Work Text:
January 14th, 2014
As you might’ve heard, a man named C.J. (Cody Joseph) Do, also known as “ilovesonicx11”, was arrested for assault on a police officer today. I haven’t heard from him in a while, but after some research, a lot of people associated me with him for a while now. Since the harassment hasn’t changed for the past couple weeks, I might as well say everything I knew about him.
C.J. was a close friend of mine. We met during my first day of high school when I said I liked the Sonic franchise. We hung out a lot during lunch and basically became best friends. He told me how much he liked Sonic, and even showed me a drawing of his OC. It was basically an uncolored sketch of Sonic with inverted eyes on his notebook. What I noticed is that while everything about his OC was all black and white, his pupils were red. When I asked him about this, he said “it’s all for the style.” The OC’s name was “Lord.”
By the time when I graduated high school and had to go to college, C.J.’s family moved to Washington. While it was disappointing, we still were together as we were friends on DeviantArt. As said before, his username was “ilovesonicx11”. We spent a lot of time there together, sharing art ideas and such. Around that time, he was also into ROM hacks. I’ve played most of his ROM hacks, and they were actually pretty decent at the time.
Around my second year in college, probably around late 2010, he messaged me. The message said that he wasn’t gonna be on DeviantArt for a while, due to college or some other issue, as he said. I felt bad, and messaged him back, telling him to hope for the best and do well with whatever's happening. He didn’t respond after that.
August 9th, 2011 was when he sent me a message I will never forget. He wasn’t hesitant at all to say it. He told me “Someone took my girlfriend from me.” I asked him what he meant by this, and if there was anything I could do. He didn’t respond. Later that day, he posted a picture on DeviantArt. It was a drawing of Lord. Usually he posted wholesome art of Lord, like eating chili dogs or riding a rollercoaster, but this one was different.
This one showed Lord spinning like a buzzsaw, slicing some person’s arms off. Blood splattered from them with Lord having a terrifying grin. It was brutal. He even wrote something on his drawing. The quality of the image was terrible, but I could make out the words “For Megan.” I had no idea who this “Megan” was or why C.J. hated them so much. From what I can remember from the description, it said “please come back jessie”. I assumed this was related to what happened to his girlfriend.
The day after that, he posted more gory art of Lord killing Megan. It showed Megan getting violently decapitated, neck twisted, stomach ripped apart, face peeled off, he didn’t stop. However, one of them surprised me the most. One of them showed Lord running over Megan’s face with a motorcycle. Lines depicted him moving the motorcycle forwards and backwards, claiming that Lord ran over Megan’s face several times. What surprised me is that when I looked at the description of that specific art, it said “i did what megan had done to you.” Whatever Megan did, is that why he was doing all of this?
Before his DeviantArt account was taken down, he made a post linking everyone to his new ROM hack. I felt hesitant about downloading and playing it, given how his art’s been for the past few days, but regardless, I wouldn’t be a good friend if I told him I didn’t want to play his hack, so I downloaded it and played it.
His ROM hack started off like a typical Sonic game, after blue text saying “ILOVESONICX11 PRESENTS” came and faded, it showed me the title screen of Sonic 3. What I noticed is that throughout the entire hack, Sonic was replaced by Lord. He was white, but had black eyes with red pupils. Starting off with Angel Island Zone Act 1, there was no music, but it played like normal. By the time I got to the Act 2 boss, I noticed something. Robotnik was replaced by that “Megan” person from his drawings. When I defeated the boss, it suddenly cut to a cutscene.
Megan was heavily damaged from the boss explosion, with bruises everywhere. When Lord stared at Megan’s state, he suddenly grew a creepy and unnerving grin. As he walked closer, Megan cried for help. Tears came out of her eyes as he attempted to crawl to escape. That’s when Lord made his move. He performed a spindash and sliced his arms and legs off. As Megan cried and begged for Lord to stop, he didn’t. In fact, he spindashed onto Megan’s face. Screaming in pain, flesh ripping apart, an eye flying off her face, it was brutal. Even after all that, Megan somehow stayed alive. Seriously, she was still breathing, and she managed to choke out whatever was left of her teeth. As I thought it couldn’t get worse, he started to strangle her. I swear to god, I could hear actual choking being heard. The cutscene suddenly went to Megan’s POV, as her vision started to fade.
As the cutscene ended, it went back to the game. This time, I wasn’t playing as Lord. Instead, I was playing as Megan in her current state, with her face split open, teeth ripped out, left eye peeling out, somehow still breathing. How she managed to survive what Lord done to her still boggles me to this day. There were no loops, hills, Badniks, nothing like that. All that was left was the background, set on fire. For a couple seconds, windows kept showing up on my screen. My computer wasn’t that great at the time, but I could make out whatever gibberish was in the windows.
“Kvu'a ybu, Tlnhu. Lmtr axkx.” or something like that.
With the controls still working, all I did was move right. As I saw Megan run for it, I could see Lord behind her. As Lord appeared, I noticed something I wish I never did. I could hear Megan crying and hyperventilating, not like an overused SFX, it sounded like an actual woman was crying, screaming for someone to help her. As Lord caught up to Megan, it cut to another cutscene. It showed Lord biting Megan, ripping her skin and organs in the process. As Lord was laughing manically, Megan was screaming, possibly the most horrific scream I’ve heard in my life. Don’t ask me how he managed to get that audio. By some miracle, the cutscene managed to crash the hack, causing it to force quit. Without hesitation, I managed to find the file location and permanently delete it. I would do anything to forget whatever I just saw.
After that, his DeviantArt account was taken down. I felt sick after that hack ended. I quickly messaged C.J. about that hack and asked him why he would go as far to make a hack like that. Surely, making gory art was already enough, so why go there? I didn’t tell him THAT part, of course, I didn’t want to be insensitive. He didn’t respond until days later, when all he said was
“Don’t you know what Megan did to me?”
He then began to explain everything.
Megan was the younger sister of Jessie, C.J.’s girlfriend. Megan always hated Jessie for some odd reason. I think it was something about favoritism, or something like that. He told me before the day C.J. became the way he was, when Jessie and him were walking, C.J. told Jessie to wait for him while he went to get ice cream for both of them. The moment he left, Megan started to intentionally run over Jessie with her motorcycle. Over and over, wheel on head, it was brutal. C.J. tried to help Jessie, but by that point, the damage was done. C.J. attempted to kill Megan for what she had done, but the park guards noticed and broke up the fight.
While Megan was arrested, C.J. still wasn’t satisfied. He wanted Megan to suffer more, for ruining his life, for bringing him to his state, for taking his love life away from him. He started drawing Lord killing Megan in gruesome ways, that part didn’t surprise me much. What surprised me of what he said about the screaming in the hack. He told me that he accidentally recorded himself screaming, reflecting on all the stuff that’s been happening to him for the past week. What he was doing at the time, I don’t wanna know.
I haven’t talked to him since.
Fast forward to the present, from what I heard about his recent news story, he beat up a child, just because her name was Megan, sharing the name of the person who killed Jessie. God knows what he's done to her. Once the police were noticed, he punched an officer in the stomach and attempted to pound him. After that, he’s been arrested and has been charged for 10 years in prison.
Hopefully that will teach him something.
- Garbiella “multifandomfan4eva“ Barney
UPDATE:
January 14, 2024
After some dusting around my house, I managed to find my old phone. It was dusty, the screen was slightly cracked, but it still worked. I don’t think I haven’t used it since 2015, I believe. I used it more for quite a while since I’m interested in older technology, and it was a nostalgic experience. Then someone messaged me. It was from someone who I never thought to interact with ever again. It was, of course, C.J. He told me how he’s been released from prison and how he needed someone to help him. I don’t know if C.J.’s health got better or worse, but I sent him my therapist’s phone number. He didn’t respond after that.
I don’t know what he’s doing now, but I hope my therapist gives him what he needs.