Dating : Group Text Terror! A Halloween Story

HUMOROUS HORROR

The insidious evil of mass-texting threads

I remember the Halloween when the group text terror began. Life was easy and relatively worry-free. I was diligent in my work and never allowed it to spill into my personal life — until that fateful day.

My boss sent a message to seventeen of us — “Happy Halloween!” it read, “Stay Safe and have fun!” An innocuous and sweet message, but the demons it unleashed would terrorize my life. Within an hour of receiving the message, my phone’s notification alarm went off forty-four times.

Panicked, I scrolled through the replies.

“Thanks, Boss! You too!”

“I hope you all have a creepy eve!” accompanied an image of Pinhead from “Hellraiser.”

And the texts kept coming. Pictures of co-workers and their kids, all dressed as “Frozen” characters. Eighteen texts poured in containing one-on-one conversations amid the thread. Seven hours later, I muted my phone’s sound and jammed it in the depths of my coat pocket. The notification buzz remained constant.

“Make it stop!” my soul cried. “What have I done to deserve this?”

I knew my co-workers were possessed and would never cease their maniacal torment. I needed to escape before the thread swallowed me whole. I searched for a phone exorcist — someone who could save me. I found a priest who insisted on cutting into the thread to stop it. But he drowned in the sea of the horrifying thread now containing 14,789 messages.

This insidiously evil form of communication threatened my sanity — nay, my very existence — but I would not let it ruin me. I quit my job and legally changed my name. I moved to a small mountain cabin with no cell service. No living person had bothered me in months. The sacrifices were enormous but worth the prevention of seven Steve Carell memes sent at 3 a.m. by a random guy from work I don’t even know.

This year, as October fell and the air ripened with crackling leaves and the thrill of mystery, I breathed a sigh of relief. I decided to emerge from my self-inflicted isolation. The world may be in chaos, but I felt I had conquered the group text demons who terrorized me.

I hadn’t received a group text in over a year. I thought I was safe.

I was wrong — dead wrong.

My Halloween nightmare began earlier this week. I held my head high for the first time in many months and leapt to rejoin society. I turned my phone back on, and a hopeful silence greeted me.

I met up with old friends and walked through a “haunted cornfield” at McCroy Farms — while remaining socially-distant, of course. We sipped on hot cider and laughed as if group texts hadn’t changed us all. We remembered those we’d lost to Group Text Terror (GTT) and vowed to continue fighting against this evil in their honor.

After a notification-free afternoon, I bounced alone to my car, giggling all the way. And then I heard a phone chime. Screaming, I jumped in the air. Mike McCroy, the elderly, flannel-clad owner of the farm, ran to my side. “Are you okay?” he asked before I realized the chime wasn’t coming from my phone. I breathed deeply and laughed.

“Yeah. I’m so sorry. I thought I heard something…”

He patted my shoulder and walked away. I could have sworn I saw him skip a couple of times. I couldn’t figure out why, but he made me shudder.

About twenty minutes later, my phone began buzzing in my pocket. Once. And then twice. Before I could pull over, fifty notifications came through.

I swung to the side of the road as tremors shot through my hands. I had to wipe my sweat-clad palm off on my jeans before I picked up the phone. I looked at the first message and saw a dreaded 49 recipients.

“Hello, and thank you for choosing McCroy Farms for your Halloween scares!” the text read. “Please feel free to include any follow-up questions or criticisms in this thread. Here for your terror, Mike McCroy.”

A fog overcame me as I let my phone drop to the car floor.

“NOOOOOO!” I screamed. Multiple notification chimes pierced through my brain. I clamped my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut. My phone vibrated and danced across the car.

The phone hasn’t stopped buzzing for three days. Somebody save me. Please. Please save me.