. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten anything in months.

He wore a shabby old suit and hat. His sunken eyes and protruding cheekbones gave the whole face a skeletal appearance. The fish belly pallor of the skin completed the undead look.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I wonder if you can help me.”

Ruby ran the Pixel Paradise retro video game kiosk in the Galleria. Even though she hated video games, working the kiosk wasn’t such a bad gig. She certainly made more an hour than the baristas and pretzel pushers. The mall was usually bustling with a steady hum of shoppers between Belk and the Saks 5th Avenue outlet. But despite the traffic, the kiosk was quiet, with only a few shoppers stopping by each day.

Dickie, Ruby’s boss, did most of his retro game trades in the main storefront in Augusta. The kiosk was just a place to offload additional stock and nab some “easy kale,” as he liked to call it—mostly from the Christmas addicts, nostalgia-seekers, and prospectors with more money than good sense.

But this customer, the one with the fiendish expression, was something new. No easy kale here.

“Sure,” Ruby said. “How can I help you?”

“I received word that your establishment has come into possession of a very rare item. I came all the way from New York to your store in Augusta, Georgia. And they said you received the item here. You must help me. It’s a game cartridge for the Atari 2600.”

Ruby knew the one. A black cartridge with a handwritten white label. She initially thought it was a joke that such a nondescript item could be worth five figures.

But over the years, she learned to never underestimate the collectors market. With the right motivation, and enough money, a collector would do almost anything for the perfect item.

The market was rife with fakes—reproduction carts, or “repros,” as they were called. Artificially aged plastic and meticulously printed labels. Dickie had taught Ruby how to spot them, but soon she became even better than him, able to identify a repro almost effortlessly. And so Dickie came to defer to her, trusted her more than the testimony of his own eyes.

The black Atari cartridge with the sloppy white label was real. No doubt about it.

“I’m afraid it’s sold,” Ruby said.

“Are you quite certain? It’s a black cartridge with a white label and handwritten title: Hall of Hades. Very rare. You couldn’t miss it.”

“Yes,” Ruby said. “As soon as my boss announced it on our newsletter, we received a bid from a private collector.”

“I must have a name, please. It’s gravely important.”

“I can’t do that. It’s a private collector. Even I don’t know who it is.” That was a lie. She had a name. But, at Dickie’s insistence, Ruby didn’t share business details with anyone. Dickie trusted her completely.

“My boss is on a plane right now to deliver the package and accept a cashier’s check.”

“The city, please?”

“No. I can’t divulge that.”

Ruby liked saying no—it gave her a sense of control in a market where negotiation was expected.

“So you’re saying there’s no information you will provide?” the man said.

“I’m afraid so. Sorry.”

The man looked as though he might start crying. He balled a fist and brought it to his mouth, as if to stifle an intense outburst of emotion. “You don’t understand. This cartridge contains a terrible curse. It has caused the ruin of so many unwitting gamers and collectors. It caused the collapse of the publisher that brought it to market. In a mad rush to divest all stock, they clumsily scribbled the title on the remaining cartridges by hand, to save on printing costs. That label is a testament of its authenticity and also to the ruination that piece of plastic-encased silicon has caused.”

The man’s florid turns of phrase sent goosebumps across Ruby’s flesh. He was clearly demented, or perhaps a committed prankster. She still had nothing to offer, no valuable information to satisfy him. And she was growing irritated by his insistence.

She looked at her watch. Any moment now. Soon. Soon, she could leave.

“I regret the inconvenience,” Ruby said. “But the mall will be closing soon.”

She watched the man’s face crumble further into a spasm of remorse. She wanted to bid him goodnight and send him on his way. But she couldn’t help it, her curiosity got the better of her.

“What did you mean by a curse?” Ruby asked. “Like, the game is haunted?”

“A very dangerous thing. Those who play the game at first notice nothing out of the ordinary. The game contains a rather amusing puzzle. But they soon see an image. A symbol. And a picture. Some say it is a woman being held in the grip of a terrifying deity. Some say it is the face of a creature. Disaster follows. In truth, some have played the game and escaped calamity. Skeptics have cited these cases and dismissed the other reports as fantasy or urban legend. But I know better. I know the curse is particular. It targets only those who have committed some transgression. Some trespass against the natural order of things.”

“How do you know all this?” Ruby asked.

“It claimed my daughter. She played the game at her boyfriend’s house. She was involved in a fatal car accident the next day.”

“I’m sorry to hear of your loss.”

“I’ll never know,” the man said. “I’ll never know why the curse selected her. What sin could my little girl have committed?”

Ruby looked down to check her watch. It was almost closing time. She held Dickie’s business card out to the man. “I regret we couldn’t help you. But if you reach out to my boss, he can put you on a wait list.”

“Damn your wait list! I don’t want to play games. I want to smash every last cartridge to pieces, burn the shards, and piss on the ashes. You have been of no assistance here. Through your inaction and ignorance, you have only allowed more evil to sluice unchecked through this world. You should be ashamed.”

With that, the man turned on his heel and walked the other way.

“Just a little customer service,” Ruby muttered to herself.

While she scarcely enjoyed being chewed out by customers, Ruby was grateful for the man’s departure. All around her, the corridor fell suddenly tomb silent. The other shops had already closed for the night.

One final task remained before closing up. She opened the drawer beneath the cash register and pulled out a box meant for a Frogger cartridge. Inside was the black cartridge with the white label. She hefted the object in her hand, marveling at her good fortune.

While she put no stock in hoary myths and urban legends, she did believe wholeheartedly in the magical healing power of money. And this was her ticket out of the mall. Seed capital, she called it. That’s exactly what it was. A seed from which she could sprout a new life, move to a new city, start again.

Poor Dickie trusted her completely—after all, she’d never given him reason not to. He taught her to spot repros, and she did it perfectly. So perfectly that Dickie would never know the cartridge she’d given him was a fake. Nor would the buyer. A perfect crime.

All she had to do was stuff the plastic box into her purse, close up the shop, and leave on time. Go home, wash her hair, and devise a plan to sell the cartridge tomorrow.

Though it was strange. She had, of course, played the supposedly cursed game. It was necessary to test the ROM she had loaded on the fake cartridge alongside the original, and Dickie required her to play and test all new acquisitions anyway. There had been nothing memorable at first. Just a flickering, ashy video frame. Then a bright yellow flash, followed by some blippy music and the graphic: HALL OF HADES.

The puzzle had struck her as odd. Just a few open tiles, with water droplets falling randomly about them. It all reminded Ruby of why she hated video games. So pointless and repetitive. Test complete, she had reached to shut it off, but a loud buzzing sound stopped her. An image appeared on the screen. She could hardly make it out with the cheap 8-bit graphical display. A face, skeletal, a woman, with long hair, and bleeding eyes. Bleeding, though it was difficult to make out the effect of motion with such blocky graphics. The buzzing sound pulsated, seemed to say, “Kill me.”

The image had sent a cold shiver through her. But she didn’t believe in curses.

Now was a time for action, not for looking back. She shuttered and locked the kiosk. Just to be sure, she double-tapped the side of her purse—good, she had not forgotten the cartridge in the drawer. A quick stop in the bathroom, and she would be done for the night.

Ruby always dreaded going to the back side of the mall, where the break rooms, facilities, and toilets were. Everything was drab and unkempt and dirty. So much unlike the shiny, spotless interior of the Galleria.

In the bathroom, feeling the buzz of the day’s noise shroud her head like earmuffs, she considered her actions. Yes, she was stealing a toy, but if no one caught her, did it really matter? A buyer found a seller, both sides got what they wanted. Ruby was just an unseen witness. What did it matter if she helped herself? Wasn’t she entitled?

The buzzing in her head, in her ears, and from the lighting fixture above, all served to reinforce her reasoning. She stepped out of the stall and looked at her face in the mirror. Worn and tired, but not without a youthful glow not yet tainted by wage work.

That was when the lights went off. Ruby was suddenly bathed in blackness.

“Great,” she said. It was probably a maintenance person. “Hey! I’m still in here.”

But when the lights came back on, it wasn’t her face staring back at her. It was the gaunt, dead face from the game screen. With the long, oily black hair and bleeding eyes.

Ruby screamed and ran out of the bathroom. Just nerves, she figured. The guilt was catching up with her.

As she passed the kiosk, she half-considered throwing the cartridge back. But that was foolish. She didn’t believe in curses; she believed in seed money.

She ran harder and faster away from the kiosk. In her shaking vision she could see the doors to the parking lot. She was almost free. Her mind refused to entertain the possibility that she was being chased.

She kept running anyway. The exit doors seemed to recede farther and farther away. No matter how hard or fast she ran, she couldn’t reach them.

Her heart pounded as if it would give out—until she felt the cold hands reach for her and lift her into the air. The buzzing crescendoed to an impossible, ear-piercing level as her vision blurred and faded to black.

Ruby had no family or emergency contacts to notify when she stopped appearing for work. The manager at the apartment complex she lived in confirmed she had not been seen in days.

Dickie filled out a police report. There was nothing else he could do. Even with Ruby absent, there was still business to be done. As he walked up to the kiosk, he thought about how strange it was that his employee could disappear without a trace. She’d never even taken a sick day.

The kiosk had been carefully locked and bolted. Ruby never missed a cue. Almost perfect. Dickie lamented the search he would now have to undertake to find someone as reliable.

The first customer of the day was a small boy with a large soda. He pointed to the Atari. “What’s that?” the boy said.

“That’s an Atari,” Dickie said, not looking up from his coffee.

“That game doesn’t even have a picture.”

Dickie looked up and lost his breath. There it was—the black cartridge with its sloppy handwritten label, somehow sitting in the Atari slot where it shouldn’t be, defying all logic and sense. On the TV screen, the yellow flash, blippy music, and the puzzle with the water droplets.

Dickie shut off the TV. A thin buzzing sound could be heard, then went silent.

About the Author

Chris Maiorana, a devoted writer of unpublishable trash tales, lives in the storm-battered city of Asheville, North Carolina, alongside his obstreperous beagle.  \"Dead Pixels\" is based on an actual untrue event.