My name is Jake. I like music; I like music so much I even have it written in black marker on the back of my iPod.
One day while I was looking up songs on iTunes for my iPod Touch, I came across an album named “My Favorite Tunes” in the featured section of iTunes. The cover was just a photo of a dark room with a fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy lying on his bed with his eyes closed and with headphones in his ears. I thought it was funny that an album named this would show up in the featured section and decided to buy the album without even checking out the songs in it. It took about thirty minutes to download the entire album (my internet was pretty slow at the time) and during that time, I was playing some songs on my guitar.
When it was finished downloading, I hopped onto the couch and started listening to the first song. It was the song “Rock Lobster” from the B-52s, but it sounded a little… odd. The notes seemed higher in pitch, and in some parts of the song, it just sounded like a big mess of random notes. I just thought that it wasn’t the song, and it was just me since I hadn’t listened to "Rock Lobster" in a while. When the song was finally over, I started to switch to the next song. I glanced at the cover art and thought I recognized the teenager in the cover art. I thought nothing of it and proceeded to the next song.
The second song was “We Are the Champions” but seemed higher in pitch and had spots with jumbles of notes just like the previous song, but this time it was even more noticeable. Also, I heard someone whisper, "Jake," (my name) at the end of the song, but just thought it was my imagination. I was a little scared but still had the courage to listen to the next song.
This third one’s name was “Day”, and when I listened to it, it was just ambiance of a neighborhood or small town alongside a running car engine. It was about forty seconds long, and when it was over I was confused, but still proceeded to listen to the rest of the songs.
The next three songs were “Sweet Dreams”, “Don't Stop Believin'”, and “Breakfast in America” all with the same effects as the first two, and I still thought I heard my name being whispered during the songs. Before I played the second to last song on the album, I looked at the cover art of the album again, and I thought I definitely knew that teenager but didn’t know who.
The second to last song was called “Night.” The first twenty seconds were nighttime ambiance with the sound of someone walking on pavement. After that was the sound of the person who was previously walking now lock-picking a door. After twenty-five or so seconds the door finally opened and the person now sounded like he (maybe she?) was walking up a staircase. When the person got off the stairway he sounded like he was now walking on carpet.
While he was walking you could hear him whispering: “Bathroom… Parents' room… Laundry room… Here we go! Jake’s room...”
After hearing him (now I knew it was a guy) say that, my heart stopped for a second. I now knew that he wasn't in any random building, he was in my house! I started to reach for the phone to call the police while still listening to the 'song.' I heard him open the door and walk for a bit then stop suddenly.
“Say cheese,” I heard him say. He then immediately took a picture, and then the song was over. I quickly looked at the cover again and realized that the picture was of me, probably taken at the same time as this 'song' was recorded.
I hesitantly listened to the last song in the album which is named “Best Friends”. I heard the same guy from the previous song say “Hello, Jake. If you try and call the police, which I know you probably will, let’s say bad things will happen. All I want for us is to become… (He pauses for about ten seconds.) Best friends.” I put down the phone and without thinking, deleted the album.
I quickly went over to a friend’s house (as my parents were gone to pick up my uncles and aunts from the airport) and told him about the album. He didn’t believe me, and when I tried to re-download the album from the iTunes store, it was gone. He called me a liar and told me to get out of his house. I went home, disappointed and afraid.
It has been a couple months since the incident and I am paranoid almost all the time, especially when I go to sleep. I have had no encounter yet with the person who created the album except for sometimes this one car seems to slow down whenever they pass by me when I am walking on the sidewalk, and that recently someone wrote on my iPod under where I wrote “I like music.” It says: “I like music too, Jake.”