When a new day comes and it brings with it the foul smell of a LAN Party, you have to be prepared and prepared good. Sure you’ve been to some LANs before, you think you’re a regular – you think that you’ve seen it all, but you can’t expect the unexpected and you never know when you’ll need that extra few inches. In the beginning, there was nothing to be afraid of; it was all the innocent fun that comes with underage drinking, software piracy and ritual enchamberment of attendees. But nothing that good ever lasts and it was bound to turn bad soon, and soon it did.

Thomas Beven is a baker; he’s not a LAN hostess although he does wear a ‘pinny’ and a straw hat and that was a recipe for disaster. I woke up in my usual position under my desk with a miniature figure of ex-Newcastle defender Warren Barton wedged against my spine, and three empty bottles of sparkling grape juice strewn across the floor. It’d been a hard night, a hard hard night. I got up, showered and made my way to the pantry where I found the cat asleep in a puddle of co-op semi-skimmed milk. “What a waste” I thought and started to scoop up the milk for my cereal with a spoon. After six bowls of lucky charms and a glass of grape juice I was ready to roll.

I had mailed my computer and peripherals to Bev’s house through fed-ex the day before to save myself the trouble of carrying them, or hiring out someone with a car so I made my way straight to Iain’s house to “call on him”, though this wasn’t the entire reason, I was also there to wake him up hopefully within 4 hours. Iain had been 4 hours late for the last three events.

I rang the doorbell, but nobody came to the door. I stood waiting for a while patiently and then started ringing the bell again – this lasted for about 45 minutes until I decided to start knocking. However as I knocked the door swung open to reveal the carnage within. My search of the house was unsuccessful and Rawson was nowhere to be seen, all I found was a skeleton with a Tesco name badge reading ‘Iain’ and some clothes in a heap on the floor. This shocked me for a few seconds until I realised it was just Rawson’s skeleton and his Tesco name badge, the clothes on the floor were completely irrelevant.

The doorbell rang. I fell down the stairs and managed to open the door, it was Rawson. He’d come to get me for the LAN, and so we left to walk the green mile along the cycle path to Bevan’s house.

Article Written by Jay