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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Smash5shulkisbroken on 2024-09-24 02:21:10+00:00.

I don’t know where to start, until now it’s only felt like a bad trip. It started as any normal night for college a loner, a game console with four controllers, a party game guaranteed to send us to the ER for carpal tunnel, and enough beer to drown a mid-sized dog. It was destined to be a night of stupidity, glee, and light-hearted antics. Since I’m the pregaming master, I already had a few drinks down to celebrate the end of finals week and before we go back home for the holidays. It was amazing to let my brain have a break after all the stress it suffered; potential dependence be damned.

JT was the first to show up, if I had to describe him in a few words, it would be if Abe Lincoln was built like a Mac truck with fingers like sausages. Despite his imposing stature, he’s relatively mild mannered, but just a beer in and he becomes the Tom Brady of our drunken game nights. Cam was next. He was by far the most social and the only one who’s out and about every week getting some action The last of our pitiful party was Phil, my roommate. Phil isn’t his actual name, it’s Stephen, but when money was tight, we lived off the cheese steaks from the sandwich shop he works at for a week straight. After that the name just stuck.

Anyway, the game night was a double feature, the first event was one grand prix of Beeriokart followed by rounds upon rounds classic Mario Party where the current first place player(s) and minigame winner(s) take sips of a drink of their choice. We had made it past the Beeriokart section with barely a buzz except for Cam who was the lightweight of the group. Which was the reason for Beeriokart, otherwise Mario Party wouldn’t be fair. At the end of the Mario Party game, Phil had thoroughly crushed us all due to bonus stars and so the rest of us chugged the remainder of our drinks as we set up the movie marathon to end off an amazing night.

As JT fumbled through the Roku menus to open HBO Max, we heard a knock on the door. Phil, being the only one of us capable of at least holding a coherent conversation, answered the guest. It was the landlord’s annoying younger brother. This kid is always wrecking things in the common area, apparently, he’s on probation for breaking a kid’s femur after the jerk had bullied his friend. I can respect the sentiment, but I guess the other kid’s parents filed a restraining order, so the little brat came to live in the building with his older brother. He wasn’t loud like he normally is so he must be on rent collection. I somehow managed to get out where I put the rent money between all the slurred speech. We went back to picking a movie when we heard another knock, the brat is back, and he wants to watch the movie with us. Since none of us were in the right state of mind, we let him stay. We finally decided on a movie. I fell asleep a quarter of the way in and started what may be the worst night of my life.

It was a pleasant dream, I woke up next to my buddies and the brat in the same room. We’re all just stretching, Phil already picking up some of our stuff in the process. As per my typical routine, I go to the windows to hopefully catch a whiff of the coffee shop across the street from the apartment complex. What I came across was a solid brick wall on the other side of the window. Next thing I know we all hear a loud bang and turn to find the brat’s upper arm scraped by the bullet. Blood slowly trickled down to his forearm as the poor kid hyperventilated through the pain. Me, half dazed but sobered by the gunshot, instructed the others to get away from the front of the door. I reached my hand across the door to the knob and quickly opened the door, firing one more shot at the other wall. After sweeping the doorway, we found a gun hooked up to a mechanism that fired a bullet when the door opened. I had seen enough body horror and torture movies to spot all the cliché traps.

After disabling a few more obvious traps we reached the end of the hall where it bended to the left. After trying to peek around the corner for a few minutes, I determined that there was no immediate danger. However, Cam took that as a sign to make a break for the elevator and set off another trap. I luckily managed to grab him and pull him to safety when I felt this sharp pain in my leg. A bit of shrapnel left a cut in my calf. After dressing my wound, me and the other guys inspected the scene and found that what cut me was shrapnel from a pipe bomb trap which was set up in the first room to the left. Whoever crafted these traps surely wanted us dead. JT, who was more toward the back, told us he heard footsteps. We all jumped up and rushed to see if there was anyone else in peril, but what we found still haunts me every night. It was a man in an off-white suit that seemed to glow in the darkness, and he was wearing an old bowler hat or fedora. We all ran towards him shouting, but he didn’t respond. He just stood there. He stood there until we were about five feet away, and then he started moving. He started to slowly turn his head and that’s when we saw what he looked like. His face was comprised of nothing but darkness, and in place of his eyes seemed to be glowing orbs.

We all violently shook awake from the worst group trip imaginable. The first thing on our minds were why was the apartment complex booby trapped and who was the mysterious “Hat Man?” Yet, that wasn’t even the worst part, because I looked down to see my calf, and saw about an inch deep cut and the blood stain left on my pajamas. Whatever just happened, was painfully real.