DNR: Do Not Reply

“Jackie, what are you doing?”

Jackie barely heard Amber’s question.  She was buried in her phone.

“Jackie,” Taylor’s insistent tone finally snapped her out of her trance.

She looked up and retorted, “What?”

“What are you doing?” Amber repeated.  “Your face was turning red.”

“Oh, it’s just…,” Jackie huffed.  “It’s this dumb faraway_brain67.  They’re being an ass.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Taylor.  “What did they do?”

“If it’s cyber-bullying, you can report them to the website they’re on,” Amber added.

“They shared this post about this thing at school, and I commented on it saying they were being stupid and they just won’t back down,” Jackie growled.

“Ooh, be careful, Jackie,” said Amber.  “You don’t want the InterWeb Troll to get you!”

Jackie finally turned her attention completely away from her phone and stared at her friend.  Her narrowed eyes and open mouth communicated her bewilderment.

“The what?” she asked.

“Iiiii’m confused, too,” said Taylor.

“The InterWeb Troll!” reiterated Amber.  “You guys haven’t heard of this?”

Jackie and Taylor shook their heads.

“She’s this new thing going around,” said Amber.  Then she switched into campfire-story-telling mode.  “They say she’s a ghost who haunts the Internet.  Legend has it, this girl Amy was a high schooler like us who spent all her time on her socials having arguments with people in the comments.  She was so angry at everyone for so long that she went crazy.  She forgot to eat, and as she wasted away, getting angrier and angrier, her heart finally gave out and she died at her computer.  Now, whenever someone gets into a comment war—like, way too into a comment war—she reaches through your phone and takes away your soul.”

“What?” Jackie piped.  “Like they die?”

“No, they don’t die!” replied Amber.  “They go catatonic.”

“‘Catatonic’?” Taylor echoed.

“Yeah,” said Amber.  “They just stop talking.  Like someone turned their brain off and they don’t respond to anyone or anything around them.”

“Whoa,” said Taylor.  “Creepy.”

“Yeah,” Amber agreed.

“Really freaky,” said Jackie.  “But I don’t think—,”

Jackie’s phone dinged in her hand; faraway_brain67 had just left another comment.  Jackie scoffed in utter frustration and began pounding out an aggressive reply.

“Jackie,” Amber hissed.  “The InterWeb Troll!”

“It’s an urban legend, Amber,” Jackie replied without looking up.  “I’m not going to lose my soul to the InterWeb—what?  An ad!?”

How had an ad popped up on her phone when she hadn’t even been watching a video or browsing a website?  What was it even for?  It was this odd, blank room, lit with sharp fluorescents and white as a bleached sheet of paper.  The only color was the yellow progress bar at the very edge of her phone.  She couldn’t find the X to close the window, and no skip button ever appeared.

It was boring, too.  The only thing that happened was a teenage girl appeared in the middle of the room… she was almost as pale as the walls… and she watched Jackie through the screen with dead eyes.

Like she could see her.

Then she was sitting in front of Jackie, cross-legged on the floor of Amber’s room like the rest of them.  Jackie could only stare, terrified.

“Jackie?” Amber asked worriedly.

“What are you looking at?” Taylor added.

The girl—the ghost—leaned forward.  Jackie couldn’t move.

“You talk too much in places where people don’t listen,” Amy said.

Then she reached out and tapped Jackie’s forehead with a single finger.

Jackie took a short, sharp breath… then her face fell slack, her body stilled, and her phone fell from her hands.