When I was visiting one of my childhood friends’ houses, I became immediately curious about what he had created in the past. I somehow convinced him to give me access to his computer without even trying that hard. Once I accessed his computer, I immediately searched for possible gems from his childhood. I found a lot of random or funny.avi files, but I must have surely forgotten that he had Doom Builder and GZDoom installed. I also searched if he downloaded any DOOM.pk3 or.wad files. I eventually found a ton of them, and I found some suspicous ones too, like 'NotAVirus.pk3', 'FleshObelisk.wad', and what this story is focused on: 'DementedDream.wad'.
I asked him if he downloaded any of those files, but he said he could hardly remember if he did it. So, as any normal person, I waited for his response. Eventually, after like 1.5 hours of digging in his deepest of memories, he said that he DID download 'NotAVirus' and 'FleshObelisk', and even told me to not play them since he also remembered that they were either irritating or grotesque and disgusting. But he said that he did NOT download 'DementedDream' and told me to not play it, but both I and him were curious enough to eventually open it and play it. Also, in the title, menu, it said it was re-textured. Well, so it was! It was normal until we arrived at E1M4: Command Control.
It looked like everything was fine, until I noticed that some of the enemies were missing or were completely red. Both of us were wondering if this was normal, but it seemed it was intentional, until the location was turned on, even though we did not touch that part of the screen at all. But he said, 'Bro, maybe we clicked on it because the mouse was not visible!' But then I checked, and the mouse was nowhere near the location button, let alone on it! With that out of the way, we advanced further and further in the map. And Doomguy must have forgotten that he had a shotgun, because as I, the player, whipped it out, the wide grim when you pick up a new weapon played on the interface, along with the 'YOU GOT THE SHOTGUN!' text. We eventually completed E1M4 and proceeded to E1M5: Phobos Lab. When we played, it was just like E1M4, but when we tried to open the yellow door, it told us, 'YOU NEED THE YELLOW KEYCARD to OPEN THIS DOOR', even though we got it. Second try, it worked.
When we eventually got to the hell barons, the textures for the hell barons weren't there, and it was like we were fighting two stone bricks. Eventually, we completed the level, but a thing that was really odd for me was that the floor that kills you killed us much faster. Eventually we got to the part that I like to call "the beginning of the nightmare." E2M1, pretty normal, except ALL the enemies were stone bricks. Same with E2M2. E2M3 was where the shit REALLY started to take place. The layout was distorted, and some of the walls were just stone bricks again. E2M4 was when things turned from "Eh, not scary" to "IS IT BEHIND ME?". The entire layout was replaced with a long hallway, and it seemed to be infinite, until we reached one of the ends and were jumpscared by a face that can be described by the following:
* Humanoid, but instead of light brownish-pinkish, was grey.
* Had no eyes, but the eye nerves were still there.
* No nose, but the skeletal layout was visible.
* And finally, to top it all off, no teeth, but a very long mouth, stretching from the bottom of the chin to the top of the nose.
We were scared to sh*t, but at least it didn't kill us. Instead of dying to it, it teleported us back; we tried again, but with Mashing Doomguy across all the walls. We got to E2M5 by clipping over a wall. E2M5 looked like a maze instead of a hallway. We always heard metronome sounds and eventually figured out that the faster the metronome, the further it is, probably to scare players as much as possible. The game extended until E2M6, where everything you knew about DOOM was flipped on its head. Switches randomly deactivating, enemies disappearing and appearing without any effects, barrely randomly moving or exploding—you name it!
When we finally """"completed"""" E2M6, the melting screen didn't show up, and we were teleported to a hallway with the faces. Now, remember that I said that these were scaring us? Well, they didn't anymore! Except, they lined up in 2 straight lines that resembled the hallway from E2M4, but it was made out of the faces, which didn't do anything, so we advanced...
... We saw a pentagram teleporter, so we hopped on it. The teleporter wasn't really a teleporter, but instead, a crusher, but every time it dealt damage, a message that extended out of the window, possibly saying 'TRAPPED' over and over. When Doomguy finally died, we finally escaped this nightmare of DementedDream.wad.
Written by GD Edware