Can you handle this?

ThE tAiLs DoLl Is WaTcHiNg YoU

The tails doll is watching you

I consider myself to be the luckiest man in the world. But I didn't win the lottery, strike oil in my backyard, or find a drop-dead beautiful girl. I survived.

Let me explain. Last week I was cleaning my dorm with my roommate Alexander, but I just called him Xander or Alex. Everything was going as usual. The work was exhausting; we unpacked box after box (our room was also our U-Haul) and were sorting everything for what felt like decades. But it wasn't without fun. Occasionally we would unpack a box and stumble upon some nostalgic item, like our sound recording pens we used to spy with in our freshman year or old assignments that we thought were torture before but now would be respite. We were having a discussion about invincibility. Alex insisted that some things were just plain ol' invincible, while I argued that everything had to have a weak point. Anyways, we were nearly finished when Alex shouted to me from across the room.

"Hey, look what's in this one!" Alex exclaimed, grinning.

I made my way over to him, and traced his pointing finger to a box containing my old Sega Saturn. I couldn't believe it. My long lost friend had returned. We had both had a Saturn as kids. It was our favorite pastime. It was our childhood. A while back, Alex's Saturn had broken, and I had lost mine. But here it was, sitting in a musty box in the corner of our room. A whole piece of childhood memories and good times buried by adulthood had suddenly been unearthed. We had found a treasure worth more than gold.

"Well, you want to play it or just keep standing here?" Alex barked, jerking me back to reality.

"Uh, sure!" I replied, trying to convince Alex.

Postponing the rest of the cleaning, we removed it, and hooked it up to our TV. Then we indexed the golden library of my old games.

"Whoa, you have International Victory Goal!"

"Yeah. Oh! I forgot about Sonic Jam!"

When we had browsed through everything, we set about what we should play first. We decided on Sonic 3D - Flickies Island. For several hours, we played through every game, reliving our childhood. It was nearly midnight, but we were still going strong. Alex removed the next game from the pile. It was Sonic R.

"Ooh, Sonic R. The Tails Doll is gonna get you!" he said, laughing and tickling me.

"Hey, stop it! Get off!" I shouted playfully. I managed to stop his tickling.

"Want to try the curse?" he moaned, imitating a spooky voice.

"Eh, why not?" I replied, frightened or so.

"I bet you don't even know what it is," he retorted.

Of course I knew about the curse. You play a tag race on Resort Island as the Tails Doll and tag Metal Robotnik (Or Egg Robot), Metal Sonic, and Metal Knuckles, tagging Super Sonic last. After that, the Tails Doll is supposed to steal your soul. It was all bullshit, if you asked me. Nonetheless, Alex grabbed the controller and had everything set up in less than a minute.

The game started. The cursed song "Can you Feel the Sunshine" began playing. We were soon reminded of the difficulty of tag race. Even though I wasn't playing, I felt Alex's frustration as he narrowly missed Metal Sonic, and Metal Sonic turned around. There were several moments of frustration throughout the race as we came close to tagging another player then had the opportunity snatched from us as we bumped into a wall, etc. After what seemed like hours, Alex finally tagged Super Sonic, ending the race. We were both so relieved to have tagged him that we had forgotten about the curse. So when the Tails Doll's picture popped up on the screen, we both jumped. Everything was silent for a few seconds as the Tails Doll seemed to gaze deeply at us, as a predator gazes at his prey, inspecting the meal.