Game or Life

Joy             王璐            190110221

One summer afternoon, virtual reality game platform that you had ordered months ago finally arrives. You can’t wait to get into it, choose the “scary” theme, among others, and start playing. What you don't know is that the game will change your life.

In a daze, you open your eyes from a bed and find that it is not a tombstone wasteland, a gloomy castle, or a bloody murder scene as you had imagined, but a cozy bedroom.

It is the same afternoon as in reality, and the soft sunlight streams through the window into the bed. You feel pain all over, with bruises and scabbed cuts large and small on your arms and body. While you are wondering, in front of you come the words: Go on living.

You get out of bed doubting how simple the rules of the game are, and everything looks calm and nice except for the mess in the room.

As you step out of your bedroom, you are startled by what you see: empty bottles and cigarettes are strewn all over the floor, and the whole living room reeks of a mixture of alcohol and tobacco. You tidy up the living room and as you check out your surroundings you find the door is locked from the outside.

You suddenly realize that you are trapped in this apartment, so you start looking around for a way out, but this flat is on the seventh floor; there are iron bars outside the windows, and you don’t have a phone to communicate with the outside world. It seems like an unsolvable escape game.

Then you hear the door lock turn; someone comes back, and your intuition tells you that it's your husband. Sure enough, he comes in smelling of tobacco and wine, with hair like a bird's nest and a stubbly beard, and a unfinished bottle of wine in his hand. Just as you’re about to ask him what happened, he bangs the door shut, grabs you by the collar, and smashes the unfinished bottle hard on your head. As a woman, you can’t fight back. You just have to let him smash the broken bottle on your head constantly. Ultimately, you lose consciousness.

When you wake up, you find that the time is back to the sunny afternoon; you lie in bed and bath in the sun as before. You finally know where the wound came from: you’ve been abused.

In front of you come the words: Go on living.

You look at the time. He will be back in a few hours; you frantically start looking for a way to get out. Luckily, you find tools at home, open the door, and discover an old corridor. Every door is locked, and you try to knock on the doors of the neighbors, but no one answers.

At last, a neighbor opens the door, who is an elderly man with no expression on his face. You quickly tell him about your situation and ask him to lend you a cell phone. He hesitates for a while and goes into the house. After a long time, he takes out his cell phone. You call the police quickly and then wait in the old man's house.

Soon there is a knock on the door. You think it is the police and the old man opens the door immediately. Unexpectedly, what you see is your husband. He thanks the old man and rudely drags you away. You shout loudly, but no one answer. Before you are forcibly removed, you hear the old man calling the police and telling them not to come because the problem has been settled.

After getting home, of course, you are badly beaten again. When you wake up in that bed, you realize that you have failed a second time. The old man called the man in advance before he lent you the phone.

In front of you come the words: Go on living.

Now you know how difficult those three words are. Like last time, you find a tool and open the door, but this time you choose to go directly to the police station downstairs. Fortunately, the police pick up the violent man, and you want to divorce so that you can get rid of him forever. However, the police tell you that a new policy has been introduced which requires you to go through a 30-day cooling-off period before you can actually divorce, so they advise you to sue for divorce. You take him to court with the help of the police and hope that the judge will make a fair decision.

But good things don’t last long; you had no mobile phone to record the evidence of domestic violence, and the man, who wails and whines in court, denies his guilt. He even says he will abstain from tobacco and drink. The court rules that the conflict between you still can be reconciled, so the divorce application is rejected, and a second lawsuit can’t be filed for half a year.

You are taken back to that terrible home by him; of course, this time he is even more angry. He grabs you by the hair and knocks you against the corner of the table. He even holds your head under hot water until you faint with pain.

When wake up in bed, in front of you come the words: Go on living.

This time you’re numb with despair, waiting for the man to come back, holding a knife you found in the kitchen. For the next few hours, you replay the atrocities he has committed on you in your brain, and your clenched hand sweats a lot. The moment he enters the door, you stab the knife into his body with all your strength. He falls, and all your strength is suddenly drained from you. You drop to the ground with tears streaming down your face and gently exploding on the floor. Strangely enough, he hadn’t fought back, but just had a weird smile before he died.

You are sentenced to death for manslaughter, and in the moment of your execution, the scene is shattered and you are brought back to reality. A paragraph appears on the game page: “Dear players, as you see, this is an unsolvable game, but there are still many people in the world who are undergoing this torture in reality. We just want to do our best to let more people help them.”

You wipe the dry tears from your face and make a decision in your heart.

Twenty years later, you become a divorce lawyer, helping many women who have been victims of domestic violence. You think that perhaps you also have contributed a small force.