The arcade was abandoned, vacant of any sound or light besides the gentle hush of the wind and the muddled daylight filtering into the arcade through dust encased windows. In the center of the arcade stood a single Air Hockey table, a Dynamo, which, upon closer inspection, stood in pristine condition, its blue surface glittering with a slick sheen. Then, suddenly, as if in queue with the discovery of the eerily clean and polished table, the arcade came to life, a million machines blinking their rapidly changing colors, their sounds of joy and play. And with the upstart of the machines came the table, turning on with a soft click, thousands of small pores breathing its life air. I turned away from the table, looking around the arcade with dubious eyes, trying to find an explanation for the strange activity. A voice, coming from the table directly behind me, gave me my answer.
“You know, of all machines, all toys and wondrous games, this is my favorite, this Air Hockey.”
I turned with a sharp convulsion and found myself face to face with a man, a man with a black-haired comb-over and two deep russet eyes, flecked subtlety with red, speaking of only one, definite, thing, insidious evil. With a mere passing glance at the mallet the man caressed in his right hand I knew who he was. The mallet was bright crimson, the hue of fresh blood, and wore a curved horn for a handle, tainting the air around it with a pall of corruption and grotesque, unimaginable perversion. This man before me was the Devil; only he would dare to warp such a beautiful relic.
“What do you want?” I breathed, rage boiling slowly to a crisp within me, “Haven’t you done enough evil? Taken enough from this world! Wasn’t the apocalypse and the chaos afterwards enough for you?!”
“You know,” murmmed the Devil, seemingly complacent, “I suppose I have, and that’s why I’m here! You see I did all that, the ‘apocalypse’ as you call it, without consent, and that weakens the power of the souls I take, and surprisingly diminishes the fun of it all. I am here, you see, to fix this problem of mine, to bring the ‘fun’ back into my life. I am here, as it were, to strike a deal with you…a deal for your soul.”
I scoffed, “Well you won’t find that deal here, I am not the fool you take me for!”
The Devil gave a knowing smile, “Hmm…well, I suppose then you would not like this here mallet made of gold.”
I almost choked with laughter, “Why would I want a mallet made of gold? A golden mallet would be quite ineffective to play with, and the chances are that I would be robbed, and most likely killed, before reaching the nearest bazaar!” I could not help but give a smug smile, feeling witty enough to see through the Devil’s façade, pleasing my soul.
“Well then,” asked the devil. “What would you like to bet for your soul? You see, if I win a set on this here table then you must give me your soul, but if you win…”
My eyes lit up with excitement, seeing promise, “Ok I’ll make a bet, if I lose then, as you say, you get my soul. But, Devil, if I win, well then I want an end to the apocalypse, a return to how things were before, and a promise that never again will such horrors return. More importantly though, I want the chance to prove that I have what it takes to best even the Devil here upon this table. And of course Devil, for this bet to fair, you must play by the rules.” I hurried in, patching the possibly disastrous loop-hole.
“Fine.” laughed the Devil, “Thanks for the soul! I’ll start with the puck, and take the red side.”
And with that the match began…
The first game seemed to fly by in a heart-beat, the Devil winning 7-5, playing a feverishly paced gamed filled with turkey shots, double banks, and other trick shots seemingly hit as fast, if not faster, than my father’s famous right-wall under. But I noticed he had one fatal error within his game, which I was just beginning to catch; he made no effort to time delay, to add the needed flare of deceptiveness to his game. He counted on only the inhuman speed of his shots, but I knew with a little time, I could properly impede this attack.
The proceeding game I did just that, easily keying into his shots, and from there tearing apart his defense which consisted of nothing but charging, and guessing, a reactionary defense at its heart. The final score tallied up to give me a dominating 7-3 victory.
The following game proved to be, well, enlightening, with the Devil changing his style completely. It seemed that he had been simply toying with me the first two games. His shots became deceptive, his pump-fakes and time delays terribly efficient, and his reactionary defense wickedly accurate, his charges almost always ending up with a “stuff.” He ran away with this game and the next, both 7-3, making me look like a dumb-struck amateur on the table.
Down 3 games to 1 to the Prince of Darkness I began to wonder how a mere human could hope to overcome such a dire circumstance. One more game and my soul would be his. But then, suddenly, I felt my mind leave my body, a feeling of pure ecstasy overcoming me as my body and mallet melded into a beautiful whole. I began hitting shot after shot with devastating power, accuracy and deceptiveness, every shot seeming imbued with the ethereal, with the essence of the very lords of the table. I forced the Devil to truly play his “hardest,” his fiercest, and still pulled out the fifth game 7-5.
The following game I continued my drilling of powerful straights, and deceptive banks, pulling away 7-4, but then, came the final game, and the most intense game of my life, the Devil fighting for what he wanted, and I for what I wanted. I barley blocked the Devil’s first attempt at a score, moving my mallet just in time to stop a blazing double-bank. I started my own offensive game with a quick “boom-boom” cross, slamming it into the Devil’s goal before he even had the chance to charge. But, before I could blink, the Devil sent an impossibly powerful hand-serve shot right into my goal. 1-1. I attempted to send home a cut which I played off a reverse circle drift. I bounced the puck right to left off of the right rail, willing for the cut-straight to look indistinguishable from a bank with all my belief. Like a true Blessing the puck led the Devil, and his “guessing defense,” to the left side of his goal before comfortably sliding into the far right, giving me the 2-1 lead.
The Devil then let fly a nearly invisible double-bank, sneaking easily around the left side of my goal. 2-2. Then he proceeded to “stuff” my next attempt at a shot, sending the puck straight back into my goal. 2-3. I then attempted a right wall-under from far left of center, but to my despair, found the puck flying once again into my goal. 2-4.
It was here that I began to feel the oppressive mists of fear, galvanizing me to run, to hide, to cower. To quit. It would be so easy to bow down, to allow myself to steal away my dignity. No! I would not allow this to happen. I would not allow the might of another suffocate my own, be it the might of man or demon. Raising my head from the depths of pitiful woe, I sent the puck from my goal, and with a deceptive cross-straight, adorned with the look of a left-wall under, into the far corner of Satan’s. 3-4. It was on!
The Devil was there to meet it, and he sent a cross-straight of his own into my goal, albeit one hit from his goal, making it more of a “straight-straight,” meant to catch my defense out of position. It worked. The score was now 3-5, and the devil was only two points away from owning my soul.
I, however, was not inclined to let this end me. I had come back before from being down 6-0, and if I could do it against true Air Hockey players, then, by god, I could do it against the Devil too. I began my next drift as I had all the others, moving the puck diagonally from right to left of center. As I brought my hand across the puck to hit it, I suddenly reversed my backhand position and snapped in a quick forehand left-wall under. It sailed in, catching the Devil’s defense completely off guard. He had become accustomed to my almost ponderous time delays, and was not ready for my quick release. 4-5.
After catching a double bank from the Devil, which was just a fraction too slow, I set up the same drift and played off the Devil’s newfound wariness of forehand shots, stuttering my hand in many, separate pump fakes, before sending in another quickly released shot. This time it was a right-wall under. 5-5.
The Devil replied with a smug smile and a sharp right-wall under of his own, which he hit from the right-rail, giving it a split-second of flight-time, a split-second to enter my goal and give Satan the obvious advantage. 5-6. I responded with a left-wall over, hit from my same simple drift, looking like a fast cut, but instead over the Devil’s mallet, which he swung greedily to his right-side. 6-6.
The Devil, perhaps playing a mental game, or perhaps simply out of ideas, went for the same obtusely angled under, leading it right into my mallet. Now with the puck, and everything on the line, I changed things up, going back to my roots. I drifted the puck right to left of center off of my father’s signature circle drift, pulling the Devil yet again for the fast cut before sending home an eternally-delayed right-wall under. 7-6.
I had won. And the devil, his eyes now endless voids of fiery rancor, could not believe it. “This is impossible,” he bellowed! “A mere mortal beating me! Immortal Lord of Hell! You must be a Seraph or Archangel, an immortal! You have cheated me! I will give you nothing but a promised spot in Hell!”
From the Devil’s open palm, aimed directly at me, came a spout of crimson flame, which, to my disbelief and understandable joy, disintegrated harmlessly into a field of iridescent radiance which sprouted about me. I looked down to find this bubble of radiance emanating from the stringed, original-original, mallet, held in my hand. I comprehended suddenly what had transpired and turned to the devil with the same smug smile forming across my face which I had seen him wear constantly since the moment of our first encounter.
“Satan,” I said, my smile now almost wry, “You seem to have forgotten one, minute, detail in your otherwise devilish planning… Air Hockey is just as ethereal, as preternatural, as you are, even more so. Air Hockey is much more than a game. It is a philosophy, a way of life, a teacher, a feeling, a grand nexus connecting all that is pure in this universe. And it does not abide the perversion you have brought in its midst. Allowing you to play was almost too much for it, allowing you to lie and renege, it will not.
In your planning you forgot to remember the godly aspects of Air Hockey. You forgot to remember that it cannot be cheated, not even by you. If you challenged me to any other task then your immortality would have won over my mere ‘mortality.’ You see Satan, upon the table, all is immortal.”
I flashed him a simple wink. With that, he began to disappear, his visage aghast with ironic horror, hanging for a moment before dissipating into the air. Then, the air suddenly smelled of rubbing alcohol, perfume, fruit, cologne, a million smells which disappeared with the apocalypse. With these smells, a myriad of sounds, voices and electronics suddenly appeared from nowhere. I turned to find the arcade teeming with life, people running to and fro with pockets full of quarters. A single voice, a voice I had not heard in ten years, pulled me from my awe.
“Yo, Jacob. Are you going to play? You begged me to drive you up here to play didn’t you? Well come on, it’s your turn to be beaten.” It was the voice of my father, who stood just to my right, mallet in hand, at one of the many beautiful tables held within Speedy’s arcade. Déjà vu rushed through me like a burst of adrenaline. It had been here, this exact moment, after those exact words, that it had all ended, that the Earth had swung into a cataclysmic apocalypse. I closed my eyes, ready for it happen again. But nothing happened. I smiled, and felt my eyes begin to water with the joy.
The Devil’s promise had been kept. The apocalypse had been reversed. December 21, 2012 would come and go like just another day. My eyes turned hungrily to the table, to the puck floating back and forth across the slick surface. I wondered if my skills, honed during the lonely years after the apocalypse, upon one of the only surviving Dynamos, powered by a generator I had built out of scraps, had been reversed, just as time had. There was only one way to find out.
“Yea dad, I’m coming.” I tried to make my voice sound as plain as possible, fearful that the truth, that revealing the knowledge of the apocalypse, might unravel this blessing.
No one could know that Air Hockey had saved the world.
