Pulling the Plug | Creepypasta

I don’t play video games anymore.

Some people grow out of video games, saying it’s kids stuff. I used to know a guy who was the complete opposite; his name was Jerry and he was into video games in a big way. He had this collection of video games that dated way back to the eighties, his room was like a shrine to gaming through the years. He was always after some obscure console or game I’d never heard of, and whenever he got hold of a new item for his collection he’d come into school beaming, hyperactive like a kid waiting to go to Disneyland.

“I can’t wait to get home and play it!” he’d say, almost bouncing in his seat. Some days, he’d bunk off school just to play his new games (his parents were separated, I never found out what his mum did for a living but she was never home most days of the week). He used to keep a blog, just some freebie website from blogspot or the like, and he’d write about his latest acquisition every time. The blog was taken down (thank god) long ago but I kept some of the funnier posts.

His room was stuffed to bursting with boxes and cartridges. What he really needed was a proper space to keep everything in but Jerry made the best out of the limited room offered by his bedroom. The guy made money from part-time work, but it all went towards growing his collection. It was a fanatical obsession for the guy.

I’d go around on weekends to see his latest items. I down-played my interest – I liked video games, sure, but I preferred the newer ones on the modern consoles. Secretly, I was fascinated by Jerry’s collection, the guy always had some insider knowledge into each game and console, a walking encyclopaedia of gaming. He knew all the secret routes, all the cheat codes, the level layouts and the boss patterns. Jerry lived in the world of video games.

There was one game he always wanted above all, the “Holy Grail” as we jokingly called it.

“Found the Holy Grail yet Jerry?” I’d tease him. He’d shake his head and chuckle.

“I’m working on it buddy, I’ve got a few leads I’m following,” he’d reply. The guy had a basic computer and access to the internet, so I never doubted it. I always pictured him speaking to similar people online, that sort of semi-autistic sort that don’t let hygiene and social graces get in the way of their hobbies. Don’t get me wrong, Jerry was my best friend, but we both acknowledged daily that he wasn’t in the best shape and occasionally forgot to shower for three days (it used to get in the way of his gaming).

The Holy Grail was, on first glance, not worth the acclaim. It was a simple black unlabelled cartridge designed for an Atari 2600. At estimate, there was only one in existence and it regularly circulated online for varying prices (that should have been a hint, looking back now). The “official name” for the cartridge and the game it contained, according to Jerry, was “Batch Item #562, Code 12”. The code was apparently a quality control grade using for internal testing which meant “this item is defective and should be destroyed, not for public consumption”. Jerry also had another story that suggested an angry, underpaid employee produced the cartridge himself late one night and then promptly hung himself. I could never corroborate Jerry’s stories or “facts”, but then I didn’t frequent the same nooks of the internet he did, mostly out of fear for the health of my computer. The contents of the game itself were vague at best, although “locked room mystery” and “ultimate horror game” were often phrases Jerry said he’d heard it described as.

I’d regularly pop around on weekends, walk right into his house (he never locked the door) and see him sat at the computer, glum at a closed eBay auction he’d lost.

“I almost had it mate,” he’d grumble. “I came this close!” He’d theatrically shake his fist at the monitor and cry “I’ll get you next time, 562! You will be mine!” and then we’d laugh and get back to playing whatever new games he’d added to his collection.

The last time I saw Jerry in person, he was ecstatic.

“I’ve got it mate, I won it last night!” he said, shaking with excitement. “I’m going to collect it from the post office after school, you wanna come over and play it tonight?”

I didn’t normally do things after school, but this was a special occasion; Jerry had finally found his Holy Grail.

I headed home after school, got washed and changed and then walked to Jerry’s, about twenty minutes away. The front door was open and I walked straight in as usual, and I was saying something like “so what’s it like?” as I walked into his room, only to find it empty.

The TV was on and the Atari was sat in front of it, cables haphazardly knotted where Jerry had hastily pulled it out of “storage” to plug it in. The black cartridge was there in it, and there was a bright green screen on the TV with some moving pixels on it. I’d never been very impressed by the Atari, and this looked like just another basic Atari game. I called out for Jerry and left his room to see if he was in the bathroom, ignoring the various beeps and boops coming from the TV. Jerry wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

I went back to his room and sat on his bed, calling out that I wasn’t impressed by him hiding himself and that he was missing all the fun. I grabbed the joystick off the floor and sat it in my lap, noting that Jerry’s manky trainers were on the floor – he couldn’t have gone far. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Jerry had popped to the shops barefoot, it’s not something out of the realm of impossibility for the guy.

When I first played Item Batch #562, it struck me as being broken. There were a lot of black and white square pixels scattered around the screen, and a collection of pink, red and blue pixels in the shape of a man. However, moving the joystick had no effect on the little man whatsoever, he just moved in circles of its own accord. I was beginning to think that however much money he’d spent, it was too much – this game was clearly broken.

A white box appeared on screen with words made out of big, black pixels. It was accompanied by a low “boop” of noise.

HELP was written in the box.

I looked at the meagre selection of buttons on the Atari joystick and tried to figure out which one the help button was.

STUCK appeared on screen in the box now, accompanied by another low boop. This game was getting abstract.

The little man on the screen ran in circles a few times and then jumped up and down a few times. I put the controller to one side and watched it for a bit. Another box appeared, another boop. My name appeared in the box.

“That’s funny,” I said aloud to myself, “Jerry’s put my name in already.”

A series of words now appeared in the box, each punctuated by a boop from the Atari.

JERRY

ME

JERRY

HELP

STUCK

I was beginning to think that Jerry was having a bloody good laugh at my expense, but a creeping sense of dread quelled my chuckles as I looked around his room. His trainers were on the floor, his wallet was on the side table nestled against his keys and his school bag was set down next to the wardrobe. Even the bunched up markings on the quilt implied that Jerry had been here one minute, and gone the next.

The Atari beeped some more-

PLEASE

HELP

VERY

SCARED

WANT

MUM

I was beginning to freak out now. The size of the letters the Atari could produce meant that the little man could only say words up to six letters long to fit the words on screen, and the flat boop produced every time was quite unsettling. I then realised that the little pixel man had pink pixels for feet. Jerry doesn’t wear socks, it’s one of his quirks. He’s always barefoot under his trainers, and his trainers were on the floor-

-I stood up, shocked. Jerry was trapped in the game. His little pixelated form ran in circles, accompanied by high-toned beeping. I realised he was screaming. Looking at the screen in detail, the bright green could easily be some sort of open grass field, but what of the white pixels? Rocks? A horrifying though occurred: the green might be the best representation of a mossy, dank dungeon the Atari could produce, meaning that the white could be…

The cartridge circulated online, from one person to the next. What happened to them? I think Batch Item #562 was the last game they ever played. They turned it on and were pulled into it, where they never left. The white and black, thinking about it, was probably the skeletal remains of the cartridge’s previous owners, having been…eaten? Eaten by the game? Was that the goal, not to turn off the console, else you lose? The only way to win is to not turn off the game, and prolong the inevitable?

What happened next? I sat there for the best part of three hours, watching the screen and considering my options.

I could turn the console off and on again, but that would probably trap me along with Jerry. What would happen if I turned off the console? Would the game eat him and add him to its collection of corpses? The collector, collected? What would happen if there was a power cut, would it count that as a victory and eat him anyway?

I don’t know anything mystic, or anyone magical. This isn’t like a kid’s story, we don’t have any old gypsy ladies who live down the road from us to help free Jerry from his cartridge prison. Even if I did manage to find someone, I had visions of Jerry emerging from the TV, malformed into a collection of fleshy cubes. Silly thoughts, not worth thinking.

The entire time, the words crying for help played over and over, with that damn booping every time. After a few hours, Jerry’s pixels went horizontal. He was lying down. The occasional soft beep, I realised, was him crying.

I could go away, let this thing sort itself out. But then what? I’d come back in a few days only to find the console still turned on, Jerry still lying there crying, having been trapped for over 72 hours in a pixelated limbo? I could hope his mum might turn up and just turn off the console, but then that would leave some very awkward questions for when I reappeared looking for the missing Jerry a few days later. I could leave her a note? “Sorry, your son is trapped in video game, pls don’t turn it off”. Like that was going to pass.

These are the thoughts that went over and over in my head. Come the end, I made a difficult decision. Jerry was my friend, and if I was in his position I’d want to get it over with. I approached the Atari and spoke to the TV.

“I’m sorry mate,” I said, choking up as my eyes watered, “I think this is for the best.”

I couldn’t bring myself to look at the series of words that flashed up on screen, each with a frantic boop of disapproval. Crying, I pressed the power button, and the screen went black. My mate Jerry was gone. I cried for what felt like forever.

Later on, I’d consider it irony that Jerry was literally consumed by his hobby. He would have liked that, in a way. He’d have laughed.

I took the cartridge with me. I thought about destroying it. I opened it up once, just to see what was inside. There was a mucus-like slime over the circuit board and what looked like a pulsating brown stomach integrated into one of the chips. When it started chirping at me, I put the casing back on, threw the cartridge into a lockbox and hid it under my bed, where I spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling while the thoughts of what I’d seen kept me awake.

There was an investigation into Jerry’s disappearance. I told the police I hadn’t seen him. His mum was very upset, but I didn’t think the truth would make it any better. The investigation stopped a month or two later. Jerry’s mum popped around to give me a few things from his collection, which I appreciated. She sold the rest and moved away.

The cartridge is back out on the open market now. I figured Jerry would have wanted it that way, the legendary Batch Item #562 out there, doing the rounds. Eating people. Let it eat someone else’s best friend, why not? When I last saw it, it was on the shelf of a charity shop. I couldn’t bring myself to ask money for it.

As for me, I’ve now got this stigma about video games. I can’t play them, at all. Every time I put one on, I begin to get this notion that the people in it might be real, and if I turn off the console they’ll cease to exist, until the next time I play. It’s really stupid, I know, but I used to find myself really struggling to turn the power off. The thing that did it for me was when I was playing an assassination game once, and as I was about to turn the console off the main character, I swear, turned to look at me out of the screen and a single tear rolled down his cheek.

I broke down in tears. That was the last time.

Hello! This is my second attempt at writing creepypasta/horror fiction. You can read my attempt from last year to write a creepy story if you enjoyed this one, last’s year was called “The Pained Man“. This year, I thought I’d write about something a little closer to my heart: video games!

If you enjoyed this or (hopefully) found it creepy as hell, you can comment below using Twitter, Facebook or Google+ and let me know!

Happy Halloween!

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | October 31, 2014 at 12:00 am | Halloween, Video Games | No comment

Tags: Atari, creepypasta, Halloween, old-school gaming