It started six months ago when I joined a popular Roblox Discord server that allows you to find friends to play with. I went into one of the "find a party" chats and sent out a request to find someone to play with. Then I received a DM.
"Hi, I'm Carla. Nice to meet you". The chat box displayed.
It was exciting to have the attention of an actual person, especially a female one. In the real world, people look right past me since I'm ugly. They see through me as if my personality doesn't qualify to be worth admiring. I've never had a girlfriend, and after being rejected a few times over Roblox, I realized I'd rather not attempt to give any unwanted attention, let alone humiliate myself.
"It's nice to meet you, Carla. Thanks for wanting to play with me. How old are you?" I pressed send and waited, feeling my heart speed up. She replied to my message,
"L-O-L. I'm 15. What about you?"
"I'm 19, about to turn 20" I replied.
"Sweet" she replied. "What's your name, by the way?"
"Matthew"
"I like the name Matthew." *Winky face emoji*, she sent back.
Just the winking emoji was enough to send my imagination running wild. Her in-game character on Roblox was extremely attractive, and it gave me a hard on.
After a few days of playing online with Carla, helping me in those Roblox games, we continued to chat. I was thrilled when she told me she lived in California, just a state away from me. She lived in a tiny apartment, and she worked for her parents' nail salon to help save up for nursing school. She seemed genuinely interested in our conversations, and my attraction to someone I had never met slowly but surely grew every time I logged on. I began playing every day just to spend time with Carla, and the day she was absent from Discord, I missed her dearly.
About two months into our online friendship, Carla logged on to my joy, but the mood shifted when she messaged me.
"I'm in a dark place. Can I maybe call you?" The chat read. My throat closed up at the request. I hate my voice.
I stumble and trip over words when I'm nervous. I tugged at my hair in frustration and paced around my bedroom, lit by the glow of the screen.
"Sure, okay" I replied.
She asked for my number, and I gave it to her. My heart raced as the phone vibrated on the desk.
"Hello?". I hated the way it came out.
"Oh, Matthew, thank you for letting me call. I just need to actually talk to someone".
Her voice was lovely and soothing.
"Of course, is everything all right?"
"I was harassed by a customer at work. He kept asking me out, and I politely declined, but he kept persisting until I threatened to call the police. I get that sometimes, but when I got home, I could have sworn I saw someone in the bushes staring at me. I'm just so shaken up".
"I'm so sorry to hear that. Nobody deserves that" I stated. Glad she was safe.
"Most men are like that. They see you as an object they want, not a person, not you"
"You're different, Matthew. You see me for who I am". Her voice slowed in a sultry manner.
"It's really drawing me to you"
We spent the evening talking about our hopes and dreams, our philosophies, and politics. Carla told me she had an abusive mother who would beat her as a kid, a father who left before she was born. I told her of my life as an awkward kid who just was not attractive to women. She cooed into my ear through the receiver in response.
"You are so much more attractive than you know. I honestly can't stop thinking about you the past few weeks" she said.
We continued talking for hours on the phone. Eventually, the sky began to light up from the rising sun, and I needed to get some sleep. We said our goodbyes, but ended up texting each other back and forth. She kept flattering me and expressing interest.
Then a few days later, she sent me a photo, a stunning woman blowing a kiss at the camera. She was so beautiful. If I sent my photo, she'd lose interest. I responded with compliments and emojis, but eventually, she asked to see me. I typed some long-winded response about how I'm unfotogenic and not attractive to begin with, but she kept pressing. I took a photo of my awkward smile and pressed send.
"You're cute" came the reply, and I was beyond relieved.
Over the next weeks, we became friends on Facebook, and I was driven wild by how attractive she looked in the few photos she'd shared online. I saw her tiny apartment and her adorable little gray cat. It was all very much real, and I was falling for her. Then, out of the blue, I received a text from Carla that shook my core.
"I need to see you". I stared at those five words with anguish.
This surely would be the moment the magic died. All I could envision was meeting up with her, then her looking at me from head to toe before saying "Oh". I couldn't take it. My heart was so fragile, it felt it would shatter into a million pieces at any given moment. Still, I had no choice but to accept or risk ending it all
"Okay" I texted, swallowing a large lump in my tightening throat.
A few weeks earlier, Carla had sent me her address, and she had more recently asked me to share mine when she said
"See you soon". I knew it was time to meet up at her place in person.
I flossed and brushed my teeth after a second shower. After a spritz of cologne and a mop of hair gel, I dressed in my best pair of jeans and shirt. My heart was pounding. I sat in the car for a few minutes after putting Carla's address into the GPS, and then I began driving.
When I arrived there, I parked, then built up my courage to get out. I approached the door, marked 205 B, her door. I knocked and waited, but there was no answer.
"Carla, it's Matthew" I said. Nothing.
I imagined she'd seen me through the window and realized her mistake. She'd likely changed her mind after seeing my face or my waist. I was about to turn around and drive back, but then I saw movement in the dark room behind the curtain. There was a figure, more just a shadow in the unlit room. They looked to be convulsing in the corner, twitching in a way of what appeared to be a seizure. My heart pounded, and I thought that Carla was having a medical emergency. She could be in danger. I tried opening the door, but it was locked. This was my one chance to be a hero, I thought.
I stepped back from the door and took a few short deep breaths, then charged into the door with my shoulder. White hot pain burned in my shoulder as the loud bang sounded. I stepped back and charged again. Then again, trying the best I could to ignore the burning pain. On the fifth attempt, the lock gave out and the door burst open.
The smell hit me like a tidal wave. I coughed and choked, covering my mouth and nose with my hands as I looked at the quivering slumped form in the corner. It was a long-haired woman, but they were pulsating, shifting in some strange manner that the darkness concealed the nature of. I reached my splayed hand over the wall, locating a light switch, and flicked it on.
I let out an involuntary yell. In the corner was a life-deprived a lived woman, covered with thousands of feeding flies. Her skin loosely draped over the armature of a skeleton as if all the meat had been removed from her body. I recognized the hair which had fallen off in patches where the skin had begun to rot. I recognized the crystal earrings, dangling from her ears as well. It was Carla, but she had been dead and rotting for weeks, maybe even months.
I jumped at a buzz coming from my own pocket. It was a text notification on my phone. It was from Carla.
"I'm like five minutes away. Look forward to seeing you". I gagged from the terrible stench and the horror of the hollowed-out body listening to the buzzing of a thousand flies.
An incoming text buzzed again, and I read the new message.
"Hey, I'm here. Let me in"
I then realized the mixup. She intended to go to my place. Not her, though, as that wasn't Carla. Something else. My heart beat rapidly in my chest. This woman, whose photos I'd seen in shared messages, was clearly long dead and rotting away in this dark room. Who was texting me and who was at my apartment?
Then another message appeared, quickly followed by another.
"Where are you? Where are you, Matthew?"
I ignored it, dialing the authorities instead. I sat in my car, conveying my worries and listening to the grim discovery.
The police arrived and analyzed the scene. The cause of death was unknown, but I was cleared from any suspicion due to lack of physical evidence.There was no sign of forced entry, only a set of strange scratch marks on the floor and on Carla's draping skin. I was informed she had to have been deceased for at least a month.
I never received any more texts from Carla's phone. I think whatever I'd been communicating with was far too intelligent to get traced and tracked that way. I stopped playing Roblox altogether and tried to get over my heartbreak. How many of those messages were from the real Carla? How many were just bait laid out by whatever thing had taken her away from me?
I moved on with my life and moved apartments as well for my own safety. Though the passing weeks turned into months, part of me missed that true connection I'd made with another human. It was part curiosity and part nostalgia, but I eventually logged into that game one last time.
I entered the virtual world, and only a few minutes after logging in, that familiar, gorgeous avatar ran towards my own. It was Carla's character, clear as day. My heart pounded until it ached. I tried to fabricate a scenario where Carla was truly alive and well, that there had been some strange mixup, but then her character's chat box popped up.
My stomach churned as I read the messages that kept popping up on my screen over and over again.
It read "Where are you, Matthew?"
Then, a few seconds later, I heard a pair of hard knocks against my apartment door. I've been writing this story since then, and the knocks have only gotten louder and more intense. This is a documented account in case I don't make it out alive. If I don't update this, assume the worst has happened.