Glitch

Kelly had done her work on her crappy, ancient dinosaur of a computer for as long as she could remember. It crashed sometimes, sure, and the cooling fans sounded like a rocket taking off, but by some miracle it still ran pretty smoothly, with only the occasional hiccup. She only kept the computer because she was a writer, but took physical copies of things only if she needed to. The computer in question was a hulk of a laptop, some off brand that she was pretty sure her dad snagged off of Craigslist or somewhere similar for cheap. At any rate, it was bad when it was given to her, and it was bad to this day.

That’s why Kelly didn’t question it when she tried to open up a document and it froze on a blank screen. This happened infrequently enough that it was very much a bother, but not unusual. Kelly stared at it for a minute in disbelief while the cooling fans attempted to leave the atmosphere.

“Ok,” she sighed, and tried to wiggle her cursor. Nothing. She muttered something incomprehensible and shut down the computer. Well, it was probably about lunchtime anyways. A sandwich was sounding good.

After the sandwich was made and consumed, Kelly headed back to the computer, hopeful the issue would have resolved itself. She flipped open the computer and cursed. Still frozen. Not even the colorful wheel of death. She stared at the computer for a minute, tapping her fingers on the desk. Then she noticed something. There was a smudge on the screen, but after some rubbing and even a bit of cleaner, it didn’t disappear. Upon closer inspection it appeared to be a clump of pixels in the middle of the white screen. This was weird, as she was reasonably sure it hadn’t been there when the computer froze. It didn’t resemble anything, really, just a spot of dark on a white background. She paid it no mind and shut the computer, resolving to at least get some errands or chores done that she had neglected in favor of writing.

Several hours later Kelly returned from the store. All the household necessities were taken care of, she had gotten what she needed, and hopefully the damn computer would work again. After setting down the bagged groceries on the counter, she flopped onto the couch and grabbed the laptop, easing it open hopefully. Still blank.

“Oh my god,” she groaned, pushing it off her lap onto the table. It had never acted up this bad before. She was about to pull up her tech-savvy friend on her phone to help her figure out what the hell was happening, when she froze. The pixel clump was still there, only a little bigger. It almost looked like it had a head and shoulders, but that was stupid. The human mind finds patterns in anything..hold on. This is dumb, but…? She carefully closed the laptop and then flipped it open again. She didn’t even have to log in this time, as there was still a white screen and a steadily growing smudge in the distance. Open, closed. Open, closed. With every clunk of the screen, the pixel grew, coming closer and closer and closer. Slowly, details became more apparent. Atrophied legs. Broken looking shoulders, being supported by spindly overlong arms…

Wait. Wait wait wait. What was she doing? She closed the computer and didn’t open it again. Patterns, remember. Odds are, it just looked like it was getting bigger. Optical illusions… her eyes were probably strained from today. Whatever. The main problem was that her computer wasn’t working, and she had a deadline to meet. She grabbed the computer, went into the kitchen and called the aforementioned techie friend. Max worked in IT support, and was very good at dealing with imbeciles trying to use computers.

“Hey Max!” Kelly said, trying to hide the tension in her voice.

“What’s going on, Kelly?” Max asked, clearly picking up on the worry. “Did you screw up your computer again? I keep telling you, you need to get a new laptop, that one’s almost old enough to legally drink!” they laughed.

“Christ, Max. The dad jokes. But no, you’re right… it’s being pissy and refuses to get off a blank screen.”

“I swear you’re only friends with me for tech support. Alrighty.” They adopted their customer service voice. “Hello ma’am. How can I help you?” Kelly decided to play along.

“Ah, yeah… I tried to get onto Google Docs earlier, and it froze between the transition, it’s just a white screen.”

“Can you open the computer and tell me what’s happening right now?” they asked.

“Yeah, uh, hold on.” She flipped open the laptop and froze. The smudge was still there. Bigger.

“Kelly? Talk to me.”

“Ah! Jesus. Yeah.”

“What?” There was some concern in Max’s voice.

“Well, the screen is still blank…” There was audible scribbling on Max’s end.

“Any tabs, login screen, taskbar? Anything?”

“No. Nothing, except there's like a, um, a little black smudge? Like a bunch of pixels in the middle? I remember they weren’t there at first but they’ve been getting bigger every time I open the computer.

“That’s weird. Maybe the screen got messed up?”

“I dunno, but I keep thinking it looks like a person.” She could almost see Max staring daggers at her, and the splotch seemed to be baring far too long teeth.

“The human brain-”

“-is very good at finding patterns, I know.” Kelly sighed. “Can you just help me figure out what’s going on, please?”

“Well, you said the smudge got bigger when you opened the computer? I’ve seen your computer, how when you shut it, it shakes the whole thing. The lid is really heavy. So, what I’m thinking, and this may sound batshit, but the shaking and the overall heaviness might have started taking its toll on the stuff inside the computer, along with the LCD and the backlight inside. That, and just the fact that your computer is stupid old and, well, stuff gets weaker and doesn’t work as well in an old computer.” Kelly looked bemusedly at the splotch. The eyes were far too big and hollow in its face.

“Huh.”

“Yeah, I know that sounds dumb, but really, I wouldn’t be able to tell for sure unless I was there.”

“Well, can you come over?”

“Sorry, my car was having issues, making these awful sounds, so I brought it in for maintenance at the car place down the road. I’m stuck here for a day or two.”

“Wow, everything’s breaking recently.” She laughed humorlessly.

“Listen, dude, I’ve got to go.” Max sighed. “I’m expecting a call from, uh, Adrien…”

“Oh yeah,” she said quietly. “How’s…”

“He’s fine. Had a pretty big psychotic episode a month or two back, something about turning into a demon and watching the world collapse, but, he seems to be getting much better.”

“Good to hear. Well, I’ll let you do that. Thanks for the computer help, and have a good day.”

“You too…” They hung up.

Kelly leaned back and began to idly flip the computer screen up and down. Click, thump. Click thump click thump…

“Wait,” Kelly whispered and slowly opened the computer screen.

The figure was gone.

Kelly felt a tap on her shoulder.