Carnivores (11/13/13)

I feel like I should give some sort of introduction. My name's Logan, I'm 18 and I just started college. It's a community college and it's actually in the next town over from where I grew up. So to save on cash I decided to keep living at home, though my mom works a lot so I'm mostly left alone. I work a part time job on campus, building sets on the stage. I should be happy but I'm not, I don't know why, it's just a weird feeling in my gut. It's like something's just not right and I think I know when it started, but first some context:

When I was a kid, I used to really like Dinosaurs, even today I still kind of do. I've always thought they were big, strong and powerful creatures. I collected just about anything that involved them, toys, books, movies you name it. So when I was allowed access to my grandparent's old computer I collected video games. Majority of them were cartoon styled educational games, but they were still fun. But one of them was different and I still remember it quite well to this day. It was a simple PC hunting game, wandering around and shooting whatever dinosaurs got in your way.

When I was young, I was always afraid of getting eaten by the more hostile dinosaurs so I never went after them, just the herbivores. There was also an observation mode where you can just wander around the map and the predators ignored you. I spent a lot of time when I was bored just wandering around in observation mode. I found out that the developers put in some neat little locations, gave them some back stories and everything. The one that was the most interesting was the temple in the aptly named "Ancient Temple" area. I found it to be a good hiding place when I was brave enough to hunt after T-Rex since it can't seem to climb steep surfaces and majority of the temple was surrounded by high walls and lava.

While I was hunting there, I heard a creepy voice. It creeped me out at first, but then I realized that it was part of the game. According to the 'lore' of the game is that the temple was a place where an ancient civilization worshiped some sort of velociraptor god. This interested me, I wondered if there was some secret way to summon this creature and maybe hunt it. I tried everything I could think of, which went as far as using the raptor call in the middle of the temple. While nothing worked I was always fascinated with that area. I was used to more complex games that usually would have a reason for an area like that, a purpose.

Disappointed I carried on and eventually forgot about the game entirely. I knew there were three more games in the series but I never played them, that is until recently. I just ended up reminiscing about the game and looked up a wikia for it. I had a thing for trivia so I pretty much read the whole wikia and to my surprise, the game had been released on mobile phones and the PSN. After a little more research it turns out that it was the second and third games, the ones I've been wanting to play. So naturally I bought the games and downloaded them. Once that was done I was a little disappointed to find out that only the iOS versions got updates like new dinosaurs and such but I was still happy to re-live a bit of my childhood.

When I started up the game, everything was normal. In fact, it was a few weeks before anything bizarre happened.

I was hunting in the Fort Ciskin area and by now I had unlocked the laser rifle and was wiping out entire islands, I had passed the Stonehenge area and for a split second I saw a dark figure on the screen. From what I saw it looked bipedal and maybe even about human sized. I thought it was a glitch at first, I was playing the PSP version and it was prone to be a bit buggy. But then I heard a voice. I instantly recognized it as the one from the temple in the first game.... but this was a port of the second, it shouldn't be here.

Maybe the second game was built on top of the first game's data and was just accidentally left in, I figured, or maybe it was left in as a joke or something. I didn't think much of it until I heard it again, I looked around in game and saw that same figure as well. I didn't think it was a glitch anymore, it's too obvious. After it happened a third time I tried to catch the figure and I realized that it was leading me somewhere. I followed it to the titular Fort Ciskin where the screen faded to black and a cutsene played. I knew this couldn't be normal, these games didn't have cutscenes and I've been to this location before and this didn't happen. Though there wasn't anything too weird about the cutscene itself, it used the games normal, dated graphics. It showed several people with guns gathered around the closed gate of the fort as something smashed into it from the other side. The T-Rex's roar heard from the other side until it's head burst through the wall, roaring at the people inside who started to shoot at the dinosaur. It pulled it's head back and smashed into the gate, throwing it open. As the dinosaur charged in, the people ran, screaming but there was no escape. The T-Rex rampaged through the fort, stepping on people and eating others. It wasn't like it was extremely violent or anything, nothing you wouldn't see in a normal game these days, in fact, normal games might be more violent than this. What little blood there was had been pixilated and a little silly, I was still baffled that I was actually seeing a cutscene as the camera panned to the open gate where I saw that figure again, vaguely outlined against the darkened backdrop by a white glow, followed by the 'temple voice' before my character was suddenly killed, eaten by a raptor. Unlike normal, the surrounding area was all black and instead of the usual "You died, would you like to restart?" message box I got a message box that read "Keep Hunting" with no options. I pushed all the buttons on my controller but nothing happened, just the animation of the raptor eating the hunter. I stared at it and realized that I wasn't hunting raptors, and the PSP version doesn't spawn dinosaurs you aren't hunting.

After a moment the screen faded to black and returned me to the start screen. I went back to Fort Ciskin and tried to get the cutscene to play again but I couldn't get it to work. Tired, I turned the game off and went to bed and as I was drifting off to sleep I could've sworn I heard that temple voice again, but I could've been imagining it. I sometimes get nighttime paranoia when I sleep, I scare myself easily. When I woke up the next morning I didn't feel so well. I wasn't that well rested and I was a little on edge. Figuring that my paranoia was getting the better of me I sat down and started taking note of all of this, the thought being that if I get it out of my system I'll feel better. Though right now I'm sitting here and looking at what I've written and I actually feel worse. I never thought I'd actually be publishing something like this but here it is, maybe I'm just crazy but I guess there is a chance that someone else could make better sense of this. I'll post again if anything changes.