Chapter Text
Collin felt like he’d been struck by something—slimy, rank, and most of his computer screen was smeared over.
He had just climbed out of a mine shaft after gathering the iron ore he needed. The sudden impact jolted him out of his calm focus, making his crosshair skitter across the screen. Fury flared in his chest when he saw half his screen blacked out. Muttering to himself, he fumbled with his mouse and keyboard to move his character’s camera, but the black patch wouldn’t go away. He opened his inventory—still blacked out in that spot.
“Tch.”
He clicked his tongue irritably in real life.
He quickly closed the inventory, then typed out insults to vent his frustration. But his hurried footsteps soon revealed that his earlier rage was just a bluff. The trip home was surprisingly uneventful; no more weird things crossed his path, and even if they had, he didn’t care. All he wanted was to get back to safety, figure out how to get rid of that black glitch, and calm the growing unease gnawing at him. He picked up the pace even more.
He flung open his door, not even bothering to store the iron ore in a chest or furnace. He headed straight for the basement. Out of caution, he dug three more blocks down, filled one back in, placed a torch, then paused the game in the settings. That habit still stuck with him—even though his save file now felt haunted by real entities, as if he were on a multiplayer server.
Exhausted, he reached up to touch his screen in real life. The black smudge from the impact wiped away easily. His calm slowly twisted into confusion, and only then did he pick up the faint, coppery scent of blood. His awareness of the real world finally kicked in—it was a flaw of his: when he gamed, he tuned out everything around him. He could play for an entire day, but he barely noticed what was happening right in front of him.
Only now did he feel a strange, cold sheen across his face that definitely wasn’t sweat. The smell of blood grew sharper. He pushed his gaming chair back. The room was dark, so he couldn’t see the floor, but the squelch of the chair’s wheels rolling through liquid was deafening. Dread flooded Collin’s brain. He ignored the computer and the fluid on the floor, stepped barefoot onto the ground, and flipped on the room light.
His eyes, long adjusted to the dark, stung from the white glare. He squeezed them shut, then opened them again. The stench of blood was overwhelming. A chunk of flesh—unidentifiable at first—had been ground into a paste by his gaming chair. Blood splattered across the floor, staining clothes he’d tossed everywhere.
Disgusting. Disgusting!
The coppery smell triggered dry heaves. Staring at the mangled flesh, he couldn’t help but flash back to something. Ignoring the blood on his feet, he sprinted to the bathroom. All that could be heard from his room was the running tap next door and Collin retching.
Hey~ Take a closer look at that chunk of meat. It’s part of a lung.
The tap ran on. Then came the sound of a toilet flushing. Collin pulled himself up, leaning his hands on the edge of the sink. He felt sick to his stomach. His mind was a mess… and more horrible memories kept flashing back. Seeing that random, grotesque piece of flesh forced him to think of AwesomeG.
AwesomeG was his brother. He’d died out in the woods, lying on the ground with his ribs split open from the outside, his lungs torn right out, leaving only a ragged trachea and a rotting corpse. Collin hadn’t dared go to the scene—even the photos had made him throw up until his stomach was empty. He’d been dazed, consumed by revulsion and disbelief at his brother’s brutal death.
In the end, his parents had sobbed through the funeral and buried him. AG’s death had never fully stopped haunting him. He’d been a wreck for the longest time. He was doing better now, mostly because the entities in his save file kept him hyper-focused, no time to break down.
Guilt washed over him as he thought of AG—guilt for not even attending his funeral. He slowly found it hard to breathe. He looked up at his reflection in the mirror: blood was streaking down one side of his curly hair, across his face, and he could feel it in his eyes. His clothes were stained with blood, maybe even flecks of flesh.
“…Fuck this shit.”
Maybe he’d been through too many bizarre things already—he only cursed briefly before starting to clean up the mess. He splashed cold water on his face and slammed the bathroom door shut.
The hallway was dark, lit only by the faint glow from the bathroom. The light in his room had gone out at some point without him noticing.
He stood under the running shower for a long time, propping the showerhead up high and squatting on the tile floor. The blood had washed off the second the water hit him, but he refused to move. He’d waste water and electricity if it meant calming down—but he couldn’t calm down. His mind was racing.
Where did that flesh come from? Can the entities affect the real world now? What if someone thinks I dismembered someone with all that blood?
Other voices screamed at him to hurry:
Quit wasting utilities. Do you really think you can ask your parents for help? Get up—you could get caught in the game! Blood, blood, BLOOD!!
All those voices screamed inside his head. He pressed his hands to his temples, his brows knitted tight—they hadn’t relaxed once, clamped down like a vice around his chest.
…
The bone-chilling cold finally drowned out his raw emotions and panic, clearing just enough space for him to think practically. How was he supposed to get out? He’d rushed in so fast he’d forgotten to grab clean clothes. All he had in the bathroom was his blood-soaked turtleneck and a dirty, unwashed hoodie from earlier.
The answer was obvious.
He turned off the shower. He grabbed the hoodie from the laundry basket, sniffed it, and pulled it on. His pants had faint blood stains, but he put those on too. A voice in the back of his mind called him gross, but he didn’t care.
He just wanted to clean his room and collapse into bed. He definitely wasn’t playing any more games today.
Busywork filled his head: changing clothes, washing them, hanging them up to dry, finding cleaning supplies. It was tedious and annoying, but he had to do it himself. He knew he’d have to face this mess sooner or later. So when he finally found his cleaning supplies and headed back to his room, he’d long forgotten that he’d left the light on. The room was pitch-black now—no nightlight, no glow from the computer screen. He didn’t think it was strange at all… until the door clicked shut behind him.
…
Hey~ Found you, Collin. You done throwing up?
A voice spoke the second the door closed, accompanied by a distorted, glitching sound that shouldn’t exist in real life. Collin tried to move—but he couldn’t move an inch. He could feel faint breath against his back. He knew exactly what it was. That thing—Hunger, he thought it was called—was opening its mouth wide, sizing him up to be eaten.
Don’t be scared! Whatever you do, don’t be scared! If you fear it, you’re done for, he repeated to himself. He’d dealt with them long enough to know how to survive. But his body betrayed his will. He couldn’t hide his terror—not when something this deadly was right there. It was primal, life-or-death fear. In this state, he was going to be torn to bits.
…
He felt teeth press against his throat. This was it, he thought—his head was about to be torn from his shoulders.
Wait… why did it feel like he was falling?