Chance

I had recently received the Sims 3 for the Xbox on Christmas.

I was excited about getting a new game, so my brother and I made a new family right away.

We took a long time on Create a Sim, But we had finally finished our family of 4. A man Named Quinton, his wife Cheryl, and two boys, Greg and Reggie. We moved them to a small house with three bedrooms.

Naturally, we ran out of money quick, so I looked up the cheating methods for Sims 3 on the console. I'm into PC gaming, so I wouldn't normally know something like this. We found out you need to pause the game, hold down the triggers and bumpers, and select 'yes'. We followed the steps and a message saying Spoot the Magic Llama was available for purchase.

We had a laugh about Spoot's name and then bought him. Spoot looks to be a porcelain (or maybe marble) Llama standing on a tiny circle pedestal. We hoarded about 2 million Simoleans before I saw an option on Spoot that caught my eye.

Unlock Challenge Rewards.

Having this being my first time playing, I didn't have the slightest idea what it was. But I selected it anyway. I didn't look like anything happened at first. Then my brother told me to look at build and buy mode. We checked out the new furniture and appliances, things like that. It was going well.

But then, we look at Decor > Misc.

After about 2 pages, there was a weird gnome. Mysterious Mr. Gnome. We both thought it looked stupid, so we got it and put it in the yard to laugh at it.

As we went back into live mode, all of our Sims simultaneously went to go kick the gnome. Everyone kicked it into the dirt and set it back up once. I found this pretty weird. Then I noticed something weirder. On the 2nd kick, delivered by Cheryl, The gnome's eyes were bleeding. Knowing EA, this isn't something they'd put in such a subtle T-rated game.

We saved the game.

After a few hours in-game, dusk fell. All of our Sims went to sleep. My brother noticed the gnome was missing! This being our first time playing, we didn't know of the gnome's teleporting habits. We noticed the TV was on, full volume. All our Sims woke up rather angry. The gnome was beside the TV. I selected the gnome to see what we could do to it rather then kicking it. It had four options, 'Kick Gnome', 'Give Name to Gnome', a weird one, '---', and finally a blank option that couldn't be selected.

I tried seeing what rename did. It pulled up a window with the name Chance. There were three options on the window. Cancel, accept and edit text. I just accepted.

Then I sent Reggie to kick Chance as a form of punishment (as a joke). Reggie ran over, looked side to side and lunged his right leg at Chance. But instead of Chance falling over and Reggie laughing, Reggie's leg bent backwards and snapped, skin ripping and blood pouring our from under his khaki shorts, paired along with a bloodcurdling scream. Cheryl fainted.

Chance stood there, one hand up, grinning.

My brother and I were terrified. My brother left the room but I wanted to see what was up with Chance. I went to build and buy mode to get another Gnome. When I selected Mysterious Mr. Gnome in the catalog, a message popped up saying "Do you need another one? Am I not good enough for you?"

I was awfully unsettled by this message so I saved and quit. It took me back to the main menu. But something was wrong. There was no music. No cars driving by. I turned off the Xbox and left the game idle for about a month.

After some time had passed, I started up the same game forgetting about chance. But the family wasn't how I left it. Cheryl, Reggie and Greg were all gone. It was just Quinton. Quinton was at a place that looked like the big park in the center of Moonlight Bay, but there was nobody there. There was dark splotches everywhere. I sent Quinton to follow them. I was assuming they weren't pools of blood, because that's cliche. But I was wrong. They were pools of blood.

There was a pool of blood for everyone in Moonlight Bay. Selecting them, I could see every resident. Trevor Burton's Blood, Malcolm Landgrabb's Blood, even Reggie, Greg and Cheryl Faulkner's blood. It was quite disturbing. The blood pools led Quinton back to the 3-bedroomed building he used to call home. Quinton had a haunting moodlet called "GnOme At the WAfting Youth" It was -100 to mood and had a picture of a gnome with flesh in its mouth.

Reading the capital letters is the uncanny part. But behind the house, lied Greg in a fetal position like he had just died. Chance was beside him, covered in blood. There was moaning sounds from inside the bathroom. But I couldn't find out what it was, as the house was as it would be if another family owned it. The front door read, "Visit the Chance Household". I canceled out of the door, but Quinton went to ring to doorbell anyway. I went into his queue and tried cancelling the action, but it wouldn't let me, like death, or passing out. Chance came to the door by teleportation. I was too scared to move, so I just watched everything play out.

The door opened and Quinton's hunger fell to zero instantly, dropping him dead on the ground. I heard Reggie's scream as the Xbox shut off. I was mentally scarred. I took the Sims out of the Xbox and put it in its case and went to the backyard and buried the game about 2 feet under.

About a week later, a package unwillingly arrived in the mail. I took it to the living room and opened it up. It was a Gnome. A replica. A note came with it reading:

"Why take a Chance? -EA"