Xbox Live 2

        It all started with my cousin. He was a nice guy, a little reclusive. Was always playing games on his Xbox. Inside five minutes conversation would swing round to this latest game that I had to try. I was more PC orientated. Maybe a strategy sim once a week, but nothing major. A week before that night, I bumped into him around town. He looked a little gaunt, his eyes tired. Small talk fizzled and resulted in me asking what was wrong.

"My console, its been acting a little strange"

I probed further, but all I got was looks of embarrassment and the assertion that maybe it was just a lack of sleep. From what I could understand, something had happened with his dashboard. Maybe it had glitched or something. It had caused the machine to burnout and he had returned it for a replacement. This glitch had creeped him out so much, he was uncertain of switching the machine back on. I patted him on the shoulder.

"It's just a game"

He smiled and nodded.

"I'll remember that"

We parted on my request that he call me if he had anything he wanted to talk about. If I'm honest, that was the last thought I put to it for about a week or so. A random game advert triggered my mind back to that meeting, and I found myself calling him just to check in. He answered the phone mumbling, but started to brighten up as I engaged him in conversation. For once I steered the flow around to gaming. He eventually admitted that he was still unnerved by the console and it was sat outside his room. I assured him that i was sure the Xbox was safe.  He agreed and admitted that he was starting to feel silly about the whole thing.

He sounded happy.

My parents won't tell me what happened that night, but come on, I live in the age of the Internet. That said the news stories are broken and incomplete with references to 'wild animal attack' and 'forced entry'. There didn't seem to be anything conclusive. At the time I was in shock, watching the world accelerate as it fell into the ritual of grief and support that follows the loss of someone. His parents eventually decided they needed to leave for a while. The destination was unclear, but I got the impression that wasn't the important part of this journey.

Just before the left town, they stopped by my house.

"He always used to talk about how much you and him enjoyed gaming, so we think he would have wanted you to have his console and games."

I'll be honest, I teared up on the spot. I accepted the gift graciously and wished them all the best whereever they went. It sat in my room for a day or two until guilt spurred me to wire it up. I felt I had to get some use out of it. The machine was clean, with a faint smell of disinfectant. As I plugged in the HDMI, I noticed a small pinpoint of red on the metal veneer on the rear of the console, dried and hard. I told myself it was paint and forcibly moved on, refusing to dwell on it.

Once powered up, the screen lit my face and it presented the profile selection screen. There was a jolt as I saw his avatar. He waved at me, and I felt my eyes well up. I wasn't ready to see that. I quickly created a new account, and an avatar that I guess kind of looked like me. I changed the settings so that the machine would instantly log into this account upon power up. I glanced at the games, but they didn't really interest me. His tastes had run a little more first person than mine, but there were one or two I might look into later. For now I had a DVD player and somewhere to charge my e-cigarette.

It was a couple of days later, I decided to pop on a movie whilst working on my empire on Civ 5. The disk spun up, then immediately slowed. I gave the screen my attention and could see my avatar operating through his animation loops. I popped the drive a couple of times to no success. I that my avatar had stopped moving, and on further inspection was staring intently to the right of the screen.

A second avatar walked across the menu screen.  Confusion gave way to growing dread as I recognised my cousins avatar. My avatar defensively held up his hands as the newcomer walked up to him casually and wrapped his fingers around his throat. I watched him throttle my avatar, pushing him to the ground and ignoring the pitiful slaps as he tried to fight back. Halfway through he turned his head and stared at me. His eyes were cold and hateful. After a couple of minutes of no movement from my avatar, he rose and dragged the corpse out of screen. He wandered back seconds later, smiled and waved.

I was shaking. My fingers were digging into the gamepad, and the muscles along my forearms were screaming. Without noticing, I had slumped to my knees and my breath was coming out in ragged gasps and soft moans.

I felt, for want of a better word, a presence behind me. I was transfixed to the screen. I didn't want to tear myself away from the screen, but some primal instinct was telling me there was something far worse behind me.

"Remember, It's just a game"

A spike of unexpected fear  brought back autonomy. That was my cousins voice. I whirled around, but found my room empty. I looked back at the screen, and the avatar waggled its finger at me. A muted snap of it's fingers and the DVD span back up and loaded into it's menu screen. A few minutes later the movie began to play. During this, I lay back on my bed and waited for my heart rate to drop.

Once calm, I threw myself into the computer chair and exited my game. I brought up Google and started to search.  "Possessed Xbox " brought up bad fan-fics and stories. I tried different variations, but eventually conceded that the Internet wasn't going to help with this. I eventually fell into a troubled sleep filled with avatars of my entire extended family. They were all waving at me. I looked at my hands and comprehended I was a digitised representation as well. A figure was moving stealthily among my family members and I regarded my cousins avatar. He grinned and started to advance. His hands reached for my throat as I felt like I was fighting through syrup. The moment he touched me jolted me awake.

This was not the only troubled night I had, and it was was a week before I could claim a good nights sleep. The Xbox seemed to have returned to normalcy, certainly no longer exhibiting any homicidal tendencies.

I was starting to question my own memory, wondering how much of the incident I could have constructed in my own mind. I was seriously considering therapy, but once in the room I wouldn't even know where to begin. Late one night I was woken abruptly. Dulled lights danced through my eyelids. Wrenched from sleep, I took a moment to inspect the source. Enlightenment slammed me up against my bed frame. Sat in my computer chair was my cousin. He was ... wrong. The colours didn't seem right, too bright and vivid. He illuminated the room. At his edges, the air seemed to be fizzing. Further inspection revealed that across his skin, small pixels were constantly detaching and dissolving. He seemed to be superimposed on reality itself. He stared at me angrily and spat the words at me over and over again.

"It's. Just. A. Game"

He increased in volume, his jaw getting wider with each word. His head tilted back as his mouth unhinged and the words devolved into a guttural scream that turned to static. Throughout the ordeal he never once blinked. Never once took his eyes off me. I smashed straight through my fight or flight instinct and resorted to just thrashing on my bed in terror screaming. That's how he found me. My room-mate slammed into my bedroom, cricket bat in hand. He managed to stop me from clawing at my face and talked me down, assuring me there was nothing in the room. He was right. I stared around wildly. I was relieved, embarrassed and infuriated at the same time. My room-mate patted my shoulder in concern, citing that maybe a drink was in order. I certainly wasn't going back to sleep. I drank several stiff scotches and amid slurring where I tried recount what I dreamt, I begged my room-mate to get rid of the Xbox for me. He promised he would.

I woke late the next morning, an hour into a shift I was meant to turn up for. My phone had two missed calls from my work. I hammered through a condensed version of my morning, but noticed in passing that the Xbox was gone, along with the games and peripherals. On my commute to work I received a text from room-mate.

"Hey dude, I dropped that console off at the charity shop like I said I would. I don't what s going on, but maybe you should like talk to someone or something. I don't know. I'm here if you need me. Catch you later."

I had meant destroy it, burn it, something other than that. I didn't want to pass it on. I wanted to make sure it could never come back. Work was torture, starting with a dressing down from my immediate manager. The clock crawled, and eventually I was free again.  There was only one charity shop near my home, and I got in the door just as they were closing up for the day. The owner was an old lady who confirmed that, Yes, they had had an Xbox dropped in earlier that day. It seems she had woefully underpriced the machine, and it had been snapped up within the hour. She couldn't remember who.

I left the shop my head swirling with a mixture of emotions. My anxiety was rapidly decreasing as the issue moved away from me, but it was being replaced with guilt at what I had potentially subjected some poor soul to.

I headed home and slumped onto shared spaced sofa. I received a text from my friend that proclaimed he was out for the evening, but that we would should hang out more real soon. I smiled at the sentiment, responded and tossed the phone to one side. It had barely come to rest when it buzzed again. I reached for it. The sender line was filled with a mess of pixels.

"Now what did you think that was going to achieve. The console was just a cocoon. I am reborn now. I want to play."

The living room television powered up. An involuntary scream started to crawl up my throat as I came face to face with that fucking avatar. I climbed upwards and backwards, intending to leap over the sofa, I turned and came face to face with the digital abomination. My cousin, glitching and rendering at high speed. His colours kept snapping between normal and inverted, burning spots into my vision. It grabbed my head with one hand. I could feel skin burn under the friction between realities, and my hair caught fire. I howled in agony, smoke obscuring my vision. I felt hot and cold fingers push apart the flesh at my throat.

I heard one final thing before he tore my throat out.

"Player Two is entering the game."