Too Good for this World by LK Chapman

2013
    It was late.
She had just finished the stack of marking and sat back with a sigh
at the little round dining table by the window. Jonny was at the
computer, hunched over below his shelves of books- books about all
sorts of things; philosophy, sociology, religion, psychology. Over
the past couple of years he’d added a collection of books about how
to survive in the wilderness, or the accounts of people who had
done just that, and he had been reading these avidly- more avidly
with every passing day. Until recently.
    ‘Jonny?’ she
said.
    There was no
response from him. The light from the computer screen flickered
across his lifeless face.
    ‘Jonny, it’s
late,’ she said, ‘let’s go to bed.’
    He didn’t even
look round. He was playing Affrayed. He played Affrayed every
evening now, and half the night more often than not. Imogen got up
and went over to him, feeling the beginnings of anger, but trying
not to let it show. ‘Jonny,’ she said again. He was still
completely absorbed, so for a moment Imogen watched the action
unfolding on the screen.
    Try as she
might, Imogen couldn’t see the attraction of Affrayed. Apparently
it had originally been something else, some sort of elaborate
multiplayer game of hide and seek, but then it had changed- evolved
into a huge online game of survival. Imogen didn’t understand how a
game could change, but how a game could change was not important.
The fact that the game had changed her husband, that was what she
worried about. Because he had changed. As each day went by she
became further and further locked out of his life, and out of his
thoughts. She looked again at his face. His blue eyes were glassy,
his scruffy hair beginning to get the sheen of grease that it
always had by the end of the day. He looked like he was barely
alive. This was going to take some doing.
    ‘Jonny!’ she
shouted, right next to his ear.
    ‘What?’ he
said, blinking like he’d just woken up, ‘what’s happening?’ He
looked around as though expecting to see a fire, and then his eyes
rested on her again.
    ‘Nothing’s
happening,’ she told him quietly, ‘I just wanted to snap you out of
that game.’
    Jonny rubbed
his forehead. She saw his eyes slip longingly back towards the
screen, but he forced them away again. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m
sorry, Gennie. What time is it?’
    ‘Quarter to
twelve.’
    ‘Oh,’ he said.
He closed the game with obvious reluctance, and when he followed
her into the bedroom he still looked distracted.
    Imogen started
to get undressed, hoping to attract his attention, but when her
body failed to draw so much as a glance from him she gave up and
pulled on a baggy old t-shirt. She thought Jonny might at least say
a few words to her, but he was just sitting silently at the end of
the bed, so she sat down by his side and nudged his knee with
hers.
    ‘Are you
alright?’ she asked him.
    He continued
his silence as though she hadn’t spoken. Imogen looked at her hands
in her lap, then at Jonny’s hands, and was alarmed to see they were
shaking.
    ‘Jonny?’ she
said, touching his arm gently. ‘Jonny, what’s wrong?’
    ‘The game,’ he
said, ‘Affrayed.’
    Imogen took a
deep breath to calm herself. She was sick of hearing about it.
‘What about it?’ she asked, as patiently as she could.
    ‘When I was
playing it just then,’ he said slowly, ‘I… I swear it was
responding to me without me actually doing anything.’
    ‘I don’t
understand,’ Imogen said. She began to feel frightened.
    ‘Well, when
you came and interrupted me my hands were in my lap,’ he explained,
‘and I think they’d been there a long time. Didn’t you notice?’
    ‘No,’ she
said, ‘why, what… what are you saying?’
    ‘Think about
it,’ he said, ‘the keyboard was on the desk. My hands were in my
lap. But I was playing. I was still playing.’

2015
    Conversations
like that one played on her mind now. She couldn’t remember where
his hands had been. She