One night, I was incredibly, incredibly bored. I happened to be playing Minecraft at the time, so I got off my lousy, creative, single-player world and typed down every single server IP I could think of, even if they didn't make any sense whatsoever. It was a fruitless task brought on by sheer mental shutdown. But at last, to my satisfaction, I managed to load a server.
The thing took ages to load. The loading bar made its way slowly across the slot at the bottom. Then, strangely, it jumped backwards. Now, being the easily startled person I unfortunately am, I jumped. The bar wasn't moving. I stared at it. Then my screen went black, and the hum coming from my computer ceased and went dead silent. This wouldn't have been particularly alarming in itself if the power for the entire house hadn't shut off. I was alone in the pitch dark. The blinds were shut, and it was dead winter. There were no stars, and the moon was at the final waning stage.
Slowly, I got up, careful not to stub my toe on anything. Tiptoeing across the room, I suddenly heard quiet music behind me. I turned around. The screen had lit back up, and Minecraft was back on. Happy just to have some entertainment for the long and dark night ahead, I plopped back in my chair again and tried to move my mouse. Which I realized, after a second, wasn't there. At least, the cursor wasn't there. The bar was, now I came to look at it, moving, slowly. And the pallet was wrong, all wrong, like somebody had inverted it and animated it to flicker violently like an old TV screen.
The server came online. I spawned outdoors, thankful that the loading screen wasn't there anymore. The textures for the world were warped as well. The grass texture was twisted, blotched, and refracted in so many different ways that I thought it was water. The sky was a sort of sickly red, and swirling. But the oddest thing was the music, because there didn't appear to be any. There was just a sort of dead sound. It sounded a lot like a windstorm.
I moved, slowly, forward. My speed was drastically reduced. I was literally at a snails pace. Crawling across the world, the music changed sharply. The wind cut out and was replaced by a banshee wail. A thing appeared in the distance, getting closer very fast. I checked the resolution. I had sworn I had it in Render Distance Tiny, but now it was at Render Distance Far and not lagging at all.
The thing got closer, and closer, and closer. I held my breath, anticipating the moment of impact and the identification of the thing. It was now close enough that I could see it: a pale gray shape. It was very intimidating as its ghastly face filled my screen.
I jumped back in my chair, and the monitor exploded into a shower of colors before blotching and turning off with a crash.
I lay in my chair, which was tipped back onto the floor. The silence had returned.
A bony hand reached over the edge of the desk...