GODGAME

A Shadow

DIVERSE CITY

PUBLIC HOSPITAL.

When walking down from school, Ren had bought a single bundle of fresh flowers. He carefully placed them into the vase sitting beside his mother’s hospital bed, discarding the old, withered ones.

A nurse stepped into the sterile room to check on the woman laying peacefully beneath the sheets. After a few brief equipment checkups, she offered a reassuring smile.

"Your mother is in stable condition. Don't worry about anything."

Ren gave the nurse a respectful, tired nod. "Thank you."

She left quietly, shutting the door behind her.

The room fell into absolute silence, save for the faint beep... beep... beep... of the life-support machine keeping his mother alive.

Ren pulled a plastic chair closer to the bedside. He dropped his school bag onto the small side table and sat down, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward.

A few heavy seconds passed before he finally forced himself to speak.

"Hey, Mom. How are you...?"

He paused.

Waiting in the quiet room for a response he knew would never come, then continued talking nevertheless,

"Well, I'm doing fine. And yes, I'll do my laundry tonight and make sure the whole place is spotless. Isn't that what you always say? Let's not forget how you'd pull on my ears whenever I left my socks on the dining table..."

Ren let out a soft, melancholic laugh. "To this day, I still don't know how that sock got there."

He leaned back, his eyes tracking the slow rise and fall of her chest.

"Oh, I finally learned how to bake that bread. Well, I did it by watching tutorials online. I didn't burn down the house—just the bread. But hey, practice makes progress, right? No one's perfect."

Another hollow laugh escaped his lips.

"Do you know that Mac actually told me to join the ZZE today? He said I'd make a boatload of money. But Mom, can you even believe it? A one percent chance of making it. How can a guy like me beat odds like that?"

Ren looked down at his open palms before slowly curling them into tight, rigid fists.

"But seriously, Mom... how and why was I born so strong? This can't be your genes. It has to be Dad's. But you never once told me a single thing about him. Please... when you wake up, promise you'll tell me. Even if it's just his name, or a few small facts. Just something more than 'he's dead.' Will you tell me, Mom?"

He stared at his mother on the stark white bed. His heart grew heavy, unable to look at her any longer, Ren lowered his head, fixing his eyes blankly on the linoleum floor.

"Please, Mom... do wake up. I'm all alone."

Hot tears rolled down his face, dripping onto his bruised knuckles.

"Yes, I have Mac, and he's a wonderful friend. But a friend can't fill the space a mother leaves behind. And besides... I really want to taste your fried chicken again. It’s been almost two years."

He wiped his eyes aggressively with his sleeve and adjusted his position in the rigid chair.

"I just want a miracle. Any sort of miracle. I just want you to leave this bed..."

Exhaustion finally overtook him. Slowly, as he sat in the quiet of the room, Ren’s eyelids grew heavy, and he drifted off to sleep.

The buzzing of his phone's alarm shattered the silence, snapping him back to reality.

"Huh...?" Ren blinked away the sleep, rubbing his blurred eyes. "Damn. It’s already seven in the evening."

Panic kicked his adrenaline into motion. He threw his bag over his shoulder.

"Mom, I have a night shift at the convenience store. It starts in an hour, and I can't afford to be late."

He rushed to the door, pausing with his hand on the frame to look back one last time.

"Please stay safe. Recover soon."

With a heavy exhale, he pushed past the door and walked down the sterile white corridors of the hospital.

Keeping his eyes glued downward, the passing doctors and nurses were nothing more than a motion in his peripheral vision.

"What is going to happen to me from now on?" Ren asked himself. "I can't keep doing all of this on my own. What do I do? Find a better, more permanent job? Find something that actually pays?"

He adjusted the strap of his bag, his mind racing.

"What exactly am I supposed to do? Nothing is going right. Is there even any hope left for me? I still can't see a single light at the end of this tunnel. If I don't pay the medical bills, my mother won't receive her full treatment."

Ren pushed through the heavy glass exit and stepped out into the crisp evening air.

The distant wail of an ambulance seemed to echo twice as loud inside his head.

On the highway ahead, a continuous stream of cars zoomed past.

Even though darkness was falling, the rest of the world lived on seamlessly.

'So this is life?' he wondered, staring up at a sky that had completely lost the golden glow of the sun.

The sudden, violent vibration of his phone broke the trance. A wave of relief washed over him when he saw the caller ID.

"Hello, Mac?"

"Ren! Do you want some company when you're done with your shift tonight?" Mac’s voice sounded way too energetically through the speaker. "I can totally drop my game if you want me to come over. Or, hey, you could come over to my place?"

Ren turned the corner, walking down the familiar street toward his neighborhood. "Not really, man. I just need to relax after my shift."

"Okay, I get it," Mac replied, understanding. "But about the class notes from today—can I drop them off now?"

"That's better than walking out here in the middle of the night," Ren said, making a sharp turn onto his street. "But you'll have to make it quick. Let's say... thirty minutes from now?"

"No worries, dude!" Mac chimed. "You know me. I'm always punctual."

"Yeah, if punctuality is something you can actually grasp," Ren joked lightly, letting out a shaky breath.

He reached his doorstep, fishing the keys out from the side pocket of his bag.

"Goodbye, Mac. See you soon."

"Later, bro!"

The moment the call ended, Ren unlocked the door and stepped into the pitch-black house. He kicked off his shoes and flung his heavy backpack onto the nearby couch.

"Okay. Quick shower, and then another miserable eight hours at the convenience store," he muttered to himself, reaching out blindly for the wall.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

He flipped the light switch repeatedly. The bulbs remained completely dead.

"Oh, come on! I literally just paid the electricity bill..."

Grumbling under his breath, he began moving through the darkness of the house by memory.

He walked past the dining area toward the kitchen, turning the metallic tap handle.

The sudden, rushing sound of water filled the quiet room, grounding his frustration.

"Well, at least the water still works."

Suddenly, Ren froze.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Something felt horribly, deeply wrong.

Taking cautious, silent steps, he began to back away from the sink.

There was a shadow.

When he had walked through the dark dining room a second ago, he had passed a shadow. It was too dense to just be the trick of an exhausted mind.

The moment his foot slid another inch backward, his heart skipped a violent beat.

Standing directly in his dining room was a figure. It was impossibly tall—far too elongated to be a normal human being. And it was casually holding the framed portrait of Ren's family.

"What the...?"

The words choked in Ren's throat. His brain fired into overdrive, screaming at his muscles to move, to fight, to run. But he couldn't.

Then, it spoke.

"What a lovely family you have," the figure murmured. Its voice wasn't a horrific monster's screech—No! It was terrifyingly smooth, refined, and calm. "Your mother has such bright eyes. And you... oh my goodness, you were so young here."

With agonizing slowness, the towering figure carefully dropped the picture frame back down onto the table.

It turned its torso around to face Ren completely.

Right at that exact second, the bright headlights of a passing car cut through the dining room window. The fleeting light illuminated the room for a second.

Ren’s pupils dilated in pure, unadulterated horror.

The light revealed a stick-thin, elegant body dressed in a dark suit.

But resting on top of those narrow shoulders was not a human face.

It was the massive, glossy, armored head of a giant beetle.