domithan.com

I live in a small town. It’s a classic piece of America that really hasn’t changed much since the 1800s. It’s a pretty boring place for a young guy like me, but I manage. I’ve got a car. I can go into the city whenever country life gets unbearable. I’ve also got a great computer that I’ve built myself. It’s a great escape from the monotony of everyday life.
I shouldn’t act like my town is worthless and devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever, though. This town does hold a flea market every Saturday morning. I love going there. I’ve found countless little treasures for extremely low prices. I’ve found all sorts of things I wouldn’t expect the older people who run it to have. I’ve picked up some great computer hardware and even a few video games… even a game nobody else has ever played…or ever will play again.
There’s no doubt that you’re a bit curious about whatever I might be talking about. Well, you see, several months ago I headed over to the flea market on Saturday at 9 AM, just like every other Saturday. It was a particularly rainy day, actually. When I arrived, I parked my car and headed toward the tents that were set up for the day. I passed through several familiar tents full of several familiar vendors, when suddenly a new stand had caught my eye.
There was an old, troubled looking man sitting in the corner of one of the tents. He didn’t have a table, just a blanket on the ground covered with what appeared to be crudely labeled blank discs. I imagined that the man must have been selling bootleg video games or music, which wouldn’t have been too unusual for this market. Every stand had something illegal to sell: fireworks, knives, fake watches. Whatever. You name it.
The pirated material didn’t keep me away from his display. I was extremely curious. “What are you selling here?” I asked. The old man didn’t really look at me, he sort of just kept staring into space. “Games.” He said. I was interested. “For the computer?” I asked. The old man looked up at me quickly with a sharp, annoyed look. “Sure. Whatever. Do you want one?” I’ll admit I made a bit of an annoyed face back at him. “Maybe.” I said. “Let me look through them.”
The old man didn’t reply. I began to sift through the piles of games, all of which had very strange titles. One was simply called “Space” another called “look” and…one specifically caught my attention. “Haunted House”. I chuckled for a moment at the very generic title for what I assumed must have been a horror game. I was interested, though. I had always loved horror games. I had even made a few old-school style horror games of my own on the PC as a hobby.
I thought about asking the man about the game in further detail, but then decided I would appreciate whatever was on the disc more if it were to be a surprise. I picked up “Haunted House” and showed it to the old man. “How much?” I asked. “Dollar.” He replied. I shrugged, took a dollar from my wallet and gave it to him. I walked around the tents for a while longer, but my curiosity was getting the better of me. I had to go home and try out the disc.
I went straight home. I was getting excited even though my voice of reason was telling me that it was likely some lousy Nintendo rip-off from the late 80′s or something. I usually made coffee after returning home from the market, but I skipped it that day. I went straight up to my room and turned on my PC. It booted up, and I popped in the disc.
An installer screen appeared. I spam-clicked the “next” button until it was finished. A new icon appeared on the desktop. A simple “H-H” labeled “Haunted House”. I clicked it and the screen cut to black.
After a few minutes, the screen faded in. I was shocked. The graphics were incredible. I could have sworn it must have been some kind of high budget project, but I had never heard of anything called “haunted house” being released on any gaming websites I had read. I thought that perhaps this was a leaked copy of a game in progress.
It appeared that I was standing outside of a really old, beat up house. I shook the mouse around, and the camera followed it. I used the arrow keys to start walking. There were some paths all around the house, but I couldn’t help but want to try to go inside the house. After all, the game was called “Haunted House”. I had the character walk up to the porch. Strangely enough, there was no sound at all. No background music, no sound effects, nothing. I checked my speakers. They were on.
When I arrived at the door, it opened a crack, and my character was able to finish opening it by simply walking through it. I laughed at the lame attempt at horror.
I was surprised when I entered the house, though. Unlike the outside, the inside of the house was very nice. Very old, sure, but very nice. It was furnished with all sorts of very expensive looking items. I liked exploring the house. It was gigantic and the design was captivating.
As I walked into what appeared to be a study, I nearly jumped a mile. As soon as I had walked in the door, some eerie music began to play. I took a few more steps into the room and noticed that sound effects had been added as well. I could hear my own footsteps. I thought it must have been some sort of glitch.
In this room there was a desk, a chair, some bookshelves, and some paintings on the wall. The subject of each painting seemed very ominous. In one, a young child was standing in the middle of a grassy field while watching storm clouds form in the distance. Another featured a man sitting at a table in a very dark room, eyes wide open, staring into a full cup of black coffee. He looked incredibly disturbed, as if he had just seen something horrifying and he couldn’t get whatever it was out of his head. The only other painting in the room featured a body slumped over in a wooden chair. I couldn’t tell if the person featured was dead or alive.
I was becoming sufficiently frightened. I decided to leave that room in search of any sort of objective, since the game seemed fairly pointless to that point. I turned back into the hallway. I noticed the house had become noticeably darker. Perhaps the game was transitioning to night time. I walked around the house for a while, only finding empty rooms and some empty closets and storage spaces. I was about to leave the house when I noticed a stair case leading to a second floor. My curiosity got the best of me a second time.
As I began to ascend the stairs, the sound cut out again. The music and sound effects were gone. It would have bothered me if I weren’t so grateful that the scary music had stopped. Something strange happened, though. As I began to climb each step, the daylight shining through the windows became more and more dull, before finally fading almost to black at the top of the stairs. I found a few bedrooms at the top of the stairs, but nothing much more. The scare I had received from the downstairs portion of the game began to wear off, and the anticipation of finding something frightening on the second floor was beginning to fade.
That is, until the sound cut back on. * THUD *
Again, I jumped about a mile. The sound seemed to come from one of the bedrooms I had just been in. I had to go look. I went back into the room to find a a motionless body on the floor. Blood was flowing from its head. I smiled a bit, thinking this game was going to give me some more fun scares to look forward to. I looked around the room, but couldn’t find any sort of assailant. I was about to leave the room when a sudden crash of glass breaking came from downstairs. I stopped moving in order to listen a bit better. I heard some strange whispering…not a conversation but almost as if one was talking to themselves. What little light was left in the room cut to black, and hurried footsteps could be heard coming from downstairs. This was the first time during the game I actually began to panic. I couldn’t see anything, all I could do was fumble around as the whispering became louder and the footsteps became more frantic.
There was a horrible screech and for an instant, the intruder’s face was visible. I then heard another thud as my character fell to the floor. The screen then cut to black.
I was stunned. I turned down the speakers and wondered if the game was over, if I had played some sort of demo.
Just as I was about to force the game to quit, I heard some sounds again. It seemed my character’s “vision” was fading in and out. I appeared to be bound to something. The room I was in looked like an old cellar.
Another figure appeared on screen with a disgusting evil smile. It was wearing a long black robe and its face was partially covered with some sort of dark bandana. I’m not sure I could describe whatever it was as human. It approached my character. Its look of evil joy began to increase as my character struggled to get away. I attempted to use the arrow keys, but nothing worked. It went behind my character and began to drag him. As it dragged him, I could only see bits of ceiling and listen to whatever the figure was saying. It began to rant. As I listened, I could feel the blood leaving my face. I felt sick. The things it was saying…were about me.
It began to ridicule my constant use of the computer. In a loathing yet satisfied voice, it condemned me, it condemned my life and everything I did. I cursed me, it explained in great detail how I was the worst kind of person…how I deserved nothing but pain and death.
I felt disgusted with myself. It began to laugh as it began to beat my character while it continued its hateful speech. I couldn’t help watching and listening. I was being killed emotionally…but something wouldn’t allow me to stop. Something in me wanted to hear every awful thing it had to say about me.
After what felt like hours, it ended its rant but continued to chant:
“You deserve this…YOU DESERVE THIS.” It finished dragging my character and threw him against a wall. It sounded like it was walking away. Hand shaking, I used the mouse to turn and see if the creature had left. My heart sank, and a little yelp escaped my mouth. I turned to face a mirror, and looking right back at me was the video game version of myself. He was beaten and crying.

I’ll have to end the story here, since there’s really not much more to say about this. After this happened, I pulled the plug on my computer. I sat panting for a moment before removing the disc manually without turning the PC back on. I tore the disc out and smashed it to pieces before throwing it away. I felt horrified. I felt paranoid. I still needed closure…but the next time I went down to the flea market, the old man was nowhere to be found.

This is a song by a buddy of mine. I figure it would be cool to share indie music on an indie games site. Check it out!

No embed code, sorry. Gotta link it.

Watch/Listen Here.

Just something I’m working on for a game!

This is one of the new backgrounds I’ve been working on for the final chapter of the living nightmare games.

This is mostly for my purposes, but this is part of a game in progress.

Minor issues after server swapping…oh well. I “get to” make a new website because of this, so it’s all going to be okay, I guess. I’ll be sure do add a section on things I’ve written this time! Now, time to get my site back in order. *grumble*