Summer break was always so mundane, filled with idle tasks to prevent you from slipping into a depressive rabbit hole. It just started with you bed rotting for hours on end, blankly staring at your phone, until it slowly morphed into a pit of misery, wallowing in your own sorrows and anxieties. It became so bad some days, that you felt like you were drowning, a thick black substance suffocating you, filling your nose, your mouth your throat, seeping down and burning your very core. You, like any other person dealing with depression didn't want to slip into that dark abyss during summer break. That was your one solace, your break from the prying eyes of school and pressure of assignments. Besides the busy tasks to keep you stimulated, you found one of the best ways to stay somewhat happy was video games. No matter how cheap or crappy, you enjoyed browsing the video game disc section of one of the stores nearby. Thank god they still did rentals, most big, gluttonous corporations had begun to remove rental options, the customer only able to buy it or not use it at all. You often came home from said store with a bag of stacked game disc containers, ready to speed run whatever Sonic knockoff and Mario copies were in the stack.

Tonight was not any different in particular compared to other such gaming sessions. Sliding the disc of the next game into your console, you scan over the front of the disc container. "The Creepypasta Tales-RPG". The hell was a creepypasta? You had no clue, and did not care near enough to look it up, instead glancing up at the TV screen as the game boots up.

You tap the controller plastic with the pads of your fingers, the sound of pixilated, eerie music emitting from the TV in the game. The screen glitches, the pixilated start screen splitting in half as bright colors dance around the edges, moving sporadically across the screen. It looked like the glitches one got when receiving a computer virus. The controller vibrates in your hands. The motion is odd, sending tingles through your body, your fingers and feet going numb. No longer able to feel your grip on the controller, it slips from your grasp, landing with a dull thud on the floor. Your vision spins, before the world goes dark, snapping you into an indefinite unconscious.

Your fingers twitch. Then your leg. Your fingers curl into your palm, the movement stiff. It felt odd, as if the movement happening in choppy incriminates. You open your eyes, vision bleary. Your gaze adjusts, blinking at the sight above you. You obviously seemed to be in a forest, as all you saw was the top of trees from the forest floor. The leaves, looked like pixels. This couldnt be real right? You will yourself to sit up, propping yourself on your elbows before standing with a weary groan. Upon glancing about to take in your surroundings, you are still baffled by by what you see. Everything. Was. Pixels. The sound of footfalls on the dead leaves coating the forest floor reaches you from behind. Slightly panicked, you whirl around only to find a man, staring at you in curiosity. His eyes, covered by orange goggles and his mouth, covered by an odd metal mask, betray nothing of his emotions. He extends a pixilated hand out to you. Wait, he was pixels too? Upon looking down, you discover you appear to be pixels too. The man studies you, awaiting you to take his hand, or if you decide not to