keyword "turmoil" title "the chase" in misc. flash fiction

Aren’t we all just on the run from a collection of ever-shifting ghosts within the mazes that are the insides of our minds? Aren’t we all just sprinting from one place to another, eating our grief and our fear when we can, trying our best to keep our bellies full so at least we aren’t aching there too? Aren’t we all deep down just a little bit like Pac-Man? Waka-waka-waka-waka.

The television ads with ten thousand side effects, selling us power pills promising that we might be able to eat those ghosts for a little while, even though we know they’ll just regenerate when the pills wear off, that the ghosts will eventually come back? Feeding coins into machines to keep ourselves alive for a little while longer, buying time to keep running, knowing that we’re not going to live forever but maybe we can keep running a little bit longer if we keep paying up? Aren’t we all deep down just a little bit like Pac-Man? Waka-waka-waka-waka.

There’s a high score for your bank account but you aren’t going to be able to take it past your grave. You can buy a handful of continues in the moment, but you can never really buy yourself a save. There will be moments, cut-scenes in the middle there when you’re not looking when you may find someone to fall in love with, even, but it never really stops the chase. You can find a bit of comfort in a Ms. or a Mister, but they can’t stop the flashing specters from advancing, brother, all the pretzels and the cherries will not stop your brain from racing, sister. Aren’t we all deep down just a little bit like Pac-Man? Waka-waka-waka-waka.

So, we keep running, you know? We run, and we run and sometimes we’re so panicked and so fervent it seems like we run out through the left wall and come back out into our turmoil and our mania through the right wall again. Our anxieties, our panics, our depressions, our fears, all of it becomes something of a flat circle, doesn’t it? An infinite loop. Sometimes we can out-think the shadows of our past regrets, sometimes we can hold our breath until they too turn blue but, in the end, we’re all just running and eventually we’re going to back to the middle, come back to true and melt down into nothing again. And maybe that’s okay. You can only run so long anyway.

Even when we can mostly eat up our regrets, though, even when for a little while it feels like we have won, we can still see their eyes, you know? Their little eyes are left behind to watch us as they flee until they find the space to regenerate and then chase us down again in due time. Aren’t we all deep down just a little bit like Pac-Man? Aren’t we all a lot like Pac-Man, at that? God knows that I am. Waka-waka-waka-waka. Waka-waka-waka-waka.