text: It was 2:25 AM I sat at my laptop aimlessly scrolling as the minutes dragged by. Only 3 more hours left until I needed to start getting ready for a long day of work. I leaned back in my chair and cracked my neck. As I heard the tension being released from in-between my vertebras with a few satisfying pops I contemplated crawling into my bed and calling it a night, but my over stimulated brain was still rushing after several hours of scrolling through endless tweets, half reading reddit posts, and hitting the next recommended videos on YouTube. I eventually found myself in the deadly cycle of switching between the home page and the inbox page on Facebook. I reached across the table and took a long swig of my now-flat Pepsi than lurched as I felt a trickle running down my chin and onto my exposed keyboard. Quickly using the sleeve of my hoodie I frantically wiped off the keys that the sugary liquid splashed onto. I cursed under my breath. “I really need to stop snacking at my computer,” I thought to myself as I observed the many crumbs scattered between the keys. I pulled my sleeve up over my thumb and dabbed it twice onto my tongue and began to scrub in between the keys. Don’t judge me! I'm sure you have done it too. After looking over my somewhat cleaner keyboard with satisfaction I looked back onto the screen. A massive jumble of letters were strewn across the google search bar as the result of my late night keyboard scrubbing session. I briefly considered googling my own name for the third time that night but then decided that those 3 hours of sleep might be just enough to get me through my next 8 hour shift. As I was about to stand up a small square suddenly appeared in the corner of my screen. It was plain white with a red frame with the bold letters flashing from blue to red reading, “This link will disappear in 60 seconds.” Below a small timer began counting down from 60 to 59 to 58. I grunted in amusement. “Nice try,” I thought to myself, “probably some low budget website or internet scam trying to trick me into taking their surveys or giving out my credit card information so that I can win that free new iPad.” The numbers counted down from 40 to 39 to 38. As the numbers counted down my curiosity of where that link will take me began to grow. I hovered the mouse over the box then stopped myself. “What if clicking this link would install some malware virus onto my computer? I have already had a computer virus once before after pirating a whole season of “Rick and Morty” onto my computer.” The numbers continued to count down from 24 to 23 to 21. I reached for the top of my screen and began to close it. “What if it was the FBI trying to bait me into clicking a link to an illegal web-sight.” Just as the screen was about to meet my keyboard I stopped. “What if it really was a once in a lifetime opportunity and by clicking this link I would get the chance to view something no one has ever seen before.” The thought of never knowing where that link would take me is going to drive me crazy and I could surely see myself losing sleep over it. I slowly lifted my laptops screen again and saw the numbers count down from 5 to 4 to 3. I gritted my teeth and cursed my overactive imagination and gullibility. I reached down to my mousepad and clicked the link just as the timer reached 1. A New tab appeared on my screen as what looked like a video began buffering. I held my breath and braced myself for disappointment. I hoped to God It wouldn’t be some kind of really messed up porn. It was going to be hard enough getting myself to sleep let alone spending the night trying to erase certain images out of my head. I bit my lip as the buffering eventually stopped and the tab was now filled by a full screen video. I blinked in confusion as all I saw was a very blurry video feed with a blinking red dot in the corner of the screen next to the words LIVE. I stared for a few seconds trying to make out what exactly I was supposed to be looking at. From what it looked like it appeared to be the shape of someone’s silhouette from his head to his shoulders. “Did the link bring me to live stream chat with some random person?” “Hello?” I stammered nervously as the dark face just stared at me in silence. A second later I heard my voice echo from my computer repeating the same “Hello.” I waited a second before trying again. “Can you hear me?” The person on the other end of the stream just sat there as I heard my voice again echo from my computers speakers. It kind of sounded like when you’re on the phone with someone and they have their volume turned up to loud so you can hear your voice repeating while you’re talking to them. I sat there for a full minute not saying anything, waiting for the person in the livestream to respond, or move, or do pretty much anything. They just sat there the whole time barely moving. Than from the corner of the screen I saw another figure standing in the background. It also appeared to be the shape of a man. At first the second figure also just sat there unmoving, than began to sway back and forth. It was kind of like the way a tree sways in a gentle breeze. This continued for another minute than it stopped and went rigid. It’s head began to twitch to the side every so often becoming faster and more rapid as time went on. I then saw it begin to raise an arm toward the other figure sitting closest to the screen who during the duration of this time just sat there motionless as if unaware of was going on behind it. I then shifted my gaze to the figure behind as it began to slowly walk closer and closer to the person very slowly and jerkily. It walked in a slow, in a zig zag like pattern. It got closer and closer to the person sitting closest to the screen who still to this moment just sat there motionless just staring at the screen not even acknowledging the figure behind them. The figure behind no longer seemed human its movement was just too strange and unnatural. It reminded me of the way a puppet on a string walked. It got closer and closer to the other figure. It eventually was so close that it’s face was nearly resting on its shoulder. My heart began to race! “Why don’t they notice what is going on? Are they drugged? Are they asleep? Is this some kind of prank or some sick snuff film being streamed on the dark web by some psychopath?” I wanted to yell out to the person warning them of the figure standing dangerously close to them who’s movement was of no doubt no human being. God, I wish that the image was more clear. It was just so dark and blurry that I could barely make out what I was seeing. Just when I thought it was about to be all over, the twitching figure stopped and went absolutely still just inches away from the person in front. By that I mean, unnervingly still. Although the figure in front remained still there was just enough movement to know it was alive. It’s shoulders raised rhythmicity as it were breathing and I would catch small movements of its head. The figure behind though was as still as a corpse. Than slowly it began to crouch down off camera and I could no longer see it from behind the seated figure in front of the screen. After my heart began to slow down I leaned in closer to the screen to try to get a better view of the mysterious figure in front of me. Than to my surprise the seated figure leaned in as well. I slowly tilted my head to the side in mild confusion than seconds later the figure seated in front did the same. “This guy is mimicking me,” I realized in amusement. I raised both of my hands slowly than seconds later the seated figure slowly did the same. I lowered my left hand and the figure lowered its left. I held up two fingers and the figure did the same. I then noticed a small light at the top of my computer monitor. A steady green light right next to the monitor camera. It was then I noticed that my camera lens was extremely dusty. It’s a wonder that the figure on the other end could not even see me. Using the same technique as before I reached my sleeve up and gently wiped the dust off of the monitor camera. The second my gaze returned to my screen I felt my heart began to race. The image on the screen was now clear as day, the figure I have been staring at this whole time was me. This whole live stream was not a 2 way video chat. It was just a recording of me sitting in front of my laptop. The figure was not mimicking my movements, it was my own reflection. The only reason it movements seemed delayed from mine was because a live feed is always a few seconds behind the actual recording. That also explained why my voice was echoing before. Than just like that the image disappeared from the screen. The tab I had open no longer showed the link with the flashing letters or the timer, but just small text reading “eRRor 404.” My mind raced as everything began to settle in, if that was a live recording of me, than that means that the lurching figure behind was actually a recording as well? I made two mistakes that night. The first one was clicking that link in the first place. The second, was turning around afterwards.