When signing up for Central’s senior assassin, players understood that they were getting themselves into a water-drenched game of stalking and double-crossing. What they didn’t realize was that they would make some unlikely friends along the way.
Senior assassin is an internet sensation that instantly grabbed senior Dom Thomas’ attention when he came across it on TikTok. Interested in bringing the water gun knockout game to Central, Thomas contacted senior Ruby Titus and asked if she could help him make it happen. Titus ultimately took the reins from Thomas and, with the assistance of Isabel Hoiberg, turned Central into a battleground.
Well, not literally. School is an off-limits zone, as outlined by the rules on the @chs24_seniorassassin Instagram page.
Central’s senior assassin rules go something like this: players are each assigned a target they must eliminate by water gun. If they hit their target, the target is out of the game. If they don’t eliminate their target, the assassin is out with no chance of redemption. The game will continue with multiple week-long rounds and new targets for each until there is a clear winner who will take home the prize of $255.
This appealed to senior Beth Mergens, who was stressed about upcoming exams and sought participation in senior assassin to take her mind off academics. “Going into it, I wasn’t really taking it seriously,” Mergens said.
Neither was Mergens’ partner-in-crime, senior Rosie Sossou. “For me, honestly, I just wanted to troll,” Sossou said. “I wanted to be outside and stuff and shoot people with my gun and stalk them and stuff.”
And stalk they did. From staking out their targets’ houses to attending their baseball games to sending Rosie’s sister to their doorsteps as an undercover cookie salesgirl, Mergens and Sossou were all in.
Unfortunately, so was Brayden Simpson, both Sossou’s target and Mergen’s assassin. On one climactic night, Simpson, accompanied by friends, sat outside Mergens’ house and tried to lure her outside. Mergen’s mom was running from window to window, door to door, trying to make sure her daughter was safe from the assassin.
Meanwhile, Sossou’s mom was having her try on clothes to wear for job interviews. “So, I was wearing a business casual outfit, got a little skirt on, like a blouse, and then Beth calls me,” Sossou said. “So, then I’m like, ‘Mom, I gotta go,’ and I start running out the house in my business casual outfit.”
Sossou played right into Simpson’s hands because her assassin, Chance Gaillard, happened to be in Simpson’s car. While Simpson was outside trying to eliminate Mergens, Sossou rushed outside, attempted to eliminate him, and then got assassinated by Gaillard in the process. “I think Brayden and his friends … they lowkey made it fun,” Sossou admitted.
To get back into the game, Sossou had to dump a bucket of ice water on her head. “It was actually kind of fun, not gonna lie,” she said.
Others did not have it as easy. Take Mergens, who was eliminated by assassin Ann Carlson and had to redeem herself by participating in the cinnamon challenge. She ate six spoonfuls purely because she did not like how she looked in the first five videos. “My stomach hurt so bad – I literally thought I had to get my stomach pumped, like, I was freaking out,” Mergens said.
“The craziest redemption challenge, I think, was Jaden,” Titus said. “I think that was probably the hardest [redemption] we did.” After senior Jaden Cheloha was eliminated by his best friend’s twin sister, he was given two choices for redemption: the ice bucket challenge and the hot one’s challenge, which entails eating a piece of chicken drenched in hot sauce.
Having already seen multiple ice bucket challenge redemption videos, Cheloha wanted to offer some variety, so he chose the latter. All he had to eat was one chicken nugget, “which was actually more than enough,” he said.
After pouring some “Da Bomb” hot sauce on the nugget and eating it in one bite, Cheloha set his mouth ablaze for the following 20 minutes. The first two minutes of his suffering are documented in the Instagram page’s highlights. “I’m glad these are set in stone on Instagram because you can go look at it whenever,” Titus said.
Another video on the page features senior Emily Mattson getting eliminated while standing behind the food counter at her job. “I was like, if I’m gonna spend $5 on this, I’m gonna go all out,” Mattson said. “I’m gonna get that pot; I’m gonna get all the money. And then I got clocked on the first day. And at work, which was so heinous.”
“I didn’t get in trouble for it but had someone else been working, I probably would’ve gotten reprimanded for it or something,” Mattson said. Unfortunately, it was not until after she was eliminated that Titus created the rule that students’ workplaces are off-limit zones. She created the rule after realizing that many players’ bosses would not let them wear protective equipment, like goggles or visors, at their jobs.
This new rule did not change the fact that Mattson was still out from her workplace assassination. Her redemption choices were to wear a mustache to school or to wear a bike helmet to school. “If I’m gonna do one, I’m gonna do the other,” she said. “So, I wore both, and I worked it! Somebody said, ‘Yes, serving French Revolution,’ and I loved it!”
In her second round, Mattson ran into an issue that seemed recurring for all the players featured in this article: getting assigned a target she did not know. “If you don’t know the person, it’s not as fun,” Mergens said.
Mattson had some difficulty finding her target, but this did not hinder her ability to have fun. Channeling her inner FBI agent, she brought her friend along to stake out her target’s house. They were there for hours and even searched the neighborhood for him with no luck. Mattson never got her target, and her time in the game came to an end at the close of the second round on April 14.
Her biggest regret was not eliminating him in the school parking lot, which is not considered a safe zone. “I had seen his car, and then I was like, ‘There’s my opportunity.’ And then I went to McDonald’s. And then I came back, and he was gone,” she said.
Entering the third round, the buzz surrounding senior assassin had died down. People were trying to pay each other off, give their assassin their location, and taking it less seriously than they had been in the first two rounds. “It happens with whatever is ‘hot’ at the time,” Titus said. “It’s hot gossip for a week, and then we’re done. So, I’m glad it lasted for like two weeks – that was good!”
To Titus’s amazement, many bonds formed in those two weeks. “There’s some people who I would never have thought would be finding each other to go do senior assassin [together],” she said.
Mergens experienced this firsthand. “I’ve been talking to people that I would’ve never talked to before,” she said. “It’s bringing people together in the senior class, which is nice.”
Titus is considering making a second game once the first game reaches its conclusion. Many people have requested this, including those who missed out on the first game and those who were in the first game but are now seeking revenge.
Additionally, she has had juniors contact her about organizing their own game of senior assassin next year. Titus is excited at the prospect of the incoming seniors carrying on this new tradition.
“As the years wind down and seniors have a little less to worry about, you don’t want the reality of the fact that you’re not going to see most of these people again to hit you, and so a good way to do that is to have one final big involvement from them,” Cheloha said. “I see value in it as long as you don’t put too much of yourself into it.”
Even though she got eliminated at work, double-crossed by her friends, and had to wear a mustache and biker helmet to school, all thanks to senior assassin, Mattson holds the same sentiments as Cheloha. “Hashtag do senior assassin; it’s so much fun,” she said. “Go buy a water gun, please get goggles, and just have fun with it, bro. Don’t take it too seriously.”
