Flame.exe

I always loved playing video games, whether they were simple platformers by novice coders or games such as Pokemon by Nintendo. Nothing has ever, and will never, change my mind. However, something has happened recently that made me slightly more wary of what I download off of the internet.

It was just a simple game that operated like the earliest Sonic games at first glance. You had to guide a girl at high speeds through a level littered with turns, platforms, loops and mechanical monsters, to get you one step closer to winning the game. The game itself was called 'Flame', which I supposed was what the girl was called, because there was nothing to do with fire at all. Well, other than the fact that there was a volcano in the background of the platforms themselves. I didn't care much for that volcano, so I just decided to call the girl Flame.

The only thing that really bothered me about the game was the fact that you couldn't clearly see the character at any given point in the game, whether it was on the desktop icon, the start menu or any of the levels. You could only see either a shadow of her holding some sort of small, rectangular object in her left hand on the title screen, or a bright streak of red and brown flying across a ton of levels. Naturally, I accepted that one thing after a few levels, but it kept gnawing at my mind. All of the other video games that I had played wouldn't hide their main characters that much. Flame was even worse than the Pyro from Team Fortress (I am only saying that because practically nobody knows which gender the Pyro is because of the unflammable suit and the gas mask). At least that didn't open up any doors in my mind leading to some sort of dark secret at the time. I am glad of that, too, because if that had set off any red lights then I would have immediately uninstalled the entire thing from my computer, and would have not given it a second thought.

The game was pretty fun, so I played it up to three or four hours each day before playing Team Fortress 2, Sonic Unleashed, Pokemon and Zelda. The fact that I couldn't clearly distinguish whether Flame was human or not eventually moved to the back of my head, making myself believe that the programmer was a novice and wasn't bothered to program the running animation for Flame. That theory was slightly countered by the fact that the graphics and all of the other animations were so good and in such high quality, but at least it stopped me from worrying about whether there was a darker reason behind it. After all, there couldn't be anything bad about the game.

I was simply reading a few emails a few days later that I had accumulated over the past three weeks. None of them seemed that interesting, so I deleted them or marked the ones that I kept obtaining as spam. However, the last one that I had to skim through before either deleting it or marking it as spam, was slightly... Disturbing. It was from the guy that had posted the game and probably created 'Flame'. I can't remember what all of it read, because I deleted it after reading it, but I do remember a few key segments. Here are the ones that I do remember..'Do not complete the game at any cost'..'Do not let her be there'..'Uninstall the game'.Yeah... Not that much, to be honest. I deleted the email straight afterwards, guessing that it was some crazy joke. How could the game hurt me, anyway?

I was right for the first two years. Basically, I only played the game actively for the first one. The other, I spent playing other games, mostly cute little pet simulators on random websites. Okay, I also played some CoD and stuff, to not turn into a complete girly-girl like practically every other girl in my high school. I eventually forgot about the email, and the game itself. Well, until I had to clear some stuff out of my computer after the two years, give or take a few days. I was looking through my files in %appdata%, where I found 'Flame'. My mind flickered back to when I first played the game. I wanted to play the game again, despite the fact that I had nearly finished it. I was about three levels away from the end. I created a shortcut to the .exe game within the folder on the desktop and double clicked it. Everything was normal and just as I had remembered it. Well, until the last level...

It started like normal. Flame was running across the usual dark, volcanic landscape, jumping on monsters at top-speed. Nothing had changed that could even hint at the events that would follow the usual friendly area and atmosphere. If you were like me and considered the flamey area 'friendly' due to the fact that I had played games with worse and more detailed backgrounds than 'Flame'. About a few seconds away from the end of the level, however, Flame simply... Stopped. Her sprite stopped moving, and turned to look around, taking out an object from what I assumed was her pocket and holding it in her left hand. I obviously didn't have any idea about what the object was, having never seen Flame hold anything throughout my time playing the game other than on the title screen. I shook it off as something that normally happened, despite being greatly confused by the event, and watched the screen, waiting for her to do something next.

She began slowly walking forwards after about two minutes, looking around at her surroundings. For a split second, it looked like she was controlling herself instead of a large chunk of coding, due to how realistic the bundle of pixels looked as it carried on moving. Then again, practically all of the newer video games had things that looked pretty much as if the characters were moving by themselves out of free will, not because of coding. At random intervals, Flame's hood would start to slip off of her head, but she would pull it back up so that I couldn't see her face. The time when I first got intrigued about the entire 'the girl is anonymous' thing came back to me, and now I could see why. Not many characters, especially protagonists, kept themselves anonymous by both names and how they looked like for the entire duration of the game. It was actually beginning to creep me out a little now. When the game did finish, just because Flame calmly walked across the finish line, I did get fully creeped out.

The game seemed to mute itself, and everything froze. I tried to close the window, and use the old CTRL+ALT+DEL command, but they wouldn't respond. I sighed and walked away from the computer to play something else whilst the PC was sorting itself out on its own. As I walked away, I made myself a small theory about that email that I had gotten two years ago; because the game would break your PC. The guy should have really tested the game before posting it online. Nevertheless, I began playing Team Fortress with a few people.

A loud humming noise brought me back to my computer, only to see the entire window with the game had vanished. I was glad to see that the PC had sorted itself out. I decided to forget about the game for a while before redoing it, like I did to a vast majority of the games I owned, and went on YouTube to watch a few Pewdiepie and Tobuscus videos to pass the time.

This is where the 'recent' part kicks in. I decided to boot the game up again about five days ago to see if I could beat it again. To my surprise, however, the game skipped the title screen completely and brought me to the final level instead. Flame was still standing past the finish line, but her arms were crossed, revealing the object completely. It was... A lighter? I blinked a few times, but the rectangular object that was on the title screen and now here was a lighter. The only thing that puzzled me was why she would need a lighter when there was fire everywhere? I hoped that she wasn't the Pyro's child or something... Another thing was that Flame's hood was actually off of her head, revealing her face after two years! I was shocked to see that she was actually a normal human girl; brown hair, brown eyes and pale skin. At least she wasn't a hedgehog, a fox or an echidna... That would be cliche, as everyone who has ever played a Sonic game knows.

After thirty seconds or so, Flame turned her head to look forwards at where I was. Bear in mind that she wasn't looking straight at me. That would defy all logic. A red textbox appeared, with the name 'Flame' in the name slot. So the girl was called Flame! What she said was enough to diminish my pride at guessing her name, though. 'So, you ignored what he tried to tell you, and after my game nearly destroyed your system?' Okay, how did she know that? Coding was so clever. After that text box disappeared, Flame turned away and the screen faded to black. A picture flashed across the screen for a split second before the window closed. I knew that that image had to be somewhere in the game files in %appdata%, so I went looking for it,. Curiosity fainted the pikachu, to say the very least.

Upon finding the image, I noted that it was called 'xXFLAMEXx'. An odd name choice, but it was unsurprising at the same time for an image that flashes up for a millisecond. I opened the image in Paint.NET, only to see a dark room at first glance, with a small flame in the centre. I knew there had to be more than that, so I zoomed in on the image. I eventually saw Flame, dully lit up by the flame, along with her lighter. She seemed to be smiling at the camera. I couldn't clearly see whether she was genuinely happy or plotting, but she was just part of the game. Of course I decided that there is more to it than her, so I moved around the image, soon finding a few words hidden within the image. 'Can you see me now?' I rolled my eyes slightly. Of course I could see her. I exited out of the image and rummaged through the files a bit more.

I just had to do that, didn't I? Some of the images hidden within the files were actually pretty dark, in their own way. Most of them were of buildings burning and collapsing, people running from the destruction, volcanos erupting... The volcanos made me think of the volcano in the background of the game, but I knew that there shouldn't be any real connection between the two. All I could say was that the coder had some pretty dark tastes when it came to secrets. I also stumbled across a video file, but I wasn't in the mood to be met with something like Username 666 or any other crazy myths about videos. The part of me that wanted to simply made me move the video to my desktop, just in case I needed a Halloween joke or something to scare my friends with.

After my small search, I decided to return to the game itself. It started where it was at last, just that the background was just fire. Flame was calmly looking at me. Not directly, I hoped. 'Why don't you just listen and get rid of me?' That actually came out of my speakers, causing poor old me to have a heart attack because they were on at maximum volume. Flame seemed to smile at my reaction, although I brushed it off as something in the coding. Her smile faded after a few seconds, to be replaced with her usual sulky frown. Wait... Did the game actually go into better quality? I calmed myself by blaming it on the coding, again. I honestly didn't know how much longer that excuse would last. 'Why can't you just GET RID OF ME?' Flame repeated. At least I had enough common sense to turn down my volume after that. Flame looked genuinely angry by now, staring. Now I was convinced that she was staring straight at me. Another coding trick, I hoped. The window faded and displayed another image, only for a split second like the previous one, before the window closed. I had more file searching to do, just because of my curiosity.

The image this time was of a girl, who was slightly burned. She seemed to be crying. The girl looked just like Flame did in the game, just real and not pixelated. Behind her, what looked like her house was burning, along with everything else. Her eyes seemed to follow me, but that was because she was looking forward, a clever little trick to creep people out. There was no way that I was getting scared by a clever game. I zoomed in on what looked like writing on one of the remaining walls that wasn't burning, only to read 'Maybe if you knew how it was like to burn.' Hooray for photoshopping images! I was still convinced that it was not real, so I exited out of the image and searched around a bit more.

I quickly came across a .avi file. I knew that it couldn't be as scary as the destruction of a town, so I double clicked it to open it. I wasn't scared, and my logic was never good, so don't rip my head off. The video actually made me cry, because the thirteen year old ended up being trapped within her burning room until the fire brigade arrived. A day after that, she was burned in a lighter accident because her mind was slightly distorted due to the previous day's event. She accidentally turned on a lighter and put it too close to her face, slowly burning her. Of course I didn't watch that. The only question on my mind was whether that was actually an accident, or was a successful suicide attempt? I exited out of that window and decided that one more 'Flame' try wouldn't hurt, even if it was that dark beneath the Sonic-like exterior.

This time, Flame was directly facing the camera, grinning. It actually looked quite creepy. It sucks that I didn't feel like taking a screenshot or anything. 'So, you know what happened to me?' That was still as loud as if I hadn't turned my volume down a few minutes earlier. When I checked, however, my volume was still on maximum. By now, I was questioning everything that had happened to me over the course of the day. Flame spoke again after about a minute, as the window began darkening, leaving only the flickering flame of a lighter dully lighting up itself and Flame's face. 'Can you see me now?' I shut the window and uninstalled the game. No more weirdness was on my laptop. I even deleted the video that I was meant to watch, but decided not to. To be honest, my description is about a million times less vivid than what I saw. In other words, I was scared for my life.

I would gladly give some proof of what happened. Thing is, I deleted the lot. My drawings or events are not that good, either, so I can't do that. You only have my word for what happened to me. All I know is that I am not going to act so hastily the next time something happens to me that is similar to what 'Flame' decided to mess up in my PC. What happened? Half of my sounds changed to fire noises, and my desktop image changed to the image that was of Flame holding a lighter to her face and the weird writing that is impossible to see without zooming in. I changed it back, but seriously; if it was just a simply game and I overreacted to it, it was very creepy, dark and clever with it's coding indeed. All that is left of it now is a folder that I can't delete in %appdata%. I can't access it, either. All I know is it's name, which is 'Flame'. I hope that it is not more of the chaos from the game itself...