Hunting for Fill Ups

I was at this guy Aidan's house to play music.

Johnny said we should keep an eye on him cause he was posting a lot, but I think he was just horny. He talked really serious about making a band. I didn't wanna practice more than once a week though. Yeah his songs were kinda good. But we were always drinking beers and smoking blunts at practice.

Why bother rowing the ship when the anchor's still dropped?

Aidan was always complaining about the ungrounded power outlets in his house, and how the guitar would shock him sometimes.

I thought it was just some nerdy whine, but then I heard a voice coming from his amp one day.

It sounded like a military communication that we weren't supposed to hear.

"Proceed to our fill ups. The quake is vicinity limited to Shaker for forseeable future."

Aidan noticed it and told us to stop talking.

"He's not coming to the drop location," a stern male voice said through the static. "We'll be unable to complete acquisition this cycle."

"What was that you guys?" Aidan asked, looking stoned with a sheepish grin. "Is my amp picking up ham radio because it's ungrounded or something?"

"That was creepy bro!" I said in response. "Did you hear him say my name?"

"What? He said Dan?" Aidan said.

"My last name, bro. Phillips. He said my name!"

"Oh, I didn't notice," Aidan said.

"Bro...you're geeked...how did you not hear that?"

Aidan giggled.

"I'm so high right now. Let's play 'City Living' again."

So we practiced more, and I didn't talk to Aidan about the voice for years.

***

A few months later, I started seeing text messages in my sleep. It was like having my phone screen in my head.

I wouldn't have thought about it much, but the conversations were really weird and got weirder.

"Resentient bot in U. Initiate Hts fill ups."

"MR"

"Presence confirmed in Cal."

Was what I remembered that morning.

That went on for a while. Every morning I would catch a little piece of some weird conversation in my head. I thought it was cool at first, because it was like being in a spy movie.

Then the videos started.

Before I woke up one morning, I had a dream that one of my friends showed up to my house wearing a slutty cheerleader outfit. When she walked in, we started kissing, and I made her put her mouth on my penis.

I don't know why I did it...it was like I was watching a movie through my own eyes. I slapped her and jammed my penis down her throat until she gagged and threw up. Then I grabbed her by the hair and made her lick the puke off the floor.

I woke up with a sick feeling in my stomach, a tear under my eye, and a sticky wet feeling in my underwear.

I promised myself that I would never watch porn or jack off again.

The next morning, the text messages in my head made even less sense than usual.

"AL58"

"Hill My Er."

"ad E not"

"Our fill, his hell"

"Total muggle death"

"Agreed, total muggle death"

"Initiate U Jen"

Then I had to watch another video. In this one, I made my friend who looked like a beautiful blonde princess drink my pee out of a dog bowl.

I woke up crying.

I brushed my teeth and tried to have a good day. It wasn't a good day.

I stayed up until 5 a.m. that night, playing video games. I tried to forget about what might happen in the morning.

Before I woke up, I saw a really long text message hover in my mind.

"Wanna be even more sad? Thousands of men beg me every day to be able to do that to women. They're subhumans. You should kill them all."