The Pestilence

Everyone knows that potatoes can be poisonous, sometimes. Most of the time, it isn't an accident when I poison myself. Sometimes, I'd just eat one because I'm bored. Its not horrible, unless you're already badly damaged. But, something seemed off about some of the food I usually ate on a regular play-through of Minecraft. Unless you eat a spider eye or, as mentioned before, poisonous potatoes, you'd never normally get any negative affects from eating food. Notice how I said: normally.

On one play-through, around late 2015, my character became hungry a lot faster than usual. It didn't make me think any different; I always sprint everywhere when I'm playing. But I noticed it about an hour after I started starving. Nothing was unusual about me starving, however.The chicken legs were the same color, same shape and size, same texture, and only drained a lot faster. I knew at that time that something was off about my game. I restarted my computer, and booted up Minecraft again. Nothing was different about the title screen or 'world select'. I thought it would make it go away, but I still starved just as quickly. Maybe it was faster than the first time, I was too confused to remember that specifically.

I just accepted I went hungry faster, and moved on playing. I built a small house, chopped down trees, etc. I didn't bother re-installing the game or anything like that. It didn't seem practical.

After a while, I found a village In a swamp pretty close to spawn. Skeletons spawned way more often then normally. They were everywhere. Being low on food, because of the weird 'hunger glitch', I went inside the blacksmith house, and went for the chest. There was only bones, and something named 'Ash', which appeared to be gunpowder or possibly sugar, but pitch black. It was startling to see a new item that, to my knowledge, was never before in the game, suddenly was in abundance in a random village. Naturally, I took all of the Ash and began to experiment with it.

Right clicking, left clicking, throwing, and burning didn't do anything unusual. It acted just like any other item. Or so I thought. I had no idea that the ash I picked up was nothing less than a monster.

Not long after I stacked up the ash in my inventory, I starting 'smoking' as if I was on fire. The smoke was alive. it had red pixels for eyes that seemed to stare at me directly no matter how I looked at them. They emitted no noise, no status effects, no damage, they just kept staring. No matter how far or fast I ran, they just followed my and kept staring. And staring. Nothing I tried jumping in water, but they followed me there, still just staring. And staring. I tried drinking milk, eating golden apples, even turning on creative mode and flying away and they wouldn't go away and kept following me and slowly the screen became darker and darker and all i could see were the red glowing eyes and were still just staring. And staring.

The screen became black. No more red eyes. No ambience. No smoke. No ashes. Just pitch black. And Silent.

I went to bed.

...

In my nightmare, I was a villager. The black cloud of red eyes stared above us. I couldn't move.

"WAKE UP!! WAKE UP!! THE PESTILENCE IS HERE!! OH GOD! OH GOD! IT WILL DESTROY US ALL!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? GET UP!! TH-THE CROPS!! THE CHILDREN!! THE CHILDREN!!! RUN!!! RU-"

I jolted from my bed, the darkness of the night sky penetrating through the cracks in my window. My heart beats endlessly. I couldn't stop breathing frantically. Something, and you'll think I'm crazy for this, drew me to my computer that, for some reason, I couldn't fight back. I let my mortified-self walk to my computer in my living room. I turned on the lamp, and opened the laptop. Minecraft was already open, on world select. I selected the world titled "THE PESTILENCE". Reluctantly, I pressed enter world.

In the same village I found the "Ash" in, the crops were pitch black. The houses were torn to shreds. The windows shattered. All the villagers, and animals for that matter, were gone. The sky was murky-grey. The same red-eyed smoke flew endlessly throughout the world.

It was only that world that became like that. I fear that if I play again, it will spread. Possibly to other worlds and games. I don't know how this illness works. I don't want anyone else to suffer what I went through. I deleted the world, then all the other worlds, then Minecraft, and then.. I destroyed my laptop. I burned the chunks of computer. The only think that remained was a pile of ash

And two drops of blood.