So Darkness I Became - Darkiplier fanfiction

CHEPTER 1 - WELCOME TO THE NIGHTMARE

Mark had just finished recording yet another let’s play. It was already late and he rubbed his tired face with his hands and took a deep, relaxed breath. That was the day’s work done. The recording had gone well and he was feeling the light happiness of a man who enjoyed his life and work. He smiled contently and felt the tiny strings of sleep tug at his eyelids. He was still a bit sleep deprived from his flight back from PAX. Before calling it a night, Mark decided to take a brief look at the comment sections of the videos he had posted that day. But when he opened YouTube, there was something that catched his attention on his homepage. There was a section of “New from the channel Darkiplier.” And below that, a video thumbnail.

Mark froze, first puzzled. The video was named very tastelessly “Welcome to the Nightmare.” Was this a joke? Mark had no memory of subscribing to such a channel. He studied the thumbnail closely. There was a picture of a man, who clearly was him, standing in front of a black backdrop. The style of it resembled the thumbnails Mark himself made. This had to be a fan-made video and the thumbnail a Photoshop edit of himself. In the picture he had dark, swooping hair from 2015, like he had had before he started dyeing it. Curiosity made Mark’s mouse cursor hover above the video. Still, he had a feeling that something was off. The chilling grin of this other Mark was one that he did not recognize. He clicked the video to get rid of the ominous feeling.

The whole screen zapped as he moved to the video’s page. Mark frowned. The video had 0 views.

The video started to play and the man from the thumbnail stood close to the camera, just having turned it on. Mark watched himself, that he didn’t recognize, to first smile to the camera and then start to talk, words Mark had never uttered in his life.

“Hello Mark, my name is Darkiplier”, the man spoke with a familiar deep voice.  “This is my first video to you! I have observed you from a far for a long time. And you seem happy.” The man leaned on a table or something out of view and talked in a conversational tone. “You have millions of followers and a tight community. That is all very good.” The other Mark’s gaze dropped to the floor for a second as he stopped to snicker under his breath; a low, rumbling, thin laughter. “But I’m here to put a stop to that. To your happiness, I mean. Because I think…” A moment passed when he looked Mark dead in the eyes through the screen. “You don’t deserve it.”

The man stepped aside and revealed the room behind him. It was a relatively small room with a look of a warehouse. The walls were typical wooden panel and same was the floor. There were two closed doors at the back wall and a window let in clear morning light from the left, somewhere beyond the camera’s view. The room was bare except for a single chair. And on that chair sat a girl. She was tied down with cable ties and a strip of duct tape covered her mouth. She was around her twenties, a frail looking skinny thing with a shoulder length bob cut and nerdy classes. She was shaking but Mark couldn’t tell if it was because she was terrified or because she was trying to get herself out of the chair, but afraid to struggle too visibly. The camera zoomed a bit closer, letting Mark see her face better. The perfect lighting from the window light up a pair of panicked blue eyes and painted visible the redness of a forming bruise on her left cheek.

“I guess I could have picked a prettier girl”, Dark said. “But you like the nerdy type, don’t you? And this girl is special.” The man disappeared from the frame, walked slowly around the room and behind the chair. The setting was clearly carefully planned. The chair was positioned with a perfectionist precision exactly in the middle of the two doors in the background, creating symmetry to the horror. The girl grew still as the man approached her. “She travelled all the way to America to see you. She never made it to PAX, though”. He leaned closer to his hostage and cupped her chin with his hand to make her look straight at the camera. “Look what you got her into. The great Markiplier,” Darkiplier purred with his suave voice right by her ear.  She closed her eyes tight, scared. “I’m planning to make her my little kitten. You could say, that this is the first part of our let’s play. And there will be more to come.” Suddenly he gripped the end of the tape and teared it from her mouth with one forceful gesture. The girl yelped in pain and surprise as her head was lodged down with the movement, the hair falling down to cover her eyes. Darkiplier stood back and let out a short amused laugh. Mark could only watch as a single tear trickled slowly down the girl’s bloated cheek and beaded at her jawline to gleam at the improper pristine light. There was dried up blood on her bottom lip where it had been split before. The girl pant, her chest heaving rapidly. That was the only agonizing sound for a while as the man prowled behind her, like waiting for something. When the girl stayed silent and motionless, he smirked, pleased. “I have all the time in the world” Darkiplier said softly and looked back at Mark. “Good luck trying to find me. Because you can’t. But I know you will try. Because you want to save her. You want to save her so badly.” He played with every syllable of the last sentence, making it as mocking as possible. “But you can’t.”

The man started to walk back to the camera. Before the dark silhouette hid the tied down girl, you could see her looking quickly at the camera. A stream of pleading broken English was shouted behind the man’s back. “Help me, please! Help me!” Darkiplier stopped. The camera adjusted the lighting just in time to see the blank expression on his face change into a sinister smile. “Didn’t I tell you to shut up,” he growled almost gently.

The audio cut off. The silence in his headphones let Mark hear his own stressed heartbeat. The video continued in black and white. The man stepped back towards the girl. She was staring at him with a wild gaze of fear.  Faster that she could shy away from the blow, the man backhanded her to the face. There was no sound, but still Mark winced. She had gritted her teeth against the pain and the split lip had started to bleed again. Before the girl could recover, the man was standing beside the chair and kicked its back so that the chair and girl fell sideways to the ground. The girl opened her mouth to a silent scream before she fell hard to the floor, her head bobbing from the impact. The young man strut back to the camera, shoulders tense with held back energy. The audio came back with a whoosh of background static.

“That’s all for this time,” the man’s voice was husky, slightly out of breath beneath the grim shadow of a smile. “And as always, I will see you in the next video.”

The video skipped brokenly before turning to black.

Mark stared at the screen. The video still continued. Suddenly, a scream rang out, so loud that it made Mark flinch. The sound hit him like a physical blow, the sick imitation of a jumpscare. Because he knew it was her scream, right when he had kicked the chair down. Mark ripped off his headphones, shaking, and covered his mouth with his hands. He sat like that, trembling for several long minutes, holding his eyes shut against the tears so forcefully that it hurt.

“Help me, please! Help me!”