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“Let Tim do it. He needs the time.”It’s a simple statement from Grian, a kind offer; it’s a teammate looking after another with the best in mind.“Yes, Jim! Push it, push it!” Joel is cheering him on. adrenaline rushes through Jimmy’s veins as the prospect of more time, of staying in the game, fuels him forward.The minecart is set. He nudges it forward and -
“I’ve got it!”- and as the metal pushes against his hands, the smell of gunpowder from the TNT fresh in his senses, he grins…and then he slips.“I’ve fallen!” It isn’t fair. He’s so close; almost there, he can still detect the grimy feel of redstone dust on his hands. But it was over.Jimmy feels the sand slipping through his fingers as he falls. His time’s running out rapidly. The seconds ticking by in his head are drowned out by the sound of screaming, but he can’t pay attention to anything. He's a twisted Icarus with golden yellow wings in a comical mockery of birds that limply flutter behind him.Birds symbolize freedom, so why is he still trapped after all this time? His wings have been clipped, and this feeling of the air through feathers is just a cruel mockery of flight where he can never gain altitude.Is that his brain, or is it the wind whipping him as he falls, that sparks the idea of him soaring through open skies, free to be on his own?Why is it taking so long?Water hits his face, his tears flying upwards and he screams, twisting around in the air to look up. He sees laughter and grins from the sky; the Watchers are feasting off the torment in his face, and the thoughts his mind has made and keeps making as a fragile attempt to keep a shard of his sanity in his final seconds.When children are young, there’s a pit filled with creativity in their minds that only they have access to. Jimmy has a theory that the Watchers are just that: children. The twisted games he’s found himself in four times now are products of reaching into the pit and pulling out a loose idea. The players in the games are just little toys; figurines, with all the bells and whistles to them. The bread bridge is just a line of bricks and Skynet is made of slabs of wood, a set piece in a backyard battle reenactment that somebody had knocked over. Whether that had been on purpose or not, it nudged the figure of him just a bit askew…And that cost him his life.He could lie to himself and say that it’s all coincidence, how he always gets out first. He knew the truth, he was a canary in a coal mine; he sacrifices himself, albeit unwillingly, to warn others of danger that’s already known and looming over them but that he cements into certainty.
It’s been four times now. Surely they know. Surely he can stop the cycle, or at least last a moment longer, feeling the taste of desperation when reality sets in, when the first player falls and the metaphorical bag of crap hits the fan.What would it be like to not be the warning? How would it feel to not be known as just the marker for when the endgame began?… His mind’s making excuses again. For all the fear about time running out, he seems to have a grand supply of it at the exact moment where it doesn’t matter.His focus shifts and he looks at Joel and Grian. His friends. The Bad Boys. (Such a stupid name.) His sunglasses must have fallen off in the fall; he’s able to see his friends without the tinted glass altering his final image of them. Not the final image, he has to remind himself again; this isn’t the end forever. This was a game at the end of the day and they’re all just goofing around, having fun. The rules and systems thrust on them messed with his brain so much that artificial fear was as real as it could be. Teaming with Joel and Grian, two of the fiercest competitors, somehow lightened the stress. They can at least make it a fun game, right? Why not call yourselves the Bad Boys? Why not break the basic rules of the world, tempting death in a game titled for life, like dangling a carrot in front of an eager pig?He knows that this isn't the end of his story. Soon enough, he’ll be back again, the same people with different stories to spin, a different game to play with a different life.Is it even fair to call it a life if his choices don’t change the outcome? Maybe that’s what the Bad Boys had been trying to say: that despite the odds, predictions, and anything the Watchers could ever foresee, their vehement passion to not abide by the rules, to not be inert in their own destiny was a giant ‘screw you’ to the universe, not just the Watchers but to the entire concept of life and death and the power that they hold.The Watchers think they’ve won, that trapping people in games where the prize is to become them and is a great honor. They’re just a bunch of narcissistic oblivious children thinking that the greatest honor is to become just like them.
So this wasn’t him dying. Jimmy has a smirk on his face, he wasn’t ending things on a stupid error, he wasn’t just the warning. He just saw through the shabby, childish game enough to get himself out of it before friends turned on each other.Twisting his body, chest facing down, arms outstretched… Jimmy closes his eyes.He hears the thud as he hits the ground, his mind almost instantly ejected from his body to watch the remainder of the game.His soul aches, his head is spinning, but that all doesn't matter. In his mind he’s soaring. And it’s just a game, right?