The story of me finding out Gossip Girl is not a gore TV show

I’m sure everyone here remembers Gossip Girl. I was 13 when it first aired and, not living in the US, I used to download the episodes so I could watch them on my computer. I remember that there was such a fuss about it between teenagers everywhere.
The actors were all gorgeous, and apparently Gossip Girl was already a famous book series, so I was excited to give it a try.
I was shocked to see how bloody and unnecessarily violent the show was, and couldn’t watch the whole thing. There wasn’t even a plot, it was just gore and horrible murders without reason.
I was always shy, so I never talked about it with anyone. My only friend back then was somewhat an intellectual, and at 14 she was exclusively into documentary films.
I kept watching Gossip Girl for a while because I was too damn curious to where this was going or if there was some purpose, but at some point I decided that it was too much.
I stopped downloading illegal stuff whatsoever, and asked my parents for a better cable package – this was 2008, way before Netflix was what it is now.
Flash-forward to 2014. I was in college and a little less shy. I had recently become good friends with a classmate named Maura and we talked a lot.
Something about Blake Lively came up, and she told me she absolutely loved Gossip Girl. I was taken by surprise, because Maura was such a sweet girl that wasn’t into weird, vicious stuff.
“I can’t stomach Gossip Girlâ€, I said. “I only watched the first two seasonsâ€.
“I admit it gets kinda boring when Blair goes to NYUâ€, Maura said.
“Boring? I wouldn’t call it boring. It was pretty shocking when she killed all those studentsâ€.
My friend just laughed and didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about.
We let the subject die off, then a few days later she asked me what I meant by Blair “killing all those studentsâ€.
“I mean that time by the end of Season 2 when Blair and Georgina slaughter fifteen NYC students in a ritual to try to bring Dorotta backâ€, I answered, just the thought of it making me uneasy.
Maura frowned immensely. It was like her face was collapsing inside itself.
“What the ****, Helen? That never happenedâ€.
“What do you mean that never happened? I watched it!†I was adamant about it. Those scenes made a huge impression on me and I was sure I couldn’t have just hallucinated the whole thing.
“Did you ****ing watch this on TV?â€
“No, my cable was pretty ****ty back then. I downloaded itâ€.
Her face lightened in relief.
“Oh, I see. You probably downloaded some dark web stuff from stupid prankstersâ€.
“I don’t know, Maura. The characters really looked like… you know, the actual actors. Everything looked expensive, tooâ€.
“It seems pretty crazy. Do you still have the files?â€
“I think I do. Do you want to check it out?â€
“Well, can’t say I’m not curiousâ€, Maura answered.
I explained to her that back then I used to download the episodes on my ancient computer, which was already way out of date back in 2007, and I was sure that it was still somewhere at my mother’s.
When I bought a better computer, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sell the old thing for a penny, and I didn’t know how to discard electronic stuff properly, so I just left it there. My mom is a little bit of a hoarder anyway (an organized hoarder, because she has specific places to hoard useless stuff).
My mother lived the next town over, so I took Maura there on the weekend. Being an introvert like me, mom just exchanged pleasantries with Maura and left us alone. It wasn’t hard to find what we were looking for; there was some logic in her mess.
We carried the thing to the bedroom I still used when I went to my mother’s, but didn’t bother redecorating. That was the hardest part; I barely remembered that computers used to be that heavy.
I plugged my old Pentium III on the outlet, connected the ridiculously old, yellowed CRT monitor and, despite taking forever to initialize, it was still functioning.
I opened the file titled Gossip_Girl_S01E01.rmvb and we watched (in very poor quality for these days) Serena van der Woodsen looking crestfallen on a train, then arriving on New York Central Station. It was the same scene I was used to but, instead of watching Serena trying to help someone leaning inside a trash can and discovering it was a guttered body still dripping fresh blood, Kristen Bell started narrating the scene with a blistered, yet pleasant voice. Some young woman with a Chanel haircut takes a picture of Serena, who seems to be looking for someone. Then the three Humphreys are shown on the same station.
Maura paused.
“So?â€
“I don’t get it. It’s not what I rememberâ€, I said.
“Helen, that’s the normal episodeâ€, she assured me.
“I never saw it. I swearâ€.
Just as I finished my words, noticing Maura’s disappointed face, a system notification popped. It told me I needed to update the Realtek player, then I noticed we had been watching the episode using Windows Media Player with a plugin, something I never did before.
“Wellâ€, I said, connecting the internet modem to the retrograde, Wi-Fi-less machine. “I used to watch it on Realtek, let’s update it and check out againâ€.
Maura looked like someone that was about to sneeze but suddenly the contents got lost inside their nose.
During the update, we grabbed snacks in the kitchen, talked about other things and nearly forgot what we were doing there. When the computer was done with its update business, we played the episode again, this time on Realtek.
Serena looking crestfallen on the train. Serena arriving, then, just like I remembered, finding the body in the huge trashcan. Maura let out a small scream. The scene grows darker, like half the lights are gone. Rufus Humphrey is running with a scared look on his face, taking both his children by the hand.
Dan screams “No!†and the camera shifts to Jenny. She has maggots coming out of her mouth.
“I’m so sorry, Jennyâ€, Rufus says, as he shoves his own daughter to the station floor, and keeps fleeing with his uninfected son.
Dan quickly glances at Serena’s direction, and only then the narrator starts talking, but her voice is gloomy, mocking, almost maleficent.
“Poor lonely boy†she says, in her peculiar intonation. “Will the love of his life succumb just like his little sister?â€
Maura paused as the scene at the station ended.
“Wow†she said. “Just… wow. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, but this is ****ing crazy. Have you told anyone else?â€
“No. You know I kinda didn’t have friendsâ€, I said.
We skipped together through a few episodes. They were still as horrifying as I remember. We saw the scene where Jenny comes back and attempts to murder her father for abandoning her, but is only able to cut off one of his hands; the scene where Vanessa shows up missing one eye and a vermin just pokes out of where it should be; and, of course, when Serena finishes having sex with Dan and just rips him to shreds like a black widow spider.
“Well, that’s… adequate†Maura said “At least they don’t have to find out their parents had a son togetherâ€.
“Oh, but they willâ€, I informed her. “Jenny will bring him backâ€.
It was an awful thing to do but, just like watching a car crash, we couldn’t stop. We downloaded more shows – Gilmore Girls, Friends and Everybody hates Chris – to check out if they would be altered too. They were. In every single one of them, the characters died gruesome deaths.
We came to the conclusion that my old computer was able to show gore versions of pretty much anything, as long as we watched it on the Realtek player.
So I had the worst idea of my life. I put a video of us in a flash driver and decided to watch it there.
It was a silly video we took on her birthday. I and Maura were at her small but charming apartment during daytime, filling balloons with helium for the party she would throw afterwards. We obviously did it to get squeaky voice; then we talked, sung and cracked up, and you could hear her roommate Yuki – who was recording the video – laughing too.
But, when we played it on Realtek in my old computer, it was dark, her apartment was completely ****ed up, with furniture turned upside down and a lot of trash everywhere. I hit Maura with a giant axe multiple times.
“No, Ellen, stopâ€, she murmured on the video.
Splosh, splosh, splosh.
Her body wouldn’t stop swashing blood on my face, and I wouldn’t stop laughing about it. My laughter at first was high-pitched from the helium, but then it distorted macabrely to a deep tone. I could hear a third female voice screaming “stop! Please, stop!†in desperation.
Maura was incredibly hurt and completely bloodied and her face barely looked human anymore, but somehow she was able to survive the smashes. She was crying and pleading, equally high-pitched, clearly going through a terrible, unmeasurable pain.
She used the last of her strength to rise her disgusting, almost entirely ripped off hand in my direction. Yuki let out a terrified scream as I shot Maura in the left eye, finally putting her out of her misery.
We cried watching it, but somehow none of our hands would reach the pause button. I felt that I couldn’t even control my eyes and stop looking at it. When I regained the control to close my eyelids, it was like the gore scene was carved forever inside them. I regretted putting this video of ours so much. I had no idea it would be so graphic and disgusting.
Maura was trembling by my side. In shock, she repeated multiple times, very quietly “this isn’t funny, Ellen. This isn’t funnyâ€.
After I murdered Maura, the camera kept zooming in on her disfigured body, very slowly. When it finally ended and the screen went black, Maura went berserk and hammered the whole computer to pieces, then left my mother’s house without saying a word.
She never talked to me again.
It’s been 5 years now. I never talked about this experience with anyone. I never went back to that house, and my mother eventually sold it and moved somewhere else. She never told me why.
I’m more reclusive than ever. I don’t have friends, a boyfriend or a normal life. These images still haunt my dreams; whenever I close my eyes, I still see perfectly maura’s torn apart body. I can hear my maniac laughter killing her, and sometimes I hallucinate she’s by my side, trembling in agony.
No matter what I do, the sedatives never kick in completely. I developed phobias and I can’t stand being in the dark. I wish it was Maura killing me in the video, but I wish more than anything that I never had this stupid idea.
I never knew why this affected me after all this time. It should have been just a weird and terrifying experience that gets better over time. I started to go crazy, I think. Everything is nightmarish even in the light of day. I’ve been having blackouts and waking up in places I shouldn’t be.
I’d sell my soul to make it stop.
Talking to people is a very infrequent thing to me, and getting a phone call is something that probably happens once a year. It happened today, and it was someone I hadn’t talk to in years: Yuki. She called me to let me know Maura died last night; she was shot in the eye after leaving the bar where she held her birthday party.
Yuki didn’t need to tell me that.


Source.