Filling out online resumes was a pain in the ass.

Being abruptly fired from a job that I’d slaved away at for close to my entire college career, along with finding my girlfriend swapping nudes with the fuckboy next door was worse.

To top it all off rent was due next month, and I was fresh out of cash.

Yeah, what a shitshow this life was.

My roommate thought I should get right back on the saddle. A new job, a new woman, double down on my academics. Learn from my past mistakes or some such.

I chose to take that sage advice to the bar, drowning out the incessant thoughts with bottles of booze. When I woke up the next morning, I decided to at least try and make a few bucks at home while waiting on my next interview.

Kicking back on our leather sofa, I plowed through at least forty resumes, each one more long-winded than the last. In between I chatted quietly with Neal, my roommate, one hand distractedly clicking ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on various internet surveys. You know, the ones that yielded five dollar Starbucks gift cards and other stimulating shit like that after an hour of moving the mouse and typing out drivel.

Neal and I had a system down pat. Typing was his neck of the woods, while I darted the mouse around at each new checkbox. For such measly chump change you’d think working our asses off at some other menial task would be more productive, but you’d be wrong. Neither of our resumes were particularly detailed, and any eye-catching marketable skills were readily absent.

At least we were using the computers for something productive for once. More often than not I’d stay up late into the night, foregoing sleep just to catch one more chance of shooting some teen’s head off in the latest game.

After doing this for five hours I sat back and stretched. It was way more excruciating than I’d first anticipated. In the entire afternoon we’d managed to accrue roughly forty dollars in cash and various gift cards, enough for a quick bite at the local pub.

“Eight dollars an hour Sam. We’re giving ourselves carpal tunnel for eight damn dollars an hour.” Neal pushed the keyboard away, walking only a few feet over to the kitchen. “My sanity should be worth at least nine.”

“If it buys us another few boxes of ramen I’ll be happy. Speaking of ramen, we still have any of the beef?” I asked.

“Nah, scarfed all of that down a few days ago. Let’s see,” Neal said, opening up a cabinet above the sink. “We’ve got chili, chicken, lime shrimp, and some of that oriental goodness. Take your pick.”

“Oriental it is,” I said, looking back at the computer. Despite the ferocious cramp in my wrist, this wasn’t such a bad gig. Not like I was making much more than that in my old fast-food job. I was just about to power down the computer for the night and help prep the meal when I first saw it.

The page should have been blank, just a confirmation box asking to finalize the survey...but for one reason or another, it wasn’t. At the bottom corner of the site that I was browsing, just to the right of the confirmation box, existed a single image. Maybe it was the face that got me. Blond hair combed to the side like a single sheet of gold. Dark, nearly pitch-black eyes opened wide above a set of pristine white teeth. The man’s skin looked impossibly smooth, a clean, pink sheet with zero imperfections.

His shirt was a drab white, plain black letters in a tacky font that read “Hello!” plastered on the front. At least this ad was unique, even if it was creepy as fuck. What the hell, one more click won’t hurt. Might as well see if the image reacted to the mouse.

I leaned forward, clicking once on the framed man. Nothing happened. Well, that was anticlimactic.

“Water’s almost done boiling. I can cut up some of the leftover meat and add it in,” Neal said from behind, drawing my attention.

“Hold on a sec, come take a look at this.” I held up the laptop, pointing the screen for him to see. “Weird, right? Never seen an ad like this on a survey before.”

“Looks like a normal GIF to me. Dude really wants you to click on his T-shirt,” Neal said.

I moved the laptop back to my lap, staring hard at the now grinning man who was eagerly pointing at his chest. The previous ‘Hello!” had also been replaced with somehow bolder lettering. ‘Let’s play a game!”

I continued to eye the man’s frantic movements, finding it impossible to move away. That had been a still image just a moment ago, hadn’t it? I must have missed one of my roommate’s questions, feeling a slight nudge on my shoulder. “Sam, I asked if you wanted some greens on the side. One salad won’t kill you.”

“Umm, yeah, sure,” I said quietly. Moving the mouse painstakingly slow, I hovered the pointer over the grinning man’s shirt. And clicked.

The man dissolved, leaving behind a blank white page. I tried to click out of it, to return to an old survey or back to the desktop, but nothing seemed to register. What the actual hell?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Letters quickly cascaded across the screen. Simple questions formed at even intervals, leaving just enough room to type out a short response. Name, age, profession. I thought it especially weird that it also asked for my weight and height, not to mention my eye color.

“Uhh, Neal, you should see this. Looks like some sort of character registration.” I moved over on the couch, all thoughts of food forgotten. My roommate took one long look at the screen and frowned. “Blondie wants you to play a game now?”

“How the hell should I know?” I scrolled through the list of questions, noticing something at the top of the page. “There’s an option here for inviting another person.”

“Probably just some company wanting more emails. Can’t delete those useless promotions they send me fast enough.” Neal pulled out his smartphone, tapping on the screen. “Guess one more couldn’t hurt. Making a spam account that you can add.”

I waited a moment as he thought up a new account, accepting the phone to type it into the proffered invitation box. “Really?”

Neal only grinned in response. I sighed, entering [email protected] before hitting the accept key.

“You should see some of the other beauties I came up with…” Neal abruptly went silent, looking down at a new line on the computer.

Mr. Griffin has entered the game

We must have stared at it, eyes wide and mouths agape, for god knows how long. “Sam, stop this shit now.”

“I can’t” I said, trying every trick in the book to make the browser disappear. Nothing worked.

“Jesus, just turn it off already,” Neal said, pressing the power button at the side of the laptop. The screen should have blinked to a solid blue displaying the desktop before shutting down entirely, as it had done hundreds of times before. He tapped the button a second time after waiting a few seconds, then a third.

[Tsk tsk tsk, you aren’t trying to leave the game early, are you?]

The blond man from before had reappeared, casually wagging a finger across the screen. Gone was the broad smile, replaced with a hard frown that only served to draw my gaze towards his simmering blue eyes.

[Enter your information, Mr. Griffin, and don’t try that stunt again.]

He dissipated as quickly as he’d appeared. I noticed the new set of questions, all of them a mirror image to the ones I'd started to fill out.  

“How does he have my last name, Sam?!” Neal scratched at his long, unkempt brown hair, rocking slightly against the sofa.

“I don’t know!” I said frantically. “I have absolutely no idea how this is happening.” All of the information that I’d put in was random. Short brown hair, dark eyes, a few years older than me. None of it tied back to us, especially not the name. Quinn Kincaid was as far away from either of our birth names as you could get. The drop-down list of professions had been the most perplexing. I’d ended up going with a novelist, replete with a fountain pen and a notebook or so the description had said.

“Look, we’ll play along with whatever the hell this is and go from there.” I handed the laptop over to Neal, who sighed dejectedly.

“Alright. Let me at least finish making the ramen first.”

The first real question after we ate the simple meal and Neal completed his character creation was completely out of left field. In plain English, this is what popped up on the screen: “Is anyone else in the room?” I glanced over at Neal, shrugging my shoulders before typing in “No” as a response and clicking on the next question.

“Are you sure?”

There was no feasible reason why I should have been scared right then. The house was locked, the lights were all on, and every door inside the cramped apartment was wide open. I still focused on my breathing, trying to make out any other noises besides my roommate beside me. There were none. We both agreed to look around anyway, poking through every shadow behind a door or cupboard. I’m not afraid to admit I sighed in relief after settling back down on the couch.

More than likely this was just some hacker’s casual joke. I wouldn’t put it past a savvy computer science graduate having the know-how to pull together a stunt like this. Had even seen something similar in the past. You’d be amazed how far they were willing to go for a reaction.

The next question was even weirder.

“You’re at your brother’s home alone. You wake up in the middle of the night, only for your phone to drop from your lap to the floor. After a moment, you reach down to grab it, only to see what looks like a hooded man laying flat beneath the bed. He’s holding a knife in his right hand, though at the moment is facing away from you. What do you do?”

Again, I shared a long look with Neal. “Is there an option for ‘run like hell’?” He chuckled at himself, though the brief attempt at humor was short-lived. Neal always gravitated towards some wisecrack when he was nervous, and tonight was no exception.

I typed in ‘sprint to the bathroom, lock the door, and climb through the window.” What exactly was this trying to gauge?

I click next again, growing steadily more agitated. “A big dinner event just ended, and all of your guests have gone home for the night. You let your dog out the front to go potty, and after a minute hear the dog again scratching at the door and making noises. Looking out the peephole, you see a man on all fours, pretending to be your dog in an attempt to gain access to your home. What do you do?”

I put a similar answer to last time: “Lock the door, call the police and wait for them to arrive. Make sure my dog is okay after.”

Once again, I click next. God, but these questions are fucked up. No way some of this is made up.

The next couple questions weren’t overly gory or explicit. No, they were just weirder. More disturbing, if that was even possible.

“Your father tells you there is a woman in your home. He says she will whisper things to you, follow you, do whatever she can to get your attention. If at any point you try to speak or interact with her, she will kill you. How do you survive for three months?”

Neither of us had any idea how to answer this. I typed out as much and moved to what looked like the end. This one wasn’t a question, simply a final statement.

“Don’t let them in. They are coming.”

Seconds later both of us jumped as a series of rapid knocks pounded against the front door. As slowly and quietly as we could, we moved over to stand behind the door. I reached it first. Inching my head closer, I lifted up the metal cover to peer through the peephole. An unopened package lay at the top of the steps, with nobody in sight.