Hominis perditi.
The lost man.
To this day those words haunt me. This story explains why...
The story starts off like any other cliché horror story. Another normal, boring day where something quite opposite to the norm occurs.
I was happy. I work at home as an Indie game developer. It is my dream job! A place where I can make my world come to life and have thousands of real people share their thoughts with me about it.
I was tired so what I saw next was something I thought was a hallucination due to drowsiness. But now I know it was real. I had finished a day's worth of coding and saved it. When I was just about to log the computer off, the codes started changing. On their own! Out of curiosity, I looked to see how the game was now, the little red man who I programmed to fly was now walking on air, and with a slightly jerky motion. The character occasionally turned into numbers or glitched out. Luckily I hadn't saved it or anything, plus I was tremendously tired, so I thought nothing of it.
That night I woke up, needing a desperate piss. I have to go through my tech room to reach the bathroom and when I saw the pale old man sitting there, playing my game, let me tell you, I didn't need to piss anymore. He swiveled around on the chair and said, "Help me, I'm stuck," really softly and quietly but not quiet enough to be a whisper. He was not talking about my game. He was talking about himself. He was wearing a cream coloured suit and his eyes were black. He was gently crying. "I'm stuck here, I'm not supposed to be here..." I trembled, barely able to mouth a word.
I never did. Never. After I waited, in a rough and deep voice he said, "HOMINIS PERDITI. Hodie puer gravis error fecistis. Cave. Erit consequatur. Leuia." A latin phrase. Go on, translate it. You want to, so do it. You will regret it.
The man faded away, laughing deeply. I didn't go back to sleep. In the morning I fixed all the codes that the man had yet again changed, he f***ed around with the character model as well. So I fixed it. It had homonis perditis written on it, which was only visible when I put the image into paint. I knew he would have put something into the finer details. I haven't seen the man since, but this story is real. I have proof. HOMONIS PERDETI