Rachel McEntee

9th Grade

The Wyoming Incident

One link.
Thats all it took to change my life forever.
A specific link, indeed. To one particular video, in one particular
lifetime, seemingly insignificant to most.
It was a normal night for me: 3AM, moms not home, working on my essay
for English when I was linked to this video by none other than my friend
Jessica over Skype. Of course, I opened it, thinking it was just some stupid
cat video. Though, it was quite odd not seeing her type anything else to me
afterwards. Not a single word. Not to mention her messaging me this late. The
only thing that changed in between the time of me clicking the video and
waiting for my browser to load it up was her profile picture and her display
name. A picture of what used to be of her and a few of her friends having fun
at a concert was now a simple white frame. Her name had changed to ones and
zeros. I thought of this as some glitch in the system. Finally, my browser
loaded up the video and automatically full-screened. This was normal since I
always watched videos with full-screen mode on. The title of the video was
The Wyoming Incident. It was a news broadcast from 2008. I knew this
because the woman was talking about the election that year. As soon as she
began to announce who had run for the republicans, the screen turned to static
and it filled my ears. I turned it down: my ears rang as if they were trying
to adjust to the loud noise. The visible static turned into a monochrome
colored screen with four different gray-scaled bars with letters and numbers
and those four bars said, from the top,333-333-333, We Present, A SPECIAL,
PRESENTATION. Then the words mirrored themselves and repeated below. After
thirty some seconds waiting for something to happen, music began to play. It
sounded ominous, dark but somewhat familiar. Thats when my lights flickered
out. I paused the video on that picture with the bars, grabbed a flashlight

and decided to take a look around. All of the lights had turned off in my
house so I went to check the breakers. Every single breaker was switched off,
even the one in my computer room. I was baffled. How can my computer still be
working? I asked myself. I hurried back to that room and on the screen was a
black background with white capitalized letters, reading, YOU WILL SEE SUCH
PRETTY THINGS. Then suddenly, the white noise came back and it was even
louder than before. I cupped my ears but that seemed to have done nothing to
drown out the sound. My vision became blurry but I know what I saw. I saw a
hand reaching out of the static. The hand coming out wasnt like human skin.
It was made of static itself. First, I thought it was just my imagination.
That was until the rest of the body crawled out of my computer screen and
dropped the floor before me.
A loud cracking sound emitted from the things body as it jerked up to
stand. It shook violently before digging its sharp, spindly tendrils for
fingers into my throat. The blood that trickled from my neck felt cold as it
trailed down to my chest. The thing slowly lifted me up with inhuman strength,
cutting off all of my air support.
It said, Why do you hate?
It wasnt a human voice. It was like a voice speaking through a fan
mixed with rain and rice spilled onto hardwood floor at the same time. Just as
I surely felt like I was going to suffocate, it then threw me up against the
wall, pulling my arm so firmly and wildly that I winced in pain and knew right
away something was broken. It felt like my veins were burning with a thousand
flames from Hell. It continued to tell me things I didnt understand.
You are ill What hides in your mind? We have already seen it. You
can lose everything.
I gripped as tightly as I could onto the arms of the monster and ripped my
body away from its hold. I ran to the door but it stepped in my way. I
realized that what the monster was saying was also being displayed on the
screen of my computer. I know, it is a weird thing to remember, but I remember
it so vividly. It then told me more but it seemed angrier with me,
disappointed, much like a mother. Even so, I was still crying and shuddering,
giving all I could to keep myself standing.
Nothing is priceless. You cannot hide forever.

Suddenly, more figures like the one in front of me emerged from the
walls. They slowly approached me with insidious intent. Their clawed
appendages stretched out towards me. My legs turned to lead, rooting to the
spot. The whole room felt like a broken TV channel. I stumbled to the floor
out of pure and utter terror.
We stand at the door. They all began to yell. You are lost on the
path.
The walls of my once normal room turned into pitch black curtains of
nothingness. The words from before were being displayed as they all came
closer and closer to me.
There is truth in fiction. All good things.
They engulfed me.
I became nothing.
Then, I woke up here. In this padded cell. Sometimes I still hear the
white noise ringing in my ears. I told them five years ago, and Ill tell you
now, it did happen. Ill never stop telling the truth.