They called themselves The Spiral Crew. Five wannabe influencers who were desperate to blow up online. Their videos were usually stupid pranks, copied challenges, and staged arguments in supermarkets. Nothing ever went viral, and the algorithm kept burying them. Then Leo came up with the idea. A group suicide prank.
“It’ll look real,”
He said, pacing around the abandoned parking garage they used as a meetup spot.
“We pretend we’re all fed up. We record a goodbye message. Then BOOM we cut it right before anything happens. People will panic-share it. Millions of views overnight.”
The others hesitated at first. It felt wrong. But they were tired of being nobodies, tired of posting into a void. In the end, ego won. They spent hours planning it. Matching black hoodies. A rooftop location. Fake pills they’d spit out off-camera. Flashy lighting. A ring of candles and a phone set to livestream privately, just for footage.
“We’ll film it at night,”
Mia said.
“Looks more dramatic.”
On the night of the shoot, the rooftop was silent except for the wind. They arranged themselves in a circle. The city lights glowed below like indifferent stars. Leo hit record. He spoke first.
“We know you won’t care until it’s too late.”
A perfect mixture of despair and drama. The others followed, whispering lines about pressure and failure. Mia even forced tears. It looked so real it made her stomach twist. Then Leo pulled out the bottle of pills. Tiny white pain killer tablets. They looked perfect on camera.
“Count to three,”
Leo said.
“Chew and spit behind you when I lower the phone.”
He lifted the bottle and poured a handful into his palm.
“One… two…”
Then everything unraveled. Eli, who hadn’t been paying attention during the rehearsal, he never did, grabbed his own bottle too quickly. His slipped. It bounced once against the concrete, popped open, and spilled everywhere. The pills scattered like rainfall.
“Shit,”
Eli muttered, dropping to his knees to scoop them up.
“We have to restart.”
“No, no, leave them”
Mia started. But Eli was embarrassed and panicked. He shoved a handful into his mouth before anyone could stop him. They weren’t the fake ones. The real bottle looked almost identical. The fake pills were still in Mia’s bag.
“What the hell are you doing!?”
Leo shouted. Eli’s eyes widened. He tried to spit them out, but his throat had already convulsed. He made a choking sound wet, sharp.
“Call an ambulance!”
Mia screamed.
“But the camera….”
Leo began.
“Forget the camera!”
Eli collapsed on his side, clawing at his own neck as his tongue swelled. His face turned dark purple. He tried to speak but only spat foam. The others hovered uselessly, terrified of touching him. The livestream was still recording.
The phone had slipped. The whole thing was being broadcast publicly not privately like Leo intended. Comments flooded the screen.
“Is this real?”
“lol fake”
“call him an ambulance”
“they’re terrible actors”
The audience thought it was part of the stunt. Eli’s legs jerked once, then went still. Nobody moved. Not until the rooftop door flew open. It wasn’t help. It was the security guard, drawn by the candlelight.
He saw the scene. The circle, the candles, the body and immediately called the police. The others tried to explain, but their voices tangled over each other, frantic and contradictory. The officers arrived minutes later. The camera was still pointed at Eli’s body.
The livestream reached over a hundred thousand viewers by the time the police shut it off.
In the days that followed, the crew’s channel exploded in popularity but not the way they’d imagined. News outlets replayed the footage again and again. The comments turned vicious:
“Monsters.”
“They let their friend die for clout.”
“This generation is sick.”
Leo tried to defend himself online.
“It was an accident.”
Nobody believed him. Mia deleted all her social accounts, but people still found her address. Strangers sent her edited photos of Eli’s swollen face. Killer, they wrote. The others stopped going outside altogether.
A month later, police reports revealed something even darker. Eli’s phone had captured a message, never uploaded, recorded right before the prank. A private video. A real goodbye. Not acting. He hadn’t planned to survive the night fake pills or not. He wanted the prank to be the cover. A way to disappear without questions.
When the others heard that, something inside them cracked. Each one of them, shattered by guilt deeper than anything the internet had thrown at them. The Spiral Crew never filmed again. But Eli’s death kept circulating. Reposted. Re-edited. Re-shared. A trend no one could stop. His final moment became the viral fame they all desperately wanted. Just not for the one who mattered.
