1.
This last May, my high school had a lockdown.
I was home sick at the time, so my knowledge of the events that happened that day come
mostly from what I have heard through administrators and classmates after the incident, and the
text messages I received during it.
The administrators haven't disclosed much about the situation, which is only making
the rumours surrounding this worse.
After a months of trying to make sense of all this, I am just tired and confused.
Maybe someone out there reading this can finally help me.
I'll try to provide as much background information as I can in order for this to make sense.
I had been texting my best friend, Andrew, all day while vegging out on my bed with netflix
playing in the background.
He first texted me about the lockdown at 11:27, which means he would have been in his 4th
hour Spanish class.
Being that the seniors had just graduated, his class was quite small - only 6 students
besides him in it.
Below are some the texts we sent to each other that day, starting at 11:27.
L stands for my name, Lindsey, and A stands for Andrew.
A: dude holy shit A: lindsey
A: REPLY LINDSEY L: What?
A: the school just went into lockdown L: like a drill???
Or what?
A: I think its for real A:
A: the P.A. came on during class and said "students and administrators please go into
level three lockdown procedure.
This is not a drill" A: like every ones in the corner
L: wait level three?
Doesnt that mean someones in the building!?
L: shit man im shaking now the school better not be ing with you all
A: its so quiet now A: there isnt a sound in the entire building
A: this doesnt seem like they are faking us out
L: I just told my mom, she hasnt heard anything about it yet
A: wait A: I can hear someone walking down the hallway
A: probably the office people coming to let us out
L: what if it isnt??
A: seriously stop lindsey A: u asshole
L: sorry L: you probably have nothing to worry about
though man A: I can hear them going down the hallway
turning all the door handles L: yeah thats what they do during a drill
L: make sure the teachers all locked em A: they are talking
L: yeah then its definitely administrators A: no
A: it doesnt make any sense A: its all gibberish
A: I dont think its even in english A: what the hell
L: drew you guys are okay though right?
Your door is locked and lights off?
L: have they gone in any other classrooms?
L: andrew???
Hello?
A: my mom isn't answering A: some one next to me is crying
A: he's outside my classroom L: dont make a sound ok?
L: andrew?
L: did he leave?
L: hello!!!
L: ANDREW L: ANDREW HELLO
L: please text me back L: andrew?
He never responded.
From what I have been told, the school eventually came out of lockdown mode.
When they went around to each classroom to check in, Andrew's classroom door was still
locked.
They called out to the people inside, and received no response back.
Firefighters eventually knocked the door down.
When they got in, there was nobody inside.
The whole classroom was empty.
Officials have offered no explanation as to where they are, or what happened.
I guess most people in town eventually moved on, shifted their attention elsewhere.
It seems as though nobody even cares anymore.
But I still do, and I need answers.
I need to find my best friend.
2.
In Euclidian Geometry, a parallelogram is a (non self-intersecting) quadrilateral with
two pairs of parallel sides.
During my freshman year of high school, I had third period Geometry Honors in a portable
classroom- a rickety structure with aluminum siding that is the size of a single classroom
but stands as its own building.
Portables A-Z were lined up in two neat rows of 13 outside the main school building.
These individual classrooms presented the unique dilemma that the students inside them
walked to each portable outside for long enough to get uncomfortably wet in the rain, but
not long enough to spend precious time putting on a raincoat.
I'm certain that most teenage girls would be worried about their outfits, but I was
an exception.
Despite the inconvenience, I enjoyed having class in a portable.
It was quieter out there, and when it rained the drumming noise on the aluminum roof could
easily soothe me to sleep.
And, if the wind blew just right on the metal stairs, a harmony would ring out through the
classroom.
The first day of school my Geometry teacher seemed completely normal.
Ms. Hambly was a middle-aged lady with freckles and rusty brown hair who had decorated the
portable with poster-sized memes relevant to math and 50 cent craft shapes you'd find
somewhere like Hobby Lobby.
She gave us a little printed-off infographic about the year that included some class information
and logon codes for online programs like the online textbook.
It seemed she'd doodled a bunch of shapes along the edges of the infographic while she
was waiting for it to get copied- I had assumed she was just bored.
She wished us a great year, and luck with the rest of our teachers before she left.
The second day of school, Ms. Hambly has us go around the room and said which shapes were
our favorites- a real throwback to kindergarten.
(I answered a dodecagon, because it was the most obscure thing I could think of.)
After everyone finished, she told us that her favorite shapes parallelograms.
The foam shapes on the wall, I noticed, were all parallelograms of some sort.
"Parallelograms are so easy.
They have their definition in their name.
And they're a riddle.
They're a puzzle that I'm always deciphering, and soon, you'll be deciphering it too.
This year we're going to learn a lot about parallelograms.
Soon, they'll become your favorite shape too.
I promise."
It was a promise.
I wasn't convinced.
The first odd thing I noticed about Ms. Hambly was that she left all the windows and doors
open in the portable, even with the air conditioning or heating running full blast.
This wasn't a problem during the summer, because I had Geometry in the early morning
when it was still cool out.
But once the fall crept along the entire class began to get chilly.
"I get creeped out with the doors closed," she explained.
"We're all alone out here.
You never know what could spring out at us in this room.
Bring a jacket to my class from now on so you stay warm."
Rhomboids are quadrilaterals whose opposite sides are parallel and adjacent sides are
unequal, and whose angles are not right angles.
Rhomboids are the most common shape to be addressed as parallelograms, although rectangles
and squares are also considered parallelograms.
Our unit on parallelograms wasn't that far into the year.
She started off the unit with a long speech on the significance of parallelograms, which
I fell asleep during.
I wish so badly now that I hadn't- there might have been information in her speech
that could give me some sort of clue or reason as to why she did what she did.
She assigned us a packet on parallelograms that night.
The next morning she walked into class frantically, as if something was wrong.
"Get out your homework," she said quickly.
"I tell you every single day to get out your homework and you never do it.
You should know what to expect by now."
We did, but three or four people hadn't done theirs, which sent Ms. Hambly into a
sort of rage.
"You're just trying to make me have a bad day, aren't you?
Well, I'll tell you something, and that's that you can't control my emotions.
You can't.
And nobody can.
Only I can.
So you can stop trying to make my day miserable."
The lights in the dingy portable caught her face, and she looked worn-down, almost frail,
and her hair was frizzy, as if it hadn't been washed in a few days.
"Fine, throw it away.
Pretend like the homework was never assigned.
This is a bad habit that you have to break."
She opened up a powerpoint and adjusted the projector so that it was on the board.
She muttered under her breath, "I'm trying, I'm trying so hard, but somedays I just
can't do this."
I was driving home after winter color guard practice at about 8:45 or so, and as we turned
to leave the school via the road that passes right by the portables, I saw Ms. Hambly walking
towards the staff parking lot at a fast pace, clutching a stack of papers to her chest.
She looked up as our car passed, and when she saw me in the front seat, she gave a weak
smile my way.
"Who's that?"
my mom asked.
"Ms. Hambly," I answered.
"She teaches Geometry."
"Is she nice?"
"She's nice enough."
A parallelogram with base b and height h can be divided into a trapezoid and a right triangle,
and rearranged into a rectangle.
This means that the area of a parallelogram is the same as that of a rectangle with the
same base and height.
Our unit on parallelograms intensified the next day when Ms. Hambly walked into class,
didn't say anything about the homework from the previous night, and pulled up a picture
of a parallelogram on the projector.
It had some parallel and congruent markings but nothing else.
"Look at that," she said, motioning towards the parallelogram.
"It's just a shape, to you, but don't you get it?
There's always something more.
What does it mean?
There's got to be something more.
Somedays I can see something more.
That's all I'm here for; that's the whole reason I do this, because Euclid clearly
saw something and I need to find it to.
There's some other meaning to all of this.
Don't you feel it?"
I could already hear the snickers around the class, but Ms. Hambly was dead serious.
Ms. Hambly paced by my desk, and I caught a whiff of her.
She smelled awful- almost like she hadn't been showering, and she was looking increasingly
frail by the day.
Her skin was pale like chalk, and her fingernails were torn off like she'd been chewing them
off in agony.
But the oddest thing I noticed was that she had drawn all over her arm.
I could only see what was poking out of the sleeve of her sweater: tons of little tiny
parallelograms all over her wrist.
The sum of the distances from any interior point of a parallelogram to the sides is independent
of the location of the point.
(This is an extension of Viviani's theorem).
The converse also holds: If the sum of the distances from a point in the interior of
a quadrilateral to the sides is independent of the location of the point, then the quadrilateral
is a parallelogram.
Luckily, the day afterwards was Saturday, and we had our first snow day of the year
on Monday.
When we returned on Tuesday, the color had returned to Ms. Hambly's skin, she no longer
stunk, and the parallelograms had been scrubbed off of her wrist.
Her hair was thick and luscious.
She jumped right into a well-planned lesson on proofs for parallelograms, complete with
a powerpoint, and assigned a sensible amount of homework in the textbook.
Somehow it was a relief- a weight lifted off my shoulders.
Nobody in the class, even Ms. Hambly herself, commented on her sudden turnaround in behavior.
But she seemed- detached, and artificial, as if somehow it was merely a facade.
I fell ill with a fever on Wednesday, and by Thursday it was clear that I had strep
throat.
I was absent from school on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday as well.
On Thursday, Matt (a good friend of mine) sent me a text (I have these saved in my phone;
maybe I'll upload in the future): Hey, where u been?
Can't get through math without you.
Hambly going batshit again.
I responded: Really sick.
You wouldn't want this.
Even if it meant missing Geometry.
What kind of batshit... parallelograms again?
Yeah He texted me Monday.
Hey N, not ing around, Hambly's crazy.
Worse than ever this time.
What'd she do?
FLIPPED out at me and started yelling about those damn parallelograms.
I swear she's, like, always high.
She smells really bad again too.
Of course it's you.
Did you not do your homework again, dipshit?
That's beside the point.
;) stfu you know this class is stupid.
I [our friend] is getting a little freaked out over her too and pretty much nothing phases
her I started to worry a bit again, and so I convinced
my mom that I was sick enough to stay home until lunch on Wednesday so I wouldn't have
to deal with Geometry.
But Thursday was another deal altogether.
When I walked into math class, the entire portable stank- reeked, in fact.
Ms. Hambly's hair was sticking out all over the place in a frizzy mess.
Her eyes were wild and bloodshot, like she hadn't gotten any sleep recently.
Even after the bell rang and all the students filed in, covered their noses, and waited
for class to start, Ms. Hambly did nothing.
She sat at her desk, muttering things to herself and shuffling papers, and every once and awhile
she'd stand up and walk around the classroom (much to the dismay of our sinuses) but then
promptly sit back down and began to scribble things on pieces of paper.
It was the oddest thing I'd ever seen.
The rest of the class didn't seem to care.
I vowed that I would ask her if she needed help.
I sat, terrified, rocking in my chair, working up the nerve to ask if she was alright, and
if there was anything I could do.
The bell rang, everybody else left, and I nervously crept over to her desk.
"Ms. Hambly?"
"Hmm?" she looked up at me, but her eyes seemed accusing.
"Uh-" I froze.
"I was, uh, I was absent.
For a week.
Well, a week and a day, but yeah.
So when should I get the work?"
She paused for a long moment, staring me down suspiciously, and then told me, "Come see
me after school.
I'll give it to you."
I left the portable, and the smell of fresh air hit my nose.
It's amazing how wonderful nothing at all can smell when you compare it to something
much worse.
The sum of the squares of the lengths of the four sides of a parallelogram equals the sum
of the squares of the lengths of the two diagonals.
That afternoon I returned to Portable A to find Ms. Hambly asleep at her desk.
She was snoring loudly, and her body heaved with every breath in and out.
There were papers scattered all over the table.
As I dared to walk closer, I realized that they were covered in parallelograms.
There were hundreds of them- thousands, even, with words scribbled in the margins trying
to prove something or another.
I wish I could show you what they looked like, but they are all either in police custody
right now, or destroyed.
Some parallelograms had congruent markings, others had angle measures, and the penmanship
was nearly illegible.
I couldn't make out a single word, but the writing seemed fiercely determined.
The ink often bled out onto the page as if Ms. Hambly had been pressing too hard as she
wrote.
"Ms. Hambly?"
I asked.
As she looked up, her face struck me.
It was weak and worn- down.
She had a large dot of blue ink on her forehead from falling asleep against the ballpoint
pen.
Her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying.
"I'm so glad you're here," she told me.
"I need your help."
"Of course," I said softly.
"What?"
"You have to see something in all of this," she told me.
"You have to understand that there's something more than just these numbers and these figures.
Please."
She began to hand me paper after paper filled with her nonsensical diagrams and numbers.
They came from everywhere: drawers in her desk, underneath the computer.
She even rolled up her sleeves to show me the drawings on her wrists.
"I can't rest until I get it."
"I'm sorry," I said suddenly, standing up.
"I have to go.
My- my mom's waiting."
A lie, and we both knew it.
"Please," Ms. Hambly begged.
"I know that you can see it.
You're smart.
I knew it from the very first day.
You were the answer to this question I've been asking my entire life.
Take these.
Take them."
She began to shove the papers towards me.
"Can't you see it?
I know you can.
I'm almost there.
I'm so, so close to figuring out the answer.
To all of this."
"I have to go," I muttered, and I ran.
I full-out sprinted away from Portable A, away from my school, and up to the first place
I knew she wouldn't find me.
The marching band practice field.
I sat on the lamppost where my instrument section used to gather for after-practice
sectionals.
And I cried, because I was utterly and absolutely terrified.
That night Ms. Hambly slashed her wrists in the shape of a parallelogram.
She bled to death on the floor of Portable A (the door was still wide open).
The janitor found her that night during his final trash run.
The school was closed for a week during investigation, and then Christmas break started.
Rumors were all over the school, but I didn't confirm or deny a single one of them, because
I knew that the parallelograms were between me and Ms. Hambly.
And, of course, the police.
When we returned in January, we had a new teacher who was much kinder to us.
She didn't like parallelograms as much, and she closed the doors and windows to the
portable (which was newly replaced, and so it had the best heating system of all 26).
The weeks following Ms. Hambly's death, I became quite interested in parallelograms.
There is something about them that is quite mysterious to me.
They have so many properties and laws that it seems that the entirety of the world can
be proved through them.
I found myself up late one night, 7 library books on Euclid spread across the table, trying
to decipher what it all meant.
Ms. Hambly had meant what she said: I have the answer.
As soon as I realized how distraught I had become that night, I threw the books to the
ground.
I ripped two of them to shreds in anger.
There is something I am missing, and there is something we are all missing.
And I will not stop short of insanity trying to prove it.
3.
Recently I took a job at a small private high school in the administration.
The school is in a very isolated area in the woods far from my town, which almost lead
me not to take the job, but the pay they offered was very good for my first job out of college
and I needed the money so I packed up and moved.
On my first day I was greeted by many people but one who stuck out was a short man in his
sixties with glasses and white hair.
He introduced himself as the head of the history department.
He told me how glad he was for someone as energetic as me to take on the job and that
he knew I was going to do a great job.
He said his name was Tom Bennet.
However, something seemed off about him that I just couldn't place.
Over the next few months I slowly adjusted to living life in this small town.
Cell Phone coverage was spotty, the grocery store had a limited selection, and there were
very few people my age.
Through that time I ran into Tom a few times around the school.
Usually in the halls of the school or he stopped by my office.
Despite getting to know him more I still had some uneasy feeling about him which wasn't
confirmed until today.
This is where it gets weird.
One role of my job is to run and manage our schools Facebook and Instagram pages.
Every Thursday we follow the popular trend of "ThrowBack Thursday" or "#TBT"
as many of the high schoolers call it.
What it means is that every Thursday I will dig threw the schools archives and find old
pictures and post them.
Today I decided to find an old picture from a yearbook to post on the page and try and
see if anyone can identify the year it was from.
To do this I went through old yearbooks looking for the perfect photo.
I grabbed a stack of yearbooks from the 60s from the archives and started looking through
them.
The second year I looked at was 1968 and I found the perfect photo of kids playing on
the grass field.
I scanned it and blew it up on the computer screen and posted it to the Facebook and Instagram
pages.
Having nothing on my schedule for about an hour I decided to look through the yearbook,
as I got to the teachers page I almost dropped the book on the grand.
There listed with all the teachers was the name Tom Bennet and a picture of him.
That was in 1968, and he hasn't aged a day since then.
Not knowing what to do I opened the current employee directly but Tom Bennet was not listed.
What should I do Reddit?
UPDATE: Friday 1/9/15 4:45 EST: Hi Again Reddit, Sorry for the delay in getting
back to you.
I've had a busy and eventful day.
I got to work early today and searched through many yearbooks and found him pictured in all
the yearbooks from 1964-1973, but not after that.
I was given a lot to do including editing a promotional video for admissions so I set
researching Tom to the side until lunch.
At lunch today I was talking with one of the teachers and casually mentioned how I was
looking in old yearbooks and saw a teacher named Tom Bennet, and asked if she knew anything
about him.
From the look on her face I could tell she did, but I was not prepared for what she said...
She told me "you must have been looking at old school papers also.
Tom was a teacher here for about 10 years working in history.
He was a very good history teacher and all the students loved him.
Anyways one day he doesn't show up, then again the next, and again the next.
The school was unable to get ahold of him, fearing the worse due to his old age they
show up at his house with the police to find it completely a mess.
Drawers are turned out stuff is on the ground but he is no where to be seen.
He was never found again.
The police investigated but found nothing.
If you want you can probably go to the police station and talk to them about it."
So I am heading there now and thought I would post to you guys here first.
4.
I just experienced something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I ask of you only one thing, read this entire story.
I understand that it is long but the only way you can understand what has happened to
me is if you know about what happened to me in high school.
I met Sean on the first day of high school, freshman year.
Sean had the locker next to mine, and I had just settled into my locker and slammed it
shut when the force of me shutting my locker caused all of Sean's books to fall out of
his locker shelf.
I stopped and thought to my self, "Great, five minutes in and I've already done something
wrong," but Sean just looked at his books, looked at me, and then said, "Man, look
at how much space that gave me," as he pointed at his now empty shelf.
I laughed and he introduced himself to me.
We sat together at lunch that day and realized that we had a lot in common.
He liked basketball, fishing, and WWE wrestling, which is pretty much exactly what I liked
too.
We talked about these things during that lunch, and we sat next to each other the next day
and the next day and pretty much every single day after that.
We were best friends for most of high school, but things started to change junior year.
It was at the beginning of fall, right around that time in September where the weather is
extremely cold in the morning but it feels like summer in the evening.
Sean came to lunch that day and he was looking a bit down.
My other friend, Douglas, told him he looked awful (being the sensitive person he is) and
asked him why.
Sean sighed and said that he was just going through a phase and was depressed about how
life can't go on forever and that he was probably going to end up living his in a cubical.
Douglas laughed thinking it was a joke but I reassured him that that probably won't happen,
but my "reassurance" didn't have any effect on him whatsoever.
He continued to be depressed for over a week and I began to worry.
I wanted the old Sean back, the one that I could crack jokes with or the one who didn't
care when his books fell out of his locker.
That weekend, Douglas had invited me to his cousin's party and I thought that maybe
a party would get Sean to feel better so I told Douglas to invite him too.
Sean initially declined but I talked him into it.
The party was at Douglas' cousin's house, which was right outside of town.
It was one of the wildest parties that I had ever been to.
I instantly lost track of Sean and Douglas, but I just hung around with some other juniors
I ran into.
Eventually I found Sean and he was looking a lot happier than was earlier that day.
I was happy that I had succeeded in my plan and I enjoyed the rest of the party.
On Monday, Sean was in a great mood and was himself again.
Douglas looked at him and said, "You look a lot better, what happened over the weekend?
Did you hookup with someone at the party?"
Sean replied, "No.
Actually, I met a few guys at the party who were really great.
They understood my depression and told me about a club I could join to get rid of it."
"A club?"
I asked as I ate my lunch.
"Yeah," He excitingly said, "You'd love it, they know how to help you find inner
peace and happiness."
"Sounds more like a self help group," Douglas said and we all laughed.
On Tuesday, I was in calculus with Sean.
Calculus is the only class I have with Sean, and we usually end up talking instead of learning
anything, but there was a big test coming up so I was trying to listen to everything
our teacher was saying and taking as many notes as I possibly could.
I was focusing on the board when Sean passed me a strip of paper.
I opened it up, expecting a "that's what she said" joke about something that the
teacher had just said but instead it was a bunch of random letters.
NIY BUQH Y JIKY I was confused and was wondering what the
letters meant so I sent a note back to Sean asking him what the slip of paper was.
He sent me back a note saying, "It's a backwards message, hold it up to a mirror
when it's dark and it will reveal a message."
I wrote out the letters trying to flip them around but they still only came up as gibberish.
I sent Sean another note telling him that his note didn't work, but then he sent me
back another note telling me that he had gotten it from his new club and that it only works
when you use a mirror.
I thought that the note was a prank so I put in my pocket and forgot about it.
That night, as I was doing my homework, I reached into my pocket to grab my phone, but
instead I pulled out the note Sean had given to me.
I looked at the random letters and thought I would try it out.
I put the note up to my bathroom mirror and nothing happened.
The letters were still gibberish and had no meaning.
I texted Sean telling him that his note doesn't work, but then he texted me back asking if
I turned off the lights.
I realized that that was one of the things he told me to do but I didn't think that
turning off the lights would do anything.
When I turned off the lights and held the note to my mirror, I was astounded to find
that there was a message on the paper.
HAVE A NICE DAY I stared at the note until my mind started
to think of the tons of different ways that this type of messaging could be used.
I texted Sean back right away, and asked him how he did that.
He told me that it wasn't him, but his councilor and that only his councilor knew how.
My excitement sank as I realized that Sean didn't know how it worked so I told him
to ask his councilor next time he went to a meeting.
A few days past when Sean handed me another note in Calculus.
BEQWAL TYI TTBILL OYQER ZS PDABIGHJK I looked at it and was excited to go home
and tryout the message trick again.
After Calculus I asked Sean if his councilor had told him the trick.
He said that his councilor couldn't tell him the trick just yet, but that he would
learn soon.
I was a bit disappointed but I knew that once we knew the trick, we could screw around with
the teachers a ton and not get caught.
That night, I took out the newest slip of paper.
It was longer than the last, but after I examined the last note, I realized that the amount
of random letters equaled the amount of letters that each word had in the message.
So when the first message said "NIY" it had the same amount of letters as "DAY".
I turned off the lights and held the message to the mirror.
HAPPINESS IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER Man the messages Sean's councilor wrote
were weird, but the trick was just too awesome.
I didn't care about what the message said, just how it said it.
I started to try and think of ways that this trick could work, but no matter how hard I
thought, I couldn't think of anything.
I went to bed thinking about the message, "happiness is just around the corner"
The next day, Sean talked about how the club was beginning to talk about depression and
that they were helping him get over his fear of death.
He said that they told him to treat death not as an enemy but rather as a friend.
"Death is what pushes us to accomplish a great life," he told Douglas and me.
I couldn't help but think that that was a strange way to look at death, and that maybe
it wasn't the best description of it, but it did have a point.
As humans, we do strive to make our mark on the world, and death is kind of like our dead
line.
A few days later, Sean passed me another note.
Sean still hadn't learned the secret, so I started to forget about it and I moved on
to other things.
FIG KL LIY ASDE X O'YU I saw the apostrophe and was a bit curious.
Did punctuation carry over in the process, or did it just become another letter.
For this reason, I decided I would try it at home to see if there are any rules to this
message thing.
I got home, turned off the lights and held the slip to the mirror.
IT'S A GOOD DAY TO DIE I froze.
I just looked at the note; I wasn't expecting this.
I was expecting another happy, upbeat note about happiness, but instead I got this weird
death crap that Sean was talking about.
The note disturbed me, so I ripped it up and threw it away.
When I saw Sean at lunch, I confronted him, asking him about the note.
He said it was just a new outlook on death and that I shouldn't be worried about it.
When I told him that I wasn't convinced, he said, "Look, if you're so worried, come
to the next meeting, then you'll see it's not anything bad."
I thought about this, and I accepted his offer.
He said ok and then handed me another note.
ZIX NC OITSM QJEL I went home and looked at the note.
I couldn't tell whether or not I should hold it up to the mirror.
Did I really want to see this note?
What if it's something disturbing like the last one?
I took a deep breath and turned off the lights.
I held the message up to the mirror.
THIS COULD BE YOU.
What does that mean?
I thought about when all of a sudden, I noticed something that almost made me scream.
It was my reflection.
I was smiling, but it wasn't natural.
It seemed kind of forced and robotic, like something was making my reflection smile against
its will.
My reflection was still holding the note in its hands, even though I had already set my
note down on the counter.
Its body didn't move, but he head pivoted so my reflection's eyes would always be
looking into mine.
I slowly walked to the light switch and turned the lights on, which caused the image on my
mirror to vanish.
When I turned off the lights again, the image didn't return.
I walked back into my room, sat on my bed, and though about what had just happened.
I thought that the message trick was cool, but what I just saw was mentally disturbing.
Now you may think that what just happened would have caused me to have second thoughts
about going to the next club meeting, but it didn't.
In fact, it made me want to go even more.
I was worried about Sean and if this club was telling him that the only way to be happy
is to die, than he might commit suicide.
I didn't want to lose my best friend, and the notes all had to do with happiness and
death.
They started out with positive phrases about how you could achieve true happiness, but
now they were starting to become dark.
If Sean keeps thinking that these messages are true, then he's in serious trouble.
I didn't bring up what had happened that night with Sean, but I did keep asking him
when the next meeting was.
He said I had to patient and that he would talk to his councilor about it soon.
On Friday, Sean told me that his councilor allowed him to bring me to tomorrow night's
meeting, but first I had to read one last note.
He handed me a slip of paper with random letters that made up four words.
THAB MNI QU VBXAOPI That night, I took out the slip of paper.
I looked at it and thought about the horrors it might bring.
My fear became so great that I decided I couldn't do it, so I put it in my desk drawer.
I didn't care what Sean councilor said, I was coming whether I read the note or not.
Sean kept texting me about how excited he was that I was coming to tonight's meeting.
On the other hand, I was dreading the moment that the clock would strike nine and it would
be time for Sean to pick me up.
I spent the day thinking about what I should do if the meeting took a turn for the worse.
Sean's car appeared in my driveway right about nine and he began to drive to the edge
of town.
He didn't say anything when I first got into the car and the silence was driving me
crazy, so I tried to start a conversation.
"Where's this meeting at?"
I asked "It's at a park right outside of town,"
Sean answered as if he was programmed to say that answer.
"A park?"
I asked surprised.
"Yeah," Sean answered like there was nothing wrong about what he just said, "Is there
a problem with that?"
"No," I answered, trying not to sound suspicious.
We reached the park in fifteen minutes and Sean lead me to the middle of a field.
As he brought me into the field, I noticed that there wasn't a single person besides
ourselves in the field.
"Are we early?"
I asked him.
"Not exactly," Sean answered without turning around to look at me, "we just have to wait
here a little bit."
We waited for a while as my mind rushed through thoughts.
Why is no one here?
Why is Sean acting strange?
What is this club, some sort of…
That's when it hit me.
"S..Sean," I asked reluctantly, fearing at what the answer may be, "Is…
Is this a cult" "Took you long enough to figure out,"
Sean said bluntly.
I stared at him for a long time, emotion flooding my body, thoughts flooding my brain.
I felt many things at once, it was like a wheel was spinning in my head, and whatever
emotion the wheel landed on, I would experience it.
The wheel stopped on anger.
"Why would you join a cult!"
I said with a raised tone, "Why did you lie to me and say it was a club!"
"Essentially, a cult is just a club when you come down to it," Sean said like it
was the most normal thing in the world to be in a cult.
Next up, confusion.
"Why would you even want to join a cult?"
I asked with a new tone of voice, "Why did you bring me here?"
"Because, you disobeyed us," Sean said with no emotion at all.
I froze.
Just like when I saw my frozen figure in the mirror.
The only part of my body that moved was the wheel in my head.
It slowly spun as the stopped clicked on each to the wheel's spokes.
It began to slow down.
Finally, the last emotion, fear.
"Sean," I asked in a quite voice, "where is everyone?"
Sean let out a sigh and then did something that I wouldn't have expected in years.
He pushed me.
I fell to the ground, and as I was disoriented, he whistled.
One by one, hooded figures jumped out of the trees surrounding us.
They had all been hiding the entire time.
My eyes grew wide and I tried to crawl away, but Sean grabbed me and held me to the ground.
"You see," he said, "ever member of this club is given an assignment.
They must initiate the assigned person into the club or else their fellow members will
kill them.
The more assignments you complete,, the closer you get to true happiness.
You were my first assignment.
I was extremely close to fully initiating you, but something you did last night threw
the whole process off."
The hooded figures had surrounded me.
The held me down and put a rag in my mouth to make sure I couldn't scream for help.
"The whole initiation process centers around five notes.
The first to reassure the target that what he is doing is completely innocent.
The third distracts the target and increases the fear of dying inside of them.
The fourth shows the power of the club and just what they can do if you disobey us.
The fifth seals the deal and fully initiates the target into the club, and they usually
don't even know what's happened until they get their first assignment."
That's when I realized it.
I've been in the initiation process the entire time, but Sean hadn't succeeded because
I didn't read the fifth note, but how did he know that.
How does he know that I didn't read the fifth note.
"You may be wondering how we knew you didn't read the fifth note," Sean said as if he
knew exactly what I was thinking, "The club always knows what its members are doing, but
that's not what we're here to do.
Alex, take it away."
Sean steeped into the ring of hooded figures and put his own robe on as one of the members
came out of the circle.
The figure, Alex probably, reached into his robe and pulled out a rusty mirror.
He took a slip of paper from his pocket and placed it on my chest.
He started to raise the mirror in front of me as two members held my eyelids open.
Right before I could see the note, I spat out the rag in my mouth and screamed.
This startled the members, and they all started to run away.
They wanted to initiate me, but they didn't want to get caught at all.
They tried to drag me away, but I escaped the grasp of the man who was holding me, and
I sprinted.
I sprinted until my legs were so sore that they felt like a thousand needles were being
pushed into them.
I ran until I knew that I was far enough away to consider my self some-what safe.
I have to say that I didn't call the cops.
There were over twenty people there, and if the cops didn't catch all twenty, then I
would be in serious trouble.
I thought about telling my mom, but I figured that she would instantly call the cops too,
so I didn't.
On Monday, I didn't know if I should go to school.
Unfortunately, I couldn't think of any excuse to stay home that would make my mom suspicious,
so I reluctantly got on my bus.
To my surprise, Sean wasn't there.
I went to lunch and only saw Douglas, good old Douglas, sitting at our table.
It's been over twelve years since I graduated from that high school.
I never saw Sean again after that Saturday night.
I never called him, texted him, and he never contacted me.
I forgot completely about the incident, until a few nights ago.
My wife was out with her friends for dinner, and my son was sleeping over at his friend's
house.
I was watching some hockey on TV when my power went out.
It wasn't raining, so I figured that fuse probably just broke (it's an old house).
I grabbed a replacement fuse and a flashlight and I descended into my basement.
I walked into the room that had my fuse box in it.
The box is right across from my door so I closed my door behind me and walked to the
box.
I reached out and opened the door to where all the fuses would usually be, but instead
I got a surprise.
When I opened it, there was a rusty mirror blocking me from the fuses.
I was surprised and looked at the mirror.
On there was a message, I read it, and then dropped my flashlight.
I turned around to look at my door and written on it with black marker were the letters,
THAB MNI QU VBXAOPI.
I just fell to my knees as the thoughts of my junior year began to flood back into my
mind.
Beneath the letters was a message that read, "Your first assignment is DOUGLAS, initiate
him or die."
I just sat there as the wheel in my head began to spin; all the while that phrase rang through
my head, WELCOME TO THE CLUB
5.
So I go to a high school close to Raleigh, NC.
It's not a huge school compared to some others, but it certainly isn't small.
I'm in my junior year and it's all been a pretty standard experience, I think.
I don't do drugs, I don't drink, I don't have a girlfriend.
Playing my cards just right, I tell myself when I'm sad.
Anyways, some dude in my AP Calculus class mentioned that he's gotten into a 'pretty
big game', and when I asked him about it (being an avid video game player myself), he told
he it was called King of Pain.
And it isn't a video game.
His name is James, he's a senior.
Football player, ladies man.
. . very different from me.
But he's smart, super smart, and never causes any drama.
So I figure he's pretty trustworthy.
He tells me that he just started playing King of Pain in the last week with a couple of
other guys from our school.
Someone at a party introduced them to it and they've been hooked on it.
I ask him what it's about.
"A King is chosen, by Divine Right."
he laughs, realizing the way that sounded.
"Game terms, of course."
he adds.
"What's the King do?"
"All the King does is see how long he can keep his throne."
"How does he do that?"
James eyes lit up, and he once again laughed.
He almost seemed embarrassed by the fact he was so into something that sounded this silly.
"He takes it, man."
After saying this, James reached into his pocket and retrieved his phone.
I waited politely as he scrolled through screens and found what he was looking for.
A picture.
He handed me the phone.
"What the hell?"
I was looking at a photo of a deep wound, a stab it looked like, on someone's forearm.
"He's doing pretty good so far."
James took the phone back and smiled.
"I don't understand.
That's the King?
Is that real?"
"Yes."
"Who is he?"
James grinned wider and rolled up his sleeve.
The wound was still there, in the midst of the healing process.
It did not appear to have been attended to.
"James, man, that's not okay.
We're gonna need to tell someone."
After hearing this, James grabbed my arm, his grip instantly shooting pain up past my
elbow.
"No, don't."
His eyes met mine, unwavering.
"Dude, you're hurting me."
"I'll lose.
I can't lose."
James let go, but kept his eyes on mine.
"Don't make me lose."
I was of course unsettled, and decided that I would tell someone anyway, because not to
do so would be idiotic.
There was clearly some bizarre sort of hazing going on, and James could be in danger of
harming himself further.
I contacted the school's guidance counselor and told him everything I knew.
He said he'd look into it.
James wasn't at school for the rest of the week.
I stared at his empty seat in Calculus and hoped he was okay.
I checked social media, but he wasn't very prevalent on there, so I learned nothing.
I asked around but no one had heard from him.
I got the impression some of the guys I talked to were lying, though.
It didn't matter anyway, because last Tuesday, we were all informed that James had killed
himself.
I didn't want to let anyone know how upset I was.
They might think I was milking this guy's tragic passing for my own gain.
I didn't know him that well at all.
But I had spoken to him just before he did it.
I had seen something was wrong.
And he told me not to tell anyone.
He asked me not to make him lose.
I skipped school Wednesday, feeling sick to my stomach about the whole thing.
Our counselor never contacted me with any answers.
I'm not sure anyone knew why he did it.
Except for the other players, who I didn't know the identities of.
I'm posting here as a therapy of sorts.
And because I need advice.
I found a note in my locker on Friday.
It was an invitation to play King of Pain.
It read: "Come and witness the crowning of a new King.
Come and build the throne.
Come and see what becomes of you.
All pain is temporary."
It was signed by someone named Devon Wright.
I quickly made the connection to the phrasing "Divine Right" that James had used.
The rest of the note was basic instructions: use a pen to leave a single line on my locker
door on Monday, and they'd contact me again.
I shouldn't.
It would be the stupidest thing I've ever done.
But I want justice for James.
With just a little more info, maybe I can get the police to shut the whole thing down.
Do you guys know anything about King of Pain?
What should I do?
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