Hell

The file arrived on my drive at 3:33 AM. It looked like a system update. The title was G_G_FINAL_TRIAL_DATA.system. The file was 4.4 gigabytes. That seemed big for a twenty-minute show.

When I opened it my computer started to vibrate. It made a rhythmic noise. It felt like a heartbeat that was dying.

There were no credits. The scene started at the Miller house.. The house wasn’t on a street. It was in a sulfurous void. The sky looked like a lung. The moon was a wet mass. It was like a bunch of nerve endings. It was dripping a black liquid onto the lawn.

Ginny and Georgia were at the kitchen table. They weren’t talking. They were doing a painful ritual. Georgia was cutting into the table with a rusty blade.. She wasn’t making patterns. She was cutting her skin. She was slicing long cuts into her forearms. Her expression was empty. Her eyes were milky white. She was staring at something behind the camera.

That thing was standing in my room. It was breathing down my neck.

Ginny was sitting across from Georgia. Her jaw was hanging by a tendon. She was vomiting a stream of white moths. They fluttered slowly before turning into ash.

“The secrets aren’t buried Momma ” Ginny’s voice wasn’t coming from the speakers. It was echoing in my head. It sounded wet and hollow. “The secrets are what hold things together.. The house is finally falling apart.”

The camera panned to the kitchen window. Outside the town of Wellsbury was a necropolis. The streets were paved with teeth. The trees were made of bone. People I knew were wandering the streets.. They were empty. Their bodies were like cages. Something else was inside them. Their chests were wide open. Tiny featureless shadows were operating their organs.

I tried to turn off the monitor.. The button had melted into the plastic. The room was getting really hot. It was like a suffocating furnace.

The scene cut to the school gym. It was filled with burning chairs. Georgia stood alone in the center. Her dress was soaked in blood. She turned to the lens. Her face started to change emotions fast. It was like a strobing nightmare. It gave me a headache.

“You like the show don’t you?” Georgia whispered. The audio had sounds of bone-saws and wet tearing. “You’ve watched us lie, kill and hide for seasons. You’ve been the witness to our corruption. You’re part of the ritual now.”

She reached out. Her hand. Elongated through the monitor. It distorted the glass. The black liquid from the moon started to leak from the screen. It pooled on my desk. It sizzled when it touched the wood. It smelled like burnt hair and old graves.

I realized with a jolt of horror that the reflection in the pool wasn’t my room. It was the Miller house. I could see myself crouched on the floor. I was staring at the screen from the side. My eyes were replaced by the milky dead void.

The entities on the screen started to laugh. It wasn’t a laugh. It was like the sound of a foundation cracking.

“The episode doesn’t end ” they said in unison. “We are the loop.”

The monitor exploded.. It wasn’t glass. It was a swarm of dead moths. They filled my room. Their wings beat against my face. It was cold and suffocating. As I struggled to breathe the darkness in my room started to take shape. It grew limbs and a smile that was too wide.

The last thing I heard before the light died was the sound of a front door locking. It was, from the inside.