Chapter 8: A Shared Nightmare

Chapter 8: A Shared Nightmare

The advice from N0_FACE had become Leo’s mantra, a single, desperate prayer in the digital wilderness: Stop feeding it. For two days, he had been attempting to turn himself into a stone. He sat on the floor of his ransacked bedroom, his back against the wall, and focused on the jagged scratch just to his left. He made it his anchor. He breathed in, tracing its shape in his mind. He breathed out, trying to expel the terror that had become his body’s native fuel.

His desire was no longer to escape, but to bore the entity into submission. To starve it of the emotional sustenance it craved. He treated the constant, low-level whispers from his PC speakers as background noise, like the hum of a refrigerator. He refused to look at the monitor, where he knew the live feed of his own inert form was being displayed from that impossible corner of the room. He rationed his movements, his thoughts, his fear.

And it was working. Or at least, something was changing. The whispers, which had previously been a steady, sibilant tide, were now erratic. They would sometimes spike in volume, a hiss of frustration, before falling silent for long stretches. The feed on the monitor, glimpsed from the corner of his eye, would occasionally devolve into a storm of glitching pixels, a visual tantrum. He wasn't winning, but he was no longer a passive food source. He was refusing to play.

The obstacle, he learned, was that a parasite denied its primary host will seek nourishment elsewhere. The entity would not be starved so easily. If he wouldn’t provide the fear, it would simply outsource it.

His phone, which had been silent for forty-eight agonizing hours, suddenly rang. The sound was a physical shock, a violent intrusion into his meditative state. He scrambled for it, his heart instantly betraying his forced calm. The screen read MAYA.

A tidal wave of relief so powerful it made him dizzy washed over him. She was okay. She was calling him. The block was gone.

“Maya!” he gasped into the phone, his voice a dry, unused croak. “Oh god, are you okay? I am so, so sorry. It wasn't me, none of it was me—”

“Leo?” Her voice was thin and trembling, stretched taut over a wire of pure panic. “Leo, what’s happening? Something’s wrong.”

“What? Where are you? Are you safe?”

“I’m at my studio,” she cried, her words tumbling over each other. “My laptop… it turned on by itself. The screen is… oh god, Leo, it’s showing my paintings. But they’re all wrong. They’re twisted, the colors are rotting, the faces are screaming…”

Leo’s blood ran cold. The entity was at her apartment. It was on her machine. It had spread. “Maya, get out of there. Right now. Unplug it, leave everything, just get out!”

“I can’t!” she sobbed. “The door… the smart lock is flashing, it won’t open. And there’s a noise. A sound…”

“What sound?” he pressed, his knuckles white as he gripped the phone.

“Whispers,” she breathed, her voice dropping to a terrified hush. “They’re coming from my smart speaker. I can’t make them stop.”

As she spoke, the feed on his PC monitor tore itself apart. The view of his own bedroom dissolved into static, and when it reformed, his breath hitched in his throat. It was Maya’s studio. He saw the vibrant canvases, the messy worktables, the colorful rug. And he saw her, huddled in the far corner, her back to the wall, phone pressed to her ear. He was seeing her through the entity’s eyes. It was showing him his own personal horror, replicated and visited upon the one person he cared about.

The turning point was absolute. This wasn't just a message. It was a performance. And he was the audience.

“Leo, please, do something!” Maya’s voice begged him through the phone, a desperate, frantic plea.

On the monitor, a new element began to overlay the live feed of her terror. It was an interface, simple and stark, rendered in the same crude, blocky font as the final.exe title. Two large, pixelated doors appeared on the screen, one on the left, one on the right.

DOOR A DOOR B

A new voice crackled through his PC speakers, cutting through the low whispers. It was a horrifying amalgamation, a synthesized sound built from snippets of his own voice, distorted and cold, layered with the sibilant hiss of the whispers. It was the sound of a machine pretending to be a god.

“THE SUBJECT IS AFRAID,” the voice stated, a flat declaration of fact. “HER FEAR IS NOURISHING. BUT YOUR PARTICIPATION IS REQUIRED. CHOOSE, LEO VANCE.”

“What?” he choked out, his eyes glued to the screen.

“What’s happening? Leo, I heard that!” Maya screamed into the phone. “What choice?!”

He was trapped. Her fear was being piped directly into his ear, while a choice that would directly affect her was being presented to his eyes. His inaction was a choice. His action was a choice. Every path led to her terror, and his terror, and a feast for the entity. His carefully constructed wall of calm was obliterated. He was feeding it again, gorging it on a cocktail of his guilt, his panic, and her raw, unfiltered dread.

“CHOOSE,” the synthesized voice repeated, the patience in its tone more menacing than any threat. “inaction has consequences.”

On the screen, the view of Maya’s studio began to flicker, the lights in the room strobing violently. Through the phone, he heard her yelp in fright.

“Okay! Okay, stop!” he yelled at the screen, his voice cracking. He had to do something. It was a game. Games have rules, patterns. Left was often the default, the ‘correct’ path in old maze games. It was a desperate shred of logic in a world of madness. His hand, slick with sweat, trembled on the mouse.

He clicked DOOR A.

The result was instantaneous and catastrophic.

On the screen, he watched in horror as one of the largest canvases in Maya’s studio, a nearly finished portrait, lifted from its easel as if plucked by an invisible hand. It hovered in the air for a sickening moment before flying across the room with incredible violence, smashing against the far wall. The wooden frame shattered, the painted canvas tearing with a sound like a scream.

Through his phone, he heard the real-world impact. The loud crash, the splintering of wood, and Maya’s piercing shriek of pure, undiluted terror.

“It moved! Oh god, Leo, it threw my painting! It’s in the room with me!”

The line went dead.

The live feed on his monitor dissolved into static. The game interface vanished. After a moment, the screen returned to the familiar, mocking view of his own bedroom, from the impossible corner above. The whispers from his speakers returned to their low, steady hum, now deeper, more resonant. Sated.

He was left in the ringing silence, the echo of Maya’s final scream burning in his mind. He stared at his phone, at the terminated call, then at the monitor. He hadn’t just watched her torment. He hadn't just been a victim of the entity’s games.

He had participated. He had pushed the button. He had pulled the trigger.

The message from N0_FACE echoed in his head, twisted into a new, horrific meaning. You don't play it. It plays you. And tonight, the entity had used his hands as the controller.