 I don't want to remember this. I really don't. It hurts me every time I do. As a lad, I used to love my PlayStation 2 with all my heart. After school, I'd come home and play Ratchet and Clank, perhaps The Rapper, The I Toy Games and many many more. It was so much fun growing up in that generation, where games still felt genuine, and graphics were in a state between realistic and blocky at the same time. I still have the thing, but I can't stand to even look at it after what happened back in 2006. I used to buy my games at this mom-and-pop store called, Game's Own, a fairly small place with not too much other than Xbox and PS2 games, no GameCube stuff sadly. It looked fairly humble, almost like a house but with last doors and rooms. There was a little TV in the corner that you could test games on for five minutes. They had a policy where if the game had a little blue sticker in the corner, you could test it before you go. The cheaper stuff mostly had this. You could also test bought games and see if they would work or not. It was pretty cool and is mainly what kept me coming back. The people working the place were rather friendly too. I became one of their favorite customers since I came in so much. You ever go to a place so much that the people working there start recognizing you? That's essentially what happened. They didn't hire many new employees, so they were fairly familiar with the regular crowd that would come in. Every time I'd go there, they'd greet me by name. My parents seemed fairly cool about it, since they didn't do anything particularly weird or creepy. They didn't anyway. In 2005, they started a little newsletter service. It was pretty simple, they would send little letters filled with the info about the new shipments of games they got, mainly the big name ones like God of War and such. Reviews, as in, one of the guys working there would play the game for an hour and give a rather basic opinion about it, and lots and lots of Microsoft word clip art. This is where things get, haha, interesting. As you may have implied from reading that last part, I had indeed signed up for it myself. Well, my parents did after I kept begging them to anyway. Every few weeks or so I'd get a letter with all sorts of info that I, in all honesty, didn't care too much about, as I was there enough to know what was there anyway. However one day when I got my fifth or sixth letter, there was another thing in the mailbox next to it. It was lined paper with some fairly crude handwriting. If you want free video games, come to Wood Road. We have lots of cool games like Ratchet and Clank, Metal of Honor and Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Me, being the stupid little idiot that I was, thought that this was a trustworthy note, despite the title and spelling errors and the fact that it was on a dodgy looking sheet of paper. I asked my one to go there, and after showing her the note, she refused. Looking back, she was probably a lot smarter than me. I remember it went something like this. Where did you get this note from? She asked. It was in the mailbox. I saw it on the counter next to the game's own newsletter. Can we go? Please? No, son. I don't know who lives at this address, nor do I trust them. Mom, please. I wanna go. I burst out crying. The rest is kind of a blur. I think she sent me to my room. I was terribly mad at my mother. I thought she was being a jerk by doing this. Instead of seeing the dangers of going to some unknown address, I was only in it for the games. This is the part that I don't like to talk about, because everything beyond this point is where shit gets real. Where things get horrible. A few days after the incident of arguing with my mother, I had planned to run from the house and go searching for the address myself. I had to wait until night to leave, since everyone else would be asleep at that point. It was during the weekend, so I didn't have to do my homework until Sunday. I sat in my room, playing a game that I believe was Metal Gear Solid 3. I had borrowed it from my friend Steven. No way was my mom gonna let me play an M-rated game. I was waiting for midnight. I tried to keep awake by sneaking soda cans into my room and praying that they'd do their job. Around 7.30pm, my mom walks in and tells me to get ready for bed in an hour. I promised but insincerely. I would just turn off the lights, lock the door, turn down the TV and play the PS2 for a few more hours afterward. I look at the clock. 1.04am. An hour and four minutes past midnight. It was time. I save my session of MGS3, unlock my door and step out. However, it's not as easy as it seems. The lights in the living room are on. My parents are still awake. Dang, I thought. How am I gonna get through this? I looked back at my room and remembered that, since I lived in a one-story house, I could just jump out my window. So I decided to do so, except for the fact that the screen was in the way. So, against my better judgment, I decided to push as hard as I could to break it. I had no thought of this leaving a warning sign for my parents. After somehow successfully breaking and pulling apart the screen door for nearly an hour or two, I was free. I climbed out the window and walked around. Then, I realized my second issue. It was dark, and I had no idea where this place actually was. How in the hell was I gonna get there without directions? Either I would have to get a map and flashlight, or just work through some trial and error. I was too lazy to do the former, so I decided to wander and ask anyone I'd come across. A few hours of blind wandering occurred as the sun slowly rose, filling the sky with a dull blue haze. I figured I was out of time, but out of sheer luck, I saw the sign. Wood Road. I had yet the jet pond. It felt like I had discovered heaven itself. Oh, how wrong I was. After looking for the number specified on the letter, I found what looked like a garage sale. There was a shady old man standing there, and it had looked like he hadn't slept in days. His haunting gaze is still burned into my mind. Ha, hello? Is this where I can get free games? He just sat there, unlinking, unmoving. He seemed like a corpse. Ha, okay. I'll just take these and go. Suddenly, he sprang to life in the most jarring fashion imaginable. Hello, boy. Would you like some video games? He said excitedly. It felt as if he were an animatronic coming to life in a theme park. It was so strange. Yeah, I was just about to- Here, have them all. Take them all. Games. Games. Hello, hello. I was scared. Was this man off his rocker? He seemed horribly ecstatic, especially for his age. He began dancing around like a madman. I quietly grabbed the games he had lying around and ran for my life, as if I was even in any true danger at that point. After a long grueling run home, I crawled back into my room through my window. My door was still locked, so I hoped my parents hadn't noticed. Then I realized the hole in my window screen probably wasn't going to help hide anything. So I just threw a pillow from my bed over it and crammed it in with the window itself. I popped in the first game I grabbed, Ape Escape 2. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Everything ran fine, as if the game was brand new and untouched. I played it for a bit and swapped it out for the other game, Batman Begins. Again, nothing unusual. All of the games I played seemed totally normal. Except, one of the things I had grabbed wasn't a game. It was a memoric CD with the words videos written on it in caps. This, my friends, is where things got horrible. I was curious. What was on this disc? It's not a game, certainly, considering it has videos written on it. I popped it in and was greeted with a generic looking DVD menu. Nothing out of the ordinary for a burned DVD. I went into scene selection and found what looked to be a bunch of bad camcorder recordings of TVs showing programs like SpongeBob, Jimmy Neutron and the like. So, I started it from the beginning. It was the Sailor Mouth episode of SpongeBob, as recorded by Shaky Cam. It was kind of hard to watch. Among the cam were a multitude of other annoyances. There seemed to be a kid in the background commenting on every little thing that happened, along with said child's father. The focusing would screw up every now and then, and you could hear what sounded like a washing machine in the background. While this was certainly low budget and awful, there wasn't anything particularly offensive, at first. Around the third clip, a recording of Kim Possible, a show I didn't care too much about, I could overhear an argument in the background with a woman and the child. It was out of context, so I hadn't a clue about what was going on. That's when I hear a slap, and then the child began crying. It felt like a punch in the gut. Even to a seemingly battle-hardened kid like me. What caused them to hit the kid? Why? I kept watching out of morbid curiosity, and the kid, who I could now see to be a little boy, running towards the TV and turning it off, still crying. Get in your room! Now! I hear the father yell. The clip ends. I'm left in a state of awe and confusion. The fourth clip, a recording of a rerun of Dexter's laboratory, was interrupted by the father figure suddenly getting up and yelling at the child for doing something. This time, I actually get to see it in first person. The camera hastily turns away from the TV, as the boy is shown being the one who had taken it. His father, who struck me as looking familiar, charges towards the boy and throws the camera on the ground, breaking the lens. The fifth and final clip was the turning point. Instead of being a shaky camera recording of a TV show, it was of a first person shot of the kid, and the father seemed to be holding the camera this time. He kept yelling things like, Say you're sorry. No. And other such things. The kid seemed confused, not sure of what he was guilty for. After a while, the father pushed the boy to the ground, and I don't even want to say it. To put it simply, it results in the untimely demise of the child. Sweet Jesus Christ, I feel fucking awful just talking about it. Every time I picture it, I want to throw up. I want to die. I want to kill such an inhuman man like him. I sat there, slackjawed and frightened. I figured the only way to get some relief was to finally admit the truth and share it with my parents. I approached my mother and cried, explaining everything that happened. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll never do it again. I was expecting a harsh punishment. I was expecting to be grounded for life. Let me see that disc. Is what she first said. Oh, okay. I stammered. I handed it to her, and she walked into her and my father's room. My dad approached me and gave me a lecture about why I shouldn't have done what I did, and grounded me for a few weeks. However, my one thought otherwise. She walked out of her room, looking absolutely mortified. Everyone, get in the car. She rushed down the road, hiking at every bit of incoming traffic she saw. By the time she was done, we found ourselves outside of a police station. My mother and father ran inside, the DVD clutched in her fingers. They were in there for quite a long time. For two five hours. I didn't see that much happening, as I was still in the car. I was afraid that the man from the DVD was going to find me and kill me. My father came out of the office and told me to come inside. An officer was waiting for me, and asked me many questions. I tried to get as many details out about the traumatic experience I had, making sure I didn't miss one single fact. They questioned me about a lot of things, where I was, who was there, etc. etc. We drove home a while later. My parents were attempting to comfort me after what I had seen. I felt like I had been violated. After all, I never intended all of this. I just wanted to play some games.