CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "I found the accursed videogame 'Polybius'" Creepypasta

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

CREEPYPASTA STORY►by Darkly_Gathers: 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. CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►Omega Black: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/N5...LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...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

The wind rustles the paper in my hand, and I clench it a little tighter to prevent it from blowing away. I glanced down to it, then back up to the building before me. Faded pink and neon teal glimmer and flicker through the rising force of the rain. Kagami Gaming reads a sign above the door. The G of the Kagami buzzes as it flashes in and out of focus. The colours of the neon reflect the pull. pooling puddles below, and in the dark, watery glass of the building's windows ahead. This is the place all right.

I stuff the paper back into my pocket, and I stride towards the doors, grabbing the handle of the closest and hauling it open, easing my way inside. Met with a sudden rush of warmth, I stop in the entrance lobby and open the front of my jacket, dripping steadily under the 90-style carpet beneath my feet. I look around apologetically as the door banged shut behind, but there is no one here to scold me. Despite the flashing lights and the whir of the machines, I appear to be entirely alone. Arcade machines are stacked clumsily together in here, corridors between them created through careless chance, not by any apparent design.

Some of the machines tower high up above me, way towards the ceiling and into the humming silver pipes and the shadows above. I think to call out, then decide against it, heading instead to the counter at my right. There is a computer monitor upon it, but little else. I decide to wait to see if anyone will appear to talk to me. Behind the counter and against the wall is a large glass cabinet filled with private. I drum my fingers against the desk as I look the cabinet over. Gumballs and toxic waste candies lined the bottom shelf, five tickets apiece. Beside them, a stretch armstrong toy, 30 tickets, and there's some weirder stuff too.

A pair of oversized novelty glasses with focus written across them. Ten tickets. The lenses seem to shimmering green and a bright, glittery, blue when you moved your head from side to side. There's a magic eight ball in there on the shelf above. 500 reward tickets is the cost for this. A lava lamp 2. 950 reward tickets required.

A Nintendo GameCube. 4,440 tickets. When did they last update this thing? I wonder. Or perhaps the GameCube was a deliberate choice. This place must get its fair share of retrofans and old school geeks. A lot of them would be keen to get their hands on something like a GameCube, I should think. My eyes zigzag up the cabinet towards the very top, where the highest cost prizes are kept on display.

There's a power glove. Looks like it could be an accessory to some old-fashioned console, but I don't recognize the brand. There's an exit sign in there too, a novelty one, I guess. Looks like one you'd find above an actual emergency exit, except the least. little stick figure has a triangle for a head in place of a circle. Weird. This item costs 10,000 tickets. I glance back into the arcade. Still, no one. Just me. I lean over the counter to look at the computer screen, but the thing is dead dark. There are no lights upon the monitor, and I'm not even sure if it switched on. Okay then, I murmured to myself, give it

up and leaving the desk for the arcade proper, making my way up the lobby steps and into the glimmer of the lights. I weave my way through the machines as they beep and flash. I recognize the DDR machine, Dance Dance for Evolution. There's a game with a plastic drum attached and another with a similarly oversized keyboard. Many of the games are in Japanese, and as such, both the title and the game's rules are a mystery, but they were, alongside their brothers, lights of flash as they try to entice me. But I'm not here for them.

There's only one game I'm looking to find this evening. And that's Polybius. This is the place. It has to be. All roots have led me here. I passed by a claw machine and pause, taking a curious look through the glass. The claw hangs in place

and the interior is stuffed to the brim with little plush characters. I don't recognise from which franchise as all the characters all look rather generic. Just regular people albeit a little more animaified.

Their expressions are all the same though. Unhappy. Their mouths have been sewn into little frowns. The black little eyes stare out at me, and I shiver as I continue on along my way. I spend the better part of an hour searching the building. It's deceptively larger than it appears on the outside, and has two accessible floors. My search yields no further clue as to the location of Plybius, the lost and legendary game.

I try again, taking greater care to track my route, but another hour passes, and And still nothing. And still, I'm yet to see a single other person. Occasionally, a machine makes an unusual noise or a pipe sends out in a regular creek, and every time I shoot a quick and anxious look back over my shoulder into the neon-sparkled gloom, expecting to see the source of a footstep or some strange figure stalking me through the shadows. But each and every time, there is simply no. no one there. I try as best a hold of my fears and my frustrations as I can, and I try for a

third time. I stick close to the windowless walls at the building's far side, winding my way through machines. I pass for the second time, a photo booth promising fun and memories within. As before, I pulled back the curtain and look inside. Nothing, just as you'd expect. seat in the centre, a blank dead screen, and a buzzing overhead light. The other side of the booth is blocked by a second curtain. And this time, I'm compelled to reach out for it, to step into the booth, to take the curtain in my hand and pull it to the side. And beyond is a revealed passage, a passage marked by the dank and dusty wall on one side, and the rear side of a basketball hoop throw game on the other. Both of these walls tower high up above me,

and the passage leads away into the gloom. With an anxious swallow, I tap the flashlight to my phone and venture forward into the unknown, pushing past the curtain and easing my way down this hidden corridor. To my right, the backing rails and barriers created by the basketball machine give way to their neighbor, another hoop-throw machine. This in turn gives way to a dank and dusty wall in a mirror to the wall on my left. There are old torn machine posters plastered up against these walls, and I cast my flashlight across them as I walk between them, heart beating hard. There's a poster for the classic Pac-Man, though it is devoid of color,

black and white and gray scale. There are numerous ghosts, too. More than the familiar for, I mean. The image depicts Pac-Man himself, traversing a maze riddled with ghosts, and every single one is looking right at him. The poster beside it is for an early version of Dance Dance Revolution. The faces of the teenagers in the machine have been scratched out, and there is what appears to be blood leaking from their shoes. A third poster along my way has been badly torn, the remaining edges and what I can see a point. upon them imply that the text was Japanese, and the corner of what looks like an artist's

rendition of a barrel suggests that this may have been a poster for the original Donkey Kong. A hole has been drawn in the barrel, and if I squint, I think I can make out what appears to be a cartoon eye looking back at me. It's hard to tell. The colors have faded with time. I turn away, reorienting my gaze. to the route ahead. The corridor eventually opens up into a room far smaller than the hall of the arcade proper,

but still just big enough to get lost in. There are no doors that I can see, no windows, just more arcade machines shoved together and positioned at awkward angles. The cables cover the length of the floor like jungle vines, and the lights overhead are dim and blue. This whole room is a massive fire hazard. I think idly as I step over in between these cables, tapping off the flashlight on my phone. The machines in here are stranger than the ones in the main hall.

They are more unusual shapes, their colours less predictable. I do not recognise a single familiar title. Some look similar, sure, but they aren't quite right. There's a street fighter knockoff. though this one is called Bronx Battle. I head over to it out of curiosity and slide a quarter into the game slot. Player Start, the machine proclaims in a voice so deep, yet so sharp that I am taken aback with fright for a moment. I shake my head and collect myself, reaching for the joystick, but the screen shows me only a glitched New York landscape.

The character's select icon appears and several boxes along with it. but the boxes are empty. I can move the character select window around the screen, but there are no characters. As I furrow my brow and confusion, the game selects for me. The screen fades the black, and when it fades back in,

the 2D side profile of a New York Street is presented to me. But again, there are no characters. Several fighting sound effects begin to play through the speakers. The screen flashes red, and every time it does so, the joystick thrums and shivers. The hell, I mutter, randomly tapping buttons in an attempt to fight back, I guess. But it is futile. In seconds, I met with a loser sound effect, and Game Over appears on the screen, white text.

I step away from the machine, unsure of what exactly it was that I just played. But whatever. As I said before, I'm not here for these games. It's just Polybius I've come to find. My quest leads me around a corner and into a little alley created between two rows of machines. The end is shrouded in darkness and a single arcade machine stands there, half hidden in shadow. My heart leaps. I take a step towards it. Can it be?

I can scarcely believe it, but there's no did. denying it now, Polybius. In all its glory, a heavy black machine with a single semi-translucent green joystick and four similarly starred buttons beside, a green diamond in the center of the screen flashes in and out, in and out, expanding and decreasing over and over. I head right to it, as if in a dream, step after step, closing in. on the end result of my long, long search. Polybius draws closer. A picture of darkness admits such chaotic flashing and whirring.

But the flashing and whirring dims as they approach the machine. It becomes little more than backing murmur, if even that. It's out of mind, out of focus. Dulled white noise. Gray noise. The flashes don't even appear in the corners of my eyes as they take a long. deep breath. Standing before Polybius, the game of legend, and here I am, successful, a winner, about to play what thousands have only dreamed of playing. I'm fearful to even blink,

afraid that if I take my eyes off Polybius for even a fraction of a second, that it might simply disappear from sight forever. I place my hands upon the surface as if to confirm that it is real. There are stories about this machine. Twisted stories. Some said the game breaks minds. Some say it triggered memories that players didn't even know they had. Some even said it caused seizures. But I don't know how much I believe that.

We'll see. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't care. I've found it. I've proved that it is possible to be found and that I'm capable of great discoveries such as this one. I grab the joystick and press one of the buttons. The green diamond on screen shimmers through a shining, glittering blue, then freezes and finally disappears altogether. I'm plunged into a silent darkness and I'm conscious of nothing but my own breathing, in and out, in and out.

And then the game begins. A low hum emanates from the screen, and Pilius appears across. it pixelated. Below the title, insert coin appears. I do so with a shaking hand, and after I hear the chime of the coin being accepted into the depths of the machine, the screen changes once again. Here we go, I murmur with a grin, and the game begins. At once, my body goes cold. The excitement I felt is replaced almost immediately with a river of dread rushing through me, but my determination and curiosity holds grim and hard as iron. I control a polyhedral green man comprised of lines that glow in the darkness.

I am alone in a vast black plain. The horizon flows dimly from green to blue and my character is running. I press the joystick forwards and he runs a little faster. This is it. I'm playing Polybius. I'm actually playing the lost. game. I lean closer to the screen and alone encompasses my entire field of vision. Where are we going, little men, I mutter, as we race across the black plane.

I passed by curious shapes and objects, all comprised of thin, glowing green bars. I tried to interact with these structures, but there is no feature that allows this. So, I just keep running. My eyes glance up to the corner of the black sky. score zero it reads there is a little gray dot also a single pixel perhaps just hanging there below it hmm all right i start tapping buttons at random i push the joystick as far forward as it will go my green polyhedral man sprints to the void and ahead the sky begins to split i squint and stare right at it as the black gives way to a shimmering blue-green. I pass by more ruined, glitchy structures, and at last I pass through into the tear in the

sky. All around me now is the glimmer. The graphics have walked and changed significantly, and I find myself running through an ancient cavern, all styled in black and blue and green. Weird. A noise begins to rise all around me, a haunting sound, a chorus of voice. a chorus of voices, though I cannot make out what they are saying. The sound frightens me.

I struggle to disconnect myself from the game. I try to release the joystick and to take a step back, but I cannot do so. I'm not even aware of there being any joystick in my hand. I cannot distinguish myself from the character. I panic, but I cannot keep myself from running ever forward. I run between enormous statues, rendering. in broken parts and pixels from the black darkness ahead as I approach. I look up at them as I pass.

Some have the rough appearance of people, though with ugly, blocky features. They all appear unhappy. A few have faces etched with deep, sad lines. Others are tensed in bitter rage, in anger. Rex reads the pedestal on the statue to my left. John reads the one beside it And I turn my head Sin reads another

Carved into the graphic of the stone Pry reads another I don't understand I want to make the game stop But I don't know how I lock up ahead Eyes watch from the darkness Eyes of blue and green

Disembodied Or are they Are they connected to something Something begins the render from the black, fading into a deep grey. A sense of terrible doom threatens to overcome me. It's a game. It's just a game. Just stop. For God's sake, just stop playing. And then, with a sudden outburst, I regain control and release the joystick. I tear my hand from the buttons, as if shocked with electricity, and I stumble backwards from

Polybius and crashed to the floor, panting and sweating. staring at the screen shows only green and blue pixels jumbled glitching from left to right across the display the hell but it was so real or at least if not real as such it was still all encompassing whatever i'm done for now i've proved the game's existence i had a go i'll be back i'll be back with everything i need for now for now I just want to get out. The lack of windows is starting to get to me. Clostophobia has begun to creep its way into my system. So I turn and scramble to my feet, hastily passing between the beeps and lights of the strange arcade games, stumbling my way across the heavy wires that trail the floor. I scanned my eyes from left to right, looking for the way back, for that narrow, shadowy passage

that'll take me to the main hall. and in doing so my foot gets caught beneath the cable. I cry out, losing my balance. The floor rushes towards me as my stomach drops. I fall forwards and in doing so I lurched myself awake. I blink. All I see is the green polyhedral man running his way across the black field. My character, I blink again and look up to the sky.

score, zero, the same grey pixel. The hell is going on. I tried to move, my character jolt, I can feel the joystick between my fingers, but why can't I see it? When I tried to raise my hand, all I see is the green, polyhedral man doing the same thing. I begin to panic. Hey, I call out into the void. Hello, what's going on? I am answered by nothing but the hum of Polybius.

I tried to escape. My character twists from side to side. I crash into the edge of one of those half-formed, glitchy, green structures. Truculent, skeletal, impossible to tell what it might once have been, or what, if anything, it's supposed to be. I feel the buzz reverberate through my bones, and I'm compelled once again to head towards that split in the sky on the horizon.

The blue-green shimmer between the black. Is this a dream? Did I fall and hit my head? I'm once again running through the ancient cavern. 3D, low-quality graphics in black and blue and green. I'm stuck for the second time with that haunting chorus of voices. I pass between the same enormous statues, watching over me. with their cold, stony eyes. To my left is the statue engraved with Rex,

stooped, hunched, silent. Beside him is John, hands clenched their sides. I swivel my head from left to right. There is sin, a woman, I think, with stone hair draped over the side of her face. There is pry, a humanoid figure with an enormous eye carved where a face should have been. The statue is frightened me now,

as they did before, and above, more eyes, looking down at me, shifting in the dark. I make it further this time. The music increases in speed just a little, and gaps begin appearing in the floor. The floor itself starts to shift and roll, and I am forced to jump up and over in between to avoid falling down into the growing void that spills from the cracks. Geez, I crowd an alarm. Help, someone get me out. I pass by a statue with an arm missing

and a chunk loss from his chest. CRK is inscribed. I pass another with his hands clasped before it as if in prayer. HPE is inscribed. The eyes above creep closer. The thing that connects them begins to warp itself back into view,

rendering slowly as if through mist. It's a game, it's just a game, or an unconscious dream. Snap out of it, wake up. I focus hard on the feel of the joystick, the buttons, forcing my brain to accept that none of this is real. I blink and find myself staring at Plebys' screen, at the green triangle that glows beneath the game's title. I throw myself in the machine and turn from it at once, sprinting away, crashing into others in my haste to a sense. I check myself and look down at the floor, watching my feet so as to be sure not a trip as I did before. I find what I'm looking for, a shadowy gap leading away, and I run down it, passing by the disturbing posters as I approached the photo booth from the opposite side.

I grabbed the booth's curtain and draw it back, passing into the darkness of the void. And I'm still running, and I'm unable to stop. I look down at my hand, green, blocky. I'm running across the plains of Plibeus. No, I scream, turning around at once, trying to get back. But in all directions, it's just that same horizon. Endless blackfield, glitchy green ruins, and the blue-green shimmer beyond at the horizon's edge,

the crack in the sky, and above. Score. Zero. Damn it, damn it, someone help. But there is no one to help, no one to respond. A terrible sensation of vertigo sends my head swimming. I veer from the left to the right, and the blue-green shimmer shines brighter. I try to escape, but it's like the horizon orient itself, depending on which way I'm looking.

And after a while, I am helpless to do a thing, but to pass through it, and back into the hall of statues with this crumbling, shifting floors. I grip my teeth as I stumble from block to block, hopping over cracks, throwing out my arms for balance as the ground raises me up. I shoot a glance over to my right. Now I level with a statue of CRK, with his missing arm and the chunk lost from his chest. Its stone eyes stare coldly back into mine, and the darkness shimmers and glitches overhead. I leap my way down the rise and crumble of the various platforms, looking for, any sign of a hint of a clue or a way out, and as I pass by statue after statue, I eventually

come to what might well be the hall's end, as there is a statue directly ahead where there hasn't been one before. He emerges from the mist. A forlorn and colossal figure in shades of grey and faded mossy green sits before me upon an enormous throne. His eyes are sunken and his head lulled to one side. He wears a crown that has been carved from his head and inscribed upon his great pedestal, his K&G. King, I look up into King's face and I run towards him, and in his face I see a reflection of my own.

My own face reflected in the darkness of Plibeus' screen. I look down to my hands, I'm clutching the joystick and hovering over the buttons. The muscles in my legs ache, they tremble and buckle at the knees. But I am myself, as I was before. I carefully release control of the machine, backing slowly and steadily away. I tear my eyes away from my own in the plebious screen and take cautious step after step towards the exit. I know the way back. Please, I mutter, looking down at my own.

my hands with every step, clenching and unclenching them, tracing the metal of the machines beside me to confirm that they are indeed real. They are cold against my fingertips. My ears ring as I creep back through the dark, deserted corridor, back past the posters and the rear side of the basketball games. I open the curtain to the photo booth with a wince. And inside, I see the room as I expected to. A little seat, a screen and a camera. I allow myself a brief sigh of relief, then ease back the curtain that will return me to the main lobby. The view is the one I'd hoped to see. A hall filled with arcade games all beeping and flashing. That 90s style carpet, the musty, fusty smell that greeted me upon my entrance. With heart still hammering,

I quickly crossed the threshold, shooting a look back over my shoulder at the vast black plains of Plybius and the blue-green shimmer on the horizon. I swivel back around at once, but my view remains the same. I am running. There are no arcade machines here. There are only polygonal green ruins. Score zero hangs above me in the cold black sky. My head throbs, and with a painful jolt on my stomach and into my throat, I feel myself sick. How the hell do I get out? What have I done? I whisper to myself as I tear across that horribly familiar landscape, this twisted, ruined game world.

But, I don't know. I'm stuck. Over and over I play this game. I try everything I can to escape. I search as best I can the glitchy green ruins and find nothing. I'm able to climb to the top of one such ruin and another glitches into appearance. But when I head over to this freshly generated wreck, it simply disappears before I can reach it. Who even cares?

It looks just the same as all the others. I pass through the hall again and again. I make it to king again and put a hand on his pedestal. I pass right through him and find myself back in front of the arcade machine. Reality blurs with the game as I struggle to tell which aspects are real. I feel the gaze of that terrible, monstrous shadow up above me in the hall of statues and in the arcade. I throw open the front doors to a green and eight-bit rain. I can feel its wetness against my skin.

But when I tried to flee, I find myself running through the void. of Plybius' black plains. I lose feeling in my legs. They burn and throb with pain. But I do not know if I am even stretching them when I run, or if it's all still a part of Plybius' simulation. The score changes. It goes up to one, and then two, and to three.

Sometimes I'm able to pull myself from the game at will. Sometimes I need to reach the hall or even king himself. Sometimes when I try to escape, I can make it outside. Sometimes I get lost in the arcade as my surroundings bleed into the black desert's green ruins. Sometimes I can barely turn around. My head swimming as the lights of the background blur with a blue-green shimmer on the horizon. I reached the end of the hall for an unknown time. Mind hazy as I tried to pass King right by.

I swear his cold, dead eyes follow me as I make a moment. my attempt. Is he too aware of the terror that lurks above us, creeping around in the shadows? No matter where I go, I remain in the hall, circling the final statue until I slip and stumble from the game and into the arcade. Make it stop, I whisper. Please just make it stop. I lose track of time entirely. Alternating burns and shivers are sent shooting at my legs, cramps in my waist, in my back, my hands come in waves of painful throbs. I have to grit my teeth and focus as hard as I can to even move in a straight line. Polybius plays on.

It plays on and on and on. I don't know what it is that triggers my new idea. A last desperate grasp for freedom, perhaps. The unlocking of an old and forgotten memory. Or just some theory of a trapped. madman circling the drain. Whilst crossing as ever the vast black plain of Plybius, I'm compelled to look back up to the sky at the lone grey pixel that hovers there above me.

It's different to everything else. There has to be a reason for its existence. But how do I reach it? How do I get myself up there? I tried to climb up the green ruins as I did before to get myself higher up on. the ground. It's a difficult thing to do as I'm constantly in motion and unable to stop for even a single moment. But with every drop of my focus, I'm able to find the ruin I found before, to ascend to its peak, and as I do so, another slightly taller ruin glitches into focus beside me.

I do not return to the ground this time. Instead, I choose to leap from where I stand and right over to a narrow little platform on the next. I land, and as I do so, a third structure appears, this one slightly higher still. Okay, I've got it. My heart flares with a newfound hope, the discovery of a new potential path. I climb and I climb, ever conscious of the distance that grows between myself and the floor. I am brought around in a steady circle as I rise, and the grey pixel drawing. draws nearer and nearer.

There is no wind here, and yet I swear I can feel a growing force of something against my skin, glitching against my hair as I leap my way to the sky from ruin to ruin. I land with a thud on the tallest of these ruins. A narrow little platform leads me forward, and I tear along it unable to slow down. No further ruins appear. There is only the pixel at the end of this platform. suspended in dead space. I'm going to have to make a jump for it, I realize.

It's now or never. Come on, I shout as I jump from the platform's end, hands stretched out as far and as high as it will go. And, to my bitter relief, my hand strikes the pixel. My surroundings change at once, and instead of falling the great and deadly distance to the black plane below me.

I fall no more than perhaps two feet, landing with a stumble on a hard grey 3D rendered floor. I look around, bewildered, and relieved to have at last come to a stop. My legs shake and my stomach turns, but I ignore these sensations as best as I can as I look around. I stand in a simple grey room. No windows, no doors. Just a room.

My footsteps echo as I walk from one side of the room to the other, and upon one wall is inscribed the message, Thank you for playing Plybius. See you again. Signed, Developers. I walk towards it, heart beating, and I place my hand upon the wall. It passes right through, and so before I can psych myself out, I pass the rest of myself through to and find that I am standing before Polybius. I blink and stare into the game screen.

Polybius, it says at the top, and below it reads, Game Over, the text overlaid across a large green triangle. After a beat, the screen changes, and the words are replaced by. Please enter initials. With a stiff neck, I look down at my body. My joints crack as I do so, and I stare at my hands, at the pot and throbbing veins in my forearms, my white knuckles in the arcade joystick, the stench of dried vomit splattered down my shirt waffes up to my nose, and I become aware of the dark stains that soaks my jeans.

Jeez, I mutter. My lips cracked and throat death dry. Every blink feels heavy, as if I might fall suddenly asleep at any second, Is this it? Am I really out? Or is it just another trick? With aching fingers, I press the buttons with my left hand and enter my initials, V-D-R. And the screen changes, flashing to a scoreboard with a long list of initials. I am at the bottom, the lowest score, with ten. The scoreboard starts to slowly scroll up.

upwards of its own accord. There are dozens and dozens of initials, and some of them I recognize the statues. Rex, 490 points, John, 620, Sin, 791, Pry, 1,101, and further up, CRK, 305, HPE, 4,400, and at the very top of the leaderboard is king 9,99999 points These people Were they like me?

Did they all play Plybius too? And where are they now? Why have I never heard of them or of their accounts? I do not understand what I'm seeing But I back away from the game as I have done what feels like hundreds of times already. I turn and make clumsy step after step through the arcade, down through the little passage, back through the photo booth,

out through the main hall and through those front doors and into the world outside with a breath of cold night air. It's still dark, but it's not raining now, nor are there any puddles on the ground or any evidence at all of recent rain. I shoot a fearful glance up to the sky, but I do not see a score. I haven't since as it happens. Though every day I wake up and expect to see it.

Every day I awake, terrified that I'll still be there, still trapped, standing like a soldier, in the grip of Plybius.