It's almost that time again folks! Halloween is just around the corner. This time of year always gets me so excited! Though I must admit that with all the candy and pie around it's hard to stick to my normal rigid diet restrictions.

To commemorate the occasion I've written a spooky scary story for you all:

THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL
by Gaben Newell

It's a dark, misty Halloween night. It's been an hour, give or take, since the last trick-or-treater knocked on your door - Finally, peace and quiet, you think as you plop down on your living room couch. You begin to polish off the last remaining bits of candy - chocolate tootsie rolls, banana laffy taffy, and all the other dregs of the candy world - while browsing Minus World on your phone.

"Wow, Minus World on mobile is slow as fuck," you say aloud to yourself. "Spooky."

You spend several minutes clicking aimlessly through old threads. Damn time zones - almost nobody is online this time of night. Relenting, you click back to the board index for one final look-over before switching to a better site, like 9GAG. But this time, you see a new thread in the PPP, one which makes your heart skip a beat: "HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED."

Your initial shocked expression quickly eases into a sardonic smile. These silly memers, you tell yourself. There's no such thing as Half Life 3. But you're not one to shy away from a good laugh - wishing to see for yourself what brand of ironic post-funny satire this thread means to convey, with a confident tap of your thumb, you enter the thread.

Bzzzzt. You hear a big spark, followed by the collective groan of every device in your house powering down at once. Great - the power is out. You are, admittedly, a little startled by this; but you figure it must just be a planned outage or something - or maybe you forgot to pay the bill. After all, you can never be bothered to open each of the myriad letters the utility companies send your way.

Your phone, as luck would have it, still has a near-full charge...plenty of juice left for an hour or two of meming before bed. The dark isn't so bad.

You turn your attention back to your phone, which has finally managed to load the thread that captured your interest. You expect to see a punchline - but there isn't one. Instead, sitting there in the OP of the thread, is a single line of text: a URL to a steam page. Oh, I get it, you think. This is going to be a link to A Hat in Time. Real funny. You click the link, almost annoyed at this joke making you take an extra step for the payoff.

Your heart races as the page loads, the white screen illuminating your eager face amid a sea of darkness. You wait for the punchline...but none comes. Sitting there, before your very eyes, is something you never before thought was possible: Half Life 3, by Valve Software. Available immediately for $49.99. Fuck the electric bill, it's on.

The desktop in your bedroom has an uninterruptible power supply; it should've survived the outage. It can last another hour, maybe two...you can use your phone as a WiFi hotspot, download the game...it's a fool's errand. There's not enough time to download the game of all years, which will surely be several gigabytes at least. But damn it, you have to try. So you race up the stairs to your room and start the download - to your bewilderment, the game is downloaded and installed in all of 15 seconds. This doesn't make any sense, you think to yourself. But beggars can't be choosers. You're running out of time. You double click the game and see a familiar "Valve Software" title card...you can barely contain your excitement as you start a new save file...

The game begins with opening credits. Alright, now this is classy. Suddenly, you feel your heart drop to the pit of your stomach.

"All Programming by:
JONAS KÆRLEV"

"No," you say, aloud and wide-eyed. "It can't be! It's impossible!!!"

Suddenly, your screen BSODs as your desktop begins to shake violently. Your CD drive opens of its own volition, and from the depths of your PC chassis emerges a decrepit human arm. It points at your face and you have never known fear before. Not like this.

But you know what you're dealing with. This is a virus - more complex than any you've encountered before - and you know just what it wants. Thinking on your feet, you reach into your back pocket and pull out your credit cards, driver's license, and social security card. Hands shaking, mind racing, you present your offering to Mechabowser...and he accepts. The arm retreats back into your computer, which immediately shuts off. The supernatural energy drained your UPS much faster than expected. Exhausted from the ordeal, you collapse into a deep sleep.

From this point forward, you have no identity. With no money, your house is forclosed. Every personal possession you owned was taken by Mechabowser. The demon of cunning has been known by many names throughout history, and now you've joined the ranks as one of his countless victims. Some say they can still hear you even to this day, wandering the streets on Halloween night, echoing your timeless warning...Mecha the Slag is a piece of shiiiit...

THE END

Boy, that really sends a chill down your spine, doesn' t it?

Anyway, now that you're in the Halloween spirit, I'd like to take the opportunity to announce a brand spankin' new HALLOWEEN SPOOKTACULAR theme! You can switch to it anytime in the site footer.

Stay safe this Halloween, fellow Minusians! Be sure to check all your candy for razor blades...and change your passwords on a regular basis

This post was last modified: Oct 23, 2017 at 2:31 AM by Pedigree.

Black and grey doesn't go as well with orange as dark greens would imo. Other than that, nice work.

also the worst way mfgg beats us

is they have boo berry and we don't

what if the dark grey here was instead a dark purple, which is also known to be a certified halloween color

purple is already the on-hover colour for a few things but I agree on dark green
also I made a logo

fuck that story was scarier than getting warn points on mfgg 3
thank you for the skin gaben

i personally disagree on dark green but if u use it ill just stick with the dark theme

imo the content part of posts and stuff would probably be better as a darker almost-brown than this bright orange.

Either way I'll be using this forever.

Orange is now less radioactive

The purple looks nice with this orange actually.

Good shit.

Now bring the Ghost of Rotten "this isn't even my final form" Jack back as a boss.

#BringBackJack

Orange is now less radioactive

This amount of radioactivity pleases me

ok nice it's perfect now

looks good

thanks gabe

spooky, but hwere are themw ghosts?

can we get ghosts floating up the screen lol