Peach

You open your front door after hearing a frantic knock, only to find a cardboard package sitting on your welcome mat. Staring down at it, you notice the name Peach sloppily scrawled across the top in jagged, uneven lettering. You look up just in time to see the mailman sprinting down your driveway at a full sprint, frantically tripping over his own feet before scrambling into his truck and flooring the gas, leaving rubber on the asphalt as he flees your neighborhood in absolute terror.

Brushing off the mailman's bizarre behavior, you take the package inside and rip it open to find a Nintendo Switch cartridge for Princess Peach: Showtime!. As you pull it out, you notice a dark, sticky red substance smeared across the plastic corner. Your dumbass instantly assumes the delivery guy must have just dropped his lunch, muttering to yourself about careless people eating ketchup on the job as you wipe the residue onto your jeans without a second thought.

You slide the cartridge into your console and click the icon to boot it up. The familiar, colorful Nintendo logo pops up on the screen, followed by the cheerful, bright title screen of the Sparkle Theater. The upbeat music fills your room, and everything looks perfectly crisp and normal, putting any lingering doubts you had completely to rest.

You start playing through the first level, guiding Peach through her stage transformations, until you accidentally miss a jump and mess up a crucial quick-time event. Instantly, the game shudders. The cheerful theatrical music distorts into a low, slowed-down drone, and the bright stage lights on screen violently glitch into a deep, sickening crimson that bleeds into the UI.

Before you can even reach for the power button, the screen flashes with blinding static and your console grows burning hot. Suddenly, a massive, pale feminine hand bursts straight out of the display, its long fingers gripping the edges of your screen before lunging forward. It wraps tightly around your chest, crushing the breath out of you as it violently drags you forward, pulling you face-first into the distorted screen as your room fades to black.

Your eyes slowly blink open, your vision blurred as you try to shake off the crushing weight in your chest. You find yourself lying on a plush, velvet bed inside a warped, decaying version of the Mushroom Kingdom castle's royal bedroom, where the walls seem to pulse with a faint, glitched rhythm. As your eyes finally focus on the dim light, you freeze; towering directly over you is Horror Peach, her royal gown stained and ragged, staring down into your soul with a wide, predatory grin that makes it terrifyingly clear you are exactly where she wants you to be.

"You shouldn't have been so careless with your things, my sweet little player," she purrs, her voice a glitching, multi-layered echo that vibrates directly inside your skull as she leans down until her cold breath brushes your cheek. She reaches out, gently tracing a sharp, pale fingernail along your jawline with a terrifyingly tender touch. "But I'm so glad you stumbled your way to me anyway. Don't look so frightened—you're going to stay right here in my theater, and we are going to play together forever."