Realm of the InterNutter

That’s what chilled me most about the picture when I saw it again, when I really got a good look the second time. Without that single detail, it could’ve really been perfectly ordinary, like any other plain old image taken a million times by a million other people. It looked so deceptively normal except for the one thing that could never, ever be normal. – Josh

It was blurry, but the eye could make out what appeared to be a white man in a suit and tie. He had no hat. He had no hands.

And he had no face.

Not even the blur of a face.

Just a white, shiny orb that took the place of a head to the casual observer.

But I knew what to look for, now. That figure had been in the background of every photograph since I turned eighteen. Every casual photograph I was in… he was there, too.

I lined them up, once, in chronological order. Put them together as a gif.

That figure’s been slowly advancing on me for twenty years.

And he’s almost caught up.

Even though he’s over my shoulder, he’s still blurry. You still can’t make out a face. But you can see that he doesn’t have hands. He has talons.

I can control the photos people I know take of me. They pass it off as vanity. Not wanting a record of my aging. They laugh. But I can’t control the photos people take… that have me in there.

I don’t know if he’s in those. They are photos taken by strangers.

And every now and again, there’s this urge. The need to take just one selfie.

To see how close he is now.

But there’s also the knowledge that that selfie may well be my last.

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