A/N: 800+ views.
Wow.
*fangirls on the inside

Credit to Dave90000 for giving me the idea for this chapter! I feel like such an idea thief :[

He couldn't relax.

He wished he could, but he couldn't.

As the exasperated teen sat on the side of his bed, with his fingers entwined and his head hung low, he mulled over the entire month's past events. What could it all possibly mean? Why was this happening to him? Why him?

Why me, Tyler Vex?

Then he realized he was literally vexed about the situation.

Hah. Funny.

As he didn't want to be without reason, the bassist stuck to one theory: that maybe someone was just fucking with him. But deep down, he knew it was something more than that. The recurring pattern of events meant something; at least, they did to him. But what if...

No. It couldn't be.

Minecraft wouldn't be tied into the crazy mess of bizarre incidents.

Would it?

He buried his face into his hands, trying to stifle a sob. He felt like crying. He just wanted, more than anything, to stop the madness that was causing havoc in his life. What would it take to end it all? If he prayed to God enough, would He help him in his time of need?

"Goddammit..." Tyler whispered to himself. He could feel his lower lip quivering; perhaps he was going to cry after all. But he refused to do so, because he knew for a fact crying wouldn't help anything. He wasn't a crybaby, he was a man! And men look their problems straight in the eye, not run from them! Nodding his head with new resolve, he wiped the tears that threatened to form, and decided on a course of action.

Okay, so most of his important belongings were now otherwordly objects. The solution?

Buy more things!

But that would hurt my wallet, thought the teen. I don't think my mother or father would lend me money just to buy things I should have taken care of.

Well, then, he would simply have to deal with it. But the idea of drinking water from a potentially contaminated flask and having to flip a heavy wooden lever just to turn his lights on was simply too much. Living like that was unbearable, unacceptable! Which is why he was left with the choice to find more ridiculous solutions to his even more ridiculous problems. As he mulled it over, a loud banging on the door interrupted his thoughts, as if whoever was outside didn't want to be outside.

"Tyler! You there?! Oh man, oh jeez, please let me in!"

Jake again? Now why would he be back so soon? Whatever the reason, Tyler was not one to turn down a visit from a friend, so he casually strode over to the door. It swung open the second he turned the doorknob, making him almost fall flat on his ass. In came a very terrified-looking Jake, who appeared as if he'd seen a ghost.

"What are you doing here?" asked Tyler.

"It was huge, man!"

"What-"

"And its eyes, all of 'em, they were glowin' red and staring at me and-"

"Eyes? What eyes-"

"And its gigantic jaws! The size of hands, I tell you!"

"Jake!" Tyler sharply called out. "Calm down and tell me what happened."

The other male trembled, his eyes shifting from left to right. He was probably afraid something would jump out at him. "A spider."

"A spider?"

"Motherfucka was about to pounce on me!" cried Jake. He seemed genuinely terrified. "I got away, thank God I did, but it's still in there, man."

Tyler was trying to make sense of the situation. "So you went through the trouble of coming to my dorm just because of a measly spider?"

"You don't understand, man," Jake whispered, his voice cracking from having breathed too heavily. "If you were there, you'd understand how I'm feelin'!"

"Well, let's see it, then."

"W-What?"

"Let's see the spider."

"No way, nu-uh, never! That thing's gonna kill you!" He paced around back and forth, trying to calm himself down. "Unless you got like a gallon of bug spray, we can go kill it. If we're lucky."

The bassist simply went to his bathroom and came out with a can of insecticide, which was barely the amount Jake had asked for. "Will this do?"

His friend just shrugged. "Hopefully."

The two young men waited in the hallway by Jake's door. Night had already approached, making the situation seem more eerie than it should have. Jake was hiding behind Tyler, for fear that "it might try to eat my face off." And Tyler, having dealt with numerous pest problems in the past, held the can of pesticide in his hand and the doorknob on the other. "It's just a spider, Jake. What could possibly go wrong-"

Lo and behold, on the other side of the door was an enormous arachnid with a hairy black body and eight red eyes that glistened in the faint moonlight. Jake was most definitely not exaggerating; its mandibles, dripping with bright green venom, were moving in a way that suggested it was ready to eat. Ready to eat human flesh, that is. All eight of its grotesque legs stuck out awkwardly and were positioned in an assumed fighting stance. Hissing sounds were emitted from the creature's disgusting mouth, hisses similar to a snake attempting to hold back its own venom from spilling.

Tyler was rendered speechless. He was not arachnophobic, but the beast inside the dimly-lit room was enough to make him reconsider. He immediately slammed the door shut and turned to Jake, whose face clearly said "Told you so!"

"What in the world was that?!" Tyler half-yelled.

"See? It's crazy huge!" Jake looked even more horrified than his friend. "I don't even know how it got in there!"

Just as Tyler was on the verge of screaming about how unholy the arachnid was, an even more terrifying thought struck him. His eyes looked frantic and beads of sweat rolled down his neck. The can of bug spray slipped from his grasp, but he hardly noticed. Jake waved a hand in front of the petrified bassist, trying to elicit a reaction from him, but to no avail. "Ty? Dude? Uh, you alright?"

No.

"Hey man, this ain't really the place to be, what with the spider and all..."

It can't be.

It can't be.

Rotten flesh, tall black creatures, skeletons, bombings, a giant spider...

"C'mon, dude. Let's scram." Jake grabbed his friend's wrist and tried to pull him away from the door, but Tyler didn't move a muscle.

Glass bottles, a jukebox, a lever...

"Dude?"

And the laptop...

Tyler dropped to his knees and stared off into the distance with wild, frantic eyes. His breathing was quick and uneven, almost like he was hyperventilating, and his whole body trembled at the same pace. This scared Jake even more than the gigantic spider waiting for a meal in his dorm. "Hey, what's with you? Got jelly knees or something?"

Tyler knew it. He fucking knew it all along. It wasn't somebody pulling pranks on him, no. How stupid he felt for assuming such a naive justification! The problem was far more serious than he could have ever imagined. He refused to believe it at first, which is why he tucked such suspicions away at the back of his mind, but at that moment, when time seemed to have stopped, his worst fears were realized. And for once, he hated being right about something.

"This is Minecraft," he whispered into the silence.

A/N: We've all been waiting for you to realize that, Ty.

Reviews of all sorts are always appreciated!