Pseudobun

I intentionally simplified the design a lot in an attempt to give it more "background character" energy. I probably shouldn't have gone with something that has so many star motifs, because Verosika obviously has a star motif, but... c'est la vie.

I do really like the idea of having Succubi in other music scenes, like how Verosika is obviously in the pop music sphere. This is obviously a watered-down attempt at a more punky character in a way that I feel would fit in with the show more than if I had gone hardcore with it. I like it. Picasso.

I shoulda known better. I really shoulda known better. But the second I heard The Sims 2 was getting a rerelease, I KNEW EA was gonna charge some stupid price for it. And I wasn’t about to give them my money for a game I already owned like ten years ago.

So when I saw a link on some forum that said FREE DOWNLOAD - SIMS 2 ALL EXPANSION PACKS, well... yeah. How could I say no? The user who posted it had a weird username—“NightVisitor”—but I just figured it was some rando. I clicked the link. The download was instant. Like, literally instant. One second, nothing. Next second, a fully installed Sims 2 folder on my desktop, with a shortcut named SIMS2.EXE.

Weird, but whatever. I booted it up.

It started normal. The classic blue plumbob screen. The cheery Maxis jingle. Nostalgia hit hard. I loaded Pleasantview because of course I did—where else do you start? But something was off right away. The loading screen took too long. The words at the bottom, y’know, where it says stuff like Reticulating Splines, just kept repeating HE IS WATCHING over and over.

I figured, hey, just some modder being weird. No biggie.

I picked a random pre-made house—Dina Caliente’s, why not—and started playing. But the second the game loaded, I noticed something wrong. The time was stuck at 3:00 AM. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t change. And Dina? She just stood there. Not idle. Not shifting weight like normal Sims do. Just frozen. Eyes open. Looking at the screen. Looking at me.

And then, the burglar music started. You know the one. That horrible, screechy, anxiety-inducing theme. DUNN-DUNN DUNNNN. But there was no burglar. The cops didn’t show up. The game just kept playing that awful music on loop.

Then, movement.

Dina snapped her head toward the front door. But it didn’t open. No burglar crept in. Instead, my screen glitched. Static. Flashing red for a second. And then—

BAM.

A close-up, front-facing image of the burglar's face filled my entire screen. His expression was wrong. Usually, he’s just stone faced, right? But here, he was grinning. Too wide. His teeth weren’t normal—too many, too sharp. And his eyes... oh god, his eyes. Hollow. Empty. Pitch black, but with tiny red pinpricks in the center.

My speakers blasted a horrible, garbled noise. Like the burglar music, but wrong, corrupted, mixed with static and whispering.

And then the game crashed.

My desktop flickered. But before I could even react, my entire laptop bluescreened.

My heart was pounding. Hands shaking. I stared at the error message, but it wasn’t normal either. It wasn’t a bunch of technical jargon. It just said, over and over, in blocky white letters:

“HE SEES YOU. HE SEES YOU. HE SEES YOU.”

And then my laptop shut off. Completely dead.

I tried to turn it back on. Nothing. It was fried. Gone.

I sat there, staring at my reflection in the black screen, my mind racing. Did I just get a virus? A trojan? Some kinda jumpscare mod? My stomach twisted. I felt sick.

I needed to sleep. I needed to forget this happened.

I crawled into bed, pulling the covers over my head, trying to shake the feeling that someone was watching me. That somewhere, in the dark corners of my room, a pair of hollow eyes were still staring.

Eventually, I drifted off.

And when I woke up—

My laptop was gone.

Not broken. Not fried. Not where I’d left it.

Just... gone.

The only thing left was a single note on my desk, scrawled in shaky, jagged letters.