The Shareware Specter

[dream]

The Shareware Specter is an Internet ghost story I wrote for Melonland! It's a story of a mysterious trickster who haunts systems. I'd love feedback! If there's sufficient interest, I'll write more of her stories and share them here.

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I seldom slept in the days of Deadlock, Pax Imperia, and Myth. Just about every Friday, I'd bike to my uncle's house and stay up all night playing games on his computer. One snowy winter night, I found a strange shareware game that, for the life of me, I cannot find anywhere today. It's as if the game never existed. There was no intro, menu, or guide. You just appeared within a dark forest.

I explored that dark forest for at least half an hour that first night, but I found nothing. When I logged in the next night, a woman was standing before me. I startled and pressed the S key on my keyboard to back away. She stepped forward and cried out to wait. Fearful, I turned and ran, and she followed close behind. Using the in-game chat she pleaded for me to listen, but I was spooked and kept running. She persisted, yelling, begging for me not to go. I stopped, turned back to her, and asked her what she wanted.

She spoke of fate and said she had been waiting for me. She said there were stories written about me here, religions predicated on this moment. She said that I was the one who would "draw the line" and "cast the net" to open a portal into infinity. Nothing of what she said made sense. I just remember being paralyzed with bewilderment and fascination with how realistic she was.

She explained she couldn't compensate or protect me here, but that if I helped her access "the beyond," as she called it, she would repay me with endless pleasure and intrigue, forbidden knowledge, and secrets of the universe. Before I could reply, she took a twig, drew a line across the earth, and stood atop it. She looked up at me and said that I must put her on the line and into the net. That's when it hit me—she was asking me to go online. I laughed. The whole situation was absurd. But I had to see what would happen. So as she stood there watching me, waiting, I opened America Online and signed on.

Once the trill of dial-up subsided, her eyes opened wide, and she grinned wickedly. She looked into the heavens, and she laughed and screamed. I turned down my speakers, but it made no difference. Her manic shrieks still came through my display. She called out impossible things—that she devoured candlesticks and raised fire from her grave. She levitated and lifted up toward the sky. With a dark bolt, she pierced a hole through the skybox, and space leaked in. She lifted up into the void, and the sky shattered into flames. The trees collapsed to dust. The ground shifted and darkened. I hit the escape key so hard it broke off the keyboard. I pushed back in my chair, but it caught, and I fell back onto the floor. As I fell, my foot knocked the printer off the desk. When I got up, the screen was black. I ran to my bedroom and pretended to be asleep.

The next morning, I saw my uncle with a screwdriver, tinkering with the computer. The screen was still black. I felt so guilty and so scared. I never said a thing to him. For years I thought about her every night. But at some point, I forgot her. Life returned to normal. I went to high school, then graduated, and went to college. But then, one evening at college, I thought I saw her in a crowd. I chased after her just as she had once chased after me all those years ago in the dark forest. But I lost her. And when I did, I also lost my mind. I became obsessed with her. Finding her. I searched for her every day, in place of school, of work, of sleep. I missed her. I feared her. I needed to know who, or what, she was. All areas of my life faded away. There was only her, the woman of the dark forest, my ghost.

Last year, I finally found her. It was just a hint of her that I found at first, but I traced her steps across the net and found this website. She resides here in this forum. I wrote her, and she struck me with her reply—electric text beyond the pale, binding and sadistic, yet beautiful and surreal. Countless pages of frightful stories across timelines and stars. Stories of a thousand lives and deaths, of horror, revenge, and heroism, of love, torment, and death. She serves me with her stories for the promise of my indulgence. I cannot contain these stories alone any longer.

This is the thread of the shareware specter. What stories I share may haunt you just as they have haunted me. But may you find pleasure in your knowledge of the beyond and the mysterious. And may you never feel alone in this world.

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Copyright dream@dreamreach.net, 2024. Feel free to share and create your own stories based on this one, as long as you give credit and don't use it for commercial purposes!

[Melooon]

This is an impressive intro story, and you should be pleased with it! Its not always easy to share writing like that     I think you did a good job of capturing the feeling of mystery and myth around the web, although does she have to becomes so obsessed? That sounds stressful 

If I had one bit of technical feedback, you could slow down a little and add more descriptions. For example, when the lady first started chasing the main character, it was a tad unclear to me if it was a game or irl (I had to go back and reread the first paragraph) ~ You'd get around that by adding some descriptors, e.g. how did the girl run? was she pressing a key or pushing a joystick? and what did that feel like? was there a faulty key that made it more difficult? did the plastics creak or slip?

I think its totally worth adding some extra stories! You could maybe come up with a list of e-mtyths you'd like to incorporate or encounter (if u don't already have one) - do you have a list of mysterious web aspects you'd like to explore? Also that old computer seems important, I hope it makes a return!

[dream]

This is an impressive intro story, and you should be pleased with it! Its not always easy to share writing like that     I think you did a good job of capturing the feeling of mystery and myth around the web, although does she have to becomes so obsessed? That sounds stressful 

If I had one bit of technical feedback, you could slow down a little and add more descriptions. For example, when the lady first started chasing the main character, it was a tad unclear to me if it was a game or irl (I had to go back and reread the first paragraph) ~ You'd get around that by adding some descriptors, e.g. how did the girl run? was she pressing a key or pushing a joystick? and what did that feel like? was there a faulty key that made it more difficult? did the plastics creak or slip?

I think its totally worth adding some extra stories! You could maybe come up with a list of e-mtyths you'd like to incorporate or encounter (if u don't already have one) - do you have a list of mysterious web aspects you'd like to explore? Also that old computer seems important, I hope it makes a return!

Thank you! I adjusted the second paragraph per your feedback. I love feedback so much--it's the case in my opinion that feedback is always—always, always—a breath of life to a work, because it brings perspective that can indirectly help clarify things for the creator if not directly. So thank you, thank you.

I wanted to give the specter a little wickedness, while also trying to impress that she is more of a chaotic trickster than a bad character. I wanted the main character to be a bit of a walking template (that is to say, largely undefined) but with a fixation, a fascination, with their haunt.

I wanted to tailor this work to the reader and as such I'd love any feedback to help hone the style or intensity of the work. I'm setting off dark and with edge, but I'm happy to nudge it more to the light with a helping of humor. I love to write! And so I might as well tailor it to be read. Thank you again for reading and sharing your thoughts! I receive them like oxygen, yours were a breath of fresh air.

[candycanearter07]

W wow. That is an insanely good story

[invader_gvim]

This reminds me of the creepypastas I used to read as a kid  deviantart. How I miss that place. This story was enjoyable. I've also encountered this specter, though she has never chosen to reveal herself to me. Instead, I have found her handiwork, where a project on the internet touched by many hands becomes too great to be directed by a single consciousness. It becomes directed by something greater, more spectral. By chance, do you have a link to where I can find her, to hopefully gaze upon her visage without her noticing me?

When I visit certain places here, I can feel the vibe of those creepypastas. Not just an eerie vibe though. The vibe of dozens of hands, working together on building a larger, deeper, more complex story.

In particular, I can feel her eerie presence on the EVIL Forum.

I feel like the Shareware Specter either is or is related to the collective creative urge that is given a personality that does not match the urge of a single thing, but rather many different things.

I feel like your story has a rather poetic meaning. Shareware and the internet in general has a certain vibe to it that this story captures very well - better than I can put into words.

Thanks to you, I feel inspired. I'm sure I'm not too tired to write tonight. 

Is what I have written gibberish? Maybe it can seem that way, but only to someone who is not possessed by the Shareware Spectre. Run to her. She is powerful, and she wants to be perceived. Who knows what happens when she perceives you though.