text: Most of my adult life, I’ve been told that home ownership has its quirks. That there’s always more work to be done, more problems to be solved, things that need fixing. When I bought my house, I found a few arcade game style coin slots on the walls. I figured, of course, that the previous owner must have been really into the whole "retro aesthetic" and maybe that they had some arcade cabinets to go along with it. I only ever saw the house after they moved everything out, you know, an empty home, but I don't remember seeing these coin slots on any of the walls. A few days go by, and my wife and I have sorted through all most of the boxes of important stuff. I crack open a beer (pretty much the only thing we had in the fridge so far) and a coin slot, just a little past the fridge down the front hall, catches my eye. It looked to me like it was glowing. I chalked it up to being some sort of trick of the light, because I would have noticed a glowing coin slot there before. I went over to inspect it, really get a good look at one of these things. Once we were all settled in, the other coin slots would get my attention and I'll get about removing them, but at that moment, I decided I needed to focus my attention on this one in particular. The coin slot was glowing alright. There was no weird light reflection as far as I could tell. I took a long sip of my beer and then touched it. I don't know what I was expecting. The coin slot had the exact same feel that it looked like it should. I wrapped my fingertips around the edges and tried to pry it loose a bit, give it a wiggle, but it wouldn't budge. There didn't seem to be any obvious way to uninstall the coin slot without doing serious damage to the drywall. A task for later, I supposed. I pushed the plastic coin return button a few times. An intense sense of satisfaction washed over me, or maybe that was just the beer after a long day of unpacking. I'd get to it tomorrow. The morning came, and I walked downstairs to find my wife pressing a coin slot. A new one, right there in the kitchen. I was sure we would have noticed it yesterday while putting away all the dishes and kitchenware, but obviously not. She was standing there, coffee in hand, just pushing the button over and over again. She hardly noticed I had even come into the kitchen. I grabbed her by the hips and asked what she was doing, and it was like knocking her out of a trance. She told me that she just noticed the coin slot and she was just having fun pushing the button. I told her how they're going to be tough to remove, but she said I don't need to get rid of *all* of them. That leaving this one around at least would be fine. I had to admit that pushing the coin return button was pretty fun. We spent the day straightening things out around the house and it seemed like every time we moved some furniture, or put something away, we'd find another coin slot fixed to the wall or the floor or in a cabinet or under a sink. It felt fun. We'd call out to each other each time we'd discover another. "PLAYER ONE!" I'd yell when I found one and "PLAYER TWO" when my wife found one. Then we'd press the button in several times, even though she seemed to get a little carried away sometimes. This went on all day and we really enjoyed finding these coin slots, until the day was over, and we sat back to relax. It started to really hit us how weird it was to have a house with retro arcade coin slots all over. I tried to shake the spooky feeling crawling up my spine. Surely, they were all there before and we just hadn't noticed them all with the excitement of a new house, our first house by the way. Again, I wanted to celebrate the hard work with a beer and my eye was immediately drawn to the same coin slot as the night before. Still glowing, maybe even brighter this time. I called out to my wife, who was idly pressing a coin slot button on the floor while watching TV and asked her if we had any quarters anywhere. She perked up and ran upstairs. My eyes remained on the orange glow of the coin slot as I heard her rummaging through who knows what upstairs. She came thumping quickly down the stairs with a quarter pinched between her fingers. I grabbed it. This wave of nervous anxiety kind of washed over me and I didn't know why. Maybe this coin slot led nowhere. Maybe I was about to drop a coin into my wall and never see it again. Why was I apprehensive? I held my breath and dropped the coin in. The house was silent as my wife and I stilly waited and listened. We heard the coin clank down some unseen path and for far further than just to the floor. My wife ran upstairs to find more quarters and I hurried downstairs to see if the coin landed somewhere in the basement. The basement which I remember being unfinished and totally empty. I would be able to spot a quarter if it had dropped down there. My heavy steps stressed the unpainted wooden stairs. I pulled the strings of the exposed bulbs to shed some light on my situation, but the bulbs were not very bright. I was amazed and a bit frightened to see the basement walls and floors covered in retro coin slots. All the same. All the same orange "Insert to Play" style coin slots. I walked slowly through them trying to set aside this strange fact and find the quarter. The buttons illuminated under my bare feet with each step, so it I stepped cautiously. I don't know why. I felt like I needed to be delicate and quiet. Overhead, I heard my wife drop another quarter into the slot. I listened for it, could hear it shuffled through some path, but I couldn't pin point the direction. The clinking and clanging echoed from every direction. Disorienting. Then I heard more quarters, much more quarters. The coin slots all around me were flashing now. That orange glow felt harsh and alive. These quarters weren't emptying here. Not at all. I stumbled a bit as I made for the stairs. There were coin slots on each step now as I used my hands for balance and climbed up the stairs. I opened the door to the main level to find my wife shoving quarters into coin slots all over. Not just the one from before, from just a few minutes ago, but all over. There were coin slots blanketing the wall, on the railing, on the ceiling, on the floor. My wife's arms were overflowing with quarters. Where did she get all these? We've never had this much change. She was muttering to herself, "ready player two, ready player two, ready player two." She squatted low, dropping coin after coin into the slots and pushing the buttons. The rigid edges of the plastic buttons dug into my bare feet. I stumbled over to my wife and put my hands on her shoulders to turn her around and face me. Her eyes were vacant. She kept muttering her words, the coin slot's words. The only light around me was the erratic and blinding orange glow of thousands and thousands of retro arcade coin slots. I squinted and slapped the side of my head trying to focus on my ailing wife. All I could hear was the quarters, so many quarters, slinking through slots to some unknown destination. When I opened my eyes, I saw my wife no longer sinking her coins into the floor and walls, but into herself. Her thighs had coin slots now, no different than the walls. Her arms had coin slots as well. She kept muttering and muttering and dropping in coin after coin into the grotesque coin slots fused to her flesh. The words, the muttering, the coins, the clinking. Where were they going? What happened to my wife? I just got up and ran. Every surface, every square inch of my new home, my once beautiful new home, was covered in flashing coin slots. My feet were bloody now from stomping across the coin slots, but I didn't care. I reached for the front door and noticed a coin slot on my own forearm. As disgusted as I was, as frantic as I was to leave this house, as scared and worried about what my wife had become as I was, I just couldn't help but press in that glowing orange button. I suddenly realized I was holding a quarter. Letting go of the knob to the front door, I fell to the ground. The coin slot. The quarter. The coin slot. The quarter. The clinking of the coins through the house. The mutter of my wife in the background. The flashing orange glow surrounding and overwhelming me. I slid the quarter into my coin slot, and it felt so good.