Snow falling from freezing wind, piling on itself and creating a thick blanket of white that covered up the ground beneath it. The grass, sidewalks, and roads might as well have become one. In tandem, a thick mist made it difficult to see alongside the darkness of the night. Anyone with a functioning brain wouldn't dare to drive under conditions such as these. But unfortunately, a certain hot-headed woman didn't have much of a choice if she wanted to make it home.
A black buggy recklessly blazed through the snow-covered streets, the driver preoccupied with a smartphone trapped between her ear and shoulder. The woman was rambling about dealing with people at work and the lack of any hot men in the area, with the other line being silent aside from occasional noises made in response.
It wouldn't be long until the lady’s house revealed itself from within the icy mist. She haphazardly whipped into what she guessed was the driveway and stopped at a sloppy angle. She then ripped the keys out of the ignition and leapt out of the car, rushing for the front door to her home. The chatty woman fumbled with her keychain while continuing to blather about utter nonsense, eventually finding the proper key and abruptly ending the conversation with her phone.
Unlocking the door and entering her home, the woman immediately gunned for her room upstairs and slammed the door shut behind her. She tossed aside her furry coat on the bed and swapped out her work clothes for something more comfortable and freeing. After changing, the lady hopped into a swivel chair and wheeled herself over to a small desk with a retro-looking desktop taking center stage. Booting it up, she eagerly signed in and was greeted with the usual message upon verifying her person.
[Welcome back, Karen!]
Without hesitation, Karen dove for her web browser and searched for her desired domain. She clicked on the top result and proceeded to sign onto a website made for sharing adult video content named BarkDew.com. Clicking on the featured tab, the naughty woman was immediately greeted with animations of humanoid animals in compromising situations and a single video of an actual person. She simply rolled her eyes and scrolled through the rough, hoping to find a diamond inside it.
While surfing through the sea of unsatisfying garbage, something caught the bored woman’s eye. It was a video titled ‘H3LL0_3X3.’ The thumbnail for the video was simply a black box, and no preview appeared to be available. The temptation of curiosity nipped at Karen’s mind, and she figured she wouldn't find anything genuinely entertaining anytime soon regardless, so she clicked on the video.
It took a moment for Karen to notice, but the video she had selected wasn't playing. She shifted her mouse to hover over the box where the video should play, but there were no tools surrounding the borders of the video. On top of that, the sidebar where recommended videos are displayed was completely missing. No buffering icons were playing on the video nor where the sidebar should be, meaning that the site itself must've been in some kind of limbo. The confused lady attempted to exit the page, but no button she pressed gave any kind of response. Not even the power button.
Karen huffed and crawled underneath the desk to reach the computer’s power cord. Once it was in her sights, the woman gripped the cord’s mouth and was prepared to yank it out from the wall. Just as she was about to pull the plug, a familiar sound came from the machine above her. The irritated woman freed the cord from her grasp and inspected the screen of her computer to see what had happened. It seemed an error message had popped up overtop the frozen page, relaying that BarkDew had stopped working.
Karen looked unamused reading the error message, clicking on the box beneath the text to get rid of the pop up and to hopefully close the page. Though, instead of the pop-up and window vanishing, the entire screen flashed to pitch black. The BarkDew website was no longer present and was replaced by a dark void, matching that of the video from earlier. At first, the lady had surmised that the desktop most likely shut off on its own somehow. However, if that were the case, then it would have notified its user that it was powering down.
Fed up with this nonsense, the cranky woman lifted herself up off of her swivel chair and gripped the computer's cord with both hands, tearing it out from the wall and then tossing it aside on the floor. The cord sustained minor damage from the violent disconnect, resulting in its innards being slightly exposed. In response, the lady let out a sigh of frustration and started digging through the desk’s drawers, searching for a roll of rubber tape she had stashed away for scenarios such as this.
Eventually, the tape was found and plucked triumphantly from its wooden prison. Its rubbery skin was peeled off and used to sloppily bandage up the exposed spot of the cord. And with the wire now somewhat mended, Karen slipped it back into the outlet it was dislodged from and awaited the results from her computer.
The desktop powered on and presented a distorted version of its start-up screen, with loud and glitchy noises accompanying it. Soon, the noises stopped and the screen flashed back to the void from before. However, this time there was something lurking inside of it.
A dark gray skull and crossbones stared at the woman with hollow eyes and an elongated smile. Karen was unnerved at the display on her screen, but she would never have expected what would end up happening next. Green text was overlaid on the skull, bearing terrible news.
[YOU HAVE 30 MINUTES UNTIL BEFORE ALL DATA IS WIPED AND BATTERY IS DESTROYED]
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Following the announcement, a timer loaded up beneath the skull and began counting down. Karen’s desktop had been compromised, and on top of that everything inside of it was at risk of being lost forever. The woman was thrown into a panic, frantically pressing every button that entered her vision and hoping that this was some kind of terrible.
Not a single button gave any response, still including the borderline useless power button. Without even thinking, Karen gripped the damaged cord and pulled it out from the wall again, successfully shutting off the infected computer. She then immediately shoved the cord back into the outlet, causing sparks to fly out from the prongs upon the violent entry. Fortunately, they only lightly scorched the carpet beneath.
When the desktop was revived, it played the start up screen again. This time there was no sound and in place of a branded logo there were numbers.
“25;15;21;0;3;1;14;';20;0;18;21;14.”
Following that anomaly, the skull and crossbones reappeared in another black void. Its jaw was slightly unhinged and two white dots dimly glowed inside of its previously empty sockets.
[LOST TIME IS NEVER FOUND AGAIN]
Another timer was set in the same place as the last one, ticking down from a noticeably smaller number than before. Karen was left clueless about what to do now, and had precious little time left to figure something out. The angered lady started biting her own hair in frustration, struggling to process the intense feelings of fear and fury.
Suddenly, a buzzing noise started to emenate from behind the woman. Whipping the swivel chair around to look behind herself, Karen didn't see anything that could be making the abrupt buzzing sound. That was, until her eyes landed on the fur coat she had dumped onto her bed. For some reason, it seemed as though the sound was coming from the coat. The puzzled woman felt something click inside her brain, which compelled her to get up and start searching the pockets of the fluffy coat.
As it turned out, the origin of the noise was not the coat itself, but rather the phone Karen had slipped into one of its pockets. The device was currently trying to receive a call from an unknown number, one the woman didn't recognize. She simply dismissed the incoming request without much thought, and then had the idea of trying to use her phone to save as much of the at-risk data as she could before it was lost.
However, before Karen could even begin swiping through the walls of apps, a notification banner descended onto the screen. It was a security alert reporting that someone had just logged into her email. After that, the phone’s screen switched to showing the skull that was also on the computer. The timer was dragged along with it, showing that the woman only had a few minutes left until everything was gone.
Karen looked back at her infernal desktop, seeing that the skull on the screen had gotten closer. Closer to the point, small pupils were visible in its incredibly small eyes. Even though it was only an image on a screen, it seemed like it was enjoying watching its victim squirm.
[THE FOOL ONLY KNOWS AFTER HES SUFFERED]
The skull faded away into the darkness, its eyes the only things still visible from within it. The timer moved and capitalized on the open space, becoming the center of attention. That final message and the taunt of how little time was left pushed Karen over the edge. She threw her phone at the desktop in a fit of rage, the force of the impact resulting in the machine collapsing and falling behind the desk it sat upon.
Unfortunately, the destroyed machine happened to land on the damaged cord and rip it apart, separating the wires from each other. The exposed wires still attached to the mouth started to launch sparks all over the place, igniting the broken computer. A fire began to build up and transfer from the shattered remains to the desk above and soon spread throughout the entire room, forcing Karen to evacuate her room. A trail of black smoke followed her as she rushed down the stairs and gunned for the kitchen to retrieve the house phone.
Karen snatched the coil cord phone hanging on the wall and dialed for the fire department. While waiting for someone to answer, the panicked woman noticed the fire was traveling from her room upstairs along the staircase and starting to burn downstairs. She thought there wouldn't be enough time for her to contact the firemen and also escape, so she tossed the phone aside and rushed for the front door.
The roaring flames beat the woman to the door, taking it into their grasp and consuming it. Karen backed away from the blaze and spun around in circles trying to find another way to exit. She spotted the windows in her living room and ran inside, opening the window and crawling out of it. The lady landed right in a pile of snow, a freezing sensation coursing through her partly exposed body.
Karen was forced to watch as her home was being reduced to ash. The events up to this point played through her mind repeatedly, with the woman knowing every possible way this outcome could have been avoided. Instead of losing data on a computer, she had now lost everything. Even when the firemen had arrived there was nothing left to be saved.
Well…there was one thing. Karen’s phone had miraculously survived the fire. Though, not without scratches and burn marks. Checking the contents of the device, the lady found that all the data stored inside was still intact. Seeing this made the defeated woman drop to her knees and break down into tears. Everything became even more pointless than it was before.
While Karen bawled her eyes out, the phone in her hands started to buzz. The phone was trying to receive a call from a familiar looking number. It was the same one the woman had dismissed before during the virus dilemma. This time she gave in and answered the call, gently raising the phone up to her ear to listen…
“6;5;1;18;0;9;19;0;20;8;5;0;16;1;20;8;0;20;15;0;20;8;5;0;4;1;18;11;0;19;9;4;5;.;0;6;5;1;18;0;12;5;1;4;19;0;20;15;0;1;14;7;5;18;,;0;1;14;7;5;18;0;12;5;1;4;19;0;20;15;0;8;1;20;5;,;0;8;1;20;5;0;12;5;1;4;19;0;20;15;0;19;21;6;6;5;18;9;14;7;.;0;
;25;15;21;0;1;18;5;0;20;8;5;0;6;9;18;19;20;0;1;14;4;0;23;9;12;12;0;14;15;20;0;2;5;0;20;8;5;0;12;1;19;20;.”