While sitting in front of my PC one evening, I had noticed something out of the ordinary in the office. For some strange reason, the entire building, except for my machine, had gone completely dark. "What am I doing in the office at 2am anyway?" I thought to myself as I sat, keying various lines of code into this machine. I was hoping this code would do my bidding like any good minion should. I thought nothing of the time as I continued to work, however, I did look up when a bright red light flooded the hallway. A million thoughts raced through my skull as I tried to rationalize the blood-red light flowing down the hallway. As I stood up to trace the source of the red glow, a voice called out my name.
Let me tell you, Hearing something unknown call out my name in an empty office building was not my idea of fun. "It must be my dinner, fighting
back" I thought, turning my attention back to the blinking cursor of my terminal. The voice subsided, only to be replaced by loud footsteps
heading my way. I pop up in my cubicle, looking around to find the source of the disturbance. The only thing revealing itself to me was the ominous
red light, still bright as it has been all evening. I sat back down, goosebumps covering my skin at this point, and realizing that I needed to get
this code finished. The red light began to vary it's intensity, and I realized something was trying to distract me from the task at hand. Fed up
with the distraction, I rose to my feet and once again followed the light. As I turned the corner, the light disappeared.
Surrounded by darkness, I followed the wall back around the corner I had just turned. The only glow in the entire office was that of my computer
screen, showing like a beacon of light. I stumbled my way back into my cubicle, and took my seat in front of the machine once again. As my eyes
focused on the screen, I noticed something strange. Something had been busy, rearranging my code. it was as if the light was a ploy to lure me from
my area so this unknown force could do the deed it had been tasked with. Little did I know, that the task given to this outside force was the task of
driving me to the brink of insanity.
I looked at the rearranged code. Gone were my well formatted lines, and in their place was one phrase, centered on the screen:
The beginning of the end for you is now
I rubbed my eyes and pinched myself, trying to figure out if my body was trying to tell me it was time for me to give up and go home. Unfortunately
for me, this was very real. As I tried to get out of my chair, I found that something was holding me to it. I reached down to my ankles and found
that the floor had risen up and grew around them. I looked back in horror at the computer screen, which had just finished typing out another message
to me:
Formatting: 10% complete
I raised my hand and attempted to reach the keyboard, when I noticed that my hand had become transparent. The percentage on the screen continued to
count off as I realized what was going on. My machine decided I was due to be reformatted. I guess after all of those times I deleted files or reformatted it, the machine decided tonight was payback time.
Format Completed
I woke up what seemed like hours later and found myself surrounded by these monsters, only the monsters were made up of binary code. I tried to get up and run, but found that I was tied to what looked like a circuit board. One of these digital beasts spoke to me and explained that I was in digital hell, the same place I sent all of them, my innocent files, after I was through with them. Little did I know, being tied down was only the beginning of my torture. I found myself wondering why I was sent down here to digital hell, and what was the deal with the light, the glow and the voice. Before I could think any further, one of the files spoke to me. "Do you remember when you deleted me? You played me, completed the quest and then deleted me, sending me straight to hell. I can see by the look on your eyes, you don't remember me. I've got one word for you. Doom."
Then it occurred to me that this beast was the shell of the game Doom, which I had played for many, many hours at a time while I was at home. I could only imagine why it chose to suck me into the digital abyss from work. Then, Doom spoke again, as if it was reading my thoughts. "I brought you here from your workplace since you were the only one around that evening. All of the phenomena you had been put through were only seen by you. No one will believe you if I were to send you back, which I'm not going to do. I have other plans for you." I continued to look at this collection of zeros and ones, and could not make sense of it all. Finally, Doom snapped its fingers and I had found myself in the middle of a level of the game Doom, but I was unarmed, naked and surrounded by unspeakable evil, which descended upon me.
This is my own (first!) work of horror fiction, written for this quest