The Forest.exe

Part 1

My name is Sam Wilkinson. These will be my last words on Earth. I recently got a strange email at work and before I leave for good I would like to tell you all about that email and what it led to. I don't care if you believe me or not, I just want to leave something behind. A confession, if you will. I'll try to keep it brief, but I guess I should start from the beginning nonetheless.

I've hated my life for as long as I can remember. It started on my first day of school. That was when the bullying began. I don't know what I did to deserve it or why it continued no matter how many times I changed schools. My only crime, it seems, was that I was fat. It was a vicious circle. The more they teased me the more I ate to comfort myself and the more I ate the more they teased me. I became depressed and more and more socially awkward. As I got older and entered high school I began to despise people in general. Basically everyone except my mom. My misanthropic world view didn't exactly help me, I suppose. Let's just say my personality became less than lovable.

I never moved away from home and I spent most of my days in my mom's basement playing old video games. Such was my life. I'm already talking about it in past tense... My god. That's still my life. My biggest shame – my biggest guilt – is that my miserable condition made my poor mom unhappy. I've seen pictures from right after my birth. My mom looked at me with so much joy in her, then young, eyes. At that time she couldn't imagine what a worthless shadow of a person I would become. She imagined something different. She thought that little boy would grow up to become a man who eventually would give her grandchildren; she didn't think it would grow up to be me.

I never learned any skills other than playing video games, so for the longest time, I couldn't get a job. But that was how I liked it. I didn't want to be around people. However, about three years ago, my mom forced me to educate myself so that I could find work and help out with the rent that kept on getting higher and higher. Reluctantly I agreed and pretty much chose a subject at random at a vocational school as close to home as possible. I didn't have a driver's license so I couldn't travel too far from home. I didn't mind that though, I wanted to be as close to home as possible anyway.

The subject I chose wasn't fun. It was business administration, which pretty much just meant I would spend my time staring at spreadsheets in Excel all day. I never thought it would lead to anything, not because I didn't learn what I was taught but because I didn't think anyone would be crazy enough to hire someone looking like me. However, after my internship at a large tech company – I won't mention its name here but you've probably heard of it – I miraculously got hired. Although I had suffered all my life, it wasn't until this period of my life – which I'm living in right now – that I started considering ending my life.

The stress was unbearable from the start. Every day when I took the bus to work I had to see how people actively chose not to sit next to me. The workplace had an open office space, so I couldn't get away from people however much I tried and they couldn't get away from me. For some reason, I had to sit together with the people from HR, the loudest and most social people in the entire building. I had to listen to their small talk all the time while I stared at my horribly boring spreadsheets. And, not surprisingly, they didn't like me. Mostly, they pretended I didn't exist but as soon as I had to talk to them – or as soon as I accidentally met their eyes – I could see the revulsion in their eyes.

Jennifer, the young woman next to me, hated me the most. She always greeted me with an expression of disgust and I often saw her roll her eyes when I sat down next to her. She was visibly annoyed as soon as I spoke to her. From time to time I heard them talk about me behind my back. Jennifer didn't even care to lower her voice. I couldn't really go to the HR department with my issues, this was the HR department.

This is what my life has been like for three years now. Recently, my boss called me to her office. Apparently, a complaint had been made against me. She said the person who made the complaint wanted to be anonymous, but I'm pretty sure it was Jennifer. My boss told me, with pity in her voice, that it concerned my hygiene.

"Why don't you take a shower in the morning?" she said.

I already did that, but after walking the few hundred meters to the bus station and after sitting on the bus more or less crippled with anxiety I was sweaty again. I couldn't help it. Hearing this made me hate myself so much. My suicidal thoughts skyrocketed. The only thing that prevented me from actually killing myself was how much it would have hurt my mom. I couldn't do that to her. But guess what? A week ago, my mom died.

When I came home from work, I found her on the floor of the living room. I could tell she had been lying there since early morning because she still had her dressing gown on. She was still alive, but she couldn't speak anymore. She gurgled with a confused look on her once so beautiful face. I called the ambulance immediately. She died at the hospital later that night. The doctor told me she had suffered a massive stroke. Of course, this would have been devastating for anyone, but for me, it pretty much meant the end of my life. From my perspective, this world didn't have any decent people in it anymore.