It wasn’t a message. Not picture nor word. Just a sound. Nothing more. It was high pitched, grating… eerie. It didn’t vary much, but you could tell it was a human scream. Or at least it once was. Its tones had clearly been twisted into dissonant antiharmonies, autotuning out any imperfections in pitch. Each change was intentional, puppeteered. Impossible. You could make no sense of it. It wouldn’t stop. You tried pressing every button. Turning your phone off. Restarting it. NOTHING WORKED. The sound was driving you mad. You took deep breaths. One at a time. Trying to hear something different. Maybe it was a message. You tried to change the volume. It only got louder. Never went down. You dove deep into your phone settings and adjusted the levels of each sound quality. You turned the bass up. The high ranges. The low. It twisted the sound, but the sound was essentially the same. You finally found the file it was playing from. You had never seen it before. You couldn’t delete it. Couldn’t edit it. Couldn’t stop it here either. You began to pull on your bleach-fried hair in panic. The noise triggered every sense of flight or fight possible. You heavily considered chucking your precious phone into the glassy lake behind you, but then you would have no form of communication with anyone. You would be stranded. Your heart raced like a prize horse. How had this gotten on your phone? It had never left your side. You hadn’t seen anyone since arriving in the mountains. The neighbors kept well to themselves. This was supposed to be a relaxing break from the bustle of working… overworking… Your nerves were truly worn thin. You tossed your head back as the sun disappeared behind the streak of evergreens on the horizon and released a soul-baring scream so guttural every ominous bat in the vicinity bolted to the hills to find their insect victims elsewhere. Your howl blended into the auditory attack like an alpha wolf joining the cries of the pack. The fissures in your sanity deepened, immediately filled with the jagged, churning sound waves of the shriek. You were becoming the sound. Or rather, it was overtaking you.

Suddenly, the sound stopped, but this time the silence was closing in unbearably, crushing your fragile mortal body. Fingers shaking, you unlocked your phone and pulled up the file, craving its presence like a drug. You spammed the play button until its comforting waves drowned your thoughts out again. It washed over your brain, gleaning clarity from chaos. You knew what you needed to do. You knew the piece you had been missing before.

You uploaded the file to some app that really shouldn’t have been on your phone either. It was sinisterly titled “The Noise.” As if your fingers had a mind of their own, they danced across the screen to reverse the sound. It was still horrendously cacophonous, but this time the scream held words:

“W I L L Y O U J O I N U S.”

You could tell it was not a question.

Your head spun terribly from the auditory discord wreaked on yours ears. Abruptly, you realized you had no idea who “you” was anymore.

The darkened world around grew darker still until it faded to black. Webbed cracks crawled across the phone screen. Head collided with dock.