You want to live?

Don't hold your breath

This isn't life

It's living death

There were jokes, and there was reality.

Minecraft used to fall under "jokes".

Used to.

It started innocently enough: Jerome was bantering, teasing Mitch and Preston, and they punched him off a cliff.

At 9:22 the next morning, he was found dead at the base of an office building.

Mitch was devastated, convinced it was his fault. Jerome had had no reason to jump (at least, that Mitch knew of), and he told himself he could have done more, though the others knew better.

Otherwise, the issue wasn't even thought about until Ty's death the next day. He'd hesitantly asked to join a recording with Adam, since his Minecraft content was severely lacking. Adam had accepted the offer, and when they'd set off on a parkour map, he'd joked with Ty and used the "/kill" command.

Deadlox was pronounced dead the next morning, at 10:24. The cause was unknown, because he had been killed in his own home. At first, it seemed as if he'd snapped his neck somehow, until a biopsy revealed that he'd died before he hit the floor.

The Minecraft YouTubers were warned to stay safe in the game, even if it meant to stop playing. Sure, not all the in-game deaths seemed to be transferred to the real world, but they couldn't run the risk.

Mitch was a daredevil. He'd always liked the brush with death, and besides, there was absoloutely no evidence that proved the crackhead theory to be possible. Determined, he played more rounds of Hunger Games, trying desperately to get Jerome off his mind.

It wasn't working.

Eventually, he gave up, committing suicide in the middle of the game, letting his character starve.

11:25 that night, Lachlan found his corpse at his desk, forehead on the keys, and, as later would be discovered, not a trace of food in his stomach.

Vikk was away from it all. He was currently on a much-needed, well-earned vacation, and hadn't heard any of the news, or the warnings. Eventually, he settled down to play some Minecraft solo, but, because of the Asian ping, his character never fully developed.

At 12:29, he was gruesomely discovered by a maid, his body only half together.

Vikk's death pushed Lachlan over the edge. Jerome, Mitch, and now his closest friend? Rob and Preston tried to calm him down, but it never really worked. He took a handful of pills, and because no one was close enough to save him, he was claimed as dead at 1:44.

Meanwhile, Adam was sinking into a depression as well. Wasn't he a murderer? He'd been the one to type in the command. The only reason he hadn't taken his own life was because of the unborn child, and Alesa, who begged him not to play Minecraft.

He didn't, and his fans understood. The simple video game had become a living hell. However, Adam did still have to use his computer. A couple days after Lachlan's suicide, his computer crashed. When he took it in, the mechanics that worked there couldn't do anything about it.

Soon enough...

Adam Dahlberg

Time of death: 1:46

MC Case

Preston crumpled the photocopy in his hands.

They were dropping like flies, and no one even knew how. It shouldn't be possible to link a character with their real life persona.

And just one game?

He sighed, shaking and sitting at his desk. GTA sounded good about now. For a few minutes, he thought about calling Rob, but decided against it.

Messing around in the game, it wasn't surprising to see the "Wasted" message pop up. Either way, Preston slammed his keyboard and rage quit.

He just wasn't in a good mood.

Rob had been planning a trip down to Texas, to surprise Preston, and was shocked when he didn't answer the door. His car was in the driveway...

It clicked.

Unable to get the front door by himself, he called for the authorities, who rushed upstairs and discovered Preston dead, with bullet holes all along his chest.

It was 1:48.

GTA was banned, but it left Rob to wonder. Why just the YouTubers? Did they do something wrong? Was it just some crazed hater who managed to find a way to do the impossible.

Little did he know, the answer had died with Jason, who had been playing the Impossible Game the day before. His house had been found in ruins, though no neighbor had heard any noise. It looked as if a bomb went off, though undetected.

Rob, now terrified for his own life, started to make a list of the times of discovery, including Jason's (1:49).

When he discovered a pattern, he went insane, and mute, too scarred to speak.

His own death seemed to break the pattern, discovered with his throat slit at 3:02, but either way, his ideas never made it to the media. Some say the government had figured it out, and just never said anything.

The Pack was gone, and most of the old Team Crafted. Seto's closest friend was gone, and he wasn't sure what to do. Ty had been his stability, and now that he was dead...

Seto could feel himself slipping.

Every day, he went and and played Minecraft as much as possible. He was flirting with death, begging for it. He'd never had the chance to kill himself, as he was usually under a watch, and now that he was free, he didn't even think about it.

Even though this was his daily life for months, he never died. After a while, though, he gave up, and just laid in bed. No one found him for weeks, until Brice flew out to check on him. Seto was dead, and had been for days now.

The time on his death certificate was 3:03.

Brice fled, and when he was calm enough, he tried to reach out to the other YouTubers who'd lost a friend. Ian and Quentin weren't terribly distraught, but offered some good advice. Brandon had shut himself up, and Mat was a wreck. The four who talked kept in touch with each other, and both Ian and Mat traveled to California for Brandon.

Ian left a couple days afterwards, while Mat stayed as long as possible. Brandon told him over and over to leave, but he never left.

It was two weeks after Seto's discovery when Brandon shot both Mat and himself at 3:05 in the morning.

Brice separated himself from Ian and Quentin, and instead tried to help Tyler, who used to be LogDotZip. The other Tyler, MunchingBrotato, hadn't been stumbled upon until recently, at 3:07. His skin had been charred, leaving the police to believe he'd died in a fire.

The four survivors weren't the only YouTubers who lived through it, but it seemed like it. They grew away from each other, staying away from computers in general and shutting down their channels.

The whole incident had been accurately named Gaming Sickness. The cause was never discovered, nor the culprit.

There is one theory, though, that says that the YouTubers went insane because of the false security Minecraft gave them, as opposed to the harshness of the real world, and everything the authorities had claimed was all in their heads. It says that those YouTubers, the ones who died, still roamed the Earth, and they'd never truly passed on.

They'd just clicked respawn.

But not to fear

We're most humane

You'll never be

Yourself again...

····

1242 words. That's gotta be my new record.

Yes, I was listening to The Pit Song almost the entire time while I wrote this.

Don't judge me.

Anyways...

See you next chapter?

Baii