I have to admit, I am a horror nut. I watch any slasher I can get my grubby paws on, and my cupboard is filled with horror movies of all kinds, across a wide variety of obscure formats. I've logged hours and hours and hours browsing the Creepypasta Wiki, just trawling through their vast archives of scary stories. My bookshelves are completely full, and every book in them is creepy as hell. I love this sort of stuff.
And scary video games, oh, scary video games, they're amazing. I keep buying new hard drives with greater storage capacities to keep them all on because I don't want to uninstall a single one. I've made sure to befriend several software engineers working for compression companies, so that I can be the first to use their latest developments to store more creepy games. I can't get enough of these horror video games, and I play them whenever I have some spare time - I have to work several jobs just to get enough money to pay for all this stuff.
You might think this obsession would quickly desensitise me to all of the techniques used in a work of horror, and to an extent, you'd be right. Most of the time a new film, game, or book comes along, I finish it and leave underwhelmed. The genre of horror does tend to be fairly repetitive, I have to admit. And there don't seem to be any decent pastas nowadays.
However, luckily for me, occasionally something comes along that does creep me out. It's rare, but it does happen, and I'm glad for it. Once, one video game went a little too far, though...
I was searching the Internet for new horror games, when I came across a website called imbored.com. I can't remember exactly what the website was like, but I do know it was very plain, like it was designed by a toddler using Dreamweaver for 2 minutes. It was basically the title of a game, "''Imbored: A Pixelated Tedium''", a download link, and a picture that I now consider terrifying.
It was a heavily pixelated, black and white drawing of some kid. Its entire facial expression looked like it was waiting for something, and had been for a long time. It was a crude depiction, but you could tell that it was scowling and looking downwards. One hand was supporting the kid's head, the other was tapping a drum beat on the table. It was almost as though it was some primary school student waiting for the bell during detention.
I say "it", though, because it just seemed... off. Maybe it was the unsettling proportions of its face, or the weirdly shaped eyes. All I know is, it looked vaguely unsettling then, and it haunts my dreams now.
Judging by the image, I assumed it would be a horror game, so I downloaded it. There was no installer. I ran the program and the game started immediately.
I say "immediately" but there was actually a 20 minute loading time. During that loading time, an animated version of the image from the site appeared. That guy was definitely bored about something; the loading time, probably. When the loading bar was finished, the figure looked up and stared straight ahead. It seemed excited to see me. It grinned in an unsettling manner, and the title screen of the game appeared.
"''Imbored: A Pixelated Tedium''" declared the title, and the figure stood up, grinned, and waved. I decided to go into the Options menu, because my computer is rather good and I didn't want to get sub par graphics. Unfortunately, I had no way of controlling these, because the options menu was just a volume control. The volume was already maxed out so I didn't touch it; I'm not a pussy! I started the game and found myself in a corridor. It was completely empty. I walked, and walked, and walked, and after 5 tedious, uneventful minutes of walking, I was just about to close the game when another loading screen appeared.
By God, it was slow. I wondered what was so great about this damn game that it had to wait for so long. I decided it was probably just poor optimisation. The odd figure was back, and it grinned for a while, but quickly grew as bored as I was, and started scowling again. I seriously stared at this screen for 10 minutes, but when the progress bar had only gone up one panel, I realised I should probably do something else.
I stood up and cooked myself dinner. I ate it slowly, savouring every mouthful. Once I had finished, I put the plate and my cutlery in the dishwasher and saw that it was full. I closed the dishwasher and turned it on. I sat there in front of it, listening to the sounds of it doing its job, and relaxing. Once it had finished, I unpacked the dishwasher and then walked to my room at a leisurely pace, admiring the framed paintings on the walls of my hallway. After I arrived at my room, I picked up a novel that I hadn't got around to reading yet. It was called ''War and Peace'', and it was one of the few novels I owned that wasn't a horror book. I read the whole book, and returned it to my bookshelf. I then went outside and repainted one particularly ghastly old wall of my house, then sat down and watched it dry as I listened to the sounds of nature. I saw that it was getting dark, so I returned inside and went to bed, happy about this being the start of a weekend. I had sweet dreams that night.
I woke up 12 hours later, sat down at my computer, and stared at the loading screen for another 15 minutes, after which the game continued. I did notice, during those 15 remaining minutes of loading, that the figure was now not only bored, but seemed more than a little pissed off at me for not enduring the loading screen with it. It was also covered in a thick layer of dust. When the loading had finished, it stood up, shook the dust off, and walked off screen.
More hallways. Great. I continued walking, until at long last I came across a door. The game crashed. ''Shit''. I was already so bored of the game that I decided to play something else, something with gameplay. I launched ''Five Nights at Freddy's'' and started a new game. The Phone Guy wasn't there. Hmm, that was odd. I'd beaten the game 20 times before, and this had never happened. The poster that usually said "Celebrate!" instead this time said "Imbored", and underneath it was -- the figure from ''A Pixelated Tedium''!
''Five Nights at Freddy's'' crashed. My desktop background had been changed to an image of the figure. Worried that I had acquired some malware from ''Imbored'', I Googled the game, but it seemed that no-one else had played it. In fact, I couldn't find a trace of it on the entire Internet! I looked at my browser history and found the page from which I downloaded the game. It now sent me to some shitty Flash game website. No mention of ''A Pixelated Tedium'' was made anywhere on the site.
I tried to delete the game from my computer, but that horrifying figure just popped up in a dialogue box next to the word "No." every time I tried to.
I was too curious to stop now. I launched the game again and after another half-hour of loading, it crashed. I didn't even get to play the game. I tried again and the same happened. I gave up.
On my desktop, there was a text file. It was called "imbored.txt". I opened it; it turned out to become the only bit of evidence of the game's existence I had, as everything else in the game disappeared from my computer the moment I opened the file. Here are the contents:
''Dear Friend,''
''I'm sorry, but the spirit of Imbored is in your computer now. You can't get rid of it. It will be nice to you, but you may find that loading screens take a bit longer from now on...''