Elias looked at the current time: 3:02 AM. He looked at the date: April 28, 2026.
That was the morning everything had changed. The morning he had walked out of his house and never looked back, leaving behind a life that felt like a tightening noose. But there was something wrong with the photo. In the reflection of the toaster, he could see a figure standing in the doorway behind the camera. It wasn't him.
In the photo, he wasn't alone. A hand, pale and elongated, was reaching out from under his bed, just inches from his ankle.
With trembling fingers, he opened the second file. It was a photo of his current bedroom, taken from the corner of the ceiling. In the center of the frame, Elias sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at a glowing phone screen.
The image was grainy, taken in the harsh, blue light of dawn. It showed a kitchen table—his kitchen table—with a single cup of steaming coffee and a folded newspaper. He checked the date in the filename: October 25, 2022.
The notification blinked on Elias’s phone at 3:00 AM: Download complete: IMG_20221025_084923.jpg.