Bobby Kotick sat there in the hot damp Chuck E. Cheese playpen looking at me sheepishly.
We were both basking in the ball pit but I deliberately avoided meeting his gaze. He fidgeted around in the sea of plastic balls, shirtless, pepperoni grease forming beads on his curly chest hair while the stench of stale toddler urine hung heavy in the air. The robotic wailing of the Chuck E. Cheese animatronic band rang out amongst the din of screaming children in the the background.
“What’s wrong 'Bae?” He asked. As if he didn’t know. How couldn’t he know? It was his baby after all, wasn’t it?
I should never have gone on that trip to Belize. What a fool I was. My mother tried to warn me about him but something about those beady eyes and that receding hairline just… Intoxicated me.
Now, flash forward 6 months. It’s 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon and here we are at Chuck E. Cheese again. Somehow we always end up back here.
“'Bae, be reasonable” he said, lips smacking as he licked pizza grease from his fingers. Each smack of his lips made me physically wince, as if it was the crack of a whip. “You have to keep the baby”
I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t take any more. Trembling with rage I lifted myself from the ball pit, plastic balls scattering and tears streaming down my face, I turned to Bobby and screamed. “It’s not your baby!”
The animatronic band fell silent, the chaotic din of the arcade seemed to fade away too as the other Chuck E. Cheese patrons gasped in stunned silence. Bobby sat in the ball pit looking like a defeated bag of fruit pulp, glistening in the fluorescent light, trying desperately to come up with something to say that could salvage this situation.
“W-who?” Was all he could choke out. “Grimace.” I said with delight as I watched the words impact his very soul and break his heart forever. “And he was bigger than you could ever dream of!” and with that, I turned and walked out the door.
I could hear Bobby calling after me as I walked out of that Chuck E. Cheese. The other patrons were standing motionless, their jaws agape yet they parted like the red sea as I made my way to the door. Bobby was crawling on his hands and knees, trailing plastic balls and pepperoni grease, but I didn’t care.
I pushed the door open, breaking through the dank humid air of the Chuck E Cheese which hung heavy and stale, reeking of bad pizza and toddler piss, into the fresh air and sunlight in the parking lot.
Bobby Kotick was in the fetal position sobbing by this point, but I didn’t care. I only wanted to be with Grimace. I pulled out of the parking lot in my Delorean and peeled out toward McDonaldland, wind whipping through my mullet. Also, my junk was super visible through my pants the whole time.
The end
