Vacation roulette | series | choose your own adventure | horror | supernatural
Vacation Roulette — Disappointment
Well that was unexpected!
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There is no way you could bring yourself to kill your partner, not even to save ten people. The more you think about it, the more sure you are. There is no context given. You could be required to be the one to kill your partner, only to find out you’ve ‘saved’ the lives of convicted killers, the elderly, or ten people from a hospice. You briefly feel bad for the comparison, but you’re sure about your answer.
You click ‘no’. Then submit.
A wheel whirls. And whirls. Your partner returns from the kitchen with their cup of tea and looks at the screen.
“What’s going on?” They ask as they peer over your shoulder.
“I don’t know. I answered the question and then hit submit. Now it’s doing this,” you explain as you shrug.
“Weird. What was the question?”
You hesitate. You’re not sure why but you feel like you shouldn’t tell your partner what the question was.
You shrug off the feeling, shaking your head. You and your partner share everything. Why would you keep this a secret?
“It asked me if I would kill you to save ten people,”
Your partner looks taken aback as they make a little sound of surprise.
“Okaaaay. That’s a little weird. But I guess when you consider the questions in the last test, maybe not so much?”
Their voice got more hopeful, and less freaked out at the end of their question.
“Guess so,” you agree.
“So, what did you answer?” They playfully ask, poking you in the shoulder.
You smirk at them.
“What do you think I answered?”
Your partner looks at the screen, with the wheel still spinning.
“Yes?”
You jokingly clutch your chest and flop forwards.
“Oh, you wound me! How could you think such a thing of me? My love for you is strong! I would spare your life if it meant 100 lives!” You exclaim dramatically, humour dancing in your eyes.
Your partner rolls theirs.
“Oh, look! It’s doing something!”
Your partner is pointing at the screen.
The wheel had stopped spinning, and a new page was loading. It loads slowly, from top to bottom. That’s weird, you think. But you soon forget about that as you see what the page says.
The page consists of a simple white background and a .gif that looks like it’s from the 90s of a round yellow face that goes from frowning to crying. Beneath the unsettling image, it says in large red lettering:
We regret to inform you that you do not meet our standards.
Thank you for your interest.
And that’s it. Nowhere else to click.
“Oh,” your partner says, their disappointment clear in their voice.
“Uh, yeah,” you say, dumbfounded by this turn of events.
You both sit there looking at the screen for a few more moments. Your partner breaks the silence.
“Maybe go back and answer yes?”
You were thinking the same thing but didn’t want to say it out loud. You click the back button.
Safari can not open the page because the server can not be found.
“Maybe it timed out,” you say, trying to reassure your partner and yourself. You click back again.
Safari can not open the page because the server can not be found.
You click back again.
Safari can not open the page because the server can not be found.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” you say, looking up at your partner’s disappointed face.
“What if we try to restart it?”
“Yeah, we could try,” you say as you navigate to the first page.
Safari can not open the page because the server can not be found.
“Well, I guess that’s it. We’ll have to book a different vacation,” you say, defeated.
Your partner nods, looking at you sadly.
“I’m going to go watch TV,” they say as they’re already walking out of the room.
Disappointed in the site, disappointed in yourself, you shut down the computer and follow your partner into the living room.
Later that night, you’re getting ready for bed when your phone buzzes. You look down and see that you‘ve received a text message from an unknown number. It reads:
We are sorry that you could not sign up for our vacation using our website. We have another opportunity for you! To qualify for our vacation, you must complete a task. Reply YES if you want more; Reply STOP if you do not want to receive more texts from us.
You consider. There’s no harm in finding out what the task is, right?
You text back YES.
Thank you for agreeing to participate! You have 24 hours to complete the following task. If it remains incomplete in 24 hours, we will be forced to follow up.
You look at the text, dumbfounded. You thought you were just getting information, not agreeing to do anything. And what did they mean, ‘forced to follow up’? Fear begins to well up in your belly. Your phone vibrates, and another text comes through.
You must go to 613 Maple Ave between 1:00 am and 3:00 am, break into the house, make your way to the main bedroom, and retrieve the gold locket from the jewelry box on the dresser. The residents may or may not be armed.
You read the message, then reread it several times. You jump when your phone vibrates again.
You must then take the locket to the coffee shop on the corner of Main Street and Church Street at 9:00 am and give it to the person in the red hoodie reading a Jim Butcher novel.
This was a lot. You really want to go on the trip. And you can be a pretty sneaky person. But breaking into somebody’s house? That was big time. But it’s not anything you haven’t done before. You’re just a bit rusty.
It’s just that you left that life behind.
You don’t know what to do. You could just go ahead and complete the task and surprise your partner with the vacation. Or you could tell them about it and let them help you make the decision. They have always had a better moral compass than you.
You decide to:
Go ahead with the task (click here).
Discuss it with your partner (click here).
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