Devil Cop by Owen Townend

Neil and I stood at the dull green embankment overlooking our freshly-tarmacked school playground. He was on a low sandstone wall and I beside it.

            Despite being close friends, conversation didn't come easily between us. Neil was the stoic type with his far-off gaze and intense pout while I was all twitchy and sweaty.

            "I have this idea for a video game," I told him one day.

            "Like Tekken?" he asked. We adored Tekken 3 but never really got far with it.

            "It's not a beat-em-up," I spoke firmly. "It's a platform adventure game."

            "Name?"

            "Devil Cop."

            It was vivid in my mind: a skinny red imp with hunched shoulders and the tinted shades that American police officers wore in TV shows. I had already drawn up concept art of Devil Cop: machine gun in one hand, barrel of nuclear waste in the other. He had very big hands.

            Neil nodded but didn't once look at me. One might have thought the nearby kickabout fascinated him but then I knew he wasn't sporty. "I like it. We could do something with that."

            "We?"

            "My brother is a game developer. He's great with computers. I'll tell him about Devil Cop and see what he can do."

            My face was sore from smiling. I looked just like Devil Cop with his toothy grin though without the fangs. I told Neil more about my idea. He loved the machine gun. He was amused by the nuclear waste. "What about bad guys?"

            "Bad guys?" I hadn't really thought about them.

            "I think they should be demons too but bigger ones. Red and black."

            Devil Cop was red and black. I felt the bad guys should have had a different colour scheme. Still I had never seen that glint in Neil's black eye before. He even jumped off the wall and nudged me as we talked.

            "And this Devil Cop, he should say something cool," he went on, sticking his tongue out in excitement. "He should shoot a guy then say something like, 'Wrong day to climb out of hell.'"

            "Actually," I said, "I thought he might say, 'Go ahead. Respawn, Spawn of Satan.'"

            Neil scratched his sandy brown hair and shrugged. "Needs work but okay."

From that moment on, Devil Cop became our idea. At playtime I would ask Neil how his brother was getting along with developing the game.

            "Great," he said. "You won't believe the graphics, man! Devil Cop looks just like Kain from Soul Reaver!"

            I frowned. "Just like Kain?"

            Neil hesitated. "Well not exactly like him. Devil Cop has a police hat. And a huge machine gun."

            "How big?"

            "Rambo big."

            I hadn't seen any of the Rambo films. Still I was impressed. "And what colour is he?"

            "Dark green."

            "Why green?"

            "Scales look better when they're dark green."

            I frowned again. "Are you making Devil Cop look like a dragon?"

            Neil's eyes intensified. "So what if he looks like a dragon? They're demons too!"

He got back up on the wall again as he said this. I dared not say another word, even when I noticed his shoelaces were undone. The bell rang and we went back inside.

For a while Neil was quiet again. I wondered if this game developer brother was the same one I met when I visited his house months ago. That brother had a gummy grin and a throaty laugh. Not someone I would want to meet again, let alone go into business with.

            Then again the thought of 'going into business' hadn't really occurred to me. I was just excited to see something I had created slowly come to life, even if it wasn't exactly how I had first imagined it. I would have liked to see Devil Cop as it was.

            "Sometime next month," Neil would always say. As naive as I was back then, I soon recognised that he was being evasive. Even so I didn't share my fears with anyone. Devil Cop was almost real. If I asked questions now, I knew that would suddenly stop.

            I didn't have to though. One day I was stood at our usual place on the embankment, waiting for Neil. When he finally arrived, his Mum stood and watched him from behind the school gates as he crossed the playground towards me.

            Neil wouldn't look up from his neatly-tied shoes. His pale hands were balled up into fists. When he caught my eye, I stepped back in case he took a swing at me.

            "It's not real," he muttered, "okay?"

            I felt a slow hollow drop inside me. "What isn't real?"

            "Devil Cop."

            "It is though." I puffed out my chest. "I came up with it."

            Neil shut his eyes and shook his head. "My brother isn't making Devil Cop, all right?"

            I sat down on the low wall. "He isn't making the game?"

            "He can't make games!"

            I didn't know what else to say. The bell didn't ring for another ten minutes so we spent that time silent beside each other. I glanced back towards the gate but Neil's Mum had long since gone.

            I did well not to cry. Sometimes disappointment comes so suddenly you can't help but accept it. Meanwhile Neil didn't look like he could accept anything. I didn't see him as a liar, not for long anyway. By the end of the day we were back to discussing Tekken 3 again.

            "If you push X and O right before Ogre becomes True Ogre," Neil told me, "A vampire steps out of the shadows. You fight him instead. If you beat him, you can play as him."

            "Name?" I asked.

            "Count Blood."

            "Cool."

            From one video game lie to the next. I believed him regardless.

            I didn't do anything with Devil Cop. I was too busy designing other video games at that time. Of course, I didn't tell Neil about any of them.