The game was an unmarked disc. Not even a color. Just a plain piece of plastic. Yet, I was horrified when I saw it in my dream. 

I popped up in the middle of the night and there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep. I laid in my bed and thought about why that Playstation game was so terrifying to me. 

The game appeared at Corey’s house when I was 13. He had moved down the street from me shortly before and I made fast friends with him because he always had all of the best games. Corey’s dad worked for an electronics distributor so he got the games early.

Corey was waiting for me when I got home from the school bus one day. His dad had gotten a crazy new game “from Japan” no one else would ever have. He had spent the day playing it over and over again. 

He showed me the unmarked disc before he put it in the Playstation. The game had no opening credits or menu. It just went straight into the gameplay - spitting you into a P.O.V. game in a murky building which seemed like an army base. 

I’m hesitant to describe the game too much. One - because I don’t remember it perfectly because of the way it shredded my brain. Two - because I don’t want to pass on any of the trauma the game gave me to anyone else. 

From what I remember, the game was relatively unfinished, and that made it more eerie - the monsters were just blank outlines without faces which would kill you, the music was low and humming and barely audible, everything was dark, the controls were jerky. 

Yet, the game was incredibly addicting. I played it over and over and over again until my parents made me come home. 

I stayed up almost all night thinking about the game. When I did sleep, I felt like I was just in the game in my head. 

Corey wasn’t at school the next day again. I didn’t think anything of it until I walked out of class at the end of the day and saw local news T.V. trucks parked out front. 

I heard what they were talking about, interviewing students and parents. An unnamed student had killed himself and his family that day at their home. I found out it was Corey on the bus ride home. 

Very few details came out. All I ever found out was Corey took the dad’s shotgun and shot both parents, and his older sister, all in bed, all still sleeping. I didn’t want to know much more. 

I stopped playing video games for a while. Yet, the game wouldn’t get out of my head. I just kept wanting to play it. 

I eventually went to the video game store at the mall. It was lorded over by a man named Morton. Obese. 20s. Shoulder-length hair, and an air of odd arrogance, he made video game shopping at a suburban town in Ohio feel like you were trying to buy records in Brooklyn.

I approached Morton with fear. He was a hulking figure to my 13-year-old self and he had his own little empire at the only game store in town. 

“I’m looking for a game, I, uh, um, my friend had it, but I can’t find it,” I started in.

“Ta-ta-ta-today…junior,” Morton mocked me with a line from Billy Madison. 

The other guys in the store chuckled, turning my face to beat red. 

“Have you ever heard about an unmarked Playstation game ‘from Japan?”’ I asked.

Everyone about Morton changed. He looked around the space to see if anyone was still listening then he motioned me closer, and spoke quieter. 

“Where did you see that game?” He asked. 

Now it was my turn to get closer and talk quietly. I explained it was Corey, and who he was, and what he did. 

Morton looked even more interested, and stressed out. 

He took me to a back room. Dark, the only light coming from an arcade machine in the back and a lit cigarette dangling from the teenage lips of another kid. 

I knew the kid. His name was Nat. He was 15 and was known in the area as a video game prodigy. He had won just about any tournament for any game ever held in several counties and he had an interesting style - he had long hair at a time when everyone had short, he wore tight clothes at a time when everyone wore baggy, and there were rumors he did professional video game testing in California during school breaks. Nat hanging out in the secret back room of the video game store was very on-brand. 

Morton had me sit down at a table as he started demolishing fun size candy bars while he told me the backstory of the video game “from Japan.”

The game wasn’t from Japan. He wasn’t sure where that mythology came from. The game was very much from the U.S. It was created by the U.S. government. When school shootings started becoming a thing there was a panic about video games, specifically first-person shooter games being the cause. 

The C.I.A.’s solution was to work with a video company to create a first-person shooter game to release and hype up but to subliminally program as to control the player’s mind and steer them to non-violent thoughts. 

“How do you know all this?” I asked Morton.

“The game is a real thing,” Nat said while never stopping banging away at the latest version of Mortal Kombat on the machine in the corner.

I let Morton go on. Nat was the ultimate authority to me. His girlfriend, Calyn, was my first love, even though she didn’t know who I was. She was a year ahead of me in school and I didn’t even know how she existed. 

But back to the game. The game didn’t keep kids from being violent. Video games couldn’t fucking do that, but something they programmed in the game destroyed the kids who tested it - they couldn’t focus on anything else and it terrorized their minds - making them think monsters were coming to kill them, basically making them severely schizophrenic. 

The worst part was something in the game seemed to make kids really want to share it. All of the test kids snuck the game out and made copies of it. 

Unless someone was skilled enough to make it through the game and beat it, the game seemed to ruin their brains, and their lives, Morton explained before saying he was out of information. 

“Have you played the game?” Morton asked me.

I affirmed. 

“Where is the game now?” Morton asked. 

I explained I had no idea. I assumed it was with Corey’s family and their stuff. No way I could get access to it. 

At that point Morton explained that he wished me luck, but he could offer me no help. 

“Do you know who has ever beaten the game?” I asked Morton as I could feel his body energy beg me to leave. 

“I have,” Nat’s voice rose up from the corner of the room. 

Nat left the room before I could ask anymore questions. 

-

The game permeated my brain. All I wanted to do was play it even though I had no way to. I would see the monsters hiding in the shadows of my parents’ house and I’d stop - wait for them to jump out and attack me. I heard that terribly ominous musical score of the game in the back of my mind all the time. 

If I slept, all I dreamed about was the game, and getting killed in the game, and it all felt real. 

This went on for a couple of days and kept getting stronger and stronger. I had to keep playing the game. 

I lost control. I got out of bed in the middle of the night and snuck out my bedroom window. 

I made it to Corey’s house in a flash. There was no police tape or anything you’d expect in a movie. It was just there. The way it always was. 

I went to the back of the house, where I knew there was a door that went directly into the basement, where Corey’s gaming setup was. I took the longshot that it was left unlocked. 

Now this all might sound crazy, but as a severe drug addict for a good chunk of my life, trust me that my desire to play that game that night was stronger than any desire to ever do drugs, that’s how intoxicating and addicting it was. Nothing was going to stop me. 

The door was unlocked and if you want to doubt that small town cops 25 years ago were that lazy…try me. 

I got into the basement. The house was cold, dark, and empty, but Corey’s Playstation was still set up right there in the basement. I checked the disc inside. It was the game. 

I turned on the Playstation and the game came to life. I started playing. 

My feet felt like they were welded to the floor. My fingers superglued to the controller. My eyes couldn’t leave the screen. 

There was no getting away from the game. I played for I have no idea how long. 

I can’t remember anything until I was standing in that dark basement, playing the game, and I felt strong hands wrap around the back of my neck. Then a powerful force pushed me to the ground. 

I was on the ground and I looked up and saw endless shadows filling the room around me. Dark and faceless. They looked just like the monsters in the game. 

The monsters were moving in on me. They were no longer in the game. They were no longer in my head. They were now living breathing with me and dangerous. 

And they were going to be on me very soon and the power they radiated at me communicated to me that I wasn’t going to last long against them. 

I also got a powerful sense of something they wanted me to do. They were telling me to go to school the next day. They were telling me where my dad kept his gun. I was losing myself in their messages. 

Then all of these feelings started to fade. Then the TV cut out - the game no longer broadcasting. 

Someone else was in the room. Not just me and the monsters. They were dressed in all black. I couldn’t make out anything identifiable about them, other than they were human like me, and they were pushing away the monsters and they took my hand. 

They got me out of the house. 

Then they disappeared. 

I looked back into the basement of Corey’s house - there was nothing but darkness inside. 

But then, I saw a blue light come to life inside the basement room. 

The game had come back on again, and it was calling me back inside with its siren song…

I was ready to go back in, taking my first steps that way when…

Someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me away. They drug me all the way back to the sidewalk where they stopped and whispered into my ear:

“Go the fuck home. I won’t help you from here.”

They let me go and were gone in the night. 

I walked home.