I’m sure that a good majority of you have seen them, even if you wouldn’t care to admit it. Those ads. “Hot singles in your area”. “Hot, lonely and horny girls waiting for you.” That kind of shit.
Usually I don’t think about them for more than a few seconds.
But every once in a while, we get curious, and the whole thing raises a few questions. Like who are they for? And who’s falling for them? Such a strange thing. You’d think that anybody with half a brain cell wouldn’t bother with it. So why do they even exist?
I decided to try and find out. Using one of my old laptops, one that’s already rife with viruses and hardly used, I went on one of those sites you only go on late at night, found one of those ads and clicked on it.
It seemed pretty standard. A small, horizontal banner colored a harsh yellow, big bold letters next to some woman with breasts so large they were sort of hard to look at.
The page it redirected me to was decorated with pictures of nude women gazing longingly into the camera, beckoning for you to, of course, enter in your credit card information.
It was about what I expected. Before exiting it out of there though, I took one last scan around the page, and felt myself shiver, as if some part of my brain really didn’t like what it was seeing.
At first I couldn’t make sense of it, what the source of this sudden and inexplicable dread could’ve been. Then I looked closer at the girls. Really close.
Most of them looked normal, but there was this one, placed down low in one of the corners, and she didn’t look right. I’m almost tempted to draw it down to a case of the uncanny valley, but in truth it was worse than that. Not only did I not feel like I was looking at a person, but also that this entity, whatever it was, was actively staring back at me and that it hated me.
The strangest thing was, I couldn’t put a finger on the problem. It would’ve been easy if her eyes or nose or some specific facial feature was off, distorted in some way, but no. It was more so that everything about her was off.
When I finally peeled my eyes away from the screen, it was dark outside. I could’ve sworn that it’d only been around 4 PM when I started. I yawned, exited out of the page, and slapped the laptop shut and stashed it back in my closet.
Still feeling some vague sense of panic, I took some melatonin, smoked half a joint and went to sleep.
That night I dreamed something horrible. I was sitting in the lobby of what I guessed was some cheap motel, and there were a lot of people sitting around me.
Except they weren’t people. Somehow I knew this.
Upon waking I felt uneasy, and I decided to go for a run.
It helped a bit.
After showering, I made myself a large coffee and sat down at my desk, intending to get some work done.
Four hours later I was watching a pirated version of some Marvel show. I clicked on the screen to pause it so that I could go to the bathroom, and as I did so, it triggered a pop-up page. Not a big deal. When that happens, you just click off quickly and that’s the end of it.
But I couldn’t. Not this time.
Out of the corner of my eye lingered that familiar yellow. I shook my head, avoiding looking directly at the screen and thought no, there was no possible way.
Then I looked at the screen and my heart drove itself down into my stomach.
That same page. For a while I tried not looking down at the bottom corner, even though I could already kind of see it. Then I looked.
When I finally gathered my senses this time, it was 2AM and the collar of my shirt was soaked in cold sweat. I grabbed the mouse and clicked off the page and then I cleared my history and turned the computer off.
Sitting in the darkness, I listened to my sporadic breaths. This went on for a long time.
I didn’t go to sleep that night and when morning came, it was time to go to work. I made myself a coffee, drained it, then made myself another one.
Walking out of my apartment and onto the streets, I became paranoid that somebody was following me, but if anybody was, nothing came of it.
Arriving in the office, I greeted my boss quickly and he stared at me while I walked past him. Going to the washroom to splash water onto my face, I realized that I looked like hell.
It kind of pissed me off. I was so strung-out, but nothing had really happened. And if something had happened, then I didn’t understand what it was, and that fact just made me angrier.
I drank another coffee and got to work. Sometime around noon, I think I dozed off. I don’t remember what I was doing or how it happened, but at some point I opened my eyes, half-groggy, half-crazed and stared at the computer screen and can you guess what I saw.
I nearly threw up. A few minutes later, somebody knocked at my door, putting me out of my daze.
Eric, my co-worker.
“You okay, man?” he asked.
Without looking at the screen, I turned my monitor off. “Yeah,” I said.
Eric squinted one eye at me. “I don’t know how to tell you this but… every time I’ve walked by your office, you’ve been staring at your screen, and I don’t think I’ve seen you move an inch for several hours.”
I just stared at him.
“You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded yes, turned off the computer and left the office. On the walk home once again I felt like I was being followed, but this time I also felt an urgency, something telling me that I could not let them catch up.
I started walking faster, took a turn at an intersection and ducked into the first door available.
It was some bar. Relatively empty, a few college kids playing pool and some older gentlemen sitting in the back in the dark, smoking and drinking.
I took a seat at the bar and ordered a shot of tequila and then two more. The entire time I was hoping and praying that nobody else would come in, but around five minutes later somebody did.
They took the seat next to me, smelling heavy of cigarette smoke, while I stared ahead at the TV. Even without looking at them, I could tell that they were large, had a lot of tattoos.
After a while he spoke.
“Do you want my help or not?”
I sucked my teeth. “Help with what?”
The man turned to me and stared but said nothing. This went on for a while before it became too uncomfortable not to address it.
I looked at him. He appeared to be in his late forties, though his real age was likely less than that. He had on sunglasses, and there was a small scar under the bottom of his left eye.
“You want to know what it is,” he said. Not a question.
I looked forward, feeling nervous, then squeezed my eyes shut.
“What is it?”
The man took a swig from his beer. “It’s a virus.”
“A computer virus?”
He nodded. “Yeah. But this one’s special.”
“Special how?”
“It wasn’t manmade.”
I shook my head. “So what? It’s an AI? A robot’s fucking with me?”
The man smiled, showing lightly stained but straight teeth. “No,” then he looked at me. “It’s a strange kind of virus. Something that propagates itself through machines and then into other things.”
“Other things,” I repeated.
“I’m just trying to ease you into it. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“How did you know that I saw it?”
The man breathed deeply. “Because I can see her. She follows you around. She follows a lot of people around.”
“Who?”
“C’mon,” the man said. “You know.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then where is she now?”
I looked at the man and he just stared back at me. Slowly his eyes drifted over my shoulder and for a short while he stared at something else, something in one of the bar’s dark corners. He shook his head.
“I’ll show you how to get rid of her,” he said. “But not here.”
I shook my head. “It’s not possible,” I said. “How can she be here?”
The man stared at me. “If you don’t believe me, then look over your shoulder.”
I stared back at him and after a while I realized that I didn’t want to do that. Or I was unable to. To be honest, I’m not sure which one it was. Then I told him that yes, I’d like to know how to get rid of her. He told me that we should go somewhere private, either my place or his. I told him we’d go to mine.
On the walk there, he asked me how many times I’d seen her. I told him two, maybe three. He asked me if it was really two or three. I thought about it and settled on three. Then he looked down at the ground without saying anything.
We walked into my place, and I sat on the couch while he stood by the doorway. I offered him a beer or a coffee and he declined.
“Well,” I said, my exhaustion closing in on being unbearable, made worse by the alcohol. “What do I have to do?”
He stood silent for a while before speaking. “What you need to understand is that you cannot let her reach you. You don’t want to see her.”
“Which is why I’m asking you how to get rid of her.”
“It’s not easy.”
“What do I have to do.”
He walked towards me, sat down on the couch across. He lifted his hand and pulled down his sunglasses. Behind them sat empty sockets and scarred flesh. My chest tightened.
“You don’t want to see her,” he repeated, putting them back on.
“But I already have.”
He shook his head. “No, no you haven’t. Not until the virus is in you.”
“If it’s not in me yet, then what’s the problem.”
The man breathed through his nose. “Let me rephrase that. It’s already in you. But it’s not strong enough. It hasn’t been activated.”
I stared at him.
“For most people it happens after the third time. Nobody has ever made it to five.”
I said, “I won’t look at it again.”
“You know that’s not possible.”
I stared at him.
“You’re marked, it’s in you. It’s gonna find its way onto any screen you look.”
“I just won’t look at any more screens. Better than cutting my fucking eyes out.”
The man laughed. “You don’t understand. It will find a way. It doesn’t matter what you do.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m not just trying to help you,” he said. “I’m trying to save you.”
“I don’t need to be saved.”
“You don’t understand. You can’t let it catch you. You can’t see it.”
“Have you seen it?” I ask.
The man looked around and then down at the floor then back at me.
“I still can.”
For a while we sat silent. Tense. Then I watched as he slowly lowered his hand, reaching for something in his back pocket.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I’m trying to save you.”
I began backing away.
“It’s not just you,” he continued. “We can’t let this thing spread. We can’t.”
The man lunged forward, cutting me across the forearm. I grabbed my lamp and broke the bulb across his head. He lunged again, weaker this time. I kicked him in the neck, and he went down. I stepped over to him and pushed the knife away with my foot. The man heaved a breath. Then he laughed.
“Just kill me,” he said. “If you don’t then I’ll just keep trying. To save you. To stop this.”
I stood over him, breathing heavy, still unsure.
“I don’t want to see her anymore,” he continued. “She’s outside your window, you know?”
I closed my eyes and then strangled him. When I finished, there was a smile on his face. Then I took a bat and smashed my monitor. I waited until night came and dragged his body to my car, stuffed him in the trunk and then I began to drive.
Where I was going, I wasn’t sure. At some point I stopped at a diner to get some coffee. By now I hadn’t slept for thirty-five, maybe forty hours. Sitting at my table, my eyes drifted lazily up to the television. A hockey game was on. I stared at the screen, not really interested but for some reason I couldn’t look away.
Some time later, a waitress was shaking my shoulder, telling me that I had to leave. I looked away from the television and down at the table and realizing what had just happened, I began to cry. The waitress watched me for a while before backing off. Once she did, I grabbed my cup, stood up and flung it hard into the television.
Through the cracked screen I could see her face, lingering, distorted, horrible. Then it went black, and I stumbled out to my car.
It was bright outside now and I sat there, gripping the wheel tight. Then I looked in the rear-view and saw something in the distance moving strangely, almost gliding on the road towards my car. Not another car. Too small for that.
I opened the glove compartment, seeing the knife the man had tried to blind me with, which I’d taken before leaving. I grabbed it and set it down onto the passenger’s seat and I stared at it.
She’s getting closer now, and I’m thinking that maybe I should.
But maybe it’s already too late for that.
---
Credits
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