“You’re going to need these. You know you will.” Coming from the end of the ad before my 5 Minute Crafts YouTube video, I questioned the significance of the words delivered to me. Out of the several ads I’ve come across, it was like no other. It was…weird. But I decided not to question it after a few seconds had gone by, but the eerie voice stayed lingering in my mind, and I couldn’t figure out as to why that was. I stayed relaxed, laying on the short, black leather couch against the wall of my small apartment, stacked on top and set below hundreds of others exactly like it. At this point in my life, I’m thirty years old and living the exact same lives as everyone else, so why should I worry about a slight buffer in my life when I know everythings still going to stay the same?
The two unusual items, a “double edged sword coated in holy water” and “my childhood stuffed animal” replayed in my head over and over; not because I found it significant, but because I thought it was the craziest damn thing I’ve heard come out of anyone’s mouth. How in the world was this ad allowed on the internet? As I stay laying on the couch, about a minute into my 5-Minute Crafts video, the screen went blank for a second or two and the obscure ad was on my screen once again. The feeling of curiosity had hit me, but this time, I felt a slight concern that I hadn’t felt the first time. Because the ad played a second time, it caught my attention enough to notice why I “need” these random objects. To me, the happening of a “supernatural apocalypse” isn’t something I’d even come close to believing, and the fact that the repeat of the ad made me consider the slightest bit that this was something worth my attention made me feel as if I was one if them: the “others,” as we call them, that are different from the rest of us.
At this point, I was not watching a YouTube video about homemade life hacks. I was watching a disaster happen. The video was stuck on repeat, getting louder and louder, and faster and faster. My head spun with confusion, fear, and a sense of doom. I snapped my computer shut in hopes to make it stop, but it flipped itself back open with aggression. With a short scream, I shoved my laptop onto the ground as the possession continued. Overwhelming volume. Flashing lights. All of it shut off, leaving a black screen that pulled my curiosity in. I stood up, but I dared not get close to it. The dead silence was irking, leaving no sound to be heard even in my mind. No thought or emotion was able to be processed, only the rapid beat of my heart and my widened eyes staring at the laptop. A light appeared out of the corner of my eye, along with an ear-piercing, long buzzing that shocked my ears. I turned my head to face the TV to look at a static screen, soon to be taken over by the man in the ad. He stood there blank faced, looking into my eyes as if he knew me. “No one can hear your screams. No one can hear your fear. You are alone, but not for long. You’ve missed your chance.” The overhead lights exploded, with a blinding light from the outside following it. All I could feel was pain. All I could see was light. The last thing I could hear was the footsteps of my death. As I turned around to face my fate, my body was hit with a shock and everything went black. “You should’ve listened to me.”