The HIMS.3
by F_R_Eaky
Ed was very stoked. He had a hard day today at the university and he wanted to get back to the dorm as soon as possible. Today was the day he’d get to try out a new PC game as he’d joined a club and got a new one to try about every two months. The day swirled round and round in his head; so much drama and crap went on today. He felt like he had played counselor to everyone.
Hank was in his Calculus class, a true geek: 5’6” skinny, like 115 lbs wet, if lucky, mousy brown stickout static-looking hair, glasses, and wears faded blue jeans and polos or short sleeved dress shirts in the wrong prints or colors. Anyway, Hank was again drifting off, day dreaming and drooling about Amanda one of the college cheerleaders, so perky, black hair, semi-decently toned 5’4” body, bounce in her step. She occasionally talked to Hank, but not with a lot of interest, and when her boyfriend, Clint was there, she completely ignored him. No wonder – Clint, the captain of the college football team 6’5” about 260 lbs or muscle, feathery brown hair, deep brown eyes, was a total asshole and of course picked on Hank all the time. This occurred especially if Hank was fawning over Amanda and didn’t get the calculus work done that Clint ordered him to do.
Anyway, Hank was deeply involved in a fantasy about Amanda, and bothered Ed with questions such as, “How can I win her?”, “How do I woo her?”. This of course led to an altercation after class with Clint as Hank hadn’t finished Clint’s home work. After Clint had picked up Hank by the collar and yelled in his face for several minutes, he then proceeded to stuff him into a very small broom closet in that hall and left him in there – the door only unlocks on the outside for some strange reason. Ed waited until Clint was long gone and opened the door so Hank could get to his afternoon classes.
The day didn’t get much better. Clint wasn’t through with his rampaging today. That morning he received a grilling from Coach Bradley, head coach for the football team. He played football, who knows how long ago, but the physique was long gone: 6’1” 285 lbs with slumped shoulders, lil’ pot belly pooch, and thick wiggle legs that stood on feet whose arches gave out years ago, all topped off with a bald head with a grey turning white crown of hair and bushy mustache. So Coach Bradley had to interigate Clint because the season was coming up and Clint didn’t have all the plays memorized yet, not the thing a football captain does.
On top of this the defensive coach, Jacob a slightly younger man, mid-forties, who had given up football early in life due to a knee injury, had blasted Clint as well for running poor drills with the team. Clint just cursed at him and taunted him for having a waistline that was starting to go, legs that were skinny, too weak, and bowing, and one of the worst throwing arms he’d ever seen on a coach. “You’d like to think you’re still football material, but you’re just a washed up nobody that wishes he could have been a has been!” Clint shouted at him one day.
So, when Ed had to use the locker room for his physical ed class, he heard all this fussing and cussing, fist into locker slaming from Clint to the coaches. The only thing he did like is completely opposite of Clint was the second man on the team, Mark. Six foot-four to Clint’s six-five, but 280 lbs of muscle to make up for the lack of an inch. Blond shaggy hair hung off his head, framing the lightest, bluest, warmest icy eyes one has ever seen. He tried to get Clint to calm down, study the plays, learn new routines to practice, and of course hit the weights. Of all the people in the college the only two who could match each other for a decent spotting partner workout it was Clint and Mark, nobody else came close.
“Fuck no! I ain’t go time tonight for the workout. I’ve got to go get it on with Amanda. You spend way to much friggin time on that weight set. You’re big enough, why bother with more? Maybe you get off on it.”
“I don’t think so, Clint. It’s just….”
“Maybe you do it cause you know Ed gets off on it!”
There it was. Because he was in the room, Clint always managed to drag him in. The supposed boy-toy of Mark, not that Ed would have minded that thought, but it wasn’t true. No, Mark just stood up for him and others when Clint went off on one of his anger binges. As Mark usually said to everyone, “Hey, ought to be friends with everyone. My atheletic abilities are only going to last for so long. If all I make are arrogant jock friends, who’ll be there to talk to me when I’ve hung up my pads?”
“Come off it, Clint, ya know there’s nothing between Ed and I. Leave the poor guy alone, he’s only in here because of his classes. Otherwise he wouldn’t want to put up with you.”
“Put up with me? He’s the one being tolerated. He should be happy to be able to know me.”
The other end of the locker room rang with the opening and closing of a couple of lockers.
“Oh, that’s marvelous, like I really need to see those two…” snipped Clint.
Those two he was talking about were Dmitri and Dominick the two star gymnasts of the college. 5’ 6” about 185lbs, solid, stocky, flexible. Nothing was really wrong with them per se, it’s just that being the only gymnasts at the college, they hung out together – constantly. This wasn’t so bad except, they knew almost everything about each other, they were so close of friends they could frequently finish each other’s sentences. They both where kind of Russian looking, jet black hair – one straight, the other curly – and deep eyes one kind of violet, the other sapphire blue. So they nearly moved and acted as one, and one would think they were brothers, some thought they were fraternal twins.
“Let’s see how the faux twins are doing today.”
“C’mon, Clint, leave us alone…”
“Or what? You gonna take me on midget?!”
The two gymnasts just shook their heads at him and finished pulling on their tank tops for their workout.
“Ya’ll are just brother wannabes and it’s just stupid. We all know ya don’t wanna be brothers, you’d rather be lovers. Usin’ all your flips and twists in nasty positions – SICK!”
As usual, Ed talked with the gymnasts on the way to his gym class allowing them to let off steam about clint. Ack! But that was this afternoon. This was tonight. Tonight was all his. He didn’t have to worry about the name calling and teasing Clint did against him, or anyone else. Tonight he’d sit alone with his lap top and his brand new computer game. A game which was right here in his mailbox. He grabbed the envelope, a lil’ odd looking than usual, but he just shrugged and put it in with his books and headed up to his dorm. He tried to take the stairs at a good clip, wanting to get a lil’ healthier these days, but his 5’9” 230 lb frame didn’t allow for sprinting up the stairs. He used his breath to blow his flyaway stringy blond hair out of his face and his deep olive colored eyes. Panting for breath he pushed the door to his floor open and made his way to his dorm room.
His dorm room. His inner sanctum. Somehow, lucky him wound up without a roommate, and that was perfectly fine with him. After classes he could sit and play for hours his games with sound up, all the bleeps and whistles going and not a soul to complain or tease him about it. This evening was going to be no different. He opened up the package and placed the disk into his laptop. After following all the cues for instruction a little intro screen popped up with some cute lil’ music. At first Ed was a lil’ turned off, but thought, “eh, I’ll see how it goes before I junk it.” To his surprise it was something like the Sims – a game in which to make characters and see if they can get jobs, have relationships, and lead a quality life.
“Well, this could be fun. I’ve not played the Sims in a while. I wonder why this one was called the HIMS.3? I wonder what different quirks it’ll have?”
But a wicked thought came across his mind. He couldn’t fix people’s problems in the real world, maybe he could fix them in the gaming world. He’d done this before on the SIMS and this he thought would be just as fun. Over the next couple of hours he created people, dressed them, created their builds, gave them stats, birthdays, and named them: Hank, Bradley, Jacob, Dmitri, Dominick, Mark, Amanda, Ed, and…Clint.
“This’ll be good, I’ll rearrange the scenario a lil’ bit and have everybody pick on Clint!”
But something surprised him. After creating different houses for everyone to live in and hitting play, the computer went right back to the create a person screen. It told him to create a guide. Ed shrugged and thought what the hell, one more person in the mix won’t be so bad. So he created him and called him Trey. “Trey” guided him through the workings of the game, which played very much like SIMS, and he played it well into then night before finally going to bed.
The next morning, late morning, Ed got up, brushed his teeth, showered, ate breakfast and headed to school. The atmosphere at school was electrified, everyone was talking about someone, some new kid that had transferred in to the college. Ed kind of wondered if he’d get to meet this kid and his chance soon came. His first class that morning, while he was sitting all the way in the back of the room, the class got quiet as a young man came in the door. He was average height, maybe a little above 5’11”, he was fresh faced, very young looking like still in high school, a man but still a boy somehow. His frame was slightly filled out like around 180 lbs but the muscle although formed decently looked like it was still covered in a slight layer of baby fat, and all this was topped off with a head that had thick dark read hair and emerald green eyes just a hint of freckles still splashed across the face.
Ed sat there in shock, motionless. This was the guide he had created in the game last night. It couldn’t be. There was no way. Had he caught a side glance of this person registering some time before? No…. how could this kid look just like the teaching avatar he made while playing a game. If he was disturbed by this now, it was going to get worse for Ed. The professor told the young man to find a seat to which the young man strode down the aisle, searching for a seat and only saw the empty chair in front of Ed. He took it, sat down, said hello to the students in front and on the sides of him, then turned around, looked at Ed, stuck his hand out and said, “Hi, my name is Trey.”…..