Are You Having Fun Yet? — Short Story | Horror
Images from the past? The future? How is this possible?
Getting a text from an unknown number can go a couple of ways.
Could be an irritation, especially with all the spammers there are out there. You know the ones. They love to bug you for the latest deals on insurance, or to tell you that a free trip to Timbuktu is waiting for you and all you need to do is give up your Social Security number and your first born child.
Those are easy to ignore. Just delete the text, maybe block the number, though they’ll just hit you with another spam message later from a different one. Maybe they’ll get pissed off about it, rant and rave for a while only to block the number and ignore it.
Sometimes, the random texts will lead to a funny conversation or, on an extremely rare occasion, bring a potential new friend into your life.
But the texts I got just a little while ago did neither of those.
They have set my heart into a terror I have never felt before.
The first few texts had no words attached, only images. They were of me, and not just some creepy stalker sending me pictures of myself from a distance.
No. They were of me, tied up, bound and gagged, with bruises on my face and blood all over.
I don’t remember ever being in any kind of position to have such a thing happen.
When the first one came in, I dropped my phone, hitting the tile floor of my kitchen almost hard enough to break the glass. I stared at it for a long while, the face I am familiar enough from the mirror with to recognize immediately, even through the blood.
The phone sat there long enough for the screen to go dark and I still didn’t move.
What the hell?
I could not understand how something like that was possible. My mind spun. When had I ever been bound like that? Where even was I in the picture?
Then I thought of my missing time, and my stomach dropped.
See, two years ago, something happened to me. The doctors chalked it up to some kind of amnesia, the result of an accident, perhaps. They could give no definitive answer, because I had been missing for over three months, and by the time they did see me, whatever had occurred to start the whole thing was no longer showing on my body.
I didn’t have any answers for them. Still don’t. Nothing of that time is there for me, a blank page in an otherwise full book.
I had simply lived a life, disappeared for months, then reappeared at the hospital with no memory of where I had been or what happened.
They kept me for a few days, helped me clear some of the haze away, and then, knowing nothing else to do, sent me home to recover as best I could.
I had no family, nothing really to my name except the apartment I lived in before I disappeared. I did go back to it, surprised to find it was still there with my stuff. I had to make up for a lot of lost time, and a ton of back-logged bills, but everything was intact.
The cleanup of the rotting food and stuff in my fridge sucked, but I was determined to move on and try to put the pieces back together.
Therapy helped, but not much. Everything was just… gone. It was as if for those few months I did not exist, moving from one reality to another.
Seeing that image of my blood-laden face, bound and gagged, on the text message wasn’t just scary. It was horrifying in a way I cannot put into words.
The tinkling bell sound notifying me another message arrived jolted me, and I screamed, ripped from the state of panic I had been locked into since the image hit my eyes.
I should have left the phone on the floor. I knew better. But something primal in me grasped it and tapped the power button on the side, bringing the original image back to life, the almost deadened eyes of my own self staring back at me.
I scrolled, my thumb trembling, to see another one pop up. This one was of me from a slightly further distance, though the position of my head seemed the same. Maybe it was taken moments before or after the previous. I don’t know.
Either way, it was me again, in clothes I did not recognize. What the hell? I mean, what the ever living hell is this?
My heart wanted to leap from my chest, slamming so hard against my ribs I felt faint, but I held the phone in a vise-grip, fingers whitening with the strain.
Another notification. Another message.
“Are you having fun?”
My eyes blurred, wetness slathering over my lids as I squeezed them shut.
Finally, my fingers did lose their grip and the phone once more smacked against the floor. I bent sideways, bile rushing through my chest and out of my mouth, barely making it into the sink beside me.
I couldn’t stop throwing up. The pictures caromed through my mind, flashing at me over and over, the words echoing around in a jumble.
Who did this? Who tied me up and hurt me? Where had I been?
I tried to breathe, to calm myself down, to bring myself to some kind of rational thought, but it took a long time.
My mind screamed at me to run, but where was I supposed to go? I was in my apartment, safe, and it was nothing more than a couple of texts.
Come on, grab rationality. Think logically. Stop the fear. I argued back to myself, my brain locked between two spheres I could not get out of.
My legs wobbled and I sank to the floor, the grip of fear so intense I could do nothing more than that simple act.
Who sent the texts? How had they gotten my number, captured the tortured look in my eyes? Spinning, reeling, I circled around and around in my head but only whimpers came from my throat in answer.
Another ding as the notification came up, telling me another message was inbound.
Don’t click. Don’t acknowledge. Don’t give any of this validity.
I yelled the words at myself but my fingers did not listen. They tapped the screen against my own volition, automatic and somehow not shaking.
“Are you having fun yet?”
The words were followed by another image.
This time, it was again of myself, but the look on my face, in spite of the blood, was what I could only describe as ecstatic. A smile wrapped my lips, swollen as they were from whatever forces had smashed hem.
Unlike the other images, though, I could see this one was taken, apparently, by my own hand. The camera — maybe the very phone sending the images — captured my arm holding it at length so the perfect picture could be caught.
What in the hell was going on? How was this happening?
What did I do during the time I could not remember?
While the first images seemed to show me in a way I was there against my will, this newest one made it appear I was not only enjoying things, but, perhaps, a completely willing participant in whatever was happening.
But it made no sense. None at all. Never would I do such a thing. Pain is something to avoid, not seek out, and yet there I was, in all ways I could tell tortured, beaten, bloodied.
Smiling.
That smile was genuine. It was familiar, something I understood from the mirror, welted up and all.
Another notification and I cringed at the new words plastered on the screen.
“Are you having fun, yet? See you next week.”
Oh, God…
More Fiction stories from this weird blind guy…
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