Design: KAZI AKIB BIN ASAD

In light of our recent plague, I had some profound realisations. You can run, you can hide, but you can't escape the questionable actions of your past.

Ghosts of Our Past

It's a fine summer evening, a nostalgic instrumental music fills the air in my bedroom, where I, a seemingly innocent 15-year-old in my sweaty school uniform, sit glued to my computer screen for several hours playing The Sims. I take a lifetime to create a couple of fictional characters, spend another to construct their fancy mansions. Then, I add a fancy swimming pool from which I later remove the ladder, for no apparent reason, and watch until the very same characters inevitably perish.

Did that stir your memories?

On other days, when I feel a bit more adventurous, I trap my Sim in a tiny room and remove the doors. Oh, and let's not forget the occasional fires. There is no use looking at me in disgust like I'm some monster, I know you're probably recalling the cathartic experience of annihilating a pixelated character's life right now.

Is This Real Life? Or Is This Just Simulation?

It's Day 107 today. It all started with losing my front door on March 20th. It just disappeared out of the blue. Surreal, right? Nothing has been the same since. I was mildly suspicious initially, but I have now managed to connect the dots. Oh God, this is such a disaster. Despite carefully locking them up in the furthest corner of my brain, vivid flashbacks of my Sims begging for an escape have finally come back to haunt me. Honestly, I could never see this coming. But, here we are, facing the ridiculous consequences of karmic justice.

The sequence of chilling events didn't end there. Before I knew it, a giant plumbob started to hover over my head, which quickly switched from a vibrant green to a haunting red. Stupidly, I disregarded this. Of course, I tried pressing Ctrl+Shift+C repeatedly, but alas, no cheat codes worked to fix my stir-crazy episodes. Have some mercy.

Just when I thought I witnessed all abnormalities, I somehow started uttering bits of Simlish gibberish (I'm suddenly fluent) in between speaking human. Tell me, how long do I keep denying these eerie parallels?  Living with all this shame and guilt… I can't help but wonder if this would be happening if we had simply controlled our sadistic impulses when we had the chance?

At this point, I'm fairly certain that like my Sim, I'm just swimming in circles, paddling and thrashing, searching fruitlessly for a ladder that no longer exists.

What Goes Around... Comes Back Around

Every time something happened, I felt that this Higher Being had been looking over me with a triumphant smile, along with all my dead Sims cheering on raucously from the Afterlife, their plumbobs shining a bright green, as they rejoiced in their prophesied victory over me.

It is true what they say, you reap what you sow. It may have taken a life-threatening plague for my eyes to finally open up and have this crushing realisation of the irrevocable damage I have caused, but I promise I'm a changed person now, growing and learning from my horrid past.

That being said, can I have my door back, please?

Nafisa has clearly played too much Sims in her lifetime and finally lost it. Send her thoughts and prayers at sara.chow26@gmail.com