Get Out Alive

Her Name Is...

This whole thing starts with you being bored enough at work to wander onto Youtube.

Now, you get bored at work a lot, considering that the shifts are usually nine hours long and it's a small nutritional store shoved way out at the end of East Coast Nowhere. You have your fair share of customers in the summer, but during the winter months, you can go at least two hours without seeing another living person even drive by the parking lot sometimes.

So, you were bored, and going onto Youtube at the computer that must be ten years old near the cash register is a pretty desperate venture. . . especially when the monitor doesn't have built-in speakers. Or any speakers, period.

But there was honestly nothing else to do. Except cry, maybe. Or stare at the walls and think about how much you're wasting your life away at almost twenty-five years old, which wasn't exactly high on your list of priorities.

You found his channel by an accident. You were looking for game walk-throughs that weren't real heavy on dialogue. The Legend of Zelda has always been a good series to fall back on, either Majora's Mask or Ocarina of Time. You're also a pretty big Turok fan, and Seeds of Evil is probably one of your favorite games, ever.

ANYWAYS. You were browsing the links and clicking on other links and, suddenly, you were too far away from familiar territory and a little concerned with your new neighborhood. But also kind of interested, because you had found a bunch of horror walk-throughs for this game called Five Nights at Freddy's.

You have absolutely no idea what this game was about, but the screenshots and the short descriptions that people were writing on it made it look pretty cool. You're kind of a sucker for scary things, to be honest. You're addicted to No Sleep on reddit and you are always checking the Creepypasta Wikia for something new and twisted to try and unnerve you. Which, as you get older. . . is getting harder and harder to do. And that sucks.

But you take what you can get. If you can't play the horror games on your own, you shove a chair underneath the doorknob in your room, pull the curtains shut tight, and snap on your giant headphones for a few, hopefully uninterrupted hours alone with your laptop. It's never really the same, though. Hell -you were terrified going through F. E. A. R. 3 when you had the controller in your hands, but watching someone else play it? Made a huge difference in how you reacted to the jump scares.

Getting back on track, though. You did a quick search on this Five Nights game and was fairly impressed with what you read. Like the original style of gameplay that it offered, the whole stationary thing and just watching the security monitors? Very neat. And, while you tend to go for the no commentary walk-throughs because people are really, really annoying, you just clicked on the first link that they had. Remember? The work computer has no speakers, so it wouldn't matter.

And said first link happened to belong to this guy called Markiplier. All you saw was his head floating around the left-hand corner of the screen -some kid about your age with dark hair and glasses. You didn't pay much attention to him. Why would you have? You were trying to watch the game, which was ranking at about a -7 on your horror index because it was broad daylight in the store and you couldn't hear the sound cues.

So you stopped after the first video in disappointment. There weren't any walk-throughs for this game without commentary, which meant that you would have to generally cringe and suffer while listening to some idiot pretending to be funny if you wanted to check out the rest of the game. This guy -this Markiplier -his videos had the most views. Maybe that meant he was the most tolerable?

You ended up watching a few levels worth of Seeds of Evil for the last three hours of the day, but you hadn't forgotten about Five Nights. How bad could the commentary be? Maybe you should give it a chance.

No one was home when you pulled into the driveway, which was pretty lucky. No ma and no step-jerk meant no stupid and pointless interruptions. Yeah, yeah. You still live with your mom. You have some money saved, and you pay your own bills, but trying to afford an apartment? Being able to furnish it and then keep up with the monthly rent? No way. You can't do that without. . . without selling your car. Or your kidneys. Besides, staying here isn't so bad. Most of the time.

You really try not to think about it.

But you're getting distracted again. So. . . right. You finally got home, kicked off your boots, and soon found yourself barricaded in your room with a box full of blueberry Poptarts and a thirty-pound computer on your lap. And it took about two minutes of random surfing for you to realize that you had nothing better to do than return to Youtube.

You gave up. You went back and clicked onto the first Five Nights video again, the one made by that Markiplier guy, and. . . you couldn't do it. You gave the commentary a chance, really, but you just couldn't listen to it.

After one frustrating hour and about thirty failed attempts at finding a copy of the game that you could stand with the fucking commentary, you were -once again- scowling at the first link on the first results page. You didn't want to admit it, but Markiplier hadn't been as irritating as the rest of the population playing this stupid game. Swearing under your breath, you clicked on his first Five Nights video for the third dame time and cranked the volume.

The worst that could happen would be your ears eventually bleeding. You'd get over it.

When you finally started paying attention to him, though. . . well, that was probably the beginning of the end. You still don't know how it happened, but one video turned into three. And then seven. And then twenty. And then the whole weekend you had free was suddenly gone. Seriously, just. . . what the hell? Was that normal? Probably not.

Markiplier had to be one of the biggest dorks that you had ever had the opportunity to witness. You have no idea why you kept watching his play-throughs. Um, nothing that you're going to admit to, anyways. He was goofy with these distinct screams in reaction to jump scares and hit or miss. . . or miss, jokes. And. . . he had a really nice voice. And smile.

So, yeah. He was pretty much like every other kid on Youtube. Right? Maybe? You don't know. Probably not. He has this silly kind of charm, you guess. It took a while for you to get used to it, and you still can't quite pinpoint the moment where his off-beat comments stopped being mildly annoying and progressed into something. . . rather entertaining, but they did.

And, hey, it's six months later and the only thing that can put a stupid grin on your face after you come home from work is booting up one of his play-throughs. He might be a bit of a dork, but he is also a bit brilliant and his rambling monologues make you laugh. . . and you honestly don't even care anymore.

You need something in your life like this. You need something that can help you forget and keep you in better spirits and. . . fuck. You just need this, okay? You need to be able to listen to him and you don't have to come up with a reason why.

Because, if you did. . . it would be an incredibly embarrassing one.

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I hope y'all like this story! (Many more to come after(; )

I easily am excited for this story, and I hope you guys are too!

Next 2 chapters are up n' ready!

Anyways, hope you liked this chapter and if you did, tell your lovely friends who love Markiplier to read this!

And as Markiplier always says, I will see YOU in the next chapter. Bye bye!

(He doesn't say chapter but, pshhhh.)

-Kara