The Chat Room

 

I’m a 21-year-old engineering student. because of the pandemic, I was able to physically attend only the first one and a half years of my studying at college, the rest of the years were spent mostly studying online. I really didn’t have a lot of friends circle. So, the lockdown even restricted me to meet even a few of those I know. It really made me lonely. One day I was scrolling through the subreddit that helped lonely people make friends. During that time I stumbled upon a post about a discord server called, “happy oasis”  the description of the discord server sounded usual, like all other discord servers’ descriptions. Stating that it was a friendly community and included all people of color, race, and sexual orientation. I felt a bit curious because I was never in a discord server before. So, I joined the subreddit. In the beginning, people at the server were really welcoming of me. There were different channels in the server for general talk and other stuff. Most of the conversations on these channels were about either TV, movies, or memes. But one channel really stood out I wasn’t allowed to enter the channel. After being on the server for a month and getting to know a few people there, I DMed a guy called Buress who I frequently used to chat with, asking him about this one particular channel that didn’t allow me to enter or chat. He didn’t reply to me for two days and was also not active on the server for those two days. On the third day, I received a dm from him. It said, ”check the channel” I opened the channel. Now, I was granted access to the channel. There were people chatting in the room with different font colors and some in caps. The minute I entered the chat room, everything about the chat room felt weird. People were talking about what kind of spice would go with meat, generally about cooking. All these people in the chat room were already known to me through the server but the way they were talking was a bit, “creepy”  this time around. Everyone seemed to be passionate about this food and I assumed this by going through the chat. I wanted to know about what dish they were talking about so, I jumped in the middle of the chat and asked what meat they were talking about? The chats suddenly stopped and after a while, Buress replied “human meat”. At first, I thought they were kidding me. I asked them again and this time to answer my question for real. Buress sent a picture in the chat room and I was shocked to the core. It was a guy being cooked, it was like a stew only with his arms and legs, while his head and torso spilling out with his intestine and other inner organs were lying on the ground. Everything looked so real. I was horrified to see it and immediately left the server. And I am still horror-struck thinking about the image that I witnessed.