When I entered the Sept. 11 Digital Archive, I did not expect to murder Osama bin Laden. Nevertheless, I found myself with a handgun. After I agreed to “Shoot that worthless motherfucker,” I fired a bullet into his eye socket. In another animation, a noosed bin Laden teeters atop a wall-eyed camel with the cue “Hang Him!” In a bit of macabre symmetry, players may even weaponize box cutters and commercial airliners.

The Kill Bin Laden game is among hundreds of homespun Flash animations—like The Torture Chamber, Fry Osama Bin Laden, and Turban Shooting—that speak to the undercurrents of confusion, fear, and hate in the aftermath of Sept. 11. In spite of or perhaps because of their DIY quality, these unofficial records invite visitors into a grieving process that is simultaneously intimate, ugly, and elliptical.