Let me get one thing straight: I know I'm going to sound crazy. What I'm about to say is going to sound absolutely bonkers. But I need to write it anyway.

To get the introductory out of the way, my name is Zach, and I've always been a huge fan of classic 2D platformers. I have very fond memories of playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii when I was 7 back in 2009. I'm 22 now, and not much has changed. I played Super Mario Bros. Wonder almost immediately after it came out. Celeste is a particular favorite of mine, and Pizza Tower was a blast. I also own Sonic Mania Plus.

Recently I was at a garage sale and found something that seemed to unlock a memory from my childhood. It was a CD copy of Marshmallow Land. I have vivid memories of loving the game to death. It didn't seem to be the original case though, since it was just a generic CD case with a paper stuffed in the front, with crude Sharpie reading "Marshmallow Land". The person running the garage sale saw me and walked over. He was a man in his late 40's who lived alone since his wife died a couple years ago. "How much?" I asked him, holding up the case. "I'm willing to give that away for free. I don't want it in my house anymore" he said with a look of fear in his eyes. "Though I will warn you, you shouldn't mess with it. Don't put it in your computer, just leave it be."
"What kind of sense does that make?" I said with a chuckle. "It's just a video game."
"I-I can't even begin to describe it..." he said, trailing off. He turned around to go talk to the other people there.
Since he said it was free, I decided to pick it up and walk back home. Inspecting the disc closely, it was the real thing. I remembered that the disc my parents had looked exactly the same, if a little less beat up. I hugged it tightly to my chest for a moment, excited. I had always wondered what the end of the game was, I had never had the skill to beat it as a child.

Arriving home, I sat down at my computer right away. I shook the mouse to wake the thing, and it sprung to life right away. Realizing my computer didn't have a disc drive, I rummaged around and found an auxillary one. I placed it on top of my machine, and plugged it in. I put the disc in and closed the drive. The whirring commenced, letting me know it was reading correctly. Soon enough, an explorer window popped up on my screen. Nestled right there, among the engine files, was MarshmallowLand.exe.

Double clicking it, nothing happened for a second. Then the game window popped up, and it sprung to life. 8-bit music filled my headphones, and the art was exactly like I remembered. It went for a simplistic black and white artstyle, being very simple in terms of sprites. The game had a very non-typical title screen. You controlled the character to navigate the menu, like an in-game main menu.

I used the arrow keys, and walked over to the play button. I pressed enter, and was flung into the actual game. Walking forward, there was an NPC. He looked kind of sad. Interacting with him told me pretty much all the plot this game had. Essentially it's just a hostile country takeover. Walking past, I just on my first enemy, a little fireball guy. He gets squished, and dies. They physics, just as janky as ever, instantly teleports me to the ground. This has always slightly amused me.

Nothing really notabable happens. It's just level one, exactly as I remember it. When I got to the end, the classic "You finished!" screen appeared. When I loaded into level two, something just felt... off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something just wasn't right. I moved the character right and ran into a wall covered in some glitchy texture. *Weird,* I thought, thinking maybe I just didn't remember this from the last time I played. So I walked left. Instead of a level, it was more like a level plane. No platforms, no terrain differences, nothing. Soon enough, I saw a red pixel texture on the ground, overlaying the existing tiles. "That isn't..." I said out loud.

I kept walking forward, beginning to feel a little uneasy. What I saw next, made my stomach drop. It was the mangled corpse of one of the little fire dudes, ripped to bloody shreds. Red pixelized sploches covered the floor and the nearby tree. There was also something else I noticed. The expression of my player character had changed from a cheery smile to an almost fearful expression. With a little hesitation, I continued walking forward. I walked past dead marshmallows, dead coal guys, and dead bats. Some were ripped to pieces, others hung on trees by ropes. In the back of my mind, I began to wonder if this was some kind of sick joke. Some sort of mod, or bootleg. But then why did it seem so official? Why did it come in a CD case of all things?

Just then, the game screen went black. After a second or two, text popped up on the screen. "Not what you expected, isn't it?" *Of course it isn't!* I thought. Suddenly, I found myself back in the first level again. Walking forward, there were no NPCs, or even enemies. It was just barren land, empty and sad. As I reached a small climbing bit, the screen went black again. More text appeared, saying, "It's missing something, don't you think?" I thought it was missing all the gameplay, but I can't say I didn't expect what... whatever was saying that thought. The ground was positively covered in pixelated blood, and walking forward revealed slightly more high resolution corpses.

Dead animals, humans, fires, and marshmallows were everywhere. They coated the floors and walls, their blood smeared everywhere. All of the structures that were fine a second ago were now all collapsed. This was all making me severly uncomfortable, and I'm wondering how this even happened. The expression on my player character was that of utter disgust, seemingly hating every second I forced him to walk over the blood soaked land. Soon, at the top of the tower that marked the end of the level, stood a marshmallow.

At first, my player character looked relieved, before becoming more... on-edge. He began backing away from the other marshmallow, a weary look on his face. With a sort of morbid curiosity, I pushed him forward. Before I could run into the other guy, the screen blanked again. I decided it was too much, and tried to close the program. Instead of it closing, more text showed up. It read: "I don't think that'll work, Zach." A jolt of fear ran up my body to my brain. *H-how does it know my name?!* I thought. More text appeared, saying "Let's play a game, shall we?"

I found myself on that endless plane again. My player character was rapidly gesturing at me to move to the right, so I did. Eventually, after what felt like a whole two minutes, there he was again. The marshmallow was there, with a Firekin in front of him. The marshmallowed picked it up, and ripped it two. Blood splattered everywhere, and I winced at the realistic sound it made. With a long laugh, the marshmallow turned to me slowly, his skin turning to a harsh shade of red. "Nostalgia won't carry you forward, Zach." Just then, spikes errupted in the background and foreground, with dead bodies skewered violently on them. The ground was once again covered in blood. My character was now really scared, and I felt the same. Using him as a vessel, I ran away from the persuing marshmallow. He wasn't even touching the ground, He was flying. He had also grown to two times it's original size. I ran and ran, but he kept creeping closer.

Before he could reach my character, he vanished. I kept running, trying to just get as far away as possible. Then, before I could stop, he came into frame in front of me. My player character slammed into him at full force. The screen went black, and I heard my character scream in pain. A second later, I saw the bloody aftermath. I sat there, a look of shock on my face. This was the last thing I expected to see today, and quite frankly, I was horrified. The screen blanked again, before more text popped up. "It's been fun playing with you, Zach." It said.

Then the game closed, leaving a message box behind. All it said was: "Just know, I am the one true god of this world."

I was kind of shaken. That was certainly not what I wanted out of this afternoon, let alone my childhood game. After the game closed, I immediately ejected the disk from the CD drive. I put it neatly back in it's case, and put it on my bookshelf, resolving never to touch it again. Getting back on my computer to browse Youtube as a mind-clear, I noticed a text file on my desktop. It was named "the future.txt". Opening it, it only had two lines of text:

It was my mom's actual death date.
(Published on January 17th, 2013)
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Comments: 3

(thelastelor28)
bro nice cliche creepypasta story XD
	Reply from (zachhhattackor32)
	I'm not lying! This actually happened!

(badger96)
hehe sonic.exe ripoff

(tinkywinky_kills)
dude you're not special, i could write this hot garbage in a day tops