Nightmare City

Welcome, friend. Follow me. We're going somewhere dark, somewhere dangerous. Most people would never dare enter the place we're going. There's no telling what horrors we'll find. what terrors will uncover. Don't say I didn't warn you. We might discover terrible monsters lurking there. Be careful, they could follow you out. Or maybe they're already inside you. Are you afraid?

Good. Now you are ready to enter the warning woods. Julia climbs the stairs to her son's bedroom, following music both hauntingly beautiful and hauntingly familiar. At his door, she can hear his fingers clacking in sync with a slightly dissonant melody. She knocks. The tapping stops, along with the music. Come in. Peter calls, not frustrated but not quite welcoming either. Was that you playing? Julia asks. Making a bashful gesture toward a small piano keyboard on his desk, he nods.

Julia gives him an approving smile. What's it from? A game I'm working on, Peter replies. He turns from her back to his computer screen and fixates on something there. His cheek-length hair hides his eyes, but Julia can feel them flicking toward her every few seconds. She finally says, So you made it up, the song? It's funny. I swore I recognized it from something.

Peter's arms stiffen on his keyboard and mouse. You saying I stole it? Julia raises her hands in mock defense. No, no, that's not what I was trying to say. Well, I mean, I'm not saying you did it on purpose. could you have by accident peter says i did kind of copy it but not from like something copyrighted and definitely not something you should recognize julia replies

crossing her arms and nodding. She finds pretending to comprehend the cryptic things her 14-year-old son tells her usually prompts him to indulge her with enough clarification to prove how little she actually understands. Reverse psychology at its finest. It's from a dream, he says. I'm basing this whole game around my dreams. What's it about? Julia asks. Locked into his screen, Peter replies,

I just told you I'm basing it on... I meant what was the dream about Smart Alec. Julia laughs, throwing a stuffed Charmander from his bookshelf at him. Mom, stop! He yips. Not quite a bark, but close. He picks Charmander off the floor and returns his focus to the monitor. He says, My dreams aren't really about anything specific, usually, and the game's going to be the same way. It's a bunch of random scenes, but somehow they're all connected.

How? Julia asks. Mom, I'm still in development, okay? It's not done yet. Well, think about it for a second, she says. Wouldn't the connection be a huge part of your game? Peter groans. Why are you crashing out about this? Julia recoils. I'm not crashing... Okay, sorry. You're right. I'm being overbearing, aren't I? A little bit, Peter says.

She's surprised to see him finally look at her instead of the monitor. She nods affirmatively, looking thoughtful. Sometimes I have dreams like that too. They connect, but I don't really understand how or why. Sometimes I see familiar places, but when I wake up, I can't recall them. I guess that's normal for dreams. Can you show it to me, the game? That song was so familiar, I wonder if anything else that came from your mind will be too.

Opening a folder on his desktop, Peter says, Well, it's just an outline and some renderings at this point, and a little music, but sure, I can show you. Peter scans the disorganized grid of files until he finds the one he's looking for and clicks. The file contains a crude 3D rendering of dense trees at night. Peter says, this is where it starts. Yeah, Julia replies, leaning over his chair to peer closer at the rendering. Um, Peter says, want me to just read my outline as we go?

Julia rubs his shoulder and nods, her eyes never leaving the screen. Okay, so you start in a forest surrounded by tall trees with no branches within reach. You can't climb, you just have to walk. It looks pretty creepy, but there's peaceful music playing in the background so you feel safe. You just walk and walk, and nothing happens. After a while, the music slowly shifts.

It sounds almost the same, but the chords make a slight shift toward a more eerie sound. The graphics deteriorate until the trees have a weird, blocky look to them, similar to what you see in this crappy rendering. The forest becomes really uncanny, and the music becomes fully creepy. What's it sound like? Can you play it? Julia asks.

Peter slides his keyboard forward an inch and plays a melody almost identical to the one which had drawn her to his room in the first place. But something about it sounds off now. Julia doesn't know much about music, but she can hear what he means about the chords being eerie. That's unsettling, she says. Peter says, thanks.

So, after that, a man with a face that's really low definition, super blocky and distorted, appears in the distance. He doesn't say anything, but he beckons you to follow him. He starts running in slow motion. You follow him at your normal pace but aren't able to catch up to him. He disappears. When you reach the last place you saw him, you find the edge of the forest. You're now in a big, empty parking lot with a single light glowing in the middle.

All the other lights are dead. The forest has disappeared completely. Behind you is just more parking lot. There's no music here, just a low crackling hum. Peter opens the next file. A dreary, empty parking lot with cracks all over its surface appears on the screen. In the center is a light with someone standing beneath it.

You look around, and when you turn back to the light, there's a green figure standing underneath it. It's tall, thin, and humanoid. But like the man in the forest, it doesn't have a clear face. Julia leans in, examining the green figure. She says, And you've seen this creature in your own dreams? He shows up sometimes, Peter replies. What is he?

Peter shrugs, zooming in on the practically faceless figure. It has one clear eye on the left side of its pixelated face. There appears to be another eye on the other side, but the poor rendering makes it look like a smudge. Dunno, he just shows up, Peter says. He laughs through his nose. Why, does he look like someone you know? Julia forces a laugh too. No, but I don't know.

He looks like something I used to have nightmares about. An alien from a movie I secretly watched from the kitchen when my sister was having a sleepover. I was way too young. That tracks. I think he kind of looks like the Grinch if you stare long enough, Peter says. This time, Julia's laugh sounds authentic. Okay, what's next? I'm loving this, by the way. I mean, hating it too, but loving your creativity.

Peter grins. Yeah, sure. Okay, so next we have this. You start moving toward the green figure against your will. Commands keep appearing on the screen prompting you to hit certain keys or buttons to stop walking toward the motionless figure, but every command fails even when you time it perfectly. When you reach the figure a sound of smashing glass behind you makes you turn around Two cars just collided out of nowhere The crackling hum gets louder Peter pulls up the next rendering

the one depicting the car crash. Julia gasps. She leans in, taking in every detail of the crash. It shows a black car's front end mashed into the undercarriage of another car flipped on its side. A jagged red leg protrudes from one of the upturned windows. Peter, Julia scolds playfully. Peter feels her hand pinch tighter around his shoulder, like she's bracing for something.

What? It's supposed to be a horror game, he says. I know, it's just... Leaning to look around her dangling hair, Peter says, I know it's a little graphic, Mom, but it's not like over the top. No, it's not. Julia agrees. She sighs. I've always been so scared of car accidents. I hope I haven't passed that on to you since you'll be driving soon, but this... This looks so much like a recurring nightmare I have about a wreck.

My dreams get interrupted by one just like it all the time. Peter closes the window with the car crash rendering, putting the strange green figure back on screen. He says, Yeah, I have dreams about car accidents too, but this one's not supposed to be modeled after anything, you know, real. Of course, Julia mutters, standing straight again. So what's next?

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You know, surrounded by all this crime scene tape. Hello? Am I dead? My name is John. I'm the new forensic pathologist. I can see you, and that's how we'll figure out how you were murdered. That means ghosts are real! Since then, I've noted multiple additional missing case files and even missing bodies.

Let's say I believe you came across some record-keeping discrepancies and a string of deaths. You're not an investigator, Jonathan. Stop trying to be one. After everything I've discovered, I just need to know why. What happened in Springfield? Going somewhere, Dr. Spacer. Listen to How I Died, a full cast police and medical procedural podcast with over 40 episodes already available.

Then, tune in to Season 4 of How I Died, releasing now on all podcast apps. A tall man steps out of the upright car dressed completely in black except for a mask that looks like an angry man with a curled mustache. He looks like what I think of as a carnival barker. The man grows taller until both he and the car are towering over you, locking the light and casting you in shadow. He reaches down. His hand completely envelops you.

Then you're being lifted into the air so fast it makes your stomach drop, the real you, the player. In the game, you can see the stars moving quickly through the cracks in the giant man's hand. Peter opens a rendering of an aerial view above a practically empty world. There are indistinct mountains in the background, backlit by a faint purple light. In the center of the rendering, he's created an amusement park.

Yet, despite its glowing array of lights, the park is devoid of people. He reads, Suddenly the hand opens, and you're launched through the night sky. Almost instantly, you turn downward and see you're a thousand feet in the air and traveling a hundred miles per hour. There's no sound but the wind rushing past you. You start plummeting toward an abandoned amusement park, gaining speed.

Just as you're about to collide with the top of the ferris wheel, a pause menu pops up, unprompted, startling you like waking up mid-nightmare. This menu will stay up until the player selects one of its options. Even if you reboot, the game won't let you play without choosing something from this screen. The menu has six visible buttons. The first says, quit. And if the player clicks it, they get a warning message that says, if you select this option,

This experience will end forever. The game will become unplayable on your system. There's no resetting or rebooting, no patch that will allow you to play the rest of the game. Beneath the message, two new buttons appear. Go back. and end it. Let's assume you, the player, select Go Back. Back on the first menu, the five buttons beneath Quit all say Enter Nightmare City.

If you notice the scroll bar on the right side, you might try scrolling down for more options, but all you'll see is an infinite number of buttons that also say Enter Nightmare City. It doesn't matter which one you select. All of them are programmed to send you to a random scene next. Wait, says Julia. So, is there a correct choice? Like, if I wanted to win the game, which one would I choose? Any except quit.

Peter replies. It doesn't matter which Enter Nightmare City button you click because everything from this point on happens randomly. I'll program the game to choose from all the Nightmare City scenes and put you in one. Here, I'll try to simulate it. Close your eyes. I'm going to open a list, and I want you to point somewhere on my screen. I'll just choose whatever scene your finger is closest to. Okay. Julia does as he asks. Oh, good one.

says peter julia keeps her eyes closed as he reads allowing herself to picture every detail your screen goes black but buzzes with faint static the staticky humming fades but stays in the background The scene loads as blocky, pixelated shapes at first. Eventually, the resolution peaks at a slightly higher resolution than before, but still pretty vague. You are standing in a department store.

It kind of looks like a Walmart or something similar. You're standing in a maze of clothing racks next to a person much taller than you, presumably a parent. An on-screen command prompts you to reach for the adult's hand. You do. and suddenly you're staring up into their face. They're wearing the same mask from before with the curled mustache. They speak with a female's voice, though, and sweetly ask, Are you lost?

Everything suddenly expands. Your perspective zooms out. There's no one else in the store. You can see down every aisle. There is no one. The person who is next to you has disappeared. You start moving again and your perspective shrinks back into first person. You step into the main aisle and look for, well, presumably for your parents. You can't find anyone though.

You search for a while, but no matter where you go, you can't find anyone. At some point after you've searched for a while, you turn around and see the person wearing that mask again, standing in front of the main doors at the opposite end of the aisle. But is it a mask? It might be a man who really has that face this time. His face appears to move, to morph from a frustrated scowl into an eager smile as your eyes meet. Stop.

Julia suddenly commands. Her eyes open. You okay? Peter asks. She shakes her head slightly. This is all just way too familiar. You actually dreamt all this stuff? About the man with the curly mustache and everything? Peter looks like he wants to resist answering, not for his own sake, but for hers. He says, yeah, this is all stuff I've seen in my sleep.

That guy shows up sometimes. Sometimes he looks like a person wearing a mask. Sometimes he just looks like that guy. Like it's his actual face. Do you know who he is? Julia asks. I don't know, just who my brain comes up with when it's imagining a creep I- There was a poster, Julius starts to say before he finishes. It used to be in my elementary school back when they used to scare the crap out of kids about stranger danger.

It showed this guy with that face. I mean, that face, Peter. He had that eager smile like you described and like what's in your renderings, and it just said, stay away, don't talk to strangers. It did the trick, too. I was terrified of every adult I didn't know. I was always scared that some random person at the store or the library would look at me with that smile.

Adults would always laugh and say, oh, she's shy, but they didn't realize I was terrified of them. My parents would laugh along with them. They didn't know what was really going on either. Jeez, mom, that sucks.

Julia smiles, knowing what a valiant display of sympathy this is coming from her 14-year-old son. Thanks, Peter. It really did. I kind of feel bad showing you the rest of this now. Want me to stop? No. She replies. Show me at least a little more. I'm terrified, but I'm also just so impressed with your imagination. Even if... Even if it's a bit creepy how much it reminds me of my own mind. Yeah.

Peter laughs. He opens the next rendering and immediately seems to regret it. Julia tenses beside him, and he looks up at her. She's closed her eyes again, but, as requested, he reads on. The mustached man with the sinister grin starts sprinting toward you. You turn to run, but there's no option to move any faster than the game's programmed pace. You start to panic, reflected in the game by every edge blurring.

making it practically impossible to make out any of the blocky objects surrounding you. A high-pitched whining fills your ears, that and the sound of heavy footsteps running up behind you. You try to look back at the sprinting man, but find the game won't let you. You're stuck looking forward, walking. The ground in front of you bends, rising like a drawbridge and lifting the whole store with it. You slide backwards.

You fall on your stomach and roll onto your back. You see your pursuer again, only now it's not a man, but a translucent green creature with a glowing orange hole instead of a face in the center of its balloon-shaped head. Equally translucent blue tentacles attached to its back writhe like seaweed in the tide. You realize you're plummeting toward water now. A second glowing orange hole opens on the creature's stomach.

It spreads its arms. You know it's preparing to catch you, to swallow you. You reach out for something to grab hold of and catch a dangling shelf at the very last second. In the next frame, the scene changes. You're not holding a shelf anymore. You're gripping the outside of a balcony's guardrail. You see frost on the rail. Your fingers are turning red. You look down. You're dangling in the wind, twenty stories high.

There is an empty street below you. Everything is gray. The street, the buildings rising around it, the sky above you. There are no cars, no lights. No sounds but the constant low drone of the wind rushing by you. You slip. You're holding on by your fingertips now. You're prompted to mash a button repeatedly in order to hoist your dangling right leg up to the rail.

This takes so long and such perfect consistency, your real hand is exhausted by the time your character's foot is planted. You climb over and collapse onto the balcony. The sliding glass door in front of you shows an opaque reflection of the buildings behind you so you can't see what's inside the apartment. The moment you touch the door, it snaps open, revealing a plain white room brilliantly lit.

The immaculate walls themselves appear to glow. Inside the room, which you've suddenly entered without deciding to, the graphics look pristine. There are no pixelated shapes here. You could almost be looking at a high-def video instead of a 3D rendering. Julia opens her eyes to look at Peter's rendering of the white room, again finding it familiar. As a child, she used to find this room.

She would escape there, particularly when dreaming about her parents fighting. Sometimes she would reach it through a secret door. There was never anything inside it. It was simply a place to be. A sanctuary.

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You spin to examine the room and notice the door you entered through is gone now. You're surrounded by four walls without doors or windows. The game gives you no prompts. There's nothing obvious for you to do here, but you don't mind. There's no threat here. It's like you've entered a different game. Julia's white room always had a door, though. A square portal in the middle of one wall.

Peter's windowless version of the room provokes her claustrophobia. She waits to see what Peter will do with the room before letting it stir up any negative emotions though. Does it represent the same relief for him too? Is it a reprieve from the horror? She closes her eyes and lets him walk her through it. Muffled speech bleeds through the walls. It sounds conversational, but you only hear one voice. Maybe it's someone talking on the phone.

You move toward the far wall to see if the voice gets louder or clearer, but it remains cloudy and distant. You turn a different direction. Now the wall that was previously behind you is practically touching you even though you must have walked 20 feet away from it. The room has transformed into a corridor. The front and back walls are both within arm's reach.

the walls on either side are almost out of sight. The muffled voice outside grows louder, angrier with every turn and every step you take. Julia hates this scene the most. Peter's perversion of the white room corrupts the happy memories she has of it. She doesn't know if she will ever remember it in the same way again. She can no longer suppress her claustrophobia. She opens her eyes.

sees that Peter has loaded a new rendering of the room stretched into the narrow corridor he described. It looks like the walls are going to crush her. And the door, if there is any, looks so far away. Peter reads. There's a thud outside the walls, and the voice starts screaming incoherently. Its source pivots all around you, even above. You look up and see not a blank ceiling, but poorly rendered white clouds above you.

You look back down and see the ground beneath you has also turned into pixelated clouds. The dream is collapsing. Julia's fingers tighten on the back of Peter's chair. The walls start pressing inward. The clouds below and above you start to burst as they're crushed. As they grow thinner, you see an idyllic suburban neighborhood saturated in pink light miles below you.

You run across the dissipating clouds to try and reach the end of the corridor, praying for a way out. Otherwise, you're doomed. The clouds beneath you grow so thin you sink through them. You press your back against one of the enclosing walls and press your hands and feet against the other. There's nothing beneath you anymore. Nothing but miles of open sky between you and the serene neighborhood below.

You see an escape at the end of the collapsing corridor, a black rectangle in the center of the distant wall. I knew it, Julia interjects. Peter asks, Huh? Nothing. Keep going. Are we almost at the end? Well, never mind. Just keep going. Okay. You shuffle toward the escape, but soon the walls are pressing too tightly.

You must choose being crushed or falling. It's up to you, the player. In this case, let's say you choose the latter. Julia imagines the sensation of dropping into emptiness. Her stomach twists. and she bends slightly to keep her innards from crawling out through her mouth. Details of the simple neighborhood below render as you fall. The blue egg shape of a swimming pool appears below you. You aim for it.

You're within a thousand feet of the earth now, gaining momentum. The pool enlarges, expands beneath you. You adjust again, aiming for what you hope is the deep end. Five hundred feet away. You realize you're off-center. You adjust. Julia grits her teeth. 200 feet. A spiky fence renders around the pool. Its black appears to be made of metal. Julia's stomach twists 50 feet. It's obvious you're still off target. You're going to hit the fence. There's nothing you can do. Impact.

The screen goes black less than a second before you're impaled on the fence. A menu appears. This time, the buttons all say, Return to Nightmare City. Okay, stop. That's enough. I can't take any more.

Julia groans. Are you sure? Peter asks. What else are you going to do with all this time? Time? Julia asks. She blinks. And she's lying on her back on the bed, staring up at Peter looming over her in a physician's coat. Julia shouts, Stop this! You're scaring me! Don't be scared, Mom, Peter replies. putting a finger to her lips. He reaches out and takes one of her hands in his own. Just keep playing. I'm sure you'll find the way out. His voice sounds far away, muffled.

He sounds like that person outside of the white room. He looks over his shoulder and calls, nurse. Julia looks to the door. The green figure has appeared. wearing scrubs and a surgical mask over its non-face. It's blocky, pixelated. It's holding a bone saw in each hand. Peter, stop this. I don't want to do this anymore, she cries.

tears falling into her ears. It's okay, Mom. We just need to take care of this. He lifts her shirt, exposing her belly. A spiny crest protrudes there, stretching her skin, nearly poking through. Peter says, just hold still. He puts on a mask of his own. Not a surgical mask. Rather, the mask of the mustached stranger. He says, here, this will knock you out.

and puts a device resembling an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. When she breathes in, she sucks water through her nose and mouth. She sputters, but her son, now having fully become the mustached stranger, holds the mask down. She coughs before spasmodically inhaling more fluid. The green figure approaches the bed and swings both saws down. A menu appears. It offers only one choice. Return to Nightmare City.

Outside of Julia's hospital room, Peter sits, waiting with his father, Jim. A doctor emerges from the room, eyes seeking them. He gives them a thumbs up. Is she awake? Peter asks. We'll need to keep her induced for a bit longer, but if she keeps fighting, I'd say she's on her way out of the woods, the doctor says. Unbelievable, Jim says, rising to his feet.

while wiping tears from his eyes. He gives the doctor an awkward smile and partially raises his arms at his sides. The doctor cocks a huge smile and opens his arms wide for a hug. The two men embrace as the door closes. hiding Julia's stone-gray face from sight. Her heart rate monitor beeps steadily as her nurse performs a final bandage check on her leg. The nurse looks up.

when the heart rate monitor detects a small rise in Julia's pulse. What's this? The nurse whispers to herself. She watches Julia's pulse climb 20, then 30 beats per minute. She's about to call the doctor back in when the monitor shows a slow decrease in Julia's heart rate back to her baseline. Sorry, Julia. I got excited for you, the nurse says. Guess you're having some exciting dreams in there. You made it out. Congratulations.

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Meet me here for another journey into the Warning Woods. Thank you for listening. I've got a homicide in Springfield's Northwoods by mile marker 16. You are now entering Springfield. Where's the body? Off the side of the ditch down there. You know, surrounded by all this... My name is John. I'm the new forensic pathologist. I can see you. And that's how we'll figure out how you were murdered.

Since then, I've noted multiple additional missing case files and even missing bodies. Let's say I believe you came across some record-keeping discrepancies and a string of deaths. You're not an investigator, Jonathan. Stop... Trying to be one. After everything I've discovered, I just need to know why. What happened in Springfield? Going somewhere, Dr. Spacer.

Listen to How I Died, a full cast, police, and medical procedural podcast with over 40 episodes already available. Then, tune in to Season 4 of How I Died, releasing now on all podcast apps. When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Kratorakian Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxy's inhabited planets.

The wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake. Defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small bit of peace. amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression. Four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living. But a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy.

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