Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.