Midnight Moon II

 Once upon a time in a little village in the countryside, along a twisting, bumpy road, there sat a beautiful cottage. In the cottage there lived a kind young woman by the name of Rose Winters, and on this sunny afternoon she was exceedingly excited as she hurried through the rickety wooden gate and up the cobblestone path. The garden bloomed bright with wild flowers and the sun sparkled on the wind-rippled pond as she unlocked the front door and slipped inside, the reason for her excitement clutched tightly in her hand.

Rose abandoned her shoes and jacket in the hallway beside the door and headed into the lounge, settling into her favourite armchair beside the fireplace with her prize. Her smile grew as she removed the packaging and examined the brightly coloured case. Midnight Moon II, the game she had been eagerly awaiting ever since the developers had announced it was in the works, was finally hers! She grabbed her laptop from the coffee table and inserted the disk, starting the installation process. It would take a while for the little progress bar to fill completely, so Rose set the laptop back on the table and stood, deciding to keep busy while she waited.

A little housework, a hot shower and a change into comfortable pajamas later, Rose retrieved her laptop and settled back into her armchair once more. A fantasy landscape with the words Midnight Moon II in a pretty, cursive font shone out at her from the screen. Excitement ignited anew, Rose started the game and watched, enraptured as the opening cinematic played. Fantastical images and impossible landscapes passed before her eyes whilst a voice spoke of fairies and dragons, elves and goblins, mages and warriors and epic quests to save innocents from an approaching evil. Once the cinematic had ended and Rose had created her character, she began her journey into the mystical world.

A sudden, shrill sound startled Rose, a sharp contrast to the gentle, soothing music emanating from her laptop. She pressed a hand to her chest and huffed out a relieved sigh when she realised it was just her phone sounding a message notification from her jacket pocket. She placed the laptop on the floor and headed to the hallway, wondering how long she had been immersed in her new fantasy world. The house had grown dark at some point, and she had been so caught up completing quests and exploring new places that she hadn't even noticed.

The phone showed a new message from James, her brother-in-law. Rose opened the message and frowned as she scanned the words.

Hey R, hope all is good with you. Anna told me you bought MMII too, so I just wanted to warn you – DO NOT GO INTO RAVENSBANE WOODS. Laura called, she reckons there's a glitch or something in there that's screwed her computer pretty bad. I don't really know how this stuff works, so I'm just gonna avoid the woods completely until they've patched it. See you Wed for Tyler's birthday! X

Rose returned to her chair, sending out a quick reply thanking him for the warning. She didn't mention that it came too late.

Her character stood in a clearing near the middle of Ravensbane Woods, surrounded by tall trees draped in green vines with flowers the size of her head dangling from the boughs. Rose didn't want to risk walking through the woods in case she somehow stumbled upon the area James had warned her about, so she opted to use a teleportation charm instead. Accessing her inventory, Rose activated the charm and set it to return her to a nearby town where she could continue questing without worry. A message popped up in the corner of the screen, informing her that witchescurse.exe had been successfully downloaded. Confused, she tried to click on the notification, but it disappeared as soon as the mouse pointer touched it. As though nothing had happened to interrupt it, the telltale glow of the charm taking effect burst forth, fading to a loading screen. As the loading bar was filling, the soft music suddenly changed to a roar of white noise and coloured lines started to cover the screen at random. Frustrated, Rose groaned and rubbed at her face with her hands.

“Fantastic.” She spat, sarcasm in every syllable.

The screen cleared to show her character standing in what at first glance appeared to be the exact same clearing she had just tried to leave. Only now, she had no weapons and an empty inventory. Rose took a deep breath and opened the map, confirming her theory that her character hadn't moved at all. She sighed and opened the menu, figuring her best bet at this point was to shut the game down and wait until the developers fixed the issue. She clicked on the save and quit option and waited. A second or two passed, then the screen flashed to the buzzing black and white of static. Barely legible text popped up and Rose had to squint to read it.

OPTION UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.

Confused, Rose tried every other method she could think of to close the game window. When nothing worked, she tried to force shut down the whole laptop. Her finger held the power button far longer than was usually necessary, and still the screen didn't change. Vexed, Rose shut the laptop, shoved it onto the coffee table and stood to leave. She'd make herself some dinner and approach this problem later with fresh eyes and a full stomach.

Ten minutes later, pasta was bubbling on the hob and Rose lazily stirred a delicious smelling sauce made from the fresh vegetables she grew herself in her little garden. Cooking had always been a source of calm and comfort for Rose. Now that she felt a little better, she considered her predicament. This must be the glitch Laura had experienced. It would be a good idea to call her and see if she had found a way to fix it yet. Rose could live without a laptop until the problem was sorted, but it was still incredibly annoying and damned inconvenient.

The dial tone rang out from the phone in its perch between her shoulder and ear as Rose drained the pasta over the sink. It was still ringing as she emptied it into a bowl and stirred in the sauce with an old wooden spoon. Eventually the ringing gave way to voicemail and Rose hung up with a sigh. She called a few more times as she ate, but Laura didn't answer. Rose would have to figure this out for herself.

Trying to contact the customer service number for the game also proved fruitless, the line was busy every time. Emails she tried to send to the address provided on the website were returned to sender immediately. Searching for answers online didn't turn up anything useful either, plenty of people were trying to figure out how to fix it but so far it seemed no one had been successful. Some players were reporting even stranger glitches, threatening messages in the static, distorted faces appearing when the game reloads, their characters dying repeatedly with no visible cause only to be brought back and killed again.

With a shudder, Rose closed the browser and set her phone on the counter. She was starting to feel a little uncomfortable and nervous reading through post after post of unnerving reports regarding the glitch. It would be best to simply wait until there was a solution, and in the meantime read her book or watch some telly before bed. It could take days for someone to figure it out. She had been so excited to finally play Midnight Moon II and had spent good money on it. It was irritating that no one had caught this issue before releasing the game to the public.

“Still, no use fretting over what we can't change.” Rose muttered, hoping that hearing the words spoken aloud would help her accept them.

She rinsed the dishes and returned to the lounge, flopping back into the armchair and grabbing her book from the footstool beside it. As though it sensed her presence, the laptop started blaring that jarring static sound again despite being closed. Rose dragged it onto her lap and opened it, relieved when the mute button actually worked. A flicker on the screen caught her eye, and she noticed the letters on the screen had changed. They now read:

ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE BIG, BAD WOLF?

Rose grimaced and closed the laptop again. She was now convinced that this glitch was some kind of hacker just messing with people. She couldn't understand how ruining a long-awaited game for the fans was entertaining in the slightest.

Rose was pulled from her musings when a quiet, robotic voice started talking from her lap. She pulled the laptop open again to see that the sound had been turned back on, though it was set to low volume. Curious despite herself, Rose turned it up.

Her chest constricted and her breath caught, panic dropping to her gut like a lump of ice cold lead. The voice was reciting her home address over and over.

Rose tried to shut it down again, her hands fumbling with the keys as she tried to convince herself this wasn't as bad as it seemed to be. The game window changed from static back to the game itself, and the voice cut off abruptly. Rose's character stood in the clearing. In the game the sky was now dark and the trees grey and barren, no vines or flowers to be seen. Unsure of what to do, Rose opened the menu again. It closed itself almost immediately, and now a house stood in the clearing with her. A sick feeling blossomed in her chest and spread as she gazed at an animated version of her own cottage. The lights were on downstairs and she thought she could almost make out the back of a head in her armchair through the window. She closed her eyes and told herself it wasn't real. It couldn't be.

When she opened them again, her character lay dead on the cobbled path. The figure of a man stood silently, gazing into the lounge window from the outside, his character name showing as Prince Charming. Rose felt numb as she realised she hadn't closed the curtains on her real windows. The man lifted a hand and pressed it to the glass, and she almost expected to hear a light tap from behind her. Frozen in fear, Rose's frantic mind flashed through her options.

She almost peeked out from the armchair to reassure herself that there was no one at the window, but what if she was wrong? What if he saw her look and decided to act? She couldn't remember if she had locked the front door in her excitement to get in and play her new game. She felt her pockets for her phone to call the police, feeling nothing but a fresh wave of dread when she remembered leaving it in the kitchen.

The screen distorted, bars of colour jutting from the edges and receding again in a flash. Her character was completely gone now. Prince Charming still stood motionless by the window, and a message bubble had appeared above his head.

FAIRY GODMOTHER CAN'T HELP YOU NOW.

A small building with barred windows sat beside the cottage, flickering firelight showing a woman that looked unnervingly similar to Laura desperately attempting to knock one of the bars free.

Tears streamed down Rose's face and a small sob echoed through the too-quiet house. It was too much. She would make a run to lock the front door and grab her phone from the kitchen, then shut herself in the bathroom until the police arrived.

Terrified but determined, Rose leapt to her feet, the laptop crashing to the carpet with a dull thud. She started to sprint from the room when the world tilted and spun. Unable to breathe, feeling as though she was being crushed from all sides, Rose's vision faded to black.

Reports had the missing numbered in the thousands. The developers of Midnight Moon II claimed to have no idea what had happened, and the legal case against them would likely last years. The police had a task force of technicians and officers working round the clock to figure out who was behind this and how to find the missing men, women and children. The group closest to solving everything however, consisted of anonymous hackers from around the world. They had new breakthroughs often, though their theories seemed wild and far-fetched. Someone had noticed new non-playable characters popping up throughout the world of Midnight Moon II, seeming lost, afraid and incapable of coherent dialogue. It didn't take very long after that for people to recognise them as the missing players. Police insisted that it was just the culprit's way of rubbing it in the families faces, that these people had been abducted by an international criminal organisation for unknown purposes and their likenesses added to the game as a sick reminder. The vigilante group had their own theory they were following, and they had vowed to never give up until every single victim was returned home safe and sound to live happily ever after.