Protagonist (Scary Tales Vol 1)

## Unknown

The **protagonist** is a playable character and the main protagonist in *Scary Tales Vol 1*.

## Description

### Appearance

The Protagonist is never seen in-game, but appears to be an adult Caucasian male of unspecified age.

### History

Very little is known about this otherwise unnamed man, except that he lives in an upper-story flat of an apartment complex along with his pet cat Dodgeball. The night prior to the game's events, the man had partied for the entire Friday night, seemingly unable to remember most of what had happened.

## *Scary Tales Vol 1*

One morning, the protagonist awakens in his bed, still slightly hungover, when he hears his door buzzer ring. In the apartment floor, he finds a cardboard package, which, as the man notes, he does not remember ordering, but curious of its contents, he nonetheless takes it inside, and opens it with a knife from the kitchen to find that it contains four VHS tapes labelled "*Night Shift*", "*The Riverside Incident*", "*Spiders*", and "*Feed Me Billy*". He proceeds to load one of the tapes into his television set and sits back to watch its contents with his cat.

After the tape finishes, the man realizes that his apartment was completely dark and that several things had changed. For one, a considerable amount of time seems to have passed without his knowing, as everything was dark outside, not helped by the fact that his power has stopped working. Said outage appears to be the result of his fridge shortening out after being left open, spoiling all food inside and leading to a minor bug problem, despite him never interacting with it. Even stranger, only the fridge and the lights do not work, as the TV, his cable phone, and the microwave still function, theough the latter is jammed shut. More alarmingly, Dodgeball has gone missing and a peephole to the neighbor's shower has been uncovered in his bathroom. Nevertheless, the man goes back to watching TV and moves onto the next tape.

Upon the ending of the tape, the protagonist sees that his apartment has deteriorated even more. The buzzing of insects signify that the infestation has worsened, though it is quickly overshadowed by the ringing of his phone. When he answers it, the person on the other end simply asks him if he has checked the microwave yet and following the voice's instructions, he finds that the microwave contained his cat Dodgeball, mutilated after being cooked alive inside. The horror lasts only moments, since as the protagonist exits the kitchen, he sees the word "DELIVRY" written on his front door in blood, with an arrow underneath pointing him to the bathroom, where a large hole has now appeared, leading to a basement area. Traversing it, he finds an increasing number of empty pet carriers strewn about, all surrounded by a number of bloodied, ripped out cat claws. He is able to find a fuse box to restore electricity, but when he returns, the protagonist is startled by three flesh-covered humanoids with cat heads. Though they are non-hostile and only harmlessly appear close to the protagonist whenever he turns around, the man stabs them all to death with his knife, their bodies reverting to piles of human gore. At this point, radio chatter can be heard from the front door, as a police officer asks the resident to open up for a wellness check, as his neighbours had phoned in a disturbance. Ignoring this, the protagonist returns to his TV to get the third tape in.

This time when the protagonist comes back to his senses, he finds himself in an unfamiliar room, with a man at a table opposite of him. The interrogator reminds him that they are in a police station and asks the protagonist to retell the events leading up to his police encounter, which he does, but the officer is entirely unconvinced by this. Next, he probes about the nature of the protagonist's "workshop", this time reacting more aggressively by accusing the questionee of playing dumb and says that they have the protagonist's fingerprints on everything. Furthermore, the interrogator says that upon the arrival of the authorities, they found the whole flat covered in blood, including the protagonist, who was completely entranced by the TV and needed to be restrained for transport over. As the protagonist continues to insist on his innocence, the interrogator wants him to answer why he put his own cat in the microwave, which he responds to by passing blame onto the tapes or remarking that he was bored, either of which solidifies the interrogator's view that he is dealing with a psychiatric case. He bluntly asks if the protagonist enjoyed harming animals, but brushes off each response as the interrogator has already made up his mind. At the end of his wits, the protagonist caves and offers to make a full confession on the condition that he is allowed to watch the final tape. Seeing that the protagonist was in utter denial, the officer agrees to the deal, with a TV set with the tape appearing behind the protagonist in an eerily long hallway.

In the end, the protagonist appears in a padded cell, unable to move outside of moving his head. Before he can come to terms with the reality of things, a man in a clown mask inexplicably appears to his side and laughs uproariously in a distorted pitch.

## Trivia

* The petting animation for Dodgeball is reused from the interaction with Alice and Merlin in *Samhain*.