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The following are selections from the autobiography of Pac-Man, "Memoirs of My Life as a Chompaholic: The Pac-Man Story," by Pac-Man.
Chapter 6: Rebirth
2008, that was the year my life changed forever. I was created in 1980. For 28 long years, my life was spent chomping away in a Namco-designed two-dimensional maze. Never knowing anything more than my simple 8-bit existence. That was, of course, until a freak laboratory accident brought me out of the game and into the world of man.
A hungover scientist working on the completion of Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider spilled their Mango-a-go-go Jamba Juice on the main control panel of the high energy particle beam, causing an electrical fault that led to a loss of approximately six tons of liquid helium. Something something superconducting magnets something something causing an electrical surge something there was a Pac-Man arcade game in the break room something I'm here now. Science shit. You wouldn't understand. These are my memoirs, not a research paper! If any of you have seen the documentaries "Virtuosity" or "Lawnmower Man" then you'd be smart enough to understand. I'm kinda like Keanu Reeves from the Matrix but with more emotional depth and range. Or it's kinda like Weird Science, but instead of Kelly LeBrock it's me, Pac-Man. Equally appealing to teenage boys from 1985, but for different reasons.
It is certainly an incredible feeling to emerge into a world where you're already a pre-existing icon of 1980s popular culture. I came to find that the video game which was my genesis was a hugely popular social phenomenon. I was the face of one of the highest-grossing video games of all time, having taken in over one billion quarters by the 1990s, or according to my intensive calculations, a quarter of a billion dollars. Evidently there was a cartoon of me at one point. I tried to sit through an episode on Youtube, but had to turn it off in disgust. What do they have me wearing? Crimson boots and a fedora? What am I? Dennis Rodman at the MTV Movie Awards? Seriously, crimson boots and a fedora. Who the fuck would wear that? Even a street pimp in Milan would think that is an immodest and unwise choice of attire. Plus, why did the ghosts have to be in every episode? Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde? Those guys were assholes. Especially Clyde. It’s like, “We get it Clyde, you’re the orange ghost. No one cares, man.”
Chapter 7: Ms. Pac-Man
Thing I miss most about being inside the game: Ms. Pac-Man. I've dated a few human girls. They just don't do it for me. No one is round enough. No one is yellow enough. I went on yellowfever.com. There was just a bunch of Asian chicks on there. Disgusting. No human lady can turn me on the way Ms. Pac-Man did. She was a brick house. 36-36-36. That's what turns me on in a woman. Someone who looks exactly like me, but with a red bow on their head. Also, someone whose last name is the same as my first name. My full name is actually Pac-Man Wayne Gacy, but my designers thought they should just shorten it to Pac-Man for showbiz reasons. But she is Ms. Pac-Man, meaning that Pac-Man is her father's surname. Everybody always asks me "What was her first name?" It's Lizette. Lizette Pac-Man. And I miss her dearly. Though I never got the chance to make her Mrs. Pac-Man Wayne Gacy, we did have a physical relationship for many years. I'll never forget the first time our two yellow orbs touched each other, bits to bits. We ravaged each other that first night like a pair of lust-filled, canary-colored click clacks. Still the best sex I've ever had in my life. You humans claim to know how to 69 each other. Trust me you don't. You numbnuts aren't 69ing, you're 11ing. Although our favorite sexual position was something we liked to call the Crazy 8. Or the Dirty Infinity. I called her "Unmellow Yellow," and she called me "Goldenrod."
But now it's just me. No one to satisfy my sexual hunger. I catch myself getting turned on by inanimate objects because they remind me of her. I feel like a pervert, but it's not my fault. Tennis balls give me blue balls. And by the way, if you're going to serve up a lemon meringue pie, you better cut out more than just one slice unless you want me to have some really unhealthy sexual feelings towards your homemade dessert. It's a nightmare. The human world has so many triggers. Why do you have so many round things? I can't get an office job! I get turned on by pie charts! Can a player get a bar graph every once & awhile? No, you gotta use pie charts. Guess what? 22% of anything looks a lot like a mouth! If there was a pie chart of the world's major religions, I would want to put my dick inside Hinduism. Don't get turned on when you talk about geometry? Gee. Oh. Me try. Gee. Oh. Me fail. I got a double radius fetish for which there is no cure. When I was in middle school I'd even masturbate to a diameter. I fantasize about having a two-dimensional threesome. They say masturbation causing blindness is a myth, well, not if it's to a solar eclipse that looks like Ms. Pac-Man.
I guess I'll get to the part about me eating food, sorry Pac-Man got sidetracked with writing too many jokes about Pac-Man having sex three nights ago when he was really high.
Chapter 8: I Eat Ghosts
I eat. It's what I'm famous for. The only thing that brings me comfort is eating. Consumption is and has always been at the core of my existence. As in the arcade game, my primary instinct is to relentlessly consume. Never tiring, never filling, never defecating. Which is admittedly weird. I mean I eat a lot of fruit.
Unfortunately I'm only able to consume what I consumed inside the game. It's just the way I was programmed. A bundle of cherries, a solitary strawberry, an unpeeled banana, a goddamn pretzel if I'm lucky. Why would those fuckers program me to only eat fruit and pretzels?! Would it have killed you guys to put a Caesar salad inside the maze? Maybe a nice plate of chicken cacciatore? Nope. Just fruit and pretzels and an endless stream of power pellets. And power pellets don't even exist in this world. Trust me, I learned that the hard way. For months this guy was selling me what actually turned out to be adderall that he was stealing from his mentally disabled step-sister. Next thing you know I'm hooked on uppers. Seven and a half months later I'm blowing truckers for their benzedrine. I don't have teeth, that a bad combo for me. I also don't have eyebrows, so no one can tell I'm not enjoying it. I was very popular in California's roadside rest areas for a brief and painful portion of my life.
But I'm clean now, except for one addiction. Fruit, meh. Pretzels, sure. Yeah, I eat 'em when I have to, but they are nothing compared to my favorite dish: ghosts. That's all I live to consume. I gobble ghosts. I attack apparitions. I feast on phantasms. I polish off poltergeists. I snack on specters. And you guys have way better ghosts. Compared to Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde? There's no comparison! When I saw The Shining, it was like a Somalian kid seeing the inside of an Outback Steakhouse for the first time. The earthbound spirit of a deceased person is literally the most delicious and satisfying thing you could ever possibly imagine. I've become a bit of a connoisseur of human ghosts these past six years. There are different reasons why certain spirits don't cross over to the afterlife and remain here on the mortal plane: some fear judgement. Some have unfinished business. Some aren't aware they're dead. Some just aren't ready to go. But all of them end up inside my mouth. I EAT GHOSTS!
I don't eat candy, man. I eat Candyman. I don't drink bloody marys. Mothafucka I eat Bloody Marys. Yes, I would love to join you for dinner at the House of Prime Rib, as long as it's a haunted House of Prime Rib. I don't eat at IHOP. I eat at HHOP. You get startled, I get starved. You hear boo. I hear boooooon appétit. If I was the star of Man vs. Food, it would be called Man vs. Dead Man. My Sixth Sense is hunger! What up Haley Joel Osment?! I also see dead people. Then I chew their ass up and shit them out.
Top 6 Fictional Ghosts I'd Like to Eat:
#1 Jacob Marley's Ghost
#2 Moaning Myrtle from Hogwarts
#3 Ghost Dad
#4 Ghost Son (aka Ennis Cosby)
#5 The Holy Ghost (If it was up to me, it'd just be the Father, the Son, and
What Happened to the Other Guy? Don't Worry About It.)
#6 The Librarian From Ghostbusters
***
You can find Trevor online at pleasekilltrevorhill.com and on Twitter @TrevorHill.
This story was written for Give Me Fiction, a prose reading series hosted by Ivan Hernandez. You can follow GMF on Twitter, check out the podcast on iTunes, RSS, Soundcloud, and Stitcher, and buy tickets for the live show which takes place the first Sunday of every month at San Francisco's Lost Weekend Video. The next show is GMF XV: Masculinity on January 4th.
