365 Nights of Fear

Night # 176 Gaming Nightmare

This next chilling tale is about a game that causes some alarming side effects.

My roommate and I checked the mail one day and discovered a small package. The package was addressed to my friend but he said that he had not ordered anything in weeks. We both agreed that maybe someone had it sent as a gift so he opened it. Inside was a new role-playing game we had never heard of.

My roommate loved role-playing games so he tried it out that night before going to bed. The next morning I noticed when my roommate came into the kitchen to get some coffee that he had a cut on his leg. I asked him what had happened and he just told me that he must have caught it on something in his sleep.

I did not think much about it considering my roommate had been known to toss and turn a lot in his sleep. When I left for work my roommate said he was going to play some more on his new game since he had a long weekend off. I got home from work really late that night and he was still playing the game. When I said something to him he said that he did not even realize how late it had gotten and immediately shut the game off.

I went to bed shortly after I grabbed a bite to eat. I was too exhausted to stay up and talk as I usually did. When I woke up the next day my roommate was still in bed. I went to wake him up to tell him I might be home late again and noticed he had burn marks on his arms and legs. He winced in pain as I touched his arm. Neither one of us could come up with an explanation this time.

When I got home from work I heard my roommate in his room yelling. I ran down the hall to find out what was wrong and he told me he was just getting upset because he was close to being dead on the game. I do not know why but bad thoughts began to fill my mind. I knew it sounded crazy, but what if the game was somehow connected to what had been happening to him. After all, we had no idea who had come up with the game and who had sent it to him. 

I talked to him about what had been occurring and asked him to please shut the game off and get rid of it. At first, he laughed at me and told me that I was just being silly. I guess he saw the grave look on my face and decided that maybe things had been a little creepy since he had begun playing it. Before he could shut the game off the power went out. 

We both stood there in the darkness wondering what would happen if the game were really responsible for the things that had been occurring to my roommate. We retrieved a flashlight and as soon as we did the power came back on. He went to take the game out of the console and noticed something very bizarre. The game was no longer there. We looked everywhere for it but it was nowhere to be found.

We both tried our best to sleep that night but it was not easy. I woke up every hour to check on him. Each time I went into his room everything seemed to be fine. At 4 AM I woke up in pain. I felt like I had been in an accident. I turned my bedroom light on and panicked when I saw the blood all over my sheets. Looking at my body I nearly fainted. I had what appeared to be stab wounds all over me.

How could it have happened to me? I did not even play the game once. I went into my friend's room to get help and when I did I noticed his tv was on. I looked at the screen in horror. A character that looked just like me was running through what appeared to be an old graveyard. The character stopped and knelt beside what appeared to be a dead body on the ground. The game zoomed in and I screamed. The body on the ground was my roommate's. I shuddered as I looked away from the screen and locked my eyes on my roommate's bed. He had been butchered from the looks of it.

I tried desperately to turn it off but nothing seemed to be working. I watched helplessly as an arrow went through my back on the screen and I felt the pain as it happened. I am laying in the floor unable to get help and soon I know I will be dead.

As I was taking my last few breaths I heard someone come through the door. It was my younger brother coming to see me. I tried to scream as I heard the words, "You will never believe what I just got in the mail. It is a new role-playing game."