literature

Sonic.exe Darkest Struggles - But What About Kyle?

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Within my dream, I was sitting on a chair surrounded by pitch-black darkness, the only source of light being a lamp that hung high above my head. I felt that the only safe haven was under that light, so I stayed where I was. The only sound that I could hear in the beginning was the loud buzzing of static, and then, it turned into the crackling of burning wood to the left and the grinding of gears to the right. I looked for the sources of the sounds, but I couldn't see anything past the darkness. That was, until the sides of the room opened to reveal that they were coming from screens depicting the flaming Angel Island Zone and the rusted Scrap Brain Zone from the game. However, they didn't look pixelated like they were in the game. No, they looked more realistic as if they have been made using the best technology available today. Every leaf, blade of grass, and bolt had an unnerving realness to them.

Then, the darkness returned before lifting again, showing Tails and Knuckles in their distorted tortured states, clinging to the screens. They stretched with the fox's and echidna's every clawing movement as if they were made of clear and flexible plastic. The poor souls were crying out to me while trying to get free. They were saying, "Help us...", "Why did you give us to him?", and "Run away, before he gets you too..." in a loop, switching lines from time to time. It wasn't long before I started to notice their voices had a distorted and echoed quality to them. Suddenly, I saw a tattered white-gloved hand reach out from the darkness in between the screens. It stopped, and shot up into the air, the open palm snapping into a fist at the apex. As soon as the hand closed, everything within the screens froze in place. With a familiar dreaded laugh, the rest of the hedgehog lurched out from the darkness until he was fully lit, but he was flickering in and out in several directions, like the reality around him was being warped.

"Hello." His voice was as monstrous and echoed as his laughter in the game. Now I was sure this was also how and why Tails' and Knuckles' voices sounded the way they did a moment ago. His influence spread to them, corrupting their very existence. Sonic laughed again while his eyes were fixed on me. I tried to back away, but my feet refused to move. I could only slump back in my seat. "Like what I did here?" He waved his arms around as if he was an art gallery curator. I shook my head in response. A person would have to be quite sick to enjoy this.

"These are only my first changes." He looked towards me again. "You're a lot fun to play with kid, just like your friend Kyle, though he didn't last long." I attempted to get out of the chair, but it was no use. I looked down and saw that my arms and legs were strapped in shackles. I attempted to speak, but to no avail. I needed to know about Kyle and what he did to him, but absolutely nothing came out. I was frightened, looking at the monster before me. He snapped his fingers and I fell to the ground as the chair disappeared from under me. I scrambled to my feet, utterly confused. Was he letting me free? No... He was toying with me.

Suddenly, the demented hedgehog warped close to me; bringing his face uncomfortably close to mine. "You have something to ask me?" Before I opened my mouth to try to answer him, he warped back to where he was. "It doesn't matter. It won't be long now until you join him and all of my other friends." He continued to walk towards me and floated up to my height. Despite him only being the size of a child, I was utterly terrified. I attempted to run, but felt I was sinking on the spot. When I looked down, small dark shapes were clawing at my legs, dragging me down through the floor. I attempted to get free, but I just couldn't. "You can't run, kid. You're in my world now. Just like the others." He came closer to me and reached out his hand, almost touching my face.

I awoke from my dream with a fright, falling forward out of my chair onto the floor. I looked around the room in a cold sweat, trying to make sure that I was safe as I rose to my feet. I would normally brush off the events within my dreams, because they were ever only ever that: dreams. I knew they would not affect the waking world, other than making me cranky in the morning. However, this nightmare had so much significance given the current events. I turned the computer back on while replaying the events in my head. Did a game character really just communicate to me through my dreams? Preposterous! But, then why did I shut down so early in the day to have that nightmare at the exact time that I turned my computer off? Finally, I remembered the jewel case with that folded paper stuffed inside that I carelessly disregarded earlier. I picked up the case from the coffee table in the living room and took it to my room. I thought that the piece of paper would shed some light on what has been going on, so I took it out and unfolded it. I gasped at what I read. This wasn't an instruction sheet as I had foolishly thought; it was a letter from Kyle. It read:

"Tom,
If you're reading this, it's too late for me. Please Tom, destroy this godforsaken disc. I'm hoping you'll be more successful than I was. If you don't destroy this CD, he'll come after you too. Don't even play the game, it's what he wants.
If you do play...don't fight back. Don't try deleting it or trying to resist playing becuase he will retaliate without merch. I suffered greatly for it. Nightmares about him plagued me for days. I even tried destroying the CD myself, but he already had an influence over me. Just hope that he will be kinder to you than he has been to me.

Please...
Kyle"

"Kyle...?" I dropped the letter and hung my head low, feeling so guilty for not heeding what could have been my final interaction with my best friend. I berated myself for not noticing this sooner. Questions swirled in my head as I kept trying to fully comprehend what I read. He wouldn't lie to me, but what he was saying just didn't make sense. Was this the reason he sent this game to me; to destroy it? Where did he get this CD? What happened to him? Is it too late to destroy the disc since it's in my computer now? Should I destroy my computer? What did he mean when he said someone had an influence over him? Who could that possibly be?  Then, a feeling of being in danger washed over me. "Who's after me? It couldn't be that Sonic. He's a fictional character after all." I thought as I nervously and forcedly chuckled to myself. Then fear gripped me. "Maybe it's the one who made this game. What trouble did Kyle get himself, and now me, into?"

I barricaded the door, locked the windows, and closed the blinds to make sure that nothing could get in. Seeing what kind of sick thing he produced, my imagination got the better of me, and I thought of a tall nightmarish creature with sharp teeth and breath like a rotting corpse. Getting ahold of myself again, I decided to call Kyle's parents to tell them about the note that I got. I dialed the number and waited on edge to hear if they would pick up.

"Hello, is someone there?" a familiar voice said on the other end. It was Kyle and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Kyle! How are you, bro?"

"Tom! I'm doing well."

"That's a relief. I mean… I got your package and note."

"Note... note... Ah! You can disregard that. I am just fine, as you can hear. The nightmares seemed to be from being in this new place I guess."

"I'm certainly glad you're alright. You really gave me a startle there, considering how things have been going here. Say... Where did you get Sonic.exe?"

"Oh, just a friend that I met here in this new city gave it to me. Things have been a little rough for you, I can guess. Don't worry, you'll have no trouble on that Dr. Robotnik section. The trickiest parts are over. I'll leave you to it."

He hung up after that. The relief that washed over me from hearing his voice quickly snapped over to dread when I realized what words just came out of his mouth. I never explicitly mentioned I was playing the game. How could he have pieced together that I was playing the game, and how could he have known how far I had progressed? I certainly never mentioned which characters I had already played as. Was that really Kyle I was talking to on the other end? These questions and more started to add to the growing list in my head. I thought about calling the police or my parents, but they might think that I'm playing a trick on them, or worse, that I am insane. I didn't even believe what was going on myself.

I tried to calm down and think of rational explanations for these events. Maybe Kyle was being put up to playing a prank on me by his friend in the new city, and the nightmare was just because of some subliminal messages that I had missed in the game. That blue creature mentioned Kyle only because he was the one that gave this to me. Yeah that's it. This was only a game, nothing more. But why did I even want to sleep in the first place? And even if it was a prank, the fact he knew exactly how far I was had some pretty creepy implications. No. Something was watching me.

With a sense of paranoia that I was being watched through my windows, I closed my blinds and turned off all the lights I could. Just as I finished, a sound blasted out from my speakers that I didn't want to hear. It was the Sega chant, in all of its lying glory. This game certainly had nothing to do with the developers, publisher, or franchise I loved. Turning around, I saw it was right back at the title screen. I didn't set this to open upon start up. It must have been part of its programming, and that was another cheap trick I didn't appreciate. This was an executable file instead of a ROM for an emulator after all. The normal Sonic 1 title screen, now also known to be a detestable lie, greeted me. I still couldn't believe that this sicko had to recreate or import this into their game creator to fool people into believing that this was the original game, hiding this game's true nature. To see if there was a possible explanation to this madness, I moved my finger over the Print Screen key, and pressed Enter to start the game. When the title screen flashed its odd colors, I took a screen cap of it. Surprisingly, the game let me minimize it, allowing me to paste the screenshot into MS Paint so that I could finally see the true title screen. It was truly terrifying compared to what it was supposed to be.

Numerous stormy clouds darkened the sky. The plants were dried, dead, and orange, and the mountains were black and gray. The once blue water turned into a sea of crimson. Through the emotions of fear and confusion that it brought about, there was a troubling facet of this. These elements appeared as they did in my nightmare: more realistic than they should have been. The title screen's emblem was rusted and ruined. As for Sonic, his eyes were indeed pitch-black with two tiny glowing red pupils, with a crimson liquid seeping out from under them. His confident smirk had morphed to a sadistic smile that stretched wide, up to the edge of his face. The style of Sonic and the logo didn't change, as if these elements were mocking the original game. The dueling realistic and 16-bit styles created a stark contrast that unnerved me as my eyes went over every detail. This image I managed to miss before was foreshadowing what was to come. I looked in the corner, to see if there was a credit to identify who made this, but the only change was that the year in Sega 1991 was replaced with 666. A rather trite clue if ever there was one. Also preposterous. So the lovable Sonic the hedgehog was taken over by the very Devil himself or something? I would have expected the creator of this game to think of something else besides this cliché concept. However, I felt this wasn't the time to take this lightly.

After I observed it for a while, soaking in every gruesome aspect, I decided to save the image onto my computer. However, when I went to save it in My Documents, I saw a folder that wasn’t there before titled "I’m Watching." I clicked it, and to my horror, I found the folder contained screenshots of the game I was playing… and a picture of me from my webcam. This did not help my paranoia at all, and I almost deleted the folder immediately, even thought about destroying my computer, but I stopped myself as I remembered the note Kyle sent. He warned me not to fight back or resist, and when I turned off the computer out of frustration before, I must have been knocked out in order to have that nightmare, where that twisted Sonic tormented me. This was more than a coincidence. I didn't want to know what else might happen if I tried anything else the game might disagree with. Kyle did try to fight back and he paid for it, as he described. More than ever I was convinced that I hadn't been talking to my friend on the phone before. I started to face the reality that there may very well have been an imposter on the line, but if he was taken, and the imposter sent this disc, then it begged the question. How did they miss that he was passing me a warning? I suppose he slipped the case into the folder as his last act, to prevent the paper from being seen. That would have been a clever solution to this problem... if I didn't blow it off like I do with game instructions!
And now, we get to the dream bit. The part that gave very few players of the fangame the same thing, I believe. Did you get the same nightmare? Comment below on whether or not you did.

Chapter 1: sandvich33.deviantart.com/art/…
Chapter 2: sandvich33.deviantart.com/art/…
Chapter 3: sandvich33.deviantart.com/art/…
Chapter 4: You are here
Chapter 5: sandvich33.deviantart.com/art/…
Chapter 6: sandvich33.deviantart.com/art/…

Sonic (c) SEGA
Sonic.exe (c) JC-the-Hyena
Credit for the remake goes to :iconguardianmobius:
© 2014 - 2024 Sandvich33
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The-Blue-EM2's avatar

Moving Kyle's note to this point in the story makes more narrative sense.