Listen… I didn’t exactly apply to be the middleman for a malevolent, nonexistent software company.
Who would?
I’m not a gamer, a collector, or one of those YouTube douche bags that read out trash stories about how and why the latest Super Mario title is haunted. I’m just a guy with a lawn, a table, and a habit of trying to stay alive by selling my problems to other people.
Every Saturday morning, rain or shine, I have a yard sale. Nothing fancy. Just me, some folding tables, a faded “YARD SALE” sign, and a box. Always the same old, beat-up box with “GAMES” written on the side.
The thing is, I never fill the box. I don’t purchase these games. They’re not from my childhood, I don’t pick them up at thrift shops or online, I don’t dumpster dive, and no… I don’t make them myself.
I just wake up every Friday morning, go downstairs, and there they are. Eight to ten games, packed neatly into that same cardboard box, on the kitchen table. The box is usually a little cold to the touch, depending on how long I take to make my way down to the first floor.
They’re always in some kind of outmoded format – cartridges, disks, once there was an entire arcade board, complete with a few layers of dust.
No labels.
The honor of labelling them apparently falls to me, as I have to sit down with some stickers or masking tape, a marker, and a crisp printed list of titles that’s always at the bottom of the box. Luckily the games are varied enough in style that it’s easy to match them to their titles.
“Rectangular Gold Colored Cartridge – WILD DESCENT.”
Also, they’re always cursed.
I don’t mean “cursed” in the “looks kind of weird” way. I figured it out after the first few weekends. Among my sales were three separate games that made it very clear something sinister – and paranormal – was going on with them.
“Furry_Friendz.exe”…
This one was a black CD with a few scratches that looked as if they’d been left by the claws of a small animal. “Friendz” was spelled with a backward “R”. There was a little pink cat emblazoned on the CD, smiling pleasantly. Only after I applied its label did I notice the cat’s tail was distinctly shaped like a noose.
A college girl named Jenna bought it. She seemed like the type that thought out-of-print games were ironic or quirky or something equally annoying.
“Five bucks, but I don’t do refunds. No matter what happens.” I noted.
She laughed awkwardly.
Jenna texted me about three days later. No idea how she got my number.
Her message just read: “its here. its moving. fr”
I ignored it.
The news broke the following morning.
“Local student found dead, half-eaten.”
When I heard that first revelation, I was stunned into a near catatonic state. No pun intended. Her apartment door was covered in claw marks, enough so that they seemed to burrow straight through the flimsy pressed wood. The audio picked up by her home security camera played constant, desperate meowing and hissing.
Still, not a single one of the cats in question were found in, or even near, her building.
“Gary’s Global Golf”…
a guy in a suit and tie bought that one. Middle-aged, headset on his ear, probably hadn’t played a video game since Pong. He was on his way to a family function and realized he should “pick something up” for his nephew.
He thought the brightly colored, self-contained hand-held game would, quote, “probably keep him busy”.
When he went to test if the game still started up, nothing happened. Just as he let his hand drop, as if he were about to let the game fall roughly back into the box, the screen came alive with a little pixelated man… Gary, probably… winking and swinging a putter.
“Five bucks.” I said, then explaining my no-refund policy.
It only took a few hours before I heard back from him, this time it was a series of demented phone calls. Still no idea how they keep finding my number – I never even give these people my name.
The problem?
Gary wouldn’t get off the screen.
The nephew had apparently “tried everything”, from restarting the game, to replacing the batteries, to hitting it a few times. Still, Gary just stood there, swinging away, winking, and refusing to let the kid play.
I guess it technically was Gary’s Global Golf – not yours.
Then Gary started showing up in other places.
The buyer’s pager screen. The ATM he tried to use on the way home. His car’s dashboard display.
Last I heard, the guy was being auto-driven cross-country by his smart car. Doors locked. Radio tuned to a professional golf match. Gary winking and swinging and swinging and winking away.
He was convinced Gary would pop up on his phone and stop him from calling anyone else after he hung up.
I searched the web for reports of smart car crashes for a few days after that. One of them drove into a water hazard at a prestigious golf course. The driver drowned. Pretty confidant that was him.
“Whatsy’s Wonder-Wish”
This one looked more like a knockoff bootleg than the usual fare. A sticker had been randomly placed on the plastic casing, depicting a voracious little cartoon character… a blatant ripoff of Kirby… in the midst of inhaling something. It was a plain gray cartridge with teeth marks on it. Human teeth, as if someone had become so desperate, that they tried to eat the game just to get rid of it.
A teenager with a mullet and a heavy metal tee took an interest in it.
After my usual half-hearted warning, he paid in quarters.
Twenty god damned quarters.
Two days later, I had a voice mail that just read out a website address.
WhatsWhatsy.clue
I figured I had comparatively little to worry about when it came to run-of-the-mill computer viruses, so I just loaded the site and took a look.
The front page was full of grainy photos of children and teenagers in what looked like a fenced-in backyard at night. The photos were obviously taken from inside a window, by someone doing their best to hide from the group.
Each kid was biting into something… dead pets, roadkill, their own arms and hands if they had nothing else.
The last image was the buyer. His mouth had a dark, rusty red on it, a milk mustache of blood. There were outlines of figures behind him. They seemed to be about the same size and shape of the previous crowd of youths.
The site’s gone now. Nothing weird there, it was up for about a year and I think the domain name registration went unpaid and it expired.
Some internet sleuths took hold of the mystery, thinking it was an ARG or a viral marketing campaign. They managed to use the photos to track down the house and property. That right there is the really scary shit, if you think about it.
What’s weird is that, from what the no-life detectives claim, the buyer’s parents say he’s fine.
They won’t show him on camera. They won’t get him into a voice call. They won’t even let him type out his own messages to those who are concerned.
The last thing his dad said in a voice message before going silent was, “We, uh… we’re taking donations if anyone wants to help out.”
Then there was a brief sound of metal-on-metal, like a set of chains, before the audio abruptly cut off.
…
So yeah. I sell cursed games, I guess.
Not for the money… though it helps.
I sell them because I have to.
I tried just storing a box of them, once. Just once. After those first three cases, I chucked the next batch of games into the cellar – by which I mean I literally threw them down the staircase without even turning on the light and slammed the door.
I came home later to find my front door broken open and absolutely everything in my house utterly smashed. I don’t think it was the same dude leaving me the games because, however he gets into the house, he does it much more respectfully.
Three words were cut into my living room wall as if someone had taken an axe blade and formed the letters out of each angular chop.
“PASS OR PLAY”
So I pass…
The question now is… are you horrified, or intrigued?
If you’re hot to get your hands on one of my games, don’t worry. One thing I should’ve mentioned is that every time I step out of my house to set up the sale, I’m somewhere else.
Either my house is moving, or the world is moving around it. Pointless distinction, I suppose.
The no-refunds thing? It’s not a personal choice, I physically will not be around to give them.
One week I’m in a cul-de-sac in Michigan. The next, I’m in a trailer park in Arizona. Once, I was under an overpass in New Jersey, table and all, trying to act like that shit was perfectly normal.
The worst part?
Customers always show up.
No matter where I end up, they find me. They browse through the box. They pick a game. They leave with it, contented with their purchase and clueless as to the ramifications. Sometimes I throw in a weird little story about the game’s history, something I pull out of my ass off-the-cuff, just to break up the drudgery of it all. So, that’s fun.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been doing this. I spend the week doing what I can to earn money and survive, Saturday is yard sale day, and on Sunday I’m somewhere else with no connections or clue of where to start over.
So, needless to say, if you ever see a guy with a folding table, a beat-up cardboard box, and a bunch of games with hand-written labels…
Walk away.
Or don’t. Hell, maybe you folks deserve this on some “cosmic justice” scale. Fuck if I know.
Either way, just remember… You don’t find me. I show up.
Maybe next Saturday, I’ll be your neighbor.
I’ll have just the game you’re looking for.
Only five bucks.
(No refunds.)
