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Representing_Tromba

Representing_Tromba

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Tempokai

Tempokai

The Overworked One
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A bedtime story about Matt Hansen:
The studio was silent now. Silent in the way a graveyard is silent—not peaceful, no, but oppressive. The kind of silence where echoes of laughter, conversation, and life seem to linger just long enough to remind you that they’ll never return. Matt Hansen wandered the abandoned halls of Obsidian, his footsteps muffled by the thin industrial carpet, each one landing with a pathetic little thud that perfectly encapsulated his career.

The posters on the walls, those glossy tributes to the studio’s golden years, hung askew like drunken old men. Their corners curled and yellowed, peeling away from the adhesive like the last remnants of Matt’s dignity. “The best games we’ve ever made,” people had once said. Now, they were relics, artifacts of a bygone era when people still cared about fun rather than checking off ideological boxes. Matt barely glanced at them anymore. Why would he? They weren’t his. Not really. They belonged to a different version of him—a Matt Hansen who still had the respect of his peers, a name that hadn’t become synonymous with self-destruction and empty grandstanding.

But he wasn’t that Matt anymore, was he?

He stopped in front of a frosted glass door etched with his title: Art Director. The words were still there, barely legible beneath a layer of grime and neglect. He reached out, tracing the letters with a trembling finger, but the reflection staring back at him in the glass wasn’t the selfless hero he imagined in his speeches. No, this was someone else entirely—someone hollow, with gaunt cheeks, bloodshot eyes, and a mouth that twitched as if muttering apologies no one could hear.

They were all gone. His colleagues, his staff, even the hangers-on who’d once clung to him like barnacles on a sinking ship. They’d left quietly at first, slipping away one by one with carefully worded resignation emails. Later, they fled en masse, like rats escaping a burning building. The last to go hadn’t even bothered with formalities—they just stopped showing up, leaving their chairs to collect dust like gravestones in an office mausoleum.

And here was Matt, the final occupant, a lone sentinel guarding the ruins of his own ego.

He told himself he stayed because he believed in the Greater Good, but that was a lie, wasn’t it? The truth was simpler. He stayed because leaving would mean admitting he’d failed—not just at his job but at everything. He’d sacrificed his integrity, his relationships, even his soul, all for a cause that had turned out to be nothing but a façade.

The office lights flickered, casting long, warped shadows on the walls. For a moment, Matt thought he saw them move. Not a trick of the eye or the result of too much caffeine—or too little—but something else entirely. The shadows seemed alive, crawling across the surfaces like oil slicks, rippling and shifting as though eager to escape the confines of this place.

And then they whispered.

At first, it was faint, a distant murmur that could’ve been the hum of the HVAC system. But it grew louder, more insistent, until the words were clear enough to slice through the quiet.

“You gave everything.”

“And it was never enough.”

“They left you. They forgot you.”

Matt staggered back, his hands clutching at his temples as if he could squeeze the voices out of his skull. But they weren’t coming from the shadows. They were coming from inside him. Every word was a thought he’d buried, every accusation a fear he’d tried to ignore.

He remembered their faces—his colleagues, the ones who’d once respected him. He remembered the players, the fans who had poured their love into the games his studio created. And he remembered how he’d turned his back on all of them, trading their trust for a chance to stand atop a mountain of moral superiority.

“I sacrificed for it,” he whispered, his voice cracking under the weight of his own delusion. “I gave myself to the Greater Good. I did it for them.”

The shadows pulsed, slithering closer, their whispers turning cold, mocking.

“You gave yourself to nothing.”

The walls warped and stretched, the office bending and twisting as if the space itself was rebelling against his presence. The frosted glass door shattered, the shards floating upward, defying gravity as they spiraled into the air. The posters peeled away, revealing nothing but a vast, infinite void beyond the walls.

“No,” Matt gasped, his chest heaving with panic. “No, I believed in it. I believed in—”

“You believed in a lie.”

The void surged forward, swallowing the office piece by piece. Matt stumbled backward, his legs shaking, but the shadows wrapped around his feet like iron chains. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t run. He could only watch as the nothingness crept closer, a writhing, hungry abyss that stretched infinitely in every direction.

And then it came.

The void itself.

It wasn’t just darkness. It was a living, breathing thing, its surface rippling with contradictions, its depths churning with half-formed ideals that collapsed in on themselves. This was the Greater Good he had worshipped so blindly. Not a force for progress, not a beacon of hope, but an all-consuming maw. It didn’t build. It didn’t create. It only consumed, leaving behind emptiness.

“Take me,” Matt whispered, tears streaming down his face. “If that’s what you want… just take me.”

The shadows rose higher, curling around his body, and the void opened wide, a yawning chasm of indifference. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t vengeful. It didn’t even care.

Matt screamed as the void swallowed him whole. It tore him apart, stripping away his memories, his identity, his very existence. Piece by piece, he unraveled, until there was nothing left but a faint echo of the man he once was.

And then, even that was gone.

When the void receded, it left no trace of Matt Hansen. No one remembered him. No one spoke his name. His games, his studio, his ideals—erased, as though they had never existed.

The Greater Good devoured him utterly, and in the end, it didn’t even bother to digest.
 
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