CYBER DEMON

It was June of 2017, and David Dread had just saved up enough money to buy himself a few new games for his PS4. He was hoping to gain enough cash to buy the latest of GTA. GTA has been out for over two to three years now. David had been looking forward to finally having a chance to play the game himself and to add another game to play online with his friends. So, after his shift, he drove to his local video game store.

The store wasn't very big, but it did have quite a few games in stock. David immediately began his search for the games he came for. He searched till he found a shelf with the PS4 label above it and quickly peered through the casings. He found a few other games of interest, but not the one he was hoping for the most. Feeling a bit concerned, David grabbed his other choices and made his way to the store's clerk.

After placing the other games on the clerk's shelf and desk, David was relieved to hear that there was one more GTAV game left in stock. The clerk left to go into a back room and returned to David with a black disc case. The case read "GTAV", but wasn't the original casing for the game. On the bottom left corner of the case was a small logo of a crow's skull with a hat. David decided to overlook the casing, and was just relieved to have the game at all.

David was very excited and just couldn't wait to try out his new games. As soon as he entered his apartment, he turned the power to his TV and PS4 on and slid the disc in the console. He sat down and waited as the game began to download and install. After installation was complete, and the story finished loading, David began playing immediately. Later, as the game's story intro came to a close, it began to show strange signs of glitching with moments of freezing lag.

After seeing this, David quickly ejected the disc and gazed over it, noticing that there were no scratches or cracks within it. Thinking that it may have just been a small bug within the game, David slid the disc back into the console and began playing again. This time he didn't notice any signs of glitches or corruption, or at least till the end of the intro. During the scene where one of the main characters were to be buried, the game began to glitch as the screen darkened. And as the priest spoke for the passing character, each and every other character within the cutscene slowly turned toward the screen and gave a deathly stare toward David.

David was surprised and shocked by what he was now witnessing. He had not seen anything like it in any of the videos he had previously watched over the game. Each and every character on the screen starred and opened their mouths wide as black ooze came pouring out. After this, David listened as he began to hear constant hissing and whispering as the game glitched back to its normal state. The intro was now over and the logo had appeared on screen just before fading back out.

David was very shocked and frozen at what he had just seen, but just turned his head and let out a small cough with nervous laughter. He just slowly brushed it off as a mod and prank that someone made before sending it to the store and continued playing. As the story of the game progressed, the glitches continued. The game became darker and darker, as the characters and surroundings became more and more distorted. The whispering and hisses also worsened as images of some darkened silhouette of a creature began to appear throughout the game.

At this point, David felt like his heart had leapt straight into his throat. The creature then appeared again for a final time as it began to move closer toward the screen as the background of the game became no more than an abundance of distorted static, that of an old TV or radio. As the creature came closer, its figure became more clear. This shadow of a creature was tall and bony. Half of its face was completely covered by a torn black cloth with the lower half revealing razor sharp teeth and no visible lips attached.

The creature also had small arms stretching from its back as though to have another being attached. As the creature came closer to the screen, David quickly began pressing and holding the PS button on the center of the controller, as to turn the power off. But to no prevail, the game would not power off. The creature walked toward the screen and stalled as it now stood right in front of the screen. Then, the creature lowered its head and literally began to come through the screen as it lightly said David's name with a slurred voice with black drool protruding from between its teeth.

Now terrified, David quickly leapt past the creature as it reached for him and tried to rip the cords from the wall. With the blackening of the TV and game, the creature began to screech out as it surged with electricity and began to fade away. Now David was alone in his apartment once more as everything faded to darkness. David was so shocked from this experience that he had lost all consciousness. The next day David removed the disc from his console and took it outside to a nearby ally, where he tossed the game and its case into a burning barrel.

As months passed David struggled to sleep, due to the creature constantly showing up in his dreams. But, eventually, the images slowly faded. But this feeling of ease was to be short lived. One night as David slept, he was suddenly awoken due to loud creaking noises throughout his apartment. David peered across his bedroom toward his door as it slowly creaked open with a flush of cold air. From the door David could hear as a slurred voice lightly whispered his name.