Tails Doll © Sega and Sonic Team. Everything else my Tails-Doll-curse-following mind made up.

CHAPTER 2

During the drive home, I installed Sonic R on my laptop. It was hard to play in the car (no one ever bothered to make Interstates smooth anymore), but it was pretty fun. When we finally got home, it was definitely easier to play on my bed, since it was mostly stationary except when some force caused it to rock.

I made a deal with myself to only have three races a day. That way, I figured, it would maximize the enjoyment and anticipation I would have for the game, and with luck, maximize the time before the inevitable came. I got about 3% added up every day.

It took just over a month to reach 99% at that rate. During that time, I talked with Samantha frequently over e-mail. I had the digital photo I took printed and placed in a heart-shaped frame I purchased from a woodworker. My brother kept trying to grill me about her, but I kept mum about it. Samantha was someone I wanted to keep to myself. I was a decent artist; I drew pictures of her and scanned them into the laptop to e-mail to her. With every try, they got better and better.

I decided to leave the game uncompleted at 99%, least I stir the wrath of the curse. However, my decision to wait to uninstall it until tomorrow was probably my worst idea ever. For the next day, my brother told me that he "borrowed" my laptop last night and completed the final race for 100%.

"Idiot," I called him after he stated that fact.

He continued to say that he survived the attack because the Tails Doll that burst forth from the screen wasn't interested in him. It flew off to somewhere else in the house (we slept in separate bedrooms), but he wasn't sure where. I double-checked my laptop; everything was fine, not a bit out of place, except that Sonic R refused to uninstall no matter what I did.

I e-mailed Samantha what he told me. Her reply was as swift as Sonic himself. It turns out that the Tails Doll had cursed their town for months before they discovered that the oracle could chase it away. But until I discovered where the Tails Doll had gone to, she couldn't suggest anything.

I decided to sleep on it. Another dumb idea. When I woke up, I found my one-eyed Tails toy was drenched in blood. The first thing I thought was, "It's gonna take forever to get that all out." My brother won that toy at Six Flags Magic Mountain one summer and let me keep it after it lost its eye. After drenching out as much blood as possible from it in the backyard, I left it there in my room, least my parents started asking more questions then they already were about school. The blood was all caked in when I got back from classes. Great, I thought, Now I have a bloody toy to play with. Kudos to you if you get the joke.

As it turned out, at school, a few of my classmates were missing. According to their friends and the teachers, they were found dead in their beds with a Sega Saturn game disk stuffed down their throats. Except for a few. Those few were chopped into lotsa tiny little pieces with a meat cleaver.

It had to be the Tails Doll, that much I knew. But what of my toy? I took it down to the police station for examination. They confirmed that the blood of the students who were butchered was dried up inside my one-eyed Tails toy.

I updated Samantha with this information as soon as I learned. She replied in a panicky tone; I could almost hear her ripping her hair out in mad confusion. There was only one logical explanation, something no one had heard before, something that the Tails Doll had hidden up its sleeve all these years.

I've heard stories of the Tails Doll possessing the players that completed the game, but never an inanimate object.

Yet it was true. The Tails Doll had taken possession of my doll!