Derek's Computer

My name is Steven Douglas. I live in Chicago, Illinois. My boss had asked me to come in about a special offer. I was a little reluctant considering how much of an asshole my boss is, but I knew his son, Derek, had recently passed, so I decided to give him a chance.

When I entered the office, my boss was in tears. He tried to hide it with a tissue as I sat in the chair. He gathered himself and spoke, "Steven, I'm sure you're aware of my sons recent suicide," I replied with a loyal, "Yes, sir, I'm sorry for your loss,"

"Don't be...don't be...anyway, I uh...I thought you might be interested in his computer. It's got decent specs, and I know as the best IT guy in the business, you'll know how to handle the idiosyncrasies."

"Oh sir, I couldn't possibly-"

"Steven, please, I insist, it's the least I can do after all these years."

Why me? He had never given me this much praise before. He fucking hated me. I just wanted to get out of there. Something wasn't right.

"Well...sure, sure, I'll take it."

"Good, good. So you can just take it and I'll see you Monday."

I grabbed the computer and got the hell out of there. Something about his office just...unnerved me. I didn't spend too much time thinking about it. I wanted to get home and see what this bad boy could do.

When I returned home, I immediately hooked up the computer. It's kind of an old one, so I knew it would take a bit to boot. While I waited, I went to grab a beer. I opened the fridge, took out a beer, and took a sip. I stood there, drink in hand for a couple of minutes, just thinking. About my boss, about Derek, about all of the nonsense I've faced in the past couple of days.

It was then, that everything started to go downhill. I heard a noise. A noise so horrifying, so startling, so...inhuman, I dropped the glass bottle on my foot and it shattered into pieces. The first thing that came into my head was, "It came from the computer room." I rushed to where I had hooked up the computer to see it...booting normally. The Windows XP logo was there, and it was revealing a desktop, as plain as it gets. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

I glanced around the room. Nothing. Everything was normal. Everything was safe. I slouched in the chair in front of the computer, "Guess it was in my head," I laughed aloud, trying to hide the fear that something was there.

I went ahead and started examining the desktop. There was My Computer, a folder entitled PHOTOS, one called VIDEOS and another called GAMES. The all-caps slightly disturbed me, but I pressed on. The first thing I did was check the specs. They were alright. Could run GTA4 if you didn't have too many processes running.

I closed My Computer and stared at the screen a bit. What am I going to do with this computer? Do I really want to see Derek's photos and videos? And that's when it hit me. What if my boss wanted me to find clues towards Derek's suicide?

Now, I've always loved mysteries, so when I thought of this, I decided to begin searching instantly. I was about to click PHOTOS when an error message sound startled me out of my chair. It was something I had never seen the likes of before. It simply said, "CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!" I stared at the words on the screen long enough to scare myself. I decided to ignore it and press on.

I clicked OK when that godawful noise played again. I was able to examine it more clearly now. It was Derek's suicide audio clip distorted by some white noise. The full clip was about 4 minutes long. This part was about 3 seconds. All it included was the gunshot. It was horrifying to think about. A perfectly happy kid killing himself for no discernable reason. The error message was still there.

I clicked OK again and this time a video came up. It was the audio clip, but it had video and it was 20 minutes long. Apparently they didn't show us the full thing. It started with Derek talking to somebody off camera. A British man.

Derek: "Please, I don't want to do this!"

British man: "Did I fucking ask you what you want? Huh? Is it fucking Christmas? No, you do what I say! Do you fucking understand? Fucking kids...

"Okay, okay, I'll do it! Just don't hurt my dad, okay?"

"Your dad'll be fine, you little brat. Now shut the fuck up and take the gun."

Derek then proceeds to recite the monologue on the audio clip. It included him saying things about girls at school, bullies, even abusive teachers, but none of it was true. Everything was proven false later. He then took the gun. Let out a final scream. And blew his brains out on the back wall.

After the suicide, the camera turns to reveal the boy's father, tied up in a chair. The British man speaks again, "Well, there you go, you fat fuck. You let your son blow his brains out all over your bedroom wall because you're too much of a fucking pussy to do it yourself. You make me sick, you bastard. I ought to kill you right here, right now." But he didn't. The video turns to black for the remaining time.

At this point, I was frozen. I closed out the video and the computer bluescreened. A bad one at that. I couldn't recover the computer or any of its components after that. It was all fried.

That computer sits in my basement. The thought that no one will ever see that video again horrifies me, as well as the thought that I don't know what happened after...