CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "Fish Clicker™" Creepypasta

Episode Date: August 16, 2020

Click. Click. Click...CREEPYPASTA STORY►by Darkly_Gathers: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...Creepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY- Dawid Planeta: ►https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ylN9n►https://www.instagram.com/minipeoplei...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

Ever played cookie clicker? If you haven't, the concept at its basis level is very simple. You open the game in your browser, you click on the cookie and you gain plus one cookie. You do this a whole load and then you can spend the cookies you've accumulated to purchase in-game upgrades, auto-clickers and the like. It's one of those addictive time-waster games. Fish Clicker is kind of like that. Similar premise.

The pixelated white silhouette of a fisherman walks slowly across the screen through the drizzle. A low-quality nightstorm sky of three interwoven colours wavers behind him. Dark blue, dark grey and black. He comes to a stop in the middle

and takes a seat. He pulls his fishing rod from his back. He pauses and his silhouette seems to shake for a short while. His body alternating between three or four slowly quivering frames then he eventually cast his line the end disappears through a hole in the ground

I found the game in an undiscovered website gem's thread on Ask Reddit I was waiting the result of a potentially rather embarrassing sexual health check to be frank and I needed something to distract me to occupy my thoughts something of low effort and repetitive the suggestion for fish clicker was right near the bottom of the thread

with a single upvote. I'm not sure if anyone else even saw it. The user provided no accompanying commentary, literally just the name of the game, hyperlinked to the website itself. I thought, screw it. With a name as stupid as fish clicker, it must be good,

or at least interesting. Nothing so far had caught my eye, and I was right near the bottom of the thread anyway. I might as well. So I took the bait. The link took a while to load, longer than I'm used to, given my connection speed. I was actually about to give up when the screen finally changed. All of it.

The whole screen had once. The task bar at the bottom and the search bar at the top both disappeared without my command. The screen showed only black with a small line of pixelated white text, alone and bright in the middle. Game cannot be stopped once begun. press escape to close Enter to continue Game cannot be stopped once begun What does that mean?

I won't be able to pause it Or is it one of those one time only gimmick games Where you have to restart your router to start again Once you've lost or died or whatever Regardless My curiosity was pete I pressed enter The above screen with a pixelated fisherman

Played out before me And once his line had been cast a menu of sorts appeared, a column that took up the latter quarter of the screen, maybe a little less. It was full of curious, shadowed shapes and objects in the top half, and the lower half showed only empty item boxes in grey. The fisherman became at once much smaller,

a small sitting figure in the rain, and beneath his 8-bit night sky. A layer opened up beneath him, this one entirely blue, and little silver fish could be seen swimming about in it. Beneath this layer of animated water was only darkness. Layers left locked, perhaps. The lamp in the corner of my room flickered.

I needed to get that thing replaced. I didn't think we had any new bulbs in the house. I thought about going to my housemate, but she's away, visiting parents this weekend, so I ignored it and played on. or try to at least it wasn't immediately apparent what I was supposed to do I mean the game is called

fish clicker so I tried clicking on one of the silver fish but nothing I tried another but still nothing happened the game wasn't even making any sound no music no sound effects just silence

the sound of rain the real rain tapping softly but steadily against the window behind me was the only noise in the room. I tried clicking on the fisherman. The rough, crude shape of a fish appeared in the top left of the screen, about two inches by one inch in size, basically made of just an oval and triangle

and a couple of white lines, like a child sketch. I tried clicking on this. Plus one appeared by the fisherman in small white text and it floated up into the sky before disappearing as the number one became fixed in the menu column to the right. I clicked again and the same plus one appeared,

though in a different spot this time on the fisherman's other side. It floated up, then disappeared, and the one to the right changed to a two. Okay, I thought to myself, I get it. Just what I'm looking for. Click, click, click. Repetitive.

Something to distract my thoughts. thoughts. I wasn't a huge fan of the game's ambience, but that was fine. I clicked a whole load more. Sometimes, but not always, one of the fish swimming about in the layer below the fisherman would disappear with a click, and a new one would swim on from off-screen. I kept clicking, and the number rose. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, not yet at least, but there was something off about this game. Something that had insane. settled me in a way I couldn't quite explain. Maybe it was the silence or the setting.

I shot a quick glance at the little fisherman, sat alone in the rain and the dark. I gently chewed my tongue for a moment, then kept clicking. One of the shadowed little objects in the column to the right became visible after a while. Its sprite changed from all black to a combination of dull colours, browns and greys mostly. looked like a bag of worms. I hovered the mouse over it and a little text box appeared alongside. Superior bait, it read, 100 fish. I clicked on it and the sprite disappeared along with the aforementioned amount of credit

from my bank. A line of white text began to write itself across the screen just above the fisherman. There was actually some sound accompanying it this time, a noise which made me jump because of its suddenness. It was a series of monotonous tones, only subtly varying in pitch, kind of like the sound effect when reading text in Animal Crossing. It read, This will help me catch. The message hung in the air above the fishermen for a few seconds and then vanished.

I found that clicking on the crude white fish in the corner of the screen now yielded me two fish instead of just one. Once I'd reached a certain number of fish, 333 I think, another layer appeared to beneath the first. The first, not including the fisherman and his stormy sky, that is. This layer was a slightly darker shade of blue than the one above it, and the fish swimming around it were a little bit bigger. The fisherman's line, a single string of pixels which previously extended to the bottom of the first layer, now continued and extended into this second darker layer two. I continued to click. The fish counter rose.

Another sprite in the menu column emerged from its shadow This one looked like a little replica of the fishman himself Hovering my mouse over it The accompanying text box read Spirit 250 fish I clicked it The fisherman did not say anything this time But I noticed that the fish counter had started creeping up by itself

Every second the number would automatically rise by one Huh, so an auto clicker then. I get it. I was starting to get into it. It was just the kind of game I needed. Click, click, click. The lamp in the corner of my room flickered again, but my eyes were focused on the screen.

A third layer opened up. Again, a darker shade of blue than the former, and above the void of black beneath. Locked layers, I'd come to presume, The fish in this layer were longer than the previous ones, and despite still being crudy made of the same pixels, their animation seems smoother somehow. A new upgrade appeared. This one was pinkish.

It sort of looked like... A brain. Hovering the cursor over it revealed the upgrade's name. Clarity. I bought it, but at first nothing happened. As with spirit, there was no accompanying message. from the fisherman. It didn't seem like my fish counter

was rising any quicker either. And then I was suddenly aware of a sound. Some actual in-game musical ambience. Was it music? I moved in here closer to the speaker.

There was definitely something. I listened through the soft sound of the rain against my window and I cranked up the volume. I moved my ear a little closer. It was faint, very faint indeed, but there was something playing. Not music, but sound effects of some sort.

The sea. It sounded like the ebb and flow of the tides of the ocean, ever so gently at the edge of my hearing. My heart had begun to beat much faster. My hands began to dampen with sweat. I was tensed, my fear of jump scares, making me suddenly conscious of the computers maxed out volume. I quickly hastened to crank it back down just in case when something flashed up on my screen. The image was not particularly scary, nor was there any accompanying sound. But the surprise alone had me exhaling in despair, pushing myself back from the screen and raising my hands in automatic defence.

It was a face. Pixelated and of low quality, but a face nonetheless. A white outline on the dark background. Overlaid across the layers of water and the menu. The face was of a middle-aged man, the fisherman, perhaps, and frame by frame he opened his eyes. His expression was difficult to discern,

but it was not a happy one. He looked troubled. I could not take my eyes from his. His mouth opened and closed. That same sound from earlier, the assortment of tone noises in a random array, of low pitches played out from the speakers. I am sorry.

The face closed its eyes, a motion comprised of three or four frames, then disappeared. For a moment, the game seemed to freeze. Then the fisherman adjusted his hat, and the game continued. What the hell? I realized that I had been holding my breath

and allowed myself a welcome intake of air. This was creepy as hell. I tapped the escape key. I decided that I was going to look for a wiki or something, see if I'd accidentally stumbled into a horror game of some sort. But the escape key did not work. I tried it again to no response. The fish counter ticked steadily upwards. I tried the windows key, F12, alt F4. Nothing. The counter ticked upwards. I tried control or delete. I tried again, but there was no response at all. I blew some air out of my nose and pushed back my chair.

My phone was downstairs. I'd leave my room, go and get it, and look for a wiki. Except... A curious thing happened then. The thought of standing and leaving the room disturbed me. The notion of abandoning the fisherman to his post. It filled me not only with a terrible. sense of guilt, but one of a deep and lurking dread.

I felt it spread like an oil spill throughout my veins, as I watched the little fish swimming about in their watery layers. I don't know where the thought came from. I don't know what it meant, but I settled back into the chair, rolled it back up to the computer. The rain tapped against the window. I ask you now, what would you have done? Would you have kept playing, knowing what I've shared with you up until now?

Or would you have forced your computer into shutdown and just gone the hell to bed? I chose the former. Screw it. I wanted a game to occupy my thoughts and I got what I wanted. I'll keep playing. Click, click, click, click. The fish counter ticked upwards. More augrades revealed themselves to me as the time passed by.

Another superior bait sprite, another spirit sprite. The counter was rolling up with speed now, even without the constant assistance of my relentless clicking. A new sprite appeared from its shadowed outline in the upgrade section. A light in the darkness. It looked like a little animated torch, a flashlight. Grey body, yellow light projected from the front. I bought it, and the fish counter began rising in the dark.

dozens with every passing second. That same series of monotonous tones, the tones that varied, only slightly in pitch, began to play through the speakers, alerting me to another message from the fisherman. I glanced up at him, while the white

text typed itself out above. This will help guide the way. It hovered still for a moment, then disappeared. It was at this point that I realized I was actually sweating. Not that my room was particularly hot.

It was actually quite cold, in fact. I wiped my forehead and clicked on. Layer 4 revealed itself to me. The animated sprites in this layer were little grey mantarays, and the water, following the pattern, was a darker shade of blue than the one that preceded it. Click, click, click. And the sounds of the ocean, distant and faint through the speakers.

became a touch clearer. I purchased more upgrades, more superior bait, more spirit, and as the counter of fish reached the 100,000 milestone, a new upgrade appeared. It looked like an 8-bit bottle of

pills. I hovered the cursor over it. Cope, it read simply. I bought it, and the distorted tone played as a message appeared above the fisherman. This will help ease the pain. I was actively nervous now.

The game was doing something to me, and I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. But I had to keep playing. I couldn't explain it, but I had a duty here. I had committed, so I clicked on. Each click of the whitefish now garnered me over one 100 into the bank each time. My counter was shooting up.

Time passed by, and the next layer appeared. As you can expect, a darker shade of blue and the sprites this time look like little hammerhead sharks, swimming silently through the deep. To accommodate this layer, the others, including the fishermen, all became a tad smaller. Click, click, click. The layers did not grow smaller as I unlocked more of them from there. Then on, I had to use the scroll wheel to cycle through them. I had to scroll up to see the fisherman for instance, and as detailed, each layer was darker

than the last. Whales swam in the layer beneath the hammerhead sharks, then giant, eerily shifting squid, then anglerfish, disturbing little things. The mouth slowly opened and closed, jaws distending, revealing lines of sharp, pixelated teeth. The fish counter was well into the millions by now. I bought more upgrades as they became available. Some I had to save for, some I could purchase instantly. A new sprite of a shining hook.

Needle point hook. The fisherman's accompanying message read, this will help me catch. A sprite of a battered brown coat. Coat. This will help me weather the storm. A sprite of a sharpened blade. Razorblade This will help me ease the guilt

Jesus ease the guilt What the hell was that supposed to mean The next layer appeared It was filled with long monstrous armored fish The faces ended in beaks The torsosos were covered in plates and fins

I get on playing Click Click click click The counter continued to rise sharply upwards The layer beneath revealed itself. The creatures at this level were not ones immediately recognised. They were all little spirals, moving in strange, in logical directions. A small, writhing mass of pixels could be seen at the end of each of these spirals on the outside edge.

I purchased another spirit. I purchased another upgrade similarly styled as spirit, but coloured in grey. This one was called Resolve. Click, click, click, click, click, click. I realised then, at some point, over the past couple of hours, my lamp had flickered one too many times and had died. I was sat in the dark. I could switch on the main light to the room, sure,

but I didn't want to leave my seat. I did not want to leave my post. And the curious sensation that the light would not work, even if I flick the switch, played tumult with my emotions. Where the sensation came from, I cannot say. But in that moment, I was comforted by the idea that the light would still work if I wanted it to.

If I rose from my seat and tested the switch, only to find it did not bring the light on accordingly, then my fears would be confirmed. My fears that the house had gone dark and I was powerless to return the light. The not knowing was, I decided, better than the potential of knowing. So, I played on.

The layer beneath the one with the spirals was too dark. I could see movement, but I was unable to adjust the screen's brightness, and the creatures were too similar in shade to the water's deep blue to tell what they were. But in relative terms, they were massive, bigger still than the whales a few layers up. I squinted and leaned close to the screen. I watched the unknown beings steadily shift through the dark of the depths.

They made me feel small, very small indeed, and bitterly cold. An alien shiver passed over me as I cracked my wrist, massaging the joints of my hand before clicking on. There was only one new upgrade available at this level. A spirit that resembled, disturbingly, the creature from the painting, the scream, drawn in red pixels. I felt a wave of anxiety as I brought the cursor over to it. This one was called guilt.

I bought it. I heard the sound of those shifting tones and I scrolled back up to read the fisherman's message but there was no message. The sound played but there was no accompanying text. Instead the fisherman's sprite had begun to shake

slowly in three or four alternating frames but I don't know how else to describe what I was seeing the fish counter had stopped rising this went on for a minute perhaps couldn't have been much more and then it stopped the fisherman stared at and the fish counter continued to tick upwards the next layer of sea was pure black only darkness I could see nothing at all

not even shifting shapes and I felt like I was there with a rain on my window in the cold and empty darkness of my room I felt as if I was there on that unknown shore alongside the fisherman above his world of the watery deep

the fish counter was well into the hundreds of millions I gave my hand of rest and watched as it flew up of its own accord 900 million 950 million 999 million As it passed over the billion mark, two new upgrades appeared together. The verse was titled with a familiar superior bait,

but instead of a bag of worms, it showed a pixelated white hand, reaching down from the sky. I couldn't be sure, it was hard to tell. I purchased it, and the fisherman responded with this expected line. This will help me catch. The second upgrade now available was a new one. Unique, a little brown-green frog. This one was the most expensive so far.

It would clear me out, essentially. I hovered the mouse over its sprite to see its name. Merlin. Merlin the frog, I muttered out loud to no one in particular. I pressed down on the mouse with a heavy click, paused, then scrolled up to see if the fisherman would make a comment. To my surprise. Merlin had appeared next to the fisherman on the opposite side of the fishing hole,

and the tones played out through the speakers, but it was not the fisherman who spoke. It was the frog. The text appeared in green above the animated creature. What kind of a fisherman loses more than he catches? I watched the text hover above the frog for a moment, then disappear, and the fisherman replied, I do what I can

I swallowed but my throat had gone bone dry Merlin replied How many more must you lead to despair fisherman A pause For a moment I thought that might be the end of the exchange

But then If they knew the danger The fisherman replied They would not play And beneath a layer of pitch darkness A new layer appeared The screen scrolled down of its own accord to reveal it, but this one was neither blue nor black.

It was a deep, dark red. And the sprites that floated about within it, twirling and floating grotesquely, looked like little people, misshapen but bipedal, human proportioned. They could be nothing else, surely. They drifted silently in the dark red water. It was horrific.

Once the initial wave of nausea had subsided, I leaned closer to the screen, eyes wide. The little humans didn't appear to be swimming in the same way that the fish were. As I described it, drifting was the better verb. I glanced over to the right. The fish counter no longer displayed a rapidly increasing number. It did not even appear to show a number at all anymore. Not even. Not in the traditional sense.

It fluctuated wildly between symbols Some numbers sure Some were upside down Some were not properly aligned But there were also foreign letters Letters from an unknown language And random keyboard punctuation Some I recognised

The backslash The hyphen the semicolon Others I did not Three upside down commas in a rough triangle A sideways Omega symbol An upwards pointing arrow with the leftmost fletching missing. Countless more,

scrolling and disappearing and changing. My heart was a hammer in my chest. The white sketch of the fish on the top left had changed the red. The room had become colder, and the ocean called louder. Unable to tear my eyes from the screen, I continued to click,

clicking on the white-turned red fish, but my clicks yielded an unexpected error. I was only given a, plus zero. Plus zero? The number appeared in red alongside the fisherman. Then it rose up before disappearing.

I tried again. Plus zero. Click, click, click. Each time I was given nothing but a plus zero. I watched the sprites of the little humans flailing steadily in the deep and dark of the Red Sea. It made my skin crawl. They were trapped there.

I could feel it. A part of me was down there along with them. Lost in the terror beneath the waves. Click, click, click, click. Plus zero, plus zero, plus zero. A new upgrade eventually became available. I don't know how much time had passed. It looked like a rough pixelated emoticon.

A round face. Eyes closed and crying, but smiling. I brought the cursor over to it. It was called Memory of the Forgotten. I held back a sob, an ethereal sadness had crept up upon me with the encroaching dread. What was I supposed to make of this game? What kind of game created such a response in its players? The question was whether I truly wanted to know any of its disturbing truths, its secrets lost

within the code. I purchased the upgrade. The tone began to play out, and I scrolled up to see the accompanying text. Merlin was speaking, his words appearing across the ocean above him in green, accompanied by that same series of low tones. You will never catch you. There are too many. The fisherman replied, I will catch every one of them. I can always find help.

The frog replied. At what cost comes to help, fisherman? I need it. I do what I can. I do what I must. An eye for an eye. A pause. Why do you taunt me, Merlin? It does not have to be this way. You bring me nothing but dismay. My hands are clean, fisherman. Are yours? The conversation ended there. I did not know what to make of these cryptic messages.

It was infuriating actually. My mind hurt with a swell of emotion within. I was so close to understanding, I could feel it. So, so close. But the finality still eluded me. Try as I might, I could not understand. I was missing too many pieces of the puzzle. Click, click, click, click.

A new upgrade revealed itself. It looked like an a-bit ray of light through a storm cloud. It was called hope. Unfortunately, as most of my earnings had gone to Merlin the Frog, I could not afford it. So, I decided to save up. I would purchase it when I could. All of a sudden, the red sketch of the clickable fish began to flash intermittently between red and white.

The fisherman began to shake. Faster this time, not like before. I clicked the fish and following a brief pause, A plus one appeared alongside the fisherman. It floated up a little, then vanished. The fisherman's sprite moved in a way I had not seen before. He was too quick for me to really work out what he was doing, but he turned quickly to his original position and began to speak.

The text above him read, I am able to catch them, Merlin, you see? And Merlin, after a beat, replied, an eye for an eye And a new upgrade appeared This one was rather confusing The sprite was only small But there was a lot packed into it

If I lay my face real close to the screen It looked sort of like a stone head Kind of like those heads from Easter Island Upside down in front of a circle of deep blue This one was called Beneath I tried to purchase. The rain beat suddenly harder against the window. A chill passed through in the form of an icy and unwelcome shiver

and a message appeared in the middle of the screen. Are you sure? The text box read. There is no way back. Game cannot be restored. And I was given the option of yes or no. And for me, the decision was clear. Was I terrified?

Yes, I was. But something had awoken inside me. Something ancient and powerful. And I had to know. What exactly I had to know I could not say. But I had to keep going. Compulsion urged me forwards. It urged me beneath.

I clicked yes. And after a moment of silence, Merlin began to speak. The text appeared above him in green, backdropped by the stormy. pixelated sky. How many more must you lead to despair, fisherman? Then he turned and hopped to the right, until he eventually disappeared off screen,

leaving the fisherman alone. The big sketch of the clickable fish in the top left changed from red back to its original white. The screen itself began to scroll automatically downwards then, back down, deep down, and I felt the sensation of being dropped like on a roller coaster or in a lift and elevator. Down we sank, down through the darkness

and past the layers of blue and black, and of red, and into a new layer that had appeared beneath. This one was like one of the previous, entirely black. My heart was pounding, and I noticed that the symbols and letters had disappeared from the fish counter and numbers returned. So I clicked on. Click.

Click, click. There was something in the black layer. In both of them, I was sure of it. Maybe lots of some things. I couldn't see them, but I could feel them. They were there. A new upgrade appeared to me after a while, except it wasn't entirely new.

I recognized it. The sprite of the brain, like the one from near the beginning of the game. It was titled as it was before. Clarity. I hesitated, but purchased. For a moment there was nothing. And then, even though I'd sort of been expecting it, it still made me start in horror.

The pixelated, low quality, but bright outline of the face, the face of the middle-aged man, the man I have assumed to be the fisherman himself. He appeared at once at the centre of the screen. His eyes opened. His mouth began to move. The speech sound played, and the text scrolled across the bottom of the screen. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Forgive me. I will catch you. I promise. I'm sorry.

I am sorry? I will catch you. I stared back into his eyes as an animated tear rolled down the side of his cheek. And the face disappeared. I sat in silence in the dark. In the darkness of my room, the rain washed down the window, and I clicked on. Click, click, click. More upgrades.

I lost complete track of time. More layers. Click, click, click. The layers had reversed their pattern. Instead of becoming darker with each subsequent level, they were becoming subtly lighter. the second layer of pitch darkness was a layer only slightly brighter. I could again make out vague, shifting shapes, massive shapes, long and silently writhing. Little pin-pricked pixels of light were dotted randomly throughout.

Although, they didn't look like pixels. They looked like actual lights. Tiny, distant and far away. And yet, as I watched them shiver, I felt that I could reach out my hand. I could press it through the screen and I would be there amongst them in the darkness. The lights like stars all around. I would see them for what they were. But I did not touch the screen.

I cracked my wrist, massage my palm, and I return my hand to the mouse. Click, click, click. The layer beneath was home to creatures with heads like the skulls of elephants. the bodies bulged as they swam. Tentacles slithered out between them. Their eyes were black and cold and hollow. The layers beneath showed me distorted starfish, massive and slowly swirling.

Sometimes the ends of their limbs would break away and form into pulsing circles. The circles would dissolve eventually until they connected with another free-floating circle. Then the combined result when it snare at one of the starfish and crush it down into nothing. The layer beneath that was filled with creatures that looked like twisted lobsters but swam like snakes.

Their heads and backs would regularly open into a form resembling two crossed hands, fingers spayed, before reclunching, writhing in the depths. And the layer beneath that was occupied only by a single black line. From the left of the screen to the right, all across the entire layer. It wavered slightly, gentle arcs rolling along it. Occasionally, little clouds of pixels would burst from its sides and disappear into the surrounding water. I hated it. I hated all of them. But I could not look away.

I could not bring myself to stop. I realised I had enough in the bank to purchase the Hope upgrade. Except, when I hovered my mouse over it, I saw that the upgrade was now entirely free and its name had changed. Hope for the lost, it was now called. I bought it and scrolled up to read the fisherman's text. I have cast too deep, he said. Then, forgive me, I will find another.

I will seek their help. I will catch everyone. Find another? Another what? I glanced back to the sketch of the fish again. I clicked it and the plus 460,255 I had become accustomed to floated up from beside the fisherman before disappearing. I wondered about the plus zero it had shown me earlier. I wondered about the fish's sudden change from white to red, then back again.

It had only been red on the red layer. It had only shown me plus zero on the level with a red sea. That had felt like, I don't know, like I was actually progressing the same. story, if there even was one. But now, what was I doing now? I was just going deeper, deeper and deeper and deeper. Click, click, click. I unlocked a new layer. This one showed only shadows of colossal claws, kind of like a crabs, but longer, thinner, hungrier, all intertwined and clustered claustrophobically around each other. They shimmered and shook in the deep.

The layer beneath showed shapes that changed and shifted as they swam across the screen, from strange spiraling cones, genetic cubes, to shimmering helixes. Helixes with long, arched fins, protruding from the top and the bottom, then to clouds of pixels,

then back to the cones. Or not, the patterns were not regular. And the layer beneath showed only a fetus, singular, alone in the dark, an embryonic fish-like shape with a disturbingly pre-human form.

It trembled within its membrane. Pieces of this membrane shell broke off into the water at semi-regular intervals. And I was cold now, so terribly, terribly cold, slick with icy sweat, but I could not bring myself to stand.

I could not look away. Click, click, click, click, an upgrade appeared. It was, I would come to learn, the final one. The final one that would become available to me at least. The sprite was a pair of eyes, glowing white in the darkness. Hovering the cursor over it revealed its name. The truth, I could not afford it, so I continued to click. Click, click, click, click, click, click.

Click, click. The fisherman spoke again, unprompted, but I have ceased to care. I need the truth. I do not wish to awaken her, he said. She is not ready. But his words were of no consequence. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. The darkness of my room, the darkness beyond the window, and the darkness beneath the waves

were unending. They were eternal. I was one with them. I disconnected from Times Road, and the upgrade became affordable. The truth. With a shaking finger, I clicked, and the sun was taken from my bank, and I was greeted with a message, a text box. Not available at this level of play. I sat there, stunned, my eyes dry and staring. Not available at this level of play? What the hell? And then I was angry. I swore at the fisherman.

I cursed his game. I clicked him furiously. I clicked on his head again and again and again. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Reveal the truth to me, fisherman, I screamed at the screen. Reveal it! He did not respond, but the screen scrolled down of its own accord. I felt that familiar and nauseating drop.

It took longer this time. Down I sank, down, down, down below, and another layer revealed itself. This layer was white, and a single, angular, pixelated red face floated in the middle, a woman's face. and this was no simple three or four frame animation. There was no repetition here. The expressions in the face shifted and changed and shimmered in constant flux. She snarled at me. Her mouth opened.

What must have been her lips pulled back. The layer changed the black and a jaw distended wide. I could feel her staring at me. I was there with her in the deep. I could feel the void around me. me. In a cold panic, I tried to escape. I scrolled desperately back to the top of the screen. The speech sound effect played out in my ears, the varying tones, and the text appeared above the fisherman's spot. I say the fisherman's spot, because the man himself had vanished,

as had the sketch of the fish in the top left. They had both disappeared. I was alone. The text read, Forgive me, I will return. The screen scrolled back down again, faster now, much faster, and I knew in a frantic moment that I would see her. I would see the terrible, red, and screaming face, but I could not look away. And there she was. The screen went black.

The barriers of my computer screen became meaningless, as the darkness became one with the darkness of my room. the darkness of my void. And only the face shone before me. Red and angry. Her jaw cracked wide and eyes empty. There was a score up high and a health bar, both in red, but the score was changing of its own accord.

I was adrift in the void. I threw out a hand, I clicked. I was clicking the various dark shapes that had begun to leak from the face's mouth. Sometimes the clicks would raise my score, Sometimes they would lower it. Sometimes they would take points off the health bar, and sometimes the health bar would vanish entirely. It was making me sick.

My stomach lurched in distress. The rules did not make sense. It's not fair, I whispered as the darkness filled my mouth and my lungs. I was never told the rules. They were never explained to me. I could feel the immense and incalculable pressure of the deep, weighing down on me. What would happen if I lost? What would happen if I lost this horrible game? And what would happen if I won? Was it possible for me to win? Was this the end? It didn't make sense.

Who are you? I choked out. The face replied. I was the first. The text shimmed out in red. then he will never save me and she screamed a noise that vibrated through the void and hammered through my head and my heart and I can't take it I no longer wish to play I do not want to play

I can't do it I just can't do it I refuse I see it in my mind's eye the power button and I reach out a heavy hand and I force it through the darkness and I press it down. I hold it down for a long, long time

and the screen cuts out. My lamp flickers back into life in the corner of my room and I stare trembling down at the computer on my desk before me. I blink and look around my room. I turn and stare out the window. The rain is stopped

and the sky is pale. The sun has begun to rise over the horizon. I blink again, heavily and realize how horribly, horribly tired I actually am. I return my gaze to the dead screen and laugh suddenly. I row my hands through my greasy hair. Jesus, I say out loud, laughing in bitter relief. One hell of a game. A hell of a game indeed.

And I stagger up into my aching legs, my joints cracking. I stumble into the bathroom. My reality fades in and out, becoming merged at the edges with my impending dreamscape, even as I stand there brushing my teeth. The content of the game, mixing and merging with my exhausted consciousness. And I return to my room and collapse into bed, falling asleep within seconds. My dreams are of the deep. And when I am awake, I see the truth.

Slowly, fearfully, I rise to a reluctant stand. Bitter with regret, but knowing where I now belong and what I must do, I head to my desk. I took my laptop under my arm and leave my room, make my way down the stairs steadily. Step by heavy step. I pass by a mirror. I take in my eyes. My eyes that are now glowing are bright and terrible white. I resent the fisherman and what he has done,

but I do not blame him. I push through the back door into my garden, beneath a dark and swirling storm sky. The grass of my garden is gone, as is the fence and trees and all of my neighbour's houses. There is only rocky coast, wet, grey stone. I do not turn around, but I know that if I were to do so,

So, my house would be gone. The rain falls as I approached the hole in the ground, the fisherman's hole. I can see silver fish swimming about beneath. He will be back soon, says Merlin the frog, from his position by the hole's entrance. An eye for an eye. And I prepare to jump head first down into the icy water below.