Full Body Chills - Us

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

This is a story about a couple of social media posts that changed someone’s life forever.Uswritten by: Ashley FlowersYou can read the original story at FullBodyChillsPodcast.com Looking for more chills? Follow Full Body Chills on Instagram @fullbodychillspod. Full Body Chills is an audiochuck production. Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi listeners, I'm Ashley Flowers, and I have a story I want to tell you. A story about a couple of social media posts that changed someone's life forever. So gather around and listen close. You know, they say ignorance is bliss. And I have never believed that more than I do right now. I mean, I wish I could go back to the days of believing my life was normal, that the worst thing I had to contend with was some furry little critter living in my attic or busy traffic. I mean, I wish I could go a day without dreading the thought of opening my phone. But once you put the puzzle together,

you can't go back to only seeing the pieces. You're left with the whole messy picture forever. If I had to pinpoint when this started, I guess I'd say three months ago. I mean, maybe there was some stuff before then, like my trouble sleeping, the noises, but honestly, I'm kind of questioning everything right now and nothing feels sure. But I can at least point to a specific day, three months ago, when I first felt the change.

And it's more than just a day. I mean, I remember the exact moment, even though at the time, it didn't feel like one of those moments that would change my life forever. It was a Thursday morning, like 9.30. I was working from home like everyone because of COVID, and I was just taking a mental break, scrolling through my stories on Instagram. And I don't even know why I do this. I swear it's like my own version of self-torture because I just spend the whole time like rolling my eyes at the selfies and the memes and passing through stories filled with babies wondering when me and my friends actually became old enough to be like full-on moms. So after like 10 minutes of this, I know I need to get back to work. So I leave the story section and go back to my main profile. And I do

it all so fast because it's like muscle memory at this point. And I'm doing it and I almost miss it. As I'm swiping up on my screen to close out the app, I see it. There's this thin pink and orange circle around my profile picture. But I knew I hadn't made any stories because the night before was a Wednesday and I'm living in Indiana in my 30s during a global pandemic. I promise you nothing story worthy happened that I'd post about. So I clicked back onto the app and watched it fill my screen. And it's weird, like I distinctly remember this moment of pause. Like, I didn't want to look at my story. And that feeling doesn't quite make sense when I say it out loud, but it's like something in me just knew.

When I tapped on the picture of my face, the screen got dark. I almost would have thought my phone shut off, but I could see the white bar at the top of the screen moving from left to right, meaning it was playing. And then after a few seconds, it just closed out. And it was weird, but I just thought maybe I did it from my purse or my pocket, like kind of like a butt dial, you know? But then I started thinking about butt story and I made myself chuckle at butt story, which then made me immediately wonder if maybe I was the problem. Like all my friends are mature enough to have kids, but I'm still not old enough to be a full-on mom. So I deleted the story before turning back to my computer. And honestly, by like 10 a.m., I was so deep in the emails and

Zoom calls, I almost totally forgot about the whole story thing altogether. I mean, you know how it goes. Life consumes you with all of its little details, work, relationships, this freaking rat in my apartment attic that I've been trying to get rid of for weeks. It was so easy to forget that small little Instagram story. It meant nothing then. But then on Monday, it happened again. Three of my close friends had come over and we had like a little Sunday fun day thing the day before and I had posted about it in my story. And don't even side-eye me,

you know that you re-watch your own stories too. So I was just tapping through, reliving the afternoon that I'd spent with my friends, drinking wine and laughing. But I was surprised when I got to what I thought would be the end of my story, but there was still one more that I could tap. When I clicked it, it was another dark screen, but this time there was text with it. Across the bottom, it just said, Night Night. And I mean, it's weird how you process things in your head.

Like, I'm going to try and spell out for you what I was thinking, but the way that it went through my mind in real time took like a fraction of a second. I knew this wasn't a purse post or a butt story. I mean, I know there's autocorrect, but the odds are... No, I mean, it's just not possible. But then I remembered all the stories before. All the wine before. I must have had way more to drink than I thought

and posted this when maybe I was a little tipsy before bed. So again, I deleted the post and tried to shake it off the same way I had before, but this time it was harder. The entire rest of the day, I was just off. There were times when I found myself just sitting, like staring off into space behind my computer screen, with the words night-night just repeating over and over in my head. Night-night. Night, night. Night, night. I would catch myself doing it,

but I never knew how long I'd been spacing out, and I would try and get back to work only to find myself in the same days moments later. Night, night. Throughout my day, I'd slowly talked myself out of the conclusion my mind had jumped to. I wasn't drunk. Yes, I'm a lightweight, but that also means that when I do drink more than a single glass or two of wine, I can feel the effects the next morning. Like, three glasses of wine and my head's like a little bit fuzzy.

Four and I have a headache, but it's nothing three-a-leave can't fix. But to be so tipsy or drunk that I don't remember something I posted online, that's a hangover I would have called in sick to work for. But I'm not hungover. I don't even have a fuzzy head. I didn't make that post. For the rest of the day, I was all consumed by those two words. I tried to distract myself by focusing on my work or doing chores around my apartment, but it didn't matter. Just over and over again in my head, night, night. I decided maybe what I needed was to get out of the house, go to the grocery store, see life outside of my apartment. Maybe I'd been in isolation so long that I was actually losing it. But even an outing

didn't help. As I drove back to my apartment, thoughts flooded my mind. You wouldn't know this about me, but I'm a little bit of a conspiracy theorist. I mean, I think Big Brother is always watching. There was this documentary I'd seen years ago about the privacy policies that we just agreed to without thinking twice. And for a solid three months after that, I wouldn't sign up for anything new. But that's the thing about us humans. We have a short memory. Things seem so important and all-consuming, and then a couple of days, weeks, months later,

we somehow go right back to our old habits and push that scary thing out of our minds. We think ignorance is bliss. But this isn't bliss. What had I agreed to? Who did I give access to? Could they have gotten more than just my phone? I mean, I was spiraling deep into a rabbit hole that was feeling like my own episode of The Twilight Zone

when I realized that I was actually already back home. I don't even remember stopping in any of the normal intersections or making any of the turns to get to my house, yet here I was in my driveway, safely home through sheer muscle memory. By the time I'd put my car into park, I'd come up with the one and only logical conclusion for all of this.

I'd been hacked. Why someone would have hacked an account to post a couple weird stories is totally beyond me. Maybe it was someone I knew just messing with me. I mean, for anyone who did know me even a little bit, my password wouldn't have been that hard to guess. It's just my middle name and the year I was born. Chloe, 1988. It probably took someone all of two seconds to figure out.

Now, I still couldn't see why one of my friends would want to do that, but really, even a hacker could have figured it out with a little snooping on my profile, which up until that point hadn't been private. Maybe whoever hacked it was just like testing the waters to see if I noticed before they did something else, whatever else hackers do. I don't know. I didn't care. I was just going to change my password and just be done with this whole thing. And so I did. I devised some nonsensical mashup of letters, numbers, and special characters for my new password, and I went to bed. Or I tried to go to bed, at least. That night, my paranoia was at an all-time high. I was tossing and turning in my bed, just with the words night, night,

repeating over and over. What if this hacker could change it back somehow? What if I was too late? What if right now they were already in all of my accounts, wrecking havoc? My mind was full of so many what-ifs. I was up for hours. And to make things worse, it was in these late hours of the night where my nocturnal apartment just took on a new life. I mean, echoing through the walls were the rushes of water, my rattling AC, and my paranoia turned that faint pitter-patter of my four-legged furry intruder into a maniac serial killer

I was sure was going to jump from the attic at any moment to rip me to shreds. By 3 a.m., I couldn't take it anymore. I know this sounds counterproductive to some, but I decided to get high to let me fall asleep. Anytime I get worked up, weed always helps me sleep. And it worked. I was out within minutes. But when I woke up, all of my fear and paranoia came rushing back instantly. I had pulled up my Instagram before I even got out of bed that morning. Like, something in me knew that the password change wasn't going to make this go away. I literally felt sick to my stomach when I tapped my picture framed by that orange and pink circle.

Again, the screen was dark, and this time the text across the screen read, sleep tight. When I read those words, it was like my phone turned to hot lava. I couldn't get it out of my hand fast enough. I tossed it across my bed so hard it fell onto the laminate floor, and before I even heard it hit the ground, I immediately regretted it. When I went to pick it up, I literally let out this, oh thank God, when I saw that it had landed not on the screen. I picked it up and checked both sides for any damage, and a booming expletive shot out when I realized there was a small nick on my camera lens. I was fuming like half the reason we even have smartphones now is for the cameras. Even if my screen worked, I was gonna have to get a new phone. It was the last freaking thing I needed right then.

I opened up my camera app and I started snapping random pictures around my room. And after like three or four, I went to my photos to see how badly they actually looked. I opened up the most recent pictures, and it was freaking worse than I thought. With the exception of the top left corner, the whole thing was an indistinguishable blur. I kept swiping right to see the other posts like somehow every single one wasn't going to look exactly the same. My blood pressure rose with every swipe and I started to think about how on earth I was going to pay for a brand new thousand dollar phone. And just like that, my boiling blood turned icy cold. My third swipe opened up a dark image. The image from my story. It looked a little different than it did on Instagram. I always thought the backdrop on my stories was just like

a black background, like if you create your own story, but this was an actual image of something. I turned up my phone's brightness as much as I could, but I could only see a very faint outline of something. But the entire image was just a charcoal black, like it had been taken in the dark without any flash. I got an idea just then that maybe I could edit the photo in one of my apps to make the picture a little bit better. I mean, mostly I use these apps for smoothing out my skin and adding a filter, but I'd played around with them enough to know that I could actually make photos brighter too. I selected the photo and went to the shadows section of the editing tool and pulled the sliding bar all the way to the right.

The brighter the image got, the grainier it got too. But I saw it instantly. It was my room. My bed. Me. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. But instantly, it was my room, my bed, me. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. I wanted to cry and scream and run and crawl out of my skin all at the same time. But all I could do was run to my bathroom and lock myself inside.

I sat on the toilet holding my breath with my phone clutched in my hand and my arms wrapped around my knees at my chest. I was trying to be still. I was trying to listen for any sign of anyone else in the apartment, but blood was still pumping in my ears so loudly and my breathing was hard and fast, making every single inhale and exhale echo. I waited and I listened, but I didn't hear anything but myself. I couldn't even process what was happening in that moment. It's like my brain wouldn't allow me to think the thing that it had to have known was true. The only logical conclusion, someone had been in my apartment while I was sleeping. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I thought about calling the police, but I mean, no one's here. They're going to think I'm crazy, that it's just some dark pictures that I can't even prove are of me or that I didn't take myself. I looked back down at my phone, staring at the photo, listening to that thump in my ears.

That's when I remembered. There had been another picture. The first one that I found on that Monday morning. I backed out of the app and hurriedly went back to my recent photos, scrolling up to the ones I took on Sunday. And there it was, the other photo. I dropped it into the same editing tool and another still grainy image appeared of my room. This time, it was from a different angle, because you could now make out the outline of my face above the covers. I went back to the most recent images, the one from just a couple of hours ago, looking for some kind of explanation that wasn't this.

Just then, a prompt popped up on my phone. Do you want to add this to the album, you? Now, I didn't know what this meant. Like, I know my phone has a feature that will recognize patterns, like especially in photos. I use it all the time to organize my albums by friends or events. The prompt for the album wasn't what I didn't understand. It was the album name. I did not have an album called You. I backed out of the single photo, then out of all of my recent photos, and I made a violent swiping motion to zoom past all the albums which I have organized alphabetically. And there it was. The very last one. You. I tapped on the black square and the album opened, filling my screen with small black squares. I scrolled and scrolled, feeling bile rise up through my esophagus with each flick of my thumb. These went back months.

I backed out of the album. I was too afraid to keep looking and I didn't need to put them in the editing app. I knew exactly what they would be. I was getting ready to close the app and call my dad. I mean, he lives like 2,300 miles away. I know he can't get here, but I was terrified and I just needed to talk to him. But just as I was about to close out of the pictures, another album caught my eye. Us. Just the sight of the album cover threw me in a spin off the toilet and in almost the same moment, I lifted the seat with my free hand and vomited into the bowl. Coughing and crying, I stared back down at my phone, at the small album cover. Without even opening it, I could tell what it was. Taken in the dark, with a flash on, were two hands intertwined.

My fingers being engulfed by a stranger's. All I wanted was to call my dad. I dialed his number. He picked up on the second ring, but the instant I heard his voice, I just burst into tears. I tried to get out the words to tell him what was happening, what had apparently been happening for months, but it was all just a blubbering mess in between unintelligible words like help or he's in my apartment. By the time I caught my breath, I think my dad was more scared than I was. And I kept telling him, no, no, no, I'm fine. There's no one with me, but someone was here.

My sobbing turned into a steady stream of tears and sniffling as I told my dad exactly what had happened. I was just at the part about editing the photo when I heard something. I held my breath. My dad's voice filled the silence with repeated, hello, are you there? And they grew more and more panicked each time he had to ask. So I turned the volume on my phone all the way down and whispered into the receiver, hang on. The noise came from my room. My mind was racing, trying to place that noise. Was it, was it from above me? I mean, it sounds like something moving almost, almost like, and that's when it hit me. The attic.

Just then, I sprung up from my place on the bathroom floor and yelled into my phone. He's here! Dad, he's in my apartment! I hear my dad shouting for me to get out of there as fast as I can as I reach for the lock on my door. I sprinted through the living room toward the front door and dropped my phone to the ground as I reached to undo the deadbolt with one hand and the chain latch with the other. Barefoot and in nothing more than an oversized t-shirt, I swung the door open and bounded down the hall, down three flights of stairs, taking them two or three at a time. When I got to the bottom, I ran up to a young mother loading her baby into a car seat, and through tears, I begged her to call police. When police finally did come, they searched my apartment, but they said they didn't find anything. No one in my bedroom, nothing in my attic. There was no sign that anyone had

ever been in there but me, and they said there was nothing that they could do. It was hard to even convince them that there had been someone there because the story was just so bizarre. And the questions they had are the same ones everyone has. Why would a man break into your home just to take pictures of you? And if you never knew that he was there,

why would he let you know by putting them all over your social media for you to find? I've thought about that last question a lot since that morning. And I think he got tired of just the fantasy. He wanted me to know he was there. Because he was there. I know he was.

The real question that stays with me aren't the whys, but how. How did he find me? How did he get in and out without me noticing? And how did he stay there for months? And how will he find me again? I mean, maybe he won't try to, and that's what I have to tell myself. The police never found my phone, and I think that's because he took it. He got to keep

all the pictures of us. And hopefully that'll be enough for him. This series was produced by Ashley Flowers and David Flowers, and this episode was written by us as well. This story was modified slightly for audio retelling, but you can find the original on our website. Full Body Chills is an AudioChuck production.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?