The Polybius Curse
Back when I was young, my friend Joe and I would always play arcade games. Joe was the best at arcade games. He had the high score on nearly every arcade cabinet. Well... until May of 1981, when a brand-new cabinet was added that nobody had heard of. It was a black cabinet with a few scratches on the bottom. On the top of the cabinet it read in blue, "POLYBIUS."
When Joe first saw it, he ran up to the ominous cabinet and stared at it for a few seconds. He said that he wasn't sure if he should play it. This was completely out of character for Joe, because arcade games were his life; he played them nearly every day. He once played Mortal Kombat for three hours straight.
Everyone told Joe to play the game, because they all wanted to see if he could get the high score. Joe sighed and went up to the game and inserted his money. The screen went red for a few seconds and then turned black. Then the words "SINNELSÖSCHEN" popped up onto the screen.
This confused the people watching because they thought it was made by Atari. The game then displayed two options, "PLAY" and "OPTIONS." Joe looked worried; he was almost sweating. Everyone watching told Joe to press PLAY, and so he did.
The game turned out to be some sort of shooter game, but it was hard to tell because of all the flashing colours in the background. Joe seemed to be controlling some sort of space craft that shot at these flying circles. It seemed that words popped up onto the screen for a very short time, though Joe said he didn't notice. Joe played the game for about 30 minutes, until the words "GAME OVER" filled the screen. Joe suddenly got enraged and started kicking the cabinet several times until he ran off. Everyone was confused: why did Joe suddenly freak out?
Nobody else decided to play Polybius because they were too scared that something might happen to them, but I started getting really interested in the game. I was curious to how it made Joe so angry. I still had a few coins in my pocket so I decided to play the game. It was really confusing because of all the flashing colours hurting my eyes and the frantic music playing. I decided to stop playing and just go home.
That night, I had a dream about that Polybius cabinet. It was sitting in an empty room, and appeared to be broken, with its window cracked and its sides scratched. Then Joe and I appeared inside the room, just staring at the lonesome cabinet. Then a giant flash of light burst out of the Polybius arcade cabinet filling the room, which woke me up. I was covered in sweat and breathing heavily. All I could think about was the Polybius cabinet.
The next day I went back to see the Polybius arcade, when I realized it was gone. I was upset that the game was gone before I could get to play it again. It wasn't really a surprise it had been removed, since that it was impossible to understand what you had to do in the game. I decided that I would just play some Atari basketball and just forget about Polybius.
That day when I went home my mom came to me with a really upset face. Joe was dead. He had hung himself last night. The police were all around Joe's house and Joe's mom was bursting with tears. I couldn't believe that my best friend had killed himself. Why would he even do that? I couldn't shake the feeling that this had something to do with Polybius.
Also, just after Joe's death every Polybius cabinets were removed without a trace, and Sinneslöschen, the company that made Polybius, was never heard from again. Though the thing that scared me the most was the fact that after the police searched Joe's room, they found that the window had been smashed, and a note was lying under Joe's dead feet that said the words, "HE CANNOT ESCAPE"
Originally uploaded on October 13, 2012
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