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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Trash_Tia on 2024-10-30 22:52:04+00:00.
Please help me.
I’m stuck in my room, months after surviving the most traumatic experience of my life, and according to my doctor, I’m developing agoraphobia.
But I don't think he or my family understand that I’m in literal, fucking danger. I haven’t slept in—what, three days? I can't eat, and I’ve locked myself in here for my own safety, as well as my father’s and brother’s.
I have no clue what to tell them.
Fuck. I don’t even know where to start.
I try to explain, but the words get tangled in my throat, like I’m choking on a tongue twister. And I won’t tell you why my hands are slick with blood—sticky, wet, and fucking vile. I can still feel it, like there’s something lodged deep inside me.
So deep, not even my dad’s penknife can reach it.
I’ve spent most of the week hunched over the bathroom sink, watching dried blood swirl down the drain like tea leaves.
I’ve carved into my ear so many times the sting of the blade doesn’t even register anymore. But you have to understand—if I don’t get this thing out of me, they’ll find me again. And this time, I’m not sure I’ll survive. First, let me make this clear:
This isn’t some attention-seeking bullshit.
I know what I went through seriously fucked with my head, but like I keep telling everyone, I know they’re not done with us.
My doctor thinks I’m crazy, and my dad is considering sending me to a psych ward.
Mom is different. She’s been on the other side of my bedroom door all day, guarding me. Protecting me from them.
Dad says it’s PTSD, and maybe that’s part of it. But I’m also being hunted. Maybe a psych ward is what's best for me, but they’ll find me—just like they've undoubtedly found the other four.
I’ve never felt so helpless. So hopeless. So alone.
Dad is convinced just because Grammy had schizophrenia, I must have it too.
Mom told him to leave.
Like I said, for his own safety.
This is me screaming into the void because I have nobody else to talk to.
I’m 17 years old, and back in July, my Mom forced me to join a social experiment which was basically, “(None televised) Big Brother, but for Gen Z!”
I wasn't interested.
Last year’s summer camp had already been a disaster.
A kid caught some virus. He didn’t die, but he got really sick, and they said it had something to do with the lake.
Luckily, I didn’t swim in it.
Camp was canceled, and for months afterward, I had to go in for biweekly checks to make sure I wasn’t infected.
I thought this summer would be less of a mess.
But then Mom gave me an ultimatum: either I join a summer camp or extracurricular like my brother, or she’d send me to live with Dad.
For reasons I won’t explain, yes, I’d rather risk contracting a disease than spend the summer with Dad. His idea of a vacation is dragging my brother and me to his office. Now that Travis and I are old enough to make our own decisions, we avoid him like the plague. The divorce just made it easier.
Mom never stops. She either works, runs errands, or creates new jobs so she can stay busy. When we were younger, she was diagnosed with depression.
A lot of my childhood was spent sitting on her bed, begging her to get up, or being stuck in Dad’s office, playing games on his laptop. Now, Mom makes up for all that lost time by being insufferable.
She thought she was helping; but in reality, I was being smothered. When I wasn't interested in participating in her summer plans, my mother already had a rebuttal.
Looming over me, blonde wisps of hair falling in overshadowed eyes, and wrapped up like a marshmallow, Mom resembled my personal angel of death.
"Just read it," she sighed, refilling my juice.
The flyer looked semi-professional. If you ignored the Comic Sans. It was black and white, with a simple triangle in the center.
I’ll admit, I was kind of intrigued. Ten teenagers—five boys and five girls—all living together in a mansion on the edge of town. It sounded like a recipe for disaster.
Two days later, we got the call: I was in.
The terms raised brows. I wasn’t allowed to use my real name. Instead, I had to pick from a list of ‘traditionally feminine’ names.
Whatever that meant.
Marie.
Amelia.
Rosa.
Mom doesn’t understand the meaning of "no," so I found myself stuck in the passenger seat of her fancy car as she drove me to the preliminary testing center.
The tests were supposed to assess our mental and physical health to make sure we were fit for the experiment.
The building loomed ahead—a cold, sterile structure of mirrored glass.
No welcome signs, no color. Just a desolate parking lot and checkerboard windows reflecting the afternoon sun.
Yeps. Exactly how I wanted to spend my summer.
Being probed inside a dystopian hell-hole.
Seeing the testing centre was the moment my feeble reluctance (but going along with it anyway, because why not) turned into full-blown panic once I caught sight of those soulless, symmetrical windows staring down at me.
With my gut twisting and turning, I begged Mom to let me go to the disease-ridden summer camp instead– or better yet, let me stay inside.
There was nothing wrong with rotting in bed all day.
“I’m not going,” I said, refusing to shift from my seat.
Mom sighed impatiently, glancing at her phone. My consultation was at 1:30, and it was 1:29.
“Tessa,” Mom said with a sigh. “I’m not supposed to tell you this—it’s against the rules. But…” She rolled her eyes. “Call it quid pro quo if you want.”
I knew what was coming. The same threat every summer: “If you don’t do what I say, you can go live with your father.”
I avoided making eye contact with her. “I’m not living with Dad.”
Mom cleared her throat. “This isn’t just a social experiment, Tessa. It’s a test of endurance. The team that stays in the house the longest wins a prize.”
She paused, playing with her fingers in her lap.
“One million dollars.”
I nearly fell out of my seat. “One million dollars?” I choked out. “Are you serious?”
“Parents aren’t supposed to tell the participants,” Mom shushed me like we they could hear us. “It’s to avoid coercion. The experiment is supposed to be natural participation and a genuine intention to take part.” Mom’s lip twitched.
“But I know you wouldn’t participate unless there was money involved.”
Mom sighed. “Is this the wrong time to say you remind me of your father?”
She was sneaking panicked looks at me, but I was already thinking about how one million dollars would get me through college without a dime from Dad, who was using my college fund to drag me on vacations. I snapped out of it when Mom not so gently nudged me with a chuckle.
“Between the five of you,” she reminded me. “But still, it’s a lot of money, Amelia.”
Amelia. So, she was already calling me by my subject name. Totally normal.
Before I knew it, I was sitting in a clinically white room with several other kids. No windows, just a single sliding glass door.
There were three rows of plastic chairs, with four occupied: two girls on my left, two boys on my right, all bathed in painfully bright lights. I could only see their torso’s.
A guard collected my phone, a towering woman resembling Ms Trunchbul, right down to the too-tight knotted hair and military uniform.
I barely made it three strides before she was stuffing a white box under my nose, four iPhones already inside. I dropped my phone in, only for her to pull it back and thrust it back in my face.
“Turn it off,” she spat.
I obeyed, my hands growing clammy.
I was referred to as "Amelia" and told to sit in my assigned seat.
I could barely see the other participants, that painful light bleeding around their faces, obstructing their identities. It took me a while to realize it was intentional.
These people really did not want us to see or speak to each other.
I did manage (through a lot of painful squinting) to make out one boy had shaggy, sandy hair, while the other, a redhead, wore Ray-Bans. The girls were a ponytail brunette and a wispy blonde.
Time passed, and the guards blocking the doorway made me uneasy.
The blonde girl kept shifting in her seat, asking to use the bathroom. I just saw her as a confusing golden blur. When they told her no, she kept standing up and making her way over to the door, before being escorted back.
The redheaded boy was counting ceiling tiles.
Through that intense light bathing him, I could see his head was tipped back.
I could hear him muttering numbers to himself, and immediately losing his place.
When he reached 4,987, he groaned, slumping in his seat.
When my gaze lingered on the blonde for too long, the guard snapped at me.
“Amelia, that’s your first warning.”
The kids around me chuckled, which pissed her off even more.
“If you break the rules again, you’ll be asked to leave.”
Her voice dropped into a growl when the boys' chuckles turned into full-blown giggles.
I tried to hold in my own laughter, but something about being trapped with no phones or parents and forced into a room with literally nothing to entertain us turned us all into kindergarteners again– which was refreshing.
I think at some point I turned to smile at the blonde, only to be fucking blinded by that almost angelic light.
I noticed the guard’s knuckles whitened around her iPad.
Her patience was thinning with every spluttered giggle.
And honestly? That only made it harder not to laugh.
“Heads down,” she ordered. The spluttered laughing was starting to get to her. I d...
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