Window Roulette

Window Roulette - Jax, Max and Me.

As the sounds of virtual gunshots echoed through the room, Jax was out of the game.

My friends-Jax, Max, and I-were playing this flash game called "Extreme Russian Roulette," and so far, it had been engaging. I killed Max, and Jax a few times, and they, in turn, killed me. We had some stakes on the line and even made some bets.

Jax and Max had been my friends all throughout middle school to early high school, and we hit it off as friends pretty well. We had our own group that sent memes and talked about things that would most likely land us in jail or some mental asylum.

Jax had chosen to add a bullet into the chamber, the turn then going to Max, who shot Jax and ended up winning the award of 1 million dollars in this high-stakes virtual Russian Roulette Game. As Max celebrated his victory, we heard the most familiar sound of a car engine stopping right outside Jax's house.

Jax stopped dead cold as his head snapped in the direction of the sound. We all came to the same conclusion-it must've been his parents who just arrived. They were out for some business in a house far away from ours and came back earlier than expected, taking Jax, Max, and me by surprise.

As we set down the controllers, we slowly made our way through Jax's house. Everything now eerily silent and still, as if the very house itself began to hold its breath. The house itself seemed to be like an apartment, with two stories in height, with Jax's room being on the upper level. The front door was not your average wooden door but rather a metal door. Jax's parents were very paranoid about security, and they were certain that a metal door would make a robber think twice before trying to sneak their way in.

It also helped that there were security cameras outside, but Jax and we didn't have access to the room that had the computers connected to these cameras.

As Jax put his hand near the switch that would open the door, he suddenly hesitated. His hands slowly drew back as he shakily staggered backwards.

"I'm hearing whispers from the other side!" Jax's voice had been nothing but panicked gibberish. I was lucky enough to understand it, but Max simply was confused.

"What? Repeat that again, Jax?" Max's face contorted in confusion as his eyebrows furrowed.

An ear-shattering sound struck the metal door as if something really heavy had made its way towards its hardened surface, clearly intent on wanting to get in. "A break-in? In a neighborhood like this?" My voice was hysterical as I tried to calm my breathing, hastily making my way towards my phone to call for the cops. Only to find that somehow, even in this neighborhood that had the best internet compared to other neighborhoods, I couldn't get in contact with the police department. Max, in his voice laced with desperation, whisper-shouted in indignation and concern, "You can't contact the police?"

I turned my head to Jax as I shakily told him to use his phone. But then I remembered that he didn't have one, or rather, it had been broken since a few days ago after a tiny accident on an online gaming session. Max's phone also didn't work.

This is really convenient for whatever is out there. Jax's family didn't freaking install a landline phone yet as they had recently moved in. But something tells me that even if they did, it wouldn't work either.

As I got lost in thought about what we should do now, the metal door ceased making any sort of pounding sound, leaving dead cold silence in its wake.

"Did he give up?" Jax's voice cut through the air with an uncertain edge, clearly shaken like we were. Max hesitantly nodded, but was still convinced it was not the end of it.

As Jax and Max continued to discuss how to call the cops or for help, we heard whispering sounds that seemed more like demonic hissing coming from the walls, as if something was silently climbing them, making its way towards the upper floor judging from the position of these sounds. The whispers that Jax had heard, we were all hearing them now. Whispers that told of nothing and yet everything at the same time, the words dancing around at the edge of sanity and logic. The shadows around us seemed to respond to these very whispers as I could see them dance around at my peripherals. Max subconsciously closed his ears and made his way towards the upper level to see if this thing was indeed climbing the walls. Sure enough, Max's shouting voice from upstairs erupted into full-blown desperation, "He is trying to get in!"

Jax and I immediately ran up the stairs and turned a corner into Jax's room, where Max was all the way on the other side holding the window tight.

The window itself was hard to break through, but it was easily opened by either side.

As we ran across the room, almost tripping over the console and controllers scattered on the ground, we arrived at Max and helped him hold the window's hinges from opening. We couldn't see it, despite being certain that it was trying to open the window; we knew it was there because of the whispers.

After a while, it seemed to give up in entering through Jax's room, and so its whispers died down. But we presumed that it was going to try another window, and so we scattered across the rooms that had windows. If it attempted to enter one, one of us would shout really loudly, and we would come in to help hold the window. This tactic worked unbelievably well. Whatever this thing was, it clearly didn't expect us to act so accordingly in teamwork. Even though panic and downright fear were gripping our hearts, we didn't let that dictate our response.

We continued to do this, but it didn't seem to adapt. It continued to do the same trick over and over again, and our tactics would prove superior again and again. Eventually, after what seemed to be hours, it finally gave up.

We walked separately across the entire house, trying to hear the whispers as indicators of its presence, but we not only didn't feel it, we also didn't hear it.

It seemed to have completely lost its interest and moved on. Jax desperately wanted to go into the camera room to see if the creature showed up on the recorded footage. But the door was locked, and so we had to wait for his parents to come home and call the cops. This thing was certainly supernatural, and we needed proof to show the police; otherwise, no one would believe us. We were also worried about his parents, wondering if something happened to them, but our fears were proven wrong as they arrived a few minutes later (more specifically, around 30 minutes later). Jax was absolutely hysterical, hyperventilating as he begged his parents to open the camera room to show what had happened. Max and I were shaken as we tried to transcribe Jax's panicked gibberish to his parents, and after a while, they let us into the room. But, as we feared, it didn't appear on the recorded footage.

But his parents seemed to believe us a bit because they were looking at our faces, their eyes narrowing as they scrutinized our body language.

They knew we weren't lying, but there just wasn't any proof, and the cops certainly wouldn't take this seriously. Jax's parents' paranoid behavior only increased after that; they decided to further reinforce the house's security measures after a few days.

In one of those days, however, we discovered that a group of teenagers in a house not far from Jax's house had all been killed. Mutilated to pieces, hacked apart. Jax, Max, and I were playing in Jax's room until we heard it from his parents, and it didn't take 2 seconds to connect the dots.

This thing had lost its interest in us and moved to another prey. And this time, it had succeeded.

We didn't know if it would come after us again, but we were certain of one thing-whatever this thing is, it's still out there.