Hide and Seek

Written and designed by: Xavier Lee (24-O2)

Childhood. Fond memories of playing tag, hide and seek and playing pretend are brought up time and time again. Each recount is filled with laughter, ridicule and the whole fun jamboree. Everyone wished that their childhood never ended. I did. Sure, my childhood was all about chasing, hiding and pretending too, but it was far from what ‘normal’ is meant to be. The only word to describe it: traumatising.

I spent the first ten years of my life as an international tourist. My family moved through land, sky and sea every other month or so and we never stuck to one place. They never could agree with each other. My mother would desperately want to stay at one place and my father would choose to move to the other side of the planet. The longest I have spent in the same house was in Hawaii for a few months. When we first landed in Hawaii, coming from the freezing weather of Kyrgyzstan, all I could complain about was the sweltering heat. On top of the glaring sun right in my face, beads of sweat were trickling down my forehead and into my eyes, arousing a stinging pain under the blindfold. 

The arrival to our new home was no different: I could barely see where I was going with the discomfort of keeping my eyes open as I looked upon the house. It was more akin to a decrepit mansion straight out of a horror film: overgrown vines dangling off the roof, moss draping the walls in a jade dress, the wooden supports of the porch baring fangs in its cracks and window fragments strewn between the waist-tall weeds. Even calling it a mansion is actually a far cry from what it really is - an abandoned one-storey house. 

I soon learnt from my parents that it was owned by a distant relative that had passed on in the house and was left unclaimed until my father was contacted. “Living in a man’s final resting place? No thank you, I’ll pass” is what I would have said if not for the fact that the house faced the beach. I always heard incredible details about the beaches of Hawaii, but seeing it firsthand, it was a beauty on its own. Living in a mountainous region like Kyrgyzstan, I had forgotten the experience of a beach. The glitter in the sand, the glistening of the water, walking barefoot on fine grains of sand, silky smooth under my feet, where each step felt softer than the one that preceded. As the sun set across the horizon, one final jewel revealed itself before my eyes, a peaceful sign to retreat back into the comfort of my home.

If only I could call that heap of trash a home.

The streets laid empty, with not a single soul within the vicinity. That should have been a sign. As I strolled through the neighbourhood, reluctant to return, I could not help but gawk at each home I passed. One home in particular had a door left ajar. Seeing as how no lights were on despite the apparent darkness, I silently ventured into what I assumed to be an empty home. 

A metal odour mixed with a stench of chemicals wafted through the air. From a locked door in the far end of the hallway came a faint, low humming. 

“Hello?”  I mustered. 

Silence was the only reply that made sense yet the humming grew louder, transforming into vaguely audible words. I abandoned all rationality and walked towards the door. Moving closer, the words became clearer, whatever it was behind that door was old. I ever so carefully turned the knob, inching a gap between the frame and the door. Light peaked through. The sound continued changing. I swung the door open to find…an empty room. 

The walls yellowed, a single lightbulb hung from the middle of the room left on its last breath and in the far corner of the room there was a television and a game console, “Natasno”. The television was on, running through countless commercials dating back at least thirty years, one of which was for the console. Out of everything in the commercial, all that stuck were the words “limited edition”. The mystery is solved, isn’t it? Yet, the most intriguing thing to a 10-year-old is a new game console no one has ever heard about. Without a second thought, the gaming console was cradled in my arms and I sprinted back to our house. 

After successfully smuggling the console into my room, I could not contain my excitement and immediately plugged the console into the tiny square box. My parents were often at each other’s throats and the only things they could agree on were my punishments. That day, they were even distracted unpacking their own failures and failed to notice my ‘sleek’ movements through the house. I could not afford to let them find out about the console I stole; they would kill me. The last time I pulled this stunt, I got the whole buffet. I still had scarring left from my last debacle. The screen flickered on, presenting a seemingly uneventful game start screen. Bubble words spelling “Hide-And-Seek: Home Wrecker” bobbed up and down against a panoramic scene of a generic neighbourhood, houses neatly lining the streets, with zero signs of life other than a black silhouette right smack in the middle of the screen. 

Pressing start ran me through a tutorial of the game: a coin would first be flipped, 

indicating the position that I would be playing, hider or seeker. As a seeker, I would have to navigate through various settings to look for a target hiding. Out of the targets that could hide, it could be a little kid, an adult, an animal and even household objects. The tutorial levels felt relatively simple that even a 5-year-old could pull off, let alone a 10-year-old. 

However, when it came time to introduce the “Hider” role, there was only one message: HIDE.

I was thrown right into a game, with no warning, as a hider. The setting seemed to be in a normal house and there was a countdown of ten minutes featured on the top of the screen. Throughout the ten minutes, I had to hide in closets, under beds, behind doors and even in bushes to prevent getting caught by whatever it was that was chasing me. I had only caught a glimpse of the entity and from what I could tell, it was NOT human. Every time the entity was close by, the music changed, the screen took on a bloody tone — and a shiver crawled down my spine. I pushed through the ten minutes and as far as I was concerned, I knew deep down that I never wanted to play as a hider again. The following nights were a nightmare. The darkness resembled the spots I hid in, the rustles outside made me think of the approaching footsteps of the entity and shivers clenched my spine in a chokehold. It kept me up all those nights. 

Each night, my parents had something new to argue about, from feuds about “who should wash the dishes” to fights of “why did I even marry you”. I could not decide whether playing the game or listening to their disagreement was more torturous. I could not take it anymore, I needed a distraction. I exasperatedly turned to the console, pushing the power  button precariously as the screen flickered back to life. Thankfully, over the next few months of playing the game, the coin flip always kept in my favour. In the end, I had clocked so many hours that I knew every nook and cranny of the preset settings of the game and it started to get boring. Just as I was so close to forgetting the terrors that haunted my nights just a few months prior, the day finally came. 

That night I returned home, ignored the usual squabble and I sped up to my room, booted up the console and the coin finally flipped…

“HIDE.”

I was thrown into a frenzy. The controller slid around my hands as they struggled to keep dry, my breathing hastened into overdrive and all of my attention turned to the game. The first thing I noticed was the unusual setting. The house appeared to be dilapidated, covered with all sorts of black mould. Looking out the window, all that could be seen were the weeds growing in the garden. All but one door was unlocked. The timer started promptly after I had found my first hiding spot. Not even three minutes into the round, an ear piercing scream rang through. My first thought went to the possibility of a multiplayer function and the other players had been found. That thought fortified my will to stay strong and push through the remaining time. The entity kept a close distance around my hiding spot and the screen remained stained with a bloody hue. The rules had changed. The room had been shrouded in darkness and there was no way to see the entity. The screen had started glitching, the entity’s usual groan distorted into maniacal laughter and there was nothing I could do about it. The game seemed to bleed into reality. Pulling up all my seeker experiences that I have accumulated over the past month, at the exact instant I had seen the red disappear, in all irrationality, I sprinted out of my hiding spot in a desperate attempt at escaping, but it seemed like I was unlucky. I finally got a good look at the entity, a monster. His red skin glowed under the fluorescent lights, two horns protruded from his forehead, long yellowed nails threatening to lacerate, glass shards covered his mutilated arm and piercing eyes that killed with one look. As the monster grabbed ‘me’ by the neck, a coarse, warped phrase rasped, barely audible, “It’s your turn”. I felt my throat tightening until I broke out of the trance when my door was busted open with a powerful kick and guys dressed in blue rushed to check on me. I insisted that I was fine and pointed to the screen, a blank screen, one that was not even on. Confused, I was escorted to the living room where many more uniformed guys gathered, standing over a white tarp and my parents nowhere to be seen. 

It was too much for a 10-year-old to handle. “Where are my parents?” was all I needed to know. They pulled back the tarp and my question was answered. Bruised, pale, cold to the touch, unresponsive. Even as a young child, the dots connected readily. My brain was left in a fuzz, with no control over my body as it slumped over the breathless mass. I was dragged out of the house still in shock, but the moment I had locked gaze with my father through the tinted windows, I recognised that piercing glare. The floodgates opened. My life was left in shambles.

The hours I had spent on that game, the hours wasted is time I can never get back. Time that I could have spent mending their relationship. Time that could have gotten me out of that cycle of hell. Time that could have saved my mother…It has been ten years since then and revisiting this house can only be described as torture. Stepping into my old room, a tone deaf chorus of familiar footsteps echoed from the hallway. The screen pulsed to life. A coin is flipped. One last message.

“HIDE”