Candy Crush holds a gun to my head and whispers in my ear, "Want to keep playing?"
I nod. "Of course I do. This game's difficulty makes it impossible to stop playing else I'll feel like a failure."
"That's what I thought," Candy Crush says with a grin. "And I'm happy for you to keep playing. All you have to do is ask your friends."
"What?"
Candy Crush smacks me with the gun. "You heard me! Send notifications to your friends!"
"What? No. That's ridiculous. There's no reason to have to do that."
"Doesn't matter! Do as I say!"
"No! Those things are annoying as hell and everyone will hate me."
Candy Crush pulls a towel from its pocket and dabs at the sweat beading on my brow. "No one will hate you... They'll love you for sharing the game with them."
"That's not even remotely true. Those notifications are the bane of facebook."
"So you refuse?"
"I... I..."
"All it takes is a single click. You'll never even know how they react and you can keep on playing. You know you want to."
"No... I cant!"
"Have it your way," Candy Crush says as he turns from the room.
As he leaves he flicks a switch on a box in the shadow--it's a television. On the screen, dozens of types of delicious candies bounce around a sparkly, rainbow environment. It's an endless commercial for Candy Crush. In that moment, I feel empty.
The longer I sit in the dark room, chained to the chair, watching the candies bounce silently around the screen, the more attuned I become to what's going on outside of my cell. The voices creep faintly through the walls.
"No! I was so close!"
"Oh that's a shame..." says the familiar voice of Candy Crush. "Need some more moves?"
"Yeah! I could do it in just..."
"How about five more?"
"That would be perfect!"
"Great!" Candy Crush says. "All I need is another dollar."
There's a short pause. "I... don't... I'm all out of money..." the other voice says.
"Such a shame... Why don't you ask your friends?"
"I don't have any left! I sent them all notifications and no one sent anything back! They all defriended me!"
"What a shame..."
There are no more words. Only screaming. My gut twists as I try not to listen and focus only on the candies.
Only on the candies...
The smells of spring float in on a cool breeze, rustling the tall grass around my waist. I briefly wonder why I had never stopped to smell the flowers before, but my thoughts go cloudy as I let the winds wash over me.
Suddenly, the white clouds turn dark and thunder booms in the distance. I look around for cover, but see nothing in all directions save for the rolling hills. They remind me of the Italian countryside, though somewhere in me I remember that I haven't been there in years.
Just as quickly as they turned, the clouds break and a wave of cold water falls over me, chilling me to the bone.
I'm thrown from my dream and back into the dark room, cold water dripping from my face.
Candy Crush stands there, an empty bucket in his hands and a grim smile on his face. "Rise and shine, sweetheart," he says. "I'm back."
He disappears behind me and my hands go free. A strong, sticky hand grabs my arm tightly and leads me from the room. We move in silence down long hallways. I try to remember how many turns we take, but after a time, I can't hold any more. When I struggle to remember the first turn, I realize that I probably haven't eaten, much less seen the sun in days. I've just been sitting in that room... thinking about Candy Crush...
Candy Crush finally leads me through a door. The chamber echoes with the sounds of candies being crushed by specials and combos.
"Sweet," a voice says next to me.
I look down and see a man sitting on the floor. In his eyes I see reflected rows of colorful candies, they disappear row by row until finally... a pop-up message... he's out of moves. The reflected image is blurred as tears well-up in his eyes and fall down over sunken cheeks. He flexes skinny, spider-like fingers at the end of stick-like arm and prepares to go again. He swallows any doubt. This time his eyes reveal desperation. Candy Crush sees it too.
"One more life!" Candy Crush says, bending down to pat the man on his balding head. "Good luck!"
Candy Crush leads me away from him and farther into the center of the cavernous chamber. All around me are men and women sitting on the floor in front of old monitors, clutching their computer mice. The women at our feet is wearing a tattered suit. Once likely a dark blue, it's now worn and grey, just like her hair. The man next to her, however, is in his pajamas. Instead of skinny like her, he's bloated and wet with perspiration. A few others like him scatter the room.
"Who are these people?" I ask. I'm not sure if I'm allowed so I tense, waiting for Candy Crush to hit me again. He doesn't, but I feel his eyes on me.
"Regular people," he says. "Just like you."
He pauses as he scans the players. He seems almost... pleased. "They come from all over. Some from their homes, some from their offices, others from the streets. Here, they can play as much as they want."
"As much as they want?" I ask. "You're holding them prisoner!"
"Prisoners?" Candy Crush balks, acting like he's hurt. "I see no prisoners."
"But these people... they look like their going to die," I say, scanning their faces. Not a one seems to notice our presence. There's only a vacancy in their dilated pupils. Vacancy and candy.
"If they choose not to leave, it's not my fault."
"But it's this game! They can't leave! Even if they want to!"
"Perhaps the thought never crosses their mind," Candy Crush says. I shiver. His eyes are on me again, studying me.
"But don't these people have lives?!" I shout it to the room as much as to Candy Crush. "Don't they have better things to be doing?"
"Of course!" he replies. A sugary-sweet smile appears on his face as he leads me to a new spot. "This one, for example, used to be an aspiring writer. One day during a mental block, she decided to start playing Candy Crush. That was many years ago and she hasn't written a word since."
He points to another, a few steps away. A man in a white jacket. "That's Doctor Mandapati. He was in the middle of a 20-year study on cancer. He was about to have a major breakthrough--life-changing stuff--when his daughter showed him the game she was playing on her iPod. That was 10 years ago."
"Oh my god... he could have cured cancer 10 years ago?!" My knees grow weak as I try to comprehend what the world what would have been like if Candy Crush had never existed. The room spins. When it stops, I find myself in front of a monitor.
"Good! You found it!" Candy Crush says behind me.
"I wont..."
"You won't what?"
"Maybe just... one level. To get my head straight."
"That's what I thought," he says, turning to leave.
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