Find me (CREEPYPASTA)

Empty.

That's all I felt as I watched my apartment building illuminated in an orange-red inferno.

Cheap liquor could still be tasted on my dry tongue from only an hour previous, where I had gone to a buddy's house to watch the game. That was the only thing that stopped me from burning in there, alongside everything I ever owned.

Whirling sirens approached my location as I slumped down on the sidewalk. Hoses ejected water into the blaze, causing black smoke to pillar up into the night sky. Police officers cordoned off the area and pushed back people from the neighboring apartment buildings, and as I solemnly stared at the blackened husk of the building, a firefighter approached me.

"Did you live here?" He asked. I gave a despondent nod, to which he offered me his condolences.

All I had now was the wallet and phone in my pocket and the laptop in my bag. Withdrawing my phone, I called one of my close friends and cried over the line about what had happened, to which they kindly offered me a place on their couch until I could get a cheap temporary housing unit.

I finally scored a room in a downtown temporary accommodation building. It was bleak; a single room with monotone white paint. There was a very small bathroom in the corner, I could touch each wall by just standing in the middle and outstretching my arms. There was a stove, fridge and single counter on the left, near the bed, and a small closet built into the wall. I dumped my bag on the ruddy carpet and dropped myself at the kitchen table. You're probably wondering why I am telling you all of this? Well, it marks the start of a bitter downfall.

Boredom was a killer; without money to buy a console or a decent TV, I was stuck watching things on the History channel, browsing through 4chan and Reddit with my laptop, and watching Youtube lets plays between my attempts to find work. I remember scrolling through the gaming section of Youtube one night, about to watch the same old clickbait YouTuber, until I saw a game I hadn't played since I was a teen. Roblox.

I remembered it was a free download and clicked on the video to see what had changed. People had hands now, with hair and in these colorful, high contrast games. It amazed me what had happened since I last played several years ago - all the way it had come. Needless to say, I downloaded it without looking back. I created an account and began to navigate the site. Jailbreak, Murder Mystery, and Piggy were all games I had never heard before. I took pleasure in revisiting some old ones I hadn't touched in a long time, like Lumber Tycoon.

My life from that point took an uplifting turn. I was eager to return from a minimum wage job to bathe in nostalgia. I was content. I was happy.

Until I scrolled a little too far in the 'popular near you' category. I was past all of the generic games that littered the popular section and were now browsing people trying to jump on the bandwagon, like 'Ghostly Forces' and 'Wood Tycoon 3'. I got a kick out of visiting these clearly half-baked games filled with micro-transactions, made by an XxSl3yerxX or someone along those lines. And that's what I thought 'Find me' was as I clicked on the blank thumbnail.

Little did I know, it would ruin my memory of this game forever.

It was made by a 'VernonBlox' and its description was simple. "Uncover 6 items, and find me."

I joined and found myself in a wooded area. Thick darkness made it hard to navigate, so I began to traverse the forested landscape whilst repeating the description in my head. Was I looking for something?

Slowly, I come to realize certain parts of the terrain weren't anchored down, allowing me to push them from their original places and see what lay underneath them. There were 0s and 1s in a very small font. I began noting them down, figuring I'd run them through a binary converter. It was probably just some creepy phrase like 'I'm watching you' or something similar, designed to share this site's main demographic - children.

In light of my situation, however, it gave me an escape. I could focus on this silly little treasure hunt and ignore everything else. It was a long few days of searching around the area with no sense of navigation, often upturning the same numbers and not getting anywhere. After a long search, though, I counted up what I had found and seen 6 different chunks of binary.

I won't lie, there was an excitement coursing through my veins as I typed them into a converter and slowly began to retrieve this phrase, letter-by-letter.

But something was wrong. Very wrong. I didn't have time to finish; I already knew the result. My stomach felt heavy, I clasped my abdomen and sprinted to the toilet to which I vomited.

It had spelled out 307 Hudson Lane, Victoria, TX 77904. My address.

Sweat poured down my face as I heard something. I finished up and turned, glancing at the front door with a horror that prickled icy shivers underneath my skin. The doorknob was very slightly rotating to the left, catching in the lock, and spinning back into its original place. I could hear raspy breathing, to which I slowly, unnervingly realized it was a faint chuckling. There wasn't time to react as I finally heard a crunch of the door's innards as the doorknob cracked to open, releasing the door from its frame.

I screamed, terrified, and shoved the bathroom door shut. The lock was an old, rusted deadbolt that I slotted in place. There was a small cupboard under the sink, so I flipped it open and curled up inside of it, unable to close the doors fully.

Hushed steps could be heard trotting through my apartment as if they were inspecting every inch. They worked around the room, starting from the kitchen to my bed, to the desk, and the table where Roblox was still playing on my laptop. When he slowly navigated to the bathroom door, I sucked in a breath and closed my eyelids tight. Flashes of my life burned in my brain: birthday parties, family gatherings, key events, and times in my life. I heard paper drift under the door, and as the adrenaline burnt my veins, there was a calm set of steps to the front door. And like that, he was gone.

It took me an hour to get out of the damp cupboard and step onto the cold tiled floor. A note had been put through the slat under the door - I carefully picked it up and stared at it with my stomach burning with fear. Three words.

Three words that will stay with me until the day I die.

Three words scrawled in red ink.

"You found me."

I was cooperative with the police when they arrived. I told them that the man had broken the lock and forced his way in, and left me the note. I left out the part about the Roblox game as to not sound insane.

As the note's ink looked suspiciously like blood, they said they were going to take it for testing as well as to search for prints. I thanked them and they left with it in an evidence bag. I didn't sleep well that night.

A couple of weeks later, one of the officers who came to the apartment arrived outside my door. I opened it and offered him coffee, to which we both sat at my kitchen table. My laptop remained in the corner of the room, covered in a litter of blankets and papers. I hadn't so much as opened the lid after the incident.

The officer informed me that they found some prints that had no match on the database. But the ink was confirmed to be blood - belonging to a man called Vernon Reedes who was found dead in his home another state over.

The man who created the game was called VernonBlox.

The man who died was called Vernon Reedes.

Vernonblox.

Vernon Reedes.

Vernon Blox.

Vernon Reedes.