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I clutched her hand tight.I didn't want to go so soon.I was barely twenty five.But the hospital and the doctors and the nurses,they opened me up,bled me and left me,tortured and immobile,chained to a bed and unable to do anything but think.And think I did,of everything I wanted to do,i would've done and could've been if i was bedridden and ill.But once the spasms began this morning,the doctors gave some grim news to me.I barely had a few hours to live.Now everyone had left me for dead. The one person beside me on my deathbed,was the person I thought I hated the most.She too,has eyes full of anger and tears but beautiful nonetheless.

When you are that low,you wouldn't mind company,no matter who.The tubes in my throat and hands and lungs fed me food to live and morphine for the pain.They were difficult to remove and well,even move.I gagged and felt a lump in my throat as she stroked my hair,holding a hand to her face,but crying anyway.

She asked me in her feeble voice"Why?Why did you go back to them?"

"Because I was so naive ,m'love"

A tear slid down my eyelids.If only i had been more brave and defended our marriage... If only i was able to fight those shitfaced smiling shits off... If only i was not so ill... If only i had loved her as she loved me... If only i could come back once to tell her how I felt... if only i had more... The body spasmed once more, The heart went weak and tore my chest. The morphine was wearing off. The bars and tubes felt so cold and so..hollow. Last thing I heard was a loud gasp and a louder beep. The Body was still immobile and The eyes still fixed,time stopped and a digital video game menu-esque screen opened up before me. There was a score counter that said

Age:24x multiplier Gender: Undecided --»(-6x cut from final score) Strength:Nil. Final Score:4,561. GAME OVER.

I thought of clicking with my hand, and a hand truer than my own rose out of a body,i didnot recognise.

Suddenly it said "DONOT DISASSOCIATE UNLESS YOU WISH TO ACCESS SPECTATOR MODE.YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CHANGE NOTHING AND THIS WILL BE PERMANENT.DO YOU STILL WISH RO CONTINUE (Y/N)?

I clicked N. It rolled a few credits,my mom and dad,my pet dog and little else that I could understand.

The screen went blank for a moment with a inverted triangle loading button rotating in the corner A tip in the bottom said:Dizziness is caused from lack of proper connection.

Then the menu screen opened and it said START A NEW SAVE CONTINUE IN CREATIVE MODE VISIT THE WORLD IN SPECTATOR MODE DELETE ALL PREVIOUS FILES. ACHIEVEMENTS SETTINGS I was clearly dumbstruck by this paradigm shift.Avid gamer that I was in the last few active years of my life,before those pigs began sucking my wealth and health dry,I wanted to look at achievements of mine. There were a few.But the rarest one of them was {ETERNALLY SAD} and it was achieved by quote"Staying miserable in the last few years of your life."end quote.

I never cared what was beyond life.If this was it then,when will it end for me? This worked by what rules,then what were those rules?

I could care less.I only cared about her and now I am going back to save her no matter what.

I clicked on "CONTINUE IN CREATIVE MODE".

A note popped up"This will enable cheat codes,all mods currently available.Balance changes are coming soon.Achievements will be locked ."

I could care less about achievements in this world.

I clicked twice and woke up in my hospital table,with her sleeping by my side,aware of my eventual death in a few hours.

There were two permanent buttons in my eyeline now.Hacks and mods.

I used the health hack,that restored me to my,original self,face,body and all. I woke from the table.She woke suddenly and looked surprised and confused.

I smiled.Atleast now will I be able to protect her.

Sorry about the grammer,typed it out on my phone and on bus.So yeah.Appreciate any checks.

I like the loading screen tips, lol, nice touch!

​

>Player: Jack Portman
>
>SCORE: 98
>
>TOP ACHIEVEMENT: FAMILY MONARCH- Have at least 7 grandkids by the time you die!
>
>Highlight: Marriage to Kirsten Mackenzie, July 16th, 2007.
>
>Would you like to Spectate, Play in Creative, Start A New File, or Return to Hub?

I was dead. I knew it. I heard the flatline, felt the tears hit my face with a splash as my sister, in her old age, saw her lifelong best friend and closest confidant pass from this world. I heard my son scream, wishing he had a punching bag, as he fell to the ground in tears. The room smelled homeless, sterile and insincere, but the aura of the room was anything but. Poor little Jack Jr, my daughter Lilly's kid, had only been born a month before, and didn't know what was going on. I was happy to see my successor before I passed.

The words haunted me.

>Spectate, Creative, New File, Return to Hub

I remembered everything. My birth, if hazy, was there. My brain knew that I was human, I had to be. I'd just lived a solid 98 years, after all! It wasn't like I was just... playing a game. No, I had a wife I loved, a construction job that I had done for 35 years, and a management job I had done until I was 73 and broke my hip. I had grandkids, my daughter Lilly was a lawyer, my younger son was a wonderful househusband, and my older son was a human rights advocate and had spoken to the UN. My family was successful. It wasn't just... simulation. It couldn't be.

My family was real.

Kay-baby was real.

I felt the helmet get yanked off of me, as bright lights blinded me.

The face staring down at me was one that took me a real good while to recognize.

Feeling came over me again. My limbs felt awkward to move, after having two very mobile arms and grippy fingers to work with. My own skin felt slimy, gross, like I was leaking. My body felt flat, lumpy, like it was falling apart. I could feel each and every wrinkle in the... table I was laying on. I felt my eyes shift around, muscles in my head moving them into different sockets so I could see from a wider angle. The idea that I had hands, and feet, solid, flowing together perfectly, felt foreign, as the muscle memory I had developed tried to find precise, detailed ligaments failed to work properly.

(the dialogue in this scene has been translated from Ygriggian in order to provide reading pleasure)

"How do you feel?"

The voice was tangy, tinted with a scent of orange that scraped against my very soul that I thought I'd had. My core shivered, as my memory of my old life failed to materialize. It was all I could do to scream.

"Are you okay?" He- no, it- placed a ligament on me, and the slimy gross feeling that I was experiencing was nothing but torture. I tried to smell, but recognized I had nothing to smell with. I opened what I thought was my mouth, to feel no tongue. Little but rows and rows of sharp teeth.

"Hey, hey, man, watch it!" he backed off. "I know it may be rough, but-"

I screamed.

I screamed, screamed, and screamed again. I made sure that the God I now knew was fictional, created by a machine, could hear me. I made sure that whoever created this machine, to convince me of a world where I was happy, cared for, and loved, would know the hell of leaving it.

Deep in my subconscious, I saw them.

>Spectate, Creative, New File, Return to Hub

Deep in my subconscious, I knew what I had to do. If the last world was a simulation, all I could hope for was that this one was too. Simply returning to that fantasy would give me nothing now.

Somehow, somewhere, the being opposite me in the room reacted. "No, stop that! You can't! Please, I have a family, don't-"

Deep in my soul, something clicked "Return To Hub"

I heard another flatline, and my eldritch body went limp.

Kay-baby, I know you aren't real. You're a character created by my mind.

But I am too.

And I'm going to wake up.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's some plot twist, to think everything was a simulation made by this eldritch creature. And desperately wanting it to be real but knowing... And what is even more crazy is how we don't get to know if he managed to return to hub or simply collapse someone else's fantasy

The way I interpreted the prompt was like this:

Imagine if, after your whole life, learning how to use hands and feet, living with the idea that after this it was over, you gave up everything to be with your loved ones. They were with you the whole way. Thousands of great memories. Life changing moments spent with the ones you love.

Then, in a moment, that's all stripped away from you.

You wake up in an unfamiliar body that doesn't feel right, being talked to in a language you understand but don't like hearing, and every single feeling you ever felt deep in your heart was chalked down to nothing but a simulation where none of what you felt was real, and where what you were ripped from turned out to be nothing but pixels on a screen.

How would you react to that?

Of course, I wanted to make it a little more eldritch, so I added some mild body horror and a possibility that the world he woke up in is all a simulation too, but that's the general premise of it. If you want to add another layer to it, I'd love to read it.

Dang, that's deep. Well done.