The Pyro

Hello, everyone. I just wanted to share a story with you of something that happened to me a few months back on Team Fortress 2. None of you will probably believe me, but I had to get this off of my chest.

Essentially, it started back when I was playing Team Fortress 2 during the 2014 halloween update. I always loved the halloween updates. The new halloween themed items that got released, being able to face down Merasmus again. It was a ton of fun.

Anyway, I had gone downstairs to eat for a bit. I had left my computer on and TF2 was also still running, just on the main menu. After I went back upstairs to resume my session of TF2, I tried to find a new server. I'd had enough of Merasmus for one day, so I just decided to try and find a normal CTF (Capture the Flag) sever. But, to my shock, I couldn't find any matches. Literally none. Before I had gone downstairs earlier, the game had detected over a 1000 servers. I figured that it was just my internet screwing up as my internet isn't the best ever. I pressed the windows key on my keyboard to temporaily go to my desktop and see if my internet was working via my browser. I opened up Firefox and tried to load up Google. It loaded up in a few seconds. I looked to the bottom right of my screen and saw that my internet was indeed working. I was confused as hell. Why was my internet not working on TF2, yet, it was working on my browser?

I got really frustrated at this and decided to go downstairs and reset my router. After about 3 or so minutes, my router had reset itself and was working again. I tried TF2 again and this time, it only found 1 server. It was just called "Halloween event CTF". It said that there was only one player currently on the server. That was odd. What was a guy doing alone on a presumably public server? But, the strangest thing was that the map name came up as "Halloween event 2Fort". This confused me even more. TF2 maps aren't usually called things like that.

I shrugged it off as a modded map or something and clicked the connect button. It started downloading some files and it took around 5 minutes to complete. When I finally connected, I didn't even get to select my class. I just spawned in as a sniper.

"What the hell? Why can't I select a class? That's absolutely stupid..."

I shook my head and grumbled. I opened up the scoreboard and it said there was no one else on the server except me. I was more confused now than I was earlier. There was literally no one. No one was spectating, no one was on RED or BLU. I opened up the pause menu, clicked on the change server button, looked at the server that I was currently on and it said that there was two players on the server. I admit, that weirded me out a bit. I just looked at the screen in the confusion, trying to take in what the game was telling me.

"TF2 must be glitching or something..."

Then, out of nowhere, a loud sound pierced my blasted through my headset. It sounded a lot like the pyro's death scream. The sound was so loud that it literally caused me to jump out of my seat. I shook it off and sat back down. As I went to search for the other player that was supposedly here, a message popped up in the bottom left corner in the text chat.

"Hello."

I breathed a sigh of relief. I admit, it was getting a bit creepy not being able to find anyone on the map  after I heard that really loud sound. I typed back a simple respose.

"Hello. I thought that I was the only one on the server as I couldn't find you. What are you doing here on your own? Is this not a public server or something?"

I waited for a response and then I saw an enemy pyro on the other side of the map in their base. It was just......staring at me. Not moving. I zoomed in and tried to headshot him with my sniper rifle, but it didn't work. It literally went straight through him. And the laser pointer was directly on his head.

I tried again and again and everytime, the bullet just went straight through him. The pyro was still stood there. He hadn't moved an inch even after my attempts to shoot him. I typed a message in the text chat as I hadn't got a reply from him yet.

"I must be lagging or something. I tried to shoot you for ages with my sniper rifle and every time, the bullet went straight through you."

I got a response about a minute later.

"Follow me. I want to show you something."

To say that I was reluctant to follow him was an understatement. He was probably trying to get me to follow him so he could get a cheap kill on me. I checked the scoreboard yet again to see if any other players had joined. I didn't expect to see anyone else as I didn't see any text notification telling me that someone had joined. No one was there. It was still only me.

"Why isn't the other dude showing up on the scoreboard? He's on RED, therefor, he should be on the RED team scoreboard. TF2 has never been this glitch for me before..."

After letting that thought slip, I came to the conclusion that even if he did want to get a cheap kill on me, it'd only be one kill. It wouldn't be the end of the world.

So, I decided to follow him. I went into the RED base and I went to the main first spawn gate. He wasn't there. Then, another text message popped up.

"Intel room."

Ah, so that's where he was. I went down to the intel room and just saw him standing there. He was staring at me once again and slowly walked up to me. This was starting to get really freaking creepy. His walking animation was never THAT realistic. He just...walked like a normal human being. He had no weapon in his hands and his arms hung next to his sides, swaying back and forth as he was walking. He came straight up to me and looked at me. He then got uncomfortable close to me and before I could type to tell him to back off a little bit, he had already typed out another message.

"You're going to stay with me. Forever."

Okay. Now, I was getting terrified. It was creepy enough when he got that close to me, but that message just made it 10 times more horrifying. I put my currenrly shaking fingers to work and typed in another message.

"What the fuck are you on about? Can you back off a bit? You're starting to really creep me out."

He didn't respond to that. He just...stood there. As always. Still staring at me. Then, out of nowhere, he fell to the floor with the most disturbing and realistic death scream that I'd ever heard. There was no death alert in the top right corner.

Feeling fully creeped out at this, I was planning to just leave the server. Before I could even think of doing that however, I saw one final message in the text chat.

"Die."

Straight after that, my character turned around. When I say that, I don't mean that I turned him around myself using the mouse, he literally turned around by himself without me doing anything to make him turn around.

After my sniper had turned around, the enemy pyro was there agaib. Except this time, he looked....absolutely terrifying. His mask wasn't there. You could see his face and my god...that face will stay stuck in my mind forever.

He had slit pupils, like a reptile. His face was all charred and black, like he'd been burned. His nose was missing and all that was there instead were two holes. His skull was showing and you could see his brain popping out a bit. His teeth were like razor sharp fangs. His face now held a disturbing malicious grin. I tried pressing the pause button to try and disconnect from the server, I tried pressing the button on my monitor to turn it off so I didn't have to look at him, I even tried to shut down my PC. Nothing would freaking work. I just stared at him and before I could attempt to try and get up to turn my PC off via the switch on the plug socket, the pyro made that same disturbing scream from earlier and jumped at my screen. My game froze for a few seconds and all I could see was his face. Then, I got booted back to the desktop with an alert stating that TF2 had stopped responding. I quickly turned my computer off and went downstairs. I was thinking of talking to my dad about it, but I knew that he wouldn't believe me at all.

Since then, I've gained the courage to start up TF2 again. And strangely, since then, TF2 has been completely fine. I was able to find over a 1000 servers again and every match that I've joined has played out like any normal TF2 match would. But sometimes, when I play on 2Fort and look at the outside of the map behind the gates, I swear that I can see a RED pyro. Just standing there. Staring at me.

MythicMaster (talk)