I like to tell people that I’m into the macabre, but the truth is a bit more shameful. The former is not untrue by any means, I really do like all things morbid and creepy. What I’m really into, however, is gore - and I don’t mean slasher movies or whatever. I mean the real deal, videos of actual people dying and getting hurt in the worst ways possible; cartels chopping heads off, people severed on train tracks, freak accidents where faces get burnt off. They make me feel horrible, and I know they’re disgusting and decrepit and wrong… but there’s something intriguing about this side of humanity. Seeing the worst of it makes me appreciate what I have; the things I won’t have to endure, and the empathy I have for those of us who have.
A few weeks ago my friend Jacob sent me a link to a site that’s address was just a bunch of scribbles, telling me to check it out for some hardgore content. He’s into this stuff as well, even more so than me. He doesn’t seem to empathize with the victims as much though, instead reveling in the horrific for its own sake - but hey, who am I to judge.
I found it slightly uncomfortable to share this infatuation with someone - a fact well known by Jacob - but he’d still sometimes send me something to look at. This particular website wasn’t anything too interesting. It looked like it was made in the 90’s - an awkwardly textured background burned dark red throughout the website, and the title “What’s So Weird About A Dead Body?” stood at the top in neon-green glowing 3D letters. Beneath the title was a video player with arrows on both sides of it.
The first video was quite old - I guess you could say a classic - of a man putting a knife through his hand. I’d seen it before a hundred times, as it was featured on every gore-centered or edgy website ever, having circulated the internet for years. The video, as I remembered it, had the man stab his hand slowly, and ended abruptly as he took the knife back out and placed it next to his hand. It was slightly macabre, and amateurish enough for the viewer to question its authenticity.
In this version, the video continued. After the knife is placed down, he puts down the camera on the table, propping it up to show his bare torso and face. He seems distressed; he’s sweating and panting, his eyes darting as if he’s waiting for someone to jump at him. The man takes the knife into his good hand and lifts it up. Taking one more look around the room, he closes his eyes and plunges the blade straight into his throat. His eyes react to the pain and try to flee his body, bulging and struggling to focus. He takes the blade out and immediately drops it onto the floor as blood gushes out and coats his chest. Deep gurgles and the occasional bubbles dance around the man’s throat and mouth until he stoops down out of the camera’s view, and the video cuts.
The rest of the videos had people dying as well. The deaths themselves were varied, some boasting grandiose acts of violence and torture, others simply the effects of overdosing or poisoning. After a while I started to click the right arrow repeatedly, skipping over videos, trying to see when I’d end up at the first one again. I must’ve loaded up over a hundred of them. With no end in sight, I promptly shut my browser and cleared my browsing history. I texted Jacob back, asking where he had found the site. He said his friend linked it to him, and didn’t really care where he’d got it from. I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind and went to sleep. I dreamed of corpses standing on a field, dividing themselves in two, like cells. The field quickly became packed with dead bodies, and I felt the world being engulfed as the death-division virus spread, the magnitude of bodies pulling the continents of earth down into the deep waters of the oceans.
The next morning I woke up to an email titled “Upload Instructions”. It held a link and some basic instructions on how to upload a video to the same website Jacob had sent me. I hadn’t given any information to the website, so I have no idea how they got my email address. The sender was a scribble of letters and numbers with no discernible pattern from a generic email provider. Initially I was freaked out - I was sure this website had somehow hacked through the browser and gotten all of my information. But then I thought about it, and I couldn’t see why they’d simply send me an email. I checked my bank accounts and social media profiles, and none of them had been affected. Surely a hacker would’ve actually done something with their prize. I quickly surmised that the culprit must be Jacob, so I texted him, nonchalantly asking if he’d gotten any weird emails, since I got a real spooky one. He knew I had gone on the site, and he had my email - Occam’s razor proclaimed him guilty. Texting me back, he acted like he had no idea about the whole thing. Although I couldn’t be completely certain, I decided to just change all my passwords just in case and chalk it up to the moron who calls himself Jacob.
I forgot about the whole thing pretty quickly, seeing as my money was still in my account, my socials were untouched and my computer showed no signs of malware. A week passed without incident. Then, I got another email, titled “When and Where”. It was sent from a different email address, but one which adhered to the scribbling convention; another random string of numbers and letters. The email was succinct, having only an address, a date and time. It took me a moment to realize, but the address was Jacob’s. The when resolved itself as the next day at 9:30 PM.
I immediately texted Jacob, and asked him if this was another prank of his. He denied the whole thing, and I wanted to get a more clear answer of his intentions, so I called him. Usually he’d crack up if we were talking, so I thought this was a good way to test the waters. On the phone he seemed genuinely stressed out, instead accusing me of trying to prank him. Neither of us trusted each other enough to resolve this then and there, so I suggested that we’d hang out on the date and time specified in the email. He agreed. I guess if it was a prank - by either one of us - we’d find out then.
The next day I got to his house a few minutes before our date. Jacob’s house was quite big, decorated with a large porch that seemed like a grin when accompanied by the eye-like windows on the second story. I knocked on the front door. No answer. The lights were on throughout the house, so at least someone must be inside. I knocked again, tried the handle, and with a wavering voice shouted his name to see if he’d hear me. With another answer of silence, and the door locked, I decided to go around and see if he had left the back door open.
The back door was ajar, forming a saber of light outside the house that illuminated the steps up to the door. I yelled out his name again and stepped in. There was no sound from anywhere in the house. I walked around the first floor, stomping my feet loudly to alert anyone who might be there of my presence. After I cleared the floor, I took up the stairs where Jacob’s bedroom was. I really hoped I wasn’t about to walk in on him jerking one out with porn blasting on his headphones, the twat unable to hear me coming in.
I walked up to his bedroom door and, for the final time, knocked and stomped and yelled out his name - a final warning before I would barge in. No sound came out of his room, or anywhere else for that matter. I clasped the door handle and let myself in.
Jacob laid on the floor next to his bed, bloodied and torn. His clothes were indeterminable in color as they were soaked in blood. The full-bodied musk of iron, sweat and urine engulfed my sense of smell. Instantly, a ladleful of vomit made its way up to my mouth, which I somehow managed to force myself to swallow.
Jacob’s head was caved in. The lowest part of his jaw remained in its rightful place, as did the top of his skull. In between these two points there had formed a crater in which a slurry of human parts, squashed and stretched and torn, sat in a pool of near-black blood. The pupil of one eye floated on the surface as yellowed teeth jutted out in awkward positions like kernels of corn. Bits of Jacob’s frontal lobe lined the top of his mangled face, drooping and overlapping each other like skinned snakes. As a whole, the sight reminded me of food, the connection instantly flooding my mouth with fresh vomit - this time some of it escaping to the carpeted floor.
On the bed next to him, there was a digital camera, completely untouched by blood or dirt. It looked completely pristine, which gave it an aura of uncanniness - an inhuman sterileness in the midst of death and gore and depravity. My transfixed stare got broken as I received a text on my phone. My hands shook as I dug the phone out of my pocket and attempted to put in my lock-screen code before finally getting it right on the third attempt. The text was from an unknown number, and it said “What’s So Weird About A Dead Body?”
Staring at the text my mind reeled, trying to find answers. I couldn’t come up with anything, the thoughts competing amongst each other and drowning all narratives out. As I held my phone, I remembered what people do in these situations - call the police.
I called 911. They took me to the station and interviewed - questioned - me. They thought I had something to do with what happened to Jacob, framing questions in a way that was designed to make me confess. I told them everything; how we decided to hang out, how no one answered the door, and how I found him. Well, I didn’t tell them about the website. They were already thinking of me as a murderer, how would it have looked if I told them I liked to frequent gore sites? People have gone to jail for less, and as they didn’t seem to have any leads, the only thing they could do is press me for information. They didn’t want to solve the case, they wanted to find a culprit. After a few days they had no evidence and no legal precedent to detain me for any longer, so they had to let me go.
I knew I was traumatized, but I was running on fumes by that point and the only things I felt were hunger and tiredness. I felt like going into a hibernation, hoping that my dreams would grace me with some form of escapism, although I feared they would only curse me with nightmares. As I came back home, I disrobed myself, got into bed and instantly fell asleep. I slept for something like twelve hours - not completely sure since keeping time wasn’t exactly a top priority.
I woke up a few hours ago to another email, this one titled “Your When and Where”. The sender was another random jutting of letters and numbers. It said that my “When and Where” had been delivered to another participant, and they await their reply. It didn’t say specifics, no address, no date, and no time. I’m assuming that the receiving party got an email exactly like the one I got about Jacob.
I don’t own a gun, and have barely anything to protect myself with. I dug out my old baseball bat, which I’m keeping at arm’s-length right now. I don’t know when my time is, or where, but I assume my house is an obvious spot. I don’t think the cops could do anything about this since it’s just a vague email, and even so, I’d have to explain the whole thing and definitely sound like a crazed murderer. I think I’m going to run - it’s only a matter of time when it happens. For Jacob I had a day - it could be less for me.
I’ll make my move soon, and keep you guys posted on how things progress. I guess I just wanted to write this out to tell people what happened to me if something went wrong, and to warn others who might’ve gone on the site. I’m naming this post according to the website, so if anyone tries to search for it, this will come up. Maybe it can warn them, or help them in some way.