Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

At First It Stole My Face

A short horror by Matthew Tonks

When anonymous images begin to show one man’s face with uncanny knowledge, the line between mimicry and possession thins. He watches the feed, and the internet seems to learn him—until smiling back at the screen is no longer just a mirror.

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His eyes widen, and the breath that escapes his lungs is jagged and splintered through his lips. He swallows uncomfortably, a grimace slicing across his face as he presses the mouse’s button—then again and again—pausing only for a few fevered moments before pressing it again and again.

Sweat cascades down his brow, and his stomach twists and turns into knots.

His finger trembles over the button as his eyes dissect the looping video before him, until he presses the button again and again, each click falling in time with the frantic beat of his heart. When he falters and hovers, his breaths catch and his heart skips a beat. Sometimes three. But never five.

Evan chews at the flesh around his fingernails, dragging the hard translucent shell of each nail between his teeth. He holds it there, stripping back its layers like a surgeon—but never biting, never tearing. Only playing. A nervous tic, almost calming. His eyes narrow, his nose scrunches. With a grunt, he shuts the monitor off.

“Enough, Michael. It was funny for a moment, but you’ve got to take a fucking breather. It’s just a coincidence, t—”

Michael grumbles, a grimace fluttering across his lips, before he turns the monitor back on.

“If it was all just a coincidence, it’d be one. Maybe two. Not fifty fucking thousand,” he spits, not even trying to tear his gaze from the glowing screen as each image flashes by with every click. “I—I—I don’t get it. I’m just me—boring. Nothing. Eighty-eight pounds of flab. No girls throwing themselves at me. So why the fuck me? Why was I chosen?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, obvi—”

“DON’T! You know what I mean, and you can’t argue with it. Facts are facts, and that—that is fact!”

He sighs. “Okay, what if, what if no one chose you? What if it’s something else that triggered this? What if it’s all AI? What if it sees something in you that others can’t? Something unique. Something it wants everyone else to see, so it’s making every image, every face, yours.”

“Y-You think this is all AI?”

“Yeah! I mean, that’s what you’re looking at—the images. They’re all AI-created. None of them are human-made.”

Michael’s brow furrows. “You think the computer’s trying to say something to me? That it knows something we don’t? I mean—everyone else knows, right? Everyone else’s seen the images, right? I mean, they must have. When I think about it—the people in the mall, the ones pointing—at least now I know what they were pointing at. Why I was their freak-show, their joke, their delight.”

Evan doesn’t have an answer. He just shrugs his shoulders and watches as Michael’s mind unravels in front of him. Then he catches his reflection in the screen’s glow, and a sea of sweat breaks across his brow. For a moment, he thinks one of the many faces lost among the thousands staring back is wearing his—until it shifts, replaced by another wearing Michael’s face.

Michael lets a stuttered breath escape, rolls his head on his shoulders, and closes his eyes for a moment. “The funny thing, the worst thing of all, is that they move like me. Some of them even talk like me, in my voice. They’re not just wearing my face. It’s everything. I—I saw one scratch his nose the same way I do when I’m nervous. That’s not random guessing. That’s precise fact.”

“I don’t think it is,” Evan whispers, leaning in close, his lips almost brushing Michael’s ear. “I think it’s learning you.”

Michael’s brow furrows, and he purses his lips. “W-What the fuck does that mean?”

“Like it’s been watching you. Listening. And now—now it’s showing you. Showing the world who it thinks you are. Or—”

“O-Or what?”

“O-Or maybe—what it wants you to become.”

Michael shakes his head, dragging in an exasperated breath. He grabs his nose and pulls it, clenching his teeth tightly, before his hand hovers over the mouse’s button again, trembling.

“W-What if it doesn’t just want to show the world your face—what if it wants to wear it? T-To become you?”

“Don’t say crazy shit like that. It’s not helping.”

“B-But what if, what if it’s true? What if it wants to become you? What if it’s learning—to become you?”

The screen flickers. A static line trembles across its centre, and then the screen is normal once again. But the images are all slightly different. Each image, each generated image of Michael, smiles—a wide, toothy smile. A bit too wide. And a bit too long. Almost like the distorted image isn’t sure what it’s supposed to be.

Michael’s mouth twitches. His jaw aches, and he feels as though he isn’t alone inside his own skin. The thought barely settles before he clicks the mouse, and another video begins to play.

“I—I think I remember this. This, this is actually me,” he stammers. Evan steps back, watching the video unfold in jittering, artificial motion.

“Y-Yeah,” Michael says as a grin curls across his lips, his voice swallowed by an endless mechanical echo. Evan’s eyes widen as Michael turns toward him, his skin tearing and splitting as the grin keeps stretching—too wide, too long, too sharp, too wrong.

“Yeah, that’s me. I-I-I remember that,” he stutters—yet the words don’t just escape his lips. They spill from the screen, from the thousands of faces grinning back at Evan.

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💬 Did this one echo?
Tell me—before it forgets your name.

—
Written by Matthew Tonks
→ Read more nightmares at mtonks.com

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