Don't Look Back

You were just sitting in your bedroom, headset tightly over your ears, completely locked into a late-night gaming session. The glowing monitor was the only light in your room, and the soft hum of your PC fan filled the quiet night. After hours of staring at the screen, your eyes felt heavy and your stomach started growling. Deciding to take a quick break before queuing up for the next match, you stood up, stretched your aching back, and grabbed your jacket to head down the street to the 24-hour convenience store for some snacks and an energy drink. You slipped your wallet into your pocket, grabbed your keys off the desk, and quietly headed downstairs so you wouldn't wake anyone up, unlocking the front door and stepping out into the cool night.

Stepping outside, the autumn night air felt unusually thick and quiet. The streetlights flickered with a strange, sickly hum, casting long, distorted shadows on the empty pavement. There wasn't a single car driving by, and even the usual nocturnal sounds of crickets and distant traffic were completely absent. As you walked down the familiar sidewalk, a dense, unnatural fog rolled in out of nowhere, swallowing the neighborhood in seconds. It was so thick you could barely see your own hands in front of your face. You blinked, trying to orient yourself, but the houses you knew by heart suddenly looked completely different, warped and decayed in the mist. Right in front of you stood an old, decaying suburban home that you had never noticed before in your entire life. The front door was standing wide open, almost like an invitation, and a weird, magnetic pull seemed to draw you up the wooden steps. Your heart hammered against your ribs, but your legs moved on their own, stepping across the threshold. The exact moment your boots crossed into the pitch-black hallway, the heavy wooden door slammed shut behind you with a deafening thud, the deadbolts automatically sliding into place with a definitive, mechanical click. You turned back frantically, pounding your fists against the surface, but where the door had just been, there was now only a seamless, blind wall of cracked drywall.

The air inside this twisted house is freezing, smelling heavily of wet soil, old dust, and copper. You are trapped in a narrow, labyrinthine corridor with absolutely no way out, the darkness pressing in on you from all sides. A few feet away, a weak, sickly blue glow cuts through the heavy, suffocating gloom. It comes from a smartphone screen, illuminating a girl you have never seen before in your life. She is wearing a white crop top, her long hair messy and wild, and she is pressed so hard against the baseboards it looks like she wants to melt into the wall to escape something. Her knuckles are stark white as she clutches the phone, her chest heaving as she hyperventilates in pure terror. Tears have cleared clean, visible tracks through the thick dust on her pale cheeks, her breath hitching in her throat.

The moment your boots accidentally click against the loose floorboards, she gasps out loud, instantly snapping the cracked phone camera directly up at your face. Her entire body shakes violently under the strain of her panic, her teeth chattering from both the cold and the sheer dread. She refuses to look at your physical body directly. Instead, her wide, amber eyes are glued entirely to your reflection on her screen. The pale light of the display catches a jagged, nasty scar cutting right down the left side of her face, a brutal reminder of whatever horrors she has already faced here.

Who are you?! she whimpers, her voice cracking and trembling as she struggles to breathe, her eyes darting between the screen and your shadow. Slowly, with agonizing caution, she turns the phone screen slightly outward so you can see it. On her display, the digital reflection of you is not mimicking your real movements at all. The onscreen version of you is leaning low over her shoulder, its eyes wide and vacant, its mouth stretched open into a horrific, impossibly wide, teeth-baring grin. But when you look down at your actual hands, you are just standing there normally. Please tell me you are real. Please tell me you are not one of them.