Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28882429-20160629194405

My story got deleted. I'd like to receive feedback on how to improve it so it meets the quality standards. Feedback appreciated! Story below:

I just came back from a vacation. It was one of the most amazing ones I've had in years. I went with my boyfriend to somewhere at the coast of the Netherlands. Even though the Netherlands isn't known for having a great climate, this week has been sunny as ever. We went walking, cycling, swimming, sightseeing and so on. Some days I would come back having a few sunburns, but nothing too serious and most of them would be completely gone the next day.

Now that I'm back, I'm writing this story in horror, hoping someone recognizes my situation and is willing to help me out. You see, I didn't want to go on vacation having the crappy phone I've had for years. It got stuck all the time, the camera quality was crap and the battery couldn't survive a single day without being charged. So, I bought a new one right before we went.

I went on Google and simply searched for 'buy new phone'. I didn't know specifically what brand to look for, so I figured a Google search would do the job. And so it did. It gave me a whole list of retail websites selling cell phones, as well as some sponsored links presenting such. One of them caught my attention; a website called phonyphones.com. I thought the name looked funny so I went to take a look.

The website seemed promising. The design was looking good and orderly and the phones they sold seemed high quality too and the best part, not too expensive. Of course I did look around some other websites, but none of them were as promising as phonyphones.com, so I ordered a phone off there. The CRP-700 model was the one of my choice. A day later, the mailman came to deliver the phone.

That was Friday, we'd go on vacation the next Monday. I opened up the box containing the phone and started fiddling around with it. The first thing that caught my attention was that it didn't seem to be running Android as operating system, neither did it run the one Apple ships with their phones. Instead, it booted up with a splash screen reading 'SinOS'. It also came with an app store I've never heard of before. Anyway, I installed some apps and played around with them. Luckily, most of the apps from the Google Play store, if not all, were also present in this one. I really liked my new phone. That's different now...

It all started with me receiving weird texts from people. Right after we got on the train to our destination, I got a text from my mother, reading: “are you having fun?”. At the time, I didn't think much of it. I simply responded saying: “you know we aren't even there yet, but the train is comfortable. I'll let you know when we're there.”. She replied: “I didn't ask if you're there yet, but I'd love to know when you're there”. Confused, I closed my phone and put it back in my pocket. I continued staring out the window spotting sheep and cows. Five minutes later, my phone went completely crazy. My boyfriend looked at me with a surprised look. “What's that?” he asked. “I don't know,” I answered as I opened my phone to take a look. It seemed like I received the exact same text message from all of my contacts. “Are you having fun?”.

I showed my boyfriend and he shrugged. “Probably a bug in your phone's software. Try updating it when we have access to Wifi,” he said. I agreed with him.

We arrived at our destination. We hired bikes and handed our luggage to the transport service to deliver it at the camping site. We cycled there, checked in and I texted my mom to let her know we arrived, ignoring the weird messages I've received earlier. After sending the message, I noticed a notification I received asking me to set up my SinCloud storage so I didn't lose the pictures I just took. I remember taking some selfies and pictures of my dog to try out the camera. I didn't care much for those pictures, but I know having some cloud storage never hurts, so I registered my phone. It asked me what albums to synchronize and whether or not to automatically synchronize new albums. Apparently, the phone has three albums by default: 'My Pictures', 'Your Pictures' and 'Holiday Pictures'. The first album already contained the three photos I took when trying out the camera. Strangely, the album labeled 'Holiday Pictures' contained one photo as well.

I opened it up and it showed me a photo of me and my boyfriend, hiring bikes. The photo was taken from a dark corner in the shop, between bikes in a space that's too narrow to fit a human being. I was shocked.

I showed my boyfriend, leaving him with a shocked expression on his face as well. He pointed out someone might have transferred a picture of us using Bluetooth or something, but my Bluetooth was turned off and I didn't have access to any networks.

I figured it would be best to turn the phone off for a while, if only it were to prevent other people connecting to it without me knowing. I used the camping's Wifi to access phonyphones.com using my laptop, but I couldn't access the website or find any trace of it's existence anywhere. Great, now I've lost any way of contacting the retailer for questions or information about the phone.

I didn't let it bother me too much, we're on vacation after all, so I left the phone at the chalet and we went to the beach. The rest of the day went completely fine. The week flew by; I didn't touch the phone the entire week and left it in the pocket of my jacket, turned off. To be honest, I forgot all about it, until today.

After we got back home, I took it out of my pocket to turn it back on, but found it already turned on. I had received some text messages from an unknown contact, the first one reading: “I saw you didn't take any pictures of your holiday, so I took some for you.”. Followed up by two messages, sent one day after the other. The first one, reading: “Open. Up.”. The second one reading the same message as the one before, but in all letters capitalized. My heart was pounding in my throat.

With shaking hands, I unlocked the phone and opened up the photo album app and found the 'Holiday Pictures' album being filled with 127 photos. They are all photos with me on them, taken from dark corners, approximately from the same distance. I found the 'Your Pictures' album with 58 and the 'My Pictures' still with the initial three photos. I am creeped out. The 'Your Pictures' album is filled with photos of me sleeping and is still filling up with photos of my back writing this, but when I turn around, I see nothing. One of them is taken right as I turn around. The photos are getting taken closer to me.

I tried replying to the unknown contact. I've asked him who he is and what he's doing, but every text I send is getting the same response: “are you having fun?”.

The photos are getting closer. What should I do? I want to run, but I know it will follow me. Please, help. It's behind me... 