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Be Careful What You Choose to Read


I’ve been sick for weeks. When I cough, I taste something wet and bitter, crawling up my throat. My chest aches from the congestion. In sporadic fits, hacking and wheezing, my vision darkens. I see silvery stars spinning from the corners of my eyes. I hug my sides, squeezing, as if my ribs would burst open. I hate it. I cannot suffer this cough much longer. I just want this illness to end.

I have had all the free time I could ask for, bunkered down at home. Wrapped in a heated blanket, I can hear cold winds howling outside. Snow keeps falling. My neighbor shoveled the sidewalk for me yesterday. I’m in no condition to face this dreadful weather, not with this horrible cough. I can’t even speak a full sentence without erupting into a choking spasm.

But I have to tell somebody. I have nowhere to go, but here.

I love reading horror stories. That’s why I frequent this site. Stretched out in my recliner, I huddled over my phone for days, looking for good stories.

Yesterday, on a whim, I searched for survival horror games. I scrolled through several titles, but one of them caught my eye. An interactive fiction app, with an icon of a white-eyed zombie reading a red book. Its grotesque face seemed familiar, somehow. I was excited to play this. A story that I can control. Or so I thought.

"The floor is cold. You wake up, trapped in a school, surrounded by the infected."

It felt like I was really there. The story played ambient music, enchantingly creepy. It was dark in my bedroom. The only light came from the face of my phone. Haunted by the narrative I read, I lost track of time. I got very little sleep.

This morning, over breakfast, I heard whispers. The voices were soft and airy. I held my breath. All was still, quiet. I could hear my heartbeat. It was just a flash of a moment, but it unsettled me. Something felt wrong. I swallowed some cough syrup, popped a few pain pills, and ran a hot bath.

Hot steam rolled over the edge of the tub. I felt a cold chill, shooting up my spine, as I undressed. Through the frosted bathroom window, I could look out over the snowy suburb. I reached for my toothbrush. The surface of my mirror was dark. Leaning in closer, I studied my face. I blinked, staring at my glassy eyeballs. Each iris was milky, clouded over. Like two smooth white stones, glossy and dead, my eyes were empty.

I gawked at myself, my mind racing, wondering how this feverish flu had erased my eyes. And then I heard the whispers again. The voices echoed, not from the hallway, or anywhere outside the bathroom, but inside my skull. Muttering without words, they spoke from inside my own head.

Frantic, I grabbed my phone to make a call. My doctor, the ER for an ambulance, 911, anybody. The whispers hissed, as my phone lit up with the survival horror game, still running in the background. The game was still in play?

"You reach for your phone, uncertain. The voices demand action. You know what you must do. You muster the resolve to commit the murders, to silence them all."

My pulse pounding, I killed the app, and without pause, deleted the game altogether. The whispers subsided. But as the icon faded, I recognized myself, ghoulish, not that white-eyed zombie, reading the red book. I swear, it was me. I know what I saw.

My hands are still shaking. My nerves, unstrung. I left the bath water running, retreating into my bedroom with my phone, seized by a coughing fit. I had to get out of there. I pulled a shirt over my head, catching my reflection in the mirror mounted on my dresser. I looked spooked, but the color had returned to my eyes. I was fine.

So now I am questioning my sanity. Maybe the medicine made me loopy. But I cannot believe that I simply imagined it all. That was me, in the icon for that app. I know it was. I searched for the game again, just before I sat down to type this out, but it’s not there. I cannot find it. I am done with scary stories for now. I never expected to be drawn into a real one.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

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