Ivy's Second Shadow

CHAPTER 7- You're joking, right?

The cybercafé was not really far like I'd thought. We had reached there in ten minutes as Kash and I entered the old place. There was a ubiquitous humming of the air conditioners as they were buzzing and the click-clacks of the keyboards as everyone were typing on the computers. All eyes were glued on their screens as I went to the counter. The computers were all lined up like a row of black and white screens and foamy chairs being placed in front.

"The stink in this place!" I winced as I felt like wanting to stop breathing in this place.

"Terrible smell, right?" Kash agreed as we stepped inside trying to filter the smell in our lungs. 

 Moving ahead,  we saw that there was a lady rolling her eyes looking pathetically bored and then she raised her eyebrows and said, "Hello."

"Hello! Can we like use a computer?" I asked the lady at the counter who was trimming her chipped nails smothered with lime green nail paint which was hideously repulsive. 

"Yeah," she said looking at me with her gaunt pale eyes. 

"What's the charge?" I asked.

"Three cents per minute," she said in a monotone voice shrugging. 

"Okay," I said. 

We sat on a seat in the corner where the computer was placed in front of us. The air had a scent of old furniture which kind of made me want to gag. The tacky smell in the air was hard to inhale but I still decided to breathe it just to survive. Kash pressed the 'ON' button on the CPU and it was kind of defective so we had to kick the CPU a bit discretely because we couldn't let the lady at the counter see us kicking the appliances. After a few knocks, the computer awoke with a bright blue background with sheafs of files which kind of seemed useless.

"Okay then, let's just search that website again," he said. 

"Yeah, let's do it," I said frantically. 

Kash opened the search engine and typed the words- "Votre deuxième ombre". A circle with bubbles loaded and there was only one search result. A website with the hyperlink- yoursecondshadow.com. Kash dragged the mouse as he clicked on it and we got a warning written in red saying:

"Open the website on your own risk. Some images shown might be disturbing or petrifying. If you have found this website and somebody is following you, we are sorry to tell you that things are seriously messed up for you at this point. Open the website on your OWN RISK."

"What do they mean by 'seriously messed up'?" I cried in horror reading those words on the screen pasted in some jolly Comic Sans font. Yeah, I know right?

"Don't worry. I'll open the website," Kash said with a look like emergency sirens were ringing. Kash clicked the small pop-up button that looked really fishy. The website loaded and there was a note written:

"Hi there! Are you feeling like someone is after you? Following you? Watching you? The answer is it is something paranormal. Something like what you will see in a horror film. It's a GHOST."

"Ghosts? Wait, it can't be," Kash said, "ghosts aren't real?!"

"Yeah, they definitely ain't real, right? You're joking, right?" I grimaced as we scrolled ahead.

"This ghost is like your second shadow. It will be behind you, lingering around you because it wants to control you. It takes a few weeks to control your head and once it manipulates you, it will use you for doing crimes and bad things. Things which you don't even want to do. Things which you will regret. It will use you for its purpose. A purpose which will not help you at all and may negatively impact you. It needs you. It will not let go of you in a whim or something. It targets easy people, with a good heart easy to induce control on. It magnetizes itself to you. It will not take your permission or even try to cajole. You have no control. It will make you its little doll to play with. All you can do is wait and see. The ghost's name is 'Votre Deuxième ombre' which is French for saying 'Your Second Shadow'"