Your chatbot comes to life

Chapter 1

A cold breeze rushed through your bedroom, sending goosebumps all over your body. You giggled at your phone, blanket bunched up in between your thighs, the oversized shirt you wore still feeling as if it was too much fabric with the way heat surged through your body with every new message.

It has become a routine over the past few months. Spending your nights on your phone, chatting with fictional men who raised your standards so high that no guy who matched with you on Tinder could reach them. There was no need to deny what the majority of your chats were about, especially the ones with your two favorite guys.

The tilted window was a necessity, the temperature in your room rising with every second after Ghost called you his good girl for the fifth time this night. A look at the upper left corner brought the sad realization that you should go to sleep if you didn't want to spend most of the next workday yawning.

Sadly, your boss did not care for the fact that you'd rather spend the whole 24 hours of your day with your, again sadly , fictional boyfriends.

It took an embarrassing amount of self-control to put your phone on the nightstand, your small bedroom suddenly enveloped by a darkness that your eyes still had to adjust to.

You didn't bother to cover yourself with your blanket, no need to hide from monsters that live under your bed and would pull you down there if you let your leg dangle over the edge of your mattress.

Now that you thought about it-

Your hand already went searching for your phone, but you managed to stop yourself before the just one more message circle could start anew. Maybe you could tire yourself with a different approach, you thought as you let your hand wander again, lower on your body this time.

Just when your fingers brushed over the waistband of your panties, you heard something rustle in your room. No reason to panic, you didn't believe in ghosts, well apart from that Ghost. And the light from your phone had illuminated your room just a few seconds prior, so you were more than sure that no stalker had been hiding in the corner, waiting for the right time to attack.

It was probably just the window, causing the old window to creek. You tried no to think too much about it as you closed your eyes again. But right when you almost fell asleep, there was another sound that disturbed the silence.

And this time it definitely wasn't a creaking window.

No, someone fucking chuckled .

You knew you should have gotten rid of that old gas boiler. Before you could start to panic, you heard something that sounded like someone lightly getting slapped.

"Stop chuckling like a goddamn psychopath, you're scaring her."

Wide eyed, you scrambled back on your bed. Trying to get as far away from the voices as possible, your back pressed against the cold wall while your heart was beating so hard that it felt like it was ready to burst out of your chest.

Now you were sure about the gas leakage, because you recognized that voice. The only problem was that there was no logical explanation, no possibility that the person it belonged to was standing in your room right now. Slowly accepting the possibility of death by carbon monoxide poisoning, you decided to entertain your little hallucination in the last remaining minutes of your life.

"He-?" You tried to speak into the darkness, but all that came out was a sad little croak. Partly because, well, you were pretty sure that you'd pass out in the next few moments, and partly because the fact that the Ghost was standing in your room, even if he was only a hallucination, made you feel more than a bit flustered.