Last Saturday, I received a very strange PM from Corinthian Market. The subject title was "WARNING" and the contents of the message said: "Watch out." Ok, so obviously this was kind of weird, so I PM'ed back with the reply: "yah wut." I was going to go to BAndrew's riddle thread to post my probability circuit thing when I received another PM from Corinthian Market less than eight seconds later. I'm serious: when I looked at the top of my screen, I had one "Unread" message nearly an instant after I had replied. Anyways, this message simply contained a link to the A Machine for Pigs website, which I'm sure you all know is Frictional and thechineseroom's collaboration effort on the sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I thought by now that Corinthian must be trolling me, or maybe this was some inside forum joke that I didn't get since I'm kinda new here. Anyways, I clicked on
http://aamfp.com/, which, as I suspected, to me to the website.
Everything looked pretty normal here. There was the big white logo that said "Amnesia A Machine For Pigs" pasted against the background of the dark Victorian city with all the red lights and smoke everywhere. Beneath it was the trailer and all those screenshots on the right side of the screen, with the "SQUEAL LITTLE PIGGIES" message at the bottom that asked people to send in to the developers their screams and shrieks of fright. Nothing looked strange at all.
So I replied again to Corinthian Market "yo wut u hai on", 'cuz y'know, mainstream English is boring. I almost expected him to send me an immediate reply just like he did the last time, but instead his response took a while. In fact, it was only about an hour later that another unread message appeared in my inbox, and when I opened it up I saw that it said: "Look again," followed by another link to the A Machine for Pigs website. Once again, I clicked on the link and went to the site and looked over everything, logo and trailer and screenshots and all. I found absolutely nothing strange about it. I guess if you're one of those people that super analyze all the screenshots and the trailer you would be able to find some interesting stuff in there, but I prefer to wait and allow the game to surprise me. In fact, I almost hate going to the AAMFP Discussion thread in case someone posts something there that spoils the game for me.
I didn't reply to CM anymore, thinking that he was probably just trolling me now. It may be that he had discovered something super secret by analyzing every pixel of the AAMFP website, but whatever it was - like I said - I didn't want to know. By now it was pretty late at night, so I turned off my computer and went to bed.
While I can't remember exactly what I had dreamed about that night, I do recall feeling strangely perturbed and waking up feeling somewhat startled the next morning. Something must have made me feel uncomfortable while I was asleep, which isn't too unusual - my bed is rather old and I've had body aches from accidentally rolling into awkward positions multiple times before. Anyways, the following day, after eating breakfast I turned on my computer to work on a school project that I've been putting off for some time now. I noticed that the startup time for my computer took strangely longer than unusual, but didn't think much of it - the machine was around three years old, anyways. There was another minor thing - the volume was muted. I don't recall doing that when I turned the computer off last night, but it was hardly a problem anyways.
The next hour or so proceeded by rather tediously. My browser, Chrome, also appeared somewhat slower than usual - quite possibly due to my unstable wireless Internet - and sometimes web pages just refused to load until I had refreshed them multiple times. This began to annoy me when I started doing research for my school project. Even google search would sometimes bring up a blank page rather than any results. Word document took a while to start up (which was where I pasted most of my research) and sometimes froze while I was typing something. Fortunately, although the lag was noticeable, it didn't severely hinder my work - at least none of my programs hung or had to be shut down. Nevertheless, I could definitely do with a faster computer. I was thinking of restarting and seeing if that would somehow make my computer run faster. But before doing that, I decided to check out my usual forums. Frictional is the second of my bookmarks, next to facebook.
I was surprised to find three new private messages in my inbox, all of which were from Statyk. The subject of each of these messages was "Participant," which instantly piqued my interest. I definitely had a feeling that this had something to do with Corinthian's tomfoolery last night, though. Although, to tell you the truth, Statyk doesn't really strike me as the type that would troll - I mean, I don't want to be prejudiced against Corinthian, but Statyk
is a moderator. Or maybe I simply haven't been around long enough on the forums to know the personalities of each member well enough. Anyways, what really began to annoy me from here was that each message took
forever to load. Like, I had to wait between fifteen to twenty-five minutes for each PM to load up after clicking on them, and this time I know that it isn't due to the fault of a laggy internet connection - I had another tab up to browse Frictional forums while waiting for my message to load, and the speed was fine.
I waited for all three messages to load up before reading them, using another tab to continue doing research for my project in the meantime. My computer seemed to get progressively slower while I worked, and I was really starting to get annoyed when word document finally hung. I had a lot of research saved, fortunately, so it wouldn't be too much of a problem to load it up again. I was ready to restart when I noticed that Statyk's messages had finally loaded up, so I quickly decided to go and check them. The first message simply said "PARTICIPANT," just like the subject title, although the word was in all caps. Okay, so I had a feeling that I was being trolled after all, or at least I was the target of some prank organized by certain members of the frictional community. The other two messages, however, were beginning to get weird.
The second of Statyk's message said: "Hey Chronofox would you like to contribute? Please go to
http://aamfp.com/." I almost sighed, thinking that Statyk and CM must be working together to pull something on me. Maybe it was failedALIAS's suggestion to, y'know, get back at me for flirting with him so much. But I decided to go to that website for the third time and see if there really was something there that I had missed the last time I visited the page. Once again, I saw the big white "Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs" logo and the dark city and the screenshots and the trailer and that message at the bottom. There was absolutely nothing odd or unusual about the site from the last time I checked the page. Since Statyk had asked if I wanted to "contribute," I thought that maybe he wanted me to send in audio of a scream as sound effects for the game. You know, I was actually considering doing that before, except that I'm a terrible actor, even at doing voices. Plus, the developers must have already received thousands of emails of sound effects by now.
Although, now that I think about it, there
was something just slightly strange about that "SQUEAL LITTLE PIGGIES" message. Was it the colour, the size, or the font of the words? I'm not really sure - something about that message simply made me feel, well, a bit disturbed. At the time, I shrugged it off as being nothing and went on to check Statyk's third message.
This one was by far the strangest of them all. The message said exactly: "They want real FEAR." And yes, fear was in all caps. By now, I was starting to feel just slightly creeped out, and I decided to reply to Statyk to ask just what was going on. Much to my dismay, just clicking on reply took me to a blank loading page, and I had a feeling that I would be forced to wait another ten or twenty minutes before I could send the PM again. I decided to close the tab and actually go on the forums to ask about all of this, since posting would be much faster. But to my surprise, even the forums was insanely slow now. I decided now that I would try restarting the computer and see if that could fix anything. However, as I prepared to close my browser, Avast Antivirus suddenly popped up (it was the antivirus program that I used) and told me it had just detected a virus.
Once I actually closed Chrome, I noticed that my desktop was absolutely
clustered with strange icons, amongst them pictures of what I can only assume to be porn. Several of them were obvious links to porn sites - likely all of them were virus-infested. I instantly understood now why my computer had been so slow for the past hour or so. Avast claimed that it had contained the virus and prevented it from infecting my system, but I had a feeling that the virus was still somehow able to get into my computer. I would have to find a way to fix this later, maybe with MalwareBytes, which I also had installed on my system. For now, I highlighted all of the icons and then clicked delete to send them into my recycle bin. I noticed, however, that one particular icon refused to leave my desktop - I simply received an "ERROR" message when I attempted to remove it, while all the other weres were deleted quite easily. The name of the icon as pigs.avi.
I was starting to get extremely suspicious now. Just moments earlier I was on the AAMFP website - which I can't possibly believe would contain a virus - and now there was a video clearly named "pigs", refusing to be deleted, on my computer. I wondered if Statyk or Corinthian or anyone on Frictional forums would really be the type of people to do this to me. If they truly were so malicious, then it would hardly do any good to go on the forums and ask what was going - but if they weren't, then they wouldn't know anything about the video anyways. Maybe it was all just a massive coincidence. I tried to scan pigs.avi with Avast Antivirus - and here is when things get extremely....well,
disturbing.
First of all, Avast Antivirus hung. As I tried to close it, my computer screen suddenly went black, kind of like what happens when you initially open up a full screen application. By now, my frustration was through the roof and I was just about to press the restart button on my computer when a video began to play. What showed on my monitor screan was a dimly lit room, a lamp resting on a table providing the only light. The volume was low - although I distinctly recall that it had been muted before, so I'm not sure how any sound was playing through my speakers. As the video progressed, the volume seemed to slowly increase. At the beginning there was only the sound of some very soft and quiet footsteps, followed seconds later by the noise of something creaking, almost like a very old and rusted door or gate being opened. I thought I heard a muffled voice in the distance, but I couldn't be sure.
I'm not sure why I continued to watch the video. I really should have just stopped and left the room there, or at least try to turn off my computer.
A masked man appeared, and his clothed arm grabbed the lamp off the table. He shone the light from the lamp onto what looked like a big sack hanging from a pole. A moment later, the sack suddenly moved, which completely surprsied me. Actually, whatever in the sack seemed to be squirming around, and again I heard the muffled voice. I thought it must be an animal or something, though the ominous feeling lingered - and this was when I started to feel extremely disturbed - that it quite possibly
wasn't an animal at all. Anyways, the man stepped form and he seemed to just stand still and stare at the sack for several seconds while it squirmed about. Then, a gloved hand suddenly reached out and began to pet and caress the sack. A second hand joined a second later. They seemed to be massaging whatever was lying inside the bag, although I couldn't help but feel somewhat frightened at the way the hands were touching the sack. Just something about the way the fingers seemed to grope and squeeze and caress the bag while whatever inside appeared to begin squirming even harder and faster. The muffled voice was also steadily becoming louder.
What happens next was truly and utterly horrifying. A pair of iron tongs suddenly moved itself into view, and each were holding up a bright orange plate - what I can only assume is burning hot metal. While the left hand caressed the bag, the right used the tongs to gently place the metal against the sack, which caused whatever was inside to emit a very loud scream. Even I was surprised at how loud the yell was when it erupted from my speakers - the volume seemed to have suddenly gone way up. I thought I heard just a very slight chuckle coming from the man, which disturbed me immensely. Then the tongs were gone, and the hands appeared again to massage and grope at whatever was inside the bag. There was a very strange noise in the distance that sounded like a laugh, although hardly a normal one. All the while the muffled creature inside the bag continued to writhe about and scream, and I was all the more horrified when the tongs appeared again to touch the sack with another plate of metal.
Then for a few seconds both hands were gone. I thought that whoever was doing this evil deed would be gone, but I was dead wrong - the right hand appeared again, and to my utter shock, it was holding a pair of rusty scissors. Then, starting at the top of the sack, the man began to cut down, which quickly revealed a pair of thin and short white legs, like a child's. I absolutely cannot believe what happened next. Shining the lamp directly against the sack, so that I could see clearly what was going on, the scissors began to cut down and went straight into raw flesh. The scream returned, louder than ever, and obviously less muffled now that the bag was over. In response, the left hand revealed the tongs and the burning metal plate again, and this time the plate was placed directly against the bottom of the sack - where I can only assume the face of the child is - which caused such a loud and disturbing scream to erupt from my speakers then I jumped back in horror.
The scissors continued cutting. I could see bits and pieces of flesh and blood appearing onto the scissors every few seconds, which sickened me so much I began to feel nauseated. At that instant, I jumped forward and pressed the restart button, but for some reason, the computer just couldn't shut off. I reached down and pulled the power cord. I heard a quick zap-like sound, as is typical when the power in a machine shuts off, yet the video continued playing. I was so freaked by this point I thought I would faint.
Something about the video gripped me and made me continue to watch. I won't go into much detail about the utterly horrifying things I saw, only that blood and flesh and even body organs were sliced up and cut about by the scissors and thrown all over the sack and the floor, and the screams continued. The man conducting this evil deed would, with his left, continue to grope and caress at the figure within the sack - the disturbing laughing in the background continued throughout - and every once in a while he would bring up the tongs and the burning plate again to gently press against the bag, causing intensely horrifying shrieks. After about ten or so minutes of this, the man suddenly threw away the scissors - by now, it was thoroughly covered in blood and flesh - and reached for two needles. I dreaded to see what was about to happen next.
The camera turned towards the bottom of the sack, where once again, I presumed the face of the child to me. Then, without any warning, the man suddenly thrust the needles forward, burying them deep into the sack. There was further screaming, only now the child was probably so weak and tired out that it returned to being no more than a muffled cry. A very loud and disturbed laughing suddenly came from my speakers, which shook me with fright. I was very, very close to vomiting at this point. Then the hands simply grabbed a part near the bottom of the sack and squeezed it tightly, causing the figure inside to resume squirming, until it suddenly stopped moving about a minute later. The laughing continued while scissors were brought up this time to cut up the rest of the sack. When the bag was fully open, the man pulled it off.
I screamed.
The video instantly focused upon a young boy's face. Two needles stuck out of the eyes, and blood dripped all over them. A grotesque pig's snout and nears appeared to have been glued on to the face. A tongue hung out of the mouth. Both cheeks were burned black. Then the camera turned to look over the rest of the body, which was covered in pieces of torn and sliced flesh. It was completely naked. Entrails hung out alongside genitals, which was just utterly sickening. There were cuts everywhere over the skin. Blood covered every portion of the body and was still steadily dripping down. Much of the skin over the neck and chest had become blackened by the burning. Then the video turned in, again, upon the face, showing again the pig's nose and ears and needles hanging out of the eyes and all the blood, before cutting out a moment later.
I simply could not believe what I had saw. I sat there on my chair for about a minute or so before I was able to regain the mental strength to move again. I dreaded to do this, but I needed to find an answer. I wanted to know what I had just watched and why it had happened. Plugging in the power cord again, I turned on my computer. I squeezed my eyes shut and only reopened them very slowly as the screen turned on again.
Surprisingly, pigs.avi had disappeared from my desktop. And my computer was no longer agonizingly slow.
I quickly went on the Internet and promptly logged on to Frictional Forum. A new unread message awaited for me in my inbox. This time, it was from Andyrockin. Opening it up, the message inside was:
"Thank you for sending in your screams for the development of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs!"
This confused me greatly. I didn't send in anything; I had only been watching that video the last twenty or so minutes.
There was a file attached to Andy's message, though. Clicking on it, I became utterly horrified.
Revealed before me was a picture of me sitting before my computer, my face in mid-scream.
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