The Phantom Game

My name is Midori. If you're reading this, I hope you have found this before it's too late. I don't live the life of an ordinary girl; odd things happen to me. This is one anomaly that is still out there, still happening and that's why I'm warning you about this. I just hope that someone else isn't dragged into this like I was, or like how my friend Mai was.

The Game

The game looks harmless, like most do. It looks like any old Half-Life game for PS2, but it's much more.

At the beginning of a new game a VGUI will display, it's a sub-menu. The amount of options on the sub-menu depends on your living relatives, friends, and siblings. If you don't want to choose one of those names you can choose your own, but you will regret it.

"Why?" You may ask. Whatever name you chose is what all the NPC's refer to you to which is just some harmless feature, but here's the catch: whoever you choose on that menu will feel the pain of the in-game player.

The only out of place things are that you aren't Gordon Freeman, but you are whoever you've chosen on that sub-menu. Other than the person you play as feeling the same pain as the PCE (Player Controlled Entity) and the NPC's not referring to you as they should the game is just a regular copy of Half-life.

Oddly enough you can't browse the game files; either they aren't there or something is preventing users from searching through them.

The game appears without a warning, and disappears when you're done playing. what ever you do, destroy it! Smash the disk, scratch it to where it's unplayable, soak it in bleach. It doesn't matter how. Just make sure that its gone!

My Experience

How I know all this is because I played the game before. I didn't have my name chosen neither did I have the slightest idea of what was going on before the situation heated up, almost literally.

It was a brisk, overcast Sunday in march. I was in the front yard. Yes, I was looking for 4-leaf clovers, when a spot of orange reflected off my silvery, faded, blond hair and caught my attention. It was a soft yet vivid luminescent color. I was drawn to it like a moth to light. That's where I picked up the game, after taking it inside I was going to look for the owner as keeping would be not a good idea, considering I don't official own the game. Before I could do so Mai, Yuka, and Yunna rapidly entered my house. I remembered that we were doing our usual Sunday morning gaming, we were going to play Polybius, or at least the alleged remake.

"And we have arrived!" Mai exclaimed with excitement.

"Mai, be careful with that door. There's only one at the entrance!" I scolded.

"Oh come on Midori, Its not like I broke the door down!" Mai countered.

"Midori, do you have the ROM and emulator ready?" Yuka asked with a bit of fear.

"Hold all my calls and pause for a second... Is that a copy of Half-life?" Mai asked.

"...Yes... but let's just forget about that. Besides we already have plans." I said.

They all agreed and we went to my room, again, as we usually do almost every Sunday. I was starting up my computer when Mai asked where my Play-station 2 was.

"Uh... it broke... and I got rid of it." I bluffed

"Ah-HA!" Yunna exclaimed. "Found it!" She pulled up my old PS2 unit

"Dammit, she dug it out!" I whispered to myself in defeat.

I tried to leave to get rid of the game, but Yuka has a certain way of getting into your mind. Her Psycik-force-focus ability, as I've named it, Works almost all the time. Yuka mounted my computer chair, Yunna was seated on my bed, and Mai sat beside me in front of the TV. The game worked, I felt a flood of nostalgia once I saw the vintage valve logo. Seeing the familiar low poly models and low resolution graphics just made me more happy. I forgot the fact that this may have been someone else's game.

I started the game on hard mode, Before the usual start of the game a small sub-menu appeared. I scanned the options, I decided to choose Mai once I saw the option. There was a small mocking giggle that came from Yuka and Yunna but It didn't matter to me.

The game was normal for the most part, The only thing was that I found blatantly out of place was that I was never referred to as 'Freeman' or 'Gordon'.

"Sorry Mai, but I have espliset orders NOT to let you through without your Hazard Suit on." Is what the guard at the first door said.

"Mai! Who would have thought you'd still be alive!" Is what the scientists would tell me when they spotted me after the incident started.

I knew it wasn't a glitch because the vocalizations were flawless, they didn't pronounce her name like:"Mee-y" "Ma-ee" or"Me-a-ee", they pronounced it: "Mah-I".

This was a little creepy but I just shook it off because It wasn't anything really bad. I was whizzing through the game, I killed all zombies I found, every vortigaunt I saw, and all barnacles without taking any damage. I than came to the meat-locker area. I was toying with the meat, just smashing it with the crowbar until it broke into bouncy gibs spattering the old blood sprites on the ground.

After I broke all the meat and we all stopped laughing at the fact that the meat used human gibs I continued on, I encountered a bullsquid in the next room. I switched to the shotgun to kill it. I was about to shoot it but before I could press R2 to fire the bullsquid spat at me, the blobs of acid from the spit hit the screen. Mai falls over, her hands encasing her face as she screamed in agony.

"Mai? Whats wrong?" I asked

"My face is melting!" She yells from under her hands.

After Mai stopped moving I removed her hands from her face. It was okay, Mai's face wasn't burned or wounded. She was fine. I was worried, I was going to stop playing but again Yuka did it again, I was compelled to play it. This still continued for a long time, and Mai felt a different pain for each different way I took damage. I'd get shot with a hornet gun in the stomach, Mai felt a stabbing pain in her stomach. I'd take fall damage, Mai felt as if her legs fracturing. Over and over again, Yuka kept me there, as far as I know you can't resist against doing what Yuka tells you to when she does her trick without a high emotional state. Yuka kept making me playing, It was almost as if she didn't care about Mai's pain. The thing that tore me away from Yuka's psychic grasp was when I made it to the gargantua boss fight, I dreaded it. Then the garg lit me on fire, Mai fell to the ground, screaming in agony and rolling around.

"Why'd you stop playing Midori?" Yuka asked, hypnotically. "Why don't you just continue playing?"

Yuka was trying to get me to continue, but knowing how much pain Mai would go through with about 3 hours of gameplay left I was able to resist. I felt the worm-like tapping of Yuka's disturbingly animate fingers on my shoulders, She usually does this to finalize her order. I immediately turned around, smacked Yuka's hands away, and clenched her shoulders tightly.

"WHAT IS IT WITH YOU YUKA?! CAN'T YOU SEE THE SUFFERING THAT MAI IS GOING THROUGH?!!" I snapped straight at Yuka.

She just teared up as Yunna rushed over to comfort her. I knelt beside Mai, she stopped moving, her breathing was reduced to short spasms of her lungs. She'd let out a rapid gasp which would expel violently from her mouth, tossing her short midnight black hair. her eyes were tightly shut, mouth gaping open as she just rested there on her stomach. Exhausted from the pain.

Then my cousin Seiko violently burst in, nearly destroying the door.

"What was all the screaming about?" Seiko persistently asked.

I told Seiko my whole understanding of what the game was doing, what was happening, what caused Mai to scream, and even how this whole predicament started. Seiko decided to see for herself what was going on, Mai was resting on my bed while the rest of us try to restrain Seiko from nearing the PS2. She got past us eventually, and started the game, we were all too tired to even think of preventing her from playing. Seiko selected the name 'Mai' just like I did, she was doing fine until she got the the first jumping puzzle, Seiko missed one of the hanging containers and fell to her death. Mai woke up from her recovery nap and began to scream again. She grasped her legs, crying, screaming, Mai kept yelling that her legs were shattered when we asked what was wrong, she would be hard to help her calm down considering the fact just touching her legs just made the pain hugely greater.

I couldn't stand seeing Mai like this, the others kept trying to help her by telling her to calm down, to just rest her legs, and they even put ice on them, but I had an almost perfect understanding of why Mai was feeling this horrid pain at this point, it was something with the game, and I knew the only way I could help her. I shut off the PS2 and ejected the disk. I felt a sense of relief as I heard Mai's crying and screaming die down, reducing to less and less until she stopped.

I decided to look through the games files, Sliding the disk into my computer and ready to see just what was causing my closest friend so much suffering. To my shocking surprise the directory was barren, not a folder, file, or even image in was on the disk. I was disappointed that I couldn't find out what caused her all the suffering.

I threw it into the trash bin, waiting for Thursday when the damned thing will be removed. I checked back on Wednesday night just to make sure that the bin was still upright. I spotted a raccoon digging through the bin, It spotted me, knocked over the bin and ran off with the game in its jaw.

I'm glad the thing is gone, out of my life and my friends' lives. I just hope nobody else finds it and suffers the way Mai did.

I later sought out answers to what had happened, I later found there were fifty one other accounts of this happening, each disappearing just like how it did the last time, with an odd looking raccoon digging around and running off with the case in its maw. This frightened me, and that's why I'm posting this here... as a warning to all who may find this.

Just get rid of that disk.

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