The Theater Play Through

Chapter 3- The Impossible Hallway

(Author's Note: Hey guys! Thanks for reading part one and two of my story! I appreciate each and every single read I get, you guys are awesome! Sorry about the delay on this third part, school gets in the way of things I like to do unfortunately... Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy part three of The Theater Play Through series. Keep a look out for part four in the future! ~Labridae ^_^)

Annie’s POV

I watched the screen with baited breath, as I saw the title menu of the game. I looked over at May. She looked on edge, waiting to see what could happen next. I looked down on my lap, and picked up my phone. I raised it to the computer and took a picture of the PC, and another with May in it. This’ll be perfect for my new post, I thought, turning around to give my video camera the ‘thumbs up’ sign. I opened Reddit, and on my profile under nosleep, I wrote:

AnnieChiri is online.

Hello everyone. This is a developing story, but I might be onto something. I’m over at my friend May’s apartment for Christmas break, and we just installed a game I found the other day (Link to that post HERE.) It turns out the game is called ‘The Theatre.’ Do any of you guys know anything about this game? Maybe it’s worth something, but I don’t know too much about it to be sure. So, I would like you guys’ help! Comment below, and tell everyone you know! There are pictures of the game, May, and the title HERE for your convenience. (With Madamelolcatz)

Cheers, Annie. (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ

A few seconds after I hit UPLOAD, my phone lit up with notifications. I paid these no attention as I looked back to the PC and put down the phone into my lap. I’ll just check these later, I said to myself. I can’t have any distractions; I need to see what will happen!

AnnieChiri logged off.

“Alright,” said May. “What do you want to click on first?” I looked at the three options in front of me.

“Let’s try LOAD GAME first.” I said. “What if the original owner didn’t delete a previous game file?” May moved the mouse over to LOAD GAME and clicked. The picture warped and distorted, the music stopped abruptly mid-note. The display went black, and back on the PC was the desktop. It looked like the game crashed on us! “What the heck?” I said aloud. May looked equally as confused.

“Let’s try this again,” she said. She opened the CD drive again and took out the CD ROM. She wiped the disk down with the edge of her sweater and put it back into the drive again. Almost instantaneously, a notification appeared in the bottom right hand corner: Permission to install THETHEATRE? “Why not?” She asked, a frustrated tone in her voice. She clicked ok. The screen went black, and right away we were back at the title. We were faced with the three options once again, but this time I knew that only two would probably work.

“Click on NEW GAME.” I suggested. The options menu didn’t seem too important at the moment. I was really anxious to see what would happen.

“Yeah, here we go…” May said. She clicked NEW GAME, and the music stopped as the screen went black. This time, we weren’t booted back to the desktop. On the display in white letters read: Salida Software Presents…This was on the screen for a few seconds, before the text flickered and faded to black. Then, more text appeared: THE THEATRE. The title expanded until it almost filled the screen, flickered, and faded to black. All of a sudden we were in the game. It was almost set up like a first person shooter, with the character viewing what was in front of them. On the top right hand corner of the image was the title of the game written in small white text. On the opposite side towards the top was the developer’s name written in the same text. Instead of the poor music that was present during the title sequence, the game was eerily silent; there was no music this time. In front of us was what looked like a 16-bit lobby. The room was very dark, with shadows covering the crimson patterned walls. To our left were a few benches and a large white sign that was covered in unreadable pixelated text. To our right were four blurry movie posters displaying various fictional titles. “Try moving around,” I said in a hushed voice. May pressed the up key on the keyboard and the character began to move forward. A light seemed to illuminate the hallway in front of us as we walked, so that more features were easier to see when we approached them. A footstep sound effect played and echoed around the room as we moved around the lobby. As we moved deeper into the theater, the same music we heard when we first opened the game started to play over the speakers (this time it was thankfully a lot quieter than before.) More of the scene started to load as we walked down the corridor. Two more corridors emerged out of the darkness, one corridor that disappeared to the left and one to the right. In the middle of the room between the two corridors was the same sprite that was on the CD cover, dark with pixelated shadows.

“Should I go up to him?” Asked May. I nodded, and she pressed the up arrow and walked up to him. The light illuminated the sprite’s face and we stopped right in front of him as a text box appeared at the bottom of the screen. White text displayed the message: Press SPACEBAR to interact. May pressed the spacebar, and a speech bubble popped into view over the sprite’s head. Another very low quality sound clip of an old man’s voice played at the same time as the message was displayed: Ticket taker: THANK YOU PLEASE ENJOY THE MOVIE. I whipped out my notebook: Sprite- ‘ticket taker.’ After this text showed up and the sound clip finished playing, the corridor leading left lit up with flickering dim marquee lights. When this happened, the sprite disappeared. “What happened to the guy?” Asked May in a hushed voice.

“I have no idea,” I said, “but it looks like it wants you to go down the left corridor.” May hit the up and left keys once more, and the character started to move towards the illuminated archway. We walked down the dark hallway for a few seconds, and it was strangely empty. Suddenly, the character wouldn’t move, and the footsteps stopped as the screen faded to black. All of a sudden, we were in the lobby once more. I was confused. Was this all the game had to offer? I turned to May, who was looking at the screen, with a confused look on her face.

“Is this it?” She asked. “That’s pretty lame.” I agreed to myself. There had to be something else the game had you do. That would be a pretty big waste of money for a major gaming company to release just that. There had to be something we were missing. Maybe we had to walk through the next corridor for something new to happen.

“Try again,” I urged May. She shrugged her shoulders and moved directly down the hallway once more. The same sound effects played like before, with the player’s footsteps playing on an endless loop. The same scene loaded as the player walked down the hallway once more. I wonder what could happen this time, I thought to myself as we walked down the hallway towards where the ticket taker was standing between the divide of the two hallways. Once more, the text box appeared at the bottom of the screen: Press SPACEBAR to interact. May pressed the spacebar with a bored look on her face. The familiar speech bubble appeared over the sprite’s head once more, and the sound clip played once more. There was something wrong though. The speech was slowed down, and it didn’t make it to the end of the message before the text box disappeared once more. TIcket tAker: THANK yOU PLEASE eNJoY THE __Ie…  What? Something definitely was not right here. I took out my notebook and wrote down: text is becoming warped, audio files failing. This time, the ticket taker did not disappear. He stood there, eerily as the hallway towards the right hand side lit up with the flickering marquee lights. May took the controls, and we moved towards the right hand hallway. Then something very strange started to happen. The footsteps sound effect stopped altogether as we continued down the corridor. The music stopped as well, and the game was completely silent. This time instead of walking for a little while and having to restart the whole game from the beginning, the hallway seemed to loop over and over. It didn’t seem like we were getting anywhere at all! Frustrated, May instinctively pressed and held down the LSHIFT key, and the character began to run down the hallway. We reached the end of the hallway, but nothing happened. I was excited; we must’ve finally beaten the game! We waited in silence for a few seconds, as the screen faded to black.