Hey guys - it’s been a while since I first posted here. Honestly, after I posted last time, I kind of felt embarrassed, like I was letting my imagination convince myself something more was happening than just a weird scientific survey I accidentally found myself a part of. I had opened those first two images to see one image of a triangle, and one image of three triangles forming a larger triangle. The triangles were stark black against a white background, unthreatening. I laughed, then, realizing how my mind had built the situation into something vast and conspiratorial and was half expecting to see something terrifying upon opening the pictures. Instead, just triangles.
I typed my answers, following the rules left to me by the odd lady on the phone whose instructions were already losing their eerie quality in my memory of the call. Then, I pressed send. And largely put the situation out of my mind.
As you know, that was a month ago. Since then, the game has almost become unquestioned habit. Periodically I receive photos over Reddit, always from a deleted user. The pictures come infrequently enough that they kind of just fade into the background of whatever other big events are going on - classes, going to the city with my friends, our travel plans for the summer, a visit from my mom. They always come early in the morning, sometimes as early as 2 or 3am, and I set my notification alert loud enough that it can wake me. For a while, they were just pictures of triangles in different arrangements, sometimes with many small triangles making up one large one, sometimes with overlapping triangles creating hypnotic patterns. About two weeks ago, natural pictures were interspersed with the others, of mountains or three-leaf plants. It became…normal. I stopped wondering why I was getting these photos, although every now and then if I thought about it too hard I would get curious. But largely, my attention was kept elsewhere and these triangles became a part of my life.
But, of course, if that was all there is to this story, I wouldn’t be writing this update. Because recently, two things changed. First, it was the tree. Then it was the eyes.
Finals are coming up, so the past week I’ve been spending almost every waking hour working on papers and studying. Stress has kept me up pretty late most nights, so the Reddit notification that woke me up around 6am was less welcome than usual. This deleted account has sent just one photo for me to play the game with, and as I opened it, a slow sense of dread crept over me. The picture was innocuous - two neighboring oak trees whose overlapping branches formed a series of narrow triangles. What scared me was that the picture was recognizable to me as the oak trees next to my childhood house, separating the property from the neighbors. My room there had a window that looked directly at them. It had been years since I had lived there, the property long since sold to some other owners who demolished the place, replacing the trees with a tall white fence. I was almost certain those trees were the ones from my memories, summer days spent alone trying to climb them, nights spent spooked by the movement of the branches in the wind. I blinked hard, trying to clear the sleepy fog out of my eyes. How is that even possible?
In my dazed state, I typed out, how did you get that photo? and hit send. I had all but forgotten the original fear that phone call at the beginning of the game had brought up for me until then, and it came back in a dizzying rush. Who is sending me these photos? What do they want from me? I stared at the screen, waiting for some indication that someone was going to respond. Nothing. I sat up, anger and confusion and fear swirling around in my head. We moved out of that house my junior year of high school after my mom couldn’t afford the mortgage anymore. Is it possible someone has been stalking me? Has this whole thing been some ploy to freak me out?
A notification.
a message has been unsent.
I cursed my lack of forethought to screenshot the picture. Something is definitely wrong - maybe I could have gone to the police? And say what?
Maybe I was misremembering. There are plenty of oak trees in the world. I had been isolated this week, working alone on my papers most days. Under a lot of stress. But pushing away that fear brought another one to the surface. What did she say, in that first phone call, about if I didn’t complete the task of counting triangles? I couldn’t remember, but it sounded ominous. Well, that’s where the eyes come in.
I hadn’t been able to fall back asleep after that message, kept up by my thoughts jumping rapidly back and forth between paranoia and rationalizations. A horrible feeling was creeping in that perhaps something far out of my control was wrong, that I had unwittingly found myself in a situation I would not be able to understand. At the mercy of someone else’s game, someone else’s rules. After laying in bed for a bit, I decided to at least get up and shower since I would have the shared dorm bathroom to myself at this time of the morning. As I gathered my toiletries and walked down the long hallway, perpetually lit by harsh yellow bulbs that revealed yellowed walls and a dark gray carpet that had the appearance of being filthy even though it was cleaned daily, I felt unnerved. Usually silence is friendly to me, quiet hours of the morning being a nice interruption from the overwhelming presence of the loud students who laugh and shriek and play music with their friends through the halls during the day. This morning, though, the quiet felt…different. It felt predatorial, like in nature documentaries when the music goes quiet right before the insect flies right into the spider’s web. Honestly, it freaked me out.
The next notification came while I was showering. I quickly grabbed my phone, the water droplets on my hand smearing across the screen and fragmenting the message. Another photo. I opened it and was surprised to see it was just a triangle. Looking closer, though, I realized inside the simple triangle, there was a detailed drawing of an eye. I hesitated at the seemingly mundane, albeit slightly creepy image. Oddly, I felt tears welling up, the absolute lack of predictability or sense in the situation and the lack of sleep getting to me. I responded with the triangle count and watched the phone for a few minutes, feeling the heavy silence surrounding the sounds of water leaking from the showerhead. With no further notifications, I put my phone down and turned the shower off. As I dried, I figured maybe it was time to reach out to a friend. When was the last time I had talked to any of my friends, anyway? It had been days, definitely - schedules misaligning and academic pressure keeping excursions short. I resolved to ask one of them to get dinner with me - maybe if I explained the situation out loud, my fears would feel much less potent than they do in my head. I left the bathroom, noting that it was now around 8am and the hallway was still empty, which was a little odd. As I reached my doorway, something caught my eye a little farther down. By the elevator, there’s a corkboard where students can advertise upcoming activities. Amidst the many layers of flyers, most with dates far in the past, I see one piece of paper in particular that makes me freeze.
It’s for some car wash fundraiser event, but the part that I’m focusing on is the group putting on the event. It’s a frat. The flyer has the shield of arms of the frat on it, an ugly mashup of pixelated icons. But above the shield of arms is the illustration of the eye, realistic and gray, identical to the picture on my phone only minutes before. Then I see the name of the frat - Delta Tau Delta, ΔΤΔ. Two triangles. My heart starts racing as I rip the flyer off the wall. There’s no way this is just a coincidence. I don’t remember seeing this flyer before and I took the elevator up just last night. I don’t even know if I’ve heard of this frat on campus, if it’s even real. Whoever they are, sending me these images - they’re fucking with me. Something is happening here. I start cycling back through the last month, trying to think if I missed something. If these signs started before today. The pictures of plants, mountains - should I recognize them? Is this some kind of puzzle, or scavenger hunt, or something? I suddenly realize the eye has been there before, just in more simple forms - circles in triangles, mostly. Have they been watching me? If so, for how long? Why?
I’m powering off my phone for a bit. It’s making me dizzy. I went back into my room and I don’t know what to do. I think I have to go to the event on the flyer. Maybe I’ll be able to find out more about what’s happening, what the triangle game is. I thought about reaching out to a friend but I just don’t think they’d understand like I do. There is something happening here, and maybe they can’t see it and you can’t see it. Maybe it’s not for you. The messages, the patterns, the triangles - it’s for me. They chose me. And I’m going to figure it out.
sidenote: I’ve been writing, trying to document everything, write down all my theories and ideas. I’ve realized that when I zone out with the pen in my hand, I’ve begun to draw triangles, tight repetitive patterns of them almost without realizing. I don’t know why this is.