Undertale.
The most popular game on the internet right now. All of my favourite youtubers have played it. Jacksepticeye, Markiplier, Game Grumps. All my friends were talking about it. Each day as I looked through Tumblr and Facebook, I'd see Undertale-related stuff. Goats, and some Dora-looking kid, and those two skeletons. Y'know, the short one and the tall one? Yeah, well, I tried to play it off as another one of those trends that usually die out in a week or so, but I was wrong. Eventually, my friend Thomas talked me into getting the game.
"It's so good, Hal." He told me over the phone, "You'll like it."
I let out a sigh. I really wasn't the type of person to follow trends and stuff. But Thomas insisted.
Having to pay for college, I didn't have a whole lot of money. So I downloaded a free torrent from Softonic. I got myself a sandwich as I waited for Undertale to install. As I put the last slice of bread onto the meat and picked the plate up, I walked back to my gaming Alienware computer and set the plate with the sandwich down beside the keyboard. Finally, Undertale had installed. I bit into my sandwich and clicked on the little heart icon. It loaded up instantly, as Thomas said it would. I chewed as I watched the intro. Feeling a bit unsatisfied with the cliche story so far. Monsters and humans used to live together until a great war? Sounds like every other video game. I shrugged it off, knowing that despite the backstory, the actual game itself might be worth something.
[Press 2 or enter] the screen flashed. I pressed enter. I got to name my character and went with my online alias, Starfox.
Then the game began.
I watched Let's Plays of it, so I kind of know what to expect. My character, Frisk, woke up in a bed of buttercups, as usual. And I began to walk towards the doorway to meet Flowey.
And, as I expected, Flowey was there. But as I spoke to him, I noticed his face was that of fear. He looked...worried? Anxious about something...
"Howdy! I'm Flowey. Flowey the Flower." He said, but his eyes began to grow wider, and seemed like blackness was dripping from his eye sockets. His lips spread into a frown and looked like...his bottom lip was...quivering?
"Howdy! I'm Flowey the Flower...please..." His face began to melt, dripping down off his petals to the grass below, "...please... g..."
My eyebrows creased in confusion. That wasn't in any of the Let's Plays I've seen.
Flowey's head drooped down before he pulled himself into the ground and disappeared. That's when Toriel came in. Her usual intro music played and it put me at ease.
"What a despicable creature...torturing such poor, innocent youth." Toriel said, "Come, child. I'll lead you through the ruins."
I followed Toriel, noticing that in the background wasn't the usual ruins music I heard in the Let's Plays, but a distorted, slower version of the music box song that plays after you save Asriel in the True Pacifist run. I must have triggered some sort of alternate story line. The game played as normal, despite the music, until I got to Toriel's house.
Frisk awoke to find the usual Cinnamon-Butterscotch pie sitting on the floor. I picked it up, then made my way out of the room. Before I headed over to talk to Toriel, I walked down the hallway to the mirror.
"It's You!" The dialogue box said, but as I turned away from the mirror, the reflection of Frisk still remained. Only this time, Frisk's eyes widened and turned red, their glare following Frisk for a moment until the figure disappeared. Now that was a really strange thing to see. I definitely triggered something strange. Or maybe this bootleg copy was somehow altered and made different?
I shrugged it off, then checked all the rooms. Frisk entered Toriel's room and I clicked on the diary, expecting the usual skeleton pun. Instead, I saw, "666". I exited from the diary and shrugged that off as nothing. Then I clicked on the third room. I expected it to say "This room is under renovations", so..I don't really know why I clicked on it in the first place, but, instead the door said "Unlocked".
I went in.
The room was pitch black for a moment. But once the lights switched on, I gasped in terror. The floors and walls of the room was tiled, with blood and dust scattered over the walls. A toy box was set in the corner, and at the far wall, there were six chairs...six chairs where stuffed children sat. The six human children, their souls teared from their bodies, and their corpses gutted, stitched and stuffed. I stared in shock and terror at their pale, distorted faces. The strange music started up again, this time louder and cut with loud shrieks of violin. Now, this doesn't sound all that bad reading it, but if you were there...if you saw just how detailed, how grotesque the sight was...that's when the pictures flashed. Six pictures, all of real life disemboweled children.
After the sixth, Toriel walked in, "Wouldn't you like to stay in the Underground with my children and I? We'd be like a big family." Her eyes in the dialogue box began to glow red as the last words popped up, then the game closed itself. I was confused, shocked, and terrified. But despite my feelings, I opened the game again. I had to know what happens next. I had to know why Toriel, the loving goat mother, would do something so evil, so sinister.
The game opened instantly to the forest outside of Snowdin. There was no music, and the game looked much darker than I remember. I walked down the path, expecting to see Sans greet me, but instead Frisk just walked straight through the gate blocking the first bridge. I thought it kind of strange, yet, this copy of the game really was strange. Suddenly, Flowey popped in front of me and the dialogue box appeared, "Please! Just close the game!"
I was confused, Flowey wasn't supposed to appear here.
"Delete the game and end my suffering." Flowey's face looked desperate, sad, and frightened. But despite Flowey's warnings, I continued. Bad idea. A few moments later, I came across Sans and Papyrus. Blood dripped from their eyesockets and down their faces as they stood around a pentagram lit by candles. In the middle was Toriel's head. Two X's replaced her eyes.
I took another step closer to the two skeletons. That's when Sans' head snapped backwards to stare at me. His bleeding eye began to glow blue. My eyes widened in horror as the words appeared on the dialogue box, "You're gonna have a bad time, Hal."
The game closed.
I sat there, petrified. Sans knew my real name. The game knew my real name. I knew I had to stop playing. I knew I had to delete this...whatever it is...from my computer. I logged back onto Softonic and looked at the comments on the download, hoping to find answers to this. Fortunately, someone already asked the question for me. I clicked on the reply thread to the comment and began reading.
'This is a haunted version of Undertale. It is stuck on a genocide save file and the fun level has been increased higher than maximum. There is no way to fix this. But I urge you, do NOT delete .'
There was no way to fix this? That was a shame. I wanted to play the original Undertale, not some fucked up, demonic version of it. I thought about deleting the game and finding a more reliable torrent, but curiosity got to the best of me and I began looking through the files. I just had to do one last thing before I deleted the game.
You know that saying, "curiosity killed the cat"? Well, I'm the cat.
My mouse cursor fixed onto . I right clicked, and pressed delete. My heart throbbed with anticipation and terror as I moved my mouse back to the heart icon. I clicked.
The game loaded up, and Sans' face appeared on the screen. He had his usual smile and smug expression, "So, you came back back, huh? Came back to have a bad time?"
I was starting to get sick of this, I just wanted to play the game, "I'm not scared of you, Sans!" I screamed at my monitor.
Sans' white pupils looked at one side, "heh heh heh. I can hear you right now. You say you're not scared, but your voice is shaking."
My eyes widened in shock, he could...hear me? I hurried to my roll of tape and a piece of paper and frantically started covering my microphone and webcam. I wasn't dealing with a game anymore. This was a hacker. A cyber-criminal who tricked me into downloading his virus so he could spy on me.
Sans continued to speak, "I bet you think this is all a dream. All a HALucination."
Now he was making puns out of my name?!
"Listen here, cyber-criminal! I'm calling the police!" I screamed at my monitor as I grabbed my cellphone.
"Heh heh heh. Kid, the only criminal here is you, dirty brother killer." His eyes went dark, then blood started to pool in his sockets.
"Brother killer?" I asked, "I didn't kill anyone! I just got the game and wanted to play normally and-" my words were cut off by the sound of the police from my cellphone.
'9-1-1. What's your emergency?'
"I—I think my life's in danger." I answered as I glanced back at the monitor. The game had closed itself, but a distorted version of Megalovania played softly from the speakers.
'What is happening?'
"I don't know I just-can you please get an officer here?"I asked.
'I'll send a dispatch your way. What is the problem.?' The receptionist asked again.
I didn't answer. My focus turned to a loud knocking at my door. I set my cellphone down, ignoring the receptionist's repeated hellos. I began making my way to the front door, everything seeming like it was slow motion. I put the palms of my hands against the door, too terrified of making any noise just in case this cyber criminal was outside right now. I crouched and stared through the keyhole. Staring back at me was one bright, glowing blue eye, and a faint, deep whisper sounded from outside, "Are you ready to have a bad time?"