User:Eamonn130

YN Computer I guess I had a love/hate relationship with browsing the internet. Annoyingly addictive as it was, I’d often find that I’d spent hours accomplishing very little but mindlessly scrolling through page after page, site after site. Which is why I was so surprised when I actually found something remotely interesting. A large computer selling on ebay for just fifty two pounds. I was in need of a new computer, especially as most of the work I did was at home. I lived alone, so a computer was my only companion, and unfortunately the one I had at the moment was slowing dying. It had served me well, but it was time to change. Totally unbeknownst to the consequences, I clicked on the link and analysed the specifications. It was being sold by a private seller a few miles outside the city where I lived, apparently in a small country village that I can’t remember the name of, nor want to. It was a large, bulky PC – bare in mind that this was in March 2004- but seemed to fit my purpose just fine – I certainly had enough room in my wallet. After a long drive in early spring Sunshine, I finally stopped outside my destination: a small, secluded, but pretty cottage enveloped in beautiful trees and aided by a soundtrack of birds chirping away. After leaving my car and admiring the site, and after greeting a gardener raking the leaves in the front garden of the cottage, I rang the doorbell. Footsteps. The door opened. A hunched, grey haired man appeared, scanning me from head to toe. “Hi, I’m John,” I said, offering my hand, which he rejected, “I gave you a call regarding your computer that you’re selling.” He nodded, handed me a large brown cardboard box, struggling to lift it based on his frail size. I paid him, and as if left he frantically looked around outside, before shutting the door and scampering away. Returning back home, now late evening, I was nervously anticipating the contents of the box. But the computer worked just fine. More than fine, from first impressions. It was bulky and white, as the advert showed, and just above the screen a large logo in bold reading: YN was displayed; a company I wasn’t familiar with. I did what I always did when I bought a new PC: browsed all the files and downloads and settings and everything I could find. It was all going fine, until I found something. A file, on the computer’s ‘Videos’, with a black thumbnail and a small text beneath it. YN.EXE643 I clicked. The video player opened, showing a small, badly lighted room – it looked like a standard working room, perhaps a basement complete with desk and chair - with a light brown wallpaper and flooring. The video itself was heavily pixelated. At the bottom of the screen, it showed that the video had been taken in 1999. After about five seconds in, the handheld being used started shaking around; it was obvious someone was carrying it. I could hear heavy breathing. Suddenly, the camera was placed down on a table opposite the wall. A man in covered in black, his face masked, walked into the middle of the room, and he appeared to be holding another man on a leash around his neck. The man with the leash appeared old, wearing a plain white t-shirt and blue jeans, and from what I could just about make out from the blurry video, he had a head of messy, white hair. He was shivering. What happened next horrifies me even to this day, and just thinking about it scares the life out of me. The man in the black held out a huge machete, and pointed it at the old man, now kneeling just in front of the room. I wanted to press x. But I just couldn’t. I tried to squeeze my eyes shut in time, but I failed as I watch the man in black swing the blade back, before pummelling it into the side of the old man’s neck. A fountain of blood erupted out of the open wound, spraying the walls in red. But he wasn’t finished. The man in black hit again, harder now that the old man was trying to cruel away, his head barely hanging on now. Another slice, and another, and another, the sound of flesh being punctured and drilled echoing in my skull. His head was finally off, and the rest of the body was now shaking vigorously on the floor in a pool of growing blood. The man’s decapitated head was shown to the camera, but the poor quality made it too distorted to make out any features. The video ended. I was frozen to the screen for a while, eyes wide with shock, before I could finally look away. I vomited then and I vomited whilst writing this. I’m not usually too phased about blood or gore, but I’d never really seen that apart from in tv and movies. This, however, was real, I could feel it, and stored on my computer. That was what terrified me. And the fact that that nervous old man had given me the computer, knowing it was on there.

I promptly deleted the file and shut it out of my mind for a while, trying to pretend it didn’t happen. Though whenever I shut my eyes, it wormed its way back into my memory, corrupting all my reason and conscience and spiralling me into a state of absolute fear. About a week later I was writing a report for work when the computer started making a strange humming sound. It started quietly at first, but slowly the pitch and volume increased, and the hum became a piercing screech, similar to that of a wild animal. Extremely agitated, I squeezed my ears, and pressed the off button over and over again, doing nothing. The sound was getting louder. After what seemed like, decades, the screen went black, the noise went, and the computer was off. I sighed with relief, and just to be sure, pulled the plug out of the socket. A video player popped up on the black screen. I covered my mouth in disbelief, which was slowly clouded by fear. It was YN.EXE643 This was the second time I watched it, and I knew that the computer must have had some kind of virus that allowed the computer to turn on from the inside. That had to be it. I was about to call the police, until I noticed something in the corner of the brown wall paper room that was becoming painted in blood. It was my computer. The black YN label contrasted with the wallpaper, and it was upon that realisation that I swept the computer onto the floor, kicking the screen and the thick, white plastic that covered it until the whole thing became nothing but an unrecognisable mess. The next morning, after a sleepless night, I drove back to that private seller’s house to complain and hopefully get a refund. The weather was different from the last time I had come, cloudy and dark, and this was further emphasised by the appearance of the cottage. The trees surrounding it had died, the flowers drooping, lifeless. The cottage appeared to be being engulfed by a disease of rotting plants and weeds. I walked past the same gardener as before, and rang the doorbell. “What are you doing?” The gardener asked, as if I had done something forbidden. “I’m looking for Mr Wilson – I was here a couple of weeks ago,” I told him. His facial expression darkened. “Mr Wilson?” He said, walking closer to me. “Mr Wilson has been dead for five years.” My heart skipped a beat. He continued. “Look at his cottage. Does that show any sign of life? I’ve been trying to keep it in order in his memory, especially considering what happened to him.” My fingers trembling, I stuttered, “W-What happened to him?” “He… he was murdered. Decapitated. In his own basement. Police only found his rotting, headless corpse, drowning in blood.”