My name is Kévin. Yeah, the most boring name in the world. At twenty-five, I wear glasses that constantly slide down my nose, hair that's always a mess, and my apartment reeks of stale chips and despair. My daily life is just an endless string of all-nighters chaining video game sessions, chasing some kind of virtual glory between two gulps of soda. During the day I work in a call center, where I take shit from clients who treat me with utter contempt. Then I go back home to escape into digital worlds where I finally stop being a loser. The only thing that can still spark any real enthusiasm in me? Heavenly Sex. Yeah, you heard that right. That game is my fucking lifeline in this shitty world.
Heavenly Sex isn't just another RPG. It's an unhinged mythological universe, the kind of production that instantly hooks players like me. On the surface it has all the classic game features: quests to complete, dungeons to explore, a hero destined to save the world. In reality, though, it's radically different. You play as Eros, the god of love or to be completely honest, the god of depravity. Your ultimate goal? To submit the entire Olympus to your will. Aphrodite, Athena, Artemis, and even Freya if you've got the balls. You have to charm them, seduce them, and finally make them submit. The game is so crude and explicit that some forums straight-up call it "Greek Porn", or "GP" for those in the know. The missions are often challenges like "Seduce Hera in a single night" or "Break Demeter with a well-placed speech". It's vulgar, over-the-top, and yet I fucking love it.
I spend my nights farming charisma points, optimizing my builds to max out my "seduction aura". In Heavenly Sex, progression is entirely based on chaining together twisted quests meant to restore Eros's former glory, which the other gods jealous of his influence over hearts and bodies had cast into disgrace. So you have to, for example, convince Aphrodite to seal a "carnal alliance", or confront Ares and seize his power. Every quest mixes multiple-choice dialogues, tactical combat, and scenes that would make a porn star blush. The game is so niche it only attracts losers like me, but I don't give a fuck. It's my thing.
That night, sprawled on my bed in a room where trash was piling up into mountains. Empty pizza boxes stacked on the desk, my screen casting the bluish glow of Heavenly Sex's main menu, and a pile of dirty laundry threatening to collapse at any moment. The walls were covered in video game posters and an old print of Athena in armor I do have a thing for warrior goddesses. My apartment is a sewer, but it's still my domain. After a long exhale, I finally turned off the console and got up.
"I gotta go out, get some air," I muttered to myself, fed up with the persistent smell of dirty fabric and stagnant food.
I threw on a sweatshirt, grabbed my keys and stepped into the hallway, where the worn carpet gave off a musty stench. Outside, the cool night air hit my face. The streets were quiet, barely animated by the distant hum of traffic. I walked aimlessly, passing dark shop windows and anonymous buildings. A group of people laughed in front of a bar, their carefree mood forming a stark contrast with my own reality.
The acrid smell of the city and the sticky humidity of the night seemed to cling to my skin like a second filthy layer. The neon signs, casting pale and flickering light, burned my eyes every time I looked up. I ended up avoiding them, keeping my gaze fixed on the cracked asphalt. A shiver ran down my spine; it was definitely colder than I'd thought when I left home.
I pushed open the glass door of the corner convenience store, triggering a shrill bell. The warm indoor air, thick with the smell of chemical cleaning products and old fryer grease, caught in my throat. The cashier, an older woman with a closed-off face, barely lifted her eyes from her phone. When her gaze met mine, it was brief, neutral, and loaded with an indifference worse than any insult. It wasn't even hatred; it was worse. It was as if I didn't exist, or as if my existence was a minor nuisance barely worth registering. She dropped her eyes back to her screen without a word. I headed to the refrigerated section, the linoleum squeaking under my soles.
My choice was quick: a six-pack of Prem's beer. The ultimate symbol of failure, I thought vaguely. The cans, ice-cold, were wet with condensation. I set them on the counter. The cashier scanned them with a weary gesture, no comment.
"That's all?" she asked in a flat voice, finally, her eyes grazing the cans then my face.
I nodded, pulling a few coins from my pocket. "Yeah. That's all."
The transaction ended in heavy silence. I grabbed the pack and walked out, the shrill bell following me like a death knell.
The dilapidated wooden bench across from the empty bus stop seemed to be waiting for me. The green paint was peeling, revealing gray, rotten wood in places. I sat down; the hard, cold wood went right through my jeans. The distant sound of traffic, the intermittent hum of apartment air conditioners formed a constant, familiar soundtrack. I opened the first can with a muffled pssshit. The beer, already lukewarm, had that metallic, bitter taste that vaguely recalled rinse water. I let the liquid slide down my throat, closing my eyes for a moment. An artificial warmth began spreading through my stomach, diffuse.
That's when the conversation started. The only conversation that still had any semblance of regularity in my life: the one with myself.
"Dude, just imagine… imagine if I was Eros, huh? Not the chubby baby with arrows, no. The real one. The god. Me, Kévin, with this body, those powers." My voice, low and hoarse, seemed lost in the vastness of the urban night. A stupid smile no one could see stretched my lips. "I'd see Aphrodite herself, the goddess of love, begging: 'Oh Kévin, please… Take me! Do whatever you want with me!'"
A short, dry laugh escaped my mouth. I shook my head as if to chase the image away. "Yeah, right. Keep dreaming, fatass. Reality is you're closer to dying a virgin under a pile of magazines than seeing a goddess, even in a nightmare. You're a god of nothing. A god of the couch and disgusting beers."
I took a long swig, finishing the first can and tossing it carelessly toward the metal trash can. It hit the rim with a dull thud and fell onto the sidewalk. I didn't have the energy to pick it up. I opened a second one. The night thickened, and the asphalt, damp from a fine drizzle, caught and diffracted the yellow streetlight into long shining streaks.
My mind, floating on cheap alcohol, drifted toward the only place where I still had any kind of role: Olympus Unchained. That game, an absolutely kitschy mythological fantasy factory, was my daily escape. I saw again the mission "The Whisper of Olympus", where you had to seduce Hera, Zeus's jealous wife, by murmuring salacious insinuations in her ear during a banquet. The dialogue was epically heavy-handed, but succeeding watching the queen of the gods succumb to my character triggered a sick kind of euphoria. Or the "Athena's Challenge", where you had to beat the goddess of wisdom at her own game, an absurd quiz about the Titans' weaknesses, before seeing her so-called defeated by my "charisma" collapse into my arms. Fuck, that game… It was the perfect antithesis of my life. There, I had power. Influence. I wasn't Kévin anymore, the guy at checkout 3 in Discount 2000, getting yelled at over a faulty barcode or a pissed-off customer.
The second can was empty. A light, cottony vertigo was starting to blur the edges of the world. "Come on, Kévin. Go home. You're becoming pathetic, even for you." I stood up too abruptly. The bench seemed to sway for a second; the lights danced in front of my eyes. I took a deep breath the cold air burned my lungs. I chucked the empty can toward the same trash can. It landed next to the first one, in the gutter.
I started walking, steps a little unsteady. The side street was deserted at this hour. Only the cars on the main avenue in the distance sped by silently, their headlights tracing blurry lines in the gloom. Lost in the dreary parade of my thoughts and the pixelated images of the game, I crossed the small street without even looking.
First there was light. Blinding. Absolute. It burst from my right, filling my field of vision with burning white, erasing the city, the night, everything. Then sound. A horn that wasn't just a protest it was a metallic scream of terror, a tearing cry that seemed to split the sky itself. Time froze, stretched in a fraction of a second of atrocious clarity.
"What the fuck?!" The shout tore from my throat, raw, loaded with pure animal fear.
The impact wasn't a noise. It was sensory annihilation. A monstrous mass the bumper, the grille crashed into my side with the force of an earthquake. There was no immediate pain, only an immense dull crack inside me, as if my very structure was disintegrating. I was lifted, thrown in a brief, grotesque flight. Then the asphalt welcomed me, hard, with mineral indifference.
Then the pain arrived. It exploded, diffuse at first, then concentrating into burning hotspots in my ribcage, my pelvis, my leg. It was liquid, searing pain flooding every nerve. I felt thick, sticky warmth spreading under my back, soaking my t-shirt. Blood. My vision blurred, fragmented into dark mosaics. A taste of iron and dust filled my mouth. My breathing became a rattle, a wet, horribly difficult gurgle. Every inhale was a knife planted in my ribs.
"Shit…" I managed to breathe, the words now just fouled air. "Is… is this how I die?" A coughing fit shook me, bringing a wave of nausea and pain so sharp that tears spurted from my eyes. "No last-minute heroism… No narrative arc… Not even a fucking cheat reincarnation in a shitty world… Just… this?"
A laugh came out of my lips, a hollow, bitter sound that turned into a bloody hiccup. The cold a deep cold coming from inside began to gain ground, gnawing at the edges of the pain, replacing it with deadly numbness. "Come on… A magic portal… Some bullshit system… A voice… Anything… Please…"
But there was nothing. Only the darkness rising, inexorable, thick as tar. It wasn't outside; it was born inside me, from my eyes inward, smothering my thoughts, extinguishing the last flickers of consciousness. The sound of the horn faded, becoming a distant buzz, then nothing. The silence that settled then was total, crushing, final. Pathetic, right to the end. A loser pulverized on the asphalt of a nameless street.