Speedrunning.
I had always been a fan of it, yet I was never the best at it. In fact, I tried to shoot for some records of my own. Of course, since I kinda sucked at speedrunning, it wouldn't really work out for me. So I tried some games that would be easier, specifically young kids games that had some sorts of challenge. I tried to think of some old childrens games I had when I was little, yet my mind went blank. So I just searched up some games on Google. I didn't get the exact demographic I wanted, but I did find many games that were from my childhood. Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda, that kind of stuff. Although, one did really stand out to me. "Puppy Dog: Space Time Adventures!"
"Puppy Dog?" I thought. "Where have I heard that name before?" All of a sudden, the memories came flooding back to me. I loved the Puppy Dog games as a kid. In fact, I still had copies of most of the games in my attic. I guess as I got older, and started focusing on things like school and exams, I put it to the side and forgot about it. I had a lot of experience with the Puppy Dog games, which would make it a perfect component for the speedrun. Sure, I was a bit rusty, but since I still had the games, I could probably replay one, and then refresh my memory, and get a world record. So, I looked up on speedrun.com, "Puppy Dog."
I guess not many people had played the Puppy Dog series, since I had gotten barely any results. The fastest run I found was for Puppy Dog Forest Adventure, which was a somewhat unknown Puppy Dog game, with 0:48:21. Of course, that was saying a lot, since Puppy Dog wasn't well known. I didn't really want to do Forest Adventure, either, since it was pretty hard, especially at one of the boss fights. I decided to do what was the most popular Puppy Dog game, which was "Puppy Dog: Space Time Adventure!" for the Nintendo 3DS. I dug up my old cartridge, and my old Nintendo 3DS. I dusted off the cartridge, and popped in into my 3DS. Suprisingly, the 3DS still had a good amount of battery in it. I entered the game, and was immediately asked to update the game. I was surprised they still were updating the game, but then I realized that I hadn't touched the game in years, and that the update was probably made years ago. So I got that over with, and finally entered the game. As the logos at the beginning played, and I was greeted with the charming sound of the title music to the game. But, I noticed something different. There was a new option, called "Add Timer." I tapped it with the stylus, confused on what it was. A popup appeared saying "Add Timer for $5.99!"
Now, I didn't want to pay $6 for a timer. But I did want to add the timer, and I couldn't really add the speedrun official timer, since I didn't have the right materials to do it. So I looked up an alternative for a timer. Some guy on a Puppy Dog Fourm had posted the timer, but for free. I went to look in the replies for reviews, but the replys were disabled, and so were the likes. That was pretty suspicious, but at the time I kinda just wanted to speedrun the game. Before I downloaded the thing, I quickly played through the game again. It was extremely nostalgic, and I got through the run no problem. So after that, I went back to the link, and downloaded the timer. When I re-entered the game, the "Add Timer" button was different, with it now saying "Timer Disabled" instead. I tapped on it, and it switched to "Timer Enabled." With that, I pressed play, and the timer had begun. I skipped the cutscene, and quickly got through the first few levels with no problem. But, as I got to the first boss fight, something off happened. When I tried to attack, defend, use an item, anything, a popup appeared, saying: "NO TIME TO USE THAT RIGHT NOW" I, of course, found that to be off. I assumed it was the person who posted the free link having a chuckle and trolling people.
I carried on, because I'm extremely petty. But, I lost the fight. Instead of getting the normal "1 Life Down" screen, I got an instant game over. I wasn't sure if that was the guy again or an addition to the timer. The music that played at the game over was very distorted - sometimes it'd be very quiet, and then it could suddenly get loud and glitchy. I tried to go to the home menu, but the 3DS wouldn't let me, it'd just show the default house crossed out. As I tried to find out what to do, the game automatically put me back into the level, except the world was a black void. There were no items, and I had one heart. I walked through the void, now I was positive the download was just a joke, which was why everything was disabled. I continued walking through the void, and I found an hourglass at the end of it. I could pick it up, so I did. And then, the game froze. I couldn't do anything, no buttons worked, not even the power off. I was pretty pissed, since I just wanted to do the speedrun, and now I had to deal with this. But I noticed something.
The timer, it was still going.
Everything else was frozen, but the timer went on. This wasn't just a troll download - it was actually messing with my 3DS and cartridge too. After a few seconds, it loaded me into a different level. The backdrop was a dull blue-ish color, and the floor was a crimson red. I walked around, but I seemed to be stuck in the small area. I wondered what to do, as the timer ticked on. But before I could make my next move, a crimson droplet fell from the sky, and onto the floor. It seemed to raise the floor a bit, too. Then another one dropped, then another. The floor wasn't just that color, it was blood. And I was in the hourglass I picked up. It made me panic slightly, the download had screwed with my game. Eventually, enough blood had dropped and it was up to Puppy Dog's waist. He looked slightly nervous, and he was looking up. I tried to swim, to make him float up and not drown, but then he looked at a different area. I moved him around the board, as the blood filled the stage, and I noticed he wasn't looking at the ceiling. He was actually looking at the center of the stage. I didn't notice anything, so I got closer to the screen. I jumped back, slightly shocked.
I saw the face of Puppy Dog, but it wasn't him. He had one of his ears half torn off, a crooked cowlick, and two black eyes with a wide smile. His eyes, and mouth, they were dripping blood. In one of his eyes, he had what seemed to be the hands of a clock, and there was also a clock on his forehead. Both clocks had different times, but only the one on his forehead seemed to be ticking. I wasn't that scared, since it was just a game, but I was slightly freaked out, considering this dog used to be my childhood, and now he's drowning in blood.
In fact, I was so distracted, that I didn't realize the stage had filled up, and Puppy Dog was drowning. I tried to swim, but my stamina ran out quickly, and the same game over sequence from last time occured. I looked at the timer, and to my surprise, it was going down. The timer had reset to a minute, and once it hit 30 seconds, I was teleported to the first stage, but the end of the stage was blocked off with a forcefield. I ran around the stage, looking for what to do. But I couldn't find anything, cause the clock hit zero. Puppy Dog looked directly at me. He looked terrified, tears in his eyes. And then, I heard the sound of tearing flesh. Puppy Dog was cut in half. The two halfs of his body fell apart. Behind him, was the other version of Puppy Dog that I saw earlier. I was able to see more of its body. The bottom half of it's body was an hourglass, held by it's ribcage with a human heart dripping blood to the bottom. It had no legs, but extremely long arms with sharp, bloody claws. It stood there for a moment, in front of the corpse of Puppy Dog. Then, it used it's long arms to crawl closer to the screen, very quickly. It freaked me out, because of the sudden jumpscare. But it just stared at me. I looked at the clock in its eye and the one on it's head. The hands were almost identical, with the one on it's forehead just a minute behind. And thats when I heard a tick, and the game made a sudden, loud, distorted and glitchy sound. I threw my 3DS in shock, but quickly rushed over to it to see what happened. The image was mostly the same, but the other Puppy Dog's eye had what seemed to be a human eye that slightly looked through. The hands on the clock had met. And then, the sound stopped. The screen went black, and had a message on it.
"You should've worried about your TIME."
I closed my 3DS' screen, and quickly went to research the version on Google. If I had done the research before, I wouldn't have gotten into this mess. And, I wouldn't have gotten my information stolen. It turns out, on a post in the same Puppy Dog fourm, it was warning about the "timer" application that the other user posted, and said it was actually a ploy to steal important information from the device of the user that downloaded it, to sell it on the Dark Web. I opened up the 3DS again, and I was able to go to the home screen. But... everything had gotten wiped. The photos I took, sounds I made, progress for other games on the 3DS..all gone. All sent to whoever made the fake timer application. Currently, I'm trying to work out things with the police. And every night, I live in fear. Not because of that creepy version of Puppy Dog, but because of the fear I have that one day someone will come to my house and kidnap me, or hurt me, or do something to me. But since I didn't get the real timer, and I turned to pirate it, I got myself into this whole mess.
Despite how bad he was, that demented Puppy Dog was right.
I should have worried more about my time.
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Inspired by Puppy Dog series, created by ProgressiveInsurance on scratch/zeebeethedog on youtube.
Credits to Astranomicon and JoeDoughBoi, the owners of Sonic.exe.