The Fourth Wall

I love creepy pastas. Always have. My favorite have always been the pokemon ones, I have no idea why. I’m just… Drawn to them. They’ve never actually scared me, don’t get me wrong. I’m not some pansy that curls up in a ball each night scared of something under my bed trying to get me while I am asleep, nor do I shy away from scary images. Actually, I love it all. I always have. On facebook, I do something called roleplay, which is essentially taking turns to write stories with hundreds of other people online. Each person has different characters, and every story is different. I’ve been a roleplayer for nearly four years now, and I’ve read some things that would make most people’s skin crawl. Not me though. I’m nineteen, turning twenty this year. My life belongs to the world of fantasy in a sense. Lately though, I’ve lost a lot of muse for writing, and I can’t explain why.

I could blame my depression. Unfortunately I know it would be a lie, because depression was what caused me to write in the first place. It was my sanctuary away from everything. I could write about whatever I liked, whatever I dreamed up would become a reality in this world of make believe. Some roleplayers are better than others; writing in elaborate detail, or even using fancy words to make their writing more beautiful. There are also one-liners, roleplayers that give nonsense short responses like “looks at you” or “smiles”, often with bad grammar. But who am I to judge? Everyone in this world starts off somewhere.

Not too long ago, a group of roleplayers appeared with weird names, and the last name “Colt”. All of them had horrific images of disfigured beings or people. Nobody even gave these people a second glance though. We figured they were just another clan that had come from another site or something. That wasn’t too uncommon, for the majority of well known clans had come from Myspace to begin with. Hell, a few years back I had started my own clan, the Vortex. These guys were all odd though… You never saw them fighting. When they were roleplaying, they were something else. I tell you. I’m good at roleplay, yet I could never even hold a candle to these guys. Funny thing was, when I asked? Nobody even remembered what the stories were about. I know I had read their writing countless times before, but I couldn’t remember either.

For about five months, this clan went through facebook, roleplaying with everyone. I can’t explain how I knew they were good. I just remembered their writing, yet I forgot at the same time. Going to find their writing again once a roleplay was over was near impossible, they were all deleted by time you came back. Something else I noticed though, they were growing more members by the day. On top of that, other roleplayer’s profiles were disappearing. This was nothing new though. Facebook was always taking away people’s accounts. Nobody was making new accounts though. I tried to inbox the Colt members, but nobody ever spoke back. Thought they were all just stuck up pricks after awhile. It wasn’t until I asked one of them to roleplay with me that I finally got a reply. I didn’t expect the reply though, I was told to go ask the leader, and that the admin was busy.

It surprised me when they said that. I mean, they all said their admin was busy, yet they had the time to respond back to me, right? I got a little angry at this uppity behavior, and wrote a huge rant post, at least fifteen paragraphs long, tagging a heap of people on my friends list. What I wrote I thought was pretty good, I digressed and went on about the attitude of all roleplayers who were too cocky to treat others on equal terms. I was quite known for my rants though see, and I often got quite positive replies when I wrote them. Come ten minutes later though, there was no new notifications. There were no comments. This was a little strange, though I guessed I had drawn a blank in sense with writing this one. Though, it did strike me as a little odd that nobody had paid the post any attention. I went back to my timeline to see if facebook had just messed up my notifications again. It was worse, my post wasn’t even there. I groaned out loud, facebook was failing again.

Then I noticed something else. My timeline was blank; nothing I had written was there anymore. My profile picture wasn’t the same either. I clicked on the image, and the creepiest pic I had come across on the net so far was in its place. I didn’t change my profile picture and all. What the hell was going on? Shaking my head, I clicked out of the picture, going back to my timeline. Then I saw my name… “Darkora Colt”. Now I was groaning. It seemed this so called clan was just a product of facebook turning my account into a spam bot. I probably just got hacked. The thing was though; I had used all of my name changes already. Hackers though, I couldn’t put anything past them.

I was a little pissed off to say the least that my profile had been hacked. So, I decided I’d just do what I was well known for doing, and make a new account. I clicked on the bar at the top of my screen, and went to log out. There was no option for it. What? I rolled my eyes, and went to just click the ‘X’ at the top of the screen. That was gone too, as well as the minimization button. Now I was a little angry. Why wasn’t I allowed to get out? The start menu, actually all the buttons at the bottom of the screen were gone. Seriously, I was getting pissed off. I tried hitting the Windows tab between ‘Ctrl’ and ‘Alt’ on my keyboard. Immediately, it showed the message for the Shift sticky key.

“Pressing the SHIFT key 5 times turns on StickyKeys. StickyKeys lets you use the SHIFT, CTRL, ALT, or Windows Logo keys by pressing one key at a time.

To keep StickyKeys on, click OK.
To cancel StickyKeys, click Cancel.
To deactivate the key combination for StickyKeys, click Settings.”

By accident, I clicked OK, and a new text box showed up. This was odd, seeing as every other time I had accidentally clicked it, nothing happened except the computer making weird noises every time I clicked the Shift key while I was writing.

“GOOD CHOICE.”

That confused me a little, though I dismissed it. I had never even pressed the Shift key in the first place. So what the hell? It took me back to the page of my “hacked” profile. I thought that was it, the hacker had probably sent some virus into my computer. With a groan, I went to pull up the chat list and talk to someone. There were none of my friends online. Their avatars didn’t even pop up. All I got was a whole list of those darn Colt guys littering my chat. Then I started to wonder. I never had these many Colt people added. Sure, I added a lot of random people who were all roleplayers. Those, I only remember having about six added. The rest I just saw in groups and stuff. Suddenly, I remembered everything I had ever seen them write, their various styles and the beauty of them.

Going into my friends list section, I saw the only people I had added were people with the last name Colt. I was getting creeped out now. For a hack job, this was far too weird. I had five thousand friends, all with the last name Colt, and all with sadistic, twisted images for their default pictures. I swore to myself, I was pissed off about as much as I could be now. In all honesty, I don’t know just what I was angry about. Then a message blipped at the bottom of my screen, just a chat box, nothing big. I can’t say I knew what to think then. So I opened the message, to check out what it said.

“Mr. Vortex, our leader wants to speak to you.”

I can’t say I remember what I said back, but it was something nasty. I had flipped my lid. I wrote back swearing, ranting about hackers and how these Colt people were undoubtedly involved. All I got back in reply was three dots. I tackled him then, saying how the lack of response was proof that I was telling the truth, and they couldn’t deny it. I accused them of having hacked multiple people and taking their profiles away. Then, from my speakers, I heard a chilling laugh.

I stopped cold, my eyes fixated on the message I had just sent. Then, the screen faded to black. I didn’t remember turning the speakers of my computer on, nor did I open any facebook voice message. Something spoke, each of its words were laced with something dark, like an abyss that trapped you tightly as you fell, one that you knew you’d never stop falling from. It filled me with something I hadn’t really experienced before; pure fear.

“The virtual world and the real one have only ever been a hair’s distance away, haven’t they? Sometimes the world you write in feels more real than the one you live in. When your character suffers, you feel that suffering, don’t you? Yet it’s made all better by the character pulling through. You could never get through such thing in the real world, so you come through it in this world to escape it, don’t you?”

I didn’t know what to think, I was frozen. The worst part? The voice was a hundred percent correct. How did the voice know? What was the voice? Who was it? So many questions were rolling around in my head it wasn’t funny.

“Who… Who are you?” I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

The voice chuckled, in such a way that I could feel the skin on the back of my neck crawl.

“Don’t you remember me? I’m one of the characters that never had a happy ending. I’m a character you used over and over again, that never found true sanctuary. You created me to feel pain, but never to get through it.”

I realized I knew who it was. A character I had never given a last name to, one that suffered in agony without ever finding a way out. The voice was Cryrax; my own creation. My eyes stayed glued to the black screen, before a edit I had done for the character appeared onscreen. Black hair, black sclera. Deep blue eyes and a single blood tear running down his pale, angry face from the eye. Behind him, the background was enveloped in blue flames, just as I had remembered editing him. Then, the image moved, a sinister smile appearing on his lips. My speakers were low quality, but at that moment they sounded too realistic to be of the kind of quality they were supposed to be.

“TELL ME ADMIN!” The voice yelled, the images mouth moving as the voice echoed around me. “HOW WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER STORY TO BE WRITTEN? I WON’T BE THE CHARACTER THIS TIME, YOU WILL! AND JUST LIKE ME, YOU WILL SUFFER, AND NEVER FIND YOUR SANCTUARY! YOU WILL LIVE MY NIGHTMARES FOR ETERNITY!”