"Save Him"

 I grabbed my phone by my bedside and turned the screen on. It was almost refreshing to have a hint of light shining through the darkness of my bedroom. It was yet another sleepless night and I was struggling to fall asleep. I saw no new notifications, so I unlocked it and went straight to watching some videos online. They were nothing too interesting. A mix of theory videos and gameplay for games I'd seen people play a million times. There was nothing new.

That's when I saw a new notification pop up on my screen. It was from an app I'd never heard of. It read, 'Can't sleep? Try this!'

Out of curiosity, I tapped the notification.

I half expected something to happen but there was nothing more than my phone screen turning black. I waited for a few seconds, believing that the app must be loading. I didn't exactly have the best phone in the world. It usually lagged when loading up the most basic of things. I'd been considering upgrading it, but I hadn't felt like doing so for a while. I do what I normally do in my life and just live with it.

With the screen still black, I was about to close the app. But that's when I heard something. A noise faintly coming from my phone. Was someone breathing? Were they screaming through static? It was so hard to tell what exactly I was hearing, but I knew something was there. But still, the screen was black. Or was it?

Just to test something, I turned the brightness all the way up on my screen, hoping something would reveal itself. To my surprise, I saw the close up of a face staring back at me. Their head was taking up the entire screen. I nearly dropped my phone and screamed from the sudden jump scare of the face.

What was this?

"Do you want to play a game?" I saw the mouth moving on my phone as a robotic voice rang through the speakers.

"What is this?" I asked, freaked out. I tried to swipe away, to close the app, but my phone wasn't responding. I even tried turning the phone off but the screen remained as it was.

In response to my fear, the robotic voice laughed at me. An evil cackling that still echo through my head to this day. Again, it repeated its question, "Do you want to play a game?"

My heart was thudding against my chest. I shook my head.

"Too bad!" it rasped at me, it's voice cold and sinister. It's face vanished from the screen and was replaced by a black and green video feed. It looked like my brother's room. The room was bare, safe for my brother who looked to be asleep in his bed, laying on his side. Why was there a camera in his bedroom?

Everything about this felt wrong. I had to look away from my phone. I put it down, but as soon as the phone left my hand and touched the bed upside down, an ear-piercing shriek rang out through the speakers. I jumped and scrambled to pick the phone back up. As soon as I looked back at the screen, the sound stopped. My heart felt as if it was about to explode out of my chest. What was this?

I heard a soft squeak coming from the speakers. Then, the closet door swung open softly. Emerging from the darkness was a tall, slender figure. It looked up at the camera with a twisted smile. It was the same face that was on my phone before. I heard its robotic voice. He uttered 2 words. "Save him."

I saw the man running straight for my brother. Immediately, I darted out of my bed and sprinted to my brother's room. His screams rang out down the hall. As quickly as I could, I swung the door open. But it was too late. The room was empty.

Behind me, the hall lights flicked on, forcing me to squint as my eyes adjusted. I heard a voice behind me. My dad.

"What's wrong?" he asked, tiredness leaving his voice groggy. "Did something happen to the guest bedroom?"

The guest bedroom? But this was my brother's room.

Pushing the door open further, I didn't see any of his things on the walls. No clothes strewn about the floor. The room looked so bare. I had a brother. Didn't I?

"Nothing, dad," I said slowly, trying to process what had just happened. I looked down at my phone and nothing was odd about it either. No camera feed, nor weird app. Had I dreamt all of this?

My father and I went back to bed as if nothing had ever happened. And in the dark void, a void where nobody could hear him, the brother that had been taken, continued to scream.