“

I rush desperately down the hall—phone in one hand, scalpel in the other.

“

Jake yelped with fright when his friend first spoke. He thought he was alone when he heard that disembodied voice from the darkness.

“

The truck will go by in the morning when I’m booting up my computer, around lunchtime when I’m assembling a sandwich, and again when I’m cooking dinner.

“

I saw lightning strike a tree outside our window. It peeled a long strip of bark straight off the trunk, like it was slashed with a giant knife.

“

Ever since the world has shut down, my company has been holding daily meetings over Zoom.

“

It started when a new villager moved into my town. A spider, a creature that I’d never seen before, not even on the forums I read about the game. I figured there must have been an update to add new characters, so I assumed the weird things going wrong were glitches at first. Problems with the programming.

“

We didn’t remember everything right away, but over the years more has come back to Sofia and me.

“

She put my doll’s mouth to her ear like it was whispering a secret to her. Then my friend looked me dead in the eyes and said, “She told me she wants to kill you.”

“

My mother’s husband coming at me with a machete trying to kill me. I stumbled and fell, it’s not a silly horror movie trope, it happens. I still hear the sound of it hitting the floor inches away from my feet as I scrambled backwards. Did you know that machetes make sparks when they hit hard surfaces?

“

Biggest thing was how often people try to abduct you.