I saw myself on ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com

I didn't think much of it. I am very average looking, after all. And the website professes to be an AI that takes average facial features and mixes them together to create a new person. Besides, this website doesn't know every person in the world. It's not unreasonable to assume some of these people who "do not exist" actually do.

I live in the country and as a writer, my life is very solitary. I haven’t had much of a social life since my best friend, Camille, died. When she died, I became a recluse. Some may even call me a “hikikomori”--except I do sometimes leave the house, just to drive around and brainstorm ideas for stories. I always doubted my ability to write. I knew I was good, but was I good enough to be published? Camille was the only person who thought so.

I didn’t have a good home life. My parents were not supportive. Aside from verbal and emotional abuse over other unrelated things, they didn’t like my writing and told me it was a waste of time. Teachers made me hate English classes. But I loved writing. Creating worlds and people made me feel like I had control over something. Camille was the only person who would read my work and tell me she loved it. I published my first short story a few days before Camille died.

She had hung herself in her back garden. It was ruled a suicide, but because of bruises on her arms, I knew something else had to have happened. Camille wouldn’t do this. Not the Camille I knew. But there was no evidence pointing to murder, so she was buried with no closure. She was laid on a bed of pink carnations. It felt so strange seeing her just inches from me with no sign of life. She was heavily made up, but I could still see the rope burns and bruises around her neck--an image that still sticks with me. I went home after her funeral, and in my mind, all I could see were those rope burns.

I became depressed and stayed holed up in my house. Sometimes I wouldn’t touch sunlight for weeks at a time. I had nobody else in the world that I could talk to. I had sworn off social media by this time, with no interest in returning. I would talk to myself in the mirror sometimes. At least I knew my mirror image would stay and not drift off.

When COVID lockdown restrictions hit, I became even more closed off. The first two weeks were great, I got a lot of work done and submitted a lot of stories to literary magazines. But slowly my productivity began waning, and I found myself distracted by stupid internet rabbit holes. That’s how I came across ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com.

Refreshing the website time and time again, I saw so many pictures of people who looked like just anyone I could run into on the street and not even take a second glance at. Some of them even looked vaguely familiar, as if they had registered in my subconscious. I have dreams about people I don’t know all the time. But the mind isn’t intelligent enough to create a new face. So if you dream about a stranger, chances are, you have seen them in passing and the face file in the back of your mind registered an unconscious opinion of them.

I was refreshing mindlessly at a robotic speed when I was stopped by my own image staring back at me. It was definitely me, but not any picture I had ever taken. My heart jumped as I looked every detail over. Everything was perfect: The eyes, the hair, they even got the small scar under my left eye on point. It felt like looking into a parallel version of myself.

I laughed it off. “Wow, this thing really is good,” I said to myself, “that’s crazy.” And I continued refreshing until I fell asleep at my desk. But the next day was when things started getting a little odd, to say the least.

It first started when I tried to send an email to the publisher of a zine I was trying to get my poetry published in. The email would not go through. This isn’t uncommon. As I said, I live in the country and internet connection can be fickle from time to time.

I tried to have my groceries delivered to me, but the same thing happened. I resigned myself to the fact that my network was probably temporarily unavailable, and decided to brave the nearest convenience store for food.

As I drove in my car, something felt “off”--I can’t describe it. Like the ominous stillness in a green sky just before the tornado touches down. I felt something on the horizon. When I pulled into the parking lot, a car cut me off. “Hey!” I shouted, honking my horn. But they got out of their car and walked into the store as if nothing was amiss. I grumbled under my breath as I picked a parking slot slightly further away.

I walked down the aisles grabbing what I needed, and found people kept bumping into me and wouldn’t apologize. I knew this pandemic was bringing out the worst in people, but not even acknowledging the bump? People really were losing all common decency. I was already annoyed by the time I reached the checkout counter.

The girl behind the counter had her earbuds in, reading a magazine and snapping her gum. “Hey, excuse me?” I said, “I’m ready to check out.”

She didn’t move, just kept flipping through her pages, blowing small pink bubbles. I hated to be one of “those” customers, but after getting bumped and ignored by numerous customers, I was in no mood for this. I rang the bell on the counter. “Hey!” I shouted, “I’m ready to check out!”

She acted as if I wasn’t there. I was ready to throw my can of soda at her when I noticed a self-checkout stand on the other side of the entrance. “Thanks for nothing,” I couldn’t help but mutter as I grabbed my groceries.

I began scanning my items, when I heard the girl at the counter greet another customer who had just walked up. “Hi, you ready to check out?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You find everything okay?”

“You’re out of toilet paper.”

“I know, I hear McKinney’s has some though.”

I turned and looked at her. She seemed perfectly polite, why was she ignoring me though? I sighed impatiently and pulled out my wallet to pay for my goods...But there was nothing in my wallet.

“Are you kidding me?!” I howled. I knew for a fact I had my credit cards, ID, and cash in there. Where did it all go? It seemed unlikely that someone would rob me. My house was shrouded in trees, most people likely didn’t even know there was a person living there. Could it have fallen out?

I left my items there and checked my car. I looked under every seat, in the glove compartment, I even opened the trunk and searched. But there was nothing there.

Groceries could wait, I needed to call my credit card company and cancel my cards before someone cashed in ridiculously expensive purchases. I sat in the parking lot and dialed the number. But I just kept getting the busy signal. Frustrated tears stung my eyes, “Today just really is not my day.”

But there was nothing else I could do. I drove home and went to work editing a manuscript. But I could hardly think, it was like my mind had gone static. Everything I wrote felt like forcing myself to vomit.

The words started blurring together on the page, taking on the form of ants emerging from a hole. I pressed my finger down hard on the paper edges, drawing up blood. "Ugh," the pain drew me out of my dissociative trance. I noticed I had drawn over quite a bit of words, making smudges everywhere.

I reached into my desk and pulled out the Wite Out. The cap was crusted shut from not being used in such a long time. I really had to twist it to get it to open.

The lid popped off and a puddle of Wite Out dripped down my hand. I ran to the bathroom quickly to wash it off. It was hardened, I really had to scrub to get it to come off.

I removed the washcloth and looked at my hand. Not only was the Wite Out gone, but the skin it had touched was just...gone. I don’t mean that I had scrubbed down to the bone, I mean there was no bone or muscle or anything. I could see straight through. It was as if I had erased myself. My heart began racing.

I picked up my phone to call 911, but again, my call wouldn't go through. I realized I needed to act fast though. No matter how much I wanted to avoid going out in public, I had to go to the emergency room.

I grabbed my mask and ran for the door, passing the large hallway mirror. As I darted past, I looked at my reflection. It was the same old me that I saw every day looking into the mirror. But as I stared at my reflection, the glass cracked around my reflection’s eyes and began shedding small fragments of glass onto the floor. They were almost microscopic, but I winced at every nauseating “cling” that touched the wooden floor. My instinct was to run, but I stayed paralyzed as the mirror shed its glass at a steady, ever-growing pace.

I stumbled towards the door, but felt my body losing its velocity. The mirror had now shed every piece of glass caging my reflection, and instead of staring at my reflection, I was staring at a swirling black hole.

Something began to form amongst the pulsing darkness. I saw myself in a flowing white dress, red eyes, and covered in blood. A knife was gripped in my double's hand.

"Wh--what do you want?" I stuttered.

"Have you checked the web address?" Her voice was just like mine, but with a reverb bouncing off invisible barriers.

"What?"

"Check the address." She held the knife at me. "Do it now."

“Which web address? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know which one,” she said, “think.”

The only one I could think of was the only one I had visited last. I typed it in slowly “thispersondoesnotexist.com”

"404 Error: Website Does Not Exist."

"What?"

A small link was at the bottom.

"Did you mean thispersonneverexisted.com?"

A small cry escaped my throat as I shook violently.

"Go ahead," my double said, "click the link."

My shaking thumb hovered over it. "This...this is impossible," I cried.

I clicked the link and dropped my phone, screaming. The very first picture was me. Not an AI generated picture either. It was me--just a minute earlier--with translucent skin standing in my hallway in front of the mirror.

"No, no, no…" I cried, "it's not true."

In the mirror, my double was now standing side by side with Camille. The beautiful, ray of sunshine Camille that I loved. But I watched in horror as the light from her eyes slowly drained and she was seized by obsidian hands, wrapping around her throat. Her eyes glazed over and a feverish plume of red carnations burst from her mouth and eyes.

“Without Camille, no one will remember you.” My double said. “Camille may be gone, but she still has friends and people who love her that will remember her and keep her memory alive for years to come. What do you have? One puny story in a magazine no one will ever read. You’re just a freckle on the backs of everyone you know--unseen and un-remembered.”

“So my time here is done?” I cried, an odd calm overtaking me as I began to accept this fate of mine.

“Your time here ended a long time ago. Nobody reads what you write, nobody calls you, and nobody is going to come searching for you. You’re not real, and you never were.”

My double reached through the mirror, taking its dagger and slicing my chest open. But I felt nothing...no blood came out. She reached inside me and felt around.

"Totally hollow," she said with a derisive laugh. "And you were so confident that you exist."

"I do exist," I whispered to myself, "I exist, I exist, I exist." I continued muttering to myself as she pulled me inside the mirror, which closed up behind me.

I don't know what happened to the life I thought I was living before. But it was gone. I'm spending the rest of my days in a dark, silent room, being groped constantly by the obsidian hands of fate. I can’t be too angry or sad--I chose this the moment I decided to stay inside. With nothing to do but lie in a void and be fondled by disembodied hands, my mind often wanders back to the time I spent on what I thought was a life.

Who was I? Did I exist? Was anyone looking for me? Did I leave any mark? What happened to the words I wrote and the thoughts I recorded? What were they all for if not documenting my existence? If I no longer existed, what would happen to them? Is there not even one person out there searching for me? Was I always here, and the life I thought I lived was just a vivid dream--feeling as though it lasted years, but in reality was nothing more than a few seconds?

I guess now it doesn't matter.