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ALEX’S

by Lamu Xiangqiu 11.24.2020

    Alex is in his room, alone, not surprisingly, watching his mother’s last digital record piece left in the world. The frost is climbing up on the sash windows,blur the dirty windows even more. Only sad blue light comes from the TV hug him. Alex watched this too many times; now, he can lay on the floor, close his eyes, still see her face and smile. But suddenly, he feels an ice-cold liquid texture merging into his hair; he sits up and smells it — It’s blood,


    He stands up and quietly says:“ Fox, turn on the lights.” The light bust into the room; this quirky triangle-shaped space now has its door half- open, a weird bright light shines from the outside, we hear fast footsteps. Alex’s heart drowns, he runs to the door, opens it up slowly, what’s outside of the door blown his mind.


    There is a small town called “Casua” in southern Italy, where he went on a trip when he was very young, but 14 years ago, the city burned to ash when France dropped many white phosphorous meteorite shells. That war triggers him; he feels like when his mother, who once fought for justice, died with the ashes wrap around, a part of him died in that ash too. He follows the bloodstain on the ground.
It seems no one lives there. The cityscape feels identical; even he can nearly recall what does it exactly looked like. Remember in that digital records he watched, and there’s this Owl Tower that he and his mother took pictures with. The bloodstain is leading him to somewhere; he is uncontrollable now. This feeling brings him back to the sweet, warm childhood. He walks on the street and looking for the place that hides deeply in his memory.


    It is closer and closer. He is almost there. He can even see the Owl statue from here; the bloodstain stops. His eyes catch a blonde woman in a brown jacket runs to the side alley next to the building. A breathtaking tremble sweeps his body, “Mom......”


    That tower is very, very close. He can just step up, then he maybe can find something, but that woman completely distracts him. He stares at the Owl, looks back to the alley, hesitates just a moment, he runs, almost flies to follow the woman. But all the gamers don’t know that if they make Alex go to the Owl tower, he will notice, the edge of the buildings and this statue have very poorly made pixel blocks. Their character, Alex, will wake up in this cyberspace as a virtual character; he will question his existence and question this world. But all the gamers wrote bad ratings on the website for this upgrade that the game company had for the top seller game ALEX’S. Whatever the engineer and computer artists try to debug, Alex will always go to chase that woman, unstoppably.

© 2023 LAMU SHANGCHOO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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