Judgement day

It all began when I walked into this old store on the corner of 10th Avenue in New York. I approached this old worn down building that said 'Ultimate Party Store'  on it the sky was nice and blue not a cloud in sight it was quite a beautiful day I looked at my wife and said: "I'm gonna go into the party store and get Halloween costumes for the party tonight".

"Mind if I tag along?'' asked the wife.

"Not at all, that would be wonderful!"  I replied.

When we walked in, there was a lady sitting at the counter; you could tell she was an older woman for sure. She had white hair, wrinkly skin, and was about five feet tall. "Hello, kind sir. What's a nice man like you doing here?", she asked in a scratchy old voice.

"My wife and I are looking for costumes for a party later tonight.", I replied.

"I see, how delightful follow me! What did you say your name was again?"

"My name is John." Then my wife butted in.

"My name is Kim by the way." The woman gave a toothless smile and gestured to us.

    "Right this way, but beware what you see might not be as it seems," she said.

          "What do you mean ma'am?" Kim asked.  She ignored the question Kim tried to ask and led us to the multi-purpose area. Fog billowed from an unknown source, and I thought I could hear barely audible screams from the objects on the shelves. Kim tugged my shoulder and pointed to a massive spider hanging from the ceiling.

"I'm scared, I don't like this place. Can we leave?" she said nervously.

"Not yet, OK? I haven't found what I am looking for yet; this is the only place where we can get actual costumes."

The woman, still bearing her haunting smile, led us into yet another room, its shelves filled with strange items. As she dug through what I assumed to be where she kept the costumes, something caught my eye. Sitting a couple of shelves up was an old game system, looked like a dirty and rather dilapidated NES. Now, I had grown up in the 80s, and the NES had practically been my childhood, but something about this was unsettling. Just looking at the thing made me feel uneasy. I took my eyes off it as the woman continued looking for a costume, but something kept nagging at me. I wanted it. No, I needed it. I looked over at Kim, who appeared to share these thoughts.

"I'll take that old Nintendo you got up there .", I said without thinking. The woman eyed me,  still digging through her box of costumes.

"You sure you don't want your costumes?"  asked the old lady. Kim and I both nodded hastily as she pulled the console off the shelf. "Since you both are such good customers, I'll let you have it for fifteen bucks and a small box of games for free."

Kim looked at the box it obviously was not in the best condition "Dear I'm not so sure those games will work just look at them," she said to me.

"I know what to look for in these old consoles. This one might be strange but who cares, we can fix that'' I said to her

" Whatever you say, John."

"May we look at the box with the console ma'am?" John asked.

"Of course you can!" In the box, we found several popular titles and unpopular like Punch Out, Space Invaders, Contra, Ghosts N Goblins, Wizards And Warriors, Kung-Fu Master, Mega Man 2, Tetris, and Rygar.

"You are right Kim these are super dirty but it couldn't hurt, right? Afterall it is free."

"Yea I guess." Kim seemed really nervous at the time, she didn't seem to like this store very much at all. She tugged on my arm again "JOHN! Hurry up let's go already!" This had encouraged me to look over the system quickly. To say the least, it was very strange. It had a Gameboy camera attached to the black casing of the NES which was strange, but Kim did not know that was odd so I proceeded.

"Alright, alright, Ma'am we'll take it."

"Wonderful, let me wrap it up for you. "

         Later that day, it was near dinner. Kim was cooking a pie for us to eat. "John, dinner's almost ready"

         "Yes Dear, I'm gonna play the game real quick!" I had turned it on and the camera turned itself on as well. To my surprise, a mysterious man who had creepy squiggly hair along with several small drawings on his face showed up on my screen with the context "Who are you running from?" This terrified me I decided to turn off the console and not to tell my wife. Kim had walked in the living room.

       "John, dinner is read….are you ok? You look you like you've seen a ghost."

       "Let's go eat, don't worry about me."     

       "Kim nodded, grabbed my hand, and dragged me towards the dinner table. Kim was curious. "John after you finish your pie can we go play the Nintendo? Since you kinda started without me."

She had a big shiny smile on her face, You could tell she was nervously excited because the corner of her eye turned slightly yellow.

As much as I wanted to refuse  I told  her "That would be great!"  Our kitchen isn't that fancy; we had the basics on the counter. We had a wine station. Below the oven we had freezer drawers; next, to that, we had a quite large espresso machine with a small six slot toaster. Next, to that, the kitchen was mostly filled with stuff like that. The kitchen table was a slab table with solid bronze chairs around it. But never mind that, Kim and I proceeded towards the table to eat the delicious looking Apple pie.

"Kim, would you mind slicing the pie?"  

"Not at all, darling." Kim quickly cut the pie and gave me a slice.

"Thank you!"  Right as I was about to eat my food, I heard a sound coming from the living room. I wasn't sure, but I was almost positive it was the Nintendo booting up

"Did you leave the TV on?" Kim had asked me.

"I don't believe so."  

"Do you think we should go look?" she asked.

"Maybe you should stay here I'll look." Kim had ignored me and followed behind me as I went to investigate...  

The TV was on; the little black Nintendo  was on  "John why is that on?" We approached the couch while staring at the screen. On the screen were several games listed with zero progress or stars on any of them which was odd because the lady said several people had returned it.

         "OMG LOOK AT THE BACKGROUND'' she said in a terrified voice in the dark sketchy background there was a dead Italian pipefitter laying on the ground with three knives stabbed in him.

" WHY WOULD SOMEBODY DO THAT?!"

           I was shaking and couldn't gather my words to respond. Instead, I picked up the controller. As I got closer to the controller nothing could stop me from playing one of the games. "John don't!" The camera began to glow again. Not knowing what to do, Kim had picked up a controller too. At that, the moment it seemed I could not catch my breath.

           Then we saw something weird; there seemed to be a man in the camera. His face was green just like the lens. The man looked desperate and seemed to be yelling something that we could not hear. As he hammered on the lens, what appeared to be a pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him into the darkness. Now hyperventilating, Kim instinctively grabbed the cord and yanked it out of the socket. The image on the screen flickered but somehow didn't falter. As I watched in terror, I heard a laugh coming from the console, seemingly mocking us. Just then, a thump came from behind. I didn't want to look, but I really had no choice. Looking over my shoulder, I saw... a man wearing red clothes with overalls was laying on the ground with three knives stabbed in him. Then in the blink of an eye, it was as if he was never there! A bump occurred upstairs. "John...." Kim said.

         "Kim, grab my shotgun behind the door," John said.

         "Wait  what, why?" Kim said

         "Stay here on the couch."  

         "NO!" Kim exclaimed.

         " I said stay." What she said after that I didn't hear the creek got louder.  I walked upstairs and walked down the long narrow hallway to the right then knocked on the door but received no answer, the door was locked. All the sudden the air in the hallway became colder. The gun in my hands was now pointing at the door

Kim had followed me against my wishes. We entered the guest bedroom.  A creature about seven foot tall with yellow eyes in red cloths was standing in the middle of the room. "MY NAME IS RED FANG." He raised the sword that laid in his left hand in the air and said "Throughout the ages of time, I will be known for my hate, on this day you will perish," and Red Fang pointed the sword at us.

            "JOHN, SHOOT HIM!!!!" Kim screamed. I pointed my gun towards him and fired, but what happened next was unbelievable every spherical projectile that came out of the gun had stopped in mid-air they crumbled up and fell to the ground.

            "How cute you think you can stop me." Fear filled our bones. He raised his hand then made a backhanding motion and knocked us through the door. I hit the wall and blacked out.

    I woke up the roof had a giant hole in it. I could see explosions in the air. Bombs dropped around us. "Kim, what happened? KIM!!" Kim woke up rubbed and attempted to get up. "OW my knee, I think it's sprained. Help me up. She wrapped her arm around me.

          We hobbled downstairs. The NES was gone. We stumbled around the living room to find nothing but major holes in the walls replaced with ashes that now filled the air, very few reminders of the furniture, and burnt black photos on the ground were what was left of our once great home. After a look around the living room, Kim pointed out that our old security camera was damaged, but it was laying on the ground.

         "Maybe we could use that help figure out what happened. My laptop is in the kitchen. Go get it."    

"ME?! Why me what if he's still here, that demon, that thing, Blood Trace or whatever the heck he said his name was!"

"I will be watching you from here if anything should happen." In a rather calm voice considering what we just went through. Even though Kim and I were both shaken she went and got the laptop.    

She then proceeded to put it on the wooden coffee table. We opened and hastily went to the footage from the security camera. In the top left-hand corner of the screen, which had a quite a multitude of scratches on but, that was to be expected. The image was also quite blurry, but we were able to make out the mysterious red man walking towards the little console. In a sinister manner, his hand began to glow a dark mystic green. He held up his now glowing hand and said "IT IS TIME MY BROTHERS BE FREE AND JOIN ME! To end the lives of the one who locked us in there so long ago!!!"

We stared at the screen ever so intensely as he then placed his hand on the console. His hand had grown brighter and now the Nintendo was glowing as well. The light got brighter, brighter and brighter than the camera footage we were watching had to turn to static. "John, what have we? we should get out of here"  The world we once knew so well was gone. We worked up the strength and courage to find a way outside the skies were blackened with thick black smog and bombs were dropping all around us from military planes from above pretty sure they were from World war II judging by the American star on the side of the plane. All around us were ruins of buildings being attacked by giant plastic robots with glass round eyes and a small red light on top of the bots along with black plastic around the pieces of glass the rest of the attackers appearance was grey plastic with very small wheels on the bottom one approached us and spoke in a robotic voice said to us

"My name is AFP9 a curfew is being put into effect  return to your home you have twenty-four hours to comply."

"You've taken our home away from us what do you expect us to do?" Kim said.

"A curfew is being put into effect return to your home you have twenty-four hours to comply" he turned and rolled away repeating the same phrase over and over. We looked down towards the ground after looking up at the AFP9 bot and saw some kind of jellyfish-like creature but it was weird it had t large fang-like teeth hanging from the bottom of the little beast it was hovering towards the screaming people the next block over.

    Two pixelated boxers were fighting in the streets one wearing red gloves the other wearing green gloves the man with red gloves was wearing nothing but black sneakers and shorts. The one in green boxing gloves was wearing a black tank top with white shorts and black sneakers, careless to what was going on around them. I and Kim ducked we heard gunshots "that almost hit us!" Kim said.

"Well, where did it come from?"  

"Up there in the Windows RUN!" Bout five-hundred yards away there was a sniper in the middle of fifty stories tall building. He fired another the shot raddled the air as around pixel ball hurdled towards us.

We use all our strength to get to away to an abandoned one story house considering how bad my leg is after I got thrown threw the door we could hear the guy yell "we have to runners heading eastbound" then all of sudden a claw came through the brick wall and knocked it down it was a AFP9 bot and several armed pixel men that looked like red football players pointing guns at us they surrounded us and made us their prisoners to be executed they pushed us with the other prisoners we had marched several miles since we were captured none of us could really breathe either it smelt like a factory everywhere we went now, we have been marching for days now the conditions are horrible the jock dressed soldiers barley give us enough food and water to survive the AFP9 bot didn't really care if we lived or died the soldiers gave us one hardtack a day per person and as for water it was muddy sewer water in a shot glass which is not much at all this caused us and the others taken captive to lose our strength and stumble more even more than when we started this death march. Also if you got out of line or could not keep going from starvation or the sicknesses going around they would kill you without question no salvation no light at the end of the tunnel.

Nowhere to call my own, No name to carry on, No finding someone new. During our escort to our death, to the camps, they had set up, or wherever they wanted to take us riots sprung up everywhere we would see people real people attack our guards five times a day sometimes more. They would be fought off and come back in a couple of hours with greater numbers than before but never broke through. All around us death it was there like cancer grows. Like cancer, it did not stop the endless waves of human lives trying to save us blood spoiled the ground around us the skies were still dark and nothing would grow around us it was all gone.

A random man fell down the red looking football player soldiers that surrounded us approached him one of them said "GET UP YOU MEATBAG! I said

GET UP!" he continued to lay on the ground and cover his bleeding ribs he had got from the other days " you're gonna get five seconds to get up One" he began attempting to crawl away on the ground "TWO!" he collapsed to the ground "THREE! FOUR! FIVE!" the gun went off dhak dhak dhak dhak dhak more blood spewed out of his body like a water fountain then out of nowhere a spiracle bullet hit the guard in the head we heard a loud thump around us Kim said

"Their all dead John."  then she saw a sniper in the tree.

"Up there" the mystery man slid down the tree he was now about seven feet in front of us on this dead soil "who are you?!" I began to question. He said,

"Shut up stay on my six more are coming let's go!" the man was wearing all black tactical clothes with a skull ski mask covering his face and had one their guns he had a tan and looked to be strong!"

"HALT!" the robot said, "what are we gonna do about him!?" The skull man returned with

"Don't worry I got this."

He mashed down on his watch and the robot blew up "Tagged him with that bomb days ago!NOW! Let's go."  

"Hold up who are you?" He slowly pulled his mask up

"My name is Luigi," he said

"Why are you helping us?"Kim asked, "Because they killed my brother." Luigi said!