[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A tweet from Jessi Cyboid (@JessicaCyboid) with a series of DM messages from Grindr. The first tweet reads:
A guy on Grindr I've spoken to a few times is currently telling me the wildest fucking story and I'm fairly sure the man is cursed.
A couple of weeks ago, a gift arrived on my doorstep. It was a melon, in a bag, with a face scored into it. It had kind of a knowing smile, not unlike that of the Mona Lisa.
I ran through the list of possible people that might have done it, and came up entirely empty handed. So I made it a small pedestal and there it sat for a couple of days, in the corner of my room, implying lurid hidden knowledge behind its juicy smirk.
Eventually I could take it no more and sought to see the melon destroyed. I bought one hundred elastic bands online and waited patiently by the door until the morning. Then I took the melon into the garden, and over the course of a half hour, set to work applying the pressure.
Not even a watermelon. A yellow melon, which means everyone who sees it accidentally calls it a lemon.
Like it has an area of effect psychic damage.
I found to my dismay that the melon would not give up its secrets and additionally discovered my 100-pack contained only 83 bands. This was enough to have the melon on the cusp of exploding, but we were shy the ten or so that would have sealed its fate.
Accordingly, I took up my housemate's sword, which is mother gave him for some reason and which he kept for some other reason. Melon annihilated with a coup de grace, I thought our fruity buffoonery had arrive at an end.
Until another melon appeared.
Guy: A secondary melon found itself on our doorstep, two weeks after the first.
Jessi: Melon delivery man innit
Guy: It had a face like a Halloween pumpkin attempting to go UwU, and had two peculiar markings on its back.
Inside the bag was also a folded piece of paper.
Would you like to see what was on the paper?
Guy: [IMAGE OF A PIECE OF PAPER WITH AN ENCODED MESSAGE WRITTEN ON IT IN CYPHER.]
Guy: We had a melon code.
It took an hour but it got decoded.
The broad strokes are as follows: we are to enjoy this tasty gift, we are to remember to smile and be warm, they will be watching, and they will try and make a better face next time.
It was signed with a unique character that, as far as we can work out, might mean M8 or could be a few other alphanumeric combinations.
Extrapolating from the code, we found that the symbols on the melon translated to XX; the prior melon had three Xs in standard Roman script on its back, now contextualised as more than practice cuts.
Baffled by what the fuck is going on here.
Guy: Now it continues to sit, taunting us with its bruising cutesy mug. But not for long. For yesterday I collected fifteen feet of bungee cord.
I don't know what this melon plans to do
But if it's anything other than "get fired at 50 mph into a tree", it's got another thing coming.
I'm already expecting a third one to appear. I've already bookmarked crafting wood, gorilla glue, and an office supply replacement paper cutter to construct a one third scale guillotine to dispatch that one.
When I unpacked the letter I did almost have an aneurysm because, although it appears this code is seemingly entirely original with no precursor online anywhere, I did recognise one character.
Guy: Every letter was based on modifications made to a + sign. "A" had a circle on the top, "E" on the right spoke, and so on clockwise.
Leaving "U" to be a circle in the centre of the cross.
Which, by what I really do hope is coincidence, I instantly identified as the symbol with which the actual literal Zodiac signed his letters.
Jessi: Are you not actually scared them because
That's some fucked behaviour if it's a neighbour or something.
Guy: Oh, Jessi, you ignorant slut. I'm contemplating building a guillotine for fruit. I walked five miles in the freezing rain to collect bungee cords. I'm not the one who should be afraid, here.
[IMAGE OF A YELLOW MELLON SITTING ON TOP OF SOMETHING CYLINDRICAL HOLDING IT UP. IT HAS A CLOSED EYE SMILING FACE CARVED INTO IT.]
Guy: This was the first melon when it arrived.
[IMAGE OF ANOTHER YELLOW MELLON SITTING ON SOMETHING CYLINDRICAL HOLDING IT UP. IT HAS A UwU FACE CARVED INTO IT. IN THE BACKGROUND ARE MULTIPLE BUNGEE CORDS.]
An additional wrinkle I just realised I never clarified:
With the cipher letter, the last two sets of symbols were very very similar, making RSTV and WXYZ hard to tell apart.
XYZ were few and far between, however, so we didn't notice the minor difference (one subsection being a diagonal up line rather than a diagonal down).
Unfortunately this had the overall effect of making us believe the entire note was written with Ws for Rs to go with the UwU face.
And let me tell you. "Hello fwiend. Wemembew to smile", when decrypted, is a sight that makes you want to walk, placid and serene, into the ocean, never to return.]
