Last Seen Dead | ONC 2023

1 | honey the bear

Ethan sighed. Here he was, on a Sunday morning, clicking through a tutorial for a site he never knew existed before. He could've been sleeping in, could've been enjoying a slow start to his day. But instead, reading the letter he got from Legacy Co. about Florence made him want answers.

Why would Florence pick him? Why not her best friend or even her husband?

It had already been over a year since he last saw her and the way things went, he thought he'd never see her name again. They were practically strangers, and yet, she trusted him with all of her deepest and darkest secrets. The things he could find, well, who knows what he would find?

He shuddered, thinking about a total stranger having access to his most intimate of memories. The private messages he sent to people, intending it to be for their eyes only. The countless emails.

Not to mention every little project he tried to start up over the years only for it to fizzle out. Having all of his failed attempts out there in the open, for someone to judge him. Or even, the idea that someone could steal all of his notes and make his projects a reality without even asking him.

The novels he could have written, sitting half-finished in his computer. The songs he could have wrote but abandoned after it proved too hard to find the right melody to match the lyrics he made.

Everyone had their own little digital graveyards these days, and Florence picked him, of all people, to sort through hers. A part of him wondered if he should just find the fastest way to delete every little facet of Florence that remained on the internet. The letter said he could do that.

But as much as he hated to admit it, he owed it to Florence to at least give it one last look.

One last look before he sent everything up into flames, never to exist again.

It took a while and a lot of reading but before he knew it, he had finished the tutorial and the website thanked him for it. There didn't seem to be anywhere else for him to go after that, besides the messages area where he somehow already had three unread messages waiting for him.

One of the messages was from someone with a cute little bear icon named Honey, who Ethan remembered the tutorial mentioned as being the AI helper bot of the entire website.

Honey had sent him the following as an introductory message:

"my name is honey and i will be helping you through the process of being a post-mortem confidant. please ask me any questions you have and i will do my beary best to help you!"

He groaned at the sight of that title again. Post-mortem confidant? That was one way of calling it. It made it seem so much lighter than it actually was. Someone died and left behind troves of messages and yet, they want to pacify it by saying it's her legacy and this is what she wanted.

When Ethan spotted the bar at the bottom of the page to type a reply, his fingers quickly went to action. There was only one thing on his mind at that moment, one thing he wanted to know most.

"why me? why did she have to pick me out of all the people she could have picked?"

A few seconds later, Honey already began typing out a reply.

"i'm sorry i can't say why the deceased has chosen you because that information is not in my database. if you'd like, we can start off by reading the letter she left you. would you like that?"

Ethan blinked a few times, staring at the screen in silence. Florence... left him a letter? Why couldn't she just call him and tell him she had signed up for this ridiculous website? Why did he have to find out this way? Why couldn't she have picked someone that was actually close to her?

He sighed and began typing out a reply to the little bear.

"yes. please show me the letter now"

If the only way to find the answers to his questions was to play the game, then so be it.