41.avi

It was an average summer day, you know, the kind you spend surfing the web endlessly till you finally start to get sleepy. It was about one month into the summer holidays and I was eagerly awaiting for my 10th birthday to come in a few months. I stood in front of the screen, playing some flash games online, when my friend, Max, invited me over to his house to play a game he found lying around in his attic.

Now, this didn't seem strange to me at the time, we had done this dozens of times before, since he lived so nearby it was easy for me to just quickly get dressed and walk over to his house.

He smirked slightly as I walked in his house. he was wearing his usual attire; a dark red shirt stained slightly from his last meal and old combat shorts. As I proceeded to walk into his hallway, he quickly sprinted into his room where he came out with an old, scratched CD with the letters T.H.E.A.D on it, written in bold black marker over its default silver- like CD layout. As the sun's rays glistened onto it, it caused a slight rainbow to form onto the hallway's walls.

It seemed innocent enough; Max's parents had been dealing with consumer electronics for years and spent a portion of their lives selling CD's in the local market, along with handmade sculptures and many things varying both in size and use. You wanted it, chances are that Max's parents had it in their small, cramped house.

They traded the selling and dealing for a more effective business in photography and photo editing. So they didn't really notice when Max would sneak into the attic and "borrow" their old goods...as a result of this, Max was left with a bounty of their old, now used stock.

We walked down the hall to Max's computer room, which was at the time also being used as his mother's photography studio. I sat beside him, looking at his computer screen with very little anticipation as it slowly read the CD ROM. Contrary to Max's beliefs, it wasn't a game, it was simply a CD containing an .avi file.

Now, what immediately stood out to us was the .avi's size,which was a whopping 4 GB, an astounding feat for any CD to hold at the time, the other thing which stood out was it's name, which was ELBATIVENI SI. We looked at each other, awkwardly looking at each other's approval of whether or not we should play the file. Without waiting another second, Max simply put his headset on to avoid disturbing his parents from their work and double clicked the .avi file.

He looked at me, as if in anguish and then abruptly fainted. It came as quick as a shock, his eyes became bleak and white as he fell like a rag doll onto his keyboard, which immediately became blood red, as he had bitten a chunk off his tongue upon impact.

It was a grisly scene, need I say more, and after a brief but painful stay at the hospital, Max was back to his old self, except...in a way, he wasn't. It was odd, he kept talking to me, he kept his joking and childish behavior, and yet he seemed to be...different. It seemed clear to me that something had happened.

Whether it was the incident with the .avi file itself, or perhaps it was a result of the medication he was now being given form the doctors. I wasn't sure. We never spoke of the .avi again after the incident, as it was a mutual agreement, yet I wondered what he had done, or perhaps was still doing, with that disc. He seemed as if he was...needing of something.

After a few days it became obvious that something was wrong. He kept covering his arms in bandages and his parents became suspicious of him. His parents suspected bullying and asked me whether or not we had been getting into trouble, but even that wasn't the case.I honestly didn't know what had happened to him. He didn't admit anything to his parents...and as time went by he didn't even talk to them at all, apart from the simple:

"I love you" or, "thank you,"

A few days later, school started. He had taken to wearing long sleeves as this point,I suspected it was to hide his scars. For a moment I thought he had actually fallen into a suicidal depression or something, and on the day that I was going to confront him about it, he just stopped talking to me. Months passed, and then one day he simply stopped coming to school completely. I was worried, and just like any worrying old friend,

I went to visit him. When I knocked, his parents answered the door, wearing all black. It was the most depressing moment in my short life. I looked at them sadly. Max was like a brother to me, even though we had barely spoken for so long. His father had stepped in and then..came out with the T.H.E.A.D CD and told me that Max had wanted me to have it. I took it and looked at them sympathetically, then slowly trudged my way home.

I inspected the disc for the second time and then placed it into my PC for the first time and it almost instantly caused everything on my hard drive (apart from the operating system itself) to be deleted. However, it left a single file, which was labeled:

"41.avi"

Regretfully, I double clicked it there was a short , hardly audible recording of Max whispering in an almost trance like state.

"Death is inevitable"

Max repeated this sentence over and over and over. This lasted for an agonizing 11 minutes and 10 seconds. I stared blankly at my screen until I abruptly blacked out and woke up with blood squirting from my nose onto my keyboard.

"A minor nosebleed," I thought as I awoke. It was 3 in the morning now, and I was out cold for hours. I stumbled slightly as I arose from my chair and clicked on the eject button on my PC's CD drive, only to find it was empty.

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