The words LOOK BEHIND YOU glowed in the shaky circle of the flashlight beam; a visceral threat painted in digital blood and rust. The silence in the pitch-black room was heavier than any sound, a suffocating blanket of anticipation.
In the pod, Emily was frozen. I could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest through the transparent lid, her breathing a shallow, frantic pant that was picked up by her microphone and broadcast to thousands. The chat on the secondary monitor was a hysterical, scrolling waterfall of pure panic.
NOPE ...NOPE ...NOPE ...NOPE…
DON'T DO IT EM DON'T TURN AROUND…
I'M ACTUALLY SWEATING WTF IS THIS GAME!!!
THIS ISN'T A JUMPSCARE!!! THIS IS TORTURE!!!!!!!
MY HEART IS GOING TO EXPLODE!!!
"O-okay," Emily's voice was a thin, reedy whisper, stripped of all its earlier confidence. It was the voice of a child trying to be brave in a dark room. "It's… it's just text. It's a trick. It wants me to turn around. I'm not gonna… I'm just gonna…"
Her avatar's view—her view—remained locked on the horrifying message. But the flashlight beam began to tremble violently, betraying the tremor in her hands. The sound design, even in its reduced state, was doing its work: the faint, almost inaudible sound of something wet dragging across the floor somewhere in the blackness behind her.
"Is… is someone there?" she squeaked.
A new sound joined the wet dragging. A low, wheezing breath. It didn't come from any specific direction; it seemed to emanate from the very air around her.
HOLY SHIT!!! I HEAR IT!!!
THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE ROOM WITH HER!
EMILY!!! GET OUT GET OUT NOW!!!!
I'M LITERALLY CRYING RN~!! !!!T_T!!!
"I can't…" she whimpered. The psychological pressure was immense. The game wasn't attacking her; it was cornering her, making her imagination do the work. It was forcing her to choose between the known horror on the wall and the unknown, breathing horror at her back.
The choice was taken from her.
The radio on her hip erupted again, not with static, but with a distorted, guttural scream that ripped through the silence.
ZZZKRRTT—AAAGGGHHH!—KRRZZT
It was the final straw. With a terrified shriek that was half-sob, Emily's avatar spun around. The flashlight beam swept across the darkness, illuminating the empty space behind her for a split second.
Then it dipped downward. And there she was.
Lisa.
Crouched on the floor, her head twisted at an impossible angle, her long, dark hair obscuring most of her face. But what was visible was a nightmare of pallid, blotchy skin and a mouth stretched into a silent, agonized rictus. She wasn't lunging. She wasn't screaming. She was just… there. Staring up from the floor. Unmoving. The sheer wrongness of it, the violation of simple expectation, was a psychological atom bomb.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!".
Emily's scream was primal, coming from the top of her lung. It wasn't the playful shriek she used for jump scares in other games. It was a raw, unfiltered, gut-wrenching sound of pure, unadulterated terror. She scrambled backward in the pod, her legs kicking out, her hands flailing as if she could physically push the horror away.
The chat absolutely lost its collective mind. The stream of comments became a solid block of incoherent panic, emojis of screaming faces, and pledges of undying fear.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
WHAT IS THAT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT???
I JUST PEED A LITTLE NO LIE….
DUKE WINSTON WHO? THIS IS REAL HORROR!!
EMILY ARE YOU OKAY?!
On screen, the Lisa entity began to move. Not a sudden lunge, but a slow, twitching rise from her crouch, her limbs moving with a broken, marionette-like jerkiness. The wheezing breath grew louder, closer.
"No! No, no, no, no!" Emily was babbling, her voice cracking with hysteria. She fumbled, the view spinning wildly as she tried to turn and run. She crashed into a wall, the flashlight beam dancing erratically. "Get away! Get away from me!".
This was it. The moment of truth. This was where the training wheels I'd installed needed to hold. A safe room was just ahead, a bathroom. If she could just make it…
She stumbled forward, the entity's dragging footsteps right behind her. She found the bathroom door, her virtual hands slipping on the knob before she wrenched it open and fell inside, slamming it shut behind her.
Silence.
She was safe. For sixty seconds.
The game's sound design faded to just the thunderous pounding of her own heart and her ragged, sobbing breaths. She was curled into a fetal position on the floor of the virtual bathroom, and by extension, in the physical pod. The chat was now a mix of concerned questions and utter awe.
OMG is she okay???That was the most intense thing I've ever seen in my life…What game IS this???I Think I just found new GOAT of Horror #MeteorStudiosisagod.I've never seen Emily actually cry from a game before….
I stood up from the bed and walked over to the pod. I could see her through the lid. Tears streamed from beneath the VR headset, tracing paths through her makeup. Her whole body was trembling. This wasn't playacting. This was a genuine, physiological fear response.
I placed a hand on the cool surface of the pod. "Em?" I said softly, my voice low so her mic wouldn't pick it up. "You okay in there? You want to stop?"
She shook her head violently inside the headset, a gesture of stubborn determination even through her terror. "N-no," she choked out, her voice muffled. "I… I have to see… to the end…."
Her professionalism, her deep-seated drive as a streamer, had kicked in. She had an audience. She had a job to do. She took several deep, shuddering breaths, trying to regain control.
"S-sorry, guys," she stammered into her mic, her voice watery. She pushed herself up from the virtual floor. "That was… that was something else." A weak, shaky laugh escaped her. "Okay. Okay. I'm in a bathroom. I think I'm safe for a minute. Let's… let's see what's in here."
She began to explore the safe room, her movements cautious, her head on a swivel. She found a note, a photograph—pieces of the lore I'd woven in. Her commentary was no longer performative; it was genuine, engaged. She was trying to piece the story together; her fear now mixed with a burning curiosity.
Unfortunately, the sixty seconds ended.
A new sound began. A slow, deliberate scratching at the bathroom door. Scratch… scratch… scratch.
Emily's breath hitched. The fear returned, instant and paralyzing.
The door handle began to jiggle.
She backed into the far corner of the bathroom, her flashlight trained on the door, her body tensed for flight. The door didn't burst open. It just slowly, inexorably, began to creak inward. An inch. Then two. The darkness beyond the door was absolute.
And then, the stream froze.
The screen displaying her VR view glitched, then went black. A connection error symbol popped up. In the pod, the lights on Emily's headset died. The game had crashed. A deliberate failsafe I'd programmed if heart rate and respiratory readings spiked too dangerously. Sunday had pulled the plug.
For a moment, there was dead silence in the room. Then, the lid of the pod hissed open.
Emily lay there, gasping, tears still wet on her cheeks. She slowly pulled off the headset, her eyes wide and shell-shocked. She looked around her familiar bedroom as if seeing it for the first time, disoriented and deeply shaken.
Her eyes found me. The fear in them slowly melted away, replaced by a dawning, overwhelming amazement. She sat up, swinging her legs out of the pod. She was still trembling. Without a word, she stood up, walked over to me, and threw her arms around my neck, burying her face in my chest.
"Sael…" she whispered, her voice muffled against my shirt. "What… what did you make?"
I held her, feeling the rapid beat of her heart against mine. I could feel the dampness of her tears through my thin t-shirt. On the monitor, her chat was in a total frenzy, viewers oblivious to the crash, thinking it was part of the game's horror, demanding to know what happened next. I smiled over her shoulder, looking at the screen. The marketing was a resounding success.
"I told you," I said softly into her hair, my voice a low rumble. "I made a good horror game…".