Surface

I bought the Microsoft Surface from a guy on Craigslist. It was cheap—too cheap—but he seemed eager to get rid of it. Said he didn’t need it anymore. When I met him in a parking lot to make the exchange, he barely spoke, just handed me the tablet and took my cash with shaky hands.

I should have known something was off.

At first, it worked fine. Smooth, fast, exactly what I needed. But then I noticed something strange. There was a folder on the desktop called “DO NOT OPEN”. Obviously, I opened it.

Inside were dozens of video files. Each was named with a date and time, stretching back years. The most recent one was marked tonight at 3:12 AM.

I clicked on the oldest video. It was a recording from the Surface’s front-facing camera, but the footage was wrong. The person in the video wasn’t me. It was the guy who sold me the tablet, staring blankly at the screen in a dimly lit room. He wasn’t moving, just breathing heavily, eyes darting to something just off-camera.

Then, at exactly 3:12 AM in the footage, he gasped, eyes going wide with terror. His face twisted in pain. The screen distorted with static, and for a split second, I saw something behind him. Something dark. Something stretching toward him.

The video ended.

Heart pounding, I clicked another, then another. The same thing. Different locations, different people, but always the same ending. Always 3:12 AM.

And then I made the mistake of clicking the one labeled tonight.

It was me.

I was sitting right where I was now, staring at the screen, watching the video. The same dim glow on my face. The same anxious expression. But as I watched, something moved behind me.

The lights flickered.

I turned, but nothing was there.

When I looked back at the screen, my reflection was still there, but it wasn’t following my movements anymore. It just sat there, frozen, staring directly at me.

And then, at 3:12 AM, it smiled.

The screen cut to black.

And something whispered my name.