The mug falls out of your hand, //''crashing''// into the floor with a sudden jolt. "Aw shit," you sigh, already turning to grab a rag to soak up the splattered coffee.
After throwing the cloth into the center-mass of the spill, you kneel down on the cold tile and pick up the bigger pieces of the coffee mug. //This was my favorite one//, you think as you look at the now-cracked image of the rubber duck logo that covered the front of the cup.
[[Continue ->Mom 1]]
You are six years old, and the ruins of a dinner plate lay smashed on the ground in front of you, spaghetti sauce splatterred everywhere. Mom stands over you, glowering.
"You are so destructive! Why are you always breaking things?" she hisses.
"It was an accident," you mutter, on the border of crying.
"You always have accidents! Maybe you should be more careful!"
[[Continue -> Intro 2]]
//Well, its not broken too badly, mostly big pieces//, you think, //maybe I can fix it//.
You gather the pieces on the counter and wipe up the rest of the spilled coffee, tossing the rag in the sink: a problem to handle later.
[[Continue -> Intro 3]]
You carry the pieces to the table, cradling them.
When you were in school, you would cradle your books tightly in your arms. Jessica would try to knock them out of your hands if you weren't paying attention or were running late, and you would have to sprawl out on the ground to quickly pick up your books, paper, pencils, and everything else as her and the other mean girls would laugh at you. "Klutz," they would yell, or "Butterfingers!" "Why do you always drop everything?" "Try holding on, loser."
[[Continue -> Intro 4]]
You take a quick stock of what you have. Luckily, the base of the mug has stayed intact. The front has broken into three pieces, which you align so you can see the rubber duck logo clearly. The back of the mug - //do cups have a front and back?// - is in two large chunks, but a lot of smaller fragments are missing. And the handle is nowhere to be seen.
[[Continue -> Mom 2]]
You are a little girl again, and you are standing outside your Mom's room at night. You've made a mess, but you're afraid to tell her and make her mad. Eventually, you work up the courage to knock on the door. "Mom," you ask, voice trembling, "are you awake?" You hear no response.
[[Continue -> Mom 3]]
//She was so mad//, you remember.
You dig around in the junk drawer until you find the hot glue gun. Then you need an extention cord to reach from the table to an outlet. After some wrangling you get it all lined up and start the gun warming up.
While it heats, you look under the couch to see if the mug handle flew under there. You can see something hidden in all the cat hair, so you reach into the fluffy pile.
[[Continue -> Intro 6]]You reach up and turn the door handle. It is dark inside, but you can see the red light of the alarm clock. 09:56 PM. You see Mom sitting up in bed, facing away from you. It sounds like she is crying - something you've heard before when she thought you weren't listening. Suddenly, she turns toward you.
"What are you doing awake?" she asks, already angering.
"Um..." You aren't sure how to start.
"Out with it!"
"I... I made a mess."
"What? What the hell were you doing?"
"I cut Barbie's hair but I didn't like it, so I wanted to glue it back on..."
She jumps out of bed, already raving. "Jesus Christ, what's the matter with you? You just have to ruin everything, don't you!"
You feel tears fall from your eyes. "I'm s-s-sorry," you sob.
"You want something to really cry about?"
[[Continue -> Intro 5]]
Your hands close around a clump of cat hair, dust, and the handle of the coffee mug. Separating the handle and dumping the rest in the trash, you return to the table.
The glue gun is ready to party. You get the front first, restoring the rubber ducky to its former glory. //Honk//. The back is more of a challenge. A few tiny fragments have turned to dust, gone forever, but you might be able to find a few splinters if you really go searching.
[[Continue -> Splinters 1]]
You get back on the floor, peering near corners and the grout betweeen tiles. Spotting one small sliver, you reach out to grab it.
"''Ouch!''"
The tiny shard is unbelievably sharp, and slid cleanly into the tip of your pointer finger as you tried to grab it. "Shit," you mumble as you move to the sink and turn the water on to wash the pin-prick wound.
You angrily pull the shard out of your finger and see a bead of blood follow it out. The shard has betrayed you, so you let it wash down the sink with the water. It hurts, but its not horrible. The warm water feels good on the spot, and after drying it off you pop a band-aid on the tip of your finger.
[[Continue -> Spinters 2]]
You open the junk drawer and look around for anything that might function as filler for the small cracks that will be left in the back of the coffee mug.
There are some loose crayons, but since you like piping-hot coffee and hot chocolate wax really won't work.
There is an old chunk of glass with dull edges that you saved from some broken thing or another, and several spare buttons from various shirts and pants.
You remember watching a video where a person was fixing broken tiles and counter tops with ramen noodles.
[[Continue -> Filler 2]]Your Mother is looking down at you, exaspirated, and says, "What did you do now?"
"I fell down and scraped my knee," you say through tears.
"Why can't you be more careful?" she asks, though not with anger. She kneels down to look at your knee.
"Its not so bad," she says. "Lets get a band-aid. Please just be careful."
You smile as she wipes your tear-tracks away.
[[Continue -> Splinters 3]]
You grab a broom and dust pan and take the opportunity to sweep up all of the dirt and whatever shards of mug still remain on the floor. //Not getting shanked again//, you think to yourself.
It doesn't take long to get the remnants all cleaned up, and now the floor looks really good. You do notice that the spot where the mug landed has a slight dent, but its not very noticable so you aren't worried about it.
[[Continue -> Filler 1]]You are eating ramen noodles, fragrant steam rising out of the styrofoam cup. It is cold outside, and you are sitting across from Alex, your former partner.
Alex is saying a lot of things in a hurried voice. "Its not anything you did wrong, specifically. Its... its me, I need something different."
Despite the heat of the cup noodes, you feel cold.
"You and I just... we aren't compatible, any more. I guess we never really were," he says.
You feel sick; you don't know what to say. So you stay silent.
"I hope you understand," he finishes, as he rises and opens the door to leave.
"Wait," you start, but its too late.
[[Continue -> Filler 3]]You remember something that was in one of the cabinets. After rifling through the cabinet over the stove, you open the little doors over the refridgerator as you balance precariously on a stepstool.
There, in the back, is a glass jar filled with sand from the time you and Alex went to the beach. Alex sealed it up and had it displayed on a shelf for a while, but after the breakup you couldn't look at it anymore. You couldn't throw it away, either.
You pull the jar out of the far recesses of the cabinet and give it a look. The sand is dirty, with black and brown flecks throughout, and there is a small piece of driftwood or something pressed up against the glass.
You crack open the seal of the jar and pour the sand into a serving bowl. It smells salty, and slightly of decay. Putting your hand in the sand, swirling it around, it somehow still has a slight dampness to it, although it has been in the jar for years. Fond memories bring a smile to your lips.
[[Continue -> Filler 4]]
A giant smile spreads across Alex's face at the image of the sunrise over the water. You are still a little cranky from waking up so early, but a mug of coffee in your hand is giving you some energy. "Isn't it amazing?" Alex asks, beaming.
You look out at the choppy water of the Atlantic ocean. Cold but energetic, seemingly alive with movement. Vast. "It is," you answer after a few moments.
"I wish every day could be like these last few days," Alex says, still looking away. "Its been so great, just the two of us out here."
You stand in silence for a while longer, watching the sunrise, hands clasped tight.
[[Continue -> Filler 5]]
You take the serving bowl of sand over to the table and prepare to fill in the cracks. You get a starter layer of glue on the larger cracks, then press in clumps of sand to create a fill layer, then set that piece aside to dry. On a piece with more fragments missing, you might do this three or four times to fill in the gaps. You've been at this for a while longer than you were expecting, but its fun. It feels good to be fixing something you've broken.
After a while the back is restored, and you get another small vein of sand to fill in the crack between the front piece and the back. After that sets, all that is left is to restore the now unified 'top' of the mug with the base.
The sand, tan with little black flecks, looks beautiful in the curving cracks of the porcelain. You add another layer of sand between the top and base, and after it sets, you are able to reattach the handle with little effort. The mug is set aside to fully dry, and you clean up the sticky, sandy mess left on the table.
[[Continue -> Ending 1]]After waiting a couple hours to really let it dry all the way through, you take the mug and fill it with tap water to see how water-tight it is. At first, you feel confident with it, but after a few minutes you realize a tiny trickle of water, no more than a few drops, is coming through the spot on the back that had the most slivers missing.
Disappointed, you pour out the water and dry the mug off with a fresh rag.
[[Continue -> Ending 2]]A few months later, you remember the broken mug. It is still sitting on the table surrounded by day-to-day detritus that builds up in our lives. Junk mail, an old magazine, a paid utility bill, the plastic packaging of some item that you needed 'right now'. Holding it up to the light, the lines of sand sparkle. Smiling, you move a short stack of already-read books off of the shelf and place the mug in a prominent position, rubber duck facing out proudly.
You take a few steps away, but turn back with a frown. Reaching out, you turn the mug so that it is not the duck that is displayed, but the sand-filled cracks that you spent hours fixing.
[[Continue -> Ending 3]]
It may not be useful as a mug anymore, but it has evolved into something else - a beautiful treasure. A symbol of struggling against adversity.
People are like the things they surround themselves with: they have a certain usefulness, but they also have something that is //more// than usefulness. We are each more than the sum of our parts, or the description of what we do.
A coffee mug is cheap and easy to replace. There are a trillion coffee mugs, each more or less the same as the last.
But this one is special.
[[End -> Credits]]''Something Broken''
Created by: Austin M Jones (@jonesaustinm on Twitter)
for Global Game Jam 2020
Special thanks to Cleveland Game Devs (@clegamedevs)