Disconnected 🎮

Disconnected: Offline 🎮

The smell of stale, cheap coffee and grease filled the air in this dingy corner street café. Grace sat at a small table in the corner. The table was sticky and the seats uncomfortable. The middle-aged waitress with a face that looked like it would crack if she tried to smile walked over. Grace ordered two coffees and was doubtful whether she or Nate would drink them. The clock struck 11pm. Where was Nate? Something happened that afternoon, and she needed to know.

The drunk guy at the other end of the café gave a snort. His head was on the table with saliva dripping out of his mouth. Grace looked away. Nate walked in.

He sat down opposite Grace as the waitress brought the two coffees over and paid.

"Why did you want to meet here?" Grace said

"It's low-key. No one but drunks and smackheads comes here," Nate said. He took a sip of the coffee and immediately spat it back into the cup. "Best not drink that," he said.

"Can you please tell me what happened this afternoon?" Grace said

"I went into Tommy's room and picked up the controller. Nothing happened until I got angry and shouted, Then something odd happened."

"What was it?"

"I can't explain it. Do you know those trick pens and flashlights that give you a shock when you turn them on? It was like that feeling going up my arms. "

"What else?"

"Nothing. I dropped the controller, and that's when you shouted. But it was like I was being watched, as if it was looking at me. "

"The controller was looking at you?"

"That's how it felt."

Grace's phone started ringing from an unknown number. "One second," she said, and answered, "Hello."

Nate watched as the voice on the other end spoke to Grace, and with every second her face twisted in sadness and tears fell down her cheek until she ended the call. "Grace?" Nate asked with deep concern.

"My...My parents. They're dead," Grace said through tears.

Nate got up and wrapped her in a hug, and they left the café to go to the house in Nates's car.

The street was bathed in flashes of blue light as police cars and ambulances took up the entire road. Neighbours were out in their gardens looking at the tragic event. Grace sat on the garden wall of her house with a blanket wrapped around her as a paramedic talked to her. Nate was in the garden with a police officer getting informed of what had happened.

Grace's mother was discovered in Tommy's room with her head bashed in so violently that it had broken through to her brain and dislodged an eye.Her dad had been found with his neck snapped at the bottom of the stairs, with teeth missing and the inside of his throat shredded. It had been a massacre.

"Do you know who did this?" Nate asked.

"Not really," the officer said, "But we do have the murder weapon."

A forensic officer walked by carrying the controller in a bag. It was covered in blood. Nate stared at it as it was carried next to him, and he got shivers down his spine. For a brief moment, he could feel the electricity and the feeling that it was looking back at him.

"Are you alright, sir?" the police officer said.

"Yeah, just an upsetting night," Nate said.

Hours went by and many interviews with the police later, they eventually let Grace and Nate leave as they secured the house. Nosy people came up to them asking what had happened, but Nate shooed them away. They got into Nates's car and just sat there.