Mouth dry, a little sweaty, checking over both shoulders, I entered the shop. It was brightly lit, with shelves dividing the wares by category. I was overwhelmed at first, not quite sure where I would find what I wanted, but also unwilling to ask for guidance from any of the shopkeepers. I wanted to stay as anonymous as possible.

I was led there by the same impulse that had me buy "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" by 2 Live Crew all those years ago. It’s knowledge that this particular piece of deviance is absolved from most of its social stigmas just because it’s so wrong. I could, therefore, pass off on most of my friends and neighbors that I wasn’t buying the product, I was "buying" the product. Buying it to see what the fuss was about, buying it for kitsch, buying it for shock, or buying it, dammit, because I am an American! No one ever believes this, except maybe some sick fellow travellers who need to believe it for whatever personal reason. I’ll admit, though, that regardless of how many days and nights I’ve spent tossing water balloons from atop this ivory tower, I’m not immune to depravity.

The MacGuffin in question here is a video game. With each of the recent mass killings, there’s been a connection to these horrible, Satanic, first-person shooting games that one plays on his or her PC. The new guy out of Atlanta supposedly would challenge his son to home-tourneys, before he bashed his head in with a hammer. Demonizing technology is nothing new. The one time I went to a Roman Catholic mass I was sermonized (hey, I think I actually meant that literally!) about the evils of the gaming platform of the time: Atari. Atari, according to this priest, was driving our families apart, as it was rumoured that children had been leaving the dinner table early, just so they could play with Pitfall Harry!! If the moralists only knew how good they had it back then!!

I came home with my new purchase, Quake II, which, my research told me, was the most violent and disgusting of the well-crafted games out there, second only to Half-Life. I skipped Half-Life because it was $50. I may be sick, but I’m not twisted; Quake II was $20.

The box, festooned with quasi-Celtic icons made from chipped bones, bore a label: for mature players only. That’s the only inkling one gets that what lurks inside this cardboard Pandora’s box may in fact ruin your life for good.

Quake II has you running through tunnels and hallways, shooting fleshy cyborgs with machine guns, grenades and rockets. The graphics and audio design are top of the line, what they told us games would be like in the future, back when we were kids. The recorded music is by Rob Zombie. The game sucks you in so quickly because the events are presented as close to an actual first person POV as possible. Gone are the days of Space Invaders, where a flat shiplike doodle is meant to represent your projected gaming soul. In Quake II, your hands are where your hands would be, you can hear your own breathing, there may be people behind you, and the villains are REALLY scary. Defenders of the game will talk about strategy: you need to find keys and cubes and cards to advance levels, and you need to find hidden trails and whatnot to avoid flaming lava pits or spiked walls. They’ll also mention that the instruments used are either your keyboard or mouse, unlike even the kid-friendly Duck Hunt from Nintendo, which had an actual gun. This is all secondary. Quake II is notable because your enemy is genuinely frightening, and he suffers when he dies. The enemy lunges at you from around corners. If he is shot once, he grunts and struggles. If he is shot repeatedly, he will start to gurgle up blood, maybe some body parts will detach--often the head! Once he is down, he may wiggle and kick like an upside-down dog, or even shoot randomly in his death throes. It is for this reason that the players' manual suggests that you not just shoot your foe, but you destroy him, as even a downed enemy might be a threat. Thus, an enemy corpse will often be shot one or two extra times for good measure, turning him into an unrecognizable mass of pulp and goo. Bits of torso may fly up in your face as you do this, not to mention the tacked on "squishy" sound made as the flesh is pureed.

So why am I telling you this? I want you to know exactly what has overtaken my life. I want you to know that I know it is wrong. I want you to know that on some level I question if I can truly separate the fantasy from reality, if the fantasy is so vivid. I want you to know that in the one week I’ve owned Quake II I’ve already dreamed about it. Also, as I walked down a narrow staircase and then a twisty hallway to my new gym (the adventures in which, surely, will be next week’s Tales of Hoffman) I played out a little Quake II mission while I knew no one was watching. I began . . . what is the term . . . strafing. I strafed. I had never strafed before.

I knew I had a problem when I caught myself cursing, I mean really really swearing, at the bad guys in Quake II. I was saying nasty things against their mothers. I was questioning their sexual practices. Was I just "letting off steam?" I dunno . . . maybe, though I didn’t seem relaxed afterward, unlike after my preferred methods of letting off steam, like playing loud music, or going for a walk, or a drawn-out stretch in the 69 position. The game drew up levels of fear, panic, rage and blood-lust I never knew I had in me. But the shroud of protective falseness kept it all okay. I knew I’d never actually pull a Quake II at the office.

Then again, I’d never be one to scream and cuss at a computer screen either, right?