Full Body Chills - Game Night

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

A story about a cut-throat game and its unwitting player. Written by Megan Fridenmaker. You can read the original story and view the episode art at fullbodychillspodcast.com.Looking for more chills? Follow Full Body Chills on Instagram @fullbodychillspod. Full Body Chills is an audiochuck production. Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck Brought to you by FX's American Horror Stories. Four Episode Huluween Event Streaming October 26th. Only on Hulu.

This episode was produced with audio effects in full surround sound. For the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones. Hi, listeners. I'm Ashley Flowers, and I have a story I want to tell you. A story about a cutthroat game and its unwitting player. So gather round and listen close. When Agnes' classmate Lorelai invited her to a last-minute game night, she couldn't think of a good enough reason not to go.

At least, not on the spot. It was supposed to be with a group of people she didn't know, which was nerve-wracking enough. But she also didn't know Lorelai very well either. But as they were leaving Psych 302, and as her ever-bubbly acquaintance bounced up with her offer, Agnes was so thrown off guard that she said yes. She immediately regretted it.

Games weren't her thing, especially not games with a group of total strangers. But worse was to bail and look like a loser. So she punched her number into Lorelai's phone and a few hours later pulled up to a nice, quiet suburban house on the outskirts of town. As she walked to the door, her stomach spun with a nervous flip. Was she supposed to bring food or drinks? She was sure there would be snacks, but wasn't it an unspoken rule that guests should always bring something? But before she had a chance to succumb to her nervous thoughts, the door swung open, revealing Lorelai and another girl, both with drinks in hand.

Lorelai explained something about being so excited Agnes made it and ushered her inside, where two other guests were waiting. They sat around a kitchen table, smiling, just as friendly as Lorelai, and introduced themselves. Trent, Catherine, and Uma, who had met her at the door. Agnes smiled, thanked them for the invitation, and sat down opposite of Catherine. That's when Trent, whose house this apparently was, pulled out a box. And drawn on the box, in looping, colorful letters, were the words,

GAME NIGHT. Agnes didn't recognize it, but to be fair, she barely knew how to play Go Fish. So she was relieved when Trent explained that the game was relatively simple. They were playing as villagers, preparing for a ritual that would appease the dark entity infesting their town. And in order to complete the ritual, they had to gather four items. A knife, a bowl, an occult book, and a quill. All around town, each item was hidden.

The knife by the gallows, the bowl by the slaughterhouse, the book by the graveyard, and the quill by the well. It seemed easy enough, until Trent pulled out the map. The game board was massive, covering the whole table. A series of twisting, jagged paths spread from the center town square to the four-corner locations. Some of the paths seemed to lead straight there, while others intersected and jutted out in all directions before finally zigzagging toward their unique destination. Seeing her wide eyes, Uma reassured Agnes that while it looked complicated, moving along the board was easy.

All they had to do was roll two dice. That would tell them how many spaces they could move. They had to get to the locations, get the corresponding items, and then make it back to the town square. The player who made it back last, even if they had an item, would be the sole loser. Simple. But then, etched into the paths were strange-looking symbols. From what Agnes could gather, she knew that landing on these spaces would impact her turn. But which did what and how and why required a photogenic memory that Agnes did not have. The shorter paths had a symbol on almost every square, implying some risk.

Whereas the longer paths were safer but slower to travel. Given the massive details, Agnes asked if she could sit the first round out. Just to watch. But Uma informed her it would take a few hours to get through the whole game. There wouldn't be another round. Plus, it was a five-player game. Everyone had to play. Crushing the desire to jump out a window, Agnes asked if there was an instruction manual,

something she could hold on to for reference. Catherine told her it was actually called a rule book, not an instruction manual, and reached into the box. But what she pulled out made Agnes' stomach drop. It was a book. An actual leather-bound, novel-looking book with Game Night written on the cover in the same looping font as the box. And sure enough, the first few pages she flipped through were full of rules, strategies, and a key to the dozens of symbols etched on the squares. Of course it would take hours.

Of course there was a novel-length instruction manual. Sorry, rule book. In the back of her mind, the window spoke. Come on, I'm so close and so very thin. But she refused. And so, like a diver taking a final breath before stepping up to the 20-meter board, Agnes reluctantly picked up her game piece out of the multicolored flock of lambs and waited her turn. The others had obviously played this game before. They maneuvered from square to square, expertly fanning out across the multitude of paths.

She noticed each person seemed to be going for a different location. Trent headed straight towards the slaughterhouse. Lorelai towards the graveyard, etc. When Agnes' first turn came around, she tried following Uma to the gallows. But when her little white lamb landed on a wolf symbol, Lorelai gave her a sympathetic look. Her piece was removed to the start, where it waited until her next turn. Then she rolled a five and landed on a stick. That sent her back four spaces. Well, at least it was progress.

It continued like that for a while. The others flew towards their chosen locations, knowing when to risk a shorter path or when to take the safer, longer road. Meanwhile, Agnes was stuck on a carousel, spinning around the town square, unable to escape. Every time she approached her exit, the path that led off to the gallows, she'd miss it. Congested with every symbol in the rulebook, this looping highway would send her too far forward or too far back. Sometimes it'd even skip her turn. It was, in a word, frustrating. She kept referencing the rulebook, trying to calculate

some way to at least get out of that godforsaken loop, but it was no use. All the other sheep were off grazing through the town while poor little Agnes was stuck in her pen. After what felt like hours, and possibly was, finally something happened. Just not for her. On Uma's turn, her little brown sheep landed on an empty space. Normally, that meant nothing. But suddenly, the tile began to glow. Shining now was the symbol of a knife. Agnes was surprised. The board was thick, sure,

but she never thought it'd be buried with batteries and lights. But then it made sense. No one told her how they'd find one of the items, only where. These hidden tiles must show when the item was found. The whole group cheered. Trent drew a tiny plastic knife from the game box and handed it to Uma. In two turns, she was already back in the town square. Agnes wondered how she made it that fast when she found on page four of the rule book, paragraph three, that the knife adds six to the player's roll. The game went on. The others drank and laughed,

sharing jokes and stories as they played, while Agnes fastened a slowly loosening smile on each of her turns. Her internal spiral spun away in full force. Why had she come? She and Lorelai weren't friends. They'd done one group project together at the start of the semester and hadn't spoken since. Lorelai had plenty of friends. They'd done one group project together at the start of the semester and hadn't spoken since.

Lorelai had plenty of friends. Why would she invite Agnes? The longer the game went on, the more like an outcast she felt. But she wasn't about to dip out early. She'd look like a sore loser. Instead, she stole her mind, relegating herself to losing and to just wait it out. Eventually, Lorelai found the book, and Trent found the bowl. Both offered an advantage, giving their respective players a toll road fast pass back to Town Square.

It was down to Agnes and Catherine, who wasn't the least bit concerned for coming in last. She was already at the final location, the well. And even though Agnes finally landed on a square that sent her in the right direction, there was no way she'd be able to make it there, find the quill, and beat her to the end. So she was shocked when on her next turn,

the space beneath her figure lit up. She wasn't even at the well, and yet she found the final item. She was stunned. And so, apparently, was everyone else. Catherine, for one, had to be nudged a few times

to get her to roll. But the other girl hadn't lost yet. Now that the last item had been found, getting to the finish line was all that mattered. For some reason, the quill

didn't offer its holder any advantages. Not like the other items. But Agnes didn't care. A strange competitiveness had come over her at the idea of maybe not losing. In fact, when counting the distance, she was elated to find that the two of them were neck and neck. And in what Agnes could only describe as divine intervention, she was gaining the lead. In a strange way, it was like they traded luck. Catherine rolled low and then lost her next turn. Agnes rolled high and then skipped ahead. She noticed now how Catherine's leg dug with a jackhammer under the table

and how her eyes snapped a tape measure across the board. Despite the amazing comeback, the mood in the room had tangibly shifted. Gone was the laughter and the joking. All eyes were on the game as Catherine's little red lamb bounced back and forth. And as Agnes' piece charged towards the finish. The silence was broken only by the clanging of dice. No one moved. No one breathed.

And then, finally, it was over. Agnes sat back, a smile spreading across her face. She made it. A sense of pride cheered with her relief. A glance at the kitchen clock told her they'd been playing for the better part of three hours. She was more than ready to go home. But the blanket of silence that now smothered the room kept her seated. Catherine stared at the pieces before her,

as if she couldn't comprehend what had just happened. The rest of the group was just as dumbfounded. But Agnes didn't care. She was only focused on getting home. And so she barely even noticed when Uma bent down and grabbed something. Catherine noticed, though. She whipped her head up to face her, words Agnes couldn't guess forming on her lips. She never got the chance to say them. In one fluid motion, Uma pulled a knife, a real knife, out of the game box, leaned over the table, and slashed it across Catherine's throat. Blood sprayed across the board and everything else.

Suddenly, the symbols Agnes hadn't understood began to glow a deep orange color. A strange hum filled the air. Not loud, but insistent, vibrating the board as Catherine's blood continued to spill. Her eyes darted around the room as she clutched her neck, blood pumping from between her fingers. She locked eyes with Agnes, her expression a mix of rage and helplessness. But Agnes couldn't do anything. She sat, frozen, as Catherine slumped overhead, smacking onto the game board. Out of nowhere,

Trent produced a bowl, and with an unceremonious flick of his hand, he wiped some of the blood from where it had pooled and fed it into the dish. At that, the orange light began to pulse, and the blood on the board sizzled, sending a horrible metallic smell into the air. It made Agnes's stomach churn, but she couldn't move. She could barely breathe. The hum, the glow, the blood.

It was something out of a horror movie. Things like this didn't happen in real life. But Catherine's lifeless eyes were all the proof she needed that this was very, very real. Numbly, she registered that Lorelai had placed the rulebook in front of her, along with a feather quill. Agnes realized everyone was looking at her, expectantly. She looked down at the book, the quill, the bowl of blood Trent had placed next to her,

then back up to the group. Lorelai instructed her to open the book, and for some reason, she did. Her hand did not feel like her own as she flipped through to the back, revealing pages she hadn't seen before. Pages lined with what must have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of names scrawled in a rusty brown. Lorelai spoke again, this time telling her to write Catherine's name. And again, with a hand that couldn't have been hers, she picked up the quill, dipped it in the blood, and scratched Catherine's first and last name down.

She didn't even know her last name, but she wrote it anyway. Once it was done, the world went silent again. The board stopped buzzing. The pulsing light dimmed. The hum became nothing more than a sigh, and then nothing at all. Trent was the first to break the silence. Well, that was, um, unexpected. The others laughed. Agnes didn't laugh, though.

Her body finally felt like her own again, and she slowly stood on shaky legs. The door. She could make it to the door. Slowly, she turned and walked away, praying the others wouldn't try to stop her. But just as she was reaching for the handle, It likes you, Lorelai said with her signature bright smile. Agnes jumped, whipping around to face her. We're about to leave town, but you should come with us, since, you know, we're down a member. The thought of ever seeing Lorelai and her friends, or whatever they were again,

filled her with an indescribable dread. Agnes turned to go, not even wanting to respond. But Lorelai caught her arm. It knows your name now, she whispered. Either you show up next week, or you're next on the list. With a last meaningful look, she released her arm and let her stumble to her car. Agnes spent the weekend alone, locked in her dorm room with the door barricaded and the blinds

shut tight. First she cried, then she slept. Then she spent hours obsessively googling the game, the names she remembered from the book, anything she could think of to figure out what had happened. But search after search, she came up with nothing. Until she almost started to wonder if she'd imagined the whole thing. Either that or it was some sort of prank. She decided to just ask Lorelai after class the following week. But come Monday, her seat was empty. And a week later, Agnes' seat was empty too. and read by Ashley Flowers. This story was modified slightly for audio retelling, but you can find the original in full on our website.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?