Don't Copy That Floppy

I know the truth now, why this all happened. Allow me to explain...

It happened when I was over my friend's house. Kyle (let's just call him that) and I weren't childhood friends. We met at the college we're currently attending, and I had only just begun to know him. He stayed at a rather spacy ranch house in the forests outside Portland, Maine that he rented along with four of his friends.

I arrived at his house as twilight gripped the sky, and all four of his roommates were out partying. The semester had ended, but Kyle was, as I am, an introvert that feels more comfortable in basic social situations. They would likely pass out at the party, and not awake until the late morning, so the house was all to ourselves for the night.

We played video games for a couple hours, but I really wasn't too into the games Kyle owned. They all were pre-owned by people who felt the need to peel off all the labels and crudely scribble half the name of the game in its place with magic markers. They were all glitchy, and they weren't even the real game. They were all shitty mods that I guess were trying to be scary, but they all failed miserably at doing so. The only redeeming quality of his collection was that some of the games had really good graphics.

Like, hyper-realistic graphics.

Whatever, I thought. I figured the consoles, like the games, were modded (which I later found out to be true.) When we finished playing MAJORA, with that stupid-looking Link statue following you around, Kyle stood up from the sofa, walked over to the basement door, and spoke.

"Come here," he said. "I want to show you something. Really cool." He made a beckoning gesture with his hand. I noticed from the beginning that Kyle was off today, as if he didn't get enough sleep last night. He was just... darker.

He led me downstairs into a damp, musty-smelling cellar. It was rather cluttered, except for one corner, which had a dimly lighted area masked by a large curtain. Kyle drew the curtain, revealing a desk with an ancient computer from the nineties running on an equally ancient monitor. On the side of his two-button ball mouse was a black envelope. It was in the center of the ring of light cast by an overhanging lamp.

"What is that?" I asked, pointing at the black envelope.

Kyle glared at me, but not in a menacing way, but rather in a pondering, analyzing way. "Aren't you going to ask about the computer first? Why I have such a strange setup here in this shitty basement?"

Then it hit me. When I saw the envelope, I immediately - almost involuntarily - shifted my attention to it. I tried to play it off. "OK," I said. "Tell me about this setup."

"It happened when, on my way back from work one day, I saw a tag sale on the side of the road. There were no other customers, and the seller was this creepy looking old guy who warned me of impending doom as I took the games. I got used to that part – happens to me whenever I go to the flea market to buy something – but this time he insisted that I take this black envelope with me. So I did, and I ended up keeping it.

"I got home, opened it, and found that there was an unlabeled floppy disk inside, also black. I got the computer and monitor from one of my roommates. They were old, which was necessary for properly making use of it-"

"Wait," I interrupted him. "Why not just get an external floppy drive? And why does the monitor also have to be old?"

Kyle nodded. "It didn't occur to me at the time. It's the disk. It possesses you, it was the reason why your attention shifted immediately to the envelope. It's cursed."

"And why did you need to set this up in the basement?" I continued. It sounded so stupid, but it didn't sound coincidental either. "You have plenty of room upstairs." "Exactly!" he exclaimed. "It gets in your head and fucks with you." No it doesn't. He was fucking with me. Fine, I thought. I'll play your game.

"OK then," I said. "Put it in."

Kyle shook his head. "I tried running it before. All the data seems to be corrupted." Of course it is.

"Try it again," I insisted. I was curious to see what exactly was on the floppy disk. Kyle shrugged and plucked the disk from the envelope. He inserted it into the computer's drive and waited.

"Watch, now," he said. He opened up the floppy's data folder on the display, which contained a single executable file. Untitled.exe, it was called. He clicked on the file, which produced a black command-prompt box for a split second before displaying an error message. Without closing it, he turned towards me. "It just crashes. That's it."

"I got an idea," I said. "I'll just take the disk back home in the morning and copy it onto my computer. Maybe I can make it work."

Just then the error message on the monitor disappeared. The command box returned, and maximized itself on its own, filling the screen with darkness. Kyle was still facing away from the monitor while this was happening. "Turn around, the program's running!"

Just as Kyle faced the monitor, the black box completely covered the screen, obscuring even the operating system's interface. Static began to fill it, until it appeared as pure noise not unlike television snow. I witnessed a humanoid shape within the flickering light, as one would see in an optical illusion. The static turned red and the shape took form.

"I THOUGHT YOU KNEW BETTER!" a deep voice boomed from the cheap speakers on the desk. The sound quality of the voice couldn't possibly have been produced by the speakers, it was too hyper-realistic. The figure on the screen grew more and more into focus.

I was terrified at what I saw. I didn't really know why; it was pixels on a monitor, only a complete moron would actually fear it. In the view was a man dressed in a cheap leather vest. A patch with a picture of a pentagram was tattooed onto the vest, coupled with "MC 666" in blood red text below it. He was wearing a goofy top hat. He had, of course, black eyes with red pupils. Why wouldn't he?

MC 666 looked at us and laughed that terrifying Kefka laugh. "Don't copy that floppy! Or you will die a horrible death muhahahaha!"

"Uh," I really didn't know what to make of it. I always wanted to see a haunted piece of technology, and it fascinated me. Even if it were possessed, I knew it couldn't do shit, that it was only using scare tactics and boring literary devices. But maybe I could talk to it...

"... How the fuck could I do that?" It was as if this entire situation was making me believe nonsense. And now it was making me feel like feeling like it was making me feel nonsense was nonsense. If MC 666 was trying to possess me, I was going to butt fuck him before throwing him out of my mind.

"I can hear you, cockshit!" MC 666 yelled in that extremely hyper-realistic voice. "Talk to me, you know you want to."

"Fine," I said. I sounded so stupid and expected Kyle to break out in a laugh when it escaped my lips, but he didn't. "What do you want?"

"I want you to take this floppy disk," the zombie-like figure from behind the screen said. "And I want you to send it in the mail to another one of your friends. Attach a note to it, and act super scared and tell them to burn it or something stupid like that. He will play it, and I will KILL him!"

"Why haven't you killed us?" I asked.

MC 666 laughed like Kefka again. "You already have the instruments, the tools. The old man's box of shitty bootleg cartridges, that was me. I am all the sketchy old people at tag sales who give away games like that! And now my next victim will be compelled to play, and keep playing, my haunted games!"

"Your haunted games?" Kyle asked. "These games aren't haunted, they're just really bad."

"Do you understand now?" he asked. And the strangest part was, I did. I let him run his mouth anyway because I figured it would make him feel better.

"I am the embodiment of all darkness and clichés. I plant the shitty creepypasta ideas in the minds of terrible writers, and I laugh as pathetic fanbases gather around them. I am the black eyes with red pupils, I am the hyper-realistic blood. I am the eventless level, the intern, and the nostalgia boner. So don't FUCK with me. If you copy the floppy, I'll appear in the form of an incredibly strong doll and MURDER you!"

I copied the floppy anyways. MC 666 can go fuck himself. Still, I told Kyle that I needed to get back to my house (I actually am living with my parents right now), even though I planned to sleep over. It was just going to be too awkward if I stayed the night. When I got home, my parents were waiting for me at the front door. I told them what happened, and my mom got scared and said "you're moving with your auntie and your uncle in Bel-Air." I whistled for a cab and when it came near the license plate said "Fresh" and there were dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare but I thought, naw, forget it, yo holmes to Bel-Air. I pulled up to the house about seven or eight and said to the cabbie "yo holmes smell ya later." Looked at my kingdom, I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.

Comments • 0

Loading comments...