Young Writers Society

Chapter 1

Finch is my name, investigating is my game. Let me introduce myself, My name is Veronica Finch, I’m 19 years old and I’m a detective, but not like some “Law And Order” crap, I’m what you call, a paranormal/ urban legend investigator. I hunt ghosts and I also hunt real life sickos like in our following story today, but let me warn you, reader, this tale is not for the faint of heart, so if you are a good, faint hearted person who cannot tolerate the excessive amounts of violence and gore, then close this book right now, and run away as fast as you can.

Anyway, I live in Buckingsdale,Pennsylvania, and I’m investigating an arcade that is 50 miles away, in Muhlenberg. The name of this arcade is Tommy’s, and by doing some research, I discover that this establishment has been around since 1975, and the owners were Thomas and Ethel Jonas, But I could’t find anymore information on Google, so I went on The WayBack Machine, and came across a website, that looked like a cheesy ripoff of Chuck E Cheese, with cringy ass CGI straight outta Kidpix. The last update to the website was October 7, 1991, discussing a new video game that was called “Bloodfest”. Not much is known about this game, other than the fact that it appears to be some shitty ripoff of Mortal Kombat, and that it was made by a company known as KodaGames. I checked out the website and found out that the company only made 2 games, one being Bloodfest, and the other, a Mario Kart ripoff known as Hopper Kart 3D.Bloodfest was released August 15, 1991, and Hopper Kart 3D was released back in February, 1986. There was a planned sequel to Bloodfest, that was supposed to be released in spring of 1995, but was pulled from shelves for unknown reasons, most likely financial stuff copyrights, and licensing.The last thing that was on KodaGames website was an update for Bloodfest, before being sued by Midway Games for plagiarism over the logo of the game, since it was similar to that of Mortal Kombat. KodaGames filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, unable to financially support it’s games, the company sold the rights to another unnamed company, before closing its doors in 2005. So who’s this unnamed company, and what the hell have they been doing?, I closed my laptop, and got out of my car. I look at the hideous building in front of me, with its fading rainbow, circus theme on the outside.A man in his forties with blonde hair and green eyes walked excitedly over to me, wearing a red tee shirt and black slacks. He adjusted his glasses and shook my hand.”Hello, my name is Anthony Dolan, but everybody calls me Tony, and you must be Miss Finch?” he says, I stammer “Umm, yes!!!, I am, but please, call me Veronica”. I follow him inside.

Chapter 2

The building inside has a very neon 1980s/1990s feel to it, with the bright tables and chairs, however, even as fun as this place seems, the lightbulbs are slowly dimming and the paint is chipping. Tony opens a door to a back office, where he hands me a cup of coffee and offers me a seat. “So, Veronica, he begins, “ Let me tell you why Commissioner Johnson sent you here. This arcade is currently under investigation because of two supposedly cursed games.” He looks at me, nervous that I'll laugh in his face any moment, but I don’t, I fully understand where he’s coming from, and he sees this and continues, more confidently, “Back in the old days,Uncle Tommy and Aunt Ethel had purchased arcade games from the now inactive company known as KodaGames, one being the cheesy fighting game, Bloodfest, the other, a more child-friendly go kart simulator,Hopper Kart 3D.Other than being total crap, these games seemed pretty normal, except for when a player won a game,there was a secret, cryptic, and highly disturbing message…”

“Many believed that an employee who worked at KodaGames was fired,and out of anger and revenge,inserted images and footage from snuff films and other images from the deep web.Some say that these images are cursed, and after playing the game, many children reportedly had seizures, heart attacks, and some became very mentally unstable and traumatized. Some ended up even worse.” He hands me a newspaper, dating back to March 1988, I flip to the page he’s talking about and I see an obituary, in bold letters, stating: “ Jason Fletcher, 13 dies from unexpected seizure,after playing a new video game” . I picked up another newspaper,this time from 1991, the year that Bloodfest came out: “15 year old Angela Dubois found dead of an aneurysm in a local arcade, Coroner states that she didn’t have a history of any brain disease and was a healthy child". Then, next to it, “Six teens died under mysterious conditions after playing Bloodfest” . The last one was even worse. Tony took out a VHS cassette dated: “Thursday,June 3rd, 1997”, He turned on the TV in the corner and put the VHS in the VCR.It was a grainy, shaky footage of a bunch of teenagers wearing ropes on their necks, standing on tree branches.”What the fu-”, I said, but before I could finish, A girl with blonde hair and glasses eerily whispered into the camera,”For Athalazzaar”. Her expression was apathetic and blank, but I could hear that sadness and fear in her voice, and the other teens repeated what she said.Then, they all jumped...Before I could even look away.

I heard their sickening choking noises, the snapping sounds of collar bones, and I turned around and saw them, swinging in the wind like lifeless marionettes, the nooses their strings, the kicking and flailing, and finally the still, floating legs, like a dance of death.The camera slowly zoomed up to the face of the blonde girl, she was still kicking around, and foaming at the mouth, her eyes bulging, her face, a violent color of purple, but before anything else could happen, the tape cut to static. I backed up out of my chair and vomited in the trash can, “That was my sister, Julia, she was only 17.”, Tony replies. I see the tears welling up in his eyes, “She loved that game so much,that it killed her, and finally after so many kids dying, Uncle Tommy finally got the hint to lock the games up in the back storage, so that no more kids would die.Then he died of cancer in 2001, and my aunt went missing, she was listed in my uncle's will, that when he dies, she gets his business assets and the arcade belongs to her, but if she dies, then I am the owner, not Bobby and Jonah. “Who are they?” I ask, “Oh, nevermind that!,follow me.” he says nervously, grabbing a flashlight.

Chapter 3

Tony led me to a padlocked storage room that was dark and musty inside. There were two video game cabinets, dusty, faded, and unplugged.He plugged one in and it made a humming static noise as it turned on.He put a token in and pressed PLAY. The logo for KodaGames flashed across the screen, then transitioned to the start page for Bloodfest. A computer generated wasteland appeared, the storyline styles were like a mix of Eternal Champions,Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.,and Time Killers, but the art was just like Mortal Kombat, with motion capture actors. I pressed the PLAY button, and the select your player page popped up. There were 14 characters;7 were locked, and the other 7 were playable.

I clicked on Zxerillza, an Amazonian queen from 45B.C., and the only playable female character. The first match was against Grizzler, a cyborg drug lord who roams New York City from 2237 A.D., so anyway the game console is pretty cheap and honestly, being a gamer since childhood, It was very easy to kill this dude,then,I kept earning points and moving up the food chain, up to the final boss level, the boss was revealed to be a gruesome mass mound of human flesh,faces, limbs, organs and eyeballs mashed together. “They must’ve wasted the budget on him”, I smirked. Tony pointed at the name tag on top of the character’s health bar:Athalazzaar. I froze for a minute and wondered why the hell these kids would kill themselves for a fictional character?So anyway, I fought the hideous final boss and expected some cutscenes to say that Zxerillza saves the planet, unifies the nations, and everybody holds hands and sings Kumbaya and shit, but the screen only turned black. Then the footage cut to a young girl, chained to the floor,in a filthy, windowless room. She was screaming and looking at the camera,then some creep in a skull mask and black cloak appears from nowhere and begins to beat her with a metal bike chain,maiming her until she passes out, a bloodied heap on the floor.Then the man masturbates while screaming at the camera, “I AM THE ALMIGHTY!!!!, I AM Athalazzaar!!”

I turned away from the screen, traumatized by what I’ve witnessed.Tony breaks the silence by saying, “I think my aunt’s alive, and my crazy cousins, Bobby and Jonah are holding her hostage.

Chapter 4

I got back to my hotel room that night, and ordered some takeout, from Chicken-With-A-K. “What a bullshit name for a company”, I thought in my head. I clicked on the TV, and scrolled down the cable TV guide, mostly televangelists, and pay-per-view-pornos. I saw a familiar film and turned to the channel.My fav movie,RoboCop, was about to come on. I looked at the clock above my bed: 11:15 p.m.

Where on earth is the food I ordered?,Suddenly, a crumpled piece of paper slipped under my door. I picked it up, and it read, “I know why you’re here, but this is my warning to you, get out,and never come back here or else….”. I quickly locked the top bolt on my door, and moved a dresser in front of it, the person was still standing outside, and my heart was beating fast in my chest.Finally, that weirdo left.I turned off the TV and got into bed, but before I did, I called the Commissioner and told him what happened.

The next morning I returned to the arcade alone, Tony hadn’t arrived yet, so I turned on the lights and went to the back to play Bloodfest. All of the sudden, I felt my knees buckle and my skull vibrating, I suddenly collapsed on the ground,thrashing around,that familiar feeling,...oh God not again, then the world became more blurred and fuzzy, until I was knocked out and consumed by total darkness.

“Ronnie, it's time for lunch, come inside!!!”, an old woman called outside a house.I had woken up in the middle of a garden, where a young girl was playing in the rain, she had curly black hair and honey almond colored skin. “Okay, Grandma, I will”, the girl replied. Then all of the sudden lightning came out of nowhere and struck the child, causing her to scream in pain and fall down, unconscious, but alive. The Grandma was crying and fearful. “Please save my granddaughter, she’s only 7, her mama died when she was small and her daddy took off.., Oh Jesus, please don't kill my baby girl.”

The girl was lying in a hospital bed, all bandaged up. Her eyes opened and she sat up groggily, observing her surroundings.Suddenly, a elderly man dressed as a doctor , walked into the room with a chart.He looked up at the girl and smiled. “This little lady here is one little brave soldier, isn’t she Nurse Keaton?”. A woman dressed as a WW2 nurse walked in and patted the child on her head. “Oh yes indeed, Doctor Rossman, and would our little soldier like a candy bar?”, The girl nodded in awe. The nurse pulled a chocolate candy bar out of the pocket of her smock and handed it to the girl. The girl looked at the expiration date on the candy bar:6/5/1945. The candy bar still tasted delicious though, and the nurse shook her head and laughed. Suddenly, the door closed and in walked another nurse, this time however, dressed in modern scrubs. “Who were you talking to,chica?”, the nurse asked. “N-nurse Keaton and Dr.Rossman, ma’am.”, the girl stuttered.The woman was confused, then her eyes darted over at the candy bar.

“Hmm, that's odd, they don't make these kinds of candy bars anymore, the candy company closed down in 1965,the year I was about your age…”, The nurse ran out of the room with a facial expression of awe. Five minutes later,a gypsy woman, along with the girl's grandmother appeared in the room and sat down.The gypsy woman stroked the girl’s head affectionately, and held her small hand.

”Tell the Văzătorul your name,my child”, the gypsy beckoned. “My name is Veronica Elizabeth Finch, I am seven years and three months”, the girl repeated. Then the woman took out a bottle and told the girl to drink it, which she did, the girl felt a weird, tingling feeling in her body, as If someone was carving onto her back, only she felt no pain.She ran onto the bathroom, faced the mirror, and lifted up the back of her nightgown to see a star with a scroll carved onto her skin, like a tattoo. The words,dicit puella, on the scroll.”Veronica..”, the gypsy began,“your little encounter with the lightning bolt gave you supernatural powers, powers beyond any mortal’s grasp.The nurse and doctor who visited your room have been dead for years, which means that if you saw them, you can communicate with the dead, and anywhere you go, anyone you meet, and anything you touch,will trigger a convulsion in you, which signals that you're having a vision, and you also can defend yourself and manipulate objects with your telekinesis, but remember, you must learn to control your powers, because as you age, they become more dangerous.”

Chapter 4

I wake up groggily tied up in a chair, and I look around and see a rotting corpse on the ground being feasted on by rats.”Well, well, well, isn’t this a treat?”, a man’s gruff voice says behind me. The owner of the voice walks over to me, a man in his early 50’s, about 6’3 wearing a camouflage suit holding an Uzzi. The children in the arcade are screaming and pleading for their lives. His brother, a man wearing a black sweatsuit, about 5’9, walks up to me and suddenly slaps me in the face. I fall over in my chair, doubled over by the stinging feeling in my cheek. “I told you tuh git outta here, ya good-for-nothing scum, now yer gonna pay!!!”.He fires some bullets into the ceiling, a couple of times, causing some tiles to fall on the floor. “Please,let the kids go”, I plead. He opens the doors. “Scram, ya little bastards!!!!”, he hollers as the kids and families go running out to their cars. I recognize them both from a picture in the back office. “Bobby, Jonah, I know what you’re hiding, that corpse is your mother and you’ve murdered her so you’ll inherit the business.”, I snapped.

“Clever girl, yes that's what we did but we came to own the business, and Tony here is getting in the way!!, our mother should have made us the owner after she died, but no…, Tony was the favorite, just cuz he was an orphan, Tony, Tony, Tony!, everything fucking thing is about Tony, you know what Tony plan to do?, He plans to sell this place, and leave town so he can be rich and famous.He doesn't give a shit about good, ethical, fair business.”Times are changing”, he says,”Kids nowadays are different with all their technology, we’ll have to sell the place, but it’ll make good money.”

“But that's no excuse to kill your own mother and then try to kill your cousin-”,I began. “SHUT UP BITCH!!!”, Jonah screeches as he backhands my already bruised face, while holding a gun to the back of my skull.”One more word outta you, and I’ll blast a bullet through your goddamn head.”, he snarled. I finally snapped, feeling anger boiling over in me, and I looked down at the ropes that bound me, and with one cutting glance, they unbond themselves from me, and I stood up and with all the inner strength I had, knocked Jonah to the floor and wrestled him. His gun began to blast giant holes in the wall and I tried to crawl away from him, but then, he turned me around and was about to shoot me, but then I remembered I had a pistol in my jacket which was sitting on the chair, I reached out with all effort, grabbed the gun, closed my eyes and fired it. Jonah looked at his wound on his stomach, then looked at me, then slumped over, dead. “JONAH!!!!!!!”, Bobby ran over to him screaming, then when he realized he was dead, he turned to me, saying “Y-YOU KILLED MY BROTHER, AND NOW I’LL KILL YOU ALONG WITH ME!!!”Bobby opened his jacket to reveal homemade bombs tied to his arm. “Any movement I make will set off the bombs and blow us both to Hell”, he said laughing maniacally.

Chapter 5

“Bobby,I said, “I’m sorry for what I did to your brother, but kill me all you want, it won’t bring your family back.”Let me talk to Tony, and he’ll give you the business himself, so you can run it the right way, see Bobby we can be friends, we don’t have to hate each other, it's not your fault okay.”, “It was that shitty video game,Bloodfest, with all of the snuff movie clips in it!!!, so many kids died during those years, that's why not many people come here nowadays.”, He finally looks down sobbing into his hands. “You have a life, Veronica, but mine is over. Tony is not who he says he is, and you’ll find out sooner or later, now go, leave or I’ll blow you up along with me!!”I run out the door with tears in my eyes, Bobby may have been a killer, but he doesn’t deserve this. Then, the building explodes into a colorful, yet fiery and hauntingly grim display of colors of amber, gold, autumn, and crimson flames against the night sky, crashing the arcade down along with Ethel, Bobby, and Jonah, taking along the broken dreams, the forgotten happiness, and the decaying cheeriness that lived in those walls. I walked over to the calmed flames amongst the burned, charred rubble, and discovered the Bloodfest video game cabinet still intact. It oddly was still working, even without being plugged in. The footage in the cabinet showed the chained girl from the last clip, only she was dead, her organs spilled out and scrambled across the floor, her face hideously mutilated and mangled. The man in the black robe lifted his hood off his face and grinned, and flipped off the camera.

It was Tony…

Then a blue screen with words appeared on that said “Veronica, Veronica,...silly little Veronica”

I took all of the footage rolls out of the cabinet, poured some gasoline that I found nearby onto the video game cabinet,struck a match, and set it on fire, then I got into my car, and drove the hell outta there.

Epilogue

I cannot tell you where I am going, only that I must leave immediately,because my life is always threatened when I’m on these cases. Tony must not find me, but for now, I must flee for my safety, but as I was hopping onto the bus, a man handed me this saying that he had a message from the Commissioner,it was a job profile page from KodaGames, it read as following:

NAME:Anthony Dolan Ⅲ

D.O.B.:7/28/1975

SEX:Male

Height: 5 feet, 10 inches

Weight:157lbs

Hair color: Blonde

Eye color: Green

Race/Ethnicity:Caucaisian

Occupation: Video Game programmer at KodaGames(formally, was fired as of August 2003, due to misconduct)

(Current employment status is unknown)

That, my friends must explain why Tony hijacked the game, he had been fired by KodaGames, and wanted revenge, so he spliced images from his own homemade snuff film into the video games, which had some sort of cryptic messages or something subliminal, which caused all those kids to have heart attacks or even die. Reminds me of how Polybius was killing people off too, or Lavender Town Syndrome. I guess we will ever know, will we?

The End