What would any other kid in Kenny’s shoes do? Probably start playing right away. That would be the natural reaction—what else were games for?

But Kenny didn’t rush. He had never heard of such realistic video games before. It would make sense if he’d put on a virtual reality headset, but he didn’t remember doing that, and it didn’t feel like he was wearing one.

To confirm, he felt his head. No headset! His fingertips, still as black as ever, felt nothing at all. Kenny tried not to dwell on that weird fact, but found it difficult to shake off the thought. What was supposed to be a fun game was turning out to be anything but fun. And something about it was dangerous, too.

“What does ‘try to stay alive’ mean?” He exclaimed loudly, looking at Whiskers. “What kind of game is this? What are the rules?”

The cat thoughtfully twitched his whiskers, which could mean either grumbling in agreement or reproaching him for cowardice, then silently walked back through the foyer into the living room again, disappearing behind the door. He’d probably jumped onto the couch and started snoozing. Traitor.

What should Kenny do? He definitely wasn’t going to play the game until he understood how to finish it. And speaking of that—how was the game even played? Kenny scratched the back of his head. He had noticed a while back that scratching his head there somehow made thinking easier. But it didn’t help now. In this game—or whatever it was—there were no joysticks, no gamepads, and it was utterly unclear how the controls worked. Heck, he didn’t even know what to do to start the level!

“Stop!” he hollered, hoping that a voice command would work, if nothing else. “Quit! Exit!”

Seeing the air before him thicken again, Kenny felt a surge of relief and shouted, “Exit! Exit! Exit!”

The text that appeared in the air quickly dashed his hopes.

Kenny! Remember, to bookmark your journey and to return to your world, you’ll need a Save Point.

“Well, that’s something,” he muttered. “At least now I know how to leave. I just need to figure out where to find this ‘Save Point’.”

He scoured the apartment, ransacking all the closets and spilling their contents onto the floor, examining shelves, and looking under the bed and sofa, but he found nothing resembling a Save Point at all. After scratching his head again, an idea came to him. This time, he commanded, “Create Save Point!”

Nothing happened, other than a hint that popped up:

Kenny, your character must find a Save Point location in order to create one.

That threw him for a loop. But then, after thinking about it for a moment, Kenny remembered that in some video games, you could only save your progress at certain spots on the map. It seemed his home didn’t count.

In that case, there was nothing left to do but… Wait! The text had said the “Game World has been created.” That meant…

Kenny rushed to the front door and cracked it open. The darkness had disappeared; it was light outside. There was now a forest around his house instead of the second floor landing of the apartment building, and the forest was somehow different than any he’d seen before.

It was probably dangerous to venture out unarmed. Closing the door again, Kenny went to the kitchen, found his mom’s kitchen knife, grabbed a frying pan with his other hand, and peered into the living room.

“Whiskers!” he shouted. “Let’s go for a walk!”

“Meow-meow,” the cat sleepily mewed, which meant, “I don’t want to.”

“As you wish.” Kenny shrugged and headed for the front door. As he swung it open, he noticed it had changed, too. The plain apartment door now bore a striking resemblance to a chessboard, adorned with alternating squares of light and dark brown, a detail he only noticed when he was up close.

Kenny pushed the door, but it didn’t fully open. The forest was closer than he’d thought, and when he opened the door it bumped into a thick tree trunk. Its bark seemed to be tiled with brown squares too, alternating light and dark like the door. It wasn’t a real tree, in other words, but some kind of strange, fake thing.

The other trees in the forest looked normal from a distance, except for the purple leaves and trunks, twisted by the wind into unimaginable angles. One even resembled a spring. Kenny held onto the door and looked around.

There were the same strange trees everywhere, large and small. If this was an earthly forest, it was certainly not one in the States. Kenny had never heard of trees with purple leaves and angular trunks like those.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The ground beneath his sneakers was weird as well, like it was a texture plucked straight out of an ancient computer game. There weren’t any blades of grass, no fallen branches, or piles of last year’s leaves. The ground was as smooth as a freshly ironed shirt, but covered in squares. These tiles weren’t a woody brown like the tree or the door, they were a murky green. The ground looked just like the floor at the doctor’s office back home in New York where Mom took Kenny when he had a sore throat. Those memories weren’t good ones. The clinic always seemed to have a cranky lady doctor who’d frown and peer into his mouth, prodding his tongue with a wickedly cold wooden stick. Yikes!

Apart from the weird trees and flat ground there was some kind of greenery as well, but it was sprouting up in an unnaturally straight line, like rows of corn on the farms they’d passed yesterday. The evenly-spaced stalks came up to Kenny’s knees, and each one was topped with a neat triangular leaf.

Suddenly, something fuzzy brushed against his leg. Kenny jumped and looked down—it was Whiskers.

“Aw, geez, Whiskers, you nearly scared the pants off me, you furry critter!” Kenny scolded, relief flooding him. “I thought you wanted to nap?”

The cat sashayed past him, tail sticking up like a flagpole, looking as dignified as a king. He took a moment to sniff the air, then sat and let out a very serious, “Meow-meow-meow, meow? Meow-meow?”

The thing was, Kenny heard nothing but meows, but they somehow made sense. He shook his head. Was he going crazy? Cats couldn’t talk. Yet, he could swear that Whiskers had just said, “We’ve sure landed ourselves in a pickle, haven’t we, young master? Where in the world are we?”

“I’m not sure, Whiskers,” Kenny replied, just to humor him.

“Meow-meow-meow, meow?” came the immediate reply. And again, it was as if Kenny knew that Whiskers was saying, “Shall we take a look around, then?”

Nodding, Kenny closed the door behind him. Text suddenly popped up in front of him:

Stepping out of the Shelter!

Caution, Kenny! The woods aren’t just full of trees—they’ve got their share of beasties too.

His knife and frying pan vanished from his hands, and the first set of text was replaced with an explanation:

Oops! Non-game items should stay in the Shelter, Kenny. Safety first!

The text disappeared. But wait, what about the dangers the first text had mentioned? Could it be talking about wild animals? No, it had to be something way creepier than that. This was a game world. Who knew what was lurking in the darkness? It could be scary monsters, spooky skeletons, or even extraterrestrial beings from outer space!

Regardless of the lurking dangers, it made no sense to hole up at home. There was no way out of the game there, and he’d end up stuck ‘til kingdom come. Or worse, ‘til he ran out of snacks!

Kenny imagined his mom returning to find him gone. A pang of fear gripped his heart. But even more important than that, he knew he couldn’t let her find out what he’d done. If she did, something terrible would happen. She’d get so worried about him, she might need saving herself. He had to return to the real world before she got back from work… if their home even still existed there.

To quit the game, he had to play it. But to do that, he needed to figure out where he was, and what he was supposed to do.

Kenny clenched his fists and walked along the apartment wall. Weirdly enough, despite the fact that they lived on the second floor of a five-story building, only their apartment had ended up in the forest. From the outside, it now looked like a small, square bungalow with a slanted roof. The walls were made of white bricks, each one looking perfectly even, as if it had been sanded down. Kenny counted just three windows—one on each side, except for the side where the door was.

He and Whiskers circled the bungalow and returned to the door. A description popped up above it when they got back:

Kenny’s Shelter

“Should we move on?” Whiskers mewed.

The cat was speaking a language Kenny could understand… or, was he? No, he was still meowing as he’d always done before, but Kenny had somehow learned to understand it. Doubt popped up in his mind for a moment—was this actually his cat? The real Whiskers would have preferred to nap on the sofa instead of suggesting they keep going. Could it be that his Whiskers had stayed in the real world, while the game created some kind of duplicate here? A magical Whiskers who could scare off all the wolves and wasn’t afraid to swim! That would be amazing!

Kenny shook his head. No, he wouldn’t doubt the cat. Right now, Whiskers was his only friend. Besides, Whiskers was a part of the family. They’d known each other since birth; he knew every spot on Whiskers, even the one on his chin. He could even tell you exactly how many stripes were on his tail.

“No,” Kenny said, “first we need to see what’s nearby. I don’t like this forest. It’s kind of gloomy.”

“Meow,” Whiskers agreed.

Looking up, Kenny tried to figure out the color of the sky in the game world and where the ghostly, shimmering blue light was coming from. But tree branches intertwined overhead, so high up that the tops were invisible. It was as if the canopy formed a forest roof through which he couldn’t see anything.

With every step, something crackled underfoot, as if he were trudging through frostbitten snow, but there was nothing under his feet to crack. Apparently, that was the game’s sound effect for his steps. No birds sang, no wolves howled, no crickets chirped. Only his steps mde noise—crack-crack, crack-crack. And then, off to the side…

Crunch!

Kenny spun around mid-jump and let out a relieved laugh. When Whiskers walked, he also made a crunching sound, and he was very unhappy about it.

“What’s this nonsense?” he mewed so pitifully that Kenny could have entered him into a cat show and won a gold medal out of sympathy.

They circled the house twice, straying further each time, but they didn’t find anything interesting.

Although… Kenny squatted down and spotted a stick, about a yard and a half long, just a step away. It wasn’t a branch, or the trunk of a young tree, but something not natural—like someone had ripped off a table leg and thrown it there for him to find.

Kenny picked it up, and a description appeared over the stick:

Wooden Stick

Type: Crafting Material/Weapon

Damage: 2

“Is it a wand? Is it a sword? It’s…a stick! But it’s YOUR stick!”

This humble piece of timber may not seem like much, but in the right hands, it’s the beginning of something big. Whether you’re fending off pesky creatures or crafting your first tool, the Wooden Stick is a true testament to the saying, “from small beginnings come great things.” Ready to get started on your adventure?