"My name is Mariana Hartell."The girl on the phone's screen is laying somewhere in the woods. Her face is dirty and the blood matting the left side of her hair looks like it was dripping down to soak her shoulder when it was fresh. She laughs, bitter. "I couldn't get any cell service and my phone's about to die, so this is probably the last chance I'll have to get a message to-to anyone, I guess. The crash definitely broke my leg and dragging myself through the middle of nowhere is getting kind of old. It's been days." The girl, Mariana, licks her cracked lips. She puts her cheek against the ground, defeated. There's a stretch of silence before a long exhale and a quiet,"I'm going to die out here."
More beats of silence. The girl is still face down on the forest floor and you begin to wonder if she's conscious. Something moves in the brush to her right and her head snaps up. "Hello?Is someone there?" Her voice is rising and it looks like she's trying to force her body into a standing position. "Please! I'm over here! I'm injured and I need help!" She's yelling now,waving her arms, trying to get someone's attention. Tears are streaming down her face. Surely, this must mean rescue. By now you know better than to hope for that. Finally, a new figure enters the frame.
It's you. It's you, but...not. Something about you is off, wrong somehow. You-But-Not walks toward the girl and recognition flashes across her face. She stumbles back, weight landing on her obviously broken leg. She sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth.
"You're the asshole that jumped in front of my car!" she accuses. The thing that wears your face says nothing. The girl is unsteady and falls, crying out when her hand hits the ground. You can almost hear the bones in her wrist cracking. Your stomach turns. The You that isn't You keeps walking forward and the girl, seeming to finally realize that something isn't right, continues trying to drag herself backward.Both of them end up off-screen. You can't see them, but that doesn't stop the sounds of tearing of flesh and the screams that fade into wet gurgles coming through the tinny speakers of the cell phone. When the noise finally stops, the You that isn't You is back standing in the center of the screen, covered in blood. It gives you a wicked smile and holds up four fingers before staggering off into the woods,back to wherever it came from. The screen goes black.
The phone was sitting on your pillow when you got home. It had been in your home this time. When you get up you add the phone to the ever-growing pile and sigh. You are so, so tired. You make your way to the bathroom to get ready for bed. It's going to come for you soon. Four. Four more bodies, then you. And there's nothing you can do about it. A deep breath, then a splash of water on your face. You look in the bathroom mirror, searching your reflection for answers, but find the mirror empty. It has been for weeks now.
