GRAHAM: If you have information, theories or ideas about what might've happened to Buddha Kline please give us a call at [REDACTED].
[VOICEMAIL BEEP]
GABE (voicemail): Hi... my name is Gabe. From Kindergarten to eighth grade Buddha Kline was my best friend. We were two weird kids who were lucky enough to find each other young. On the very first day we met, we were both wearing the same ‘Timon and Pumba’ Lion King shirt. Then at lunch we both had the same Jurassic Park lunchbox. And by the end of the day we were slamming Dr. Peppers and trading Ace Ventura impressions on the bus.
We lived two blocks from each other. Went to the same school in the same grade. And we didn’t stop laughing or doing Ace Ventura impersonations together for a long long time... At each other’s sleepovers and birthday parties it would usually just be a few kids from class or from the neighborhood, and then us. Me and Buddha. As we got older the circle shrunk and the other kids stopped coming. But BK and me, we were stuck together at the hip with a childhood worth of Elmer’s Glue..
Our special brand of weird rubbed off on each other. We’d stay up late on the weekends to watch Saturday Night Live. Then we’d spend Sunday re-enacting the skits in Buddha’s backyard. Buddha showed me how to reach the Secret Cow Level on Diablo II. And I made him cassette copies of my stepdad Rick’s Richard Pryor albums. He introduced me to Napster and my all time favorite band, The Dead Kennedys. And I, after many months of laying out my extremely detailed case, finally managed to convince BK to watch the live action Calvin & Hobbes movie with me. And he loved it. We used to quote it all the time when we were... nevermind it doesn’t matter.
[PHONE CALL DISCONNECTS]
[PHONE CALL RE-CONNECTS]
GABE (voicemail): Um... sorry. Kinda got off track there. The reason I wanted to call was because of what happened after my 12th birthday. It was late August, the summer was ending and the new school year was bearing down on everyone. My Mom was off doing whatever it was that she did when she didn’t feel like being a Mom, but my StepDad Rick.... I guess he saw the disappoint in my face and decided he’d try to salvage my big day by taking BK and me to the mall.
We went straight to the arcade, Aladdin’s Palace. I have these amazing memories from that place. As a kid, I used to tell myself I’d decorate my house the same exact way one day. But I look back now, as an adult, and I think about all the plastic genie lamps and gold spray painted curtain rods and I cringe at my ten year old sense of fashion. At the entrance to Aladdin’s Palace was this life-size cutout of Sinbad from that Genie movie “Shazam.” It was moved straight from the movie theatre to the arcade and lived at the entrance for pretty much my entire childhood. A Men-In-Black Will Smith cutout ended up making the same move not too long after. Decor wasn’t exactly in the Aladdin’s Palace budget. But they did have an amazing selection of games: Tekken 3, Time Crisis, X-Men, Air Hockey, Killer Instinct... Lots of good shit. We were going to use my stepdad Rick’s sympathetic wallet to fund our final domination of Alien vs Predator, but when we made our way back to the furthest corner of the arcade where it was usually at... It wasn’t there anymore.
Our favorite game had been replaced by some boring looking crap called, Polybius. I didn’t want anything to do with it, but Buddha wanted to try it out. So we did. And we kept pumping tokens into it until the Arcade closed that night. Rick crammed us so full of soda, candy and hotdogs that I never even thought about a cake. Or any candles. The gameplay was kinda strange at first, but we picked it up after a few quick deaths. I don’t remember how it was played now, but I definitely remember how bright it was... And I remember how my eyes watered down my face as we played. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t blink. We were going to beat this game if it killed us. At the time I didn’t understand the feeling of being addicted to something. But I know it now. And that’s exactly how I felt.
We had no idea how many levels there were, but we felt like we were getting close to beating it. Things were coming to a climax.... and then the lights were flipped on. And the teenagers running the arcade made everyone leave. Sitting together in the backseat on the drive home, still alive with adrenaline and sugar, we made plans to come back and conquer Polybius. We traded strategies and rubbed our sore cramped hands while Rick rocked out to Rush on the steering wheel. We were going to defeat this game and we knew exactly how we were going to do it.
But we never saw it again. The Polybius cabinet was removed from Aladdin’s Palace just as suddenly as it had arrived. Rumors were starting to spread around town that the kids who played it were getting sick... I don’t know if I want to say for sure that it was caused by the video game, but in the first few weeks after my 12th birthday I felt like a completely different person. I started having these incredibly vivid nightmares. I would wake up in the middle of the night. Frozen in place. Locked inside my own body. And when I managed to snap out of it, I would scream and Rick would come busting through my bedroom door holding a baseball bat and wearing a Punisher shirt, ready to beat the shit out of the boogeyman. But the room was empty. I was alone. And the boogeyman was in my head. Then the Sleepwalking started. First Rick found me in the Kitchen trying to make a baking soda sandwich. Then he found me on our front porch. And then the neighbor’s front porch.
All this time, while I was struggling to cope with what was happening to me, I had no idea that a few houses down, the same exact thing was happening to Buddha. The only difference being that he managed to get all the way out of our little cul-de-sac. I remember his mom crying and knocking on everyone’s door. Asking if they’d seen BK. No one had.
He had been missing for twenty-seven hours when they found him. He was standing all alone in an undeveloped area behind our neighborhood. Fifty years earlier, during World War II, it was called Camp Maybury and it housed German prisoners of war, but at that time, we just called it, The Weeds. After the war, the buildings were removed, but the concrete foundations were left behind. Nature did her thing and erased everything else. Now there’s nothing out there except for porno mags, snakes and cactuses. Buddha had been out there all night. Not talking. Not doing anything. Still sorta just sleep- standing, I guess. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with what has happened now, but I... I thought maybe... I don’t know.
After a few weeks, everything stopped and life went back to normal. We never talked about Polybius again. And I never asked him about what happened to him that night. That Fall was sort of the beginning of the end for BK and me. We stayed friends, sure, but our interests started to diverge. Less and less time was spent together at school or on the weekends and by High School we barely talked. Senior when he.... Sorry. Rambling again.
So, I don’t know.... I guess what I really wanted to say was that Buddha, if there is some chance that you might be out there listening to this, I’m sorry for how everything turned out between us. I really wish I could have been there for you when you needed me. I had a lot going on, but that’s no excuse. I should have done more. Your friendship meant the world to me and I’m sorry I fucked that up. And if he’s is gone. If he’s never coming back. Then I want everyone listening to know that Buddha Kline was the best friend I’ve ever had.
