Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies

Hello Internet. I wanted to share something with you that will probably disturb me for the rest of my life. I've not been able to tell anyone else who I know in real life as they don't believe me and, they usually call me "crazy".

It all started a week ago. It was a normal Monday for me. I got up, took a shower, got ready and headed out for college. The day went by slowly and when college had finished, I caught the bus back home. As I got to my house however, one of my friends, Tom, was standing outside of my door. This was unusual, as he very rarely came to my house. I would usually just chill with him and go somewhere rather than come back to my house with him.

Anyway, as I walked up to him. he turned to face me. He looked...scared, as if he'd seen a ghost or something. He ran up to me and handed me an object. I looked down at the object that he had just given to me and it turned out to be a video game. Call of Duty Black Ops, to be precise. I wasn't really a Call of Duty fan, so I'd never really played any of the games in the series before. I looked at him with a confused look.

"Tom, 2 questions. Number 1: Why are you waiting outside my house and number 2: why did you give me this? I told you that I've never played Call of Duty before."

Before I could get an answer from him, he shoved me out of the way and ran away. I ran after him and noticed that he was running to his house. He only lived about 2 minutes away down the road, so I knew the path to his house. I continued to run after him, shouting "TOM! WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH YOU?!" Eventually, he finally reached his house with me trying to catch up to him. As soon as I made it to his door, he slammed the door in my face. I tried to open it.

"Of course. He locked it. The fuck is up with him?"

I banged on his door for what seemed like hours. But, after a while, I figured that he wasn't going to unlock the door so I made my way back home.

"Well, that's me weirded out for the day. I'm going to have to talk to him about that tomorrow."

I looked down at the game, a confused look on my face once again.

"What the hell am I going to do with this? It's not like I asked to lend this. I might just leave it for now. I don't particularly feel like playing Xbox yet anyway."

When I got home, I walked into my living room and turned my TV on. I put the game down on my settee (couch for you Americans reading this) and sat in my chair. After a few hours of watching TV, I got bored and decided to turn on my Xbox. As it booted up and brought me to the dashboard, a thought came across my mind. "What should I play?"

I looked over to my settee and saw the game that Tom had handed me earlier. I went over to it, picked it up, opened the case and put the disc into my Xbox.

"I might as well try this out, see if it works and what not. Even if I'm not all that interested in Call of Duty, it is a game and I've never actually played it before so..."

My thoughts came to an end when a loud sound came from my TV. I jumped and looked at my screen. The sound came from the main menu booting up. I was in a room with TV's on my right and a TV on my left. The TV on the left had options such as Campaign, Multiplayer, Zombies and Options.

"Zombies huh? Sounds better than Campaign or Multiplayer,  I guess. Might as well try this out."

I clicked on the zombies option and the room changed to a yellowish colour. I also noticed that a guy behind the window who I didn't notice before hand was smacking on the window, trying to break through.

"How did I not see him when I was on the main menu? My eyesight must be worse than I thought. Either that or I just wasn't looking properly."

Paying no attention to this, I clicked through the various menus and saw a map called Kino Der Toten. I clicked on it and eventually, I found a lobby with 3 other players. The match eventually started and I spawned into what seemed a run down building. While the other players ran off in different directions, I searched around this room and noticed that all the 3 other players were standing next to a barrier of some sort.

"Is this where the zombies spawn?"

After realizing that they did in fact spawn behind the barriers, I found one that wasn't occupied by one of the players. I stood behind it and eventually, the zombies started coming towards the barrier. I only had a pistol and so did everyone else, it seemed. So, I guessed that I couldn't do a whole ton of damage just yet. After killing a few zombies that tried to break through the barrier, I heard a scream behind me.

"There are scream sound effects in this game? Huh."

I ran towards the sound and saw that a player was getting mauled by a bunch of zombies. What confused me here though, is the fact that the player's character was looking towards me with a realistic look on his face. He had a terrified expression mixed with a look that seemed like he was pleading... to me. I ran towards the zombies, shooting them as I got closer, but it did almost next to no damage. Before I could get really close to him, the zombies started ripping into him and eating him alive.

"They even have death animations where the character gets eaten? I should have played this ages ago! This is awesome!"

I soon heard the player's character shout to me. "HELP ME!"

"Wow. They really went all out on this game." I thought to myself. When I managed to actually kill all the zombies around the player, he was gone. All that was left were bones and a very realistic, mangled head. That creeped me out a bit. For one, I had never seen a game THIS realistic. Especially the faces on the characters when they were getting eaten alive.

The game apparently progressed through rounds. Round one had finished when I received a text from one of my other friends, Dave.

It read "Hey man. What are you up to?"

I looked around and made sure that there were no zombies there. When I was content that I wasn't going to get killed, I picked up my phone and replied to his message.

"Nothing much dude. Tom was outside my house today. Handed me a game for the Xbox 360. Call of Duty Black Ops. What was really odd though is how he looked and acted. He looked terrified and as soon as he handed me the game, he ran home. I followed him but he locked his door and wouldn't open it. I admit, it creeped me out quite a bit. He's never done anything like that and I don't see why he would. Anyway, I'm playing the game now and I gotta admit, it's freaking realistic. I'm on a zombies match with 3 other players. One of them died and the player's character did a really, REALLY realistic animation while the zombies were eating him alive. He even screamed, looked towards me and shouted "HELP ME!". I really should have bought this game ages ago!"

After finally sending the text, I heard two screams from my TV. I put my focus back on the game and saw that the two other players where getting eaten as well. They both looked towards me and screamed different things each. One of them shouted "WHY AREN'T YOU HELPING?!", while the other one shouted "I HATE YOU! I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL WITH ME!"

That was when I started to get a bit weirded out. "A game can't be THIS realistic.....can it?" I'd been surprised at how realistic it had been so far. But, now...I was getting more creeped out than before. Especially when I heard the two players screaming. The screaming were... the most realistic screams I had EVER heard in a video game, even more realistic than the scream I heard when the first player died.

I got a text and decided to read it. I checked the game and noticed that the zombies where still eating the other two players and weren't paying any attention to me what so ever, so I decided to quickly look at the text that I had received. It was from Dave again. I told him what was happening.

"Dude....what the hell are you talking about? I have that game and I've played a LOT of zombies. It's NEVER been that realistic, not even in the new maps. There is no animations where the player gets eaten alive. They don't look towards you and scream "HELP ME!" either. All the zombies do is hit you two times and you go down. You can only get revived by another player. So, you've either got a really well done hacked version or you're bullshitting me."

I looked at the text in confusion. "The hell is he talking about? It can't be hacked. Tom has told me before that he bought it new."

Before I could even click on reply, I heard yet another scream from the TV. I looked and jumped at what I saw. There was a zombie who had its face right up to my screen. And when I say that, I mean literally an inch away. It looked like if I reached out to the TV, I could probably touch it. It was also the most realistic zombie that I had ever seen. I've seen a few zombie films before and this zombie beat all of them out of the water with its appearance. I could see its skull and its brain barely hanging out. There were only black, empty sockets where the eyes should have been. The flesh on its mouth had been ripped off so you could see the entire front of its jaw. The next thing it did scared me intensely. It grinned. It grinned at me. As in, literally at ME. It looked as if it could see me through the screen. It spoke.

"I am going to enjoy this."

Its voice was low. Not demonic or anything like that, just a low male voice. Although, there was something that made its voice sound a LOT creepier than any males voice... it had a soothing tone to it.

Before I could do anything, the zombie stabbed its fingers into, what I presumed, my characters eyes. I only guessed that as the fingers looked as if they touched my screen and the screen went black. There was still sound, just no video. I could hear moans and then... I heard something being snapped. Then, more snap sounds. I guessed that the game was still running, just with no video. I didn't even want to think what the zombies were doing to my player. Then I heard what sounded like someone eating something. I gagged at the thoughts coming into my head.

I ejected the disc with lightning fast speed and put it back in its case. I ran over to Tom's house and knocked on his door. Still, no reply. I put the game down on his doorstep, hoping that he would find it when he came out of his house. "He can have that game. I never want to see that thing again."

The day went by pretty normally. However, when I went to sleep, I had a nightmare which included the zombie what I saw on the game. It was eating me alive. I could feel everything. Every bite, every scratch... everything. I woke up screaming and sweating like a mad man. I was relieved that it was just a dream, but it felt so... real. I've been having this same nightmare every night for the past week. And when I've woken up in the middle of the night, I swear that I can see someone standing at the foot of my bed. But, when I rub my eyes, the mysterious figure is gone.

I honestly don't know what to do. Obviously, I knew that I might have a nightmare as the experience disturbed me a lot. But, the same exact nightmare for an entire week which involves me feeling the exact same pain as the zombie eats me? And when I wake up, a see a mysterious figure standing at the edge of my bed?

Something is wrong with me. I really need to get some help... thanks for reading guys. Let's just hope this doesn't happen again tonight...