It was my birthday. I got Sonic Adventure from my mom. She said it was from some garage sale down the street, but I was still happy. I had inspected the case for a few minutes to find that there was some tape covering one part of the back, I unpeeled it and found nothing out of the ordinary. Just a picture of knuckles happily standing in a victory pose. The first thing I did after the guests left is I put the game in and started playing. I chose knuckle's story and played on from there.
As soon as I made it to station square, I wanted to try out a glitch my friend told me about on how to get into Twinkle Park as knuckles. I made the glitch happen by gliding through walls and glitching through doors.
Eventually I made it into twinkle park as knuckles! Everything was normal as if i were playing as Sonic, but some things acted differently. I heard from my friend that this funny glitch happens when I die in twinkle park, so I purposely lost all my rings and died. Nothing really happened, It was just a normal death. Dissapointed, I decided to continue, but to my surprize, the music was gone. No music at all. I played like normal. No enemies either. As I got deeper into the level, things got worse. Red fog appeared. But what truely got me was the fact that near the end, Knuckles started shouting things like "Oh please no!" and "Oh god help me!". It really creeped me out, but then again, mom DID buy it from a garage sale. It could be hacked or corrupted.
I ignored the creepy things and continued the level. I finally went to the goal and won. Knuckles' usual victory animation started, but as soon as the jingle stopped, Knuckles died. Cheap death... I pressed continue yet again, but then I realized knuckles was stuck frozen in his victory animation. I could still move and jump, but he was just frozen in that animation. Out of curiosity, I beat the level once more. After the jingle, the game freaked out, the level models went flying around, everything was constantly changing texture, but knuckles stayed exactly the same. This extremely loud high pitched squeel followed by some odd noises then filled the house. I reset the game.
I started a new game as tails. Everything was totally fine. I played the levels normal. But something went odd when I went into station square. The red fog returned. The music stopped. I ventured around the map to see what the hell was going on. I saw knuckles. His frozen victory pose. Just standing there under a pipe that leads to twinkle park. But something was wrong. Very wrong. His eyes... His entire face. Twisted with fear. He looked horrified. His eyes were all black with these orange spots. His mouth was overfilled with cotton. He looked like a stuffed statue. Stuffed Knuckles... I tried to make tails run away, but the game crashed. I tried resetting it, but it wouldn't work. I had to unplug it.
This time, I started a new game as sonic. Straight away, the red fog and no music consumed the hotel. I saw the horrific knuckles sitting in the corner. As I got closer, I saw a horrific tails as well. Tails had the same exact eyes as knuckles... The horrific black eyes with the cotton stuffed mouth. The game froze for a second, and then big red words appeared on the screen: MURDERER. I screamed and unplugged the machine and ran into the kitchen, downstairs.
...
Many months later, this present day. I have not touched the console. The memory. It haunts me. I am right beside the console right now as I write this and... It got quiet outside. The birds were chirping a few minutes ago! I am looking outside the window now. Oh no. Is that red fog? For real?! Shit, NO!