Red Dead Redemption: The Final Stand pt.3

CONTINUATION OF PT.2'S ENDING

Right outside the window was a gatherer. This thing was easily one of the creepiest damn things I've ever seen. It was a tall, almost slenderman like figure, with a round head on it's scrawny shoulders. It's face was pure white and it had no eyeballs where it's eye sockets were, but it did have to small red dots. It had a sick twisted smile that was bound in stitches and had blood dripping from it's lips. It was wearing a torn black cloak and it had the hood pulled up. Without taking another look at the hideous creature I drew my shotgun and fired two rounds out through the window. The shots didn't even get a chance to get close to the Gatherer before it dissapeared in a cloud of white smoke. I was shocked. The mechanics were really good for a prototype. How could one man program this much stuff into a single prototype, and how did he manage to scare the shit out of me with one cheesy pop-up? It's just that the face on that thing looked almost... real.

I spent the rest of the night in the General Store, not moving a single muscle. After what had happened in the previous game day I did not want to step an inch out of the goddamn door. My curiosity got the better and I opened the door. Wait... WHAT THE FUCK? I was no longer in an empty little town, no, I was staring down the corridor of what seemed to be a Mental Hospital. Over and over again I was repeating "WTF" in my head. This was all starting to seem like a big cliche. I soon thought nothing of it and actually laughed about it for a bit. If this guy was really trying his best to scare someone he should of thought of something other than a Mental Hospital. Figuring this was just going to be some cheesy horror game from now on, I entered the corridor with confidence.

As soon as I took the last step out of the door it slammed shut behind me. I turned around and realized that I was staring at nothing but a blank wall. Ok this was starting to get weird. I turned back around and was immediately greeted with a dead end. But how? There was a corridor there just a second ago. I turned back around again and there it was. The corridor. I nervously set off down the corridor with my last strand of courage. I kept walking for about twenty minutes. I didn't get anywhere. I looked behind me and saw that right in front of my face was another dead end. Was I not moving? No, I was. I had already passed by many rooms so I was going somewhere. Was the wall following me? As soon as I was about to turn around something invisible was carving something into the wall. Don't.. what? Don't turn.. Don't turn around? Yep, that's exactly what it had carved.

I took the wall's advice and did not turn around. I slowly kept backing up, but then the dead end in front of me had switched to a narrow corridor. I was soon stopped by an invisible wall behind me. I turned around thinking that it would have another message for me. Boy was I wrong. I was greeted by a blow to the face by the Gatherer. My character fell to the floor wincing in pain. He was about to get up before I was greeted by another blow to the face, this time by a second gatherer. Soon I was surrounded. Gatherers at every angle. All of them around me in a circle. I thought that this would be the end for my character. But no. He was knocked unconscious by yet another Gatherer. The screen faded to black. I was sitting there with my eyes wide open. I could not believe what had happened so far. This was definitely not something Rockstar would make. Suddenly the screen switched to my character as he was waking up.

He was in a room, a very dark room. In the background I could hear drips hitting the floor, almost as if there was a leaky pipe. My character stood up and brushed himself off, then checking around to make sure he was indeed alone. He fumbled for something that lay on the floor and came up with a flashlight. It switched on and a stream of bright light poured out and illuminated the area around him. I now wished that he hadn't switched it on. All along the walls were mutilated corpses hanging from meat hooks. The dripping sound was of their blood, draining from their lifeless bodies and hitting the ground below. Each corpse was slashed in the same way. The eyes had been gouged out, the nose had been sliced off revealing the bone underneath. Their mouths were stitched into a gruesome bloody smile, an 'X' had been slashed over the location of the heart, and their internal organs were ripped out and strewn about on the ground.

The camera switched from the normal 3rd person view to first person. Without me touching the controller, my character walked over to one line of corpses and stared up. There among other corpses were Donna, his wife, Mike, his best friend, and Johnathon. Poor little Johnathon had been slaughtered in a very gruesome way, worse than the others. His face was sliced open and exposed his face bones. His arms had been chopped off and stuffed into his chest cavity, and his feet had been sliced off and layed below his corpse. My character's vision suddenly became blurry and he sat down against the wall. He started to cry softly. About five minutes later he looked up and yelled "I'LL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU SONS OF BITCHES!". He sprang up and ran towards the end of the room, towards a set of double doors. He burst through them with such force that he almost knocked one off the hinge. The game went dark for ten seconds, the everything just got even more fucked up. My character was running through a tunnel with bright colors flashing all over, it was almost like a drug trip. All over the colors, there were memories from every stage of my character's life. The first time he learned to ride a bike, getting his first car, making his first friend, meeting his first girlfriend. All the memories played out on the colors above and before him.

I could tell he was starting to go mental. He reached the end of the tunnel he was running through and fell off of the very end, no, he jumped off. He wanted to end his life. He didn't want to cope with this anymore. Everyone he ever knew was dead. His home town was destroyed. He was all alone. My character fell for about three minutes before he reached a light at the end of the drop. Was that supposed to be heaven? Or was this all a dream? He reached the light and the screen went blank. It stayed blank for about thirty seconds before it showed him waking up abruptly from what seemed like a bad dream. He was in his own house, in his own bed. It was all just a dream. A terrible nightmare. He looked at the other side of the bed. There was his wife, lying there peacefully asleep. He smiled and reached out to her. Before he touched her shoulder she turned to face him. She was dead. Her face had been totally decomposed and most of her hair had fallen out. He recoiled in horror. He looked at the foot of the bed and froze.There standing at the foot of the bed were three Gatherers. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

One of the Gatherers raised a bloody sword and pointed it right at my character. That was it, he had had enough of this. He wanted to end this. He yelled at the Gatherer "COME ON YOU BITCH, DO IT. DO IT!!!" The Gatherer looked at the others and then without warning, thrust the sword into his abdomen. The Gatherer twisted it around a bit then pulled it out. My character fell back and went very still. The camera zoomed in to his face. Through all the pain and suffering, he let out his biggest grin. He laughed, he couldn't stop laughing. This was it. He would be dead soon. That's what he wanted. To die, and reconnect with his family. He finally stopped his maniacal laugh and fell silent. His eyes rolled back and he went very still. The screen cut to black. I was scared out of my fucking wits at this moment. I stood up quick and went to eject the disc, but my speakers let out a terrible screeching sound and showed a picure of a very realistic looking Gatherer before cutting to a PS3 error screen. I was speechless. What sort of lunatic would make this sort of shit?? I immediately repackaged the disc and went out to go mail it back to my cousin. I asked him to either destroy it or send it to the Police as soon as he got it. I didn't want anyone else to get their hands on this terrible thing.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: My cousin got the disc and sent it straight to the police. It turns out the guy who was fired from Rockstar was a very disgruntled individual. He was fascinated by demons and the devil himself. He based this game on what he saw and what he believed. The Police raided his apartment hoping to make an arrest but they were too late. He had committed suicide... by stabbing himself in the gut with a sword. All over his apartment were pictures of the Gatherers, like REAL photographs. Were the Gatherers real demon figures that he had conjured up and included in a game? He seemed to refer to them as his 'servants'. I'm just glad that this lunatic is dead and that the game is safe and locked up in Police archives. To this day I still haven't forgotten that game, and it gives me chills whenever I think about it.

- KingoftheUnderground669