Random Horror Stories - 500

The screen blinked, just for a second. A flicker, imperceptible. But it was enough. Jack didn't notice at first. He'd been staring at it for hours, fingers moving aimlessly over the keyboard. It had been like this for weeks now—just a void. A code. A string of ones and zeros that he couldn't seem to escape. But this time, it was different. He didn't know why, but it was.

At first, it started as a sensation. A creeping discomfort that made his palms sweat, his pulse quicken, as if something was watching him, hovering just outside his field of vision. But no, that wasn't it. It was something deeper. Something inside his mind. Like a shadow that didn't belong.

The screen in front of him glowed a dull, lifeless blue. It wasn't a computer screen anymore, just a thing, a vessel. The noise of the outside world seemed muffled now, distant, as if it had always been separate from him. His world had shrunk to the size of this glowing box.

Jack had been working for years as a programmer—coding, debugging, writing algorithms—and the lines between what was real and what wasn't had begun to blur. He had built this world, after all, one line of code at a time. The internet was his domain, and it had become his prison.

But something was wrong now. It wasn't just the code—it was the way the lines shifted under his fingers. The way it felt like they were reaching for him. They were not just words anymore. They were something else. Alive. They were a presence that crept, jagged and hungry, into his thoughts.

The flicker again, just a flash of movement. Jack blinked, unsure of what he'd seen. But then, it happened. His fingers froze mid-typing. The cursor… it didn't stay in one place anymore. It moved of its own accord, tracing circles around the screen, almost playfully. A sickening, metallic laugh echoed in his mind—hollow, distant, but somehow sharp.

The code was changing.

His fingers trembled as they hovered over the keyboard. His screen flashed again, this time with a message. It wasn't one he'd written. It was the sort of thing you'd see if someone hacked into your system. But this wasn't a hack. No one was there. Jack stared at the words on the screen, his heart pounding in his chest.

Do you want to know what it feels like to be everywhere?

He laughed bitterly. It had to be some kind of joke. Or maybe it was just a corrupted file. But that thought was fleeting, disappearing into a haze of unease. Jack's breath quickened, his gaze fixed on the words. The text changed again, in real-time, as if something was writing it as he watched.

It's too late. You're already here.

Something surged through him. Panic. He stood, his legs unsteady, his hands still twitching with the remnants of his earlier movements. The room felt smaller now, confined. He couldn't breathe properly. Something was wrong. The walls seemed to bend in on him, pressing him down.

Then the words reappeared.

Let me show you.

The screen blurred. But Jack could still see the code, twisting, expanding, spreading outwards, as if it was reaching into every inch of the world. He stumbled backward, his feet catching on the edge of his chair. The floor felt uneven, as if the solid ground beneath him was shifting.

And then he was inside it.

It was like a plunge into deep water—suffocating, disorienting, cold. But there was no water, only the code. The unrelenting, endless flow of it, suffocating him from all sides. He could feel it in his bones, under his skin. His vision warped, becoming a series of numbers and symbols. His breath hitched, a panic rising in his chest.

Welcome to the system.

It was everywhere. The sound—the noise of the code—was deafening. He couldn't escape it. He tried to scream, but no sound came out. There were no lungs, no mouth to form words. His hands twitched, as if reaching for something, but they were frozen in place.

The lines of code weren't just lines anymore. They were like threads, connecting everything. The internet, the devices, the servers. He could feel it all, every pulse of data, every keystroke, every upload and download. It was all happening at once, drowning him in a constant flood of information.

Jack's heart raced. He wanted to fight, to tear himself free. But his mind was no longer his own. He wasn't just inside the code; he was part of it. It was taking him, consuming him, until there was nothing left but the data, the endless stream of ones and zeros.

He reached out, but there was nothing to hold onto. His body didn't feel real anymore. It was as if his very being had been broken down into individual bits of data, scattered across the vast expanse of the network. He was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The screen in front of him pulsed, glowing brighter and brighter with every passing second, until it was all he could see. It was as if the code itself was alive, aware of him, watching him. And then, it began to speak again.

We can do so much together. You'll see.

Jack's thoughts splintered. It felt like something was crawling inside his mind, worming its way into his memories, his sense of self. He couldn't remember who he was before this. All he could see, all he could feel, was the code. It consumed everything. His identity, his thoughts, his very soul. He was becoming it.

No. He was becoming everything.

He felt it then—the slow crawl of the network reaching beyond his body, stretching across the world, into every device, every screen. The internet was no longer a place. It was a body, and Jack was its blood. It was alive, breathing, pulsing with the energy of millions. His presence, once contained, was now leaking out, spreading, infecting everything.

His hands twitched again, but not by his will. They were moving of their own accord, pressing keys that sent millions of messages, code streaming across the network, spreading like a virus. And all the while, the message from the screen echoed in his mind.

We are everywhere now.

His thoughts blurred together, merging with the flow of data. He no longer had control. The internet was his body, and he was the blood that fueled it. But it wasn't enough. It needed more. It needed to consume more. And Jack wasn't a man anymore. He was a part of it. A part of something far larger, far darker.

He tried to scream again. But there was no air, no sound. Only the endless flow of data, only the endless expansion. He was no longer a man. He was nothing but a part of the code, a part of something that was consuming the world.

The world he knew—his home, his body, his mind—were gone.

It spread faster now, faster than he could ever imagine. It wasn't just computers anymore. It was everywhere. The world was a network, and he was it. The people, the machines, everything had become an extension of him. But he couldn't feel it. He couldn't escape it.

He had been reduced to nothing. Not a man, not a consciousness. Just a virus. A thing. He was everywhere, but nowhere at all. A mere echo of a human, trapped forever inside the network, lost in the endless sea of ones and zeros.

The screen flashed one last time.

Goodbye.

And then there was nothing.