I Played A ‘Game’ With A Stranger From Reddit And I Hope She Rots In Prison

Would you rather. That’s all it was. I’d played the game when I was a kid. Would you rather have a lifetime supply of Skittles or Starbursts? Would you rather have a pet alligator or a pet tiger? Things like that. It was supposed to be fun. Harmless.

But then I grew up. I turned twenty-two. And I made the mistake of playing the game with a stranger on the internet.

No. Not a stranger. At least, I didn’t consider her a stranger at the time. At the time, I called her Amelia. Amy, for short. I had a bit of a crush on her.

We met on Reddit. She was always sharing creepypasta that freaked me the fuck out. Real dark stuff. I wished I could write as well as she did. So we started talking.

She didn’t want to exchange numbers, in case I was some psychotic killer, so we talked over Snapchat. We never sent any photos. Just used the chat box.

And one day, she asked if I would play would you rather. A creepy version. She’d come up with all the questions (taken from a list on Thought Catalog). All I had to do was answer. It was a character study for the novel she was writing, she said. It wouldn’t take long, she said.

And it didn’t. Five quick questions. Five quick answers.

When she finished, she thanked me and told me she had a lot of work to do. But she promised she’d talk to me when she found the time.

I went about my day – went on a jog around the block, went to work, went to the pub with my friends (I had a brief scare where I thought someone slipped a drug into my drink), and then went to bed. Like it was any other day. Like I’d wake up the next morning and repeat the routine.

But instead of being stirred by the alarm on my phone, I woke up to a strong fruity stench and an unopened message on Snapchat.

I threw off the blankets and put my feet on the ground before realizing I wasn’t in my apartment. I didn’t know where the fuck I was. All I could see were brown stained walls, wooden floors, and a boarded window. There was hardly any furniture. Just the bed I had slept on, a fridge on one side of the room, and table covered with a thick sheet on the other.

Did I only dream about going home the night before? Did someone actually slip a roofie into my beer? Did someone rape me? Kidnap me? Hurt me?

I unlocked my phone with the intention of calling a friend to pick me up, but for some reason, the phone app wouldn’t open. Neither would the messages. Or the mail. The only thing that seemed to work was Snapchat, so I checked my one and only message. From Amy.

It said, “It’s okay. You’re with me. You’re safe. Now, check the fridge.”

The hell? Did she know where I was? Maybe I’d messaged her the other night to tell her where I was going? Or maybe she finally told me where she lived and I was at her house? That must have been it. This must have been her place.

For whatever reason, I walked toward the fridge. Call it a gut feeling. One of those instincts that your body can’t ignore, no matter how loudly your mind is screaming at you to get the fuck out of there.

I wrapped my hand around the old-fashioned handle and yanked it open, expecting to see a plate of waffles or pancakes. Something to eat.

Instead, on the shelf eyelevel with me, was a severed hand, purple and puffy at the wrists. A wedding ring sat on one bloated finger.

It looked so fucking realistic. It must have been some sort of prop, a piece of horror movie memorabilia, but it looked legit.

My phone glowed with a new message: “Would you rather find a human head or a human hand in your kitchen?”

Amy had asked me the same question the other day. When we’d played would you rather. I had picked the hand. When she’d asked for my explanation, I’d said that someone could have their hand chopped off and still live, but they couldn’t have their head removed without dying.

Did she set this up?