- 0.1

I woke up that morning feeling board as hell. I looked

at the time, it was 11:57. It was a weekend, and I still

felt a bit drowsy so I lied there for quite some time

before I finally decided to roll out of bed and face

the day. I sleepily stumbled down the stairs even though

it was well past noon by now, and had a lazy, half-assed

breakfast, a dry waffle, and juice.

Looking at the time,

I decided I should get out of the house for a while,

rather than wasting the day inside playing games. I

chose to go for a walk, taking the mail key with me so

I could check it on my way back. After a brief, uneventful

walk through the neiborghood, I headed back home, first

stopping at the mailbox to see if anything had come yet.

I opened the mailbox, and pulled from it, a stack of

generic bills, ads, and fliers, I was about to disguard

the fliers, when I noticed that there was something solid

inbetween the pages. I peeled back the first page, and

found a disc, packaged inside a tattered paper slip cover.

As I walked back home, I removed the disc from the cover,

to try and tell what it was, it was a basic DVD+R disc

with " " written on it in black marker. I had

never been an overly huge fan of the sonic games, but

I had often played them with my mom, the source of most

of our "more heated" arguments. I turned over the paper

cover in search of a name or adress, but I couldn't find

any evidence of who sent it, or if it was even adressed to

me. I looked inside the cover, to check for a letter of some

kind, but what I found was a message written on the inside

of the cover itself. I ripped the cover open at the seams

so I could properly read the letter, safely tucking the

strange disc between a couple of utility bills. The

message read as follows; "Hello, Kyle! Its been forever!

I was hoping you would take this of my hands, I dont have

time for games anymore, your old friend, Dominique".

Old friend was right, I hadn't seen Dominique in years,

not since she had moved to Canada, we always talked about

meeting up somewhere, but it was, what it was, talk. We

never followed through with any of these plans.

When I got home, I picked up the phone

and dialed Dominique's number,

but there was no answer, which wasn't too odd, concidering

the outgoing person she was. The thought had crossed my

mind that it might not actually be her's but I didnt

pay much mind to that, I was mostly just curious as

to why she would send me a sonic game, or even have one

to begin with. After much thought and procrassination,

I finally popped the disc into my PC. I clicked the auto

run option on the disc menu, and it started extracting a

file onto my desktop. Once it had completed, I went to my

desktop to see what the extracted file was. It was an

executable file, titled " " just as the disc's

title had indicated. I ran the program, and when it started

up, it was nothing but a black screen. Quite some time went

by, and I was about ready reset my computer, when the

Sega logo appeared, acompanied by a mechanical voice, which

accordingly said "SEGA". After that, the Sonic One title

screen came up, with text prompting me to hit the space

bar to start the game. When I did so, the game froze for a

moment, then the title screen shook a bit, and bugged out.

with the mechanical voice looping in the background saying

"Seg-Seg-Seg-Seg-Seg-Seg". I tried hitting Control Alt Delete,

but no matter what I did the computer wouldnt respond, so I

reset it.

I decided to try running the program one last time

before giving up on it. It started up much quicker this time,

but when I got to the title screen, things were different.

The colors were reversed, like a photograph negative, and

the water was red. Again the text showed up, prompting me

to start the game. As I did so, the game took me to a

character select screen, something I didnt remember seeing

in the first sonic game. The music kept cutting out,

and changing pitch. Then I noticed, that of the available

characters, Sonic himself was not among them, it was

Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Robotnik. I knew for a fact that

Tails an Knuckles were not in the first sonic game, and that

robotnik had never been a playable character before, so I

figured that it was a hacked rom of the game, which would

explain the glitches such as the music cutting out, and

the title screen bugging.

Knuckles and robotnik were

locked, so I chose the only other available character, tails.

The game started up, and right away the game was having multiple

issues. The music was cutting out, the colors in the background

were inverted, and no matter what button I pressed, tails

would not jump or crouch. I continued on into the level,

noticing that the layout was completely flat and barren of

any enemies, I was about to shut down the game, when I saw

something Utterly disturbing. As I continued to the right,

everywhere, there was blood, and dead animals hanging from

the trees. I was at a loss for words, why the hell would

Dominique send me this? Was it some kind of sick-ass joke?

I continued on a bit further, and eventually found sonic,

standing facing away, with his eyes closed.

The game went to a cutscene, and Tails began walking

up to sonic, slower at first, then a bit faster, untill

he came to a complete stop behind him. The music then cut out

entirely, and was replaced with a grimey, high pitched

tone. Sonic's eyes opened, revealing them to be black and

bloodshot, as if he were pocessed. Tails started crying,

and the screen began to flash, I couldnt make out much of

what was happening, but when the flashing stopped, tails

was gone, and sonic was facing the screen, as if he were

looking right at me. The high pitched sound stopped, and

nothing happend. My PC was entirely frozen, with

that grusome image of sonic staring out of my screen.

At this point, even the power button failed to work, So I

turned off my monitor, and left it for the night.

I woke up the next morning, having

almost completely forgotten about the

hacked game. I sat down at my computer, and turned on the

moniter. As I did, the image of sonic immediatly reappeared,

and he lunged at the screen, with a loud pixelated screech.

I jumped back, covering my eyes and almost falling

out of my chair. As suddenly as it had started, the sound

stopped. I uncovered my eyes, to see that the computer had

shut itself down. I hit the power button to reboot it, but

it did not respond, after several frustrating attempts,

It finally booted up, and as it did, the phone rang.

I picked it up on the third ring, and to my surprize, it

was Dominique. She started to talk, but I inturrupted her,

explaining what the game had done to my computer, while

commending her on an exelant prank. But then she said

something that worried me deeply... "What game?".

She denied it sevral times as I tried to call her on it,

but she seemed really sincear...

After a pleasent phone call

of catching up and mindless talk, I returned to my computer to check my

facebook. I woke my computer from sleep mode, to find

that the game had restarted itself. This time, it started

at the chemical plant stage from sonic 2, but the player

character was knuckles, and the music was playing in reverse.

I tried everything I could to force quit the game, I even

held down the power button for well over a minute. Eventually,

I resorted to unplugging the computer. I leaned under my

desk and ripped the powerbar's cord from the socket on the

wall, but when I got back up, both the computer and

the game, were still running. I suddenly felt ice in my veins,

like someone was standing right behind me, holding an icecube

to my neck. Then, I heard a voice;

"try to keep this interesting for me, KYLE".

I blindly spun around, my heart racing, but there was no

one behind me. Instead, sitting on my bed, was a sonic plush

doll, it's eyes soaked with red stains. I looked back at the

computer, and what I saw, utterly horrified me. It was a

Hyper-realistic image of Sonic himself, his eyes pitch black

and dripping with blood, bold red text above him said;

" D... READY FOR ROUND TWO?". I ran from

my room and into the hall, almost certain I was hearing

the sound of quickened footsteps behind me, I ran down the

stairs and ducked into the Pantree, where I sat for a countless

amount of time. I grabbed a pen and paper from the shelf,

and shakily started scribing a note;

"My dear friend Tom. I can't take it anymore, he's too

fast, take this disc and destroy it! Whatever you do,

dont play it, it's too late for me...". As I stood up,

I grabbed an envalope, and slowly exited the pantree.

There was nothing around to suggest that anything was

out of the ordinary, other than the sound of the game,

playing in my room upstairs.

I went up the stairway

and peeped into my room, no one was there. I ran in, and

quickly attempted to remove the game from the disc drive,

but it would not open. Out of desperation, I picked up the

computer, and smashed it against the wall, sending the disc

flying onto my bed. I grabbed the disc, and shoved both it,

and the note, into the envalope, and ran down the stairs, making a

B-line for the front door.

I burst outside and started

running toward Tom's house down the street. The mailman was

already there delivering his mail. as the mailman left, I slipped

the envalope containing the note and the game into Tom's

mailbox. Suddenly, I heard it again, the quick pattern of

footsteps growing closer, and closer, and the disembodies voice

saying; "You can't run kyle".

I ran as fast as I

could, but it was no use, i felt it grab me from behind,

it felt like razor blades sinking into my flesh, it began

pulling me back, digging it's claws deeper into

my skin, then, everything went black...