Playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time On The Nintendo 64
By Adam Crittenden
When I arrived at Kakariko Village, chickens flapped to the lazy music and the villagers sat outside of their cottages. I rolled to get around—because rolling around as young Link is faster than running—and stopped occasionally to talk with villagers. I had no idea that the amount of fucked was so rich in this village initially, but when I became older Link I saw the village for what it truly was: a facade for the sins of all of the villagers who lived there. Who knew that so much death and decay hid behind the cemetery and under the ground? As older Link, rain constantly pelted the abandoned village, but the rotten ReDead corpses masked with wooden faces still lingered. They never went away; they couldn’t because they had nowhere else to go. The first time I approached one (as young Link), it crept slow and froze time—as the ReDead do. No buttons could save me, and it approached while I stood, hypnotized. It grabbed my chest and hugged. This was like one of those bear-hugs my father gave me growing up as a child. I hated them. He wouldn’t let me go until I began to cry and struggle to breathe. When he released me, he would laugh and I would somehow be okay again—at least until the next hug. Sometimes I think those hugs were his way of saying, “I resent you. You are a burden.” At other times I think those hugs were his way of saying, “I don’t want you to be weak. You can’t be weak.” Those strange hugs. How odd to forgive someone we love. How odd to move on so quickly after pain. How odd to never really move on.
After I finished the level, I sometimes returned just to look around, even though the village had the same corpses waiting in the same places.
About the Author:
Adam Crittenden holds an MFA in poetry from New Mexico State University where he was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. His writing has appeared in Barrelhouse, Bayou Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Barn Owl Review, Whiskey Island, and other journals. Blood Eagle is his first full-length book of poetry and is available from Gold Wake Press. Currently, he teaches writing in Albuquerque at Central New Mexico Community College.
About Weekly Flash Prose and Prose Poetry:
CutBank Online features one work of flash prose or prose poetry every Monday. Submissions are free and open year-round. Send us your best work of 750 words or less at https://cutbank.submittable.com/submit.