It gets worse the longer you look.

In the half-light of of her cramped dorm room, Cassie Lawrence cursed and ran a soft cloth cross the shining underside of a game disc. Tiny droplets of water glistened briefly on the surface before evaporating like her patience.

“There,” muttered Cassie, blowing a lock of blonde-and-black hair out of her face. “That ought to do it.” She pressed the “open tray” button on her Xbox and inserted the disk, a  secondhand copy of Bee Movie Game someone had gotten her as a joke. It was just a test, of course, to see of the system was working. Out of the five other games she had tried, Morrowind and Dark Souls were the only ones it would read. The other three-- Portal 2, Oblivion, and Mass Effect-- merely went from “Reading” to “Open Tray” in the span of about thirty seconds. If the system would read at least one game, she reasoned, then the problem must have been with the games themselves.

 The console hummed and whirred softly, as though savoring the disk. Cassie glowered at the television screen, her controller in a sweaty death-grip. The disc icon stared back at her. The longer it stayed on the screen, the faster her heart beat. She was tapping the A button with anticipation: every second held the promise of a fade to black and an offensively yellow, honeycomb-patterned title screen. God, look at me, thought Cassie. Getting all hyped for the Bee Movie game. She cracked open a bottle of grapefruit sparkling water and took a sip, her gaze never leaving the screen.

It had been almost two minutes before she realized the Xbox had frozen. Cassie hurled her controller at the wall, then hastily examined it for damage. She glanced wearily at her phone: 4:12 AM, no notifications. In three hours, she’d have to be in class. Cassie groaned. Her head pounded and her eyes swam. All she’d wanted was a nice, easy gaming session before returning to real life. Dark Souls and Morrowind had been fun up to a point, but there were only so many cliff racers and YOU DIED screens a normal human could take before the brain turned into cottage cheese.

“You piece of trash!” Cassie screamed at the Xbox. “Are you punishing me? Are you mocking me?” She stepped over the coffee table and knelt by the console, mashing the “open tray” button. Snatching two game boxes off the floor, she tore them open and popped out the discs: the only ones that would play. “Why? Because I want to actually have fun?” she continued. “Take this!” She ripped Bee Movie Game out of the tray and stuffed the two discs into its place. Cassie slammed her hand into the tray, forcing it back into the Xbox.

Breathing heavily, Cassie put the disc in her hand back into its box and settled back down on her futon. “God,” she said. “Keep it together, Cassie. They’re just games.” She took several hard gulps of sparkling water, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Just games.”

The Xbox screeched like a pig being slaughtered. Cassie jumped, spilling her drink all over herself. She covered her ears, grimacing, and made her way to the power strip, which she switched off with her foot.  “I’m going to be getting a complaint in the morning,” she muttered. Changing into boxers and an undershirt, Cassie turned off the lights and snuggled into the futon. She pulled the blanket up to her chin and closed her weary eyes; it probably wouldn’t be too dangerous to leave her contacts in, she thought.

Outside, the wind rattled the windows and shook the branches of the trees. The leaves whispered furiously to one another. Half-asleep, Cassie mumbled and curled up a little tighter. She listened to the thunderous rustling of the leaves and smiled. Funny, she thought. When I was a kid, the wind in the leaves reminded me of waves breaking. I used to imagine I lived right by the sea... The more she listened, the more the ocean of leaves carried her away her away into a heavy sleep. Sounds just like waves, thought Cassie as she drifted off.

Hours later, someone shook her awake. She groaned and rolled over, her eyes still shut.

“Stand up,” said a low, hoarse voice. “There you go. You were dreaming. What’s your name?” Cassie’s eyes snapped open.