Red Room

DAY 1

Andy: October 3rd. I've been unemployed for four months. Got my severance pay yesterday.

Andy: Sarah picked up the last of her boxes last week. Nothing of hers is left in the apartment.

Andy: Well. That's not true. The smell of her shampoo is still on the pillow.

Andy: I'm starting this journal because my therapist says I need to get things out of my head somewhere. No one will read this.

Andy: The apartment sounds different without her. Bigger. More echoes.

Andy: I haven't slept in two nights. I've been reading threads about the deep web on Reddit.

Andy: Just out of academic curiosity. Like taking a stroll through a cemetery.

Andy: I downloaded Tor. Opened it. An ugly search box and a welcome message.

Andy: I thought this would impress me more.

DAY 2

Andy: October 4th. I slept until four in the afternoon.

Andy: Back to Tor. Total disappointment.

Andy: Drugs. Fake passports. Stolen credit cards. Auctions for things I don't even want to know about.

Andy: This isn't what the YouTube videos make it out to be. It's like a crappy Wish with worse design.

Andy: I found a forum. Just white text on a black background. It's called Below7.

Andy: People write in broken English. They talk about "experiences." Live cameras. "Shows."

Andy: There's a thread titled "Red Rooms — Myth or Reality." 312 pages long.

DAY 3

Andy: October 5th. I've been reading the thread all day.

Andy: The academic consensus is that they don't exist. Not a single verified case.

Andy: Tor can't handle quality live video. The latency gives it away.

Andy: That's what I wrote on the forum. I cited a paper by a Carnegie Mellon researcher. Came off like a know-it-all.

Andy: Twenty replies within an hour. Almost all of them mocking me.

Andy: One caught my attention. It was from a user named kuratuvo.