Thursday, April 18, 2013

Short Story: Unknown Zone by Roger Bryant

Alright fellow readers, just received the first short story for the new feature I want to start here. If you're not familiar with this new feature and you are interested in having your stories featured here on Scared Sheetless, then click here for more info. Anyways, on with the story! Enjoy!

Scared gives this story a Rated E for Everyone.

*Please note: I did not change any grammar or word placement in this or any other future story, unless asked by the author. The only thing that might change is the formatting, but that's because of Blogspot.

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Unknown Zone

 Chat function not responding – will restart chat in 10, 9,8, 7....

       Well my day started out pretty much the way it always does, my wife had already left for work, so I headed into the kitchen and fixed my breakfast and a pot of coffee. I really wanted to get out of the house today. Since Annette was at work I could maybe go visit some friends, go to the bookstore or even catch a movie. I had three full days off from work, and there was a lot of things I wanted to do.

          However, there was one thing I needed to do, I have been working on a story to send to my Publisher, well, not my Publisher, since I have never had anything published, but a Publisher none the less. So I guess another rejection letter probably wouldn't kill me. Besides, no pain, no gain.

          However, I was dreading it, I was having so many issues with my old PC, sometimes I just wanted to smash it up and sweep it into the trash. So I figured it's not going to get done all by itself, so I went ahead and started the old thing up and waited for it to come on, that's when I noticed how slow it was moving and wondered “what now?” and that's when I noticed, on the toolbar, a message telling me that I had low disk space. Well I wondered how that could be. I really do not do a whole lot on the thing. Maybe some music, and some pictures I've gotten off the internet, and of course, feeble attempts at writing. So I decided to go through my files and see what junk I had in there I could delete. So after going through everything I decided to delete all of it, who knows -  maybe I could get it to run faster and more smoothly and who knows, perhaps I could actually get some work done, and maybe this would be the one to actually get published by someone.

          So, I guess I had been working for maybe an hour, when my screen all of a sudden flashes and a large icon appears in the middle of the screen that says no disk space available, see unknown zone. “What in the world does that mean?  I've never seen a message like that before.” Well, now I'm pretty frustrated and decided I would just turn it off and come back in a few hours and calm down, maybe go out and have some lunch somewhere, anything – just to get away from this stupid computer, then come back and see how many other files I could delete and get back to work.

           Well I come back from lunch and place myself in front of the computer, and wondered if maybe I picked up a virus somewhere and how much this was going to cost me to have it fixed. And how much writing time I was going to lose. Well, I start it up and go to “My Documents" Folder and see how much more clutter I can delete. But what I found instead was a message that stated I  no files could be found except for one and it was marked Unknown Zone right in the middle of the screen. I wanted to throw the thing against the wall, had to have been some sort of virus that had gotten into the computer. So, after about an hour of ranting and raving to the wall about how stupid and crazy this was, I turned the computer back on  and right in the middle of the screen in big letters: "Unknown Zone", so I move closer to the screen.

          For some reason my hands are shaking and I am sweating from every pore of my body and have a very odd feeling in the pit of my stomach. So I do it, I double click on the file and the computer monitor flashes a bright blue and I feel an electrical charge run up my arm and the last thing I remember is thinking I hope I don't bust my head open on the table on the way to the floor.

          When I finally recovered I discovered I must have been out for a pretty long while, because I was surrounded by darkness. It must already be nighttime and for some reason I'm freezing to death. I finally struggled to my feet and I noticed I didn't know where I was. Everything looked foriegn to me  and I'm surrounded by darkness and cold and I can hear clicking noises in the background. Then as I'm looking around I notice that I am looking out a window and it's daylight and very sunny, and then out of nowhere I see my wife had gotten home and she's sitting down in front of me.

          But it she doesn't seem to notice me, and it appears she's typing on a keyboard and not only could I feel every stroke but I could tell what she's typing. This has to be some sort of nightmare. I'm trapped in  the computer somehow. That's when I notice it - in the middle of the screen in large letters "Unknown Zone". That's when I about lose it again. Now I'm frantic! I've got to somehow warn her! I have to let Annette know not to double click the icon and to get away from the computer. How am I going to save her if I'm trapped in here. That's when it hits me. I'm trapped inside the computer. I just might be able to get a message to her, so I look around, hoping to find a way to contact her when I find the chat section. That's when I can see it, even on this side of the screen.

Chat function not responding – will restart chat in 10, 9,8, 7....

I wonder if she can even hear me scream?

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