GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: LENA

Lena had never seen the app before. A black icon with a blinking red eye sat on her home screen, though she didn’t remember installing it. Curious, she tapped it. The screen lit up with a teen girl's face, then went into a self imposed doom scroll. Glitched, then went dark with a strange hum.

Her reflection flickered across the glass—distorted, stretching, like a funhouse mirror melting into static. Then, a whisper: "You are seen." a voice that sounded eerily like her own yet distorted. Her body tensed, fingers frozen. She felt ill suddenly and her eyes felt dry and painful. The phone vibrated violently in her grip as the screen pulsed with a deep, glitchy void. Lena tried to look away, but something—someone—inside the app was looking back. A sharp jolt shot through her skull as colored lights blinded her. Feeling light headed, she gasped, then stumbled.

Consciousness was wavering as the phone emitted a bright vibrantly blinking light and a sound that assaulted all her five senses violently. She was aware but couldn't move as the lights shot through, danced around her and finally closing in on her with a flash of white.

She felt a pull, physically, mentally that was euphoric yet painful all at once, as her breath, her voice, her very being was siphoned through the screen like ink bleeding into water. The bright lights engulfed her once again and she felt them glitch as goose bumps rippled through her skin.

She looked ahead and saw herself from the outside now—her empty body, still standing, phone clutched in lifeless hands. The app blinked shut. Her body blinked open.

A smile stretched across her face. It wasn’t hers. She—it—glanced at the phone, now displaying a new icon: a pale face, screaming silently. The name beneath it read Lena.

Art and story by Hal Hefner.
Produced by Catmonkey Studio