ORGANIC.exe
My name is Jeremy. I'm not the kind of person who has superstitions or scares easily. I've never really known the "fun" of being scared at a ghost story or movie like my friends obsess over. But I can tell you that for the first time in my life I am afraid, and I cannot claim the same enjoyment my friends do. I live alone, in a small apartment. With all my things in the living area, there was no room for my computer, so it's in my bedroom. I spend a lot of time on it- I have never been a social butterfly, my hobbies are lonely ones. In fact, lately I have been playing mostly indie games. I'm a fan of unique, quirky games, so I will try just about anything once. A few of those have been horror or horror themed games, but none have ever frightened me.
On Thursday, July 5th, I was surfing for new or obscure games. In my search, I found a website that intrigued me. There had been a post on a forum I had been frequenting, with simply the address. The post remained, but the user's account had been deleted. All of the information, instead of being deleted or redacted, was replaced with gibberish. You could tell words were behind the fonts and symbols, but not what they said. Fascinated by this, and assuming it was some kind of viral advertising, I went to the site to check it out. The website itself displayed nothing but a black screen, reflecting my own, tired face back at me. I hovered my mouse over the browser's back button but almost as soon as I did, a short timer appeared, in simple white font. 10...9...8... When the timer reached zero, a video appeared. I looked like a web cam feed, showing a guy – maybe in his mid twenties, like myself- in a dark room, maybe a bedroom. His face was illuminated by the light of a monitor. Suddenly, it went dark... but after a moment, his glasses reflected the same countdown I had seen. When his countdown concluded, loud abrasive static issued forth from my speakers. I quickly reached to turn the volume down, only to find they were quite low, nearly at it's lowest setting. Instead, I powered the speakers off entirely, ridding the air of the static. While I had been fiddling with my speakers, I missed part of the video. When I finally looked back at the screen, the chair was empty, and the eerie glow of the monitor was cast across the room, giving a dull blue hue to all it reached. Above the video, a file name had appeared: ORGANIC.EXE. Must be the game, I figured, as I clicked it, quite intrigued. It downloaded the file to my desktop right away, and far faster than I would have expected for a file of that size.
In hindsight, I should have clicked back before the count down; I should have closed the window and never gone back. But with such a monotonous life, I took any small chance to feel reckless and ran with it. I went back to my desktop. ORGANIC.EXE was there. It's icon looking like the image of an animal cell, the ones we would memorize in high school biology- but it was black, the organelles white, and the nucleus a deep red. Once again, lead by my fatal curiosity, I moused over and clicked on it, waiting moments for it to load. It didn't take long for a noise to occur... a soft, rumbling noise, a noise that put me to mind of tree roots, for some reason. Tree roots growing and burrowing through soil. I couldn't understand why I could hear it, I had turned my speakers off not a moment before. I reached to turn them on, and the noise only became clearer.
I looked back to the screen once more- again, in my distraction, the screen had changed. A window was up now- the game. It was a simple black screen, with no title, but GO, OPTION, and CREDIT, in fuzzy letters. I felt a little dizzy looking at them, so I selected 'OPTION' to see what was available. The options appeared to be the normal game fare, though much more simple than what I was used to. No options for graphics, just some sound and controls, and one strange option that stood out to me. Instead of having a title like 'sound', there was only black. To the right of it were two options- YES and NO. It had defaulted to YES, and I left it as it was.
I left OPTION alone and moved to CREDIT. When I opened the CREDIT page, a loud digital sounding noise issued from my speakers, and the program went mad- the box jumped all over my screen while glitched out, pixellated bullshit flickered inside it. I was unable to close it manually, so I did so from the task manager. I wasn't freaked out, but in hindsight I had lots of reason to be. But, as I said, I'm not terribly freaked out by things.
This time, when I opened the program, I chose GO right off. When some of the same pixellated bullshit started, I was about to go to the taskbar and get the fuck out, but after a moment, it settled. The pixels seemed to fall into place, forming into the ground and sky... afterwards, some platforms and what appeared to be my character. It was simple, reminiscent of old platformers for the Super Nintendo. It wasn't the best pixel rendering, but it did have clearly a white shirt, and a long coat. Remembering the controls, I tried them out. He didn't move at all, just stayed still. I was annoyed, and started to press different buttons, testing each... still, nothing. I sat back, exasperated, and the character turned, facing me... no, staring at me. I felt my breath catch in my throat, and watched it. Like some kind of endless, silent staring contest, I just watched. Suddenly and without warning, the program closed. It caused me to jump, and I thought I might have turned off the power, because as soon as I jumped, the computer turned off. But examining the power bar, everything seemed normal. I turned the computer back on again, just to make sure everything was normal, that I hadn't downloaded some virus, but everything was normal... except, ORGANIC.EXE was gone. There was no trace of it, not even in the recycle bin. I figured the whole thing was freaky, but it was probably all programmed in by the guy who made the game. It was just some kind of avant garde artistic bullshit, and didn't make for a very good game. It was late, and I decided to go to bed.
I always sleep with my back to the computer, facing my wall. I can't say why, but- you know how people, some people, sleep in the same position night after night, and have a hard time sleeping if made to lay in a different position? Yeah, that's me. Anyway, I slept soundly that night, and the next few. It wasn't until a few days later that it began to bother me. I couldn't sleep, and after a few nights I began to feel like someone was watching me... no, not really watching. Just staring at me... through me. I couldn't shake the feeling, but I just dismissed it as some symptom of a lack of sleep. I began to feel it during the day too, constantly. Every time I turned around, nothing was there. It became less of a symptom, and more the cause of my insomnia. I couldn't sleep with something staring me down.
Then, a few nights ago, I got back on the computer as I do every night, and immediately noticed something wrong. Every icon on my desktop had changed. Every icon was that same black white and red cell, like ORGANIC.EXE. The shortcut names were replaced with random gibberish. I recalled then, the user who had posted ORGANIC.EXE, and the way his information had been just... gibberish. I tried clicking the icons, but nothing would load. I decided to reboot. When the screen came up again, it was different- the cells were black, but the organelles had migrated to the centre, surrounding the nucleus. Each and every icon was an eye, staring , unseeing, straight at me. Suddenly, a browser window popped up, navigating itself to a website. I had never seen it before, but it seemed to be a gaming forum. Without even logging in, it created a new post. I watched as it typed, number by number, the address to the website I had downloaded the program from. The page refreshed, and showed me that it had been posted, the same gibberish obscuring all other information as before. Another refresh, and I was back at the site... that fucking site. I watched as the light to my webcam turned on, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Once again, it counted down from ten... but instead of the video, it showed me myself.
I felt the blood drain from my face, and watched myself go pale as I saw the reason for my feelings of unease over the past weeks. There he was- his white shirt, long coat.... but it was tattered, and though my monitors glow reached it, I could tell the frayed edges of the clothing, and across the chest were dark stains- stains that could only have been blood. I couldn't see his face, he was too tall... my view ended at his chest. I swallowed, hard, shutting my eyes for a moment. I opened them, and the figure was still there. I was too afraid to turn around and look at his... it's face. Just as I thought I had grown brave enough to turn around and look, the video closed, leaving only black. Black in which I could see the reflection of the gaunt, eyeless grinning face leaning down and hovering above my shoulder. I felt tears fall from my own eyes as I stared at the creature. The blood around his sockets and mouth as long dried, in parts flaking off. His lips, I realized, were not there, sliced off roughly, like someone had taken a cheese grater to his face. It was then I heard a voice in my ear. Hello, Jeremy. I ran then. I pushed the chair violently away as I dashed from the room, and house. I could still feel him watching me, but when I turned to look there was nothing there... I don't know if there had ever been anything there.
In the days since the events, I've been trying to figure it out. I'd read about some sounds that can make you hallucinate, and was drawn to the sounds I first heard when I opened the program... But it didn't make sense. Nothing made sense about anything that had happened. All I know is now, I'm here in this hotel room, alone, and I can feel him watching me. I keep looking to see him, but he isn't there. I can only hear his breath by my ear. I reach back and touch him, but he isn't there. But he watches. He stares.
I'm taking this last chance to get this out there, and tell my story. I have no choice but to cut myself off from computers now. I can't use them anymore, any computer I touch changes, all those fucking icons, ORGANIC.EXE... every one I touch posts that damn link, always on different sites. I don't know what it is, but I don't want to spread it anymore. I'm haunted by this program, infected. Please, don't open that program, if you find it. And if anyone ever asks you what happened to me... just tell them I love them, and I'm sorry.
Credited to Tylociraptor
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