Perry Andrew Callaway - PAC
The Pac-Man.
This tale follows the story of Perry Callaway. The Pac Man.
Perry stumbled through the corridors of the empty spaceship. His visor was fogged up in the artificial atmosphere of the vessel. He didn't want to risk lifting the visor for fear of them. They followed him when he could look down the long corridors.
He was chosen for a mission the likes of which were thought impossible. Perry and his four team mates were sent on this spaceship as children to grow up on the forty year journey around the sun. Each child had been placed on the spaceship at the tender age of seven. The camera feed and contact to earth had been severed by a magnetic pulse when the travelers were twelve. Perry and his team mates had grown through adolescence and young adulthood completely devoid of human contact besides with each other. Although not all the team mates had made it. Allison "Pinky" Schumacher had died at seventeen years of age. She was always an intensely happy and hyper person. She was the heart and the soul of the crew. Everyone loved her, and as her three male companions grew as teenagers they began to develop more intense feelings for her. About a month before Pinky died she was brutally raped by Clyde Timmins. The generally accepted story was that after the ordeal she self-destructed and would stay in her room for days. She was Perry's best friend and he was the only one she would let into her room. Perry knew she was close to ending her own life and all he could do was encourage her to forgive Clyde. He knew his attempts to console her were just delaying the inevitable. Clyde had developed a hatred for Perry during this period. Clyde had the firm belief that Perry and Pinky had become an item. This was encouraged by Dallas "Blinky" Tapper. Blinky was not as slow as dim-witted strong-arm Clyde. He had a silent intelligence about him that he could back up with a silver tongue. Perry never found out whether or not Blinky had persuaded Clyde to rape Pinky but his thoughts often wandered to the subject. For a week and a day after Allison's death no one talked. They sealed off her room with her body in it. The fifth team member, Ian "Inky" Key was the most silent and timid of the crew. He was a small boy, barely reaching five foot five and weighing around one hundred pounds. Diminutive next to Clyde's imposing 6 foot 4, two hundred pounds. Ian was always pushed around by Clyde. Clyde's reasoning being that the strongest survive and the weak do not. Around age twenty three Ian began to start resisting Clyde's reign. It started with small things like ignoring Clyde more frivolous commands. Dallas was the first to notice this. He took advantage of this small rebellion and started pointing it out to Clyde. Clyde believed Dallas worked for him, but Perry knew how it worked. Clyde was Dallas' puppet. Clyde began physically assaulting Inky whenever a command was disobeyed. No longer children, the beatings began affecting Ian's health. Without a medical crew on board a broken rib became catastrophic as Ian had no idea what was wrong. Dallas had read the onboard medical manuals, he knew what was happening and he knew he could exploit this. During one encounter when the remaining crew had reached the age of twenty-eight Blinky pointed out the black and purple bruise on Ian's skin to Clyde, presenting it as a target. Clyde repeatedly punched the 'target' as Ian cried out in pain. Ian's broken rib has pierced his lung. After the assault Perry had walked in and saw Dallas and Clyde leave the room as Ian hung in mid-air due to the lack of gravity. Ian was gasping for breath and Perry tried to help him breathe. When the coughing of blood began Perry started to panic. The only other time he'd ever seen blood was when he floated into Pinky's room those years earlier. Back then the room was full of the crimson streams as a knife floated around the room. Now it was just specific globes of blood shooting across the room as Ian coughed them out. Perry remembered a specific moment when Ian looked into his eyes, fear gripping his small frame. He asked Perry if he was going to die and Perry simply left the room and locked the doors. The walls to Perry's private quarters were the only ones he saw for a year or more.
Ever since they were kids sometimes a soothing voice would come from the speakers informing the passengers that they had to don space-suits while the oxygen in the ship recycled. This is where Allison got her nickname 'Pinky'. She chose the Pink space suit gleefully. Clyde had taken the orange one, Blinky the red. Inky was forced into the powder blue one by Clyde. Perry had found a distinct yellow one with black trim and the letter's PAC on it in the engineering room. He knew it stood for Project Aegis Controller but he reveled in the coincidence of it matching his initials. From this he got his lifetime nickname 'Pac-Man'.
Perry knew Dallas and Clyde were still at large in the maze of corridors. Occasionally he would hear them talking as they floated through the hallway outside his door. From what he picked up they were thinking of ways to get into his room. Perry became intensely paranoid and would go for days without sleeping. This kept up for another few years. The three remaining crew members were thirty-five. For the last few months Perry had been taking pills that were in his medicine cabinet. They were unlabelled and originally he had being trying to end it all but had found the pills helped him with his feelings. One day he decided he felt well enough to leave his room. As he opened the door he noticed something about the corridors he knew so well. Panels were ripped off the walls and burn marks riddled every surface. General disarray was rampant as little things such as pencils and cups slowly floated through the artificial air. Blinky and Clyde rounded a nearby corner and saw Perry. They both began laughing to themselves and started moving towards Perry. As they arrived at Perry's drugged and smiling face they were confused. Clyde was confused as to why Perry was not cringing at his mere presence and Dallas was confused as to why Perry was so… complacent. Perry waved and greeted them and said something about how nice the lights are as he floated off down another corridor. Dallas wasted no time going into the Pac-Man's room to look for whatever was making him so docile. Right off the bat Blinky spotted a half-empty bottle of pills with the label DxRR18. Dallas gave a grim smile and nabbed the pills. In fact, he nabbed every bottle of DxRR18 in the ship. The next morning as Perry woke up his head was pounding and he was slightly damp as a cold sweat had set in during a nightmare he had where Pinky and Inky were chasing him down the corridors as kids. He reached over towards where he usually keeps his pills. As brief panic came on as he could not find them. He immediately left his room and went to the next unoccupied private quarters where once again, the medicine cabinet was empty. He became angrier with each room he checked. The first thing he thought was that Clyde was playing a childish prank on him. Well Perry wouldn't have the wool pulled over his eyes. Perry set off towards Clyde's quarters, his anger doubling with every yard. As he approached Clyde's door he was shaking with rage. Why would Clyde take his pills? The asshole doesn't deserve to live. He killed Inky… He killed Pinky… Perry slid open the door and saw Clyde sleeping in his sleeping bag. As Clyde heard the door open all he saw was a yellow form coming at him with perceptible amounts of rage and heavy breathing. Clyde couldn't unzip the sleeping bag fast enough as Perry's hands closed over his neck. Clyde struggled with futile rage as slowly he lost the artificial oxygen keeping him alive. Perry continued constricting the former teammate's neck for a full twenty minutes as his anger died down. Perry took his hands off Clyde's neck slowly. He felt cold as he stared at his own hands and began to violently shake. He could hear the screams of Pinky and Inky as he screamed himself. Dallas had heard Perry screaming and realized what the lack of pills might be doing to him. Dallas grabbed all of the pills in his arms and headed towards the screaming. As he rounded a corner he saw Perry glaring at him intensely. Perry's drug-starved rage was about to be directed at Blinky and they both knew it. Dallas began backing up and apologizing. He was scared, and vulnerable without Clyde. Perry began floating towards Dallas as fast as he could. Dallas threw the pills and began to flee. Perry didn't care about the pills in that moment and was focused on Blinky. Dallas knew the ship's corridors better than Perry and managed to escape for the time being. The familiar voice chimed in and warned the passenger's to get into space suits to avoid dying in the air-recycling. Perry was already in his trademark yellow suit, but he knew Dallas was not even on the right side of the ship to don his suit. The Pac-Man began heading back to his pills. As he reached the pills the air began to recycle and all the pills began shooting towards the large fan, grates just big enough to fit the small bottles. Perry screamed and swiped at the cloud of bottles managing to grab a bottle. He watched as the rest of them hit the fan and exploded. Some pills made it through the vent unharmed while most of them were chopped up on the process. Perry fled to his room downing pill after pill.
It took him about a month to finish all the pills. For a day and a half he tried to survive without the pills. It was too much for him. Whenever he opened his severely tinted visor he would see images of his dead team-mates coming at him. Timidly he opened the door to his room. What he saw astonished him when he took off his visor. There were small pieces of his pills floating all through the hallways. He couldn't see them with his visor on though, so he had to keep it up. The horrid visions of his dead companions all moving towards him, he began panicking as they got closer. He sifted through pill fragments in the maze of corridors looking for the brief relief of a full pill. The fragments didn't do anything but he collected them anyways. Whenever he found a full pill the images of his dead crewmates vanished into the floating debris. This continued for years. No one knows what really happened to Pac-Man and the Ghosts, but this is the best guess.
Thanks for reading.