-72 Hours Remain-

"So, Donna," Reese began, bursting through Donna's front door. "Have you finished Majora's Mask yet?"

"Nope," Donna admitted, bringing her shoulders up in a shrug.

She'd "bought" the glitchy cartridge a few weeks back and told her friends about it, but not about how she'd stopped playing it after all she deleted the excess BEN file after the NPCs started calling her by the wrong name.

She should've known the copy was a bad one from the moment she'd seen the creepy old man and he told her she could take it for free. When she'd realized he'd been saying goodbye to Ben, she should've known.

"What do you mean, you haven't finished it yet?"

"I've been busy," Donna replied. This was more or less true, but she didn't think Reese needed to know the technicalities. It seemed like Reese was about to force Donna through a lot more questions, but as they turned the corner to get to the stairs there was someone waiting for them.

"Oh, hello Reese," Donna's mother said, placing a smile on her lips. But as Donna walked into the room behind her friend, she let out an enormous groan.

"What the heck, Mom?" Donna asked, already exasperated.

"What, you don't like it?"

"You dyed your entire head blonde. Of course I don't like it. You naturally have black hair. Black. Like mine. Why would you dye it blonde?"

"So it doesn't look good," her mother replied, taking a strand of her hair in her fingers and examining it. "I thought it suited me."

"You look lovely, Miss Bell," Reese piped up. Donna immediately rolled her eyes, knowing that Reese was trying to suck up just in order to continue staying at her house. She wanted to shove her in the arm in order to get her to shut up, but instead she did nothing, waiting to see how the conversation ended up.

"Thank you, Reese," Donna's mother said, a soft smile curling across her lips. "I'm glad that someonethinks so. You must be a delight over at your house."

"Oh, please," Donna scoffed to herself.

"Well, Donna, I don't remember you telling me that Reese was coming over today..." Ms. Bell began, leaving the last word hanging so that she could continue. But of course, Donna didn't pick up on this.

"Oh, that reminds me - Tyler's coming over later," Donna stated.

"Donna, shouldn't you ask me before inviting your friends over?" her mother asked, attempting to put on a warning tone and utterly failing.

"I've never had to before, so why would I start doing it now?"

"Donna Bell," her mother said, once again trying to be firm. "Donna, you...you need to ask me."

"What, are you going to send Reese away and tell Tyler that he can't come along now?"

"Next time," replied her mother, her eyes starting to bulge. "Next time, you're going to ask me. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, yeah, I understand," Donna sighed, giving an enormous roll of her eyes. "I'll ask you next time I invite someone over." Under her breath, she mumbled a few more words to herself - "Next time, if I feel like dealing with all of your crap."

"So, Donna," Reese said, a hesitant laugh creeping into her tone. "We should head upstairs, right?"

"Yes, we should," Donna agreed. The two teenage girls exited with a stagnant silence in the room. Reese didn't feel comfortable opening up and speaking once again until they were ascending the stairs.

"God, Donna. That was probably the most awkward thing I've ever seen."

"The conversation, or my mother wearing stilts for heels and dying her hair hooker blonde?"

"Come on, you're being too harsh - I thought she looked pretty good."

"Shut up, Reese. I don't hear any sarcasm in your voice, and that's scaring me," Donna said, shaking her head.

Reese just smiled back, glad that she'd already been able to worm under Donna's skin. "Let me tell you this, though - I'm just surprised your mother doesn't have a boyfriend."

"Why do you think she did all of that crap?" Donna asked. "She's probably trying to get one before the week is through."

"You make it sound almost like you want some random guy around your house and making out with your mom," Reese snorted.

"No, I want her to get a boyfriend so she gets herself out of the house and I don't have to deal with her," Donna said. "I think she's having an identity crisis - can't decide if she wants to be twenty two or forty two. And, of course, she's somewhere in the middle."

The subject, fortunately, faded away as the two girls entered the bonus room where the television and Nintendo 64 sat, waiting for someone to pick them up and begin playing.

"So, let me watch you play some Majora's Mask!" Reese exclaimed after a few minutes, wondering why Donna hadn't done anything yet.

Donna let out an exasperated sigh and then said, "You have to let me actually turn on the Nintendo 64 and put the game in."

"You really are slow, aren't you?" Reese replied dryly. "I thought it was just the birthday cake a few weeks back."

"Shut up," Donna said. She still held bitterness next to her heart for her friends stealing away her controllers during her seventeenth birthday party Super Smash Bros tournament. With an added boost of speed, she set up the N64 and started the process of turning everything on. However, she hesitated when it came to actually turning on the console.

Donna bit her lip, hoping that the game wouldn't continue mixing up the names now that the BEN file had been erased. She would be called as Link, and nothing else, so she'd be able to go about the game as normal. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she might be able to get the entire game finished within a single day. Her mother wouldn't be too happy with her, but she didn't mind that.

"What're you waiting for?" Reese called out. "Just start playing the game!"

"You're sure you wouldn't rather play some Super Smash Bros? You know, actually play something instead of watching me play Majora's Mask?"

"No, I'd much rather watch you play," Reese replied, smirking slightly. "And I told Tyler that he was going to be watching you play Majora's Mask, and I don't think you want to disappoint him there. Or do you?"

"No, I don't," Donna grumbled.

"So then play the damn game!"

"Fine!" She pressed the power button with excessive force, making her worried at first that she'd broken the Nintendo 64 she'd been so lucky to recieve in the first place. But then she saw the logo appear on the TV, and everything seemed to be working out fine.

She rushed her way through the title screen, pressing the same buttons over again and creating a ticking noise almost like a clock going twice as fast. She was getting lazy already, and just wanted to get into the game. Within a few moments (although it was a few more than Donna and Reese would've liked), Link was back in Termina and she was free to play around. But it didn't take long for something strange to turn up.

"What the hell?" Donna breathed.

Sure enough, the NPCs were no longer occassionally referring to her character as BEN. But they weren't calling him Link, either. In place of a name, there was nothing but a blank space. Absolutely nothing showed up - and Donna was sure she had Link's name down for the save file.

"Well, that's weird," Reese said.

"Weird's kind of an understatement, isn't it?" Donna replied. "I mean, do you know of any other games that do this kind of thing?"

"No, I don't," Reese said, shrugging her shoulders up. "God. You think Emile might know about what's going on here?"

"I asked him about the NPCs switching up names back when I had the BEN file up, but he didn't have a clue."

"Guess that makes sense - he knows more about what's in the game than what makes up the game," Reese replied. "Not that I'm surprised."

Donna didn't say anything for a few more moments, running Link up to another NPC to see if the same thing happened. Sure enough, there was just a blank spot where the name was supposed to be. Her stomach started to churn as she flipped through the rest of the text.

She continued doing this over and over again to no avail, until she was interrupted by the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs. A shriek of surprise pushed to get out of her mouth, but Donna held it back until she knew what was coming for her.

"Tyler, good to see you!" Reese said, her voice getting louder until she was nearly yelling at the boy who was entering the room.

"Reese, shut it," Donna growled, irritated mostly by her own reaction. "My mom already doesn't want the two of you here, and if you're being too loud then she'll probably just kick you out."

"And that'll hurt, because those heels she's wearing are like spikes," Tyler said, immediately sinking into a beanbag beside Donna.

Trying to keep her focus on getting through Woodfall Temple, Donna remained silent for a moment. But she couldn't help but burst out just a few seconds later, absolutely mortified at what her mother had done.

"She's wearing heels again? Inside the house? Good God," she said. "First the hair, now this."

"I don't know why she's doing all of that crap," Tyler said. "She looked fine before."

"If you're going to start hitting on Donna's mom, then I'm just going to go to the bathroom and start puking now," Reese said. "And don't you dare call her Allison."

"I wasn't hitting on her, I was just stating the facts. Sheesh. Sometimes you just have to take a joke, Reese."

Reese was about to retaliate when Donna let out an enormous shush - she was in the middle of figuring out a puzzle and needed to be focused on what was going on the screen rather than what her two friends were talking about. Of course, they only ended up focusing on her at this point.

"No, you have to use the Deku mask!" Tyler called out as he looked at the screen. "You'll just fall into the poison if you're playing as a human."

"Shoot it," Reese said. "You have snot bubbles when you're a Deku, use them!"

Her friends guided her in their direct manner, all the way to the dungeon's boss. Donna, rather embarassed she needed two friends just to get through Woodfall Temple, started button mashing in an attempt to finish off the boss in record time.

"Oh, damn it," Donna hissed, a few minutes later.

"You lost to the first boss in the game?" Tyler said, before erupting into howls of laughter. "You died on freaking Odalwa?"

"Well, maybe if you and Reese could shut your mouths for a second, then I could actually focus on what's on the screen!"

"No, it was the first boss of the game," Reese sniggered. "You shouldn't have had any sort of problem."

Donna now released a slightly more offensive cuss word and threw the controller in her hand down to the floor. This was certainly not worth all the effort she was putting into it, she decided. Besides, all of the glitches were truly starting to get to her once again, after not playing the game for such an awfully long time. She might not want to play the game ever again with all of the crap going on.

"No, forget this," she said. "I'm sick of the stupid glitches, and now I have to deal with the fact that I suck at this game, all while you two are watching? Nope. I'm stopping right now. You two can go."

"Don't give up now!" Tyler said, putting on a faux cheery tone. "You've barely begun, and you still have so much farther to go!"

"Fine, fine," Donna groaned, only submitting because she knew how much she would get teased if she didn't. "But I'm doing the fourth day glitch this time around before heading to the next temple. Not risking anything."

Reese and Tyler agreed that this was a good thing, mostly because they hoped to watch her continue to fail at the game and have a few laughs. This time, however, Donna got through the first boss without any trouble. With her friends attempting to guide her along, she was able to make her way towards the Snowhead Temple, grabbing some key items along the way.

She decided, however, to do the fourth day glitch right before she entered the temple.

"Reese, you've done it before, right?" Donna asked.

"All that you've got to do is wait until the countdown clock is at all zeroes, then you talk to that pedophilic astronomy guy and look through the telescope. Then bam. You have all the time in the world."

"No," Tyler said before Donna could do anything.

"What, is that not how you do the fourth day glitch?" Donna asked.

"No, I think he's very nice old man."

"Shut up, Tylo," Donna scoffed, deciding to use the nickname that she knew he loathed.

"Shut up, Donna," he replied, but his words dissipated as her main focus was placed on trying to get the fourth day glitch to work for her. She followed all of Reese's instructions, hoping that her friend wasn't just leading her on in an attempt to make a fool out of her.

The three watched the clock at the bottom of the screen intently, making sure that Link looked through the telescope at precisely the right moment, when absolutely no time was left. It seemed it all worked out, until Donna exited the telescope and was supposed to end up in a "fourth day."

"Shit!" Donna exclaimed, nearly dropping the controller on the ground from surprise. Her friends immediately snapped their eyes open to see what had shocked her so much, both of them ending up with open mouths as well.

"Okay, that's not supposed to happen," Reese said. "You're supposed to go right back to the telescope room. Not the final boss room. And what the hell is Skull Kid doing there?"

"He's just floating there," Tyler murmured. "That's weird."

"Uh-huh," Donna replied, nodding several times. Her palms were beginning to sweat, but she tried not to let it show. She was lucky that her hands were now clamped tightly around her own Nintendo 64 controller, so that neither of them could see what was currently going on with her.

"Try moving around," Reese suggested. Donna did just that, and Skull Kid followed Link around no matter what direction she turned. It always faced Link, always turning around to be directly in front of her vision. This continued for a minute straight, nothing changing except for their relative position in the final boss room.

"Forget this," Donna sighed. "I'm going to hit the reset button. Better to lose my progress than deal with this."

"Donna, wait!" Tyler cried out. "Look!"

She whipped her view back up to the screen, seeing that a line of text had appeared across the screen as if it meant to give a message to her.

"You're not sure why, but you apparently had a reservation..." Donna breathed.

"That's not supposed to be there," Reese grumbled. "That's supposed to be Anju's text, back in the Stockpot Inn!"

"What do you want me to do about it?" Donna asked, feeling her mind starting to spin with a new sort of panic. Nevertheless, she tried to keep her voice calm and steady. She shouldn't be so worried, thinking that the game was somehow trying to communicate with her.

"Keep playing," Tyler demanded firmly. "It's just getting interesting now. I want to see what happens."

"You might as well," Reese shrugged. "And then we can pound that reset button as much as you want."

She started moving Link around, making sure to check anything and everything in the room. As the only thing around there was the multicolored walls that made her feel as if she were stuck within a rainbow kaleidoscope.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," she groaned. "There's nothing I can do. This is so effed up. Why would someone want to hack a game like this?"

"Maybe it's not hacked," Reese suggested. "Maybe it's bugged."

"It doesn't look anything like a bug I've seen. It's way too complicated to be a bug," Tyler murmured.

Then, yet another line of text from a different part of the game appeared on the screen.

"Go to the lair of the temple's boss?" it read, with two options: yes and no. Donna moved her pointer over the no response, contemplating what might happened if she denied what the game wanted her to do. She stared down at her controller pushed down the button, and then waited for the game to respond.

"Donna, it's not doing anything," Tyler announced her. "It's just staying the same."

"What?" she asked, whipping her head up from her controller back up to the screen.

Sure enough, nothing had changed. Now staring directly at the text on the screen, she pressed the button once again. Nothing. With nothing better to do, she moved the pointer towards the yes option and went through with it.

Donna knew that she could easily press the reset button at any moment. The only thing that was stopping her was the two friends sitting beside her, constantly egging her on. They thought this was fun, obviously. They didn't have sweaty palms or a palpitating heart.

The screen faded to white, and then Dawn of a New Day appeared on top, with many lines underneath it - ||||||||||. Donna immediately felt a sense of horrible dread wash over her, along with an emptiness that made her feel like she was drowning within a sense of depression. She wasn't a depressed person, but she couldn't place the feeling anywhere else.

Finally, the screen turned back to the game and where Link was, bringing Donna back to everything. Except, of course, it didn't look like the game she knew it as. It was strange, augmented, absolutely nightmarish - and it made her heart feel cold.

"What the hell is this, the Twilight Zone?" Reese squawked.

"Actually, I think it's Clock Town," Tyler corrected. "At least...I think. I'm not sure."

It certainly was supposed to be Clock Town, as Link walked right out of the Clock Tower as he was normally meant to do. But there was absolutely no one else there, not a single NPC to be seen. Even the little white dog and the guards were gone, making the town absolutely deserted except for the one boy in green and his fairy.

"Well, at least you have four hearts and a bow," Tyler noted, giving a shrug. At this point, Donna could feel all of her blood rushing away from her face, leaving her pale and slightly quivering. As if she needed something else to frighten her, the music came on and send chills rolling down her spine.

She recognized it as the Song of Healing - except it was being played backwards.

"Oh, my God," she said. "How do you even eff up a game enough to make a song play backwards?"

"The Song of Healing, yeah?" Tyler said. He didn't get a response back, as Donna had just entered West Clock Town. There were so many textures missing that it looked as if Link was walking on air. The sky surrounded everything, but instead of being lovely it just seemed eerie and as out of place as a fire in the middle of the Antarctic.

"I'm just going to...just going to keep walking around," Donna mumbled, trying to keep going without showing her fear to her friends.

"Didn't you just hear that?" Reese hissed out of nowhere.

"No," Tyler replied, while Donna shook her head no, unable to keep her eyes off of the screen.

"Listen for a minute." All three got completely silent, trying to figure out what exactly Reese was going on about and why it had shaken her up so much. Within a few moments, they all noticed it - the sound of the Happy Mask Salesman's chilling laugh played softly in the background every few moments.

"Where the hell did you get this cartridge from, Donna?" Tyler asked.

"I got it from a garage sale for free," she admitted. "I think I might have to give it back."

After several more minutes of Link running around in the ghost-Clock Town, Reese suddenly jumped out of her seat.

"Damn it, how long have we been here?" Reese asked. "Tyler, it's nine o'clock. My parents expected me back at eight."

"Mine too," he said, realizing how much time he'd wasted.

"Then I can finally turn this God damn game off," Donna said, letting out a sigh of relief. "Finally."

Reese's eyes immediately flared up - if eyes turned different colors with different emotions, then hers would've turned as red as her hair. She jumped down and tightened her hands around Donna's forcing them to stay on the N64 controller.

"No, no, keep playing!" Reese said. "I want to know what happens!"

"Yeah, me too," Tyler added in. "Give me a text if something interesting happens!"

"Promise," Reese then said. "I'm not sure if you'll actually do it if you don't promise."

"I promise," Donna sighed. "I promise, I will keep playing. Unless something comes up."

"God, that's vague," Reese groaned. "Only if your mother pulls the plug on the TV."

"Or if she accidentally breaks a wire with those heels," Tyler said

"Fine," Donna said, giving in. She'd wrapped herself into her friends' desires, and therefore she didn't really have any way out of it. She could very well lie to them - but they'd be able to find out what was going on as soon as they tried to talk to her about it in person. "Bye, you two assholes."

"You know you love us. Or at least me," Reese said, giving her a small smirk before following Tyler out of the room.

Now sitting alone in complete darkness, Donna released a breath she hadn't been aware she'd even been keeping in. She halfway wanted her mother to come in and bark at her for allowing her friends to stay for so long, just so she would have an excuse to get off the N64 and wouldn't be completely alone.

But of course, she didn't have any way out. She felt like she couldn't rip her eyes off of the television again until the game was no longer on. It felt, somehow, like something else would be coming for her soon. Nothing new had happened in many minutes, but she could feel it.

She continued walking Link around in circles, all while the backwards Song of Healing seemed to get louder and louder in the background. Donna closed her eyes for a few moments, trying to prevent her breath from getting stuck in her throat. It wasn't just the room she was in - she was completely alone in the game as well, in a way she'd never experienced before.

Finally, she decided her best idea would be to try and leave Clock Town with all of its disturbing music and desolation. But every time she tried to go through an exit, Link would just end up being warped back to another part of Clock Town. This only fueled her desire to get out of the place even more.

In Donna's desperation, she made Link take out the Ocarina of Time and play the Song of Soaring, specifically used to warp to another part of the world. The game gave her a line of text in response: "Your notes echo far, but nothing happens." She tried again, using the Song of Time in an attempt to go back to the first day, but with the same effect.

With no other ideas in her head, she thought she might just have to kill off Link in order to get him to spawn somewhere else. Of course, this wasn't as easy as it might've been - Clock Town was completely empty. Donna sat there for a few moments, trying to think of something that would end up killing off Link.

Finally, it came to her - she needed to drown him within the Laundry Pool. It would be quick and simple, and she could get herself out of Clock Town. Now with this in her mind, she forced Link to move as quickly as possible, trying to find shortcuts in every nook and cranny in Clock Town. She could be done with this.

She finally made it to the pool - but right as she was about to launch Link in, he grabbed his head and the screen flashed. The Happy Mask Salesman appeared, but only for a moment. But a moment was more than enough to make her break.

"Holy shit," she whimpered, allowing the controller to slip through her fingers as she looked up to the screen. Donna wiped the sweat off of her palms and then picked it up again, knowing that she had to keep going despite of how much it was bothering her.

She forced Link to run through the abandoned Clock Town, every few seconds the Elegy of Emptiness statue reappearing behind and causing her to let out a small cry every time the blue light and sound effect popped up. Link started to spasm, his limbs flailing out in various manners. He was being haunted by the statue, the statue that was supposed to look like a reflection of him.

But right as she started directing Link into the nearest building, the shattering shriek of a Redead burst into her ears and the game faded into darkness.

"No, no, no, no, no!" she said, unable to keep the words from spilling out of her mouth. The screen was turning back to white, displaying "Dawn of a New Day" and |||||||||| all over again. Sure, she could still move Link around, but she seemed to have completely lost control of the game. When the game came back up, she was sure there was nothing more for her to do.

Link was dead, half stuck within the floor of the tower, contorted in a way Donna had never seen before. He stared towards the camera, out of the TV screen. She stared right back, hearing nothing but eerie silence. All the while, Skull Kid floated above him. Within a matter of seconds, however, the game started to fade out.

"You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" the game asked, before turning to black and returning Donna to the title screen. She didn't let it finish - she couldn't deal with it any longer.

"Screw this. Screw all of this," she said, launching herself towards the power button.

A/N Hello, my lovelies! I'm so glad to finally be posting this. You're in for quite a wild ride, let me tell you. It's kind of a good thing that I waited so long, because then it means that I can use what I've learned about psychological horror from Hannibal. Aren't you excited?