I.M. Meen: The Lost Video Game
Hello. My name is Ignatious Mortimer Meen, and I live inside of a garbage can. Just kidding. That's Oscar the Grouch, and I am not Ignatious Mortimer Meen at all. However, I did encounter him one day in his video game form, and it... it caused me so much pain that I'm surprised I can even narrate it to you now. I am surprised that he didn't tear out my vocal cords, but perhaps he wanted me to pass on this story to the consumer in the event that you'll also purchase his game, because that's the way it works. Lonely person listens to lonely narrator narrate on the internet, and then they go off and go searching on the deep dark web of toronion in search of if it's really real. Well let me tell you something, Bubby Brister. It's real. I'm real, the game is real, and you just lost the game. Which is a good thing, because you otherwise would die.
I first encountered the Burger King Impossible Whopper at a yard sale at my grandpappy's house. Grandpappy had passed on, and by that, I mean he moved out without telling us where he moved and he left off his haunted estate because, according to his will-but-not-a-will-because-supposedly-he-wasn't-actually-dead, he hated us. Fine by me. I didn't like the old bastard anyway. I took a bite out of the Impossible Whopper that my mother bought me because she's a hippie vegan and it was O.K. I guess but it tasted kind of like peanuts and I had a peanut allergy. I started convulsing and farting and vomiting and I fell on the grass and vomited and farted and shit my pants some more. The police came by and arrested me. After interrogating me, accusing me of being homeless despite my mama's insistence that I was her baby, and kicking me out of the homeless shelter for misidentifying on a racial identification form for an evaluator job at Western Governors University online many a year ago, I was back at the yard sale, but I was walking on crutches and the homeless shelter doctor had prescribed me beano for my unrelentable gas. Mama Hatler (that's our last name) was just about to pop her car keys into her car keyhole when she remembered something that would scar me for the rest of my life, thanks mom.
"Your grandfather wanted you to have something better you died, Alfie.", she said. Alfalfa is my first name. Remember, my mother is a vegan hippie hipster. "I just found it in the glove compartment." She beckoned me to come over and I... I shrieked in unrelentable horror. My very own mother had pulled a gun on me! Her baby Alfie Hatler Jr. burger! But no, it was a water pistol. Ha ha. TBS. Very funny. Thank you, mom. She reached back into the glove compartment. "It's a very old CD-ROM. It's better than a floppy dick I mean disk, though. I mean disk. I was just thinking about your father." Well, thank you mom. I grabbed the CD-ROM and ran upstairs to play it, neglecting the gentleman who wanted to buy my Bazooka Joe bubblegum comic card collection for $576 in pennies and nickels and quarters and dimes and quarters. I reached for the coax cables before remembering it was a game and not a VHS tape, and opened up the jewel case, thrashing the disc into the disc holder so hard that I slashed my thumb on the disc drive. Fuck you, grandpa. His computer tower was made out of rusty old razors, barbed wire, and melted barbie doll corpses blended with paper mache.
The title screen popped up on the monitor. I was scared. I.M. Meen? As in, I am Mean? What sort of message was that supposed to send children? Assuming this game was for children, as all video games are for children and do not qualify as art. It walked through an intro in which an elderly old librarian who seemed to have a strange obsession with children sang and danced about wanting to lock children up in a labyrinth for knowing how to read. I noticed by his skin pigment that he was likely Hispanic, but I don't see race so I'm not sure. "Oh look, what clever children, see them study, watch them learn. How I hate those goody goodies, how they make me stomach turn." Maybe the guy should just try not being around kids? Did you know that Dr. Seuss actually hated children? Seriously, look it up.
I started playing the game and it was a first person shooter DOOM knockoff, except you had to correct the spelling of shit instead of blow apart imps with a super shotgun. I got kind of bored pretty quickly until I noticed something... was not quite right. This was peculiar. According to a search on Bing! there were gnomes in the game that interacted with you during cutscenes and were supposed to work for I.M. Meen but were secretly helping you, but instead, the cutscenes...
They were all pictures of my grandfather, reenacting scenes from various American wars. Was this supposed to be some sort of sick joke? There was my grandfather telling the French that he wouldn't help them, even though they're responsible for securing American freedom. There was my granddad telling Stonewall Jackson to go ram his dick up against a stonewall and report his findings about what happened to his reproductive organs to a private. There was grampy himself telling Harry S. Truman that Operation Super Mario was going to be a huge success. I put my keyboard down, and by that, I mean I slammed it to the ground. Operation Super Mario? Get real. This game had me up until that, but no.
I was scared. And by that, I mean really, really scared. There were just so many unanswered questions. I knew that my grandfather wasn't dead, but where was he, and why was he in this horrible 286 processor monochrome monitor with MIDI soundblaster speaker sound effects PC video game? And why had he given it all to me? I was just about to give up, but I wanted to finish the level first. I fought a 'mischievous illiteracy monster' who apparently didn't like it that I corrected his use of there/they're/their. It took 3 shots to the head with a spitball gun but he peeled over and died and turned into purple smoke. And then the game turned into a cutscene.
A cutscene that I would never forget. For the rest of my life.
It was I.M. Meen, but he looked... sad. I mean, his eyes had been replaced by black voids and his nose fell off like Michael Jackson post rhinoplasty, but I could tell it was him and that he was sad. He stared directly into my eyes, which I could somehow tell he was doing somehow. "I don't actually hate children." He whispered. "It's just that... I'm gay." ... The fuck? What did his sexual orientation have to do with anything? "Just kidding. I'm not gay. Thank you for finding the secret ending to the I.M. Meen computerized video game. Now go look in the nearest mirror and shout 'Bloody Marty!' three times." I.M. Meen exploded after that. The screen turned red. And yellow, for guts. I wondered what kind of guts those were. They were very gross. I didn't want to see an old person's guts. I vomited. The aftertaste of vomiting sucks, but I did it anyway because I couldn't help myself. I was going to press power on the razory computer tower when, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a single lightningbolt (it was otherwise sunny that day) hit my entire house and home! The power went out and the bathroom burnt down. I could smell the fiery shits and hear my mom freaking out, but it was too late for me now. Too late for me to use the bathroom. The bathroom mirror. I ran downstairs to the local Kmart and asked to use the men's dressing room.
I tried on a pair of Batman underwear. They felt good. Fit all nice and smug. It makes me feel like a super hero when I wear Batman underwear. "Blood Marty", I said to the mirror. Nothing. Hmm. Must have had to try again. "Bloody Marty", I said again. Still nothing. What the fuck was this? O.K. One more time. One more time and if it did not work, I would go home. "Bloody Marty!", I screamed. "Shut the fuck up in there!", the dressing room attendant yelled. I was going to extend a middle finger out of the door and right into his face when... everything around me... changed.
I was dizzy. The whole world was dizzy. I threw up again. I knew Kmart was going out of business and that wouldn't help their image, but I threw up even more. I closed my eyes. I was too dizzy. It was like when I was a little kid and would spin around in circles and pretend I'd reawake in Pistachioland, a magical land in which everything tasted like pistachios, including the people and it was socially acceptable to eat people because they always reappeared in the next panel. But no. I was not in Pistachioland. I was not in Pistachioland at all.
I was in...
The magical labyrinth of I.M. Meen!?!?
Grandad!?!?!?
I reached out to hug him. It had been so very long. Two full days! But grandpa broke my heart. He broke my heart instead. He shoved me away. "Here's a rhyme for you. Ahem. I knew a gay little grandson who tried not to go to school, but he got good grades so I moved away and disowned him." That... that didn't rhyme. "Would you like another?". His fizzy hair fizzled. I didn't get it. "I knew a once proud father, whose wife gave birth to a hippie girl. I told her not to have children but she married and gave birth to little Alfalfa Hatler." "That... doesn't rhyme, grandfather.", I stated between tears. "One more for the road. Ahem. I knew a grandfather who was so fucking lucky, he broke into Area 51. He stumbled upon government secrets, and now he lives in a video game where he captures children and keeps them from graduating junior high school English." I stared at my grandfather. This was not like him. I stared at his skin pigment. I realized the shocking truth. "My grandfather is Hispanic! You're Caucasian!".
"That's right, you little shit. It is I... Ignatius, Mortimer Meen, of the S.S. Army! Remember this?". He shoved me a picture of me hugging my big red dog rover. How the fuck did I.M. Meen get this? "How the fuck did you get this, I.M. Meen?", I asked, jaw dropping and hitting the floor because I was stuck in a video game dimension. "Where do you think your father actually went, bookworm? Did he really leave you two days ago? Or...
Let's do the time warp... again?".
And that's when it all hit me. For real, this time. I didn't have a peanut allergy. I never had a peanut allergy. Who had told me I had had a peanut allergy? Fake grandpa. Not my real grandfather. I.M. Meen. I.M. Meen had captured my real grandfather. I.M. Meen had been mindcontrolling me by claiming that I had an allergic reaction to peanuts as a placebo! "Fuck you, I. M. Meen!", I yelled. I grabbed a letter 'h' from the wall and threw it at him, but as a sorcerer he cast a spell and a spew of brown crusty waste splashed it away and into my face. I never knew a fucking h could hurt so much.
As for what happened next? I.M. Meen zapped me in the mouth next. It tasted like chocolate, but it wasn't chocolate at all. It was a teleportation device. My cells crushed into quantum bits and I died before re-emerging in a cell... with my grandfather.
"I always was a kid at heart.", grandfather muttered under his breath.
I sighed.
At least I'd never have to go to school again.
YouTube reading
Credited to DaveTheUseless
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