In 2013, researchers at the University of Houston exposed five people to an entire season of some of the worst football of all time. Promising potential subjects the opportunity to watch every minute of an all-time great season by a generational defensive football talent, rent-free and supplied with endless barbecue, the scientific team sequestered them in an enclosed chamber. The chamber was stocked with meat and sauce to last at least half a year, beds, toilets, and running water, with five copies of the Houston Chronicle’s sports section delivered daily, the test subjects’ only connection with the outside world save for the large HDTV screens on every wall. The TVs, controlled from outside the chamber, would be turned on only to show Texans games and local pre-game and post-game coverage.

The mood in the chamber was cheerful for the first two weeks, with the Texans scoring close victories over the San Diego Chargers and Tennessee Titans. Conversation between the inhabitants of the test chamber was lively, at first largely about subjects’ lives outside the experiment: their jobs, their schooling, their families, their friends. But over time, as an intended consequence of the experiment’s design, the subjects’ discussions became focused increasingly on the Texans: their past performance, their future outlook, and the decisions of their coaching staff. The last of these topics came under greater scrutiny with each passing day.

After a week three blowout loss to the Baltimore Ravens, conversation took a darker turn. Subjects openly fretted about the team’s now obvious weaknesses, pondered out loud the potential merits of tanking a season that had started 2-1, and were observed biting their nails, pulling out their hair, and exhibiting various other nervous behaviors. Late in the week, researchers recorded an entire seven-hour period in which every conversation between test subjects was about Bud Adams, and only Bud Adams.

That Sunday, the screaming began.

The first of the subjects started to scream immediately after a field goal that gave the Seattle Seahawks an overtime win over the Texans, and continued for nearly four hours. It appeared to the researchers that he continued attempting to scream beyond this point, but that the exertion had caused him to tear his vocal cords. In any case, just as he began to squeak and then fell silent a second subject took up the cry. The bloodcurdling sound lasted well into the next morning, but there was no further screaming after the second subject stopped.

As the fifth week began, those subjects still able to vocalize at all quit speaking in each other’s presence altogether, and began speaking only to the the closed-circuit cameras installed in the chamber. At the time, the researchers theorized that each of the subjects considered the others responsible for the team’s suddenly disappointing performance. Oddly, they all seemed convinced they could trade their insights on how to improve the Houston Texans’ play for release from the experiment. As the subjects sunk into greater and greater depths of desperation and paranoia, researchers recorded suggestions that the Texans trade an injury-plagued Arian Foster for Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, replace Kareem Jackson with an adult leopard, and send JJ Watt on a mission to assassinate Roger Goodell.

The subjects’ appetite for barbecue increased suddenly and dramatically that week. On the sixth Sunday of the experiment the observers arrived in the lab to find all the camera feeds blank. Review of the previous night’s tape revealed that the subjects had covered the lenses in hot sports takes ripped from the chamber’s daily ration of newspapers, stuck to the domes and lenses of the cameras with large amounts of fecal matter. The cameras’ microphones were still active and picking up pregame analysis, but the team could not detect any other sound.

Despite the subjects’ remarkable silence, data from sensors inside the test chamber suggested all five were not only still alive but exerting themselves to a degree previously unseen in Texans fans.

The experiment design stated explicitly that the researchers were not to use the intercoms built into the test chamber to address the subjects, but after reaching the halfway point of the experiment still unable to observe the chamber, the observation team felt they had no choice. “We are opening the chamber to address technical issues with the game feed,” they announced. “Please lie face down on the floor with your hands behind your back. Compliance from all of you will ensure the speedy firing of Gary Kubiak.”

To their surprise they heard the test subjects respond as one in a calm, eerie monotone: “We no longer care about the Texans.”

Further attempts to elicit a response from within the chamber were unavailing. After some debate, the researchers determined that the experiment could not feasibly continue without reliable observation of the subjects, and opened the chamber against clearly stated experiment protocol. Entering the first room, which served as the chamber’s kitchen, they found that the smoked meats allotted for all weeks after the seventh were untouched, but the sauce was not. The reason for the discrepancy became clear as they proceeded into the main room central football viewing room, home to the largest screens and the most comfortable couches in the chamber.

Four test subjects still lived. They had ripped apart the fifth subject and, it appeared, slathered his raw flesh in barbecue sauce before consuming it, leaving only chunks of gristle that they’d stuffed into the drain in the central room. Four inches of water had accumulated in the room; though an indeterminate portion of this accumulation was assuredly blood and barbecue sauce. Having stripped the subject’s skeleton clean, the living subjects had proceeded to tear meat from their own arms and legs and eat it as well. It was unclear to the researchers how they were able to continue moving about, missing large parts of muscles on limbs that were still supporting very substantial torsos. Later examination of all five subjects’ wounds would reveal that they had pulled the flesh off with their own bare hands.

The team immediately called the university police to remove the subjects from their chamber, and remove them they did, although at considerable cost. The test subjects were not merely capable of standing despite their ravaged condition; they showed almost superhuman strength and agility, killing one officer by ripping out his throat, and breaking another’s leg. After a protracted struggle, two more subjects lay dead, but the officers were able to restrain the two survivors. Intent on salvaging what they could of the experiment, the researchers strapped the survivors to gurneys and fitted them with monitoring equipment, prepared to wheel them back into the chamber and force them to watch Monday night’s game.

Footage from the cleared cameras in the main room shows that three research assistants returned remaining test subjects to their places, and that as they turned to leave, the police captain blocked the door. “Not so fast, my friends,” he said. “Do you think the people who paid for this study will be satisfied with the results you’re giving them? The experiment will proceed, of course, but not without new participants.” The nearest of the assistants rushed the captain, pulling his gun from his holster and firing two rounds into his torso as the two other researchers fled the chamber. Rising, the assistant shot one surviving subject and turned the gun on the other.

“What are you!?” he screamed at the experiment’s last survivor. “What has happened here? Tell me!”

The subject smiled.

“Don’t you know?” the subject asked. “We are you. We are the small but insistent part of you that tells you that watching football is a waste, that it is making your life worse, that it is wrong. We are the nagging voice that you drown in beer and Buffalo wings, the frustration that you ease by making dick jokes–that, if you were ever truly forced to embrace it, would leave you no choice but to stop caring about this wretched sport.”

The research assistant took shaky aim with the handgun and pulled the trigger. The subject slumped in his stretcher, his EEG flatlining, as he choked out: “Still… don’t… care…”

This story is a much abridged retelling of the classic Internet creepypasta The Russian Sleep Experiment. If you’ve never read the original… well, you should!