Out of Place

Erwin Carman was your average University student who lived in the US. He has always wanted to go into game design, so that's what he signed up for at the University. When accepted, he had wasted no time starting to study. He has been at the University for 3 years, now age 21, he still heavily enjoys gaming. His journal logs were found a few weeks after his disappearance.

Player's Story...

January 4th, 2013:

It was 4 days after New Years, me and my friends were hanging out at my place. We were playing all of your typical games without incident, of course reading Creepypastas and playing Slender is just in the game, right? My buddies went out for a party but I stayed as I wasn't feeling very good, so I decided to start playing some games. But something was odd, when I opened my Need For Speed Carbon folder, NFSC.exe was not in the folder, I disregarded this as a disk fragmentation issue or some sort of glitch, so I restarted my computer. When I rebooted, everything was back to normal, my files were in their correct locations... or so I thought, normally I ignore drive letters as they have no use to me, but when I looked to the left to click on my C:\ Drive, it wasn't there.

My C:\ and D:\ Drives were renamed to M:\ U:\. I was a bit creeped out, so I looked it up on the internet, but I found nothing. After spending a few hours researching, I found a computer virus. After I scanned for the virus, it came back negative, I was puzzled. I decided to backup my files and re-install Windows. I ran the backup and when it was done, problems were immediately noticeable.

"explorer.exe was not found"

"explorer.exe was not found"

"explorer.exe was not found"

"explorer.exe was not found"

"explorer.exe was not found"

"explorer.exe was not found"

"explorer.exe was not found"

"explorer.exe was not found"

This message would not stop popping up, it was appearing at such a fast rate, my computer shut down.

January 7th, 2013:

After taking it to support, my computer now had a fresh Windows 7 install. When I went to my backup drive, all of my files and folders were locked and they were named in almost a pale white shade, it was making me uncomfortable. Only one file wasn't blocked, "Out.exe."

With all of my files useless, what did I have to lose? I opened the application and was granted with the original Mario theme, I was puzzled. Nothing was wrong, I played the game, and I played for hours, completely forgetting about all my problems, like as if I was being dragged into a separate reality separate from what is life. The noise in my ears eventually slowing down and becoming distorted, my monitor was morphing and changing, I passed out. In the hospital, my friends were there, hovering above my hospital bed. "What happened?" I asked. One of my friends replied; "You went into a coma, but they could never figure out why." I was shocked, how did a computer put me into a coma? He continued "You were hit by a car."

Now I was extremely confused, curiosity and fear crept over me like snakes, my body filling with rage, what kind of sick joke was this?

March 15, 2013:

I am finally back home. The first thing I do, is get back onto my computer. It was odd, my computer was completely normal, no file Out of Place... and just as that thought came to mind, there it was. "Copying files..."

The window showed up on the screen. And there it was. Out.exe had returned, I knew I would regret clicking it, but I decided to get my friend to standby. The game played like the original Mario as it had before, but this time, I wasn't sucked into the game. I was fine. He left the room, and I continued to play, when I heard an unsettling noise. It sounded like a scream, followed by a gunfire... but, this was an 8-Bit game, it sounded too real. Suddenly, the colours began to invert and the music slowed until it was nothing more then a low rumble, hurting my head, I couldn't remove my headset, if I tried, my skin was pulled with it, trying to stand up was impossible, my legs were limp. I couldn't CTRL+ALT+DEL, I was stuck on this terrifying screen. Suddenly, when I pressed the right arrow to continue, the image on screen changed. Animals. No matter what button I pressed, pictures of animals were appearing on the screen, at first nice and comforting, but than their faces were beginning to become distorted, like human faces with empty eye sockets. The text appeared on screen.

"Join us. Become us. Die with us."

I tried to escape, but it changed.

"Don't escape. Delete. Delete your memory as a..."

My mind went blank, I couldn't think straight, my thoughts becoming all messed up and combined, and random ideas popped into my mind, I was imprisoned in my own mind, watching my own twisted plots form without willing control. And it happened.

March 16, 2013:

My friend found me passed out at my computer yesterday, he was able to wake me up from my horrible dream, I destroyed my computer and bought a new one. But I don't think I will do anymore PC gaming. I had a Wii, so I booted it up.

"Wii Menu Out of Correct Order, but has been found, continue?" This wasn't a normal Nintendo message, could the virus have spread? I pressed A, or "Continue" and I was greeted to the most horrifying screen ever, all of my channels, were replaced with Super Mario Bros, titled "Out" and the disc channel... was titled "Not Found. File Out of Place." At this point, my hand was shaking, I threw my Wii remote at the ground, and watched it explode open, revealing what you would expect. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I changed to normal cable, the news. I was hoping this would comfort me. The first story that comes up, "Four Teens found dead. Four teens were all found dead in the Mississippi river, more than 200 miles away from their homes," She read the names, they were my friends. Then, it happened... "Their bodies were very mangled, their limbs out of place, just like them a-" ...The Signal cut out, and the screen flashed to Mario. I notic-

End of recovered Journal pages.

His apartment was found empty, his TV still on, showing a static screen, and there was no body. Just the journal entry with a few ripped pages, and some bird feathers. The feathers could not be identified as any known species, it troubled investigators. The body of the teenager was found on top of a nearby building, his eye sockets had contained no eyeballs, his limbs were mangled beyond what they could possibly be bent to, he was far Out of Place.