Vincent stared at the blank notebook in front of him, the pristine pages a stark contrast to the chaotic tangle of his thoughts. His mind reeled from the inconsistencies: the vanishing pill bottle, the sound of the thud perfectly predicted, and now the eerie blankness of the notebook that had, just moments ago, been filled with meticulous, disturbing entries.
The crowbar lay across the desk, its solid weight grounding him in a way nothing else seemed able to. His hands trembled slightly as he reached for the tablet, its screen glowing faintly with the last search query he’d typed: fluoxetine uses. The phrase stared back at him, clinical and mocking, daring him to find meaning in this unraveling mess.
He needed clarity. Action. Something to tether him before the static-filled void of his mind consumed him. The forums. They had been his lifeline earlier, the one place where people treated his experiences as real, no matter how absurd they seemed. Maybe they could be his anchor again.
With a determined breath, he opened the tablet’s browser and navigated to the familiar dark theme of the forum. His thread was still there, sitting near the top of the general discussion board. The title, Help Needed (Trust), felt almost laughably naive now, given the weight of what he was dealing with.
The thread had grown. Dozens of replies had appeared since he’d last checked, some offering advice, others joking about cursed objects and horror tropes. He skimmed past the lighthearted ones, his focus narrowing on the posts that took him seriously.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard as he prepared to type an update. The words came slowly, deliberately, as he tried to capture the scope of what had happened without sounding completely unhinged.
<hr>
Update: Things are getting worse.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Notebook that had detailed everything is now blank.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">I lost time again, about 16 hours this time. Countdown is at 1 day, 7 hours.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Pills I don’t recognize appeared with my name on them. Prescribed by a “Dr. Ellison” who doesn’t exist. Pills are for hallucinations/disordered thinking. Never contacted a doctor.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Loud thud predicted in the notebook at 7:57 PM. It happened. No explanation.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Radio turned itself on again. This time, static with garbled voices. No identifiable message.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Bought some items to help a crowbar, medkit, etc.</li>
</ul>
Am I losing it? Or is something actively trying to make me think I’m crazy?
<hr>
He hit “Submit” and leaned back in his chair, the faint glow of the tablet screen reflecting in his tired eyes. The static from the radio filled the room again, its low, unrelenting hum washing over him like waves on a rocky shore. He closed his eyes, letting the sound envelop him as he took a shaky breath, trying to calm the trembling in his chest.
Moments later, a notification ping broke the fragile calm. His heart jumped, the sound pulling him back to reality with a jolt. He glanced at the screen. A single reply.
It was from a user he didn’t recognize: Observer777. The name struck him as odd; it felt deliberate, not like the edgy or humorous usernames the forum usually attracted. He clicked on the reply, his pulse quickening.
<hr>
Reply from Observer777:
You’re not losing it. But you might be losing your freedom. Whoever, or whatever, is doing this isn’t just trying to mess with you. They’re crafting an alibi. Look at the evidence:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">You’ve publicly posted about hallucinations.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">You’ve researched medication for disordered thinking.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">You’re describing paranoia, lost time, and hearing voices.</li>
</ul>
If this were presented to someone, say, the authorities, it would look like you’re mentally unstable. Add in that pill bottle with your name on it, prescribed by a ‘doctor’ who doesn’t exist, and it’s starting to look like someone’s building a case against you.
Think carefully. Who stands to benefit from you being declared unfit or dangerous? What might they be setting you up for?
<hr>
Vincent read the reply once, then again, his stomach twisting with each word. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, but he couldn’t think of anything to type. The idea settled over him like a suffocating blanket, wrapping around his chest and squeezing until he could barely breathe.
An alibi.
The pieces clicked together with horrifying clarity. The posts he’d made, the searches, the strange notebook entries, if someone else was behind this, they were constructing a narrative that painted him as delusional. The kind of person who couldn’t be trusted. The kind of person who might do something dangerous.
His hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms as he fought to suppress the rising tide of panic. He glanced at the crowbar on the desk, its solid weight suddenly feeling less like protection and more like evidence. A paranoid man with a weapon. How would that look to someone on the outside?
Vincent exhaled shakily, running a hand through his hair. He needed to think, to really think. He couldn’t let his mind spiral. Not now.
<hr>
The static continued its steady drone in the background, filling the room with its familiar hum. Vincent focused on it, letting the sound wash over him, grounding himself in its monotonous rhythm. His breaths slowed, each one deeper and steadier than the last. The words from the reply churned in his mind, but he forced himself to analyze them logically, piece by piece.
Public posts about hallucinations. That was true. He’d been honest in his thread, describing the strange events as they unfolded. But that honesty could easily be twisted into something else, couldn’t it?
Researching medication. He glanced at the tablet again, the open browser still displaying his searches. It was innocent enough, a natural response to finding the pill bottle. But in the context of everything else...
Paranoia. Lost time. Hearing voices. The notebook entries had documented those things in painful detail. And now that the pages were blank, the only proof they’d ever existed was his own memory, a memory that could easily be called into question.
The pill bottle. It was the most damning piece of all. The label, with his name and the fabricated doctor, was too precise to be a mistake. It was deliberate, designed to cement the narrative.
Vincent’s fingers trembled as he scrolled back through his thread, rereading his own words. With each post, he saw how easily they could be taken out of context, how neatly they could fit into the story Observer777 was suggesting.
A shiver ran down his spine. If someone, or something, was building an alibi, what was their endgame? What were they setting him up for?
The static rose in volume for a moment, the sound sharp and grating, before settling back into its usual hum. Vincent flinched, his gaze snapping to the radio. The red power light blinked steadily, unchanging, but the noise felt different now, less like background noise and more like a presence.
He stood, pacing the small apartment as his thoughts churned. His gaze flicked to the window, where the faint glow of the city outside cast long, distorted shadows on the floor. The world felt distant, disconnected, as though it existed on the other side of an impenetrable barrier.
He stopped by the kitchenette, his eyes scanning the familiar space. The glass of water sat on the counter, untouched since earlier. The dishes were still stacked neatly in the sink. Everything was as it should be. And yet, it wasn’t.
Vincent turned back toward the desk, his gaze falling on the crowbar. The thought crossed his mind again: how damning it would look, lying there, if someone else walked into this scene. He picked it up, holding it loosely in his hand as he considered where to put it. Out of sight, he decided. Somewhere innocuous.
He crossed the room to the closet, opening it to reveal a cluttered assortment of clothes and miscellaneous items. He shoved the crowbar to the back, burying it beneath a pile of old jackets. It wasn’t much, but it made him feel slightly less exposed.
As he turned back to the room, his eyes fell on the radio again. The static seemed louder now, more insistent. It filled the apartment like a living thing, seeping into every corner.
Vincent approached it cautiously, his heart pounding in his chest. He reached out, his fingers brushing against the tuning dial. For a moment, he hesitated. Then he turned it.
The static shifted, rising and falling in pitch, as though searching for something. Then it stopped. The silence was deafening.
“...Vincent…”
The voice was faint, barely more than a whisper, but it was unmistakable. It sent a chill down his spine, his breath catching in his throat.
He stared at the radio, his mind racing. The voice didn’t come again, but the weight of it lingered, pressing down on him like a physical force.
Vincent backed away slowly, his legs trembling as he returned to the desk. He sat down heavily, the static filling the room once more as the radio resumed its steady hum.
The reply from Observer777 flashed in his mind again, its implications more chilling than ever. Someone was crafting a narrative. Someone was building an alibi.
Vincent sat at the desk, the notebook open in front of him, its blank pages waiting for him to make sense of the chaos swirling in his mind. The heavy static from the radio hummed in the background, filling the oppressive silence of the room like a low, unrelenting tide. He let it wash over him as he took a shaky breath, forcing his trembling fingers to steady against the pen.
“I need to think,” he muttered under his breath, his voice barely audible over the static.
The notebook was both a blessing and a curse. Its emptiness taunted him, the lack of entries a stark reminder that whatever, or whoever, was behind this wanted him to doubt his own mind. But it was also a tool, a means of organizing the thoughts that threatened to consume him.
With deliberate strokes, he wrote a single word at the top of the page: Suspects.
The absurdity of the word struck him immediately. Suspects? Like he was in some noir thriller instead of trapped in his dingy apartment with a countdown ticking toward an unknown fate. But he shook the thought aside. He needed to take this seriously. If Observer777 was right, someone, or something, was orchestrating all of this, and he had to figure out why.
He underlined the word twice, the sharp scratch of the pen oddly satisfying, and began listing names.
People Who Might Want Me Gone
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Building Manager (Mr. Garrison)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Motive? None obvious. Always weirdly nosy, but nothing sinister.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Possibility? Unlikely. Seems too incompetent for something this calculated.</li>
</ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Ex-Roommate (Travis Lane)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Motive? Fallout over rent dispute eight years ago. Petty grudge?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Possibility? Slim. Feels far-fetched, but can’t dismiss entirely.</li>
</ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Online Acquaintance (Cryptkeeper69)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Motive? Knows too much from forum discussions. Could be messing with me.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Possibility? Medium. Their humor can be dark, but would they take it this far?</li>
</ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Family?</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Motive? Estranged for years. Would they care enough to pull this off?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Possibility? Low. Feels too personal for them.</li>
</ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Former Delivery Driver</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Motive? Argument over late package. Escalation into obsession?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Possibility? Absurd. Scratching them off.</li>
</ul>
</ol>
The list grew as he dredged up every face, every interaction, every slight from the past decade that might hold a kernel of reason for this bizarre situation. By the time he finished, fifteen names stared back at him, ranging from mild irritants to distant acquaintances he hadn’t thought about in years. Each entry was annotated with his best guess at a motive and a probability rating that, in the end, amounted to little more than gut instinct.
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes scanning the list. None of it made sense. No single name stood out as a credible suspect. If this was some personal vendetta, it was the most convoluted one he’d ever encountered.
Vincent’s gaze drifted to the radio, its static a constant presence in the background. It was easier to focus with the noise, easier to block out the oppressive silence that seemed to magnify his racing thoughts. He picked up the pen again, flipping to a fresh page.
His mind wandered to the stories he’d read about, the ones that had made brief splashes in the news before being quietly swept aside. People vanishing without explanation. The authorities always found an answer, of course: suicide, accidents, voluntary disappearances. But there had been something about those cases, a thread he couldn’t quite pull together.
He began writing.
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Case #1: Sarah Watts (34)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Details: Found near the riverbank. Presumed suicide. No note.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Oddities: No history of depression. Family insists she was happy.</li>
</ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Case #2: Jason Morrow (28)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Details: Disappeared from apartment. No signs of struggle.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Oddities: Door locked from inside. Security footage inconclusive.</li>
</ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Case #3: Angela Cross (40)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Details: Missing for three weeks. Body never found. Declared voluntary disappearance.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Oddities: Left behind all personal belongings, including phone and wallet.</li>
</ul>
</ol>
The list grew as he scoured his memory for the details he’d gleaned from news reports and forum discussions. There was no clear pattern, no obvious connection between the victims. They were different ages, different genders, from different walks of life. The only common thread was the unsatisfying explanations that followed their disappearances.
Vincent frowned, tapping the pen against the edge of the notebook. Could the same thing be happening to him? Was someone, or something, crafting an alibi for his eventual vanishing act? The thought made his skin crawl.
He stared at the page, willing the scattered pieces to form a coherent picture. But the harder he tried to make sense of it, the more elusive the truth seemed.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
His mind wandered to the stories he’d read about, the ones that had made brief splashes in the news before being quietly swept aside. People vanishing without explanation. The authorities always found an answer, of course: suicide, accidents, voluntary disappearances. But there had been something about those cases, a thread he couldn’t quite pull together.
He began writing.
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Case #1: Sarah Watts (34)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Details: Found near riverbank. Presumed suicide. No note.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Oddities: No history of depression. Family insists she was happy.</li>
</ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Case #2: Jason Morrow (28)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Details: Disappeared from apartment. No signs of struggle.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Oddities: Door locked from inside. Security footage inconclusive.</li>
</ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Case #3: Angela Cross (40)</li>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Details: Missing for three weeks. Body never found. Declared voluntary disappearance.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Oddities: Left behind all personal belongings, including phone and wallet.</li>
</ul>
</ol>
The list grew as he scoured his memory for the details he’d gleaned from news reports and forum discussions. There was no clear pattern, no obvious connection between the victims. They were different ages, different genders, from different walks of life. The only common thread was the unsatisfying explanations that followed their disappearances.
Vincent frowned, tapping the pen against the edge of the notebook. Could the same thing be happening to him? Was someone, or something, crafting an alibi for his eventual vanishing act? The thought made his skin crawl.
He stared at the page, willing the scattered pieces to form a coherent picture. But the harder he tried to make sense of it, the more elusive the truth seemed.
Vincent’s grip on the pen tightened as he stared down at the list he’d just written. The names of strangers stared back at him, fragments of lives reduced to bullet points and cold, clinical oddities. The notion that he might be next sent a shiver down his spine, a slow, creeping dread that refused to let go.
The static from the radio continued its relentless hum in the background, but now it felt different, less like a grounding force and more like a quiet observer, a passive witness to his growing paranoia. He glanced at the device, half-expecting the disembodied voice to return, but the static remained impassive, unchanging.
Was this how it started for them? he wondered. A series of unexplained events, an unraveling of their sense of reality, until finally, they were gone? The cases he’d listed were too vague to confirm anything, but the parallels gnawed at him all the same. It felt like he was standing on the edge of a precipice, teetering on the brink of something he couldn’t fully understand.
He pushed the notebook away, the edges of its pages fraying under the pressure of his fingers. His gaze drifted back to the tablet on the desk, still displaying his forum thread. The reply from Observer777 loomed large in his mind, its words a relentless echo:
"They’re crafting an alibi."
Vincent leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk and cradling his head in his hands. The idea made too much sense, and that was what terrified him. If someone wanted to erase him, truly erase him, this was exactly how they’d do it. Undermine his credibility, plant seeds of doubt in his mind, and then, when the time was right, strike.
But why? Why him?
He let out a slow, trembling breath, the weight of the question settling heavily on his chest. He wasn’t anyone important. He didn’t have enemies, not real ones. Sure, he’d argued with people online, had the occasional spat with coworkers or neighbors, but nothing that could explain this level of malice.
Unless it wasn’t personal.
That thought struck him like a jolt of static electricity, sharp and sudden. What if it didn’t matter who he was? What if he was just… convenient? A test subject? An experiment? The idea was absurd, but so was everything else about his situation. He’d read enough about psychological experiments and black-market surveillance to know the lengths some entities, corporate or otherwise, might go to in pursuit of their goals. He might have just been unlucky enough to catch their attention.
Or maybe it was something even bigger. His mind darted to the news stories he usually ignored: conspiracy theories about shadowy organizations, rogue AI programs, or secret government projects. They had always seemed laughable before, the ramblings of paranoid minds desperate to make sense of a chaotic world. But now, sitting alone in his apartment with the static hissing in the background and a countdown ticking steadily toward its conclusion, they didn’t feel so far-fetched.
Vincent’s eyes flicked to his phone, lying face up on the desk. The countdown continued its unrelenting march: 1 Day, 6 Hours, 57 Minutes.
He stared at it, willing the numbers to stop, to freeze, to give him some semblance of control. But they didn’t. They ticked on, indifferent to his desperation.
What happens when it reaches zero?
The question lingered in his mind, heavy and oppressive. He didn’t have an answer, and that terrified him. Was it his deadline? A point of no return? Or was it something worse, something he couldn’t even begin to imagine?
The words of Observer777 resurfaced, pulling him back into the present: “Think carefully. Who stands to benefit from you being declared unfit or dangerous?”
The phrasing had stuck with him. Declared unfit. Declared dangerous. It implied more than just sabotage. It implied intent, purpose. Someone wanted him removed, not just physically, but in every way that mattered. His name, his reputation, his very existence could be erased with the right combination of lies and fabricated evidence. And if they succeeded, no one would question it. He’d simply be another name added to the list of unexplained disappearances, another case closed with a neat, convenient explanation.
Vincent’s hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to find a way to fight back, to prove that he wasn’t imagining this, that he wasn’t crazy.
But how?
He stared at the objects on his desk, the notebook, the tablet, the phone, as if they might offer him some kind of guidance. His thoughts swirled in chaotic loops, circling back to the same points over and over again. The evidence he had wasn’t tangible. The pills were gone. The notebook’s entries had vanished. Even the radio’s garbled voice could be dismissed as interference or a trick of the mind. He had nothing concrete, nothing he could point to and say, This is real.
Unless…
The thought came to him slowly, hesitantly, like a shadow creeping along the edge of his consciousness. What if he documented everything? Not just in the notebook, but digitally, on the forum, in videos, in audio recordings. If someone was trying to erase him, they couldn’t erase everything, could they? Not if he spread it wide enough, made enough noise.
He reached for the tablet, his hands steadier now, and opened the camera app. The screen flickered to life, displaying his tired, pale face framed by the cluttered backdrop of his apartment. He looked like a ghost of himself, hollow-eyed and tense.
“Okay,” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. “Let’s start small.”
He hit the record button, the green dot blinking in the corner of the screen. For a moment, he just stared at the camera, unsure of what to say. Then, slowly, he began to speak.
“My name is Vincent Price,” he said, his voice shaky but determined. “If you’re watching this, it means I didn’t make it.”
The words hung in the air, heavy with implication. He swallowed hard, his throat dry, and continued.
“Something is happening to me. I don’t know who’s behind it, or why, but they’re trying to make me look crazy. They’ve planted evidence, pills, fake prescriptions, and they’ve messed with my memory. There’s a countdown on my phone, and I don’t know what happens when it reaches zero.”
He paused, glancing toward the radio. The static filled the silence, an ever-present reminder of the strangeness surrounding him.
“If this is my last chance to tell the truth, then here it is: I’m not crazy. I know what I’ve seen. I know what I’ve heard. And if someone’s trying to erase me, I won’t let them win.”
He ended the recording, his finger hovering over the save button. For a moment, he considered deleting it, the weight of his words suddenly feeling too real. But then he saved it, naming the file Evidence 1, and uploaded it to the forum thread.
Vincent stared at the new reply under his video, his stomach sinking as he read the scathing critique, the reply from Observer777 was bold as if to put emphasis on it’s words.
<hr>
Reply from Observer777:
What are you doing, man? This just makes you look crazier. Nobody thinks they’re crazy, and now you’re posting videos of yourself ranting about conspiracies? Congrats, you’re just reinforcing the alibi for whoever’s setting you up.
<hr>
His lips tightened into a grim line. He reread the message twice, his heart thudding heavily in his chest. The post wasn’t wrong, at least not entirely. The thought had already crossed his mind as he’d hit the upload button, but desperation had overruled caution. Now, staring at the cold truth laid out in blunt words, he felt the gnawing sting of doubt burrow deeper into his mind.
The tablet’s screen glowed faintly, mocking him with the irreversibility of his actions. The video was already uploaded to the forum. Deleting it now wouldn’t help, it had likely been downloaded, shared, maybe even dissected by those curious or cruel enough to tear it apart frame by frame.
Vincent clicked back to the forum thread, scrolling down to see if anyone else had chimed in. A new reply had already appeared, this one with a dramatically different tone. The user, FinalCut82, had attached a gif of shaky cam footage from The Blair Witch Project. The caption beneath it read:
<hr>
Reply from FinalCut82:
If you’re gonna go full documentary, at least make it entertaining. Maybe include some creepy close-ups of the countdown clock or whisper ominously into the camera. People love that stuff.
<hr>
The gif looped endlessly, the frantic motion of the infamous horror film’s amateur footage somehow heightening Vincent’s growing unease. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, unsure whether to reply or simply close the browser and walk away. But before he could decide, another reply appeared, this time from the same user.
<hr>
Reply from FinalCut82:
On a serious note, if you’re gonna document this, you need evidence. Real evidence. Screaming into a camera isn’t gonna convince anyone. Start recording everything, timestamps, unexplained events, the countdown on your phone. And for the love of God, use something offline. Internet-connected devices can be tampered with. Go low-tech.
<hr>
Vincent frowned, his gaze drifting back to the tablet and its always-on connection to the digital ether. The advice made sense. He didn’t trust his laptop anymore, and even his phone felt like a liability. The reply had planted a seed of doubt about his current method of documenting events. He needed something physical, something offline, that couldn’t be hacked or remotely altered.
He swiped over to the delivery app on his tablet, his fingers moving with purpose. The list of suggested items greeted him with a sanitized interface, a stark contrast to the tangled paranoia running rampant in his mind. He hesitated for a moment, unsure of what exactly to search for, before typing in: wearable camera.
The results populated instantly. Most of the options were sleek, modern designs, boasting features like live-streaming, cloud backup, and AI stabilization. Too connected, he thought, dismissing them with a flick of his thumb. He kept scrolling until he found what he was looking for: a basic, standalone wearable camera with no internet functionality. It had a simple design, the kind of thing you’d expect a nature enthusiast or hobbyist to use for personal projects. It recorded directly onto an SD card, and its minimalistic specs were almost a selling point now.
Vincent tapped the listing, his eyes scanning the description. It didn’t promise much, decent battery life, average resolution, no bells or whistles, but that was exactly what he wanted. He added it to his cart and completed the order in record time, the estimated delivery showing as 45 minutes.
The thought of waiting, of sitting in this room with nothing to do but ruminate, made his skin crawl. His fingers itched to take action, to do something, anything, that might help him wrest back some control.
But there was nothing.
Vincent leaned back in his chair, letting the static from the radio wash over him. The sound filled the apartment, its unrelenting hum an oddly comforting backdrop to his spiraling thoughts. He glanced at his phone, its screen still illuminated with the countdown: 1 Day, 6 Hours, 41 Minutes.
He clenched his jaw. That was all he had for now, the clock, ticking steadily toward its unknown end. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
With nothing else to record, he grabbed the notebook and began jotting down observations about the countdown. He noted how the time had seemed consistent, never jumping forward or backward since he first noticed it. That suggested it was tied to something external, not just his phone’s internal clock. But what? A server? A program? Or something… else?
The thought sent a chill through him, but he forced himself to keep writing. The act of putting pen to paper was grounding, even if the answers eluded him. He wrote down every detail he could think of about the countdown: when he first noticed it, how it had synced with his phone, how it refused to be dismissed or tampered with.
When he finished, he stared at the page, the words blurring together as his exhaustion began to creep in. He rubbed his temples, glancing at the tablet to check the delivery status. The camera was still en route.
The seconds stretched into minutes, each one feeling heavier than the last. Vincent stood and began pacing the apartment, his steps aimless but restless. The static hummed on, the countdown ticked away, and the weight of the unknown pressed down on him like a lead blanket.
When the soft hum of rotors broke through the static, Vincent’s head snapped toward the window. The delivery drone was here. He moved quickly, sliding the window open as the machine hovered just outside, its small cargo compartment extending toward him.
The camera was neatly packed in a plain cardboard box, its unassuming appearance oddly reassuring. Vincent signed for the delivery, his fingers fumbling slightly as he held the box. The drone chirped once before zipping away, disappearing into the city’s tangled skyline.
He wasted no time tearing into the package. The camera was as basic as promised, a simple rectangular device with a single button and a clip for attaching it to clothing. It came with a small stack of SD cards and a charging cable, nothing more.
Vincent held the device in his hands, its weight both literal and symbolic. This was his tool, his witness. If anything happened, if the countdown hit zero and something unthinkable occurred, this camera would capture it. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.
He clipped it to his shirt, the lens facing outward, and pressed the button. A small red light blinked on, indicating it was recording. For the first time in hours, he felt a faint glimmer of hope. He couldn’t control what was happening to him, but he could document it. He could leave behind a trail, a record of his experience that no one could erase.
The static continued to hum in the background as Vincent sat back at the desk, the camera now recording everything.
Vincent leaned back in his chair, letting his hands fall limply to his sides. The quiet whir of the newly delivered wearable camera filled the silence alongside the persistent hum of the radio static. The tiny red light on the device blinked steadily, a constant reminder that it was capturing everything now, the room, his movements, even the faint shadows dancing on the walls.
He glanced at his reflection in the dark screen of the CRT monitor, a distorted image of a man frayed at the edges. His gaze drifted to the notebook and the tablet sitting on the desk, then to the camera lens fixed firmly to his chest. The weight of what he was doing, what he had been driven to do, pressed on his mind.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath, the words barely audible over the ambient static. “I look like… like I’m trying to reenact one of those damn games.”
The thought lingered, and his mind began to wander. There were games like this. He had played them, devoured them, and analyzed their every frame. The ones where the protagonist stumbled through unsettling environments with only a handheld camera to document the strange and terrifying events around them. The premise was always the same, grainy footage, shaky camera angles, eerie whispers captured just on the edge of perception.
The gif of The Blair Witch Project flickered in his memory, looping endlessly as if mocking him. It was the same concept, wasn’t it? Fragmented recordings left behind for someone else to find, evidence of things too horrifying or surreal for the protagonist to survive. That was how the stories always went.
He sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair as he considered the absurdity of it all. From an outside perspective, this probably looked like an elaborate Alternate Reality Game, a finely crafted narrative designed to blur the lines between fiction and reality. The thought made his stomach churn.
“An ARG,” he muttered, his voice tinged with frustration. “That’s what they’d think. That’s what I’d think.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk as he stared at the faintly glowing countdown on his phone. 1 Day, 4 Hours, 33 Minutes. The numbers ticked down with an unrelenting precision, like the beating of some invisible clockwork heart. If this were a game, this countdown would be the central mechanic, the driving force behind every decision. But this wasn’t a game, or at least, not one he understood the rules of.
Still, the idea gnawed at him. If someone stumbled across his footage, if it ever made it out into the world, would they believe it? Would they see the fear in his eyes, the cracks in his voice, the strange occurrences that had pushed him to this point? Or would they dismiss it as a hoax, another overproduced attempt to go viral in the ever-hungry world of internet horror?
“Probably the latter,” he said bitterly, shaking his head. “Most people would just laugh. Call it fake, call me crazy.”
The thought stung more than he cared to admit. He didn’t want to be dismissed, reduced to a punchline or a footnote in someone’s conspiracy video. But what could he do to stop it? The footage was what it was, raw, unpolished, and undeniably strange. It would either resonate with someone or it wouldn’t. He couldn’t control that.
He leaned back again, his eyes drifting to the ceiling as he tried to find solace in the static. His thoughts turned back to the games, the ones where the protagonist was doomed from the start. The idea had always fascinated him, the notion that the character’s efforts, no matter how desperate, were ultimately futile. It was the tragedy of it that made those stories so compelling.
But this wasn’t fiction. This was real. His life wasn’t a narrative to be consumed, dissected, and debated. It was messy and terrifying and confusing in ways no carefully crafted story could replicate.
And yet…
“If even one person believes me,” he said softly, his voice almost drowned out by the static. “If one person takes me seriously, it’ll be enough.”