My neighbor was my best friend, but since i made his account suspended…

Hey everyone,

I’m Marcus, 22. I just graduated and moved out to this quiet suburb in Texas for a game tester job. The pay was decent — $2000 a month straight to PayPal — and I got to work from home testing some mid-tier horror game. Sounded perfect for a guy who basically lived on his PC anyway.

The apartment I found was cheap and nothing special. Thin walls, old carpet that smelled a bit like mold when it rained, and my neighbor across the hall was this tall, skinny dude named Harry. Messy hair, always looked like he hadn’t slept in days. We bumped into each other while I was carrying boxes in. He gave me this awkward little wave and said “Hey man, new here?” Turned out he was 24 and also super into games. We added each other on Facebook and Discord that same night.

From then on, every evening around 9 PM we’d hop on and play together. It was honestly the best part of my day. Work was repetitive as hell — running the same levels over and over, reporting tiny bugs, writing boring notes — but at least I had someone to talk shit with and laugh about stupid deaths. Harry became my only real friend out here. I didn’t know anyone else in Texas.

Then one morning I woke up and my test account was renamed to some random “Unknown_47291”. I freaked out and emailed the company right away. They said it was a system bug, apologized, and threw me like $50 extra. Whatever, I thought. Glitches happen.

Later that day I got a message from a blank profile on Facebook: “Check your game account bro.”

I logged in. My character name was now HarryProPlayer24.

That was Harry’s exact username.

Before I could even think, Harry messaged me on Discord:

“Marcus what the fuck? Why did you steal my account?”

I typed back super fast: “Dude I didn’t do shit. Someone’s fucking with both of us.”

I tried to screenshot the weird message to show him, but when I went back, the blank account had already blocked me and the whole chat was gone. Harry sent me his own screenshot showing the account got flagged for multi-login and locked. He sounded really pissed:

“You’re gonna regret this. Gaming is literally all I have left.”

I logged out of everything, restarted my PC, and tried to calm down. That night I went to bed early, telling myself it was just some asshole hacker.

Around 3 in the morning I jolted awake because my PC fans were screaming like crazy. The monitor was on even though I’d turned it off. The game had launched by itself. Right in the middle of the screen there was a pop-up:

“Confirm name change?”

I grabbed the mouse to cancel it but the damn thing clicked “Yes” on its own. My name changed to Dieddieddied. The avatar switched too — it was now a picture of Harry standing right in front of my apartment door, holding a kitchen knife, smiling in this way that made my skin crawl.

Then the banging started on my front door. Loud. Angry. Like someone was trying to break it down.

“Marcus! Open the fucking door you jealous prick!”

It was Harry’s voice. Exactly the same as in Discord voice chat. But way more unhinged.

“You took my account, you took the money, you took everything! Come out and 1v1 me for real, coward!”

I was shaking so bad. I grabbed the biggest knife from the kitchen and backed up against the wall. I called 911 with one hand while still holding the knife. The lady on the phone was calm, said police were on the way, would be there in ten minutes. She told me to lock myself somewhere safe.

The banging kept getting harder. The whole door was rattling.

“Come on Marcus! Don’t hide like a little bitch!”

I just stood there in the dark, breathing fast, waiting for the sirens.

When the cops finally showed up, everything went quiet. I slowly opened the door, still gripping the knife.

There was blood all over the hallway carpet.

Harry was lying face down right outside my door. Stabbed multiple times in the back and neck. His blood had already soaked into the old rug.

The officers looked at me, then at the bloody knife in my hand.

I kept saying “It wasn’t me, I never left my apartment, someone set me up…” but they weren’t really listening. They took the knife, cuffed me, and that was that.

Now I’m in a psych ward. The doctor showed me my file and said I have some kind of dissociative disorder from being alone too much, staring at screens all day. He told me there’s no record of anyone named Harry ever living across the hall. The apartment opposite mine has been empty for months. No one in the building remembers seeing him.

He says I made Harry up because I was lonely. That in my head I created this friend, got paranoid, and then walked outside and stabbed some random guy who was just walking by at 3 AM.

I don’t know what to believe anymore.

But here’s the part that’s keeping me up at night.

They let me use the computer in the common room yesterday evening for “journaling.” I logged into Discord real quick when the nurse wasn’t looking.

HarryProPlayer24 was online.

He sent me one message before I had to log off:

“See you at 9 tonight, Marcus.

I’ve been waiting.

Don’t keep me waiting again.”

My hands won’t stop shaking.

Every night at 9 PM sharp I start hearing faint game music coming from inside the walls of my room here. The nurses say it’s nothing.

But sometimes when the lights are off, I catch my own reflection in the dark TV screen… and for a split second it doesn’t look like me anymore.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep typing this.

If anyone reading this is thinking about taking a random remote game tester job that messaged you first… don’t.

And if you just moved somewhere new and some skinny guy waves at you from across the hall…

Maybe don’t wave back.