Exe.exe

The experiences below were recoreded as they happened. They have been shared unmodified.

Section Heading Hello!
Hey there, all! I'm a major fan of creepypastas and have devoted a lot of my life to tracking down the creepiest possible games. I was thinkin' I'd crack my knuckles and live-stream the spooky file I just found for all of you, but my camera's been down ever for awhile now, so I guess I'll just be playing and writing as I go. Oh, right - so I guess I should give some background.

I'm about 20-something years old, just got back into collage and have been acing my courses so hard that I've got a lot of free time to kill. I'd recently visited te local flea market and found a bunch of old shareware cd's being sold by this old guy. What a trip, am I right? I mean that's how all the best scary stories start! I remember pushing someone out of the way and grabbing them by the armful, asking how much they'd go for a piece; a few of my bros were there with me and thought it was funny how excited I was, or maybe how funny the woman getting back up off the ground was, I don't know, I just wanted those cds!

But listen up, I got them all and they're mostly rip-offs! Junk, junk, junk! Plenty of low-grade shovelware that I'm sure you've all heard of before, so I won't bore you. I mean, Harry the Handsome Executive? That's scary all right, but not in the way I'm looking for. See, I'm looking for something really blood-curdling... and I think I found it.

One of the disks had been tampered with somewhere along it's lifespan. In black marker, someone had written 'scrub', several times. At first me and my boys thought it was some guy making fun of a loser who doesn't play well - but then I thought back to my old man talking about the space race, and how they'd used scrub as a fancy way of saying 'abort mission'. The wheels in my brain started turning and I thought - what if this is worth a look, you know? So I loaded it up.

Jackpot. Inside was a single file - exe.exe. I laughed at the name. If someone was trying to scare me, they'd have to do better than that. So it's just you, me, and a can of mountain dew - and I'm going to be sharing my reactions as we go along.

... Or I would, except that the file doesn't do anything; it just opens a command prompt window and closes. I finally tried running the damn thing in administrative mode, but now the command prompt window is just hanging and -

Sorry, as I edit the page, everything keeps on screwing up. I mean, would you look at this formatting? Geeze, but it's not my fault - every time I try to write a sentence, the next one keeps crapping up errors, as if I'd mashed down the insert key.

Right, whatever. I took a break, decided to go outside and run some laps and clear my mind - when I came back, my disk drive was spinning slowly and making that ominous whirring sound that means it's probably time to splurge another hundred on a combo drive - or possibly a new HD. It just seems like everything breaks so fast, these days...

Exe.exe had stopped running again, though the process was still running in the background. I coughed - the smell of burnt plastic was pretty strong from over in my microwave, where I guess I must have accidentally nuked some food with the wrapper on. But I'll clean that up later - I fried the process and slowly had another idea, which was that the thing wasn't actually a .exe file.

Feeling successful, I opened the microwave and let the scent of burning smoke waft into the room. Better out then in, or so I've been told. While that was taking care, I tried unpacking it in a variety of ways, finally settling on renaming it as a zip and extracting it to the desktop. To my surprise-

It worked.

Exe.exe kept on spitting files out at a rapid pace, so rapid I started to feel like I was watching when of those flipbooks that some people had as kids, where the image feels like it's moving so fast that it's animated - but that wasn't actually happening, it just felt for a minute like it was - like the files were clogging up my desktop, sliding out of every hole and pore in the skein of my computer tower and spurting around me like smoggy data that smelled like burning food in the microwave as it wound around my neck and pulled until I started to choke -

My mind came back to as I realized it'd been a few hours since I'd let exe.exe extract. I'd gotten sleepy and had an unpleasant daydream. But I'm hardcore, so I cracked my neck and tried to walk off the unpleasant feeling that I felt with every gulp of fresh air. Finally, my prize awaited!

There were literally millions of files - my computer, which is one mean machine, actually hung everytime I opened a new folder. The folders were named really stupd things, too. Things like 'simile' and 'b41a' and 'earwig kisses' without any noticeable pattern. And the files themselves, though I only had the patience to look through about twenty thousand of them? Disappointments. Each one was an image, usually only one or two colors - almost always the same colors, brown as hardwood and a sort of rusty color. Sometimes there'd be something looked a little more like coffee creamer or ground coffee mixed in, but it was hard to tell what any of the images were - each one was 1024 x 768 pixels, and felt like they'd been blown up from something much smaller.

I'd made it halfway through a folder called 'rabbits in snow' when my computer hung up and just wouldn't unfreeze. On the plus side, I had a data recovery extension, so I could restore my progress - but it about sapped my energy to look into exe.exe any further; or would've, if every single one of the files hadn't gotten hopelessly corrupt. I tried defragmenting my drive, even using data recovery software - but no luck. Nothing came back, and at some point I'd misplaced exe.exe on my hard drive; and as I've said before, my disk drive seems to have cried its last - stupid thing.

But, that's not quite all. A few days back, the woman from before sought to press charges and though I'm sure it was her own damn fault if she suffered a leg injury or whatever, a few of my 'bros' have mentioned that I have mood issues? Fuck them, that's what I say. If anything, it's the game - as you've all seen, it's really affected me, right? I've been so sleepless, and had such scary dreams it's only natural I'd lash out at others, especially if they didn't know when to get out of my way!

There's one last trace of exe.exe that's been on my computer and I feel like I need to share it before I go meet my court date - but for some reason I feel like it isn't exactly what it seems. My hand's have been getting really nervous and sweaty recently... Every second I feel nauseous, but I have to keep typing. You guys believe me, right? It's not my fault! It's exe.exe! It's a cursed game! It

Addendum
The computers and digital recording devices used by {Name Withheld} were seized in Volodarski, Grummer and the people of Concord et all vs. {Name Withheld} as state evidence. Despite claims of the accused that the accident sustained by Mrs. Volodarski was, in fact, caused by a cursed game, no such evidence has been found - nor any evidence that sufficient doses of exposure to video-electric phenomenon can cause anything more than a mild stupor. Others brought forth evidence that {Name Withheld} had been obsessed with the idea of scaring others through an interactive form of online literature. Several online associates - who requested their names also be withheld - mentioned finding {Name Withheld} 'distasteful' and 'prone... outbursts, accusing others...'

Great deals of the interactive literature posted by {Name Withheld} appear to be plagiarized from other, similar online works and show a lack of creativity coupled with a disregard for others. The one piece of supporting evidence in the favor of the excused were many damaged files that appeard to be unrecoverable - but appear to have been taken by the accused from his mobile device. Self sabotage and destruction of evidence is suspected.

Upon hearing his sentance would be a short period of probationary time as well as community service, the accused flew into a rage and began attacking the Presiding Judge violently, clawing with nails and even biting the Judge on the shoulder at one point. Due to the small police presence and general shock, the Presiding Judge - name also withheld - was beaten to semi-comatose state, though doctors are hopeful for a recovery.

//''ed. Off the record, I'm shocked that someone could feel threatened enough by a game to attack others, and feel that the accused was highly selfish to the point of egomania. The weird thing is, going over all the documents of similar cases - you almost start to see how it's possible people could believe that stuff... Or just how many more people like {Name Withheld} are out there...''