IGRA PRC

My name is Lyn. I like to go on walks. I'm working on learning how
to do art, but, to say my doodles are uh, childish, would still be
pretty generous, they're still bad, I'm still learning. I chew on
sticks. And, I am literally undead, although I don't mention it to
most people.

I originally lived from 1952 to 1961, and died getting hit by a
car in my old age. I was a Great Dane. My life partner (my human)
was named Fiona, we grew up together, started as young ones and
grew into ourselves, through all of the fun and all of the
hopeless-feeling work that that entails. I remember long hours
sniffing around our back yard while she did laundry; I remember
lying pressed up against her side in the sunlight as she did the
washing in the bucket, and I remember playing around bothering her
to throw a rock for me to go get while she was pegging up the
clothes to dry; I remember how at first she really wanted to throw
a stick, but I liked the rock more, lifting it up and the taste of
it as I carried it, it was important to me it was a rock, and
eventually she went along with it. I think fondly of the smells
that filled the house when she cooked. Roasts, bacon, I drool just
at the memory sometimes. I remember some days were crying days,
she would be in a foul mood, and it would never go away until at
least the next day, but she would calm down a little if I was
there, she would cling to my hair, she would pet me, she would
tell me things that I don't think were about me, but I tried my
hardest to be listening, and I learned who some of the people were
who made her sad. I remember her scolding me regularly for going
up onto the table to eat food when she wasn't around, but the food
she made always smelled so good, nothing she could say would stop
me the next time I was left alone, it was always worth it. I
remember a time when my ears were sore and itchy, and she would be
mad when I scratched at them, I didn't understand; eventually they
stopped being itchy, anyways. I remember sharing her bed, I would
never fall asleep better than to the smell of her breath, and the
warm comfort of her there with me, my packmate. I remember I
always licked her, on the hands and arms and legs, and then one
day while we were on the couch, she looked around to see if we
were alone, and then we kissed mouth to mouth, and that became a
thing that we did a lot. I remember one time our bedroom door was
closed with her inside and me outside, and I bonked my paw into it
to push it open, and to my surprise the door wasn't fully closed
and did come open, and I saw her on the bed naked, doing something
with her nakedness; she looked around like she had looked around
before the kissing, and then she invited me into the bed; she
showed me what she was doing, sliding some toy in and out of her
vagina; I licked at it carefully, and she liked that a lot, and it
became another new game we played; I even got her to use the toy
on me, showing her my puss, showing every interest in getting
played with too; when she finally did, it was so immediately
fulfilling, pleasurable, enjoyable, like I had found out about a
new sense entirely, similar to the disobedient gluttonous joy of
filling my belly by eating good food off of the table; I remember
the first time she did it, we looked into each other's eyes like
hey, we just found something new to share together, didn't we; it
was a fun personal moment. We went on for years, playing around on
the bed, waiting around in the house, romping around in the
sunshine in the back yard as the wind blew by and carried all of
the neighborhood's smells right past my nose, for my inspection
and appreciation. And then, yeah. Car. Smack. I barely lived long
enough to even know that was what happened. It's not like it was
all that traumatic, at the end of the day, from my perspective
anyways. It was pretty quick and then it was over.

I don't even want to get into why I was brought back, because that
isn't really my story. It's like if I was raped by a stranger. Why
he decided to do what he did doesn't define me or what my story
ever was before that. But, since it did become a defining moment
anyways, sure, I'll give the brief version.

The car that ran me over ran over a human later too, same driver
in fact, and this time the driver actually did do time for murder.
But, more to the point here, after being in evidence and then in
an auction, the murder car mostly spent the next few decades
forgotten about in some dude's barn under a sheet.

And then in 2018, my reviver--I won't say his name, fuck him--came
along looking for a murdered soul, knowing about the story of the
car. Well. He knew about the human who was killed by it. She was
the one he was looking for. He didn't know I was on there too.
Inadvertently, he got the more inert pieces of her, and the actual
soul of me. He had designs of creating a zombie to assassinate
President Trump. I didn't know what a president was prior to being
brought back, because, yeah, dog. Not my ballgame. I did get some
factual knowledge off of the human's soul, so, when it came time
that I was resurrected for this purpose, I at least knew the job
description of a president, even if the exact politics of this
specific president were a few decades ahead of the other soul's
time too.

My reviver died, anyways. As he was trying to imbue me with the
desire to assassinate and the skills to actually make the attempt,
something went wrong with the ritual. A demon appeared he hadn't
even been attempting to commune with--I think she overheard, bless
her. A giant she-wolf made of fire and smoke. She bit his entire
head off, freed me from the chains he had kept me in, and then...
the world was mine again. Just like when I was a dog, before, I
was alive again, I was a creature in the world that could do...
whatever it behooved me to do.

I tried to find Fiona. That took a very long time. It was
difficult enough finding the town that we had lived in, but I did,
in the end I walked there through huge fields of corn that cut up
my bare and sensitive human feet. I walked to our house. Someone
else lived there who I didn't know, and he threatened me as he
told me to leave. I learned more about what year it was, and, what
that meant. I found out it was 2019, and she had died in 1968,
seven years after I had. Everything was over.

I tried to die. I went out into the woods and tried to starve. I
tried to shoot myself. All I felt (after the initial pain and
confusion) was a breeze. I reached into the wound and started
scooping my brain out, handful after handful, until I could run my
hand smoothly around the entire inside surface of my cranial
cavity. It didn't matter. I regenerated. I never even passed out.
My soul (my perspective of existence in the universe) is not
predicated on having a physical body, like it is for most people.

So I decided, if I am unable to die, then I will give myself over
wholeheartedly to living. I eat well and I eat healthy--I'm
actually vegan, mostly, which is not very dog-like, but with these
human taste buds I cannot get enough of onions and peppers,
seriously. I have a job. I have a girlfriend who I uh, have not
told the undead thing to. And I have a truck that I am driving in
right now, on my way home from picking up some groceries from the
organic store that's down the highway. I didn't really need to go
there, but, I'm mixing it up today. It's a free spirit sort of day
right now.

My exit isn't for another couple miles, but on a whim I take this
other exit I'm coming up on anyways. I have a drink of my bottled
lemonade on the way up, tilting it up beside by face, my eyes
never leaving the road. At the top of the off ramp, I take a right
turn onto whatever the hell street this is, and start cruising.

I don't really have anywhere to be. Not in a hurry. The groceries
in the back are mostly produce, nothing that's going to go bad
even if I take all afternoon getting home. And I'm on a two week
staycation, because incidentally I have not used any of my
vacation time this year, and that time resets on the anniversary
of when you were hired. So, being that I was hired nearing three
years ago, here I am with time off that I either use or throw
away.

So I am taking the scenic route home.

Shortly after the off ramp and the stop light are some gas
stations, fast food places, nothing surprising. I think one of
these bigger buildings is a hotel, and the next one down is
probably an apartment complex, and then I'm into a bunch of
housing, my truck ambling along by people's yards, taking it
casual in the slow lane.

I see a sign for a yard sale. Yeah, why not. I throw on my turn
signal, ease down the brake, and make the turn.

A little ways farther down a bendy residential road, and I see the
garage sale ahead. A few fold-out tables set up in the driveway, a
few people poking around. I park the truck on the side of the
road, hop out, and go to see what's good.

The other humans shuffle around between the tables, looking things
over. Seems to be middle aged people, one of them has a kid with
them who is goofing around in the front yard--I smile at her.
She's making a better use of this day than any of the rest of them
here, definitely, doing somersaults and running around.

I do turn my attention back to the tables. It's mostly clothes,
from all kinds of ages, baby to adult. I wish it wasn't considered
weird to smell things. Like, screw all these other people, I'm
interested, you know? I'd love to spend a long, long time here,
going item by item, holding the clothes right up close, cupping
them around my nose whether they're a shirt or socks or pants or
underwear, and just sniff them, inch by inch. Who knows. Maybe
they'd all just smell like cigarette smoke anyways. But, maybe
some body odor, maybe fragrant detergent, maybe dirt, maybe
mildew. Guess it'll be a mystery. Guess I'll be left not really
caring about these clothes, since, that was going to be what was
interesting about them. Oh well.

On one table, there are some tools on one end, wrenches and uh,
stuff. And on the other end of that table is some computer stuff
too. A couple of screens, a couple of keyboards and mice. I
certainly don't have an interest, and I think my girlfriend, June,
is already good on screens and keyboards and mice. What catches my
eye though is something that she might have an interest in:
there's a cardboard box with game cartridges stacked inside.

I take some out and look them over. They're definitely used, a lot
of the labels are scuffed or discolored. I sniff one, it doesn't
really smell of much at all, which is good of electronics I have
come to understand--I catch myself and do not sniff any more. Most
of the cartridges are light grey, and have labels with different
cartoon characters on the front, and names I am sure I've heard
before, Mario, Banjo, Zelda. Down at the bottom of the box are ten
black cartridges that don't have any graphics on the labels, just
a narrow white laminated strip with plain black text on it. I
don't know what those are. They all say IGRA PRC and then a
number, like, the lowest I see in here is IGRA PRC 2, and the
highest is IGRA PRC 30, so there would appear to be numbers
missing, I don't know if that matters.

But, details aside, June LOVES computer games. Each of the
cartridges is labeled with a little sticker that has $10 written
on it in pen. I turn to the woman who's seated in a fold-out chair
in the mouth of the garage.

I say to her, "Nice day out." It's the way humans say hi to each
other, I guess. Start by talking about nothing. It is nice out,
anyways: it is autumn, and it smells like it and it feels like it.

She says back, "It could stay like this all year long, you
wouldn't hear me complaining."

Just estimating, buying all of these would be three hundred bucks.
And I mean, I have it, and I'd do that, why not. But I do think
June will appreciate this more the less I say I spent. She is
smart like that.

I make an offer. "One forty for the box?"

"Deal," she says, no hesitation. As I'm getting out my wallet, she
goes on, "I was on the phone with my grandson, he said I should
charge more for those, found them going for more online. I said,
well do you want to come get them? They're free to you, if they're
staying in the family that's worth as much to me as selling them.
And he said no, and I said well there you go, I'm not charging
more if you won't drive an hour to get them."

I hand her one forty in twenties.

She counts it out briefly, and then says, "Thank you very much,
miss."

"Good luck with the rest of the garage sale!" I say.

She grabs a sturdy plastic cane and starts to stand up, probably
to go put the money inside. I have such a desire to help her stand
up, offer her a hand, but I have learned that personal space with
humans is... Touching a stranger is not something you do, even if
you're being nice.

I leave her to stand up on her own, happily pick up the cardboard
box that is so totally mine now, and carry my new thing to my
truck. I set it in the passenger side on the floor, rather than in
the back, to keep the open box safe from unexpected showers or any
dust on the road. I kind of hate computer stuff. Always have to be
so careful with it. No fun. But, I'm happy to have gotten the box
all the same, I think it's a good present. We'll see.

I continue driving in the direction of home. Driver's side window
rolled down, arm hanging out, wind on my face.

Getting closer to home, now on streets that I do usually go down,
I make a stop that I usually make. I pull into a small graveyard
by the road, park the truck, and get out.

Reaching into the bed of my truck, I take a can out of a six pack
back there, and open it as I walk to one of the graves.

Fiona Warren. My life partner.

I sit down in front of the grave cross-legged, and start sipping.
There is a lot of space between my thoughts, as I speak them to
her.

"Not much new to say since yesterday, Fi. Picked up a box of old
games. I don't even know what system they're for. They look like
Nintendo 64? I don't even know if all of them are games, some of
them are labeled like they might be someone's tax files or
something, so, maybe they aren't even for a game system
necessarily. June will know. I basically got them for her. I think
she'll either be stoked or she'll call me a dork and be a little
bit annoyed at how much money I wasted on this. It wasn't much
honestly, but, I guess it would be a dumb amount to spend on
something she can't do anything with, if she can't. We'll see.
I'll let you know if anything in the box was any good."

I set the can down and lean back for a moment, hands pressed down
onto the grass, head tilted back to look up at the clear blue sky.
I breathe it in, and sigh. I pick up the can again, which is half
empty now, and I keep talking.

"I don't know what else to tell you. So much of the human
experience seems to be about... thinking about things that you
aren't sensing right now. And that's not to say I never thought
about things that weren't in front of my face as your dog. Believe
me, when you were at work, I looked forward to you coming home,
even beyond the fact it would mean you would let me out into the
back yard to play around. I just looked forward to seeing you. So
it's not new, thinking about things that aren't true yet. But
it's... more. So much of the human experience seems to be thinking
about things you aren't sensing right now, even when the things
that you are sensing right now are good enough. I don't know.
That's just how I feel about it in this moment. But I'll let you
know how the games go over with June."

I take the last drink from the can, crush it in my hand, and huck
it into the bed of my truck as I'm walking back to it. I get in,
and drive the next couple of blocks back to home.

I live with June, my girlfriend. It's her house. It's REALLY her
house. A human's house. I would never think to put so many of the
touches on it that she has, but she has really made it her own
space, on top of all the things that the previous owners left
here. She's done an unnecessarily cool job of decorating the
walls: in the living room the walls are mostly painted black with
a bunch of neon colored triangles here and there; in her office
the walls are papered with desert imagery, sand and cactuses and
skulls, that kind of thing. There are book shelves in so many
rooms, many do actually have books, others have ceramic vases and
figures, pieces of taxidermy, sewing projects, puzzle toys, tiny
masks carved from wood and painted in detail. If this were my
house I probably would have smashed all the windows to let the air
in and dragged all of the blankets into the kitchen to make a food
and shelter den. So, she has thought of more than a couple
decorating ideas that I would not have.

Her car is in the driveway, I didn't really expect she would be
going anywhere while I went out to get groceries. I bring
everything inside, two bags of groceries in one trip (I bury my
nose down into the bags as I walk in and sniff the onions and
greeny earthy veggie smells), and the box of games in the second
trip (I bury my nose into the box and sniff that too, and
basically just smell the cardboard box itself).

I set everything on the kitchen table for now, and start going
around to find where my girlfriend is. She isn't down here on the
first floor, in the living room or kitchen or in her office or in
the bathroom. I climb up the stairs--unashamedly I go up the
stairs using my feet and my hands. At the top of the stairs I walk
lightly over the carpet down the hall, and poke my head in to our
bedroom. There on the bed is June, all cozy with blankets strewn
all over her. Sunlight falls on her in little golden beads and
lines, through the gaps in the blinds. I feel a phantom tail
wagging behind myself--the fact that I don't actually have one
isn't even super a bother right now, it would be smacking so hard
against the wall behind me. I tiptoe forward, take off my shirt
and pants, and slink onto the bed with her, snaking my way under
the blankets, into the warmth that she has packed in there.

June, half asleep, grabs me in her arms. Under the blankets, we
hug front to front, finding a way to settle in that is comfy: she
ends up using my arm as a pillow, I have a scrunched up blanket
for my pillow. We nuzzle in, my face and hers touching, skin
tingling skin, my nose mushed into her forehead, her cheek mushed
into my lips, and we are so cozy this way. I love her. It's
perfect.

I take a deep breath. A slow breath, letting go, wholeheartedly,
of any sense of needing to be anywhere else. I do not need to do
anything at all right now. I can just relax. I can snuggle.

I love coming home to this. I love June. She is warm. She is here.
And she wouldn't make it anything more complicated than that. She
gets me.

And the smells. The sheets smell like us. Sweat, cooch, ass,
detergent, breath. This is our den. This is our special together
place. This is ours.

Before too long at all, I fall asleep with her there, face on
face.

I wake up to the feeling of her planting a big kiss on my lips. I
wag, or at least, I feel the fact that my tail is not thumping
against the bedsheets when it should be. I kiss her back. Then I
stretch, grab all of the blankets, and fling them all onto the
floor in one throw, leaving me and her bare on the bed.

"How do you DO that?" she asks, amused, but also really asking.

"I wanted them off the bed and now they are. Duh."

I pet her tummy. She stretches, and lays back relaxed and lets it
happen.

She says, "It's like that trick where you pull the table cloth off
and still leave everything on the table, but with the blankets and
leaving us on the bed."

I have no idea what she's talking about, but I just keep petting
her tummy.

"I got you video games," I tell her.

"Did you?" she asks--she sounds like she might be happy about this
but is sooo skeptical of what I mean by that, which, to be fair,
is totally fair.

"Whole box of old ones, down on the kitchen table."

She floppily rolls away from my petting and off of the bed, onto
the floor, and starts pulling her clothes on down there on the
floor without getting up. I do get up, get back into my pants and
shirt too, and follow her out of the bedroom door, towards the
stairs.

"I need to see these immediately," she says on the way. "What kind
did you get?"

"It's a surprise because I have no idea."

"Oh my god."

We get to the bottom of the stairs, and she runs to the box on the
kitchen table, and immediately starts grabbing the cartridges out
and looking them over and setting them out.

"Yeah, these are Nintendo 64 carts," she says. "Holy shit.
Okay..." She is setting all of them out in some kind of organized
way, it seems. "Where did you get these?" she asks.

"Garage sale," I answer. "I know the labels all say ten dollars, I
just bought the whole box for a hundred and forty."

She continues digging and sorting while I'm talking. When she gets
to the ones at the bottom, the black cartridges with the text
labels, she says, "I don't know what THESE are," and she leaves
them in the box. "But the ones I do know... yeah, honestly you did
not get ripped off whatsoever, some of these are pretty worthless
but some of these are good gets."

That is good to hear and all, but I wasn't in it for the resale
value: I'm just pleased that her tone of voice at seeing this is
all excited, happy, interested. I am very pleased that I seem to
have not fucked up here. Some could even say that I have been a
good girl.

June asks me, "Wanna play these?"

Holy shit. "You have the console??" I ask.

"Yeah, it should be up in the attic."

Holy shit! "You have an attic????" I ask.

June lets out a shrill little laugh, as I continue to stare, wide-
eyed, awaiting her elaboration as to this "she has an attic" news.

"WE have an attic," she tells me, resting a hand on my arm.

That is firstly very exciting, and I must know right freaking now
where this entire freaking attic is hidden at. And, to the point
of her emphasis on 'we,' it is nice that she thinks of this house
in that way. Because, according to my understanding of how human
ownership works, this house is all hers and she could kick me out
for no reason if she ever felt like it. So it's nice to hear that
she doesn't feel like it. The house had previously belonged to her
parents, and then there was a sickness that killed a lot of people
including them, and now it belongs to her.

She promises that yes, she will show me where the attic is. When I
see she's going for the stairs I run around her and climb up the
stairs ahead of her on all fours, and wait for her at the top.

"There," she says, pointing to some kind of square recess in the
ceiling of the upstairs hallway.

"THAT'S an ATTIC?" I ask.

"It's the stairs leading to an attic. Come on."

We go to stand under the square. I see there is indeed a little
handle, painted the same white as the ceiling, I never noticed it
at all before.

June carries out a stool from our bedroom, and uses it to step up,
and pull a fold-down door stairs thing magically out of the
ceiling.

"Woahhhh," I say.

"It's very cool," she says, teasing me, but she loves me. "You
going up first?"

"Absolutely not."

"Really? You always seem to insist. Like, literally just now when
we went up the stairs."

"Yeah I already know what's up the stairs, I dunno what's in that
fuckin place."

"Alright, I'll go make sure there's no ghosts or anything," she
says, and starts up the stairs slash ladder thing, up into the
attic.

I hold my tongue as far as commenting on how the ghost is kinda
down here, sort of. Me. Her girlfriend. Whomp whomp.

I follow her up, once she's made it to the top. Looking around, I
see that there is indeed an entire attic in this house.

I ask her, "Why aren't we doing anything with this! This could be
like an awesome scary hangout that we turn into a cozy hangout!"

"Um," she says, and then looks around, and shrugs. "I guess I'm
not against that, actually. I have to go through all these boxes
at some point."

"Do you know where the video game thing is?"

"Yeah! My old gaming stuff is in a plastic crate, I should be able
to spot it." She takes out her phone, turns on the flashlight, and
barely shines it around for two seconds before the light lands on
a blue plastic box that stands out from all the cardboard ones.

She moves towards it, doing a sort of crawling walk to not bang
her head on the low ceiling here. I crawl after her, and take her
phone to hold the light while she opens the box.

"This one!" she says, and takes out a game system. I can see right
on the top of it, it has a slot the right size for the game
cartridges I got. "One sec, let me find the right cords."

The box has all kinds of old electronics and game cases in it.
Neatly packed in among them are power cords that are all bundled
together and kept from being all loosey-goosey by the same kinds
of twist ties that come on bread. She takes out two cords, and a
pair of controllers, and then closes the box and takes her phone
back, and turns off the light.

We split up the load, making easy work of carrying it all down to
the living room. As she gets it all hooked up to the TV, I go and
put away the groceries. I put the paper grocery bags beside the
collection of paper grocery bags June keeps below the sink--
sometimes I see them re-emerge as overflow recycling bags. I don't
know if she uses them for anything more other than that, but, I
put the bags under the sink, anyways.

When I come back to the living room, June is on her stomach,
reaching under the TV stand into all of the wires back there. I
sit down on the couch, and hold a pillow as I watch her work.

Eventually she is triumphant in setting up the system, and raises
her hands over her head and does a little dance. I clap along to
her rhythm--dancing still LOOKS very strange to me, but, some
human instinct for keeping time has rubbed off on me, and so going
along with things like music is... still weird-feeling, but it
kind of tingles too. It's sort of like the first time June gave me
a foot massage, when the feeling of music is strong. When the
feeling is weaker, it's more like seeing an optical illusion.

June continues her little dance all the way over to the table, and
there she stops. I turn around and flump over the back of the
couch, facing her.

"Were there any of these in particular you wanted to play?" she
asks, looking over all the games she's laid out.

"Nah," I tell her.

"Would youuuu like to try a racing one or a fighting one?"

"None," I say.

"What!"

"I just want to watch," I tell her.

"That sounds a little boring."

"It sounds a little NOT boring," I counter, and I wag at her--
well, I would wag at her, etc etc. "I get seasick playing."

"Yeah, I know."

"But I wanna snuggle and see you play and you tell me what you're
doing and I ask dumb questions and you tell me more."

"I love you so much, Lyn."

I blow her a kiss. She makes an air kiss back at me too.

She grabs one of the games, and says, "Let's try Ocarina, make
sure my N64 still works. After that though, I'm really curious
about these other ones with the weird labels."

"What do you think they are?" I ask.

She peers down into the box, moves a couple of the black
cartridges around. "The labels say I G R A, P R C. That doesn't
mean anything to me, off the top of my head. But I mean, it could
be a few things? My guess is that these are just bootlegs, and
they'll just turn out to be some other normal games, maybe in a
different region or something. It could also be that these are
loaded with in-development game snapshots? Doesn't seem likely,
but, it's weird anyways, so who knows."

"Do they still make games for this?"

June laughs a little, as she comes over to put her chosen game
into the system. "No," she answers. "This is like, later 90s, up
into 2000, baaarely anything 01 or 02. Well, but that's the thing:
just because commercial development stopped, doesn't mean that any
random person who wanted to couldn't develop on their own in the
twenty years since too. Modding is definitely a thing."

I have no idea what she's saying, but I wag at the sound of her
voice going on. It's very relaxing. As she's been talking she has
put a cartridge into the slot at the top, and slid the power
switch on.

Onto the screen comes a logo, and then the title screen, with a
horse going across a dark field in the background.

"It works!" June says.

"Yay!" I yay.

June sits down on the couch next to me, presses stuff on the
controller, and then we are looking at a menu. I don't know this
game at all, but I get the gist of it, that these are two
different save files. The second file is empty. The first one has
some stuff on it.

June flips the selection back and forth between the two files, and
says, "Huh. The guy named his Link Pick."

"Is that important?"

"No, not at all, but I guess that's what we can call him? I am
assuming all of these games came from a guy, I have no reason
whatsoever but it's what I'm going with."

"Sure, they can all be from a guy," I say, and then I melt over
against her side, nuzzling her, getting comfy. "We can call the
guy Pick. Can we look at where he got to in the game?"

"Yeah," June says, and just as soon selects the first save file.

The screen cuts to a view as though we are looking down into a
room from the ceiling, and I am very glad I have opted out of
playing: just looking at the screen I can deal with, but if I was
the one who had to drive the character around right now I might
hurl. June makes the guy, Pick, leave the room, hop off of a
balcony, and then start wandering around in a village with a bunch
of trees and hills.

June mentions, "From the file select, I know he's still on the
first dungeon."

"Show me around," I request.

June takes me on a walk all around the town, doing all of the fun
little things to do, running around in tall grass, throwing rocks,
talking to all of the people--she does the voices on all of them,
as I snuggle in and wag and listen. I do enjoy it, seeing this
whole place. It'd be neat to be there.

As June is about to go into some other part of the game, I
interrupt, saying, "Let's try the weird games."

"Fuck yes, let's," she agrees.

We both scramble off of each other, and she goes to get the box
while I stand and stretch--my side that was all mushed into her is
all sore, but, no regrets.

She brings the box over and sets it beside the system, and kneels
there as she switches out the game we just played for one of the
black cartridges. "IGRA PRC Two," she says, and then slides the
power switch on, and doesn't even get up as she looks at the TV,
waiting to see if it works.

The game does come on, I think. It looks like a pale blue sky in
the distance, a completely flat dark green field, and a yellow
rectangle standing on the field. And that's it.

"Hm," June says.

"Any idea what this is?" I ask her.

"Nnnnnot a finished game, is all I can tell you," June answers.
She hits the reset button, and same image quickly appears on the
screen.

Sensing that this whole process might involve a lot of fiddling
around with switching out games and doing stuff on the console
itself, I start taking cushions off of the couch and blankets and
pillows and stuff, and begin forming a cushion nest around June
that I will join her in when I am finished.

June tries something with the controller, and right away says, "Oh
wowwww, this is terrible. Look at this."

I look, as I am draping a blanket over her shoulders. She is
moving the rectangle around, but the point of view on the screen
isn't changing, so the rectangle easily goes away off to the sides
or becomes really small in the distance.

She makes a noise like she's going to throw up (I think she's like
half pretending) as the rectangle starts drifting slowly into the
distance.

"What?" I ask.

"I pressed the... oh Jesus, the D pad starts the camera moving but
then doesn't stop it, I can still control the block with the
joystick, this is... wow."

"Bad?"

"Yeah, very bad."

"You like it?"

"This game is talking dirty to me in the BEST way."

I lick the side of her face, and then continue working on the
pillow fort.

She tries the second controller. It doesn't seem to do anything at
first, none of the buttons effect anything, but then all of a
sudden she says, "That's a crash." She laughs to herself, kind of
rolls over onto her side (onto many of the comfy cushions I have
placed) and then rolls back up, sighing after the laughter.
"Wowwwwww this is shoddy. Initializing controller two crashed the
game."

She turns it off and on, and the game is back to normal. I sit
down beside her, and get in on the blanket I put over her,
stealing half of it so it's now draped over both of our shoulders.

June tells me, "If the rest of these are as exciting as this one,
we are in for a treat."

I lick the side of her face again, she kisses me back this time,
and then she turns off the game.

She reaches into the box, and says, "Up next, IGRA PRC Five."

Swapping out the games, she turns it on with the new one in, and
we get a totally different screen. We actually have a person to
move around instead of a rectangle: he has a cape and green skin
and a bald head. And there's actually stuff here, too. A bridge is
right ahead of us, leading towards an expansive obstacle course
that climbs high above our heads in a field in the woods.

"Damn," June says. She moves the guy around, and he actually
walks. "Well this is a huge step up."

She starts walking for the bridge, and our view actually follows
the guy now, instead of staying behind.

As she goes, she tries out all of the things her guy can do. He
has a bunch of different kinds of jumps, some of them are flips
and others are really far jumps or tall jumps. She manages to do
double jumps too, finding weird ways to dance the character
around.

"This handles insanely well," June lets me know.

"Is it a copy of a game, like you were talking about?"

"No. This isn't anything that was ever released on the N64. It's
taking some design cues from SM64, but this really is wholecloth
its own thing."

"Maybe it's one you haven't heard of?"

"I am a freaking historian with this stuff," June says. "I
promise, I am familiar with the entire N64 library, this isn't
anything in it."

"Name every game."

"Super Mario 64, Pilot Wings 64, Saikyo Habu Shogi--"

"FUCK STOP, I believe you."

June giggles to herself. She is doing a lap around the forest
clearing area, staying on the ground rather than going up onto
anything.

"Getting a lay of the land?"

"Yeah. This area alone is extensive. Can I..."

She tries a few things on her controller, making her guy do random
stuff. Then, with an "ah ha!" she makes the view look upwards.

"Damn," she says.

It goes up very, very, very far. Kind of far enough that the
highest stuff up is basically too small to see, so it might go
even farther.

Once she's done a whole lap around, she stands in the middle of
the clearing, and points the view around to a few different
places. She explains, "So, we can start climbing up there...
there... or there. I think all of them are a viable path up, but I
wanna try this one, I see tight ropes and I'd like to see how
those work."

"Sounds good to me."

June heads for that way, which starts with a series of platforms
spiraling up the trunk of a very tall tree.

The way that June plays is mesmerizing to watch. I don't just mean
that of this game, either, I have sat and watched her play games
before. It's like performance art. She glides around the platforms
up this tree like a ninja. She gets to the tight ropes, and with
laughing and experimenting, she has figured out how they work so
fast, and starts jumping across them like she is hot on the trail
of someone ahead.

This area of the game really is freaking huge. We spend way longer
just climbing up all of these things than we spent in the village
in Ocarina, and it just keeps going up and up and up.

At some point I grab us snacks. Snacks from June's food, not mine,
so, chips and sodas.

By the time we can see the top of the area, it's gotten dark
outside in real life. There is one last thing to get over, a bunch
of platforms that are all spinning around a weird giant glowing
green orb. June just goes for it, no hesitation at all, we both
scream and reel at the idea of falling down at this point, but she
powers forward, makes it across the platforms, and leaps into the
orb.

Instantly, her character is teleported to a completely different
level: a blue-tinted town, instead of a green-tinted forest. June
scream laughs at the jarring change in scenery, and rolls over
onto her side, into my lap. I pet her as she is laugh crying and
trying to breathe.

She says to me, "We are going to be up all night, aren't we?"

"That sounds fun to me," I say. I. love. doing weird random shit
with her.

"I need to know how much more of this game there is," she says.

"I'd like to know too," I tell her. And then I admit openly, "I
mean, I don't actually care, but, I want you to be able to find
out, and I like spending time with you."

June kisses me. She tastes like terrible cheesy corn chips. I love
her. She then sits up again, takes the controller once more, and
goes forward into the new area.

As we go around the town, she says a lot of things like
"interesting" and "huh" and "ohhh." I usually have absolutely no
idea what is so interesting or huh or ohhh-worthy, but she
explains to me that basically this area is a huge puzzle, riddle,
secrets kind of thing, unlike the last area which was purely
jumping around.

She walks around to the same areas many times, sometimes spends a
bit of time standing in place, staring at an area, thinking,
before she says "ah ha!" and then goes and jumps on something or
moves something somewhere else, and then seems pleased about it,
and explains how this thing she did here will have effected some
other thing somewhere else. Mmmmost of this is lost on me, but
mostly I don't care. At a certain point I'm not even looking at
the screen, I just have my head in my girlfriend's lap, facing
her, taking in deep sniffs of her shirt, and feeling her gut
moving forward and back against my face as she breathes. She
smells so human. Bad cheesy snacks, body odor. We are both
incredibly sweaty for two people who are just sitting here. It's
probably a mix of all of the excitement from jumping around in the
game and also just the fact that we are very toasty, both of our
body heat pooled together and contained within blankets.

It really is seeming like we're going to be up all night. She is
still sitting there, I am lying beside her on my back, looking at
the TV screen upside down, and she and I are just talking about
stuff as she works on the puzzle thing in the town.

June says to me, "This reminds me of growing up. Being tired, and
eating garbage, and hanging out with friends, and playing a game
without knowing at all what I should expect next. An actual sense
of mystery in a game."

I treasure her sharing that. I haven't told her much about my life
from before I knew her, because, there's not a lot to share if I
don't want to get into the whole 'undead dog' thing. And, in a
sort of mirrored way, I don't know much about her life from before
I knew her either. In some ways I don't need to? I never know if
this is just a normal human thing or if I should try harder to
ask. There is isolated trivia. She knows I dated someone named Fi
who died. I know she had a girlfriend growing up too, but I don't
know what her name was, or what happened, and that's fine that I
don't know. I feel like it is my dog side that is utterly
nonjudgemental as to how she got to be here, and is only invested
in the fact that yes, now she is here. But, this right here, this
night, is the best of both worlds: her sharing some insight that
stuff like this is how she grew up, I love to know that, and I
love to get to be here doing it again with her.

She asks me, "Did you do a lot of stuff like this growing up?"

What a question. I tell her bluntly, "No. Doing stuff like this
with you is a lot of firsts."

"I had like, two best friends when I was a little kid," she says.
"One was a neighbor, and the other was a friend from school..."

She goes on, telling me stories from when she was little. Playing
around in the woods pretending to be wolves--hehe, oh that is so
great, I love that. I wag a ton at those stories, and ask to hear
a lot more about their pack, their territory, their hunts. She
tells me things about going to school. I hear so freaking much
about school, from TV shows and from people talking. It sounds
traumatic, so much of the time. Fiona cried about school a lot. It
sounds like June had mixed experiences. Some of it was bad, and
hurtful, and unfair. But she and her friends also got up to fun,
writing things on the whiteboards that would disrupt class,
passing notes and trying not to laugh but failing, and also
sometimes just leaving school early with her friends to go hang
out and, well, do stuff like what we're doing, this night. I
snuggle against her listening to all of it, wagging. It's
incredible I get through the entire conversation without it coming
up that I never went to school.

It's late enough into the night that June and I are both nodding
off a little bit. We have busted out June's energy drinks, and
have been sipping those. June has been circling around and around
a graveyard in the game. There has been a little lull in the
conversation, and I find myself snapping my head upright, catching
myself from almost falling asleep. I turn and lick the side of
June's face.

"You're weird," she says.

"Licking is a sign of closeness in wolves," I tell her.

She is weirdly quiet at that. I expected her to explain we are
humans. But instead, there is a real heavy silence, as she makes
the character on the screen walk around the graveyard more.

And then she says really quietly, "Hey Lyn?"

I get the sense that we're not in teasing joking mode anymore, and
I try to affect a certain amount of... approachable gravity. "I'm
here," I answer her.

"I told you once that I could relate to you and Fi, but I didn't
want to get into it."

I nod, and don't interrupt her. I can feel her voice on the verge
of cracking, and I might cry just hearing how worked up she is,
but I remain right at her side. I rest my temple on her shoulder,
listening completely.

"Well. My partner growing up, my girlfriend who I had my first
kiss with, and my first sexy times, and who I really wanted to
marry and run away with... was my family's dog, Shiloh."

Tears flood into my eyes, because of how much I know now, how much
I understand about her pain. The dog "was" Shiloh, not "is"
Shiloh. I might be the first person she has ever told about this
hidden pearl of love. I tell her, "Oh sweetie," and I grab her in
a strong hug. She grabs me back, and we cry together.

"I understand," I tell her, as I pet her, and we hug each other.
"You're okay. You're beautiful. You're perfect."

She lets it all out. I stay here with her, here to have it all let
out onto. I'm good at that. I wouldn't have it any other way. I
want all of her pain she will give me. I squeeze her again. She
squeezes me back. We are real. We are two breathing crying things
that are here together right now, breathing and crying on each
other.

As some time passes, we are eventually just two beings breathing
together, not crying. I lick the side of her face. She licks me
back. I wag. She smiles.

"Do you wanna tell me more?" I ask.

"Not right now," she says.

"Will you later?" I ask.

"Sure," she says.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"I really do get it, and I hope you and her had all of the best
years that you could."

She nods, and says, "We did. I wish it could have... no offense to
you, but I wish it could have lasted forever."

"You don't have to explain that one to me, I understand."

"Right. Sorry."

"We have so many notes to compare, some other time," I tell her. I
hope I used the turn of phrase right. 'Compare notes.' Seems like
a school thing.

She seems to know what I mean, anyways. She nods, and comes in and
hugs me again. We make it a quick one this time.

June looks over at the TV screen, and says, "I give up on this
graveyard, unless you have any ideas."

"I have had no ideas the entire time you have been in this area, I
promise."

She snickers, and says, "If these are all 'in progress' versions
of the same game, maybe this is as far as this version goes.
Should we try the next one?"

"Let's snuggle a little first," I offer.

"Sure," she says, and then in one motion she leans forward and
switches off the power on the N64 and falls onto me to snuggle. I
catch her, and gently lay both of us down in this nest of cushions
and blankets. Both of us there, both of us having the taste of
chips and soda on our mouths, both of us up way past our bedtimes
and so tired, both of us so cozy, I nuzzle her. I kiss her
forehead once, and then we just lay there, and I hold her, and I
pet her.

Pretty soon, she is snoring as I am petting her.

I relax, good to fall asleep too. I fall asleep thinking about how
beautiful my girlfriend is, this human completely asleep on me who
knows what the love is like between a human and a dog. I fall
asleep thinking about how much we really, really have in common. I
fall asleep in love with someone who kisses dogs, more times than
she knows she has, but I think, when I tell her, that it will all
be good news to her, as much as something like that can be. I fall
asleep truly, fully pleased with my new human, as she has fallen
asleep with her new dog.