Let it go. It’s not worth it.

And yet the words on the screen burn into Miles’ eyeballs.

“jfc what a dumbass lol”

There’s no sense in getting sucked in.

He knows that he shouldn’t engage. But who is this Jack Dalton? Why is he commenting on the thread of a man he’s never met? And the crime Miles seems to have committed? Posting an article about rising real estate prices. With some vomiting emoticons. And that makes him “a dumbass?”

Miles wants to comment and interrogate, but he reminds himself he’s above arguing on the internet.

‍Click. Miles arrives at Jack Dalton’s profile, hoping to understand more about this anonymous commenter. Know thy enemy, that kind of thing. He’s immediately assaulted by an image of Jack Dalton leaning out of a monster truck, pointing an assault rifle right at him, at the camera.  

The picture is too grainy for him to say for sure, but…is that a Confederate flag hanging off the back of the truck?  

Miles Wong and Jack Dalton have no mutual friends. Dalton is from some part of Texas that Miles has never heard of. Twenty miles outside of Bumfuck Nowhere, perhaps.  

Miles scrolls. Dalton’s feed elicits visceral disgust. His page is filled with articles from websites like “Freedom Daily.” Vaccines contain microchips. Climate change is a Chinese hoax. Jews are using robots to take away the jobs of hard-working Christians.

‍Aha. So Jack Dalton is a right-wing troll, Miles realizes. He’s vindicated. No need to engage.
‍
Click. He switches back to another tab, back to a video of two celebrities day drinking until their words are slurred and they’re practically falling over. Hilarious.

Except… Stuck like a parasite burrowing into the back of his mind is the troll: Jack Dalton.

Jack fucking Dalton.

‍Perhaps Jack Dalton has some constructive criticism about Miles' post. Maybe he could provide some insight into how the “other side” sees things. After all, Miles should be open to other viewpoints, right? He should be able to engage in intellectual debate.

He navigates back to his post and begins typing.

“care to be more specific? or is that your whole argument?”

Enter. His comment appears, attached to Dalton’s.

After a minute, Miles realizes that he’s been staring at the screen, awaiting a notification. It doesn’t materialize, of course. Not yet.

Miles glances at the clock. Time to get ready for work. Say what you will, but Miles is legitimately excited to brush his teeth now that he has a smart electric toothbrush that (using haptic feedback) directs him to parts of his mouth that need extra attention. Expensive, but according to experts, it leads to a 30% reduction in cavities. While brushing, Miles programs his smart thermostat to ensure his place will be the perfect temperature when he gets home from work. He grabs breakfast from his smart toaster (a waffle, perfectly crisped) and he puts on a sweater (in accordance with his weather app). Before running out the door, he takes a quick glance at his computer.

A little red “1” dangles at the top corner of his browser. Miles feels ashamed by the rush of adrenaline.

‍Click.

“sure, ill be more specific. ur a fucking dumbass, miles ennis wong. hows that for an argument”

It’s idiotic, of course. But Jack Dalton used Miles’ full name. That information isn’t publicly available. Miles built a security bot to perform quarterly sweeps of public databases to ensure that no identifying information about him exists online. The bot even submits complaints to the FCC to take down any details it finds.

And yet, Jack Dalton knows his name.

‍Click. Miles closes the window and heads to work. Ignore, ignore, forget, forget.

Miles tries to distract himself at the office. He works as a server administrator for a multinational conglomerate you’ve never heard of but whose subsidiaries run your life. According to his official job description, he’s responsible for effective provisioning, installation/configuration, operation and maintenance of systems hardware and software and related infrastructure. In practice, it means spreadsheets, emails, small talk, meetings, hours spent writing and executing command prompts and – most crucially –  asking Chat GPT every time something goes wrong.

Most days, the hours bleed together as Miles’ brain sticks to just about anything but the task at hand: the latest superhero movie trailer, the video game waiting at home, his coworkers exchanging first date stories one cubicle over.

Today, however, every moment is drowned out by the deafening drumbeat of goddamn Jack Dalton. Miles’ head floods with a million responses, comebacks, insults, rhetorical shivs he could slip right between Jack’s ribs, puncturing his lungs… Every few minutes, Miles shakes his head clear and attempts to focus on whatever task he finds himself in the middle of.

But even in moments of calm – especially in moments of calm – he can hear the voice in the back of his head:

‍He’s making you look like an idiot. Don’t let him get the better of you.

‍At lunch, Miles nibbles on his sliced-ham-and-American-cheese sandwich and downs a Diet Coke, sitting alone in the sanitized-white break room, a space fit for surgery – bright lights, tile floors where the blood would wash right off. He’s almost always the only one here at lunchtime. His coworkers usually go out to lunch together, spending twenty-five dollars on fancy sandwiches with brie and prosciutto di parma and eight-dollar artisan handcrafted lattes while trapped in awkward small talk. Miles is happier here with the exact same meal for a tenth of the cost watching YouTube videos he knows will entertain him.

And so he pulls out his phone. His stomach clamps and blood rushes through his arms as he taps the app icon.

Miles’ instinct: ask how Jack knows his name. But showing weakness never helps, does it? I need to be smart about this, he thinks. He types:

“very well thought-out criticism. you must be some kind of genius. do you even have enough room on your wall for all your diplomas?”

‍Nice. Miles mentally high-fives himself as his sarcastic bullet is fired from its chamber. He rewards himself by scrolling through his timeline, and in the middle of a video of unlikely animal friends, Dalton responds.

“yep there is but im saving space so i can mount your head on my wall after i murder you with an axe and chop you into a hundred little pieces”

Miles nearly drops his phone. His mouth hangs open. Furiously, he types back:  

“what the FUCK is wrong with you? get the fuck off my wall pls and thank u”  

He navigates back to the animal video, but soon realizes he’s not even watching. The phone is trembling in his hands. This is ridiculous, he tells himself. Right? I’m sitting here shaking over a stupid social media comment.

He tries to brush it off. But another notification appears at the top of his phone. Miles quickly clicks through to the comment.

“im not going ANYWHERE. ill be watching u every single moment. im ur future murderer. i promise u ill be the very last thing u see”

Miles jumps out of his chair, nearly knocking the table over. At first, he’s shocked, angry, disgusted.  

But then he realizes how absurd this Jack Dalton is, and there’s some freedom in that. Jackplayed his whole hand, and now Miles knows he’s bluffing. There’s no way this rando wouldtake the time and risk to find and murder him. That means Miles can put all of this behind him.

‍Right?

And yet Miles Wong thinks about Jack Dalton all the way home. He zones out as his car self-drives through traffic, past his favorite comic book store and burger joint.

‍What if he is watching me? What if he does try to murder me?

That’s insane. He’s just another weirdo on the internet.

‍But some small percentage of these internet weirdos do turn out to be murderers, right? What if Jack Dalton is one of them?

‍He feels the vicious cycle of dread start again.

Miles pulls up to his house. Using his phone, he locks his car, unlocks his front door, turns off the alarm. He steps inside, and the temperature is perfect, 73.5° exactly. He puts on The Beatles’ Abbey Road. To calm himself down. The music follows him from room to room, each set of speakers balanced for the specific acoustics of the space. He pretends he’s in the studio with the Fab Four. He tries to focus on that.

“Bang! Bang!”

He’s shaken out of his musical meditation by the chorus of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

“Maxwell’s silver hammer came down upon his head,” Paul croons. “Clang! Clang! Maxwell’s silver hammer made sure that he was dead.”

Miles stops the music. He manages to distract himself with some TV. The immersive sound system is so good, he can easily pretend he’s right there on the set of The Bachelorette waiting for his rose. He’s so focused that he jumps in his seat when he hears the front door unlock.

Rachel walks in, her hair in a loose bun, her wrinkled blazer in her hand. “Hey, babe,” she says, giving Miles a kiss. “How was your day?” To him, she always smells like truffles – mushroom, not chocolate.

They met in a chatroom, arguing passionately about an MMORPG, they can’t remember which, but to this day, they’re both sure that they were right. It took the intervention of one of Miles’ friends to point out that she was flirting with him. Soon after he found the nerve to ask her out. He was nearly bowled over the first time he saw her in the flesh. Her orange hair, the gap in between her two front teeth, the freckles along her arms, her intoxicating smell. Plus, their first date was to TechCon. They were both drawn to the neural net augmented reality gaming system. Miles immediately fell in love with every piece of her.

“Oh, you know, the usual,” he says, praying she doesn’t hear the tremor in his voice. “Just another day. How about you?”

“You know, this Keller case is making me want to kill somebody,” Rachel says as she walks to the kitchen, strangling the air. “And Sammy tried to do his part, but god help him, the guy barely knows his way around a paper cutter…”

Miles feels a buzz in his pocket. The adrenaline rises in his throat as he pulls his phone out. Another comment from Dalton. He briefly wonders whether he should even look at it, but it’s too late – he finds himself unlocking his phone.

“did i scare you away? whatre you gonna do report me? block me? thats not gonna stop me”

It’s one thing to respond to me, Miles thinks. But to taunt me? To try to reel me back in? Why? To what end?

And then Miles realizes Jack Dalton’s right. He does have the power to report and block him. He types back, “maybe I will if you don’t stop being such a psycho. go bother someone else”

“…even listening to me?”

Rachel stands in front of Miles, a glass of wine in one hand, other hand on her hip.

“Of course.”

“No you’re not,” she scolds. “You were on your phone the whole time, weren’t you? We just had this conversation the other day about you being on your phone during dinner with my parents! Why do you always do this? You are so addicted to that thing.”

“I am not,” Miles says, like a whining pre-teen. But he desperately doesn’t want to relive that marathon-length argument. The kind of marathon where you run until your feet blister over and bleed and you pass out on the pavement.  

“Give me that,” she says, grabbing his phone.

He tries to pull it back, and she fights him. “Let me see!” she cries, pulling harder. Instinctively, he pushes. Rachel trips over the table and falls backwards onto the carpet.
‍
“Fuck!” she cries in pain.  

Miles doesn’t know what to do, so he stands there as his brain tries desperately to wrest back control. “I’m so sorry!” he practically shouts as he drops to her side. “Your back?”

“Yeah,” she says, taking his hand and pulling herself up. She plants herself on the couch, massaging her lower back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I don’t know…you went for my thing, and I guess I’m a bit on edge, so I just…”

Rachel grabs the phone out of Miles’ hand. He doesn’t fight back. She scrolls through his feed. Her mouth and eyes get progressively wider as she reads more. “Who the hell is this?”

“No idea.”

“So he’s just a stranger?”

Miles nods.

“What a fucking lunatic!” She pauses. “Delete the thread.”

But I want to see how he responds, Miles thinks. As if reading his mind, she says, “You got the last word in. Now delete it.”

‍He nods, deletes the thread, and spends the rest of the evening trying to make it up to Rachel with a massage gun and many, many episodes of Law and Order.

Miles lies in bed, awake. Rachel sleeps soundly beside him. The part of him that wishes he hadn’t deleted the post grows and grows. He asks himself why, and he realizes he wants Dalton to admit defeat in some way, to publicly concede or apologize. It’s not going to happen, of course. If anything, Miles is the one who lost. He had the upper hand, and yet, here he is, lying awake, tormented, obsessed.

Miles turns over. He’s just shut his eyes when he sees his phone light up through his eyelids.Cursing himself for not turning on Do Not Disturb, he picks up the phone.

‍Direct message from Jack Dalton.

‍Maybe this is when he confesses that this was just a prank gone too far. Or maybe he’s in love with Miles and is just terrible at flirting.

The message contains a photo. A dismembered arm on a hard white surface in a pool of blood. Tendons, muscle and bone peek out from the wound. The forearm is covered in a tattoo of a heart with the word “Romance” over it.

“this is gonna be u,” the accompanying message says.

Miles nearly vomits. He quickly blocks and reports Jack Dalton, puts his phone down, and squeezes his eyes shut, trying in vain to slow his heartrate and erase the image before it’s forever burned into his brain.

Miles must have managed to fall asleep. He wakes up the next morning alone in bed. Rachel has already left for work. He immediately grabs for his phone. No notifications, thank god. But he does have an email – from one jackdalton@gmail.com. The subject reads, “good morning.” How did he find my email? Miles wonders. He doesn’t want to open the message, but does he really have another choice? He feels his finger tap the email, opening it. It reads:

“morning sunshine”

Below is an image: another bloody arm on a white surface, with even more fragmented bone poking out at the elbow. This one also has a tattoo: another heart, with the word “bad” overlaid.

“Bad romance.” The arms match.

Miles is half awake, a blessing as he struggles to process what he’s seeing. He fumbles around the mail app and finds a way to block the email address. He puts on Abbey Road again as he brushes his teeth, making sure to skip “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” hoping he can get lost in “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” He schedules the thermostat, starts the car from his phone.

Jack Dalton is quiet for most of the day. Miles tries to focus as his boss reams him out for not filing requisition Form 36 using Protocol 94A. But the arms keep flashing across the backs of his eyes.

As Miles grocery shops after work, Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” comes on over the speakers, and he nearly gets a heart attack. He quivers in the meat aisle, and his hand flies to his phone to escape the musical assault. He’s hoping to come across a video of a disgustingly creative cocktail recipe like a ground beef margarita, or perhaps a video of a chef making fun of someone for creating a ground beef margarita – but instead, he finds a text, an image, from an unknown number.

Miles glances left and right to make sure no one’s looking over his shoulder and then opens the text. Pain shoots through his teeth, and he realizes he’s clenching his jaw. On a familiar white table, now covered in dark brown stains, is a leg, detached at the thigh. The skin seems paler than the arms. A different person, a different victim? Or perhaps the leg was photographed later? Maybe the deceased never wore shorts.

A message arrives with the image: “you cant ignore me”

Miles recoils, stepping backwards into a display, and stacks of canned beef-a-roni are sent scattering in all directions. The sound of aluminum cans splitting open on tile floor, red meat and juices spilling out, bounces around in Miles’ ears.

“Sorry,” he shouts to no one in particular and runs out of the market.

Miles blocks Jack Dalton’s number on the way home. He frantically tugs on the door handle of his house before remembering that he needs to unlock it from his phone. Slamming the door behind him, Miles’ foot slips as he enters the living room. He catches himself and turns, finding a pile of mail beneath the slot in the door.

On top of the bills (always paid in full by their due date) and political mailers (Miles already knows who he’s voting for months before an election) is a large manila envelope. His breath catches in his throat. He opens it and a stack of blown-up photos spill out. Each one is an image of a particular detached body part. There are so many. Every organ and appendage must be represented separately, Miles thinks. Some are recognizable, some are so disfigured that he can’t even tell what he’s looking at. And in the last photo…

A head. The head. The head of a man in perhaps his late 60s. A long, blood-caked goatee. Eyes rolled back. Mouth hanging open. Tongue and teeth…well, missing.  

Miles is so repulsed that he can’t look away. The photos slip out of his hands and flutter to the floor. Jack Dalton would’ve had to mail these at least…two days ago. But their online encounter only began yesterday.

Miles grabs a golf club and props it up against the mail slot. (He bought a set hoping to play with his nephew, but the bag has sat by the front door ever since.) He calls the police. They’re sympathetic but unhelpful. Something about a small online harassment division. But they’ll look into it.

Rachel’s working late on some huge case, so she’ll be sleeping at her place tonight. Normally, he’d welcome a night to himself. He loves her, of course, but Miles likes some time alone. Tonight, however, he just tries to ignore that part of him that longs for her warm, loving, safe presence. He considers calling her, but he knows she’s busy, knows how crazy he would sound.

Miles feels the world outside closing in. He locks the doors, draws the blinds in an attempt toshield himself, but he’s cut himself off from everything instead. He has no idea who might be lurking, peering through his windows, watching his every move. He gets the feeling of eyes on the back of his neck, but he doesn’t dare turn and look. To do so would be to give it – give him – power. And so all he can do is pray that by tomorrow, this nightmare will be over.

Even though the sun has only just set, Miles rolls into bed, hoping it will bring him closer to tomorrow, the artificial deadline he’s put on Jack Dalton’s psychological warfare. It all has to end tomorrow, right? Because if it doesn’t…

He puts on a soothing classical music playlist just to give his mind something to focus on: violins and clarinets tangling and twisting in time, moving through his ears, carrying him on their journey.  

Miles realizes he must have fallen asleep, because when he hears the first loud bang, it rattles him awake.  

He jerks up in bed, startled, terrified. The first thing he notices is the heat. His sheets are drenched in sweat. Did he leave the heat on accidentally? As he wakes, in the moment between sleep and consciousness, he thinks he sees Jack Dalton standing over him, but the phantom disappears as Miles fully wakes. The only thing in the room with him is silence. He looks at the clock – just past midnight. He tries to slow his thumping heart, and that is when

BANG.

It comes from downstairs.  

BANG.  

He slowly rises and moves toward the bedroom door.

BANG. BANG. BANG. They come faster now.

Miles peeks into the hallway. It’s coming from the living room. He slowly creeps down the steps.
‍
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.  

The front door. Someone’s at the front door. The knocking shocks him every time, as if his body forgot the last burst. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.  

Miles turns the living room light on. It flickers on and off. Strange, he thinks. His smart home app should let him know before a bulb dies. He pulls out his phone and looks at the front porch security camera feed.  

A towering man stands at the door, pounding on it with his fists. The night vision obscures the figure, turning him into a pale apparition, but his anger and aggression remains obvious.

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.  

He can hear the door hinges rattling.  

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.  

And then footsteps – moving away from the door?

Miles stands in silence. And then he hears the crunch of boots on leaves from outside his window. It moves to the next one. Miles is paralyzed as Jack Dalton – it has to be him, right? – moves around the house. He can’t see into the kitchen from where he’s standing.  

CRASH. Glass shattering.  

CLICK CLICK CLICK.

The turning of the door handle.

CREAK. The door hinges squeak.  

TAP TAP TAP.

Footsteps in the kitchen.  

Miles’ body takes over and he bolts up the stairs. He shoots into the bedroom, locks the door, and drags his dresser over, barricading the entrance. Running into the attached bathroom, he locks that door, too, and collapses to the floor.  

The footsteps move up the stairs. They’re heavy. Each one shakes the whole building. Or is that Miles’ heart thumping in his chest? He looks around for anything he can use as a weapon. The best he can find is his straight razor on the sink. Miles takes it, grips it tight.  

Jack Dalton reaches the hallway. He tries the bedroom door and the locked doorknob rattles.  

CLICK CLICK CLICK.

Then. The smashing of wood. Jack Dalton makes quick work of the door. There’s a loud crash as he shoves the dresser out of the way.  

TAP TAP TAP.  

His footsteps move around the room. Miles hears his closet thrown open and his sheets ripped off the bed.  

The window in the bathroom is too small for Miles to fit through. Every cell of his body wants to run, but there’s nowhere to go. All he can think of now is those body parts, perfectly posed against white backdrops.  

TAP TAP TAP.

The footsteps move closer to the bathroom.  

CLICK CLICK CLICK.

The jiggling of the door handle echoes off the porcelain tiles. Miles inhales and exhales quickly, readying himself for inevitable confrontation, as Jack Dalton begins slamming into the door. The door hinges rattle in place. He jumps to his feet and holds the razor ready. He prepares himself for a surprise counterattack. He’ll throw the door open and strike, catching Jack Dalton off guard. Inhale, exhale, razor at the ready. Miles Wong rips open the door and finds

Nothing.  

There’s no one in his room.

The dresser is still blocking the door, the closets are closed, the sheets are in the sweaty pile on the bed where he left them. Miles pushes the dresser out of the way. His bedroom door is intact. Wielding the razor, he steps into the hallway and slowly makes his way into the living room. Empty. He walks into the kitchen, and the door and its windows are whole.

‍But I heard him! He was in my house!

‍Then, behind him. Running, thudding footsteps, and –

“AAAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEE!”

A scream so loud that Miles’ soul leaves him and his body tries to run on its own. He realizes that he’s screaming too. He bolts toward the kitchen, turning around to see what he’s running from, what’s chasing him, and finds

Nothing.

But Jack Dalton was right there. I felt the ground shake with his footsteps.

Then, Miles sees them.  

The speakers. In every room of the house. The sound so realistic…
‍
‍Could it be…? Did Jack Dalton hack into my sound system?

‍Light hits him from the living room. Miles walks in. The TV is on. Plastered all over the screen are the images of body parts. Except this time, there’s no “bad romance” tattoo on the arms. Instead, there’s a very distinctive mole on the left hand.

Like Miles has.  

There’s a cut on the right-hand index finger, like he gave himself last week from chopping sausage.  

There’s an amoeba-shaped birthmark on the inside left thigh, just like his.  

And then the image of the head appears. It’s Miles Wong. In the exact same position as the other victim. Eyes rolled back, tongue and teeth gone.

Miles grabs the remote and tries to turn it off, but it won’t respond. He pulls out his phone to try the app, but it’s covered in the same images. He throws his phone to the side and rips the TV’s power cord out of the wall. It turns off.

But then the alarm system starts blaring.  

BEEP BEEP BEEP.

It’s deafeningly loud.  

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

Miles finds his phone and tries to deactivate it. But he can’t get past all the photos.  

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

He tries the alarm panel next to the front door, but his code doesn’t work. He hits buttons at random. Nothing.  

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

He yanks on the door, but it’s locked.  

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

The sound is causing Miles’ head to burst at the seams. He can’t think straight. He grabs the golf club still propped up against the mail slot and starts smashing at the alarm unit. He doesn’t stop until it’s a crater of wires and plastic in his wall.  

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

He realizes the sound is coming from the speakers now. It slowly morphs into a voice. A deep, metallic, grating voice.

YOUR TURN. YOUR TURN. YOUR TURN.

Miles starts swinging wildly, smashing every speaker throughout his house. He doesn’t stop until thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment is destroyed. He spent years finding the perfect speakers with the right EQ controls, controlled from his phone, motion sensing speakers that could follow him from room to room. He measured every space to perfectly balance treble and bass. He installed each one of them himself.  

He barely gives it a second thought as the entire system comes crashing down, taking bits of drywall with them.

Finally, the sounds stop. His house is silent.  

He tries the front door. It opens. Miles stands in relief, letting the cold night air in. He realizes there’s something under his foot. The manila envelope, staring up at him. There’s a return address on it, as if awaiting his discovery.

And that’s when Miles realizes he’s about to do something stupid.

After a few hours’ drive, Miles finds himself twenty miles outside Bumfuck-Nowhere in the Texas Panhandle, standing outside the return address, a house…Jack Dalton’s house?

It’s a modest home on a large piece of land with beige walls and a sloped, metallic roof. The driveway is longer than Miles’ apartment.  

He hasn’t slept a wink, yet the chance to end this waking nightmare keeps him going. His heart begins to race as he walks up the pathway with no idea of what comes next. He quickly knocks before he can try to convince himself not to. After a moment, the door opens a crack.

“Yeah, what is it?”  

It is indeed the man from the profile pic, albeit older, perhaps thirty years older. The man’s voice is almost entirely vocal fry, and the question catches Miles off guard. Shouldn’t Jack Dalton recognize the person he’s stalking?

“Don’t you know who I am?” Miles asks.

Jack Dalton stares and then shakes his head. “Should I?” he asks in a thick Texas drawl.  

“Yes,” Miles says, quivering with rage. “You’ve been ruining my life for the last couple of days.”

Jack Dalton cocks his head, confused. “Excuse me?” he musters.  

“You’ve been stalking me on social media, sending me threats, photos of…of body parts…” Miles can feel his voice rise and crack. “You tried to break into my house last night! Or…you hacked into my house and made me think…” He can’t finish the sentence.  

Jack Dalton stares back, mouth agape, eyes dead, expression impenetrable. Miles hasn’t the faintest idea what the man is feeling. Is that anger? Fear? Sympathy?

A ding comes from Jack Dalton’s pocket. He slips out his phone and stares at it. He starts to move his mouth when a voice interrupts from the other room. “Honey? Who’s that?”

Miles leans to the side and looks past the man at the door. The house is decorated with family photos, taxidermized animals, mounted hunting rifles. There’s no rhyme or reason to his aesthetic: a plaid couch with a minimalistic black side table and a glossy wooden TV stand. It makes no sense. Everything’s cobbled together, as if at random.

On the couch, facing away from the front door, is an older, gray-haired woman. Jack Dalton’s wife? Sitting next to her are two young adults. His children?

Jack Dalton forces his mouth into a smile. “It’s no one. Cable sales guy again.”

“Just tell him we’re perfectly happy with our current package!” she calls.

“I am!” Jack Dalton cries back. With a sudden intensity, he turns back to Miles and drops his voice to nearly a whisper. “This isn’t a good time. There’s a gas station about a mile north. Meet me there tonight. And just…I…” He purses his lips, trying to figure out how to put words to his thoughts. He fails, takes one more desperate look at Miles, and then closes the door in his face.

Miles blinks heavily, trying to keep the exhaustion at bay and piece together what just happened. He fails, slumping into the seat, when

“You gonna order something else, chief?” the waitress asks, poking Miles’ shoulder with her pen, rousing him from his sleeping place right there on the diner’s black-and-white-checkered table. He yawns and rubs his eyes.

The waitress’ wrinkled skin sags from her cheekbones. Her face is plastered with blue eyeshadow. Miles can smell the cigarettes on her breath from across the table.  

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Miles says groggily. “Do I have to?”

“One item every three hours,” she says as she looks around at the graveyard of empty mugs and dirty dishes on Miles’ table.  

“Fine,” he says. “Another coffee. Two creams, two sugars.”

“Coffee’s only buying you fifteen minutes, babe,” she says as she walks away.  

Miles can’t blame her. He’s been sitting in this booth most of the day. Jack Dalton didn’t give him a time, so all Miles can do is sit in this diner across the street from the gas station, about a mile north of the Dalton residence, and wait.  

Maybe Jack Dalton was just trying to get rid of him. Maybe he doesn’t intend on coming at all. If that’s the case… Well, Miles needs answers. And he knows where Jack Dalton lives, of course. He thinks he can get rid of Miles that easily? Not a chance.

‍Miles glances out the window and realizes the sun has set. He glances at the clock on the wall. 8:47 PM. Shit, did he miss him?

‍Miles gets up and hurries over to the cashier stand. “Excuse me,” he stammers, “was anyone at the gas station?”

“The hell do I know?” the waitress says.  

Panicked, Miles looks around, contemplating his next move. And then he sees it: a dirty pickup truck pulling into the gas station, Jack Dalton at the wheel.

Miles throws all the money in his wallet at the waitress, unsure of what he’s given, and hurries across the street.

Jack Dalton is about to get back into his truck and drive away when Miles arrives.

“Wait!” he cries.  

Jack Dalton stops and turns to face Miles. He looks nervous, uncertain. He looks as scared and nervous as he is.  

“Did you engage with it?” Jack Dalton finally asks.  

“With what?”

“Did you engage?” he asks again, as if growing impatient.

“I don’t understand,” says Miles, bewildered.

“It commented, sent you messages, right? Did you respond?”

“There was a comment, yes, and I responded—”

“What did you see?”

“What did I—? I still don’t understand…”

“Did you get the pictures?!” Jack Dalton is practically screaming now, as if he’s the one who’s been stalked and terrorized.  

Miles hesitates. “Yeah. I got lots of pictures. Lots of fucked up pictures.”

“Fuck,” Jack Dalton says. “Fuck, fuck fuck.” He rubs his eyes, collecting himself. “Okay. I have to go now. I’m done.”

“Done?”

“It’s your turn now, not mine, your turn. I’m finished. You understand?!”

Miles doesn’t understand at all, but Jack Dalton doesn’t care to explain further. He climbs into his truck and pulls out of the gas station.

“Hey!” Miles shouts, as Dalton’s truck tears out. He rushes to his car, unwilling to let him get away, and peels out onto the street.  

Miles drives through the countryside, past farms and open fields, he can see car lights in the distance. Dalton’s truck he hopes, he assumes. He considers his plan, his next move, or lack thereof. Wife and children be damned, when Jack Dalton gets home, Miles is knocking on the door again, no more cable sales guy routine. Miles isn’t leaving without answers.

But as Miles follows the truck, he passes Jack Dalton’s home and drives on, a few more minutesuntil finally, the truck pulls off the highway, down a rough dirt road. At last, the truck parks in front of a greenhouse. Miles pulls to a stop down the street and watches. If Jack Dalton sees his car, he makes no show of it as he steps out of the truck and walks hurriedly into the greenhouse.  

Miles sits in his car and watches the greenhouse in silence. He finally decides to step out of his own car and make himself known. Something is blocking the glass walls of the greenhouse, and in the dark, Miles can't tell what. As he approaches, he notices the door slightly ajar. He pulls it open, and as he steps inside, he’s hit with the stench of manure and rotting meat.  

The greenhouse is covered floor-to-ceiling in white tarps. Bright lights hang off the rafters, nearly washing the place out. A desk with a serious computer setup, several monitors and servers, sits on one side of the greenhouse. A little office space sits around it: a mini fridge, a couch, a water cooler.  

On the other side stand several long white picnic tables, set up in a neat grid.  Body parts are strewn across the tables.  

Arms, legs. Just like in the photos. Fingers, toes, various organs. That smell.

And on one table, a decapitated head, eyes rolled back, mouth hanging open, tongue and teeth missing. But unlike the photos he received before, there’s no goatee.  

Then, Miles realizes – it’s Jack Dalton.  

He notices tattoos on the arms. Two hearts, each with a word overlaid: bad romance. Miles’ eyes blink rapidly, his legs growing weak. He backtracks until he hits the wall and sinks to the floor, grabbing his head.  

To see photos is one thing. But to feel the humidity, to smell the rot, to taste the blood hanging in the air… These aren’t pixels. This is real. Miles could reach out and touch the corpse.

Should he call the police? Tell Jack Dalton’s family?

 What would he even say? He doesn’t even know what happened, not really. He was sitting in his car, Jack Dalton went inside, he followed him in… And now this?  

Miles realizes with terrifying clarity that someone did this to Jack Dalton, and whoever it was must be nearby. He turns around, looking in every direction. He thinks to scream “help,” but the adrenaline is so thick in his throat, no words come out. There's no sign of anyone else. No footsteps, no moving shadows. And how did this happen so quickly? Dalton was in one piece just a moment ago. As he glances around, Miles notices something high up in the corner of the greenhouse: a security camera.  

‍Watching him? Miles wonders. Maybe it feeds to the computer…

‍Miles walks over to the desk, stepping over streams of blood running across the floor. Terror is replaced by horror, a fear for his immediate safety replaced by a slow-rising sensation of something darker, something inexplicable, and yet he can sense it just ahead of him, like an inevitability.

‍He finds the security camera feed easily enough – as if it was waiting for him – and rewinds until he sees the greenhouse door open.  

Jack Dalton walks in.  

Glitch.

‍A break in the feed, a time-jump. And now Jack Dalton is gone, dead, his body parts strewn across the picnic tables as they are now, and then glitch – another time-jump. And now there’s a shadowy figure holding a knife, standing before the butchery.  

The shadow stops, turns, and stares directly into the camera.  

It’s Miles Wong.  

But…it can’t be. He knows that he didn’t murder Jack Dalton. Did he? Against his better judgment, he looks down, half-expecting there to be a knife in his hand. But there isn’t. Of course there isn’t. Miles squints. As he looks at security feed and looks into the figure’s eyes, Miles realizes it’s not him, of course, he knows it’s not him, but… This ghost, this other Miles – its stare is dead, soulless, still. Video Miles lifts Jack Dalton’s head and places it gently on one of the white tables.  

Miles stops the footage. He didn’t do it, he knows that. But he can’t deny that it very much looks like he did. He even has a motive – Revenge! Revenge for Jack Dalton’s harassment! How would that look?  

Miles suddenly, against his better judgment, feels compelled to make absolutely sure no one ever sees this footage. He peels back the casing on the computer unit and rips out the hard drive. The computer screen goes black.  

A green, blinking cursor appears, waiting for a command prompt.  

Miles starts to walk out of the greenhouse, hard drive in hand, when he notices letters populating the screen.

YOUR TURN

Line after line after line…

YOUR TURN​
YOUR TURN​​
YOUR TURN
YOUR TURN​​​
YOUR TURN
YOUR TURN
YOUR

He can’t take it anymore. He is struck by a sudden vindictive, deep-seated hatred for this computer sitting before him. He picks up the metal chair in front of the desk and smashes the it, hitting it over and over again until all that remains of the device is a bundle of wires twisting out from its plastic corpse.  

Coming to from the fit of rage, Miles runs. Out of the greenhouse, as fast as he can. As he leaves the property, making for his car, someone calls out from the darkness, “Hey!” A figure in the distance, unobservable. “Who are you? What are you doing?”  

Miles starts the car and hits the gas, glimpsing a man grasping a shotgun in his rearview, growing smaller and smaller in the reflection.  

‍Where should I go? he wonders and realizes that there’s only one place for him. Home.  

Miles makes sure to put hundreds of miles between him and Jack Dalton before stopping the car, laying the hard drive underneath one of the tires, and then driving on.  

The harassment ends. Weeks go by and Miles Wong doesn’t hear a peep from Jack Dalton or whoever – whatever – it was that terrorized him so. Occasionally, Miles asks himself questions about Jack Dalton and his family, the greenhouse, Video Miles, the man in the dark… So many questions. But he quickly shoos them away. This wasn’t his fault. He didn’t kill Jack Dalton. Despite how much it looks like he did. This much he is certain of.  

Miles’ life returns to normal. Rachel didn’t even know he was gone. He was able to get a new phone and clean up his apartment before she saw him again. He even retroactively put in for sick days at work. No harm, no foul.  

Against his better judgment, Miles slowly finds himself returning to social media, as if no horror is too great to kill the itch. It isn’t long before he’s back to scrolling through his timeline to kill time, and not much longer before the pangs of fear from every notification disappear.  Months go by, and Miles and Rachel are having dinner in front of the TV when a knock comes at the door. The two of them stare at each other. They aren’t expecting company. The knock comes again, this time more aggressively.

Fighting flashbacks, Miles checks the security camera footage of his phone. There stands a young Black woman, frantic and panicked.  Miles rises and walks to the door. He can feel Rachel’s eyes on his back. He opens the door.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you Miles Wong?” she asks, full of fire and fear.  

“Yes…” he says slowly. “Can I help you—?”

“Why are you ruining my life?!” she practically screams.

“…I’m sorry?” he fumbles.

“Why the fuck did you send me these?” She holds up a large manila envelope.  Miles feels his pulse rise. Then his phone dings in his pocket, a text from an unknown number.

“YOUR TURN”