How had the blood pooled this much without anyone noticing? Had everyone just assumed it was some kind of April Fools joke and ignored her?

Someone in the crowd screamed.

No, she hadn’t gone unnoticed. She literally hadn’t been there before. He was sure of it. The girl on the ground hadn’t been there even a second earlier.

Tristan realized this hours later. The moment he found himself in front of the girl’s body, he just kept thinking that he should have never left his apartment.

He should have ignored that message and stayed inside.

It was the previous morning that Tristan woke up to the message in his inbox.

“Who the hell’s trying to talk to me this early?” He rolled over in his bed, taking his phone off his nightstand. “It’s only 11:30.”

He sat up, looking at the phone display. After scrolling through the main screen, he finally clicked a blue icon marked ‘Clock Link’.

The message was from New Universe, his girlfriend. Well, okay, she wasn’t his girlfriend. Who was he kidding? She could be a forty year old man for all he knew.

New Universe: “Can we meet in person? I know it’s only been a couple of weeks, but the truth is that there’s something I want to tell you about. Plus, I really want to see you in real life. I know we’re both embarrassed to send pictures, but I bet you’re really cute. Could you meet me tomorrow? Maybe we could meet at Peace Café downtown?”

Tristan hung his head. “Why does it have to be outside?” He leaned his head back, looking up at the ceiling. He would have to go out sooner or later. Maybe he should just take the plunge.

“Okay, let’s meet there at 3:00,” he clumsily typed out.

He moved over to his computer. He went to the History Girls community page, and opened up the member-only chat room.

HistoryGirls99:“Guys, she wants to meet in real life.”

DarkSkyz: “The girl that has the busty Abraham Lincoln profile picture, right?”

HistoryGirls99: “Yeah.”

DarkSkyz: “She’s got shit taste. School girl Theodore Roosevelt is where it’s at.”

Jaden Porter: “Dude, a girl interested in History Girls? Yeah, right.”

He had a point. After all, what kind of woman wanted to learn how to play a card game depicting the battles between historical figures represented by cute teenage girls, exactly? If there had been girls like that at his university, he would be out there in the wide-open world dating them into oblivion.

HistoryGirls99: “Well I’ll never know unless I go.”

DarkSkyz: “Any pictures of her on her profile?”

HistoryGirls99: “None.”

DarkSkyz: “Not even any that her friends tagged her in?”

HistoryGirls99: “Nope.”

Jaden Porter: “Then it’s a guy, bro.”

HistoryGirls99: “Oh, shut up.”

Jaden Porter: “You need go OUTSIDE to meet girls, loser.”

Tristan scoffed. Jaden was one to talk when his profile was littered with photos of Sadie Quasar, a singer and model who had gotten famous through Clock Link. Jaden had never even met her, but talked like the two of them were going out.

“You just go to your little high school every day like a sheep. Doesn’t matter how many girls are in your class or how many you pass when you walk down the street,” Tristan mumbled to himself. He wanted to type it out, but held back. “You’re living in a fantasy world, you pig.”

Talking to them was a stupid idea. It wasn’t like any of them had experience with women anyway.

For a moment, he sat quietly before noticing his own reflection in his computer screen. The face looking back at him was like a skeleton’s. Well, he supposed that everyone’s face was that of a skeletons’, but that was beside the point. What if she was way out of his league?

Another message appeared in his inbox.

New Universe: “Yay! I can’t wait to finally see you!”

He sighed, running his hands through his hair. It was starting to get shaggy. If he was meeting her tomorrow, he would have to give himself a trim first. He typed a message back.

HistoryGirls99: “Yeah, I’m excited too.”

New Universe: “Oh, by the way! John Doe posted something interesting yesterday.”

HistoryGirls99: “I’m following his page too, actually. He’s always posting weird stuff.”

New Universe: “You already saw?”

HistoryGirls99: “I don’t think so. What is it?”

New Universe: “It was about the six degrees of bacon.”

HistoryGirls99: “Bacon?”

New Universe: “No, wait, that wasn’t it! Anyway, it’s a really cool idea!”

HistoryGirls99: “What is it, exactly? Some kind of cooking thing?”

New Universe: “No no no, it’s the idea that everyone is connected to each other through a chain of relationships.”

HistoryGirls99: “Okay, you mean the ‘six degrees of separation’.”

New Universe: “Yeah, that! We’re linked to each other through a friend of a friend of a friend! Or something like that!”

HistoryGirls99: “I think I remember seeing his post. I didn’t really get where he was going with it.”

New Universe: “I like it… That we’re linked that way.”

HistoryGirls99: “Where did you get ‘bacon’ from?”

They continued talking until five, when she always got off for the rest of the evening. He wondered if maybe she worked nights, although he supposed it was possible that she talked to him through her phone while she was at work. Either way, she had a schedule to keep to.

Schedule? He couldn’t even remember what having one of those felt like. Staying on the computer all day was easy for a 23-year-old unemployed college drop out. It also helped that he hadn’t left his apartment in almost a year.

“Maybe I should just ask her to come over instead.”

He looked around his room, taking in the empty potato chip bags, dirty clothing and cardboard boxes that had contained his online purchases. Some were still filled wth clothing he had never bothered wearing, while others were of the pizza box variety.

The floor was nowhere to be seen. Truly, it was a magnificent kingdom of trash. He was a king among rats, he thought.

Somehow he didn’t think his apartment would impress her. Plus, inviting a girl over to your apartment that you’ve never met in person was a surefire way to freak her out. He gave up on the idea.

Tristan let out a long sigh and got up from his bed, heading over to the window. Blinding beams of light shot out from between the drawn blinds.

They were only thing keeping him from the piercing gaze of those outside. In reality, there was little chance that someone would see him looking out his window on the third floor, but he couldn’t help feeling nauseous.

The idea of being seen by so many people at once made his skin crawl. In his entire year shut in, he had only found the courage to look out his window a handful of times, and when he did, it was always at nighttime.

Finally, he managed to look between them. His eyes took time to focus, but the street outside came into view. The crowd below moved like a river, the flow of which never ceased. He felt dizzy, but he fought the urge to look away.

In front of his apartment was a convenience store, which he often paid to deliver snacks when he craved them. Part of the stream of people branched off, gushing in and out of its automatic doors. Through the mass of black suits, he spotted a pair of girls walking close by one another.

Both were slender with pale skin, but what caught his eye was their hair extending from their ski caps. It was long, and dyed bizarre colors: one blood red, while the other a dark blue.

Those have to be wigs, he thought. Maybe they were dressed up like video game characters?

The city was strange. In fact, it had a reputation for it. Whether this was because strange people flocked to it or if it was the city made them that way was debatable. In any case, seeing the two girls somehow brought him a sense of relief. He was just a normal guy, if a little skinny. He wouldn’t draw attention as long as people like them were out and about. With that in mind, his resolve grew strong.

He spent the rest of the night touching up his bangs, and attempting to do some exercise. After managing to do five pushups in a row, his confidence was through the roof. If he was going to meet her, it was now or never.

Leaving his apartment in the first place proved to be the difficult part. The next morning, he started by just opening the door without going outside. He was used to opening the door to bring in packages, so this wasn’t a problem. Taking a step outside wasn’t so bad, either. Closing the door behind him seemed to be the main problem. As long as it was open, he felt like he was still connected to the inside in some way.

“Damn,” he said. “So bright out here.”

Next, he started worrying about how he might smell, which resulted in him taking three showers in a row. Maybe his clothes were too baggy. Maybe his hair was still too long. It was getting close to 3:00, and he was going to have to leave soon if he wanted to make it on time.

His final solution was to tie a piece of string to the doorknob. This way, he could pull it as he walked away without having to see it close. This would work. When he heard the click of it behind him, he panicked. This wasn’t going to work at all!

Or that’s what he thought anyway, before realizing he had left his key inside. Since he hadn’t left in a year, the fact that he even owned a key had completely slipped his mind. He started pounding on the door frantically.

What the hell was he doing? He lived alone.

He would have to talk to the landlord that night to get his door open. For now, he had no other choice but to head to the café. Leaving the apartment behind, he started down the streets of downtown Portland.

Looking at his phone, he realized the date. April 1st. Great. This better not be some kind of joke.

And after that, he found himself standing in a pool of blood. People all around him broke into chaos as they discovered the slaughtered girl beneath their feet.

She was young; maybe 16 or 17, and her clothes must have been white because they were stained completely red. Her head was cocked to the side, with her hand outstretched toward him.

Then it was all a blur. People screaming. Sirens. Running. His apartment building. A pile of packages at his doorstep.

Tristan let himself drop to the ground. His body trembled as he felt a wave of nausea wash over him.

“What if that was…” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “What if she was…”

No, that was impossible. Then again, what had just happened to him should have been impossible as well. Whatever the case, he needed to get inside. Get inside and never come out again.

As he tried to get back up, one of the packages by his door caught his eye. It sat on top of the others with large red words stamped over it. It had no return address, and the sender was left blank.

The stamp read: “OPEN IMMEDIATELY.”