Pacmania

"Those were the Golden Days, the days of lore. We'd spend all day tearing round the pillfields, stuffing ourselves on the God-given supply of spirits - plentiful and free. We wished for nothing more. We were happy.

"But time wears on, and pacbones don't get any younger. I remember that day the Doctor told me I had an intolerance to pills. I'd been feeling tired, down on energy for a while - but sometimes you just gotta push through the barrier for Good Times' sake, y'know? I guess we never wanted to stop and even ask if we were overdoing it.

"She assured me there were plenty of pill-free alternatives out there... that I didn't have to eat less, just differently. But I knew the truth. I knew there was no alternative for Akorah: the Ghost-Hunter substance, that once-in-a-lifetime freak occurrence where Mother Nature let slip and permitted us to open our stomachmind to forces outside of normality. That route is closed to me now.

"Sure, I'm alive. I live. I verb. I am adjectives. But there's alive, and there's alive. And in between there's so much difference that sometimes you can't even believe it's the same word you're looking at."