The Story[]
I’ve struggled with how I’ve wanted to write this as I don’t want to reveal too much personal information, but the subject matter is important and I need people to know about this. For the sake of privacy, you can call me anon. I live in a suite in my colleges tri-dorms with two other people. I don’t want to reveal their actual names, so we’ll call them Michale and Barry respectively.
Just some basic stuff you need to know, Michael and I share a room and Barry has one to himself. I bring this up because neither he or I know Barry all that much. What we do know is that he’s kinda quiet and spends most of his time in his room. Neither of us thought all that much about it since some people are introverts and prefer to be alone, so we just let him do whatever he did in his room.
I’m talking about Barry because he’s currently in the hospital. Dude’s alive, don’t worry, it’s just that the reason why he’s in the hospital worries me a bit. You see, starting in early September, the guy would occasionally talk to us. Most of it was about video games and cartoons, some of which I also liked. He and I also shared a catalyst class and would work together on whatever activities and/or project we were doing. I wouldn’t necessarily say we we’re friends, but he seemed like a nice guy. As we continued through the semester, though, Barry started to change. He stopped talking as frequently and started spending most of his time in his room. More than usually anyways. He started coming into class much later and, on some days, wouldn’t appear.
Admittedly, I also like to spend most of my time in my room, but Barry seemed to be in there a lot. I’d rarely ever see him leave his room, unless if it was to use the bathroom or grab food from a delivery guy. It was really starting to worry me, so I knocked on his door to check up on him. He let me in and I saw that his trash bin was full of cans and some wrappers, and empty bottles were on the floor. I asked why he was cooped up in his room all the time, and his only response was “it’s his birthday,” and pointed towards his computer. I looked and saw he was playing SpongeBob SquarePants: SuperSponge on an emulator. I was confused, but he never elaborated and just asked me to leave.
I decided to look up the game and read a synopsis of the plot. Apparently, SpongeBob is doing all these tasks to try and get an autograph from Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy so he can give it to Patrick for his birthday. I assumed Barry was talking about Patrick and that he was just trying to beat the game, so I didn’t think too much about it.
Days passed and Barry continued to stay in his room. Eventually, he just stopped attending classes all together. On the rare chance I, Michael, or anyone else saw him outside his room, we’d ask why he was spending so much time in there, and every time we asked he said the same thing. “It’s his birthday.” I also noticed that the guy wasn’t looking all that good. He was pale and started to put on a few pounds, and every time I saw him walk he seemed really out of breath. I was really worried for his health, so I decided to get him away from the computer.
When I walked into Barry’s room, my nose was immediately assaulted by this horrible smell, and the floor was covered in fast food wrappers and empty bottles and cans of soda. I saw Barry sitting at his computer playing the game, and I knew something had to change. I told him I was going out with some friends and that he should come along, and his only response was “it’s his birthday.” I was pretty sick of him constantly saying that and told him he needed to step outside and get some fresh air. Once again, he told me “it’s his birthday,” and went back to playing the game.
Clearly, he wasn’t gonna budge, so I did the only thing I could think of; I went over to his computer and tried to unplug it. As I reached for the plug, Barry grabbed me and told me “it’s his birthday.” I tried to unplug his computer, only for him to pull me away from it. I told him his current living situation was not healthy and that he needed to go outside, but Barry just repeated the same thing he always said, rather angrily, and went back to play the game. I was fed up with him at this point and yelled at him to leave his room. He yelled at me back and the whole thing devolved into a shouting match, with Barry coughing every now and then.
His coughing started to get worse, sounding like he was about to hack up a lung. The coughing got so bad that he barfed onto the floor, and then collapsed onto said barf. I was shocked by this and checked to see if he was ok, only to find out he had passed out. I told Michael and he called the hospital as we carried him into my car. We got him to the emergency room and now he’s currently staying in the hospital until he’s recovered. The doctors told us that Barry had developed type two diabetes and that his vomiting and tiredness was a result of ketoacidosis. I was really worried about him and afraid that he might die, though, as I already said, he’s still alive. I recently got a call from the hospital telling me was actually doing better, though he kept mumbling something about it “being someone’s birthday.”
I’m glad that Barry is alive, though his constant insistence of it being the birthday of a fictional starfish worried me. There’s also another thing that worries me. When Michael and I got back to our dorm, we decided to clean up Barry’s room. When I walked in, I saw that SuperSponge was still running and went over to turn his computer off. That’s when I saw the actual name of the game file. “Pathogen.rom.” I was confused as to why the game was just called Pathogen.rom, but that question got shelved pretty quickly when I saw something in the game. It was brief, but it looked like a bigger, more purple version of Patrick, and his mouth was inhumanly stretched wide open, and when I blinked, he disappeared. At the time, I thought I was just seeing things. I had just witnessed someone I know pass out and was probably just stressed out. Nowadays, I’m not so sure of that.
A week after Barry was hospitalized, a friend of mine a couple doors down, we’ll call her Sarah, told me her roommate was starting to act weird. She was staying in her room more often and eating a lot more junk food. We actually checked up on her and saw garbage on the floor, much like Barry’s room, though to a much lesser extent. To my surprise, though, Sarah’s roommate was also emulating SuperSponge on her computer. When we asked her why her room was the way it was, though, she didn’t really say anything. Immediately, we had to get her outside and away from the game. She’s doing better, though she still refuses to give us a straight answer.
At that moment, I was weirded out, but still didn’t really think all too much about it. Maybe she was in slump and needed someone to get her out of it?
Then came the thing that inspired me to write this.
Exactly two days ago, Michael was at a party and, while there, he told me there was a guy playing SuperSponge on an emulator, and he wouldn’t stop playing the game. I went over to the dorm the party was held at and asked the guy living there about the game. He told me his roommate plays the game all the time and that he doesn’t see him leave his room often. He even told me he saw a deformed Patrick, though his description said he had a face on his stomach. I stayed to watch the guy’s roommate play the game, though came up short. No deformed Patrick appeared, and the guy told me he was drunk at the time he saw it, and might’ve just been seeing things. I went back to ask Michael about it, and he said he didn’t see such a thing appear.
At this point, I don’t know what to think anymore. The fact that three people are driving themselves ill because of an old PS1 SpongeBob game cannot be a simple coincidence. And that weird Patrick thing also has me confused. The best explanation I can come up with that’s reasonable is that it’s a ROM hack somebody made for sick kicks. I have seen many ROM hacks do some pretty impressive things, though I don’t know any that was super addictive and made people slobs. I don’t even really know if “Pathogen.rom” is the actual name.
I tried looking it up, but every result I get just talks about bacteria and sicknesses. I also tried looking up “SpongeBob SquarePants SuperSponge ROM hacks,” and all I could find was an Indonesian translation of the GameBoy Advance version of the game. Nothing on the PS1 version. I’m still not ruling out the ROM hack theory, as I’m aware there are plenty of games that include subliminal messages, and I’m sure some sick developer is lurking around somewhere on the internet, but I still don’t fully know what’s going on.
So I ask all of you reading this. If you know anything about this “Pathogen.rom” thing, please let me know. Any leads, any names, anything about the freaky Patrick, just anything you can find. I want to get to the bottom of this.
Credits[]
Author: @WILDFIRE252