Mimic

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Do you go in, or do you keep walking along the path into the night?” The prompt blinked across the pathway in the virtual reality simulation. Nate fiddled with the controller glove, wondering which option to choose.

“Don’t be such a chicken, Nate.” Scoffed Adnan. “Of course you go IN the cabin, duh.”

“Well you never know. I guess it’s designed to be creepy either way you choose right?” answered Nate. He tapped his right finger ahead of himself in the air selecting the correct option, indicating that he’d be going inside the cabin. Adnan did the same.

“Hey guys! Wait for me!” Tommy mumbled, shoving a fistful of chips in his mouth while rushing down the basement steps. “Can’t just leave me out of this Beta!” He quickly snapped the monitor wristband on his hand and slipped the VR headset over his freckled nose. “Woah, this really is creepy eh. They weren’t kidding when they said this was meant to give you the heebie jeebies.”

“Tommy shut up and choose to come in the cabin with us. We’re waiting for you so we can all go in since we’re linked in this sim.” Nate snapped.

Tommy quickly grabbed the controller gloves and pulled them on his greasy chip covered hands. “Sorry, they won’t like…ding you for making the gloves greasy or anything will they?” he said jokingly.

“How could they. The whole experience is free remember. We’re just testing this out so we can give a review and some feedback.” Nate answered, the annoyed tone in his voice very clear.

“Okay okay, I’m in. Ok so I just tap like this in the air and…ohh very cool. Looks very real. I feel like I’m…”

“Tommy!” Both Adnan and Nate yelled.

“Reeelax, I’m coming. Let’s get in this creepy old cabin and see what jumps out at us.” Tommy responded.

They walked towards the cabin in the virtual reality video game realm. Everything looked eerily calm and realistic. Nate almost felt the wind against his skin when he heard it whistling in between the dark and crooked trees in his peripheral vision. Of course, it was just the ceiling fan in his basement, but quite the sensory experience, nonetheless.

The cabin was a classic style log cabin, with a simple one floor, one room layout. The shingles on the top of the roof were tattered and half of them were missing. The old logs were dented and scarred with age and rot, and the decaying front porch steps barely looked like they could hold the weight of a person.

"Hey Tommy, don't fall through the porch." snickered Adnan, alluding to Tommy's husky stature.

"Hey Addy. Be careful you don't fall through the gaps in the woodwork." Tommy responded, poking fun at Adnan's beanpole physique.

"Shh guys. You're ruining the ambience." Nate said quietly, as he approached the front door. His heart was racing, expecting something to jump out at him at the last second.

He reached for the door knob, and slowly turned it around. The wooden porch boards strained under the weight of the three teenage boys. Nate could almost smell the mulch and decay from the softened rotted wood panels. He gave the door a push and it swung open slowly. The boys walked into the cabin apprehensively and started to look around. The candle was the only light in the one room. It flickered ominously on the window ledge as they came in, causing the cluttered items lining the shelves to create dancing shadows across the walls. Everything was a dusty, grey brown, and there was a wooden chair sitting in the corner of the simple single room structure.

“Wow this is so unique!” exclaimed Tommy sarcastically.

“Yeah. Probably the most generic “creepy” cabin.” Adnan agreed. “A little messy though. Lots of random junk.”

“Let’s take a look around at all this stuff. Maybe there’s a task or some kind of a puzzle to solve that’s part of the game.” suggested Nate.

They started to rummage through the stuff lining the walls. Most of it was covered in a thick layer of caked on dust.

“Woah…guys. This is so weird.” said Adnan shakily, holding up a tattered old stuffed animal. It was hard to tell what animal it was. “This looks identical to one that I had as a kid.” he continued. "I mean, who would put this specific old stuffed animal Llama into a scary video game sim?" He muttered, turning the plush toy around.

“Ooooo Addy’s scared of a little teddy bear! Doesn’t take much to get you shaky.” snickered Tommy. Nate chuckled as well. Adnan wasn’t laughing. He stood there looking at the stuffed animal. It even had the same stitches on the left ear that his mom had put there when he was 9 years old. How could the game possibly know?

Nate was still internally laughing at Adnan’s “scary llama” when his eye caught something familiar too. He picked up an old broken picture frame and wiped the excess dust from its remaining glass pane. A tight knot formed in his stomach. This was the same picture and frame that his family had hanging in the kitchen, except it was covered in dirt and looked like it had a bloody smear on the lower right side.

“Umm I found something too. Look at this.” He said with a frightened quiver starting to well up at the back of his throat. “How would they know this. I mean I know the game is called ‘Mimic’, but I didn’t think it would literally mimic our personal lives with real details…” his voice trailed off.

“Well, these wrist bands are supposed to monitor our heart rates and every time they sense an increase in heart rate, the program doles out more of the same to increase the personal scare factor. I’m sure since the company knew you were testing the game, they investigated personal stuff to add some fun extra scary details.” Tommy concluded.

The boys nodded, but still felt uneasy. “Yeah, I guess”, muttered Adnan, still peering back at the stuffed llama he left face down on the dusty shelf.

“See, the design team didn’t know I’d be your 3rd tester when they sent the gear to you, so there’s nothing personal for me.” Continued Tommy, nonchalantly flipping over items. “I wouldn’t be surprised if…” he trailed off mid sentence. He was at the window and stared directly outside. He started stuttering, “G-g-g-guys, there’s someone out there!”

Adnan and Nate ran to the window in a few short bounds. Sure enough there was a figure out in the darkness. As they looked, it slowly started to move closer to the window. It wasn’t walking or floating. It seemed to be moving in glitched jumps, and in a sudden burst it was right at the window.

It was an old woman. Her smile stretched unnaturally across her face as if the corners of her mouth extended to the back of her ears. Her eyes were like two black holes.

They all stumbled back. “Ohhhh shit’s getting REAL! What is that?!” Nate yelled. He could feel his heart rate spiking from the adrenaline. Adnan was backed up to the corner of the room as far away from the window as possible. He had his hands behind his head and was pacing trying to calm himself down. Tommy on the other hand had retreated to the corner of the room with the chair. He was crying.

“Hey man that was so scary! This game is intense!” Nate said, trying to make Tommy feel better for not handling the programmed scare as well as he might’ve liked.

“No you don’t get it. That thing out there…it was my grandma. Well not really. It couldn’t have been her. But it was wearing her favourite sweater. And her hair. But she died 4 years ago” he said holding back tears.

Just then, the candle blew out, leaving the three of them in complete darkness. “Oh hell no I’m out.” Adnan said, and all three boys launched for the door. Of course, the door was locked, or maybe the handle was jammed. The walls of the cabin started shaking and a low wail surrounded them.

“Screw it I’m tapping out.” Nate said, as he pulled off his VR headset, and controller gloves.

Adnan and Tommy shortly followed suit.

The three of them sat there, breathing heavily, and staring at the discarded hardware on the table in front of them.

“That was way too intense in my opinion.” concluded Nate. One thing is to try and get someone scared, but another is to create a terrifying situation preying on someone’s emotional attachments, like dead relatives. That’s going too far.

“Hey Tommy, pass me some chips” Nate said after a prolonged silence. “Let’s forget about this game and watch a movie or something.”

“Yeah, good idea. No horror movies though I’m refusing that genre tonight” replied Adnan, reaching for the remote control.

Suddenly there was a loud crash upstairs. The boys were all startled and looked up at the ceiling, and then at Nate. “I thought you said your parents were away for the weekend?!” whispered Tommy with an exasperated tone.

“They are.” Nate answered while looking at the bottom of the staircase apprehensively.

Nate got up and grabbed his baseball bat from the bottom of the basement steps. He went first, wielding the bat, with Adnan and Tommy following. They came up into the kitchen, where the basement steps ended, and Nate flicked on the light with a tap of the bat. There was a big mess on the kitchen floor. One of the small planters had fallen off the stand and knocked some items down along the way. Potting soil and glass shards littered the tiles.

Looking around carefully through the open concept kitchen and living room to make sure no one was there the boys slowly inched into the kitchen. Nate bent over to pick up the potted plant and what was left of the shattered planter. As he did so he felt a sting, slicing his thumb on a shard of glass. “Ahh damn it.” He muttered under his breath, while applying pressure to his thumb. Just what he needed at this moment. Tommy and Adnan slowly walked through the rest of the main floor area looking around corners.

“Maybe it was just a small earth quake?” suggested Tommy hopefully. “I mean they are pretty common here.” He added.

This was true thought Nate, but he couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease churning in his core. Something seemed strange, like the lighting was wrong. Or maybe the smell? He couldn’t place it. He chalked it up to the harrowing game experience they had just been through. Maybe they were all still on edge from that freak show.

Nate walked over to the medicine cabinet in the corner of the kitchen and started to bandage his thumb. That’s when he noticed the frame in the dirt on the kitchen floor. He walked over slowly and picked it up. As he brushed the potting soil off a feeling of dread gripped him. It was the same framed photo of his family that he had seen in the game. It was covered in dirt and his bleeding thumb had left a smear of fresh red blood on the lower right side – the same state that he had found it in while in the VR cabin. He quickly put the picture face down on the kitchen island, chills running through his whole body. This was not OK.

“Guys. Guys! Come here!” He called out to Adnan and Tommy. “Look at this” he said, as he shoved the picture at them.

“No no no no no. I’m not having that. Throw that shit out.” Tommy shuddered, shoving the frame back at Nate.

Adnan picked up the frame and thought for a bit and concluded, “Someone is messing with us guys. How else would they – “

*SLAM*

The back sliding glass door that lead out to the back porch was pummelled by something.

All three boys jumped and turned instinctively to the source of the noise.

Nate’s family dog, a large German shepherd, was standing on the back porch panting, looking through the locked glass sliding doors.

“SERIOUSLY?! I thought my parent’s said they were taking Bif with them. How long has he been out there?” Nate said as he moved to open the sliding door to let the dog in.

“Wait…don’t.” Adnan grabbed Nate’s arm before he unlocked the glass pane. When Nate looked at him questioningly, Adnan gestured to the dog and said, “Look. He’s got something in his mouth. It's my toy Llama.”

Nate looked back at the dog and realised Adnan was right. It was the same plush animal. And upon closer inspection, Bif didn’t look quite right either. He was panting hard, and there was something disproportionate about him, like something bigger had tried to pull the skin of a dog over it’s body. Before he could make anymore assessments through the glass the dog started running into the glass doors again. He kept running full tilt headfirst into the glass, shaking the panes in the frame.

“Shit guys it’s going to break through. What do we do?!” Tommy yelled.

“Stand back in case he shatters it” Nate said. He backed up to the kitchen and picked up the baseball bat from before. He wasn’t keen on using it against the family dog, but something told him that whatever was on the back porch wasn’t the family dog. He wasn’t even sure it was a dog.

After a few more attacks on the glass door, the 'dog' fell over and started convulsing. His eyes had rolled into the back of his head, and the ragged toy Llama still dangled from his canine grimace.

Nate, Tommy, and Adnan stood in silent shock, staring at the seemingly dead, bloated, and potentially demonic dog laying on the back porch.

“What is going on here?” Nate exclaimed. “This is beyond fucked. Someone is fucking with us. They must be. Who else would know about these things, and then the game? I just don’t know anymore.” He continued ranting. He walked over to the kitchen island putting his elbows on the edge and putting his face in his hands, hoping if he closed his eyes it might just stop.

“Well, I don’t know about you guys, but if what’s happening now is following the same order as the game, I don’t want to stick around to see the next installment.” Tommy said. “I’m getting out of here before – “

He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. The lights in the kitchen flickered. A loud thump from above broke the silence, followed by a heavy dragging noise, as if someone was reorganising heavy furniture in the bedrooms above. A vacuum like silence enveloped the house. A pressurised ringing began to set into the guys ears.

“SHIIITTTT GUYS LETS GOOO!” Adnan yelled. They all ran to the front door and tried to open it. The handle was jammed, just like it had been in the cabin.

As they jiggled with the handle, a small bedside table flew down the staircase from the hallway upstairs and crashed into the wall adjacent to the staircase landing. The old recliner in the living room started to move slowly across the hardwood floor.

“PORCH GO GO GO!” Nate yelled. As they ran back from the front of the house to the back porch, Nate caught a glimpse of something at the top of the staircase. A dark figure. “The figure from the game? But how?” He thought. He wasn’t about to stick around to find out in either case.

They got to the sliding back door and hastily fumbled with the triple locks. The lights were completely out at this point. The ringing in their ears was almost unbearable.

The door finally slid open, and the boys ran out on to the back porch tripping over one another while trying to avoid the dead animal.

“What’s that stench?” Thought Nate to himself. Could it be the dog decaying already? He didn’t investigate further. All three of them ran as fast as they could, jumping the back fence and running into the forest behind his house.

They ran for a few minutes before they slowed down to catch their breath. The air was fresh and crisp, a welcome change from the stuffy and constricting house filled with apparently haunted or possessed paraphernalia.

“Ok well what do we do now? This is a shit show. What are we supposed to do, sleep in a tree like Tarzan? What am I? Katniss Everdeen? Gonna trap some squirrels for my dinner?” Tommy whispered maniacally, his freckled face blotchy and red.

“Oh shut up, as if dinner was our most pressing problem right now.” Adnan retorted. “How about suggesting something constructive for a change instead of just complaining.”

“Well I don’t see you coming up with any solutions Addy” responded Tommy.

“Wait wait guys be quiet. I think I see something.” Nate whispered, pointing through the trees.

A light was flickering in the distance. It looked like someone might have a campfire going. That was completely possible, considering Nate’s house backed on to a large, forested area with trails and unofficial fire pits that teenagers from all over town used.

“Let’s go see if we can find anyone.” Nate said and started towards the light. Tommy and Adnan followed for lack of better ideas.

As they approached the light, the trees began to thin. A soft wind played across the treetops, the autumn leaves quivering against the soft moonlight. The breeze felt familiar to Nate, like the feeling one gets when they put on an old shirt. As the boys approached the flickering light, they began to see that the light wasn’t a larger campfire flickering from far away like they had initially thought, but instead a small light, like one caused by a candle. A feeling of dread washed over Nate. He started realising why it felt familiar. It was because it was very similar, if not identical to the game. “No way, it can’t be. We were in my house. We just left my real house.” He thought to himself. “This place doesn’t exist in real life.”

It became increasingly clear that the light was coming from a flickering candle sitting on a windowsill. A few more steps revealed that the windowsill was indeed part of an identical cabin like that one from the game. The same tattered roof shingles, the same rotting wooden steps leading up to the dilapidated front porch, only this time there was no flashing prompt across the pathway. This was real. It had to be real.

“HELL NO, I am NOT going in THERE!” Adnan whisper-yelled in panic as soon as he registered what they were looking at.

“Yeah no shit you think I want to go in there?” Nate whispered back, equally terrified.

“OK so what are we going to then? We can’t just stand here. This is clearly not going to help us just standing here.” Tommy snapped, looking around uneasily, his eyes flitting between the gaps in the trees. He really didn’t want to be out here with the thing he saw last time he was in the cabin.

Just then, a silence fell across the forest. The pressure in the air started rising around them. The same vacuum silence pushed in on their eardrums and caused a terrible ringing. Before they could start running again something grabbed Adnan around the ankles and dragged him across the forest floor. ”FUCK IT HAS ME! HELP! GRAB MY ARM!” He screamed, clawing at the twigs and mud on the forest path as he was dragged backwards into the bushes.

Tommy and Nate jumped to grab his arms and held on as hard as they could, while being dragged for a few feet along the roots and rocks. Tommy was knocked head first into a tree, and Nate was left with nothing but a torn stretchy yellow Livestrong bracelet from Adnan’s wrist. All they heard were Adnan’s screams in the forest and then sudden silence.

Nate got up and ran back to Tommy, who was rubbing his head and trying to get up himself. “Man we have no choice, let’s go! Now! COME!” He yelled at Tommy, yanking him up by the arm. He ran as fast as he could, dragging a semi-concussed and stumbling Tommy toward the cabin. He hated the thought of going back inside that horrid little room, but having some kind of walls between them and whatever got Adnan was better than nothing.

They burst into the cabin, and slammed the door behind them. Like a nightmare, the cabin looked the same way it had when they entered it in the game. The same flickering shadows, dirty items strewn across the shelves, and a single wooden chair sitting in the corner.

“This is insane. I don’t know what’s happening. Why?” Nate started muttering to himself. “There has to be a logical explanation.” He went on. Tommy sat against the wall, leaning forward with his face in his hands. “Please God, just wake me up from this nightmare.” He started praying, his voice quivering.

The tell-tale pressure and ringing returned almost immediately. The walls of the cabin started shaking violently and the candlelight was blown out. Items began flying off the shelves and the chair in the corner began moving across the room slowly and deliberately in direct juxtaposition to the chaos that was unfolding around it. At this point both Nate and Tommy just sat huddled against the wall of the cabin with their hands over their ears, screaming and waiting in absolute fear for what would happen next.

Everything went black. All Nate heard was his own screams. He was trying to move his arms but couldn’t. All he could do was scream as loud as he could. Then the darkness started to fade, and a dim light began to form in the centre of his vision. He could see blurry objects and began to hear muffled noises like voices, and beeps. Soon he heard his mother’s voice.

“Nate? Nate? Can you hear me? I think he’s waking up. Oh, Thank God. Nurse! Doctor!” his mother’s voice said somewhere in the blurry scene that was emerging in front of him.

In a few minutes his vision and hearing became sharp again.

“Mom? You wouldn’t believe…wait what happened? Where am I? How did you find me in the cabin?” Nate blurted out all at once. He started to push himself up in the hospital bed, but quickly lay back down as he felt a sharp pain tear across his chest. That’s when he noticed he was hooked up to an IV and had a bunch of wires and stickers stuck across his front and shoulders.

“My baby don’t worry yourself anymore. You can’t get worked up ok? The doctor said to stay as calm as possible and not to get stressed.” She said as she gently hugged him and helped him lay back down on the hospital pillow. She sat down and held his hand in both her cold and shaky hands.

“What happened? Can you at least tell me that? Where’s Tommy? Did they find Adnan?” Nate asked. “And why I am I hooked up to all this?” He added, pointing to the wires and machines that were beeping around him.

“When your father and I came home, we found the three of you in the basement passed out with your video game stuff still on. All of you were overheating and your heart rates were through the roof like you’d just run a marathon...you had a heart attack Nate. They had to revive you using a Defib.” She said with tears welling up in her eyes. “We thought we’d lost you Nate. I’m just so glad you’re ok” she said through sniffles, tears now rolling down her cheeks.

Nate squeezed his mom’s hand and leaned back into the hospital pillow. The whole thing was in the game then. What a shitshow.

“So Adnan and Tommy are ok?” He added. “I promise, last question.”

“Yes, they’re recovering in other rooms. Tommy isn’t doing too well though, it seems like he’s had some head issues too. Like a concussion or something. They can’t figure it out.” She said. “But don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll be ok. You just get some rest. I’m going to go call your father.” She added patting Nate’s hand. “I’ll be right back.” And with that she left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Nate let out a sigh of relief. He was so glad to be back in reality and for that whole ordeal to be over. He rested his head back on the pillow and tried to close his eyes but couldn’t quite get comfortable. Using the hospital bed button, he mechanically propped himself up a little bit, so he could comfortably reach for a glass of water. As he reached toward the glass, he noticed a bandage around his right thumb. “If it was in the game, then why do I still have the bandage on my hand” He thought. The uneasy feeling slowly started to creep back into his gut. As he took a sip from his glass, he also registered what his mother had said not 5 minutes before. “Tommy has a concussion or something”. If that was in the game, then how would he have actual symptoms of a concussion. Things weren’t adding up.

He rolled over to his other side to reach for the remote control. Perhaps watching something on the T.V. would relax him a little. There was no remote, but there was an old grocery tote bag sitting there. He grabbed it thinking maybe his mom had brought some snacks.

When he looked inside his stomach dropped. Adnan’s tattered old Llama plush animal was sitting there. It’s neck twisted and hanging limp to the side.

“Not again” Nate muttered to himself. As he looked up toward the door, the lights in the hospital hallway flickered and went black.

A deafening pressure and silence filled the room.

Nate put his hands over his ears and began to scream.