I FOUND A STRANGE MAP SAVED ON MY HUSBAND’S WORK LAPTOP LAST NIGHT
My hand trembled holding his heavy work laptop, the screen glare sharp and blinding in the dark kitchen. He always left it open on the counter, never thinking I’d look, not really paying attention ever since he started working late and acting distant. But the notification popped up on the corner – a shared file from an unknown contact, oddly titled ‘ROUTES – FINAL’. Curiosity, or maybe just a deep-seated unease about his recent behavior, got the better of me tonight.
I clicked it open, fingers clumsy on the trackpad, the cold plastic feeling alien under my touch. It wasn’t a road map at all, not even close to anything normal. It was rough, hand-drawn lines crisscrossing desolate, wooded areas far outside the city limits, marked with strange symbols that looked like codes and timestamps I absolutely didn’t understand. My heart started hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird trying desperately to escape its cage, making my whole body feel shaky.
One spot was circled repeatedly in thick, dark pen, labeled clearly in hurried writing: ‘DROP POINT – EAST QUARRY’. The air in the kitchen felt suddenly thin and unbearably hot, making it hard to breathe, a strange metallic taste coating my tongue. I heard the distinct creak of the floorboards upstairs as he moved around in the bedroom, a slow, measured pace that felt deliberate and menacing. Had he heard the laptop click open over the low hum of the refrigerator?
I zoomed in closer on the circled spot, a cold dread washing over me as I recognized the area – the abandoned quarry miles outside of town where nobody ever went anymore. This felt utterly wrong, terrifyingly wrong in a way I couldn’t articulate or understand. What kind of person needs a map like this? There was a date and time scrawled next to the circled area in thick pen: Tomorrow, 3 AM sharp. Then I heard his footsteps on the stairs, coming down slowly, deliberately now, each step a heavy weight on my chest. My mouth felt like cotton, completely dry, every muscle tight with fear. He stopped silently at the bottom step, just out of the light. “What are you doing up in here so late?” he asked, his voice unnervingly flat and cold, echoing slightly in the quiet house.
The last symbol on the map was a small, crudely drawn skull and crossbones.
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*”I… I just couldn’t sleep,” I stammered, my voice a thin, reedy sound I barely recognized as my own. My eyes strained in the dim light, trying to make out his face, but he remained a silent shadow just beyond the kitchen doorway. The air crackled with unspoken questions, and the damning map was still starkly displayed on the laptop screen between us.
He didn’t move for another agonizing moment. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, each tick of the kitchen clock a hammer blow against my eardrums. Then, with a soft exhale, he stepped into the faint light spilling from the screen. His expression wasn’t angry, not exactly. It was something more complicated – surprise, annoyance, and… was that a hint of shame?
He walked slowly towards the counter, not looking at me, his gaze fixed on the laptop. My heart still pounded, but a sliver of the immediate, bone-deep terror began to recede, replaced by a cold, investigative dread. He reached the counter and gently pushed the laptop screen down, the map disappearing from view. The sudden lack of the horrifying image felt both like a reprieve and a confirmation of my worst fears. Why hide it if it was innocent?
He finally looked at me, his eyes dark and tired. He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture of weariness I hadn’t seen in a while. “You saw the file,” he stated, not a question.
I nodded, mute.
He sighed, a heavy sound that seemed to carry the weight of months of unspoken things. He leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. “Okay,” he said softly. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”
My legs were shaking, but I managed to pull out a kitchen chair and sink into it. He remained standing, looking down at the spot where the laptop had been.
“It’s… complicated,” he started, hesitating. “And honestly, a little stupid. I didn’t want you to know because I thought you’d think it was ridiculous.” He paused again, collecting his thoughts. “Remember Gary from accounting? The one who left last year? He got me into something. It’s a game. A kind of… live-action strategy thing.”
A game? My mind reeled. A game with maps like that? With drop points and skulls?
“The map,” he continued, seeing the disbelief on my face, “it’s for the game. We form teams, use coordinates, follow routes through the woods at night. It’s like a mix of orienteering and a treasure hunt, with… well, with objectives we call ‘drops’.”
“The quarry?” I whispered. “Tomorrow? 3 AM? The skull?”
He nodded. “The quarry is just one of the locations. It’s abandoned, so it’s perfect for not disturbing anyone. Tomorrow night is the final ‘event’ of this season. The ‘DROP POINT – EAST QUARRY’ is where our team has to get to by 3 AM to collect something – points, usually, or a ‘flag’. The dates and timestamps are just checkpoints and deadlines.” He even managed a small, strained smile. “The skull and crossbones? That’s just our team’s terrible logo.”
The explanation hung in the air, so profoundly anticlimactic after the terror I’d felt that it was hard to process. A game? All of it, a game? His distance, the late nights, the secrecy… not an affair, not something illegal, but… playing in the woods?
“Why all the secrecy?” I asked, my voice still unsteady. “Why on your work laptop? Why the weird file name? Why not just tell me?”
He finally sat down opposite me, leaning his elbows on the table. “It started as just a silly escape from work stress,” he explained, his voice softer now, earnest. “It sounds ridiculous, right? A bunch of grown men running around in the dark? I was embarrassed. And then, the team makes a big deal out of secrecy. It’s part of the ‘strategy’, supposedly. We use work laptops sometimes because they’re secure and tracked, ironically, makes it less suspicious than using personal devices for ‘clandestine’ planning. The file name was just a bad attempt at being discreet.” He looked genuinely chagrined. “The late nights… planning meetings, sometimes practicing routes. I was so focused on it, on this… dumb game, that I let it take over. I didn’t mean to shut you out.”
He reached across the table and gently took my trembling hand. His touch felt familiar, anchoring, pulling me back from the dark abyss my mind had created. “I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. “I scared you. I was an idiot. Running around playing soldiers in the woods while you were here worrying.”
The metallic taste in my mouth was gone, replaced by the faint, familiar scent of his skin. The trapped bird in my chest was still fluttering, but less frantically now, starting to understand the bars weren’t what it had feared. The map, the symbols, the dreaded quarry… they weren’t keys to a nightmare, but simply components of a hidden hobby, a strange, misguided attempt at stress relief that had ironically caused me immense stress.
I squeezed his hand back, a wave of dizzying relief washing over me, leaving behind a residue of annoyance and hurt, but underneath it, a profound sense of… normal. It wasn’t a perfect ending, not a dramatic showdown or a Hollywood twist. It was just him, tired and slightly sheepish, explaining his secret, ridiculous game. And in that moment, after the fear, the ordinariness felt like salvation.