A Fault in the Code

Chapter 7

I wake up on the forest floor, unsure of what happened. But I soon remember. Well, at least now I know what a creeper does.

I start to stand, and when I look down, my arms and legs are covered in burns. Was I on fire? If I was, then how long? I look up and realize I am in a big ditch, but this wasn't here before. It must've been the explosion.

I force my body to stand, even though I'm aching all over, and start to walk deeper into the woods. The deeper I get, the darker and foggier it becomes. I need to look out for monsters. I walk for a few hours, needing to run from zombies, skeletons and creepers a few times. But as I walk, I start to faintly see two purple lights in the distance. They look a lot like those eyes I saw back in the cave.

I get closer, and the eyes start to come into focus a little better, along with the figure they belong to.

The part of the eye that's supposed to be white is a magenta color, and in the center is the iris, a darker color mix between magenta and full purple. The body is tall and skinny, and completely black. The legs and arms are disproportionate to the torso, the legs are very long and extremely thin, and the same can be said about the arms, with the added fact that the ends of the arms reach to about 3/4 down the legs. Floating around the body are particles of some sort that look kind of like stars or snow, but purple.

As I lean forward to examine the features, the thing stares at me for a few seconds, then vanishes, leaving a few of its purple particles floating in the air for one short moment before they disappear as well. I squint. What happened to it?

Just then I feel a sudden pain in my back. I sharply turn around and see the creature staring down at me, shaking furiously. Does looking them in the eye show aggressiveness?

The most disturbing thing about the angry creature is that it has a wide, gaping mouth that seems to spread on three sides of its cubic head. There are sharp-looking teeth in its mouth, which are black like the rest of its body, that look like they're about to eat me alive.

It punches me hard in the shoulder, and I punch its stomach. I run to the nearest tree, take my backpack off my back to open it, and try to fetch my axe, but the creature appears in front of me before I know it. It slaps me away from my backpack and disappears, but not a second later it reappears next to me. I kick it in the leg as I struggle to get my face off the ground. As my fist connects with it, it "teleports" back a few feet, then walks toward me again. This gives me time to get up onto my feet.

I keep punching it, and it does the same thing where it teleports feet back and walks to me. It tries to throw punches at me, but I am too fast. I keep punching it, but it won't weaken. I get tired finally, and I collapse into the grass.

Just kill me, I think, I never really liked this place anyway.

But I feel no punches.

As I breathe heavily on the ground, I feel something touch my back. I turn my head, and what I see startles me. The creature I was just fighting with. Its face is right in front of mine, its eyes looking sad.

I sit up and lower my eyebrows at the thing. It looks down, ashamed.

"What are you?" I whisper. It looks up and makes some weird noise, then it shrugs. I guess it can't speak any human languages.

"Wait here," I say. I run over to my backpack which is still by the tree. I pull out the book and quill that the mysterious messenger sent me, and I give it to the creature. "Do you know how to write English?" I say.

It doesn't respond. Instead, it puts the quill in its right hand and starts to wite on the empty page I gave it. And I feel relieved. Maybe I will finally have someone to talk to in this place. And not an evil glowey-eyed demon guy or a voice in my head. An actual living creature.

After a couple minutes, it hands me back the book. The hand writing is messy, but it's readable.

My species is called endermen. The reason we're called that is because we live in a dimension called the End. And also because we normally end lives of people who come here. But the reason is because we're just trying to defend ourselves. We were told that being looked in the eyes by a human is aggressiveness, so we have to go end their life before they end ours. You got pretty close to ending mine today.

I was right about the eye thing. I continue reading.

I know we look scary and act scary, but we're really not. Once you get to know us, which is a very rare chance considering we kill each other, we're actaully pretty nice guys. I have hundreds of enderman friends back in the end, and a few in the overworld, too. But it's nice to finally have a human friend. I've been so suspicious around them that all I've been doing is killing.

"Are you saying there are other people here, too?" I ask when I finish reading the note and hand the enderman the book and quill.

It writes some more, and it shows it to me.

There were, but they've all died, and no one knows why.

"What's your name?"

Enderman #261.

"Would you like a real name? Are you a girl or a boy?"

Yes, I would, thank you. I'm a male.

I think about male names. What would be a good name for an enderman?

"Jeff."

I like that.

I nod. He closes the book and hands it to me, and we stand up and start to walk. I decide to tell him a little about myself, since he's said so much about him.

"So, if you were wondering, I'm Rocky. I'm sorry I didn't tell you this before. Anyway, I really don't know why I'm here. I was taking my driving test and got in a crash, then blacked out. I woke up here in this place. I used to live in the United States. Ever since I got here, there's been this strange man with white eyes following me and trying to hurt me. One time, I even heard these voices in my head. They sounded like a demon that you hear in the movies, but they weren't saying anything. Just gibberish."

I keep walking, but suddenly, Jeff stops in his tracks. I start to go back to see what's wrong, but then I see that I don't have to. Through the fog, there's a structure made of a material that I've never seen before. It looks kind of like black cobblestone, but shinier. And it makes that note I got from the mysterious guy pop into my head.

Look for my clues.

The structure in front of me. It's the letter B.