The flickering notification icon was like
a persistent itch in my brain. It started a week ago, that little red bubble taunting
me on the corner of my Instagram screen. No matter how many times I refreshed my feed,
tapped the icon, or scrolled through all my notifications, it wouldn't go away.
At first, I ignored it. Maybe a glitch, I thought. But it stayed there, pulsing
a faint red in the corner of my perfectly curated feed. My curiosity, usually the
driving force behind every like and fo
llow, began to morph into something more sinister.
One night, unable to resist any longer, I tapped the icon. The screen went
dark for a beat before a single, grainy photo materialized. It wasn't a photo
I recognized. A dark, blurry forest floor, the kind you see in those creepy missing person
posters. A caption, written in a font I'd never seen before, scrolled slowly across the
bottom: "They're looking for you." Panic clawed at my throat. I tried to delete the
photo, but my finger wouldn'
t obey. It hovered over the like button instead. With a jolt,
I slammed my phone down. My heart hammered against my ribs. Sleep, usually a welcome
escape, was out of the question that night. The next morning, the notification was back. This
time, the photo showed a mangled tree branch, its end sharpened to a deadly point. The
caption read: "They're getting closer." A morbid fascination gnawed at me. Who
was doing this? What did they want? The photos kept coming, each one more
disturbing th
an the last. A muddy footprint, a single crimson drop on a decaying leaf.
The captions grew more frantic: "They know where you are," "There's nowhere to run."
The worst part? The location tag. Every photo was tagged with my current location. It was
impossible. I hadn't enabled location sharing on Instagram in years. A cold dread
seeped into my bones. This wasn't a prank. This was something else entirely.
Desperate, I messaged my closest friend, Maya. "Maya," I typed frantically,
"you need to
see this." I sent her screenshots of the photos. Her reply came back
instantly: "What the...?" Then, silence. The next notification arrived just as
the sun began to set, casting long, skeletal shadows across my room. The photo
showed a single, open eye staring out from the undergrowth. The caption: "They're here."
My breath hitched. Grabbing my phone, I dialed Maya's number. It rang once, twice... then a
voicemail picked up. Panic swelled in my chest. I checked my Instagram again. A new mes
sage
from Maya sat there. Just one word: "Run." Before I could even process it, the
floorboards beneath my feet creaked. A shadow flickered at the edge of my vision.
With a strangled cry, I scrambled back, knocking over a chair. Silence. Then, a soft
tapping sound, like a fingernail against glass. My eyes darted to the window. It was
cracked open, a sliver of moonlight cutting through the darkness. My heart
hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. There was someone, something, outside.
I
knew then that the carefully curated world I'd built on Instagram, a
world of filters and followers, had become a cage. And something terrible was
waiting for me just outside the like button.
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