Selfie Inflicted

11

I was back in my apartment.

I'd left her. My friend.

I waited, staring out the window as the day slowly burned away the mist and the sun began to rise.

Of course, I heard the sirens. I knew they had come for Lyza. That they had found her, and no doubt were starting to investigate the death of a young woman. Two tragedies in two days. It would shake our small college community. They would come for me. Want to ask me questions. But not yet. I had some time, I was sure of it.

None of that mattered to me now.

I was trying to survive. My backpack sat at the door. I stared at it, my mind racing. It loomed at me, it was all I could see. I felt a familiar fury growing within. I reached for it, tearing it open and pulling out the phone.

"Ok you bitch, what do you want!" I yelled, my voice cracking as I placed it on the table.

I looked at our photo. Lyza and Ryan were gone and even I was barely halfway there now. It was like we were being slowly rubbed out.

Tears welled in my eyes and my strength faded. I fell back to the floor, my back slumped against the couch. Outside my door I could hear people talking and the sound of someone hammering or doing something in their apartment. Renovating maybe.

I stared at the photo.

"What do you want?!?" I cried.

I tried to zoom in but accidentally swiped the photo back. I saw the previous photo, another empty scene. I swiped again. And again. And then again. And so I continued.

It seemed endless. So many photos, so many places. Exotic places too - famous landmarks and sights. From the Eiffel Tower to those ruins I think were in Cambodia, to the Sydney Opera House and the statue of Christ in Rio.

Endless photos. Endless emptiness.

Until.

Out of nowhere there was a photo. A boy. Well, a young man. Standing there at a photo taken in a pub or a bar somewhere. He was handsome, with shaggy sandy brown hair. He was wearing a t-shirt and looked deeply tanned. His arms were held up oddly, like he was spreading his wings. A beer bottle was in his left hand and a cigarette in his right.

Then I noticed the faintest shadowy wisps beside him.

I put the phone down on the table and then grabbed my own phone. I took a photo and then imported it to my laptop. I cropped it, zoomed right in on him and then started an image search.

Hundreds of photos showed up. Some were boys that looked like him, others were totally random things. This was pointless. Impossible. I'd never find him.

I looked up. I saw myself in the mirror that I'd hung in my hallway. I looked awful - drained and run-down and desperate.

Then something clicked in my mind.

The boy. The one that had posted the message. His profile pic. He'd had sandy brown hair and tanned skin.

I searched back through the hundreds of sites I'd seen the night before. Desperately trying to find those most recent posts. I pulled up my history and saw what seemed like a million pages. I couldn't remember which one was the one that I'd seen that most recent post. Then I remembered.

Narcis? Narscene? Narcissa?

I searched for the word alongside terms like phone, ghost, curse.

And then, I found it.

His post. I clicked his profile and found a contact page. I searched deeper and then came across his profile on a social site. There was a message button.

I clicked the icon and wrote in the message box.

URGENT. I FOUND THE PHONE. HELP.