TALES OF TERROR

Sonic.EXE

I'm a total Sonic the Hedgehog fan much like everyone else, I like the newer games, but I don't mind playing the classics. I don't think I've ever played glitchy or hacked games before, though I don't think I want to play any after the experience I had... 

It started on a nice summer afternoon, I was playing Sonic Unleashed (I liked how you get to explore the towns in it) until I noticed, out of my peripheral vision, that the mailman had arrived and put something in my mailbox as usual and left. I paused my game to go see what I got in the mail... The only thing in the Mailbox was a CD case for computers and a note. I took it inside. 

I looked at the note first and realized it was from my dear friend Kyle (Let's just call him that), whom I hadn't heard from in 2 weeks. I know that because I recognized his handwriting, though what was weird is how it looked; it looked badly written and scratchy and somewhat difficult to read, as if Kyle was having a hard time writing it down and did it in a hurry. 

This is what he wrote... 

"Tom, 

I can't take it anymore, I had to get rid of this thing somehow before it was too late, and I was hoping you'd do it for me. I can't do it, he's after me, and if you don't destroy this CD, he'll come after you too, he's too fast for me.... 

Please Tom, destroy this god-forsaken disc before he comes after you too, it's too late for me. 

Destroy the disc, and you'll destroy him, but do it quick otherwise he'll catch you. Don't even play the game, it's what he wants, just destroy it. 

Please... 

Kyle" 

Well, that was certainly weird. Even though Kyle IS my best friend and I haven't seen him in 2 weeks, I didn't do what he asked me. I didn't think that a simple gaming disc would do anything bad to him, after all it's just a game right? Boy, was I wrong about that... 

ANY way, I looked at the disc and it looks like any ordinary computer CD-R disc, except it had black marker on it written "SONIC.EXE", and it was much unlike Kyle's handwriting, meaning that he must've gotten it from someone else, like a pawn shop or eBay. When I saw "SONIC" on the writing of the CD, I was actually excited and wanted to play it, since I'm a a BIG Sonic fan. 

I went up to my room and turned on my computer and put the disc in and installed the game. When the title screen popped up I noticed that it was the first Sonic game, I was like "Awesome!" Because like I said earlier I liked the classics. The first thing I noticed that was out of place was when I pressed start, there's was a split second when I saw the title image turned into something much different, something that I now consider horrifying, before cutting to black. 

I remember what the image looked like in that split second before the game cut to black; The sky had darkened, the title emblem was rusted and ruined, the SEGA 1991 was now instead SEGA 666, and the water had turned red, like blood, except it looked hyper-realistic. 

But the freakiest thing that was in that split second frame was Sonic, his eyes were pitch black and bleeding with two glowing red dots staring RIGHT AT ME, and his smile had stretched wider up to the edge of his face. I was rather disturbed about that image when I saw it, though I figured that it was just a glitch and forgot about it. After it cut to black it stayed like that for about 10 seconds or so. And then another weird thing happened, the save file select from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 popped up, and I was like "WTF? What's this doing in the first Sonic game?", anyway, then I notice something off, the background was the dark cloudy sky of the Bad Stardust Speedway level from Sonic CD, and there were only three save files. The music was that creepy Caverns of Winter music from Earthbound, only it was extended and seemed to have been in reverse. And the image for the save file where you see a preview of the level you're on is just red static for all three files.