Hazel was my closer. I always saved a brief mention of Hazel for the end.
“Come on, tell us something we don’t know.” My friend Baron again.
This time he didn’t even turn around as he asked the question. I made a note to have a word with him about his commitment to earning his cut of the profits.
“Well, rumor has it there’s another force at work, operating behind the scenes of the game—something powerful, mysterious, and, occasionally, deadly. Something out there watching from somewhere else, staring into our world from an infinite darkness, waiting for the players to make a mistake.” I paused again for effect, and then continued, my voice a bit lower than before. “This warning was discovered written on the back of a Dewey decimal card in an old set of drawers in a thrift store in Ireland.”
I cleared my throat a little, then recited:
“Remember the game, or your world it dies.
“Remember to follow the patterns and signs.
“We wait in the shadows a-twisting your fate,
“While you crawl and you stumble blind into the gate.
“It’s all predetermined, no losses no gains,
“So play, little human, keep playing the game.”
“Wow, that’s dramatic.” The unseen man again.
I looked around and caught part of a green military-style jacket moving through the crowd.
“So, that’s the game,” I continued. “Rabbits.”
I looked around the room again slowly. “With unclear prizes for participation and sinister-sounding punishments for those who betray the secrecy and spirit of the game, it’s hard to believe anybody still actually plays.” I took a deep practiced breath before I continued. “Any other questions?”
“My friend says she has proof the game has started up again, the eleventh version.” This was somebody new, a woman wearing a red bandana, sitting on the floor and leaning against a Dragon’s Lair cabinet.
“With all due respect to your friend, experts agree the game has been dormant since the tenth iteration ended. We’re in a down cycle. Nobody knows if—or when—the game will start up again.”
“What about Hazel?” Baron Corduroy again, right on time.
“I’m afraid that’s all the time I have tonight.”
Moans from the crowd.
“But, if you’d like more information, there’s a brand-new downloadable PDF on my website.”
Normally at least half the crowd sticks around for an informal Q&A, which is when I’d finally share some of the stories I’d heard about Hazel or a number of other infamous Rabbits players, but there was a midnight screening of Donnie Darko at The Grand Illusion Cinema in about twenty minutes.
The Venn diagram of people interested in Rabbits and in Richard Kelly’s sci-fi thriller from 2001 is essentially just a circle.
I said goodbye to each of the participants in turn as they collected their electronics and hurried out into the rain to catch their movie.
After the last of them had exited the arcade, I opened a small green lockbox and counted the donations. Two hundred and two dollars. Not bad. I left the Magician his cut and slid the lockbox under the counter.
“Well, that was all kinds of bullshit.” It was the voice from earlier, the man in the green military-style jacket. Beneath his jacket he wore a thin black hoodie, which hid his face. He was playing Robotron: 2084, the game Baron had been playing throughout my presentation.
At some point while people were leaving, he and Baron must have switched places.
“Where’s Baron?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The guy who was playing this game earlier.”
“I think he went to see Donnie Darko.”
Of course he did. Baron couldn’t be bothered to pay attention while I talked about Rabbits, but he’d be more than happy to pay seven dollars to see a movie he’s seen at least eighty times.
“Not bad,” the man said, nodding toward the screen.
I moved closer and saw the score. It wasn’t bad at all. It was much higher than Baron could have managed, and Baron was the best Robotron player any of us had ever seen.
“I used to play these things all the time.” At this point, the man in the green jacket turned around and slipped off his hoodie.
I recognized him immediately.
There are two things worth noting here. Number one, the man playing Robotron in the Magician’s arcade—the man who’d asked me if I knew Alan Scarpio—was the famous reclusive billionaire philanthropist and alleged winner of the sixth iteration of Rabbits: Alan fucking Scarpio. The second thing worth noting is that although I’d mentioned earlier that I knew Alan Scarpio, I’d never met him before in my life.