I met a girl called Chloe on Hinge. Hinge is another dating app, but one that I’ve had success with in the past. We spent a day by the seaside trying to figure each other out. My ice cream melted and it ran down my finger, which I hate. She ate hers quickly, her tongue licking the rolling beads on the side of the cone. We walked past the arcade, and she pulled me in smiling. Apparently, we weren’t truly at the seaside if we didn’t play the ‘Coin Pusher’ machine. We tried coin after coin but the rolling text only gave one answer:
“BETTER LUCK
NEXT TIME”
“You know these things are rigged”, I said.
“I know but it’s always worth giving it a go”, she replied.
The other arcade machines amused us for a short time, and out of nowhere I said, “I’m enjoying being by myself at the moment. I know that this sounds weird out of the blue, but I just don’t know if I want anything right now”.
And I wasn’t sure what possessed me to say it. She seemed fun and certainly wasn’t someone I’d want to cut a date short on. I thought perhaps it was my subconscious. Or maybe it was something else?
“Oh okay, ummm”, her face was motionless for a bit. “Look don’t worry about it”, she said cracking a grin. Maybe she respected that I had some sort of genuine reason.
“Do you want to continue hanging out though?”, she said with a charming level of hesitance. “I mean, I understand what you said. But you know… its summer, we’ve come all this way, and I only have a lonely trip home waiting for me”.
She seemed to handle my previous outburst well, and I really did believe her when she said she just wanted to enjoy herself.
“Sure”, I said, still a bit shocked about my own outburst.
-–
We spent the rest of our time walking into town. We went to an old bookshop where I pointed out all the places I still wanted to travel to within a Lonely Planet guide. Then, we went in some charity shops and put grandma hats on each other in front of the mirror. We ended at a beachfront bar and watched the beginning of the sunset. She had to catch a train and gave me her phone number before she left. She wrote it down on a scrap of paper, which I thought was very cute. She pulled off old school well. Perhaps she really wanted a friend in me.
I felt something there with her and I couldn’t help thinking, what made me refuse her in the arcade? I saw love and loss and something else there that I didn’t understand. It was like a bottomless well, one I’d be inside for a long time. I wasn’t sure if I was even making any sense at this point. I needed to clear my head.
I decided to sit on the pier and watch the sunset. I didn’t realise how much time passed until I heard someone shutting a roller door behind me. It was closing time for the pier amusements, and I thought it was a good cue for me to go home. I saw a man closing up the front of the arcade, he must’ve been in his last years before retirement. I gave him a friendly nod as I walked by and I noticed he was gesturing to me. I looked around to see he wasn’t signalling someone else.
“Look. Look what someone left at the arcade today”, he said with a chuckle.
He wasn’t threatening and no one else was around, so I walked over and saw what was in his hand. It was a coin, brass coloured with a square hole in the middle.
“Have you seen anything like it? Where do you suppose it’s from?”, he asked somewhat rhetorically.
“Er… not sure…”, I replied vaguely.
“Here you can have it. I saw you on the bench there”, pointing to where I was sitting, “a penny for your thoughts we’ll call it”, he said with a smile.
I stuttered, “no honestly its…”. But he pressed it into my hands with a two-handed shake. I felt like he meant well so I just went along with it. Wanting to examine the coin, I opened my hand.
“I can’t see the details on it myself because, because me eyes are no good any m o r e ”, the last few words trailed off as if the old man was about to cry. I looked up to see he had completely gone. The pier was empty. I walked around the arcade’s perimeter to look for the old man but couldn’t find him.
When I made my way back to the front of the arcade, I realised how late it was. The ghost of the sun was floating in the clouds, painting everything red: the waves, the pier’s floor, and cutting red wedges on the interior of the arcade. When I looked inside there was a deep emptiness, it was like visiting a school after hours. The chatter, music and laughter still echoing silently. In my mind’s eye there were holograms of people milling around on the games. I noticed that the old man never fully closed the front door so he probably went inside to lock the inner doors or check things before he left. Although I’m not much of a risk taker, I’ll admit that I was curious to wander around the empty arcade at night.
There was a glumness hanging in the air. I started pressing some arcade machine buttons for my own enjoyment. I padded around for a bit and noticed a glowing light out of nowhere. The ‘Coin Pusher’ machine had been turned on. I looked around for any sign of the old man. Perhaps he’d switched it on by accident while fumbling around at the back. Its metal tray moved back and forth like sea waves. Its green, red and yellow lights splashed across my face. “INSERT COIN”. “INSERT COIN”, it commanded. I looked at the coin in my hand. The one that had literally been thrust upon me just now. I wouldn’t miss it particularly, if anything, I figured it would be a fun little memento to end my day. So, I put it in.
There was the same old ‘booping’ and ‘ringing’. But something different happened, the text rolled continuously. Random numbers were being generated. Until it stopped and showed what looked like some kind of phone number. The noises from the machine rose sharply in volume. It rose until it became excruciating. I couldn’t bare it anymore but it just constantly became louder and louder. I clamped my hands over my ears and scrunched my face in pain. Suddenly, the alarms stopped and were replaced by its normal happy sounds. As a matter of fact, the whole arcade happily started ‘booping’, ‘zipping’ and ‘ringing’ again. I opened my eyes and it was daytime and I was standing next to Chloe. We were both looking at the coin machine. Her, with a look of amazement, and me with my, I’m sort of enjoying this, face. This was roughly the moment I had my unexplained outburst. I had another chance.
I held her hand… She looked at me.
“Do you want to head into town together? I know a nice bar to watch the sunset a bit later too”, I asked.
She looked at me motionless for a bit. “Oh”, she said cracking a grin. It broke into laughter and of course I smiled back. Unusually, she carried on laughing. It went on until it was uncomfortable. People began to look and poke their heads round. I started to wonder when she was going to stop. It felt like a lifetime. She dropped to her knees, and it turned into a gurgling laughter. I was panicking, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying at this point. Suddenly, she started screaming.
I had a moment’s relapse: Where was the old man? Where am I now?
“You lied to me”, she screamed with tears rolling down her face, “You fucking lied. You just lied to me”
People began to gather. I gawped in horror as everyone who was looking earlier started to form a circle. They had twitching electrocuted smiles on their faces, punctuated with wide bloodshot eyes. Chloe started pulling an unnatural smile, wide enough to rip lips apart, revealing brown tombstone teeth.
“Is this what you want…?”, she croaked.
I froze.
“IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT!?”, she shrieked with an ear shattering wail. She sprang at me. Her red veiny hands grabbing me by the throat.
“IS. THIS. WHAT. YOU. WANT. YOU FUCKER!?”, she screeched whilst closing her grip like some kind of ungodly mechanism. I was shaking her violently trying to get through to her but her clasp increased in increments. The pain was too much. I screamed, grimacing and I grasped my throat…
But there was nothing there. I opened my eyes and I was back in the night time arcade. Everything was dark, red, and eerie. All machines were turned off apart from the ‘coin pusher’ in front of me. Its text rolled down:
“THESE THINGS
ARE RIGGED“
As it finished, there was a metallic locking “click” behind me.
I ran to the entrance like a bull in a China shop. I frantically pushed on the front door handle repeatedly. The old man was pulling down the roller shutters from the outside.
“No no no no. HELP! HEELP!”, I yelled, “OI, OLD MAN, I’m in here. HELP!”
I saw him through the perforated metal and I was shaking with adrenaline. When he turned around briefly he just waved at me and proceeded to leave. After sitting at the door restlessly; wailing, begging and cursing, I tried to let the adrenaline wear off. What on earth? There was something wrong. Seriously wrong. Eventually, I got up like an aching zombie and I scanned the room. There was a lot of dusty haze illuminated by this peculiar red sunset.
“We’re alooooone now”, said a cheery childlike voice.
I didn’t know where it came from but I heard footsteps. I frantically paced towards the coin machine. With two hands on either side, staring into it, I saw my coin lying amongst all the other coins. I heard gurgling and footsteps getting closer. I shook and hit the machine in a state of deranged mania. Gurgled screaming began behind me. I was hyper ventilating and crying. My tears fell onto the machine’s acetate cover. Text rolled down:
“WAIT FOR NEXT
CONTESTANT”