User talk:Shockingspaghetti

I didn’t know it would happen like this, okay man? You gotta believe me, I never expected it to go this way. It started out as harmless fun. We had the technology, we had the skills. We were bored.

No one was supposed to find out.

No one was ever supposed to get hurt.

It was a joke, it was all a joke. You’ve got to believe me. Oh god. What have I done? Oh god, you’ve got to believe me. This wasn’t my design. Please, god, please, listen: I am so so sorry. This will be my last entry. You need to know the truth.

I don’t want to sound cliché, but it really did start on a dark and stormy night. Mark and I were taking advantage of the weather to go on a horror binge: telling ghost stories, watching dark, disturbing movies, curtains closed and volume turned up loud over the swell and crack of breaking thunder outside the window. We sat on the ratty dorm room carpet and focused in on tiny flickering TV screen, completely absorbed in terror, screaming like pussies and filled with that instant adrenaline rush of fear and embarrassment whenever the scariest scenes were shown. We were always hungry for that feeling, that racing heat, that next thrill. I guess that’s what drove us to this. Image after image of blood and horror flashed before our eyes; a man sawed in half, a zombie ripping off flesh, and girl’s head twisted backwards spewing ancient Latin literature towards anyone who would hear her. I remember looking over at Mark and noticing the grin of complete euphoric terror and rapt attention across his face and goosebumps rippling on his arms. Just as I slid my eyes back to the scene before me, the room ignited with the slash of a lightning bolt, and, all at once, the entire room was pitch black.

“Dude,” my voice shook as I uttered it to the dark screen I could no longer see, afraid to turn towards my friend.

“Dude,” he quavered.

I recognized the scream of the hot girl down the hall, yelling at the sudden power outage. Not from the lack of light, probably, but more likely the fact that she could no longer turn on her curling iron.

“She was doing her make up,” Mark quipped, a smirk in his voice.

“No, it definitely sounds like the scream of half straightened hair,” I grinned.

“Or maybe she saw a ghost in her reflection,” he said slowly. “Maybe we could make her see a ghost.”

I gave a wicked smile when I saw where this was headed. “First one to make her scream wins?”

Mark heaved himself up. I could feel his face close to mine, his breath tickling my eyebrows. “Loser buys pizza?”

Why the fuck did this start over pizza.

I quietly got to my feet and creaked open the door. I could see the girl’s pale bodacious figure tramping about in the hallway shrieking into her cell phone at what sounded like the building maintenance staff. She was half lit by the moon, and the shadows behind her left her looking small, weak, alone. She looked just dumb enough to be like something out of a—

“Horror movie,” Mark whispered, mimicking my thoughts.

The girl was now stalking angrily towards the darkened bathroom. It was too perfect to ignore. While I had lingered to watch, Mark had stridden back into our room and taped a paper plate to his face. He had cut out circular slits for the eyes and curvature for the mouth. With the absence of light in the hallway’s shadows, the holes looked as black as death, with a demonic twisted smile, devoid of light or laughter. It sends shivers down my spine to think of what that mask would come to represent.

He motioned to me, in the mask, to stay silent, and waved his hand.

“Follow me,” he was barely audible.

We tiptoed silently into the girl’s open door. “Jessica” was what the nametag said and “Abercrombie” was what the scent screamed. We found an overflowing closet and hid amongst the clothes, not a second too soon, when the slam of the bathroom door echoed in the hall and Jessica padded in and shut her door.

Obviously frustrated, she threw herself down onto her bed and pulled out her phone. At this point, my heart was racing against my ribcage, its tempo only matched by my rapid breathing. The high I was getting out of this scare was unnatural. We were watching a girl we hardly knew from her closet, where she kept her bras and panties. Soon, she rolled to face the wall, and we heard the subtle change in breath- a deeper, more rhythmic pattern emerged- and Mark crept out towards the bed without making a sound. He crouched as he walked, nearly crawled, a trait that would soon become trademark. His figure threw jittery shadows on the wall and seemed to almost transform into a translucently demon eyed beast. My heart beat in my throat and I made a terrified strangled noise as he slowly climbed atop her metal headboard and tilted his head, as if he was watching her sleep. He perfectly perched like a malicious white owl. I nearly hyperventilated as he reached down and stroked her face.

I am so sorry Jessica. It was only supposed to scare you.

Nearly immediately, she woke up. I can only imagine her terror as she opened her eyes and stared into Mark’s tilted stark white face, and eyes that could suck out her soul. She screamed with all the horror and gusto of our Hollywood victims and scrambled to run, tangled in her sheets. Mark threw the nearest scarf over Jessica’s face and we ran for our lives, stumbling over skinny jeans to our room. We jumped quickly in bed with no time left to spare. We heard girly screams of real terror tear through the halls. Doors opened and groggy teenagers padded out in confusion but I lay in bed petrified in fear and excitement. Jessica hysterically recounted towards anyone who would listen. No one thought that a monster in a mask had tried to suck her breath out in her sleep, and no one believed it wasn’t a dream. But something in her voice scared them enough to sit out in the hall with her instead of walking away alone. As the lights began to flicker on one by one, more thunder rumbled in the distance, and in the soft illumination of the lightning that passed, I could see the grin on Mark’s face that meant that we were only getting started.

We never bought that fucking pizza.

That was the first time.

Fast-forward a couple of days. Mark and I resumed our tech classes as normal, still flying from the high we got off of being the bad guys. I know it’s sick, okay? We didn’t talk about it, but everyone else sure did. You could see the mischievous glint in our eyes when we hear Jessica’s countless retellings. We relished in the danger that we could be found out at any second. We reveled in her misery, and our infamousy. The rumor of the “Oakwood Hall Ghost” had been passed around and spread like wildfire. Every degree of separation from Jessica herself altered the story until it was so far from the truth it was ridiculous. However, slowly, one rumor dominated the rest. We didn’t know this at the time, but earlier that week Jessica Stein had been seen putting ex-lax in brownies another girl, one whom Jessica didn’t particularly like, was making in her home economics class. When her teacher had to cancel the next day’s lesson, the innocent girl was in deep shit, granting Jessica both a day off and freedom from her economics annoyance. Even though Jessica told her friends not to tell, whispers made their way around. Our demon suddenly became the guardian angel of the weak. The rumors gave us reason to strike again. But this time, we had a plan.

She may have done a bad thing, but Jessica Stein is a not a bad person. Please. You have to believe me. Jessica, and Brian, and Mark--- They’re just kids. We are all just stupid kids, okay? Please. Oh, god, please. This is my hope. I’m all out of options. Please. You have to listen to me.

Brian was our quarterback. Jesus, I’m using him in third person. Oh god, what have I done. Brian is our quarterback. For all of you reading out there that is not my intended audience, Brian was as cliché as he could be. It would make sense for our newly christened angel of the night to pay him a visit. He shoved you in the halls. He hazed the water boy for the team. He was the one your girlfriend slept with when you had a fight. We had been looking for a suitable target for a week when we stumbled upon Brian beating up a freshman by his car. That’s when we knew. But Brian was no Jessica. There was no room for error; there were no scarves to throw. This was no longer a practical joke. This was an elaborate scheme, and we intended to make him cry.

Oh, god.

I remember the sense of danger I felt that morning after. I remember the amount of legal trouble I would be in if I were caught. I remember pounding the keys furiously, I remember Mark egging me on in the background. I remember hitting the send button, the moment everything changed. I remember how fucking happy I felt.

It makes me sick to think about.

Every morning here we have channel two announcements available if you live on campus. Pretty much everyone watches them because they announce cancelled classes, time changes, social events. To be honest, it was way too easy to hack into the server. It was way too easy to cut out the announcer’s voice and substitute our own. It was way too easy. At exactly 10:47, after Mark texted and informed me that Brian was nursing his hangover with the morning news, the anchor’s cheerful place was sudden replaced by something much more sinister.

The shot began in a dark and grainy room, focused on a sleeping Brian in bed. Slowly, a hooded figure opens the door with care, with a white face and soulless eyes, and crawls demonically towards the boy. The visual cuts in and out every occasionally like a strobe light, so the shot looks even more supernatural than the acting alone. Cut to a close up of the creature stroking our beloved quarterback’s face in an almost sickening manner. The tilt of the head. The manic slit smile of the mask. Strobe light cut back to regular distance zoom and seven or eight seconds of the creature perched there. Waiting. The screen goes black for a second before white simple words flicker for a few seconds, and the TV cuts back to the regular program. “Always watching.”

The gasps and screams were audible throughout the entire campus. Quickly, I logged out of the temporary computer account I had made to hack into the network, and deleted every remnant off of the public computer.

“DUDE DUDE DUDE DUDE DUDE!” Mark ran into the library shouting. His voice was lost with all of the other shrieking. People all over were staring at the TV that was softly displaying the campus news in the corner.

I saw him grinning ear to ear and I shivered in an adrenaline and endorphin overload.

“If you think this is big, you should see the roar on the internet.”

Immediately, the smile slid off my face.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” I hissed. “WHAT THE FUCK? THE INTERNET? YOUTUBE? YOU DO REALIZE WE JUST PULLED A HIGHLY ILLEGAL SCHEME OFF AND YOU PUT THE SAME FUCKING VIDEO ON YOUTUBE?!”

His face faltered, but his voice was strong. “I’m not an idiot. I hid the trail. There’s no way anyone can trace this back to us.”

I trusted Mark, but this was the dumbest idea he’d ever had.

This may have been his doing, but I still blame myself.

It’s on my shoulders to get him back.

Oh god. Oh, give me a second. My eyes are so blurred I can’t even see straight. I haven’t slept in days. This horrible weight, the knowledge it’s all our fault, the proxies, the fact no one knows the truth. Here it is. Please. Please take it from me.

“I posted it last night,” Mark began, “and by this morning, well, look.”

The video had over four thousand views, and two hundred comments. Theories explaining the “creature”, inquires asking the owners of the account to step forward, and students who recognized him taking stances on whether or not he deserved it for his actions. Everyone thoroughly terrified.

Mark refreshed the page.

Four thousand four hundred.

He refreshed it again.

Five thousand.

People who had just seen the newscast were looking this up. Updates on Brian’s horror were commented. Hate, admiration, fear.

Excitement.

And you. When did you see it? Were you one of the first hundred? An early bloomer? Did you comment on it on a different account?

Did you know from the start you were going to do this to us?

About a week later, another video popped up. Similar to ours, but a different person, a different room, a different account. “Always watching,” meant to scare douche bags into a better state. Soon, they were all over. They called themselves “Proxies”, as if they were all working as stand ins for us, in places we couldn’t reach. Identical masks showed up everywhere on the internet. People began to use fear to control others, like soft-core terrorism.

We tried to delete the account, but our video was already on other websites, in other formats, on people’s computers. We never realized how seriously people were taking this.

I guess I wouldn’t have thought anything of Jessica not showing up for her classes if I never saw the video. Back in my dorm room, occasionally I would search “proxies” into a server to see if our video was still viral. This time, a new video popped up as my number one hit.

“Mark, come look at this,” I said.

I had no idea. Jessica, I am so sorry. I had no idea.

Mark bent over and rested his head on my shoulder as I clicked the play button. A girl was tied to a bed. I could visibly see her struggle when she realized the camera was rolling. I could hear her trying to scream at us, looking deeply into the lens as if it were my eyes, and yanked against her constraints, but when her eyes flicked to the side, she suddenly looked a hell of a lot more terrified. The costume was as close to ours as I had seen in any of the proxies. The acting seemed the best, too. The proxy slowly stalked up to the girl, where he hung his head over her, and stoked his gloved hand to her face. The scene suddenly cut and now he was close, just a face shot, where the proxy was looking directly into the camera.

And gave a slight tilt to his head.

The video cut out and was replaced with the words. “Always watching.” The screen flashed, for a millisecond, something else, though.

“Whoa whoa, did you see that?” Mark asked. “Go, go back. There. Stop.”

The blurry and tiny words “Jessica Will Be Prosecuted” hung on the screen.

I felt suffocated. I couldn’t breathe. I was petrified in tasteless fear, my blood frozen in my veins. Mark’s head still rested on my shoulder, and I felt tiny droplets soak my shirt.

I miss him. Please.

Out of its own accord, my hand moved the mouse to the YouTube user’s account. He username was “Proxy”. Plain and simple. There, I found one more video.

It was nearly identical to the first. The same bed, the same ties, the same masked man and the same motions. The same ending. But this time, Brian lay in Jessica’s place, and his name was the one in the flash at the end. I had known he had taken a break after our video was air to clear his head, but I never suspected…

“This is sick,” Mark whispered in a hoarse and breathy voice. “This is so fucking sick man. This is…” I felt him sway beside me, like he was going to faint, or vomit

I sucked in the air around me and it felt incredibly thick and hard to take, like I was underwater. I pulled up a command box and starting typing in a complicated code to try to track the user. I knew it was useless, but I couldn’t just sit there.

Mark stumbled away and towards our door where the trash was located. I heard the sounds of him getting sick and bile stung the back of my throat. I kept my eyes on my keyboard. When I looked up to my code I saw I had been typing just the words “ohgodohgodohgodohgod” hundreds of time at full speed.

“Jay.” Mark pleaded.

I cleared my throat before replying. “Yeah?”

“We have to go to the police.”

I turned around where I found him wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and his pupils dilated three times their normal size. I nodded, but couldn’t say a word.

Jessica. Brian.

We agreed he would go to the police station, because he knew if I went they would arrest me on the spot for confessing to hacking a public news station and airing R rated material before I had even breathed a word of proxies or YouTube accounts. If I had known that when he walked out of our dorm door that day that would be the last time I saw him, I would have hugged him a whole lot harder.

He didn’t come back.

He didn’t call.

The next day I saw your video.

Please. I’ll do anything you ask.

Please just give them back.

In the back of your video you told me if I confessed the truth and gave in to the police, their sins would be forgiven.

Here is the truth, for the whole world to see.

I am headed to the station as soon as this confession is done.

Fucking hell, Proxy.

I know I can’t trust you, but there is nothing else I can do.

This is my last resort.

I will do anything for them.

Okay.

Here I go.

This is it.

And I know you’ll know whether or not I really go.

Because you?

You are always watching.