“Shrek Golf is real. When I was a kid, I did play it. Although not many others knowing of its existence makes sense.
Let me explain.”
During the last stream, we spun the Wheel of Prompticality and it landed on “Discord Prompt.”
Chat then voted on this prompt from the #prompts Discord channel: a creepypasta based on Shrek golf.
Watch the process here, or scroll down for what we wrote.
Here’s what we came up with:
I never thought I’d tell this story. The memory was triggered inside me when I saw a mockup image online that someone posted. It was “Shrek Golf,” with Shrek and Donkey’s heads crudely Photoshopped onto the cover of some Xbox game. You know, the type of low-effort meme that gets ten-thousand upvotes on Reddit.
Most people commented about how they were surprised there’d never been a real Shrek golf game made before. During the green ogre’s heyday, you’d see his face on everything, from lunchboxes to popsicles to crocs. Odd that no business suit in some backroom decided that slapping him onto some company’s middling golf game would be an easy way to rack up a few million bucks from unsuspecting kids at Walmart with their parents.
But Shrek Golf is real. When I was a kid, I did play it. Although not many others knowing of its existence makes sense.
Let me explain.
Back in 2001, I was eleven years old, and my mom bought me a GameBoy Color for my birthday. All of my friends had PlayStations and Nintendo64s, but this was my first real console, so I felt like I was finally part of the cool crowd. Obviously we didn’t have a lot of money, so she only bought one game for me to play: Mario Golf, discounted to two dollars. I didn’t care though; I could finally play video games in my own bedroom!
I immediately snapped the cartridge into the GameBoy and clicked it on. Hearing the sounds come out of the tinny speakers was such a rush. I’d spent years playing Mario games on other people’s save files, but now I could finally start my own.
But as soon as the title screen came up, something was wrong. Instead of Mario and Princess Peach and everyone standing around the start menu, there was someone else. Shrek.
Like most kids in 2001, I’d seen the movie. It wasn’t my favorite or anything, but I at least knew about Shrek and Donkey and Farquaad. What I didn’t know, however, was why they were on my screen instead of Mario. And why the title was, in thick green letters, “Shrek Golf.”
I yelled for my mom, but she’d already left for work. She was working two jobs back then, cashier at CVS in the morning, and waitress at Denny’s in the evening. Most of my time at home was spent alone, doing homework or watching TV. So I only had two options: either watch the same Fairly Oddparents reruns I’d seen a hundred times, or play Shrek Golf and see what happened.
Of course, I pressed the Start button.
My disappointment at not playing Mario quickly faded. Shrek Golf was pretty dang good. As far as I could tell as an 11 year old, anyway. You got to pick which character to play as — Shrek, Donkey, Fiona, Dragon, Farquaad, Gingerbread Man — and then you just played golf.
The characters would say funny things, like Donkey would encourage you if you missed a hole, saying, “Don’t worry, in the morning, I’m making waffles!” Or when Farquaad hit a hole in one, he would say, “Some of you may lose, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” It was surprisingly well made and thought out for what should’ve been a quick movie cash-in game.
I played as Fiona and quickly made it through the first 9 beginner holes, coming in first place by a wide margin, like ten or twelve strokes or something. At the end, I was ready to move on to the next level.
But then something weird happened. Shrek’s face suddenly took up the entire screen, with the text, “Are you ready to go to the next layer?” pasted above it. Unlike the rest of the game, which was nicely made with decent Gameboy Color graphics, this part was just a still image, something that looked like a jpeg copy/pasted from MS Paint. Even the text was a weird dark blue color in a font like Times New Roman. There was no background music either, just the silent image filling the screen. It all felt out of place.
I pressed the A button, and the screen vanished as quickly as it had come, with a Shrek sound bite saying the phrase: “Ogres are like onions, we have layers.”
Just like that, it was back to the main menu, only now the text “Layer 1” was there in small lettering underneath the thick, green title. If I’m being honest, I didn’t really think about it all that much, I just started up another round of golf. Maybe I didn’t know enough about what video games were supposed to be like, not having played enough on my own before, or maybe, in the depths of my mind, I knew what was to come. And I wanted it.
I picked Fiona again, and started up another round. This time, before the game began, there was a short cutscene with Shrek, wobbling around as he spoke through the GameBoy’s midi speakers.
“Le’ss hev some foon,” Shrek said, his polygonal eyes staring out of the screen. “How ‘bout this? If ye win this round, I’ll tell ye a secret. But if ye lose, then I’ll have to peel off a layer.”
He said it in such a fun-sounding way, that I didn’t hesitate to press A again and start the round. This time, the computer wasn’t pulling any punches. Last round, I’d been able to win by merely hitting one or two over par. This time, the computer was getting par and birdies left and right. By the final, ninth hole, my buttons were slick with sweat, and my eyes strained from concentrating so hard. Even then, at the final tally, Fiona came up one point short of everyone else.
Before I even had a chance to press a button to move on from my second-place at the trophy ceremony, the same MS Paint Shrek face crackled onto the screen. This time, it was slightly more pixelated, and the text was harder to read, but I could still make it out: “Are you ready to go to the next layer?”
Undeterred by my loss, I pressed A, and the same sound byte as before played, but this time it was slightly distorted, slower, with a staticky hiss that hadn’t been there before. “Ooogres are like onionsss, we haaaave layersssss.”
Back to the main menu, now with “Layer 2” beneath the title. For some reason, just staring at it made my head sting, but I was determined to win. I pressed A, and the polygonal Shrek was back.
“Le’ss have some more foon,” he said, “Same deal, laddie. Ye win this round, I’ll tell ye a secret no one knows. But if ye lose, then I’ll have to peel off a layer.”
A button. Fiona. It was time to win.
I played as hard as I possibly could, but the computer was too strong. Even with my own pars and birdies, I couldn’t keep up with their eagles. Even worse, as I kept playing, my headache just got worse. It felt better when I stared hard at the screen, but any time I tried to look away it was like rocks scraping against my temples. I had to keep my eyes on Shrek Golf.
I lost the round by three strokes. As soon as Fiona was given her third-place bronze trophy, the screen snapped away, back to MS Paint Shrek. This time, the image was so blurred and the text was so scrambled that I probably wouldn’t have been able to read it if I hadn’t seen it twice before: “Ar ou rdy t g o th nxt lyr?”
As soon as I pressed A, the headache went from searing to splitting. I wanted to press my hand against my forehead to make sure it hadn’t been blown off in an explosion of pain, but I couldn’t bear to move my fingers away from the GameBoy.
“Layer 3.” I had to continue.
I don’t need to tell you how long this went on for. You can probably guess. It was the same repetition, over and over. Polygonal Shrek would appear, make me the same deal, and I would lose, going deeper and deeper to another layer each time.
By Layer 5, the ending image was completely indecipherable, and by Layer 7, the Shrek sound bite was no more than a hellish shriek. I swore that at Layer 8, cold green liquid started to ooze out of the speakers and dribble on my fingers, and at Layer 9, I was surrounded by darkness. The only light was the small screen, held in hands I could no longer feel.
I pressed A. Layer 10.
“This’s yer las’ chance, laddie,” Shrek said, “If ye win this round, I’ll tell ye a secret no one should know. But if ye lose, then off comes the las’ layer.”
I pressed A. Chose Fiona. The 9 holes began.
Let me tell you, I have no idea how I played that round. Honestly. My fingers had no senses left in them, same as my arms and face. All I had was eyes to see the screen and ears to hear the cheers of all the holes-in-one that I made.
Somehow, I was killing it. Every hole, I got it in on the first shot. Maybe it was because I’d been playing the game for so long that the controls were now a part of me. I could somehow know through mere intuition the path I needed to send the ball on to get what I wanted.
Nine holes. Only nine strokes. Even then, I only won by a single stroke. Finally, Fiona had her gold trophy at the end celebration. I feel like I breathed a sigh of relief, but I wish I hadn’t. The victory cutscene hadn’t even played for a full second when the ending screen flashed back up again, and I felt like I’d been sucked out of an airlock.
The screen didn’t show Shrek. It showed his promise. There, in blurry text. His secret that I was owed. A secret that no one should know.
When my mom finally found me, hours later, I was lying on the floor, my mouth locked open in a wide, contorted scream.
It’s only been recently that I can think back to that time without relapsing into shock. I guess that’s thanks to almost two decades of therapy that mom took on a third job to pay for. Rest her soul. She died without ever knowing what caused this to happen to me. I tried to tell her, I tried to tell all the doctors and psychiatrists. But how can you explain something that is not meant to be known.
There’s a reason the best philosophers said ignorance is bliss.
Be sure to check out the video for a dramatic reading, as well as a bit of the process for how it got written.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Wikimedia Commons
