Mind Games - Static Noise

Chapter Two: Losing control

Mark woke up with hands around his neck. His eyes snapped open and immediately began to struggle. Jack was sitting on his stomach, his hands wrapped tightly around Mark's windpipe. Mark struggled, managing to wrap his hands around Jack's wrists and prising them off.

Jack - Séan - looked almost unrecognisable. His eyes were completely black, and under his skin, black lines zig zagged, tracing his arteries, and his skin was incredibly pale.

"Séan?" Mark gasped, massaging his throat. For a second he thought Jack was going to go for him again, but something unexpected happened, Séan looked horrified with himself. He shuffled backwards and his eyes flashed back to blue, however the veins didn't return to their normal colour.

Mark went to approach him, but a look of panic flashed across Jack's face. "Don't come any closer, I don't want to hurt you," Jack gasped, seeming to visibly struggle with himself.

Mark didn't know what to feel, his mind was racing. "What the hell's going on?" Mark asks, bewildered.

Jack clasps his hands tightly to his chest. "Same as you really, I had to play some sort of game but...even though I won...I think...Anti has a better ability to possess me when he feels like it...FUCK!" He yells and his eyes flashed black for a second and he writhed.

Mark felt terror and concern rise in his chest. He was frozen where he knelt. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing seemed to come out. He managed a weak "Jesus fucking Christ," before falling back to lean against the wall.

"Mark you need to be careful around me, I'm not sure what Anti or Dark's plan is but I think it involves me doing something to you. This isn't going to be done in levels I -" Jack splutters and blood starts seeping from a cut on his neck, just like when Anti made his first appearance in his video, but Mark thought that was fake...wasn't it? He thought his first projection of Darkiplier was fake...but didn't he wake up the next day feeling like he was hungover, even though he doesn't drink anymore?

Mark brought his hands to either side of his face. He honestly had no idea what was going on anymore, he just had a feeling Jack was close to losing control...will that happen to him? Will he lose his mind too? He hoped not.

It was a second before Mark realised he couldn't hear. The static noise he'd heard before was filling up his ears again, he couldn't think straight, he wanted it to stop. Stop it, he thought, STOP!

He looked up to Dark staring down at him, with something darker than deep satisfaction on his face. Mark wanted to kill him, which made no sense, seeing as he was basically looking at himself.

"Enjoying yourself?" Dark's voice sounded muffled and echoing at the same time, and Mark felt a deep hatred for him. What was the point of this?

"Does there have to be a point?" Dark laughs, and the static intensifies in Mark's head. Mark wasn't aware of it, but one second he was sitting on the floor, the next second he was leaping at Dark, grabbing at his collar and shoving him against the wall. Anti was in the room too, and he looked immensely amused by the situation. Instead of looking afraid, Dark just laughed.

"Well you'll be a lot easier to corrupt than Séan was for Anti," he stated, and it was this statement that triggered Mark to remember himself. He felt ashamed for giving in to anger so easily, and promised himself that as angry as Dark made him, he wouldn't do that again. He let go of Dark's collar and stepped back several feet.

Séan tried to give a reassuring smile at Mark, but Mark could tell he was still struggling to stay sane, and Mark felt incredibly bad for the guy.

"So what do you want with me?" Mark demands calmly.

Dark laughs, "You'll find out soon enough, Anti, bind him." And before Mark could react, Anti was forcing him back into the chair and tying him to it, making the ropes ever tighter. Mark flinched, but didn't question it. Jack was sat in the corner, his eyes flashing black every few seconds and a manic grin appearing and faltering on his face.

Dark smirked at Mark's concern for Jack, he thought human friendships were ridiculous. The most he'd go to interacting, was allying with Anti, and even then they both hated each other. That's as much as Mark knew about them cooperating with each other, and Anti had the most bitter expression on his face when Dark was giving him orders. He wasn't one to be ordered about but did it anyway to fulfil his own tasks.

Dark cocks his head at him, and his smirk turns into a slight demonic grin. "Ready?" he chuckled.

"Get on with it asshole," Mark retorted.

Dark doesn't reply but gives a booming laugh and clicks his fingers. Darkness surrounds them, and Mark felt the ropes binding him fall away and chair disappear, as Dark and Mark appear with salty air blowing in their face, and Mark falls to the ground.

They were standing on a cliff, right at the edge. The sheer face falling away to the broiling stormy grey sea below. However Dark wasn't looking into the ocean, he was looking across it. Mark follows his gaze and spots what he was looking at.

A mound of rock juts out like an island, waves are crashing against them and perched on it, ominous against the cloudy sky, is a crooked tower, looking to have about thirteen floors. Mark gulped. He had a vague idea of what Dark was going to make him do.

"Twelve levels," Dark states, narrowing his eyes and grinning from ear to ear. "Number one is easy. All you have to do is swim to the tower."

Mark stands up. "And how exactly am I supposed to do that?"

"That," Dark laughs loudly, but is muted by the crashing of waves, "is up to you."

And with that, he disappears.