Years ago, when I was about thirteen, I was hanging around in my house one summer's night when the phone rang, Mom picked it up, and shortly after, handed it to me. She told me that my cousin, Felix, was on the phone.
We caught up and chatted about his first couple of days at the new summer camp he was going to. He said that it was great and he was having a good time.
After speaking for a few minutes, he mentioned that he was looking for a game to play with the campers.
"Not truth or dare, spin the bottle, or any of that crap. I'm looking for something scary."
Those were his exact words.
I asked my mom if I could use the computer and, she agreed, thus began my search for a game.
I spoke to Felix while I searched. Most of the games were pretty dumb, Bloody Marry, Ouija boards, among others.
I was on the ninth or tenth page of google, just clicking away when I found this super obscure website. I can't remember the name of the website, but what I do remember was that it was a forum where a group of people was talking about this game, a game called "7 Minutes in Hell".
I told Felix what I had found, and I started reading through the chat aloud.
The game was simple.
You must be in a very dark room, and it must be quiet, or else the ritual will be broken. Step into the room, sit on the floor, one leg over the other for seven minutes, no less, no more.
If you leave before seven minutes is up, something will follow you for one hour or more, depending on how early you leave. Every second you spend outside of the room before the seven minutes are up counts toward an hour of something following you.
If you leave after seven minutes is up, you will have one year of bad luck or more, depending on when you leave. Every second you delay counts toward a year of bad luck.
I read all of this to Felix, and he was stoked. It sounded perfect, he said that his twenty minutes of call time was almost up and that he had to go. I said bye but continued reading through the forum. This game was taken pretty seriously, the people on the forum were talking about strategies for the game. One guy even tested all of the rooms before he played, using a stopwatch to figure out how long it would take him to get in and out of the room.
I kept reading until mom came in and told me to get off. I closed the window and honestly forgot about the game for some time. That was until Thanksgiving that year.
Felix, my sibling, and I were hanging out in my grandma's back yard, Thanksgiving Dinner was being prepared, and we weren't wanted in the kitchen. I recalled the game then and asked Felix how it went.
He laughed and said that it didn't work. He coughed during his turn in the room. I laughed in response, but that's when he stopped as if he remembered something. I asked him, and he told me that one of the guys left the room early, had a bad feeling. He said that it felt as if something were following him. This creeped them out, and they hung out in the cabin with all the lights on. I remembered the rule about leaving early, and I asked Felix how early his friend left.
He said that he didn't know for sure, it had been so long ago.
I asked if anyone had left late, and he couldn't recall.
We got called in for dinner, and the conversation was dropped.
Later that night, I was approached by Felix. He said that he remembered something while he was eating dinner.
One of the girls in the group left late, she' had fumbled with the doorknob, which cost her valuable time. However, he remembered how late she was, two seconds, which according to the rules, meant two years of bad luck.
I raised my eyebrows, and he continued.
The girl, I'll call her Eliza, stayed in contact with Felix after she went home after camp ended and didn't notice anything at first. She expected a bunch of near-death experiences but no, none of that. She first started noticing things about a week after she got home. Her mom sent her into the store to grab something, toilet paper, or something. Eliza ran in to grab it, but the isle with the toilet paper was closed. Someone had fallen and hurt themselves badly. EMS was there and everything. She didn't think too much of it, but the thought of the game stayed in the back of her mind the whole time.
A few more things like that happened, she was getting ice cream, and when it was her turn in line the ice cream man had a heart attack, that same week, she and her family were going to see a movie but there was a horrible car accident, and they missed the showing.
The one event that stuck out was her first day back at school. She went to a preppy private school, and during PE, she sprained her ankle. PE had just ended, and she had to limp inside to her next class. The teacher asked her to grab some pencils from the supply closet in the hall. Her ankle caused her discomfort, so she asked her friend to collect them.
She obliged but never made it back to the classroom because as it turned out, the freshly sharpened pencils were stored in a precarious cup at the top of the shelf. Eliza's friend, in an attempt to reach them, bumped the shelf and all of the pencils fell, finding lodging in various parts of her face.
She ended up being fine, but Eliza blamed herself for her friend's injuries.
Felix finished, and I took it all in. That was a lot, was the game real? It could just be a coincidence.., but was it?
We didn't talk about the game after that, Felix got into High school, and I got a summer job. The game became nothing more than a vague memory.
Years later, I was seventeen. I was home alone and bored. My mom was out of state, and my siblings were at my dad's house.
I suddenly remembered the game I discovered all those years ago. I was bored and decided to give it a go, taking caution to run the various tests beforehand.
I had my clock set and my phone on vibrate. I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door, and sat on the floor
I felt kind of stupid for playing a child's game at seventeen, but once again, I was bored.
Two minutes passed, and nothing happened. It was just dead quiet aside from the kitchen appliances making noise every now and then. I realized then that I had forgotten to turn the light off in the kitchen, which was pretty close to the bathroom. The light made a dim line just below the door. I worried that I'd ruined the ritual but continued with the game regardless. That's when I noticed something weird... There was what looked like a pair of legs blocking the dim light from under the door. But it was so dim I could barely differ it from any other shadow. I tried not to think much of it, I probably only had another few minutes.
The legs or at least, what I thought were legs, kept coming in and out of focus. I kept telling myself that it was nothing, just a trick of the shadows. It was so inconsistent that it was hard to say. Suddenly my phone buzzed, six minutes and fifty-four seconds, I had six seconds to leave the bathroom. I had forgotten to turn the brightness down on my phone and I don't know about you guys, but my old phone would turn the screen on when the timer went off.
I saw something, standing against the bathroom door, thin, gray legs with scabbing skin. It was only for a few seconds because I thrust the door open and threw myself into the hall.
Panting, I turned the hall and bathroom light on. I stepped into the bathroom and found nothing.
What the hell was that? Was all I could think. Was the game real? Did I think it just prayed on the player's fears but was that the case? I wasn't about to find out, I turned the rest of the lights on and tried to put the game behind me, for good this time.
The End
