Alex opened up his sock account on Instagram, legoboi23941, and scrolled until he found the perfect picture to target. His accounts never lasted more than a week or two, but he enjoyed the rage-fuelled replies he got from the comments.

This picture had a brunette in a blue bikini, sunbathing in what appeared to be the Bahamas, holding a magazine and a cocktail. The description read: ‘Living the life down here!’

The comments were full of praises like, ‘Slay queen!’, ‘You go gurlfriend!’, ‘Beautiful!! :),’ and so on. Alex was ready to start a small fire with his new account. Clicking on the comment box, he typed, ‘Try losing some of that extra weight, fatty.’

Alex continued trolling people on Instagram and Facebook, escaping reality and ignoring everything he didn’t want to deal with in the real world. Online became his oasis, away from his vanished mother and relatives who aimed to take everything he had left because the will had not been in their favor. An oasis from his former friends who were states away in fancy college institutions learning how to be doctors, lawyers, or psychologists while he deteriorated. 

Alex continued scrolling and found a picture of a father-son moment. The boy wore a baseball uniform with his bat swung over his shoulder, and his father knelt beside him proudly. 

Alex’s chest ached a little. He opened the jar of heartburn gummies on his desk and popped one into his mouth. He didn’t comment on that image as he briefly remembered his father, who had tried so hard to care for his only son. He worked himself until he was negative six feet tall. Alex tried to forget as best as he could. The person Alex had loved the most since he was born was 100 percent dead. Sometimes, Alex wished his father had cared a lot less, maybe it would have made some difference.

After cycling through his fake accounts, Alex sat back and cracked his knuckles and neck. He shut his eyes, and a breeze brushed over his face, but all his windows were shut.

“Alex.”

Alex jumped and looked around, his head swinging in different directions, worsening the headache he had been carrying for weeks.

“Who said that?” Alex asked, his voice which he hadn’t used in several months was hoarse and strained. It was also deeper than he remembered. He waited. No answer. “Hello?”

Nothing. It was just his mind playing tricks on him. Alex had locked himself away for so long that he was making things up. It probably didn’t help that all he was surviving on was bottled water, orange juice, cheese pizza, and cereal stored in his room. He would probably run out of supply in several weeks, he might have to consider leaving his house to buy them.

“Alex, I know you’re there.”

Alex ignored the second call. It’s just you, Alex, he reasoned in his head. You’ve been alone for so long. It’d make sense for you to hear things that aren’t there. It’s probably just the wind, and you’re making a molehill a mountain.

He clicked on a fake Yelp account and found a few restaurants.

“Alex.”

He stopped typing and got up from his computer. His legs ached from sitting down for the past few days. He passed by the floor-to-ceiling mirror and paused. His hair was damp from his stuffy room and was coated with grease and dandruff. Dark circles were widening all around his eyes and marked themselves to the mid-way point of his nose. A jolt of disappointment ran through him, causing the previous pride to sink as he evaluated his malnourished build.

“Alex, I’m still here, you know.”

Banishing all other thoughts of himself and focusing on that one voice, he moved like a robot and marched to his bedroom door. His heart pounded faster than it ever had. He reached for the doorknob and opened the door.

A man who looked similar to Alex stood there, smiling, and said, “Alex, I’ve called your name three times.”

“Dad? But I thought you were…” Alex couldn’t get himself to say the d-word. “Where have you been all this time?”

“I’ve been nowhere and everywhere, all at once.” 

Alex’s dad’s grin grew and grew. His face warped and became distorted. His eyes bulged out, his forehead wrinkled in, his cheeks and lips stretching too far out and merging with his enlarging ears. His head no longer held the form of the skull because it seemed his skull had melted away, and his head oozed, collapsing in on itself. 

Alex stopped and couldn’t do anything but watch in horrid fascination, stifling a scream. His dad laughed, high-pitched and eerie, nothing like the hearty laugh he had before. This laugh was void of all human emotion.

Alex turned around, wrapped his arms around his waist, bent over, and closed his eyes. Alex wanted nothing to do with the heinous image in front of him. How did it even get in the house and why? 

The laugh kept growing louder and squeakier. Alex covered his ears, but he couldn’t block out the noise. He felt the figure growing and hunching over him, and he couldn’t help but spin back toward his father’s figure.

“Dad, please! Please, stop!” Alex cried. “Please! Stop! Just shut up! Shut up right now! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

Alex stepped forward, stumbling over his own feet and collapsing to the ground. He squeezed his hands around his aching head. He closed his eyes tighter and tighter until he couldn’t feel anything anymore.

He let out a wretched scream to overlap the screaming of his father, tears pushing at his tightly shut eyelids. He screamed again and again until he couldn’t scream anymore, and his Dad’s cackles were the only thing to be heard.

Slowly, the cackling faded, and Alex relaxed and let his hands fall limply beside him. He opened his eyes, blinking hard, and looked around the room, unaware of the time that had passed and how dark his room truly was. But his dad was nowhere to be seen.

Alex slowly got back up to his feet and sat at his desk, staring at the computer screen that had now gone dark. He debated if he should turn it back on or call it a day and give his head a nice, long rest by going to bed. 

Instead, he kept staring at his computer screen and, for the first time in a while, wondered how long he’d last in his room. How long before he ran out of food? How long before the money in his parent’s bank accounts was drained out just to pay for everything? How long before he imagined something like this again? Was he even imagining things? It felt so real. 

How long would he last? That was his last thought before falling asleep at his desk.

***

Alex. I know you’re still there. 

Alex, I’m still here, too.

Alex.

Alex woke up with a start and looked around the room. There was nothing. It was all just a dream. The words were just a dream. Was seeing his dad again also a dream? It must’ve been because that couldn’t happen in real life, no matter how real it felt. Alex had to be realistic about this.

He reached for an orange juice box and laughed at himself for thinking such things could be real. Alex took a long swig from the carton, the liquid making him notice the roughness of his throat. Was it from the screaming he’d done? But hadn’t he told himself the screaming was all a dream?

Alex. 

He tried to ignore the voice that sounded faint and wispy. It was just the wind, of course.

Alex.

Ignoring became harder to do. He glanced around the room again.

Alex.

“Who’s there?” he asked cautiously.

“Alex.”

He was startled. The voice was no longer some faint whisper that could be denied as the wind, now it spoke. It was real.

“Alex.”

“No, please. Not again.”

“Alex. I’m right behind you.”

Alex turned around, eyes widening as he saw what was behind him. The face of his distorted dad, who had shrunken by a couple of feet, was peeking over the backside of Alex’s chair on his tiptoes.

“You’re not real. You are not real,” Alex choked up, blinking hard, hoping the figure would disappear. “Why do you keep doing this? Please, leave me alone.”

Alex’s whole body shook as he went back toward his bedroom door he reached for the doorknob but grasped air and stumbled back, landing on his bottom. 

It couldn’t be a dream if his bedroom door were open. Did that mean the figure that could be his dad was real? 

The figure inched forward, and realizing he was still on the floor, Alex scrambled up to his feet and stepped backward towards the stairs.

“Why do I keep coming?” his father cackled like he had done the night before. “Because I want you to see what you have done to me!”

“But I-I didn’t do that to you,” Alex grabbed the stair banister and took one step down the stairs. “It was a drunk driver who—”

“NO! And don’t you dare deny it, Alex! You were the one who wanted that present that I had to get for a brat like you! Now all you do is make fun of people online! All you do is sit in your room doing nothing at all. Nothing!”

Alex descended a few more steps, heart racing and aching, feeling like it might explode. “B-but, that’s still not—that’s not what I-I mean, I mean that—”

“It was your fault!”

Alex froze. Now his dad was back from the dead, and there was no denying it. This was all Alex’s fault. From his birth until now, Alex had always felt he ruined everything for everyone, and maybe that was truer than anything else in the world.

“Now do you understand?”

Alex nodded, still staring at his dad’s warped face. He was a disgrace.

His dad looked at him for a second before his head flew back, and he began to cackle loud and hard. The high-pitched shrieking made Alex come out of whatever daze he was in and hurry off the steps. 

His dad lunged at him so their faces were merely inches apart. Alex could see his dad’s deep, dead, black, soulless eyes that seemed to want to take possession of him and pull him inward. Alex flinched. He scrambled to get away but lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs. When he got up, he saw his dad chasing after him. Alex screamed and raced into the kitchen.

Alex grabbed a kitchen knife and fumbled as he tried to figure out how to hold it right. His dad raced into the kitchen behind him.

Alex threw the knife. 

It pierced his dad’s right shoulder, with a dull ripping sound, making thick, red blood leak out of his shoulder. A small strangled scream escaped Alex’s throat in shock. His father tugged on the knife and pulled it out, advancing faster than before.

Alex’s hand found another knife, and he threw that one. The second one landed on his left thigh, and more blood squirted out. Alex let out a blood-curdling scream as his dad’s face turned back to normal, and he could see what he’d truly done.

His dad tried to come forward as he wrestled with the knives in his skin, but Alex threw a third knife, then a fourth, and finally a fifth. His fear and anger began to boil, making his throws hit the target, and all the while, Alex kept screaming. 

As the adrenaline wore off, he slowly stopped shaking. His Dad stopped approaching and fell to the floor. The figure faded and then completely disappeared. All that was left was the puddle of blood on the floor and some of it splattered against the walls.

Alex felt something grab at him, something tugged at him. It was the stress and the pain that kept him from reacting any further, and he collapsed to the ground and welcomed the darkness that encapsulated him.

***

When Alex awoke, he heard a knocking at the door. He grabbed the kitchen counter to get off the ground because one of his legs had fallen asleep. Alex wondered what he was doing on the kitchen floor and then remembered the fight he had had last night with his dad.

Alex looked back at the spot where he had attacked the man who looked like his father only to see knives sitting on the dusty floor, perfectly clean, and the white walls weren’t even stained. How had the mess been cleaned up so fast?

Alex limped to the door on his half-asleep legs and opened it to see his middle-aged neighbor, Tonya, the only genuinely kind person at the funeral. She was also his mother’s best friend before she vanished from Alex’s life.

“Hi, Alex,” she greeted him and he noticed she was carrying a plate wrapped in aluminum foil. “I wanted to stop by and check in on you. I’m surprised you answered the door.”

“Well, I was down here,” Alex said, trying to sound casual but all he could keep thinking about was his father or the image of his father. 

“I just wanted to ensure you were okay since no one’s heard much about you. And I brought brownies for you.”

“Well, I’m fine,” Alex brushed her off and tried to close the door.

“But I heard screaming last night. Were you alright?”

“I was fine, thanks.”

“Then why were you screaming?”

“Just stressed,” Alex tried to shut the door again.

“Alex,” Tonya said, placing her foot in front of the door and forcing it open. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. But if you aren’t that’s fine, too. Your dad would be proud of you either way.”

His father would’ve thought that he had died in vain if he could see Alex today. Alex’s heart began to race rapidly out of nowhere. Now, he was hallucinating and having heart problems, too. Splendid. 

“Thanks, but I’m just fine,” Alex said, and there was a moment of silence between him and his neighbor. Alex could hear Tonya’s kids fighting down the street, and he knew her motherly instincts wouldn’t push her away without knowing if he was right.

“I could use a hug,” Alex sighed, but when the words left his mouth, they felt truer than he would admit.

Wrapping his arms around his neighbor, Alex shut his eyes and pretended it was his mother. When he opened them again, Alex pushed himself out of the hug.

“Do you see that?” Alex asked his neighbor, pointing a shaky finger down the street.

“See what?” She asked, looking around but still confused.

“How do you not see it?”

A distorted man about six feet tall stood at the end of the driveway. And he was cackling to himself, his face aimed at the sky, laughing soundlessly at the whole universe. 

The figure turned to Alex and gave a sinister smile. Alex realized the face wasn’t warped and it was not his dad. It was someone else with red slashes going through them. His clothes were stained and torn. He looked so very, very much like Alex. And that sinister grin the figure bore did nothing but grow and grow on the doppelgänger’s face.