Hello again Story Club members. I'm Ivy, your ghostly host with the most and keeper of the strangest,

spookiest tales on earth. Today is another Ivy's chilling tale. This icy tale story club members might make you bundle up against the cold. It's deadly out there.

It's one I call, beware of Chiller, the icicle thief killer. Ethan Turn Jr. was sick of the heat.

He lived in Arizona where it was hot most of the year, but this summer was a particular scorcher.

It was so hot, they even closed the

neighborhood pool. No one was brave enough to walk the few blocks for a dip. Walking outside felt

like stepping into an oven set to broil. Ugh. Ethan was hot and bored. So he decided to sip

ice-cold soda, sit in the AC with a vent blowing cold air directly on him,

and play a new virtual reality game called icicle thief. His dad made video games for a living,

and this one was a prototype, meaning it hadn't been released yet and was still in the testing

stages. His father, Ethan Sr., had warned him not to play the game as there were still

a few bugs to work out. But playing a game with the winter setting on a boiling summer day

seemed like it would hit the spot. How bad could the glitches be in the game? It's not like he

could get hurt in virtual reality. I mean, it's a video game. Let's get real people. So Ethan Jr. slipped on the

gloves and headset and dove into the wintry virtual world. The goal of icicle thief was to

steal icicles from an opposing player's cabin by breaking them off, then sticking them on your

own cabin. The one that had the most icicles would win the round, and the cabin would evolve from your basic log cabin model up to an ice castle as you played better and better. But beware, because the Chiller was lurking around. Chiller was a spiky monster made of ice shards that didn't like you stealing icicles, so he would either freeze you or puncture you with his glazed

daggers. Either way, you'd lose a life. It's kind of a weird concept for a game, and Ethan told his father so.

But his dad said that angry birds seemed like a dumb idea for a game at first, too. Okay, whatever, Dad.

Ethan prowled around in the virtual snow.

It was nearly a foot deep.

Besides chiller getting you, you could also lose health points by being out in the cold too long.

...