Fear-1996- → (Trusted)

wait.

She knew it was stupid. It was probably a prank by some college kid with too much time and a copy of Photoshop 3.0. But the fear was delicious. It was a cold, clean feeling, different from the dull anxiety of high school, different from the way her stomach clenched when her father’s footsteps paused outside her door at night. Fear-1996-

Mariana.

Not a human eye. The pupil was a perfect, inky void, and the iris was the color of an old bruise. It was looking at the camera. Looking at her. But the fear was delicious

The phone rang.

She didn’t answer. She watched the image finish loading. The eye blinked. Not a human eye

The next morning, she told no one. She deleted her AOL account. She told her mother she’d had a nightmare. But that night, as she lay in bed, she heard it. A soft, wet click from the computer room. Then the dial-up tone. Not from the computer. From the phone line itself, singing in the wall, searching for a connection that was no longer there.