EXE TALES 1

Lost and Found

Life-Of-H4ns
05/21/18

For those who are reading my blog, you will not BELIEVE what I found today.

So, me and my friends were messing around in a park near where we live, basically just walking around checking things out and joking with eachother. It isn't much, but what's interesting is what we found.

We were hanging out by some tree when Reggie noticed some metal sticking out, it looked like it was off something, having a small figure of a man holding an X. Reggie pulled it out to see if there was anything it was attached to, but there wasn't. Though I could swear I saw something else down there. So I dug it up with my hands (pro tip: DON'T do that) and found a small sheet protector with a folded piece of paper inside. It was slightly crumpled, the guy who folded it clearly didn't take his time. I unfolded it, and started reading it out to my friends. It was long, so I gave up after a bit, but now that I'm home, I'm writing the note down here.

It's probably some guy playing some sort of joke, but I thought it was interesting.

Anyways, enough delay, here's what it said:

Hello, reader.

I would first like to congratulate you for finding this note, I hid it very well. I'm as impressed with you as you should be with me. Writing in my current condition is a damn chore. But then again, so is doing anything, really.

But alas, I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Scott. I'm writing this note because I didn't want my story to go completely unknown, so I've decided to leave some evidence against me intact. I'll tell you everything that's important in this note, and after I'm done, I'll tell you how not even a guilty confession can stop me.

It all started when I was a little boy. I was full of innocence, just like everyone else when they were children. And of course, like other children, I had dreams of fiction becoming my reality. Most of them were related to my favorite fictional character at the time.

Sonic the Hedgehog.

I remember that every day, after school, me and my younger brother Thomas would race to the Sega Genesis we had to play Sonic the Hedgehog. Hell, even when I grew up, I still came back to the original every now and then, right up until...

Well, you'll find that out soon.

Speaking of Thomas, he got to play the 2 Player VS in the second game, I always picked Sonic, and he always picked Tails. I beat him every time, obviously, but he tried his hardest to win, and I could respect that. He never gave up, even later on in life.

We talked about how the roles fit us so well, and we even said that we wanted to be Sonic and Tails. Back then, when I was young and stupid, I meant that. I even had dreams where I was Sonic. Though I have to admit that I still think the roles fit us - The talented one, and the younger brother under his wing.

The point is, I loved Sonic. I watched that cartoon by DiC, I played the original two games every day I could. When the third came out, I played it near-religiously. I always talked to my friends at school about it, as well.

I remember some rumors from the time, noteably one of my friends telling me about the secret seventh zone in the original game, Robotnik's nuclear weapons bunker, Radiant Cave Zone.

Don't believe everything someone tells you, that's what I have to say about that. I spent hours upon hours trying to find an entrance into it. From Green Hill to Scrap Brain. I eventually just gave up looking for it.

But around 1996, me and Tom's interest in the series just disappeared. It's like Sonic just wasn't cool anymore.

I did occasionally dip back into the franchise, but I never fully went back into it. I did try Sonic Adventure 2 when a friend let me over to his house, but I gave up after the eighth level, I hated those stupid Tails and Knuckles segments. For the most part, I gave up on Sonic apart from revisiting the original trilogy whenever I felt nostalgic.

Now, why am I telling you about my history with Sonic the Hedgehog you may wonder? I'll answer you that question later.

I'll let you in on another thing, something people in my community knew me for.

When I was 19, back in '03, I started learning taxidermy because of my uncle Ross. He was skilled at it, and as a result, I became skilled too. I was a fast learner. I'm clever, very clever.

And after I completed my course for taxidermy, I started working with my uncle, mounting deer heads, posing animals, the usual stuff.

I don't know what it was, but something about it just felt satisfying to me. Removing the skin off of an animal, making it's lifeless body pose in any way you wanted it. I loved it.

It paid well, and my uncle was friendly.

I miss him.

As for more personal details, I was also in love with a woman named Kylie. Something I regret immensely.

I feel nothing but contempt for her now.

I had met Kylie when moving provinces for my taxidermy course. We first saw eachother in a music store. I was there to pick up Nickelback's latest album, while she was there to get a new amp for her guitar.

She was into rock, but she wasn't the type of girl you'd expect to be into rock. She was polite, well-mannered, and quick to apologize.

I found what she did interesting, and she found what I did interesting. I listened to her songs, and she listened to me explain my hobby.

Her songs were awful. In retrospect, I should have called them awful right to her ugly face.

After I completed my course, I stayed for a little while before quitting my part-time job and moving back to Ontario to work with my uncle, as I mentioned before. Kylie came with me, and in '07, I was able to get my own place to live thanks to my hobby.

I had everything.

And then, it all came tumbling down in one day.

In 2008, I was out partying with Tom and some of the people we knew from high school. Just a fun time out, I had something very important that was stressing me out and I thought this would help me de-stress. I did have one or two sips of alcohol, but I swear on my life it wasn't much.

So, when I got home, Kylie was waiting for me in the living room. She had already told me before that I should stop drinking, and that she would be mad if she saw me waddle in drunk again. I didn't even drink regularly. What right does she have to tell me to stop drinking when I only get drunk once in a blue moon? Fuck her.

I was absolutely not in the mood to deal with it, so I tried to just walk upstairs and go to bed, but she got in my way.

She had finally decided to step her foot down, and what did she choose to stand against? Something I didn't even do that often. What a bitch.

Even if I was sober, I most likely still would've pushed her out of the way, as I did while I was intoxicated.

However, she didn't fall over and let things blow over. Instead, she held herself back up and got into a scuffle with me. I may have said a few insulting things during the scuffle, but then she pushed me back.

I died.

Right then and there.

I believe what killed me was a blow to the back of the neck off of something she pushed me into, but I'm unsure what. Maybe a table? I can't exactly remember my surroundings.

You may thinking (sic) - "If you're dead, how are you writing this?" Well, you'll find out soon.

After death, there was a whole lot of nothing.

It's hard to describe nothing. Where even are you if there's nothing? Are you nowhere? Or are you everywhere? Does time still pass for you? What is your physical form?

None of that matters, however. I don't remember how long it was until I saw anything, but I came face to face with a bearded man. Was this god? Or, perhaps, the devil? Even now, I am unsure of which of the two it was.

He gave me an offering of two choices.

Either I could stay in the afterlife, though with no guarantees I would leave this place, or whether I would go to heaven or hell if I did.

Or I could return to the realm of the living, with one of my greatest dreams coming true.

The way he worded it, it made the latter sound like the better option. But I didn't really know what he meant by "one of my greatest dreams coming true".

Of course, now, I know exactly what he meant.

I told him I would go with the second option, and with a snap of his fingers, my vision turned black.

When I finally came to, I didn't recognise where I was. I felt really, really off. My head was killing me, so I went to put my hand on it, but I felt some pushback. I turned my head to look, and I was absolutely mortified to see that my arm was very different. My hand especially, it looked white and all swelled up.

Though I soon realised what was holding me down, I was in some sort of plastic wrap. It was hard to move under it.

Should I not have been dead if that was the case? Don't I need to breathe? My body felt hollow in terms of air. I pondered these questions to myself, but I was distracted by the overwhelming need to blink, I hadn't done so for a few seconds and my eyes were feeling sore.

However, no matter how hard I tried, I could not close my eyes. What was wrong with me? I couldn't breathe, I couldn't blink, and I felt a constant smile across my face.

Quickly, I stood up and managed to break the plastic keeping me trapped. Still, I couldn't feel myself breathing. My chest ached. I could still feel my human self, but I don't know what I was now on the outside.

The natural way to answer my underlying questions about how different I was would be to look at my legs, and so I pulled one up and looked down.

I was shocked to realise that it was blue, even more so that it was sewn together. But looking at my shoe, I instantly recognised what I was.

Somehow, I was Sonic. More specifically, judging from the stitch lines, I was most likely a life-sized plush of him. I knew I probably wasn't in a costume because my hands were big and my fingers were conjoined, so a plush was the more likely option.

Before I could make any escape plans, however, I heard a door open. I quickly went limp, I knew that because I was a plush, I could likely use this to my advantage to hide in plain sight.

I couldn't feel a pulse in my body, so I must be able to limp pretty well.

I heard a few people come in. They were talking about some shit. I believe it was soccer? I'm unsure, and honestly, it's irrelevant.

They immediately came across me, and were surprised to see that I was no longer confined to my plastic prison. One was nearly about to report a break-in, until another calmed him down. He said that I was the prize of a contest being kept in this warehouse, and since the contest winner had already been decided, they could just put me in a box and be done with it.

So, one picked me up. My cover was nearly blown, since he said I felt a bit heavier and harder to move than I should, but another quickly shot his worry down by bringing up the possibility I was special.

He was right, but not in the way he thought he was.

After putting me in a box, rather lazily mind you - they didn't bother properly closing it - I was loaded into the back of a truck to be shipped to the contest winners.

The drive was long. I wanted to sleep, but as I mentioned before, I can't close my eyes. I can't even move them anymore, I have to live like this, eyes constantly aching.

At least, being unsupervised, I was able to move and stretch around a little. Despite being a life-sized Sonic plush, I could still feel very human things in me. Most noteably, I could feel my ribcage while pressing against my chest. I believe I still have some remnants of humanity in me, though I'm not sure how this plush even has a skeleton. Did the bearded man gi infuse (sic) this toy with my mortal body?

After what felt like eternity, the truck stopped moving. I quickly went limp once more. The man driving the truck came back to check on me and the other contents, which included the newest Sonic game at the time, as well as a Wii to play it on.

I was dropped off in front of the door. The sun was blinding, and combined with being forced to stare, that added more pain to my new body. I knew that nights would be the time best for me, I could walk around with less people likely to spot me, and the sun wouldn't shine directly into my face.

The driver rang the doorbell, and a woman answered. I won't bore you with what happened, but she soon took me inside and called her daughter down. I forgot her name, but she was real pretty.

The little girl was ecstatic to see me and everything else that came in the box. She was saying how she never thought she'd win the contest, and I heard a man say that he didn't think they'd win either.

And so, I was sat down on the floor. Forced to watch this girl set up the Wii and play the new Sonic game. Sonic Unleashed, it was called. It looked fun.

Though of course, she couldn't play it all day. She was eventually called for dinner. I thought about making my leave here, but I knew leaving at night would be the most optimal decision.

And so, I awaited nightfall.

What I didn't expect was for the girl to take me up to her room. She seemed to be a big Sonic fan, there were some characters I didn't even recognise who she had plushes of. The series must've got a lot more characters while I wasn't looking.

What's worse is that she went to bed with ME.

So, in the dead of night, I had to slip out of her bed. I had to be quick, but I also had to be careful, and let me tell you, this body doesn't really favor the second part of that.

Miraculously, I managed to get out of the bed. I went to grip the door handle, but then I remembered that my hand could barely move. This immediately started to anger me, though in my anger, I realised something.

Whenever I tensed up, it felt like the plush around me would become thinner, as if a layer was removed. My fingers were still interjoined, but as long as I kept them tense, I felt a lot more freedom, as if they were just webbed hands.

So I grabbed the door handle, but unfortunately, the door creaked really badly. Enough to wake the girl up.

She probably expected to see her mother, but she saw me, her Sonic plush, standing up.

Her first reaction was to scream, seems like she was smart enough to realise that plushies don't just get up and start walking. I didn't know what to do here, and shushing her wouldn't work, so I just ran up and hit her as hard as I could across the face. The force was enough to send her down, but I knew that scream would wake her parents up. I was fucked.

I immediately hid towards the inside end of the door so I wouldn't be spotted once her parents came in. My eyes quickly darted across the room to find something I could use as a weapon, and I noticed a box of lego. It was blue, it had a handle, and it seemingly had a lot of lego in it. It would work beautifully as a blunt force trauma weapon.

Both of the parents quickly rushed in to investigate, and I made my move - I struck the father over the head with the lego box. It was to the back of the neck, too. I think I killed him right then and there. Before she could react, I hit the mother with it, too. Right to the chin. She was still moving, so I hit her again with it, and again, and again, and again, and again. I wanted to make sure she was dead. Her head was pretty much crushed. I decided to do the same to the father, just to be sure. I hit it against his head several times over, with some sort of sadistic glee.

Afterwards, I was hit with the realization that I had just taken two, possibly three, human lives. My emotional response was initially disgust, until I dwelled upon it some more.

It felt really good to just smash those heads.

So I did it some more.

It felt like some primal desire was finally fulfilled. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, your first experience of something always is confusing. I just wish I could feel my first time killing someone again. It's truly something indescribable.

I was going to do the same to the girl, but then, I had an idea.

I went downstairs to look for a knife. I had a very specific idea in mind. If taxiderming animals was something satisfying to me, how would taxiderming people feel? I knew sewing would be a problem right off the bat, but I could probably try to steal the equipment from somewhere.

After I picked the perfect knife, I rushed back upstairs. Tensing up also seemed to make me run faster. This was annoying to do, especially pressing down on my ribs, but I guess all good things have their price.

With my now-perfect yet annoying to hold grip, I entered the room where I had already killed the parents. However, I was too quick on assumptions - My hit hadn't killed the girl, she was still conscious.

I had to hear her gargling as I took the knife to her throat, slowly slicing to rid her body of her head. This resistance made the cut less than ideal, and I was even second-guessing myself, but nonetheless, I pushed on until I had fully taken her head.

I made my exit through the front door in the dead of the night. With me now learning that I could run very quickly with my body tensed up, pressed against my skeleton, I bolted as far away from the house as I could, head still in hand. It was only then I realised I would need a place to stay, and of course, to be my new museum.

I also realised by looking into a puddle to see myself that tensing up my whole body would often rip my mouth open, exposing teeth for all to see, so I had to sew that back up when I got my new equipment.

Fortunately, after a few weeks, I had found an abandoned shipping container that I could call home. After that, I just needed to locate more equipment, which I found by breaking into many, many places. Hell, with the new sewing equipment, I was able to make it so my fingers were no longer conjoined.

I had plenty of close calls of course, but I managed to get everything I needed, and within a month, I managed to mount my first human. A little girl's head was now up on the inner wall of this abandoned CONEX box.

I would've prefered it to be over something like a fireplace, but a shipping container is fine, it's my new home after all.

I don't know if the murder of the family got in the news, I really can't just go out and check in my current form, but it likely did. I can't give you their names, since I never learned them, so if you want to check, I can't give you many leads other than what I already said about skull-crushed parents and a decapitated little girl.

After that, my taxidermy projects became easy: I'd just have to sneak around, find a way to put myself among over Sonic merchandising, limp, and the victims would reel themselves in to me. My current count as of writing this is 17 people. I don't taxidermy all of them, so looking around, I only have 6 bodies to my name in this container, including the little girl's head.

Why am I doing this, you may ask?

It's only fair.

I hate my current form. I don't have to eat or drink, but I still feel very hungry and thirsty. I've tried to drink once, but it felt like acid was pouring down my throat.

Whenever I speak now, my voice is raspy, I sound like I'm about to vomit at any moment.

I don't even have my beautiful beard which I had before I died.

If I must suffer, than (sic) others will too. I don't even care who at this point, but I do have two targets on my mind who I want to kill above all else.

Thomas Roberts.

Kylie Leblanc.

I don't know if you two are still in Ontario, especially you, Kylie. You've most likely moved back to Manitoba. Hell, I don't even know if you'll be reading this, I hid it in a very good spot. But even if you two move to different continents, I will find you.

I'll come and find you two.

And I'll make you just like me for doing this to me on that fateful night.

Remember how you used to blame everything you did on me, Tom? How I always got the blame because I was older and always "seemed more malicious"?

I do.

I'll make your wish of becoming Tails come true, I have another cotton cage that's just for you.

As for you, Kylie, why don't I make you the annoying pink girl, Amy? That'd suit you very well.

I'm suffering through this constant agony, so you two should suffer with me.

You two dying will make me feel so alive in comparison.

And dear reader, whoever you may be.

Despite the fact that I'm telling you all this, I'm confident that you won't be able to intervene.

Why?

It's simple.

Nobody will believe you.

How much of what I wrote here is true? Am I really who I say I am?

If it is true, what's the possibility this is outdated? Have I already been caught?

And do you honestly think the police will investigate a cursed Sonic plushie killing people? Don't be stupid, haunted plushes aren't real.

Or are they? You've never seen one.

Sleep tight tonight.

- Scott Roberts