Wrong Connection

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It started with a click. Just one click—and the night took a different turn. Jonas had been sitting in front of his laptop for hours, exhausted and irritable. The office was quiet, the only sounds being the soft hum of the machine and the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock. He was working on a presentation, but every time he saved, a brief gray flicker appeared on the screen. At first, he thought it was a glitch. Then, fatigue. Finally, a sign that he should just go to sleep. But Jonas wasn't the type to simply ignore something. Around midnight, he opened his browser to look for a troubleshooting guide. One of the pages he clicked on had the unassuming title: "ReaperNet - Advanced Access." Below it was a black screen with a blinking input line. No legal notice, no logo. Just a sentence in gray letters: "Want to see who's watching you?" Jonas grinned wearily. "Sure." He typed yes. The flickering intensified. At first he thought the laptop was crashing—but then lines, shadows, and contours began to form on the screen. A figure emerged from the darkness, shadowy and fluid, as if smoke were turning to flesh. A face without features, only empty eye sockets from which a faint, bluish light seeped. The scythe, black as burnt steel, slowly took shape. Jonas's heart raced. "Very funny," he muttered. "A virus or something." But then the thing spoke. The voice sounded like metallic static in the speaker: "Jonas Lenz. Connection established." "What... what does that mean?" "You clicked. Now I'm here." A cold draft swept through the room. The monitor glowed as if it were a gateway. Smoke billowed out, thicker and thicker, until Jonas recoiled, coughing. Then he saw a bony hand reach out from the screen. The fingers were long, gray, with cracks like old wood. They gripped the edge of the laptop, pulling themselves out further, inch by inch, accompanied by an unnatural, grinding sound. The Reaper emerged—half from the monitor, half still trapped in the digital afterlife. Jonas fell from his chair, tried to unplug the device, but the plug seemed to have melted into place. Words appeared on the screen, as if someone were typing from within: “Connection stable. Session active.” The Reaper leaned forward. The light from its eyes flickered across the keys, across Jonas’s trembling hands. “You checked who was watching you,” it hissed. “Now you see me.” “I don’t want this! I’m going to delete you!” “Delete you?” The creature laughed—a sound like breaking glass. “Data is just a mirror, Jonas. You didn’t open me. You reflected me.” It crawled further out until its scythe was half-exposed to the screen. The handle was made of wire mesh that pulsed like a vein. Jonas stepped back, stumbling against the desk chair.