Ben's Resurrection {Ben Drowned Creepy pasta}

*This is one-shot creepy pasta. I was basing it off of the original ending for those who have read the popular story. I do not own anything that has dealt with the creation of Ben Drowned or fiction.*

May 11, 2014

Compton, California

My best friend, Jake and I were very excited about moving into this two-bedroom apartment last summer. He was tired of being in a cramped dormitory with a rude, obnoxious and filthy roommate with no respect for the person living five feet away. I felt his pain as I too had a similar experience with my previous roommates. So after a lot of hard work and serious overtime hours, we were able to make enough money to afford this decent looking apartment. We agreed to split the rent fifty-fifty and provide for food. Any other interest was strictly up to us.

Now while Jake was into the whole booze and girl's typical routine I was all about video games. I bought myself an Xbox 360 along with several games such as Call of duty, Halo, The Walking Dead, and a hell of a lot more. This was plenty of awesome video games to keep me occupied for maybe a year. Probably anyone for that matter. I'm a total completionist when it comes to games. However, after two weeks I was starting to lose interest in majority of the games I bought. Not that they weren't great and all but it was missing the spark that made me become a gamer in the first place.

With that being said I told Jake about my problem and he suggested I go check out this local flee market that was selling a lot of used games. He said that some of his friends purchased games that hadn't been around since the 1990s. Even older. This had me extremely excited about getting to play some of the old school era of gaming. My mind jumped around with all these video games I couldn't wait to get my hands on. Not even trying to hear the rest of his story, I raced to get my sneakers on and retrieve my car keys.

As I droved to this flee market, I observed the neighborhoods. There seemed to be a series of garage sells and moving trucks. It was strange to see so much movement in a suburban area. But I wasn't a fool to it either. Being that I was an urban kid, I didn't put it past me about all the rumors about quiet vile over here was true. I finally pulled up to the market which was pretty crowded. There was shopping carts driving in different directions back and forth. I was very eagered to become about of this society.

I parked by car a bit far from my destination. Rushing as fast as I could I pushed through the doors and made my way through the crowds. I had no time to browse for house appliances. I left that job to Jake. That is unless he really had no need to eat, bathe, or clean. Anyway I strolled observantly past a few stuffed shelves but nothing that really fascinated me. It wasn't until I was prepared to just pick a normal game store that I was approached by an elderly man.

This guy threw me off as the kind of senile old man and a bit weak from the wobble of his knees. I didn't want to be disrespectful by staring at his obviously impaired right eye. I assumed he was some random senior citizen lost from his aid but he actually worked there. I just really wanted to find some games to play before clocking it for the day.

He pointed to the table in few feet behind him and gestured me to follow him back over. To my surprise he actually had quite a few gaming cartridges laid out, a classic black Nintendo 64 console and three gray controllers along with it. I wanted to squeal in delight but that wouldn't have been very decent on my part. But man was I excited. There was Perfect Dark, Donkey Kong 64, Mario Party 3, Golden Eye 64, Pokemon Stadium, and even Puzzle League. I looked at him for a pricing as to how much it would cause me. I guess you can say by the desperation splatter across my face there was no denying I'd pay a fortune just to have all of that.

"No charge." He said weakly. I couldn't even come up with a proper way to thank him. I was completely stunned.

"Sir...I can't thank you enough."

Before I could say anything else he bagged up the system and games neatly before handing it to me. It was strange at first. A nice offering but because there were registers line-up for check out I really anticipated on taking it there to at least get a receipt or something. I came to the conclusion he really wanted to get rid of the damn thing. Well that was surely no problem for me. I thanked him again and turned on my feet to head out.

"Hold on there." He quickly chased up behind me, hold out another cartridge. It looked like a pretty cheap version of Majora's Mask. It had Majora written in black magic marker. I declined the game as I tried to tell him that I wasn't going to get to it anytime soon. Really I didn't expect to. But he insisted I take it just in case I changed my mind. So I took the game, carelessly tossing it into the bag before finally thanking him and leaving. I swore he said "See you around Ben". I pondered on why he would say that but maybe that was the effects of his senile disability.

11:45 pm

I was definitely going to break night playing Perfect Dark with Jake. He was going back and forth in multiplayer with out guns set and the team arranged to an even amount of computer bots on each side. I wasn't keeping track but we took turns beating each other. Soon Jake asked if we could take a break from out hour and a half long duel.

"Yeah why not..." I turned off the system as I took out the cartridge. I allowed Jake to use my Mac laptop so I guess there wasn't anything better to do other than play some more Nintendo. I just couldn't get enough of it to be completely honest with you. Now something told me to just play some more missions on Perfect Dark but Legend of Zelda was calling my name. I remember beating it before but just being able to play it again had me excited again. Even if it did look kinda cheap.

"Is that hacked?" Jake asked curiously. He must have seen the magic marker of the title written on it. I shrugged my shoulders as I thought about it. It was 2014 and games seemed to get hacked a lot lately. Something told me it could have been some sort of beta even but Nintendo games weren't easy to fool around with back then.

I placed the game inside of the console and turned it on. It started up pretty good and I hoped it did. It sent me to the main title and I pressed start quickly. I was filled with an unsettling surprise when there was a name saved under Ben. Underneath was a name saved under Play This. I looked at Jake who sat staring at the screen as well. He didn't look too nervous but just shook off the weird reaction we seemed to share.

I checked the names game status separately and saw that only Ben's name had almost all of the mask collected. I assumed the previous owner was the old man that had given this to me. Then I was suddenly struck with a conclusion. "See you around Ben..." Then old man was talking about the game. Or was he? But that didn't make much sense. Why would he say something like that?

"What the shit? Dude I think you have a virus." Jake looked as if he lost some color off his skin. I made my old name before attending to his accusations.

"I don't have a virus. I don't watch porn so I shouldn't." As I left the game unpaused to see what was "wrong" with my Mac, I noticed Cleverbot was opened in another window. There was response that read:

"Pay attention."

I felt my skin shiver as I read this from the bot. I looked at Jake who seemed pretty oblivious to the situation. I thought this was some kind of trick. I even saw Link begin running around in the game and spazing out in some sort of a glitch. His head cocked back to the screen and stared at me.

"Cut that out." I demanded. But as I looked to Jake he seemed to have no idea what was happening. To add salt to the mixture the controller was sitting still on the couch. Link walked closer to the screen and this was beginning to get creepier by the second. It was only when I got up to turn off the game that Link burst into flames which never happened in all of the Legend of Zelda games and a faint laughter of the Skull kid could be heard. I couldn't take this horror show anymore as I turn off the game immediately after.

"Dude! Dude!" I turned around moments after Jake needed my attention. I checked the computer again and it was another message from Cleverbot. I began to think my Mac had more than a virus.

"You shouldn't have done that..."