The Mysterious Messenger
Fear, but also confusion, surge up in you.
This is a collaborative choose your own adventure story. Click here for the chapter guide. Return to the previous chapter here.
As much as you hate to do this, you’re not going to tell your partner about the text message. Who knows who sent you that warning, and why?
You read the texts again:
Do not go on Vacation Roulette. It’s a trap. You will not make it home.
You will find nothing but death.
Your automatic assumption is that whoever the texter is, they know the truth behind Vacation Roulette, and they sent you a message to save your life.
But what if you’re wrong? What if it’s just a practical joke? You’ve heard of the stupid pranks that kids get up to these days, just for their own amusement. Who’s to say that these messages aren’t more of the same?
It’s too much to think about. You put your phone away and go back to bed. But you can’t sleep at all, and an idea grows in your mind. So you take your phone out again and respond to the messages:
Who are you? And what proof do you have that you’re serious and not just pranking us?
At first, you think they won’t reply, because most pranksters don’t persevere for that long, right? Especially as dead silence might be scarier than anything they could write.
But to your surprise, your phone buzzes with a new message. Your stomach clenches before you even read it:
This isn’t a joke. I’m warning you because I’ve been there before. I was one of the lucky few who got out of there alive. For safety reasons, I won’t tell you my name. But I have friends who helped me hack into Vacation Roulette’s system, so I get notified every time someone signs up, and I can warn them.
Fear, but also confusion, surge up in you. You type:
Okay, assuming that you’re not messing with us, how did other people you texted respond? And I still don’t have any proof from you yet, just a claim that you’ve experienced this before.
A full ten minutes pass by before your phone vibrates again.
Look, I get how abrupt this is. If I were you, I would question a warning from a random stranger, too.
And don’t bother trying to trace this number, either. It’s a burner phone with a fake location, so no one can find me. The Vacation Roulette organizers would never let me live if they got to me.
As for responses, it varies. Some people wisely heeded my warning, but some others went ahead. I can only do so much.
For evidence, I wish I took photos or videos of what happened, but me and a few friends barely managed to escape, let alone have any time or forethought to get evidence.
We later tried hacking into the Vacation Roulette organisers’ accounts, both their business and personal ones. But we couldn’t find anything incriminating, or maybe they’ve hidden their records somewhere we can’t find. They’re way too cautious.
It sounds like they have more to say, but you don’t wait before you respond:
Huh, any prankster could say all that you just did. But collecting evidence would be hard if this was all true, I admit.
You pause here for a moment, before continuing:
Can you tell me what exactly happened to you, your friends, and the other vacationers?
The person on the other end is silent for a long while, but they finally write back:
It was so horrific that I don’t even want to describe it. Basically, they staged some benign-looking scenarios, but they had planned on killing us all along. Again, I don’t want to elaborate on what they did, but let’s say we should have seen them coming.
You stare with unblinking eyes towards the ceiling. How on earth do you deal with information like this?
