Screentime - Full Story

Section Eleven - BlueBird Part One

Twitter is my everyday life, and every single second seems to revolve around this app of pure hatred. With recent events about Elon, I wanted to stand by and watch as Twitter gets destroyed. It would destroy half the internet as we know it, as people wouldn't have a place to go to share their opinions other than Hive, and from what I've heard, Hive is much worse than Twitter. That's why I, Ethan, am staying on Twitter. This world is mine and I'm always talking to my friends and making new friends with common interests. Some things I enjoy is playing video games, my favorite being Slender: The Arrival. It gives a new perspective on gaming and is what I believe to have woke up the sleepy Creepypasta community. I much love horror games, they spark an interest in me I yet have to figure out why. This community was my home for comfort and stability. It wasn't just horror that interested me, when I wasn't online I was looking at things about the ocean. I absolutely love how dark and mysterious the ocean is. Going to college for it was the one thing that made me happy in life. The ocean waves, the animals, it was all so intriguing to me. I also quite liked birds as well and went birdwatching in my free time. Sounds boring, I know, but I absolutely love hearing the birds chirping and how peaceful it gets when no one else is around. Just you and nature. This however changed everything for me.

August of 2022, I was chilling in my room on my phone and saw the time, I had to go to my college class or I'd be late. I didn't want that. College is for nerds is what the jerks at my high school would tell me. Some idiot named Jack. But overall Jack was nice. He had a girlfriend who was also very sweet. But nonetheless, I was dragged into his friend group after a few days of us talking. He seemed way too nice and somewhat scared of me because he saw how addicted I was to the internet. Jack was able to send chills down anyone's spine when near them. This usually only happened when ghosts were nearby or passing through. However. this felt different. This felt like he was the ghost if anything. But, how could that be true?

Jack and I shared a college room together, which was funny because he said he never wanted to go to college and called it lame. Turned out, he and I were going for the same thing at the same exact times, which we thought was funny and cool. He and I decided we would both help each other where and when needed. We were there for almost a year already, and word had gotten around about some Creepypasta known as Screentime. Knowing I hadn't ever heard of this, I was overall confused and scared. Some people said it actually happened.

Leaving my dorm room, I walked down the hall and on the walls were what looked like Tweets saying "Screentime is real! Luxury is back! Hide yourselves!" and "I hope it doesn't happen to Twitter, I'll go insane if it does." These Tweets were all made from users in the campus and I felt like it was pointing towards me, which I thought was strange. How could an innocent Creepypasta story be actually true? What that even possible?

As I entered my college class, which was for marine biology, obviously. Jack followed right behind me, out of breath. Logging into Twitter, I saw it was much worse than it already was. Jack looked at my screen with an expression of terror and saw all that was happening. Screentime had been trending on Twitter, with over 10,000 tweets an hour. People were saying that they found him or saw him with voce recordings of him or them going outside and finding him. Jack hugged me tight and whispered "He's here..." to me. I looked down, the presence being much heavier than before. "I don't want you ending up like him..." I shook my head. That's when we heard a voice screaming down the hall Dan Bull's war cry.

In the room appeared a new student with an upbeat personality. This person immediately looked over at me and began asking so any questions, it felt so overwhelming to me. Slouching over my textbooks and groaning, the new student introduced themself as Onyx, and that they use they/them pronouns and are nonbinary. I was no expert on gender, but being nonbinary seemed to make them happy. Jack groaned and seemed angry. Onyx laughed as Jack screamed in anger. I finally had a new friend.

We found Onyx would be sharing a room with us and we thought that was totally fine. Onyx is a nice person after all, so why not? When we got to our dorm later, Onyx slipped on a Y/N hoodie from the game Your Boyfriend. They said they were obsessed with the game, especially since Y/N is nonbinary and Peter is pansexual, much like themself. I however, told Onyx that I had no interest in love at all. Already knowing I was asexual, I told Onyx that since they seemed up-to-date on that. Slouching a bit, they said that I'm aroace, meaning aromantic asexual. I had no time or desire for love or anything like that. I just wanted it to be me, myself and I. Looking at Onyx and seeing they were upset, I asked what was wrong and they immediately told me they liked me. They were so honest and never hid their feelings. This I liked about them and found interesting. The rest of the night we spent playing Uno while eating Subway that Jack had bought off of UberEats.

Later that night, my phone kept buzzing more than a mom's does when she joins a Facebook group for Facebook moms to share Minion memes. Looking at it, people were tagging me in a Tweet, saying I had found Screentime, when that wasn't true. They said I was somehow connected to it. Trying to respond to every single Tweet, I was literally sucked into my phone.

Looking at myself and the app around me, I had on a baggy black hoodie and my hair was blue. The tips were a faded cyan color and I appeared to have wings and a bird-like structure. I was... a blue jay? Huh? This was confusing. My eyes, a pink color and my beak, a pure white. The rest of me was normal blue jay colors however. I had on a pair of short shorts and on my head was a pair of headphones. Looking around the app for answers, Screentime was everywhere. A number appeared on a small hologram aside of me. 9841 was the number. This sounded like Screentime. Managing to find a window, I looked out of it and saw a strangeoly familiar Starbucks. Being an avid Starbucks enjoyer myself, I went down to investigate and found this was the same Starbucks. Entering, I ordered a small pumpkin spice latte and a cookie. The cashier laughed and said that Screentime ordered a cookie every now and again, and they smiled and handed me the order.

I needed to find a way out of the internet, and fast, but the number and the Tweets kept following me wherever I went. I could never escape it and I wanted out of there as fast as possible.