I remember the beginning
starts like some kind of Korean ghost/thriller movie where some colleagues, a
man and three women (my persona as one of said women), are just exiting the
office building after a long day's work. What's strange is as they make their
way out of the office, the whole place gets dark. The corridors leading to the
car-park were dark so we stood around, confused about where the doors were. One
woman assumed her car would be in the other direction so she went ahead alone.
I didn't want to leave her alone but the other two were headed another way.
They found a door with light omitting from it so I called her, saying this was
the right door. But she was lost in the dark and a door opposite opened all of
a sudden, by itself. Thinking it was the right door, she went through it and
the door shut behind her. I was already spooked so I went ahead with the other
two.
At the stairways, our
personas changed suddenly from Korean adult colleagues to Caucasian teenagers
who were exploring this part of the 'supposedly' abandoned stairway. Of course
I was the paranoid one, which made the others either the bold or stupid ones.
The only way to go was down and it was a long, dark way down. We went anyway
and what we found below was a surprise. Could you believe an underground
cybercafe sort of spot, with flat screen computers and really comfortable
chairs. There were already ppl there, who looked like the usual cyber-zombies;
didn't even notice us walking in. The others felt like it was an awesome,
secret discovery for teens. I felt wary about the others and this one, small
Asian kid that was hanging around. He wasn't playing and he was the only one
who made eye-contact with us when we arrived.
The girl wanted to try out
a computer game. She sat down and automatically a window pops up, which looks
to be some kind of role-playing game. The computer requests the player to make
a new account. After she does, her character in the game appears and has an
orange octagon symbol hovering above her head (kinda like the sims' green
diamond). And after her character appears, an orange holographic octagon
appears on her head too; I had a bad feeling from that. It looked as if her
virtual character tied itself to her and I had some kind of hunch. “How do you
pause the game?” I asked. My friends, not really amused by my un-fun, paranoid
ways, just answered “You just press 'pause'.. Duuuh?”
“I'm serious – show me how
you pause, how you quit and save the game.” Giving up, my friend clicked on the
window's task bar where the basic game options should be. Strangely there was
no pause, quit or save button visible. After realizing this, they also thought
it was strange. What was strange, and frightening to me, was that the Asian kid
knew what I was up to. He had been stalking me from behind and after my hunch
was proven correct, he got onto my back and jabbed something into my neck like
some kind of needle. At first it hurt, at first I was scared. But after that I
was just pissed. The little kid grinned at me, showing me his tiny, sharp teeth
and his slant, black eyes. I just felt like punching him in the face. When we
wrestled, he kept screeching in this impish, childish sort of cry which almost
made my ears bleed. I punched, I slapped, pinched and almost pulled the skin
off his face. It was thin like rubbery latex, and it felt like if I pulled it
any further, his whole face would come off. I stopped cus the thought of seeing
his flesh creeped me out more.
Apparently those that got
pulled into playing in this cursed cybercafe, your physical body would be
linked with your virtual character. You had to continue sustaining your
character, if not it would die. And if it died, the real person would die as
well. The other teens in the cafe were too fixated in keeping their avatars
alive. They had little sleep, little food and drink to eat; they couldn't leave
the computers. They were tied to their virtual games until they would wither
and die. After pulling my hand away, I
got a little hesitant of what to do next and how to escape with my two friends.
We were closing in near to the door but the kid engulfed my whole fist into his
mouth, which was excruciatingly disgusting... I managed to pull my hand out and
sucker-punch the kid away. There were leeches left on my hand... for.. some
reason...But after getting rid of them, we made our escape. Finally we ran out
past the door and into the darkness. The rest is history.
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