Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/w1oh1a/my_experience_using_cursed_tinder_part_1/
The next afternoon, I was working from home answering customer enquiries, doing my best to put the whole experience out of my head, when I got a new notification of activity from tinder. I’ve got to admit: when I saw it, I very nearly shit myself.
It was nearly an hour later before I could bring myself to reopen the website. When I finally did go back, I found, to my relief, tinder had returned to its normal look. No red screen, or glitching, or creepy and unsettling profiles showing up in the browsing section.
I did notice I had a new match. A young woman’s photo stared back at me, under my previously empty matches list. She was about my age, with light brown hair and brown eyes. She had dimples and full lips and a kind of cheeky looking half smile on her face.
I hesitantly clicked on her profile, then clicked rapidly through all of her photos, worried one of them would display one of the freakish, gore filled scenes I’d been subjected to the previous night.
Her pictures were all totally normal, depicting her posing in various scenic locations, or, less frequently, inside her own house.
Her name was Esther. She was beautiful. Gorgeous to the point of leaving me wondering why she’d taken any interest in some loser like me. I’d just assumed, after checking her profile out, that I must have swiped on her profile some time before I’d installed the program Francis sent me.
I sent her a message, not really expecting she’d respond to me, bracing myself for another small disappointment.
Somewhat to my surprise, she sent a message back within only a couple minutes.
Our conversation started with basic things, both of us awkwardly introducing ourselves. I made a few bad jokes and otherwise managed to decisively embarrass myself in my attempts to try to get her to like me.
Esther didn’t act like she was bothered by this, though. She said she thought I was sweet, and admitted to feeling about as shy as I did at the time.
I spent the next few days getting to know her, and against all my expectations, we actually hit it off. We were both somewhat introverted and quiet, and sometimes preferred to be around ourselves than other people.
Asking her more about herself, I found out we also both shared a similar passion and taste for adventure. On most of my free weekends, my hobbies were anything ranging from surfing to skydiving. Before long, Esther and I were discussing our favourite thrill-seeking activities and where we went for them. Esther’s favourite was rock climbing around the Appalachian mountains.
She even thought it was cool that I worked at an antique shop, and pressed me until I told her more about it.
Esther was turning out to be one of the few people I’d ever met on tinder who I felt like it was easy to talk to.
God, I thought, after two full days of us speaking, I think she really likes me. And I sure as hell fancied her.
I should have probably taken a bit more time to consider the fact she was never more than a couple minutes in responding to any of my messages, and how she appeared almost a little too eager in her interactions with me, and that she almost always agreed with everything I said. Instead, I brushed those details away, telling myself I should be grateful I managed to find a successful match at all.
After three days of talking to her on tinder, I asked her out on a date. She said yes.
I’d considered taking her to a restaurant, but at the last minute I decided to try something different. I suggested we visit a fair that had been set up in my city. Esther told me she moved around a lot due to her job and was new to the city, so I figured she most likely hadn’t been to it before. It was a somewhat spontaneous decision, but my instincts told me it was a good one.
Esther said she thought it was a fun idea and she looked forward to meeting me there.
Esther was more beautiful in person than she was in any of her photographs. Her hair fell in chestnut tumbles down her shoulders and she wore a flowery, green dress that reached down to her knees. I spotted her out of the crowd of people milling around easily and made a beeline for her.
Her face lit up when she saw me too, and she waved eagerly.
She gave me a bright smile as I came over to her. I told her how beautiful she looked. She blushed and responded telling me I had a cute tie. I’d laughed, and we’d fallen subsequently into an easy conversation as I guided her through the fair.
I’d been right to decide to take her to the fair. Esther said she’d never been to one before, and her eyes lit up in response to the twinkling lights of the rides and the various clowns and elaborately dressed performers moving past us.
I took her around the fair for the next couple of hours, visiting rides, buying her sweets and playing games at some of the stalls with her.
We must have gone on half the rides at the fair, and definitely all the scariest ones. One the most intense parts of these rides, Esther would grab on to my arm or my hand and hold on to me tightly as she shrieked along with the other people sitting nearby. Each of these times, I felt my heart stop for a moment as our skin made contact.
Honesty, I was too busy paying attention to her half the time to notice much of what we were doing together.
After we had both exhausted ourselves, we bought some kebabs and fresh lemonade at a couple stalls and sat down together somewhere a little more quiet.
We must have sat and talked for at least another hour. I’d honestly never thought I could have felt so comfortable around someone like her, but she had a way of making me feel like I was talking to someone I’d known for a couple years, rather than only a few days.
‘I get the feeling you don’t like your job that much,’ Esther observed at one point. I’d been telling her more about the work I did as we watched the sun setting on the horizon together.
I’d considered denying it, then decided it was better to be honest with her.
‘It pays okay. Most of the time. And it keeps me occupied. I guess. But, yeah.’
I searched for the right words, while Esther watched me intently. ‘I never really had a choice. My great grandfather founded the business I own now and it’s been passed down through the family since. My dad kind of raised me expecting me to continue a legacy, and I never had the opportunity to consider if it was right for me, you know?’
It was true. Although it wasn’t something I had discussed much with others before.
She smiled a little bit. ‘Yeah, I get that, actually. I was… Well, I was raised very religiously and my parents expected me to do something traditional like housework or teaching when I grew up, just something that they thought was appropriate. I spent the first few years of my adulthood with almost no choice in what job I worked in and I hated it.’
‘What changed?’ I asked.
She replied simply, ‘I found the courage to stand up to my parents and turn my life around for the better.’
She smiled. ‘I guess I’m trying to say, I understand how it feels, to be trapped. It’s like you’re scared you’re going to be stuck doing the same thing until you grow old and die. And then, what you did for your whole life won’t have meant anything.’
I nodded. ‘That’s a depressing way of putting it,’ I’d observed, with a touch of amusement. Feeling a hint of regret, I’d commented, ‘I wish I could try to do something else for a living, but I don’t have the money or the time anymore to be able to consider it.’
We fell into a brief silence. ‘That sucks,’ she murmured, staring down at the table. ‘I think I’d go nuts if I were in your position.’ She added shyly, ‘I’ve never really met anyone who understood what growing up like me felt like.’
She’d reached over then to absentmindedly to grab a cloth and wipe under her nose. When I looked at her face, I noticed a streak of red was oozing down above her mouth. I got concerned, but she just chuckled and said she had nosebleeds all the time. She held the tissue to her nose for a bit as she continued speaking to me about her childhood, assuring me a couple more times she was fine.
As she pulled the tissue away, I swore I caught a glimpse of something dark and slimy slithering back up the trail of blood emerging from her nose and disappearing inside the shadow of her nostril. It was wriggling rapidly back and forth in its attempt to drive itself upward. It was gone so fast though I decided I had to have imagined it.
I’d admitted to Esther the depressing life at the antique store I was condemned to was one of the big things that led me to pursue thrill-seeking as such an active hobby. The thrill-seeking allowed me to escape my world, a world I’d long lost patience for, for a few precious hours. Just for a short time, I felt alive, and truly happy. I felt like life was worth it.
And then, without even completely intending to, I told Esther that was exactly how she made me feel.
She’d simpered and blushed and then gave me this intense look that made the blood rush to my own face.
Yeah, I was already crazy about her. Even though she was a bit weird and eccentric. I’d never met a girl like her. I did mean every word when I told her how I felt about her.
And, better than that, she seemed to actually like me back.
I invited her over to my place for a couple more drinks. She agreed immediately and went with me back in my car.
I led her into my small apartment. I was a bit embarrassed by how unimpressive it was, but I at least had had the foresight to clean up a bit in the case of our night leading to the both of us being there together.
I know we both got fairly drunk at my place. The first hour or two went great, and I was truly starting to hope we’d be spending the night together. However, after a while of us talking and laughing Esther started to get a bit more quiet.
‘Ralph, there’s something you need to know about me,’ Esther brought up, after I asked her if she was alright.
‘That sounds serious,’ I’d observed lightly, noting her change in tone.
‘It kind of is, actually,’ she answered, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand.
‘Oh,’ I’d uttered, and suddenly her nervousness had become infectious. I wanted to say something else, but my mind went stubbornly blank as I tried to think of what between my wondering what exactly Esther was about to tell me.
‘I’m - how do I say this?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m an… Alien? To be honest, I don’t even know what you’d call me. Look, the point is, I’m not like you, I’m not human. The world - the universe - I come from, it isn’t this one.’
She looked down almost guiltily. ‘From what I understand, when you found me on your dating app, you created some kind of link which enabled me to travel to this universe.‘
Her words were coming out in a slight rush now. ‘I guess I kind of lied to you a little bit before, didn’t I? I’m sorry. You’ve got to understand - I really really wanted to visit your world! It looked so innocent, so enticing. And you were my only way in.’
That was when I suddenly remembered cursed tinder. And I really started to try to recall where exactly it was that I’d swiped right on Esther.
‘When you asked me if I was from your country, I figured out you must not have known what I really was, and that if I told you the truth, I thought you might stop talking to me.’
I just kept sitting there, staring at her open-mouthed, as she proceeded to elaborate further on how she had used a dating platform to gain access to my world from hers. If I wasn’t sure about her being a match from the program Francis sent me, her words left me with little room for any further doubt.
‘Ralph? Talk to me. Say you think I’m crazy. Say something. Please.’
Esther had finished speaking. I was still fighting to rationalize her words, to wrestle against the beyond out worldly possibility that she might be serious.
‘I guess I don’t know what to say,’ I murmured eventually.
‘I know I manipulated you. And lied and used you, I guess. But that was all before I got to know you tonight,’ she told me, searching my face with an anxious expression. ‘Listen, you’re the best part of this world I’ve seen so far, Ralph.’ She laughed. ‘It’s actually pretty boring here, compared to my reality. You are what made it worth visiting.’
She sighed. ‘But, well, I understand if this is all too much for you.’
I rubbed my hands across my face. My date thought she was an otherworldly entity. I couldn’t, honestly, fully wrap my head around the idea.
‘This is - got to be a joke, right?’ I asked, rubbing my temples. If you seriously believe all the things you just said… Then you need help. Professional help -’
‘I’m not making this up!’ She cried.
‘Did one of my friends set you up for this?’ I demanded. ‘Did they pay you or something to go out with me?’
She shook her head rapidly. ‘No! I would never do something like that! I’m trying to tell you the truth right now, but you’re not listening!’
Esther inhaled sharply. ‘You know what? I think this date might have been a mistake. You clearly can’t handle who I really am. I should probably go,’ she said suddenly, making a motion as if to stand up. ‘I’ve said too much, I’ve obviously ruined things - I’m sorry I freaked you out.’
She picked up her bag on one arm. ‘Goodbye, Ralph.’
‘No, wait! Don’t. Please don’t!,’ I burst out, grabbing onto her arm before I could help myself.’
She turned back.
‘I’m sorry - I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did.’ I couldn’t help adding, ‘You can’t leave. I - I don’t want you to go.’
I knew I should have let her leave, that I would be crazy not to. But I couldn’t. Really, it didn’t matter if she was serious or not about what she’d said. I still kept thinking about her one hand curling up against mine and the way her other one was trailing down the side of my arm. Her being crazy didn’t change how much I was attracted to her.
She looked back at me, so I continued, ‘I don’t know if I believe you, and to be honest, rationally I think you do need some kind of professional help, but, you know what? I - I don’t care. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. God, you have to be the most incredible girl I’ve ever met.’
‘I know how much you care about me,’ she answered seriously. ‘And I really am sorry I didn’t say something earlier. You didn’t deserve to have me lie to you like I did.’
And then she told me, ‘I will stay, if that’s what you want.’
Her words sent a rush of relief coursing through me.
I suppose you could say that I kind of went with it, after that. Esther settled down again, and I let her convince me she liked me as much as she had acted like she did the whole night. I think perhaps I actually even believed it. I tried my best to be accepting of her story, even if I couldn’t quite buy into it.
We inched nearer to one another until she was pressed up even closer to me than before. If she was an alien, I thought, she sure didn’t feel like one.
After a while, I’d managed to relax myself enough again to ask, ‘So my world is boring, huh? What’s yours like, then?’
She gave me a sideways look. ‘I think you’d quite like where I’m from. I’d almost be tempted to take you with me back there to show you.’
‘Describe it to me,’ I’d told her, genuinely interested to hear what she’d say.
She looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully, then picked up the bottle of wine from the table to take a sip from it. With careful words, she started to speak, while I listened in increasingly awed silence.
Esther described a sun which dripped from the sky like melted gold, and empires that fought over the pieces of it that fell to her planet. She talked of the carcasses of dead gods and ruined alien civilisations inside which people made their homes. There were rivers of blood, she said, and volcanoes that vomited ice, unending wars fought by titan-sized, monolithic beings and bloody tournaments in arenas the size of planets. She’d seen all of it, she claimed. She’d been given the power to explore both the most terrifying and wonderful parts of her world.
I must have listened to her speak for at least half an hour, but the time seemed more like minutes. Her descriptions were beautiful and terrifying, breath-taking and sickening all at the same time. She described them in such vivid detail, in such a haunting voice, that I could imagine each scene easily in my mind’s eye. And she was right. I would have loved to visit that world, if I could have brought myself to believe it did, in fact, exist.
‘Want to hear a secret?’ Esther asked. We were still sitting together on a sofa. Esther had taken her shoes off and her long legs were draped over my knees. She had already spent close to another hour explaining various, more intricate details of her world to me.
I’d looked at her and chuckled. ‘What, you have another one? Seriously?’
She nodded eagerly and pointed at herself. ‘I’ve been chosen for something special. I have a wonderful creature growing inside of me. A long time ago, its mother decided I should have the honour of being the one to carry its offspring.’
‘You’re pregnant?’ From what she said, it was the first thing I assumed.
‘Not exactly pregnant. See, this child, it’s not from my species. And it’s more ancient than I am.’
‘It’s quite harmless, really,’ she continued, quickly trying to reassure me as she saw my eyes widen. ‘I like to think of it more like I’m.. It’s surrogate.’ She smiled. ‘Sort of. It kicks, it makes me want to eat weird stuff. I talk or sing to it sometimes to help it relax and go to sleep. It has been… Restless since I came here.’ She giggled. ‘I think it wants to get out and cause more mischief.’
I remembered, involuntarily, the moment at the fair where I thought I saw something poking out of her nose, something that she had so absentmindedly pushed back up inside of her.
God, I thought. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
I was, admittedly, back to being spooked at that point. Her words had finally managed to partially stir me out of the comfortable drunken haze I had settled into since Esther informed me she was extra-terrestrial.
Had any other woman said this, I believe I would have reacted more. But it wasn’t any other woman. Every time I allowed myself to look into those deep, hazel eyes of hers, I completely lost my train of thought. It’s like I said before. There was something about Esther that made her impossible to resist. She just kept disarming me. I wasn’t sure there was anything she could have said at that point that could have really scared me away from her. I know it sounds crazy, but I doubt she would have had such a different effect on any of you. Being around her, it took me out of my right mind.
So I decided it wasn’t that much more out there than the things she already told me, and I tried for a little enthusiasm as I told Esther I was happy for her.
I’d added, somewhat uneasily, ‘But wouldn’t that be kind of unpleasant? It kind of sounds like, um, some kind of parasite or something. No offense.’
She shook her head quickly. ‘You don’t have to worry about offending me. I do understand how strange this all must sound to you. Also, to answer your question, it’s not like that. It’s a privilege for one of them to choose you. It doesn’t hurt me; actually, it’s quite the opposite. My child is the reason I was able to escape from the religious home I was born into. After I was chosen to be the carrier of it, I started to change, to get stronger. After a while, I was developing powers I never would have dreamed of having before then.’ She twirled one finger idly around a strand of her hair. ‘For the first time in my life, I was able to stand up to my parents. They couldn’t stop me from leaving. No one could.’ She giggled. ‘They were all too scared.’
‘After that, I was able to use my powers to explore the world, to see things I’d never dreamed of seeing. This child I’m carrying saved me from a lifetime of enslavement to my family. And it gave me a purpose, because it needs me to help it find the things it requires to grow and pupate in power.
‘But… No, I’m sorry, I’m still not sold on it,’ I said, unconvinced. ‘It doesn’t sound natural - and you weren’t exactly given a choice, were you?’
‘We don’t get to choose our destiny. It is given to us.’ She replied breathily. ‘My child is destined to be a god among men. And I am destined to carry it until it is ready to be born.’
‘Someday it will hatch and eat what’s left of me,’ she had continued, thoughtfully. ‘Though not for a while. I’ll gladly make that sacrifice when the time comes.’
‘You probably could have left that last part of your story out,’ I’d advised her.
She laughed a little bit.
‘You want to hear about my other powers?’ Esther asked, once her laughter faded. Her voice changed suddenly, taking on a more seductive note. ‘I have many powers, not just the ones I used to escape from my parents.’
She told me flirtatiously, ‘Among others, I can make any man unable to resist me.’
‘Is that so?’ I asked, a touch apprehensively.
‘Most definitely. Here, let me prove it to you,’ she whispered, leaning forward into me.
I felt her warm breath whisper across my face and her body flattening up hard against me. I barely had time to smell her sweet citrus perfume and feel her hair tickling my face, before her lips were pressing up softly against mine.
Oh boy, could Esther kiss. Her kiss was more than just a normal kiss. It was hypnotic, irresistible. The second our lips were locked, all I could think about was her. She invaded all of my senses. My arms went around her and I yanked her even closer, as close as I could. She responded by kissing me harder, deeper, then rolling us over so she was straddled on top of me.
I’d say Esther made me high when she kissed me, but this was more amazing than any high I’d ever had in my life. I’m confident she hadn’t been lying when she told me about her having a power for seduction.
I suppose you can guess how the night progressed after that. I get shivers just allowing myself to think about it, and I’ve relived it more times than I can count.
I was sure, at one point, while her head fell back and with her body arched above me, I caught a glimpse of something half rising out of her mouth, as it tilted open in a silent moan. Whatever it was, it was too dim in the room for me to focus on it, no matter how hard I tried. After a while, I just forced myself to ignore it and focus on another part of her body. Considering the highly intoxicated state I had fallen into at the time, it wasn’t such a hard thing to put it out of my mind.
I know we made love continuously for hours, and after that, feeling deliciously and senselessly exhausted, I fell into a deep sleep with her spooned up against me, all the while thinking about how glad I was I hadn’t allowed Esther to leave earlier that night.
The next thing I remember, I’d opened my eyes to the darkness of my apartment, and my heart was pounding.
I had an inexplicable sense of fear crawling up my throat. I felt sick, and I knew, instinctively, there was something incredibly wrong. I could feel a heavy weight on my chest, like I was experiencing an episode of sleep paralysis. But I could tell immediately that wasn’t what was happening.
I was lying with Esther still curled up against me. I could see her outline under the sheets, the curves of her hips and chest. By that time, whatever Esther had done to me had mostly worn off and I was feeling a little more sobered from the long night of drinking.
My attention was drawn up to Esther’s face. I froze. Her face was shaded in darkness, but it wasn’t too dark to be unable to see basic details. As I leaned closer, I could see her still open eyes had rolled back in her head. Her face had gone a sickly shade of pale white that made her look as if she were dead. Her mouth had cracked open unnaturally, impossibly, wide. And there was something slick and dark emerging out of it.
With my eyes, I followed what I could only describe as a collection of innumerable wet, vein-like strings and tubules which ran across the bed from her mouth toward me. I traced them to where they extended into the back of a malformed, overgrown face, with huge eyes, a swollen lump for a nose, and a misshapen mouth. The face was attached to a similarly malformed and twisted, wrinkled body.
It was sitting, no, practically lying, right on top of me, its face reaching up to the bottom of my neck. The creature appeared to have reached its hands further up to hold on to it.
As I watched in a state of helpless disbelief, the thing leaned forward with its head and its tongue darted out. I felt it sliding across my face seconds later. The stench of something utterly putrid filled my nose, and I had to swallow repeatedly to stop myself from gagging.
Its tongue retracted slowly, its eyes gleaming in the darkness with an animalistic intensity.
I made the mistake of reacting to it with panic. I reached out and grabbed this thing’s body with the intention of hurling it off me.
The creature clung to me with surprising strength and resisted my efforts as I tried to pull it away. The demented smile on its face turned further into a frown the more I fought it, and then, finally, it settled into a grimace. One of its clawed hands, which had been draped over my neck, started to tighten, multiple sharp, cold points digging deep into my skin. The pain this sent through me threatened to drive me even further into hysteria.
My mind raced. The thing’s face did a full 360 turn above me and it opened its mouth, displaying a wide set of uneven, jagged teeth. It let out a high pitched growl which sent spittle flying over my chest. It raised one hand above me threateningly.
In that moment, I honest to god thought I was going to die, and the demonic child’s face would be the last thing I ever saw.
In pure desperation, I tried to do the only thing I thought might save me. I started singing. The voice that came out of my throat sounded like more of a wheeze, but the creature that had emerged from Esther had an obvious reaction to the noise, pausing in its action, and tilting its head to the side slightly, as if to listen.
I coughed to make my voice clearer. I steadied it to make it less wobbly, and then tried my best to turn it into some kind of tune. The first thing that popped into my head was the star trek theme song I would always hear Francis annoyingly humming whenever we would see each other. It had gotten so stuck in my head from all the times I heard it from him that I actually knew most of it from memory.
As I sang, Esther’s child seemed to, incredibly, be almost enjoying the sound of my voice. It lowered its clawed hand somewhat and the grimace half faded off its face.
It took every bit of courage I had not to freak out again, but I didn’t. Even though every passing second was utterly torturous.
Its hideous attempt at a smile steadily returned and expanded. It began to affectionately coddle me, its clawed hands drawing faint lines of blood across my face as I felt it grope blindly at my cheeks and mouth, gurgling and drooling all over me as it did.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how quickly it changed, how easily it had gotten upset, and what it might do to me if it got upset again. So I tolerated all of this, and I patted it and stroked its head, swallowing back the bile and vomit that repeatedly rose up into my throat and mouth. I cooed softly and told it what a wonderful creature it was in a voice I would have never expected to hear myself making. I did everything in my power to keep it from becoming angry again.
The next few hours were some of the longest hours in my life. Honestly, at a certain point, I began to sort of dissociate myself from what was going on. Like I was both witnessing and experiencing these events simultaneously.
I tried to focus only on making it through to the morning, where I hoped, and prayed. Esther’s parasite would retreat back inside of her.
After what had to be a small eternity, the thing stretched up from me and crawled its way back toward Esther’s gaping mouth. I watched as it somehow made its way back inside, although I’d say perhaps melting back through all of the orifices of her face would be a more accurate description to what I witnessed.
Incredibly, she didn’t even wake up through any of it, only turning over on her side toward me and draping one arm over my chest, letting out a contented sigh, and cuddling up against me again.
I think I must have passed out from shock a brief time after because the next thing I knew, I was being nudged awake and I heard her voice at my side.
‘Morning, sleepyhead.’
I felt her lips on my ear, her warm breath on my cheek. One hand traced the length of my body while the other twined around my neck. My eyes snapped open and I was about to scramble away from her.
Then her lips moved from my ear to my mouth, too quickly for me to protest.
I didn’t push her away. I couldn’t. I was kissing her back before I even knew what I was doing.
Yeah, we had sex again. I know I should have really kicked her out but I also knew such an action was against the dating rules I was supposed to follow. Plus, the high brought on from her intoxicating presence temporarily pushed the prior traumatic experience to the far back of my mind.
Esther had taken on a kind of glow since the previous night and her body was impossibly flexible. I could see the veins of her wrists and arms darkening as she wrapped them around my neck.
Something indescribable seemed to have animated her body, and she practically brimmed with energy.
We spent the rest of the morning together cuddled up on the bed. I let her talk to me, telling me more stories about her world and then what worlds she was, apparently, planning on exploring after she left mine.
We talked about plenty of other things, too, however neither of us spoke about what had happened the previous night. When she’d asked if I had a good sleep, I thought for a second. then claimed to have slept like a log.
To be honest, I don’t know if Esther was even aware of how her child paid me a visit. She hadn’t commented when she saw the scratches on my face and the small wounds on my neck, so I guessed she either wasn’t, or for whatever reason she chose not to mention it.
It was around the time I had finally started to disentangle myself from her that Esther told me - quite reluctantly - she had to get going. Something about her being close to her ‘first metamorphosis’. It was actually right after I was about to offer to prepare her breakfast, hoping she might stay for a bit longer. Esther’s charms had reasserted their full control again.
‘I had a great time last night,’ she said meaningfully as I trailed her to my door. ‘Thank you for showing me your world isn’t entirely boring, Ralph.’
She’d idled in the doorway, looked back at me for a pause. ‘You’re not afraid to take a chance. I like that about you. Don’t give that up. Someday you’ll take a chance which will change your life forever.’
She winked at me, twisted on her heel, and with that, left me there staring silently after her as she made her way down the small driveway outside my house.
That was the last I’d ever see of her. Esther completely vanished from tinder after that, and despite my best efforts, I found no other trace of her.
I decided to take Esther’s advice, though I’m not sure it was in the way she intended me to.
I returned to cursed tinder. At first it was because I was searching for Esther, but I admit, after a while, it became just as much to find someone, anyone, else with whom I could hope to recapture the amazing night I spent with her.
Francis was right. The danger and horror of using CT were totally worth it. I’m sure of that now.
Since meeting her I’ve gone out with six different women from CT. Some of the dates went well, others… Not so much. But, you know what? I’m happy with my choice, and CT remains my go to dating platform to this very day.
I guess you could say this has become my newest form of thrill seeking, but it’s a lot more than that, really. Through the women I’ve met there, I feel like I’ve found something I didn’t even know I was searching for. Like that special thing Esther was speaking about before she left.
I called Francis to tell him about my incredible experience, and to apologize to him for the things I’d said during our last argument. I also wanted to thank him for helping me, and in a lot of ways, turning my life around.
So far, he hasn’t responded to any of my attempts to try to contact him. I haven’t heard from Francis in quite a while, actually.
I’m starting to worry something might have happened to him.
Those otherworldly tinder dates, they can get quite nasty sometimes.