Welcome to micro Terrors, scary stories for kids where it's always the spooky season,
full of chills, thrills, and spine tingling spooks. Micro Terrors are
family friendly frights for those ages eight and up, and while our stories are
for younger years, we are still talking about things that go bump in the
night, and some children may not be able to handle what others can.
Parental consent is recommended now for tonights micro Terror ski Forever by Scott Donnelly.
Dear mister Anderson, I'm writing to you because of a strange incident that occurred
at my house this past weekend that left my dad in the hospital, still
incoherently blabbering on and on about some giant monster covered in white fur. As
I cannot yet attest to seeing this actual monster, I can confirm the series
of events that led up to it. Let me start by introducing myself.
My name is Blake Macklin. I live in southern California, where the weather
is usually very warm. We live about a block away from Vista del Mar
Beach, and let the record show that in my ten years of life,
I have never seen snow outside of a TV screen. Snow is something that
just doesn't happen here. I'm an avid gamer. One day, I hope
to be good enough to travel the world and compete in circuits and competitions.
My game's a choice or Minecraft, Fortnite, Rocket League, and I've dabbled
a little in roadblocks. My interest in games recently had an effect on my
dad. His name is Drew. He'll sit and watch me play games like
Minecraft and Fortnite and immediately starting to reminisce about how back in his day he
used to be a tour to force in the gaming community, which, if
I understand correctly, was basically maybe just the best gamer and a group of
four or five friends and a sleepover, and not a world ranked position like
they have today. There were no online rankings, vast virtual communities. What
my dad seemed to be referring to were basic bragging rights among friends. Anyway,
he was telling me about all the games he used to dominate when he
was younger. Then he told me war stories about the games that he struggled
with, calling them his white whales. I had to look up that analogy,
since I had no idea what he was talking about. In his fever
dream of a past one that seemed to plague him like a horror of war
was a game called ski Forever. I'd personally never heard of it, but
he said it was a game that came pre installed on most desktop computers back
in the day, along with the likes of Solitaire, Mind Sweeper. Not
to be confused with Minecraft, Please don't confuse it with Minecraft and Chess.
He described ski Forever to me as a simple, crudely animated, and simplistic
game where you're a character that is constantly skiing down a snowy mountain trying to
avoid obstacles like trees, stumps, rocks, and flags. He said the
game would eventually pick up speed further down the mountain you got, but at
some point, no matter what, a hairy beast would come crashing through the
tree at warp speed, eat you, and the game would end, restarting
you from the top of the mountain. My dad insisted that it was an
impossible to win game, although when I looked it up afterwards, I couldn't
find anything that completely backed up that claim. The vast majority of the online
community agreed that it was a frustrating, irritating, and repetitive game that was
easy to rage quit. But it also seemed like there were many variations of
the same game. Others were called ski Free, mad Slopes, and surf,
a version that included a surfer, not a skier. Even though I
presented him with claims that people had beaten the game and made it down the
mountain, my dad assured me they were all lies and they must have all
played one of the different winnable variations of ski Forever. Will all this Ski
Forever talk really sunk into my dad's head. It's all he could think about.
It's all he talked about. He mentioned it to his old friends,
people he worked with, even my teacher at a parent teacher conference. They
all vaguely remembered the game, but didn't seem to hold on to the same
suppressed aggression that my dad did for it. Well, Dad did next what
dad does best. After he scoured eBay and other online stores, he found
someone who was selling an old desktop computer from the early nineties that had Ski
Forever pre installed on it. My dad purchased it from the guy for nearly
five hundred dollars and paid extra for overnight shipping. The next day, our
family was the proud owners of a three and a half decade old desktop computer.
My dad booted it up and immediately found Ski Forever from a streams start
menu in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. He pulled up the
game and I was finally able to lay my eyes on one of his infamous
white whales. The game was rough to look at, It was simple,
crudely animated. It was just as he said it would be. My dad
was also just as rusty as the game looked. He crashed and burned several
times immediately, but after a solid forty five minutes or so, he had
finally gotten the hang of it. Now, watch, son, he said,
Watch for the yettie. You never know where he's gonna come. Suddenly,
there it was. There, It is sun see it. He's coming.
Rushing from the tree line in the top right corner of the screen,
a yetti looked to have been drawn by the game programmer's newborn frantically charged down
the mountain, grabbed my dad's skier and gobbled him up. It rubbed his
belly, belched, and then the game reset with my dad's skier starting all
over at the top of the mountain. My dad sneered at me, see
what I'm talking talking about. Want me to get mom? I asked,
no, He said, she doesn't care. This is gonna be up to
us, Now up to me. I need to finish this game once and
for all. I patted my dad on the back and said, you got
this. Dad. For the next week, from anywhere I was in the
house, I would hear my dad abruptly shout and yell anytime the yetti would
rush and eat him. I was starting to believe his initial claims of it
being an unbeatable game. Either that or my dad's game playing rust was now
just a permanent layer of him and his glory days were long gone. Then
two days ago, something happened, something completely unexpected. My dad actually beat
the game. He exploded into a chorus of squeals and shrieks, clapping,
hoots, and hollers. It woke me from sleep at two in the morning,
and I had to be up for school in four hours. It woke
my mom too, and she was not very happy about it at all.
But I knew how hard my dad had worked, how many hours he'd spent,
how many vacation and sick days from work he had used, and how
many pounds he had gained, so, being the supportive sun I was,
I walked into the computer room to congratulate him on his nearly impossible feet.
After a high five, the first strange thing happened. A cold breeze trickled
in through the open window. And keep in mind, it was eighty degrees
out that night. The next day, when I got home from school,
our house was freezing cold, literally freezing cold. Almost all of the surfaces
had a thin sparkling layer of frost over it. My dad said it was
because we had the best air conditioner on the West coast, but I wasn't
so sure. Event that night, I was woken up by a tiny cold
flecks of something touching in my face. I turned on my light and was
stunned by what I saw. It was snowing in my room. I climbed
out of bed and stepped in a cold, wet dusting of powdery snow.
I rushed out into the hallway and saw the floor throughout our house was covered
in it, and it was still falling, and I had no idea where
it was even coming from Mom Dad. I called out. My mom rushed
out of her room, wrapping her fuzzy robe around her body. Her breath
plumed out in front of her as she spoke, What in the world is
going on here? She exclaimed, Drew, that's when we heard the struggle.
There was a crash from downstairs in the computer room, a loud thud
followed by a deafening shatter. My dad let out a painful howl, and
then silence. My mom and I rushed downstairs, careful not to slip on
the snow and ice. When we slid into the computer room, we saw
my dad ruffed up and haphazardly strown across the bookshelf and computer desk. The
computer itself was destroyed, laying in the snow, and several broken pieces,
and strangest of all, in the clenched grip of my dad's hands were tufts
of matted white hair. My dad is currently recovering in the hospital, telling
the nurses and doctors all the same inconceivable story about how he was blindsided and
rushed from behind one of my mom's fake trees in the far corner of the
computer room by a giant yetti, beat into a pulp, and left to
suffer. Of course, they don't believe him. My bomb doesn't believe him
either. I do find it funny though, that she'll refuse to even try
to explain away the snowstorm we had in our house. I, on the
other hand, believe my dad. I believe ski Forever is more than just
a game. I think it's an experiment in some kind of advanced digital reality
practice that only my dad so far has been able to unlock its true nature.
If there have been others, I really hope to discover them soon and
discuss their stories with them to help me build my case. I'm doing a
lot of research now, and from what I've found, I believe you to
be the creator of the game. That's why I am writing to you,
mister Anderson. I want you to know that whatever Yetty black Magic was programmed
into your pre installed early nineties computer game is unacceptable. It's bruised and damaged
my dad's body, rearranged his face, and has made him the laughing stock
of the hospital. But I have the tufts of Yeti hair to prove it.
I have home security footage of the in house snowstorm, and I was
able to fix the computer enough to make ski Forever work again. My plan
is simple. I plan to play the game myself. I plan to beat
the game, and when I beat it, I will be ready for the
Eddie. I will trap it, film it, and I will show the
world what actually happens when you beat your unbeatable game. Then I'll train the
Eddie in revenge tactics that I conjure myself and come for you. No one
does this to my dad. See you on the slopes, mister Anderson,
Signed Blake Maclin. Thank you for listening to micro Terrors. Join us each
Saturday for another scary story. For more fun, visit our website at microterrors
dot com, where we will also have spooky games you can print out and
play like wicked word searches, mysterious mazes, and more. Microterrors dot com
is also where you can find us on your favorite social media and even send
in your own scary story for us to tell. Plus, you'll learn more
about our author, Scott Donnelly, who has other horrors for both young and
old. I hope you'll join me again soon for micro Terrors scary stories for kids.