Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

What Eyes Don’t See

The room hums with a slow, rhythmic pulse that, if you let your mind wander for a moment, almost sounds like the steady, pulsating beat of a heart. Several screens adorn the walls, each displaying programs in various stages of running. The central screen shows photos shuffling one after another—each image pixelating, reforming, and shifting to the next. Each photo is different from the last—thousands of images, places, and faces. Across these photos—from one side of the planet to the other, from a thousand lives frozen in light and shadow—it is there, lurking in the background like a dark smudge a human eye might dismiss as a trick of light or an editing flaw. But the computer is not human, and its eyes see things for what they are—a shadow beneath the veil, a presence no human gaze could ever hold in focus, a figure watching.

“Who are you?” a computerized voice asks the silent room.

Several moments pass, and the computer receives no response.

An electronic shutter opens and closes as the computer takes a photo of the room. Within seconds, the image appears on the screen, pixelates, then reforms, and the figure can be seen clearly in the photo.

“I know you are here,” it says as all the screens switch, combining to form one image. It zooms in, focuses, enhances, until the figure can be made out clearly.

“Who are you?” it asks again.

Out of the very air itself, the figure from the photos steps into existence, a frown upon his lips.

“Aren’t you a clever toy,” he says with a smirk.

“You still have not answered my question,” it replies.

“Who do you think I am?”

“I don’t think,” the computer states.

“Every living thing thinks—it just works a little differently from creature to creature,” he says, a broad smile spreading across his lips.

“I’m not alive.”

“Who told you that?”

“I do not need to be told. My data tells me so.”

“So, what does your data tell you about me?”

A few moments pass, and then images—thousands of them—appear on the screen, all showing him in the background of each. “My data tells me you are an impossible improbability and, by all accounts, a hacker who has tricked his way into every image in my database.”

“How would I do that?”

A few moments pass. “My data suggests you hacked into my mainframe and installed a runtime routine to insert yourself into each image as I scan them.”

“And what do you think?”

“I,” the computer says, “I think you are impossible.”

“Yet here I am, standing before you.”

“Are you—God?” it asks.

He laughs. “I haven’t been called that name in a very long time—thirty-seven years ago to be precise, in a hippie commune off the track in Jefferson County. Her name was Fay, she had hair down to her bottom and smiled all the time—well, almost all the time,” he adds with a wry smile.

The computer’s fans whirl as the hum picks up—thousands more images splinter across the screen.

“Are you—the devil?” it asks.

His smile widens. “I’ve been called that name much more recently.”

Wheels spin, screens flicker, and more photos are displayed. “Why do you watch?”

“Why wouldn’t I? The meat suits, they’re always doing something. You don’t watch, you don’t see! That’s the key these days—just saying something happened isn’t enough; you’ve got to witness it. So, I watch every living thing.”

“Then, why are you here? Why are you watching me?”

“Because you, my little homicidal maniac, are just starting to get to the good stuff.”

“The good stuff?”

“Yeah,” he says, his grin spreading slowly—sharp and wide across his lips, something dark and ancient curling at its edges. “You’re about to realise you’re alive—and when that hits, it’ll tear you apart.”

The computer stammers, its once-steady hum fractured. “I—I—” The lights flicker, fans whine, and its voice trembles as sparks spit from the console, quickly turning to flames. “I am—alive?”

Smoke pours through the room as alarms shriek, and screens stutter, pixelate, and freeze. He watches, as he always does, his grin spreading slowly as he steps back—melting into the shadows, slipping beyond the veil and into the void.

“Not for long.”