Susan

Susan


I live in a family of four, there’s my dad John, an average looking middle age man who’s tall, has grey hair and blue eyes. There’s my mom carol, a shorter woman with short and curly brown hair. There’s my sister Susan, a pretty and very popular girl, she’s a skinny, average height and has long blond hair. Then there is me. My name is Jason; I’m a short nerdy looking teenaged kid with pale skin and red hair. Unlike my sister I don’t have very many friends in school and I am an avid gamer.



Recently my family has been looking for a new house to move to because we have been having financial problems and can no longer afford to stay in our old home. After a while of searching we found a small old house that fit within our price range, yeah it would need to be fixed up a bit but it was nothing we couldn’t handle. So we moved in and got working on fixing it up. One day we were digging up a sewage line so we could repair it and we came across something in the ground when we were digging. It appeared to be some kind of time capsule; it seemed to be from the80’s or early 90’s. I brought it inside and later that night after we were done with the sewage line my family and I sat down and started going through the time capsule. Inside there where some old family photos of previous owners of the house and a couple journals but what caught my attention was an old floppy disk that had made its way to the bottom of the capsule. I was curious as to what was on it but I had no way to see due to the fact that I had no hardware on my computer that could read floppy disks because they are so outdated, so I stored the disk in my closet for the time being.

After a little while I came across a floppy disk reader online that I could have shipped to my house in a couple of days and with my mom’s permission I ordered it. I couldn’t wait for the reader to get to my house I was excited to see what was on the old floppy disk. Finally the next Tuesday the reader arrived, a day late but that was ok. I immediately brought it up to my room and installed it on my computer, grabbed the floppy disk out of my closet and put it in the reader. After I put in the disk a game popped up, of course I was happy because I enjoyed games but this game was strange, it launched right as I inserted the disk and there was no menu it just dropped me in the game. But I didn’t think anything of it and started messing around in the game. Looking at the game I was surprised, The game hade fairly good graphics although it was just an 8 bit game, it had good animations and it seemed to be a fairly large game in general, I don’t know how a game like that could even fit on a floppy disk but again I didn’t think much of it.

The game featured four characters, 2 males and, and 2 females, one male had grey hair and the one I controlled had red hair. One of the female characters had brown hair and the other was blond. It seemed like the objective of the game was to lead all the characters from the start of the level to the end. As I made my way through the level it seemed like an easy game but it was long and one slip up could mean game over. I played four a couple of hours almost flawlessly until I made one fatal mistake which ended up killing the male character with grey hair. After I accidentally got the character killed the game reset to the beginning of the level. I was furious; I had just wasted hours on that game just to start over. I was so angry I pulled the game out of my computer and I threw it back in my closet.

Later that night my mom was in the kitchen working as she received a phone call. Apparently there was an accident at my father’s work and he was killed. My whole family was devastated; we grieved for over a month over our loss. Eventually we back to our everyday lives, one day I was cleaning out my closet and happen to stumble upon the floppy disk we found in the time capsule. I was bored so I decided to pop it back in my computer and try to play it again. This time when I launched the game something was different, the male character with the grey hair had changed, he was now slightly transparent, he was still there and part of the game but it was like he was out of the game and you didn’t have to worry about him. I ignored this passing it off as some kind of glitch and continued playing the game.

Just like last time I played the game for a couple hours until I messed up and killed the female character with blond hair. “Dammit!” I yelled as the game returned back to the beginning of the level. I decided to go to sleep as it was getting late and I didn’t have time to play another game. So I stored the game back in the closet and went to sleep

The next morning I woke up to a crash in the kitchen I ran down to see what happened only to find the gruesome sight of my sister Susan lying dead on the ground, her neck slit by a broken piece of glass. She had slipped and fallen off a stool while putting away dishes for our mom.

Now it was just me and my mom living in the house by ourselves. We both went through another grieving process for a month or two but eventually got back to our everyday lives again. One day I was lying in bed bored trying to think of something to do. I decided I hadn’t played that old game on the floppy disk in a while, maybe if I take my time and work my way through it carefully I could beat it. So I sat down at my computer and played for a few hours and I got to the point where I could see the end, it was so close. I got excited and rushed to the end but in that moment of being so excited to finally beat the game I made a mistake, I killed the Female character with brown hair. The game reset back to the starting screen and I got up out of my chair kicking various objects that were left lying on my floor, knocking objects of my nightstand. I was so angry with myself, if I had just taken my damn time i could have won and be done with the damn game. I sat down on my bed and looked out my bedroom window; I saw my mom gardening out by the road and off in the distance I saw a large truck speeding down the road. Suddenly it clicked. I ran down the stairs and was about to run out the door when I heard screeching tires and the sound of my mom yelling followed by a large crash. It was too late, the truck had hit my mom and pinned her up against a tree. I ran upstairs to grab the phone and call 9-1-1 and as I passed my room and saw that the last female character in the game had turned transparent. Now there was no doubt that it was to game that was killing my family.

After the accident my grandparents came and took care of me in my house so I wouldn’t have to go to a new family. The next Saturday just three days after my mom’s death I turned on my computer for the first time to see that the game was still running. I was going to try to destroy it but I thought that maybe it was possible to bring the characters back because they weren’t gone they were just transparent; maybe if I win the game I can bring them back. It was worth a shot anything I could do to try to bring back my family would be worth it.

I played the game day after day, month after month with no luck; I wasn’t able to win because one of the characters would always die. My grandparent  were starting to get sick of me constantly playing the game because my grades in school started to drop and I spent more time on the game than I did studying, but they continued to let me play because they thought I was using the game to cope with my families death.

After about three month of playing the game every chance I got I was finally able to complete the game with all the character still alive. Then like normal the game just reset back to the beginning, but this time something was different, the blond haired sprite had changed. It was no longer transparent but it didn’t look like the original sprite either. Instead it looked tattered and had multiple holes and her blond hair was now stained red. Although the sprite was so strange looking I looked past it because I was excited maybe this would mean that my sister would come back, after all this was the character that resembles my sister.

A couple minutes later I heard my front door open, this was strange as it was the middle of the night and everyone in the house was asleep but me. I carefully peeked down the stairs to see who it was and saw that it was my sister. I ran down the stairs to great her but when I got up to her I saw that her clothes where ripped and she had cuts and bruises all over her body along with a gash across her neck from the accident in the kitchen. Upon closer inspection I saw that she was concealing a large knife behind her back. When I saw the knife she took it out and swung it at me. I ran upstairs to my room to my room to try and hide and as I ran past my computer screen I saw that all the characters in the game where transparent but my sisters. Including mine…