Chapter Text
“I have no personal tastes, do I?” I mumble to myself.
I had been hearing constantly about the recently popular horror media project called “welcome home.” I mean nonstop talk about it through social media and my friends. Since everyone was talking about it and seemed to like it, I finally decided to go onto the website to see what the fuss was about.
It was a chilly November afternoon, and I had just finished up with work and hopped on my PC.
“What was the name of it again?” I grumbled as I tried to remember the site's name.
“Oh right, Clownillustrations.com.” Got to stay focused. I’m just going to take a peek to see what's on there. I typed it in the search bar and opened up the colorful page. Upon glancing at the cover art and the text below, I could tell this was going to be a fun time.
I ended up spending a lot longer on there than I should have. There was just so much text, so many adorable illustrations, and so many secrets. I spent hours upon hours on the site until I had uncovered every secret, and twisted around every corner. I was heavily invested and now saw why others were as well.
It was becoming late, and I needed to get to bed. I decided to do one more scan through the site before I was done for the day. Upon zooming my cursor along every text in hopes of finding random clickable things, I clicked on an odd word. The word was lost. It transported me to a dark page. The title called “Hidden.” very ominous.
I was confused because I had never heard of this secret before, and didn’t even think it showed up for anyone else. I had many many questions, but upon accidentally highlighting the page there was a corrupted audio file next to a crazily spinning record. Without thinking, I clicked play.
“I’ve made a mistake. This show is cursed. We are going to shut down production immediately.”
We all knew that bud.
“The lost episode was never supposed to be shown to the public. How did it find its way through the cracks?”
Wait, lost episode?
“We are ruined. He could return. In the far future, he will return. We will fix it. We will fix him. We will fix everything.”
Fix who? Wally? What happened?
“If anyone Is to find this, don’t listen to him. Any version of him. Save yours-” The recording cut off with a scream before glitching out.
“Oh… wow. More lore!” I said with a happy grin. But.. ‘lost episode?’ ‘He will return and they will fix him?’ ‘Don't listen to any version of him?’ What?” I was puzzled.
Was this hinting that welcome home will come back or perhaps, has come back? If there was a reboot of sorts, I had never heard of it. No one else has found this secret, it seemed nonexistent. Why did I find it and not others? If there was a reboot, it was either extremely well hidden or the WHRP would have found it. I was curious now.
Upon questioning why this had happened, an error message popped up on my screen.
I stopped thinking in my tracks. It was a glitch or a bug. It had to be. Now my computer was going to get corrupted. The next error message appeared, and more followed. I closed out of the creepy page, but it was too late. I panicked. My computer started glitching, and slightly shaking. What had I done? I wondered in pure fear. With more glitching came static, then a big bright white flash. I covered my eyes. I was going to freaking die.
***********************
A while later, I regained consciousness. I slowly opened my eyes and used up the energy I had to look around. I was in a bedroom of sorts. It was colorful yet cozy, but the technology was slightly outdated. I glanced at the MP3 player on the bedside table. Out of curiosity, I picked it up. It was bright red and had ‘sk8er boi’ on the recently played. Before I could even think about where or when I was, a yellow hand snatched the device right out of my hands.
“Hey, get your hands off of that! Don’t you know what privacy is?” The guy said with a strong pang of annoyance. I glanced up. Holy crap. My suspicions were correct. There was some alternate version of Wally Darling standing before me.
I could tell it was Wally because of his 2 signature features: His blue hair and his yellow skin. His skin was a bit warmer, and his hair was a prominent light shade of blue instead of the deep purplish blue of classic Wallys.
Instead of Black dots and orange eyeshadow, he had very prominent purple spiral eyes and black eyeshadow. He had a Black sweater with a big collar, a red, yellow, and blue muted messy stripe cluster pattern throughout the sweater, and a red cartoon heart patch where his real heart would be sewn on.
He wore a smiley face belt and basic light jean color jeans, and I couldn’t see whatever shoes he was wearing as he was right over the bed. Vastly different in both looks and from what I could tell by his sassiness and snarkiness, personality.
“Sorry. I grumbled. “Why do you have an mp3 player right beside your bed with an unconscious girl? It was kinda natural for me to be nosy.” I huffed. I didn’t know how different this guy would be from the original Wally, and I didn’t want to risk anything.
“I thought it would be common sense to not touch random strangers' things.” He glared at me. “Well, you're not a stranger. I know your name. Your Wally Darling, right?” I glared right back. He froze, looking down at me with a look I could only describe as a mix of fear, anger, and confusion.
“H-how do you know my name?!” He said with caution, backing slightly away from me. “I’ll answer that once you explain some things. Like, How the heck did you come across me?” I needed to know why I was in his room and not in some ambulance bed.
Since he knew nothing about me and if I had personal info on him, he talked with precaution and immaturity. “You quite literally, fell out of the sky. You're lucky you didn’t break something.”
“Before you say anything, I don’t freaking know how you fell out of the sky. I just saw you fall and land when I was taking my nighttime walk, and I didn’t know what to do. I decided it would be best to give you some care, so I took you to my house after checking you weren't hurt, and put you in bed. You’re welcome.” He rolled his eyes, likely thinking I was some ungrateful girl that somehow fell out of the sky.
“Ok, so I fell out of the sky. Thats... News. If you thought I was hurt, why didn’t you call an ambulance though?” This guy was already really suspicious, so he’d better be careful with his words.
He let out a huff and said, “I checked and you were fine. You just needed somewhere to stay, so I came to the rescue. Thanks for thanking me.” This guy was surely one thing so far: annoyingly cocky. “I think it's reasonable that I’m mad some random dude picked me up off the street and took me home. Don’t you?!” I leaned forward, angrily deepening my glare at him.
He rolled his eyes again, before sarcastically saying “Sorry, My princess.” I wanted to burst. I had the right to be mad at him, and he was just being plain immature. He smirked at the sight of me getting angry. “Is the princess upset because her knight saved her butt and didn’t let her lay there and die?”
“I would’ve preferred to die there than have to get stuck with the emo and snootier version of Wally Darling!” He laughed loudly while lifting his head, and backed away from the bed as he put his hands on his waist. “That's surely a new one.” He continued laughing before promptly stopping and staring at me. “What do you mean by ‘Version?’”
I stopped glaring at him and leaned my head against the pillow. “What year is it?”
“2003, obviously.”
Huh?!