When I was five years old, I was introduced to a game called "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask." Note: If you for whatever reason find yourself reading my blog posts, you will see this game come up quite a bit considering that, much like a book series or favorite TV show would for a "normal" person, "Majora's Mask" taught me many valuable lessons that I still remember today, such as the value of altruism and how others are just as important, if not more important, than I am.
Anyway, even today, I question if it was really appropriate for my parents to give me one of the darkest games in the "Legend of Zelda" series when I was only five, because, trust me, that game terrified me for three years straight, even if the end result ended up being beneficial to my overall character.
Now, one would expect things such as the ever-descending moon (with a face constantly glaring at Link), Majora, or even the Happy Mask Salesman to have been the cause of this fear, but they were not, oddly enough. The only part of the moon that actually frightened me was the scene in which it destroyed the entire realm of Termina, but other than that, it never bothered me. However, even regular enemies, even weak ones such as Bombchus and Chu Chus, tended to send me running away in fear... for some reason. Then again, perhaps this was because "Majora's Mask" was the first Nintendo game I played that wasn't Pokemon, so I was definitely not used to being attacked by enemies at this time. However, there was one... thing... that was worse than any other enemy in the game, even ones that resembled it.
Before I delve into this deep-rooted fear, I feel as though I need to give a few details about the overall setting. The main town of the game, Clock Town, is divided into four sections: South Clock Town, North Clock Town, West Clock Town, and East Clock Town. In East Clock Town, there is an inn called the Stock Pot Inn; this inn has two floors. The upper floor contains the regular hotel rooms while the bottom floor contains a room where the inn keeper's mother lives, a kitchen, and... the bathroom. Now, this bathroom's toilet is modeled after traditional Japanese squat toilets (as the game was made by a Japanese company), which means that it simply looks like a hole in the ground. This room is where it began.
One day, I was playing around Clock Town after midnight, trying to figure out how to get out of my Deku form (I was five and still could not read, so I was completely lost), and I went into the Stock Pot Inn. I went to the bathroom, and... a gigantic white arm and hand with black nails popped out of the toilet saying, "Pa-Pa-Pa-Paper, please!" Of course, I did not know that he said that since I could not read at the time, but I just wanted to note that this thing did in fact talk. "Hmm, that's weird..." I thought to myself, and I promptly left. However, over time, I started developing a fear of this oddity for some reason that I cannot fully explain myself. I told a friend about it, but I did not know at what time the hand came out of the toilet, simply stating that it was at night.
A couple days later, he was playing it in front of me when he decided to see the hand for himself. Like I said, though, neither of us knew when it came out (for reference, it comes out between 12:00 A.M. and 6 A.M. in the game's time. Each hour takes about forty-five seconds of actual time). He went to the restroom at around 11:40 P.M., and it did not come out, leaving both of us quite confused. He then pressed a button that allowed one to see through Link's eyes (or a first person view), allowing for a better view of things. Right when he did this, the clock struck 12:00 A.M.
The gigantic white hand with its black nails burst forth from the toilet, clawing at our television screen, taking up the entire screen in fact. It truly was a monstrosity. At that point, I completely lost it, and I ran to my dad (who was downstairs at the time) for comfort. Thankfully my friend completed that sidequest for me later on because I honestly do not know if I could face it again... well maybe now I could, but back then I definitely was not able to. As you have seen, though, I haven't quite revealed the name of this abomination, but it does have a name... technically. It is simply referred to as "???" That is its name officially, and it definitely does not at all help my perception of it.
Of course, though, that was just one "Legend of Zelda" game, and while "Oracle of Ages" also featured it, it was only a 2-D sprite, so it wasn't nearly as bad, and while other games in the series had hand based enemies that did scare me, I was sure that I would never see a return of ??? after several games have gone by with not a single sign of it. This remained true until "Skyward Sword" gave me a sidequest that involved giving a letter to either a person Link knew or a ghost in the bathroom that I had not seen yet. Despite every fiber of my being telling me to give it to the person, I let my curiosity get the best of me and decided to give it to the bathroom ghost, and when I went inside the bathroom, I once again came face to hand with ??? and I slowly realized that its legacy will never truly end.
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