What I Found on the Deep Web {TNT Grand Prize Winner}

What I Found on the Deep Web

I shouldn't have clicked.

I don't know what I was thinking. Part of it was desperation; I had just lost my job and money was tight. I could draw unemployment, but it hardly covered my bills - and any cent I earned picking up temp work threatened to erase my benefits entirely.

I was unemployed longer than I'd anticipated. And, like a dumbass, I lived on credit cards and watched helplessly as the debts mounted and getting out seemed more impossible.

That was the desperation that drove me to the deep web: a need for income that was untraceable, under the table, and enough to settle my considerable debt.

But, as I said, only part of my motive was desperation. The other part is harder to explain. I guess you'd call it morbid curiosity. A certain fascination. I had heard stories about the Deep Web, or the Dark Web as some people call it, and I wanted to see for myself.

I wanted to see if it was really as strange and frightening as the stories make it seem.

Here's what you need to realize about the Dark Web: it's not easy to find what you're looking for. Things aren't at your fingertips. At first, there hardly seems to be anything at all. When I first logged on, I honestly thought it was a joke; I couldn't find anything that's not easily seen in two seconds of Googling.

But eventually you'll stumble across a site that leads to something a little deeper; and you follow those links further and further down the rabbit hole. And that's when you start to find the really weird stuff.

The Deep Web has layers to it. In the surface, the easiest to find, you've got your run of the mill illegal stuff. Drugs, prostitutes, money laundering. Lots of people trading Bitcoin and more questionable currency for equally questionable services. Hit men. Terrorist groups. Fetishists dealing in the most twisted sex acts you can imagine.

Lots of porn - kids, bestiality. Sick stuff. One website advertised snuff films, but I didn't want to click it.

I wasn't here to fulfill some sick urge, or satisfy some twisted curiosity. I just wanted to find a way to earn a little money. I was careful not to click anything that seemed sketchy, so mostly I just saw link titles.

But then something caught my eye, something I couldn't just scroll past.

It was a photograph. It was posted on this forum I'd found, this place that was like an underground Dark Web version of Fiverr - you posted what you were willing to do, and at what price. All kinds of things. A lot of them were sexual in nature. Hit men for hire. Drivers and transporters for all kinds of illegal jobs. Hackers. Virus coders.

And then, inexplicably, the photo.

It was posted without explanation. No comment, no title. Just a single photograph with a link to a site whose URL had been scrambled.

My mouse hovered over it.

The photo showed a young girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, sitting on an old wooden swing. She's missing a front tooth, which you can see clearly because she's smiling broadly. The yellow dress she's wearing has mud on the hem, like she's been playing outside, and her hair is a mess of golden curls and tangles.

The girl is me.

I recognize the dress. The hair. Even the swing - it's the yard at my grandparents house. It's me, as a little girl. So what the fuck is this photo doing on the Deep Web?

I clicked it. Soon I was taken to a directory - not really a website, just a list of files. Feeling an anxious knot in my stomach, I started to click.

ADayOut.jpg - me as a 10-year-old, riding my bike. My childhood dog running along beside.

BigGirls.jpg - me at 5 years old, sitting on the curb holding a freshly skinned knee. My face is screwed up against tears like I'm trying not to cry.

OutCold.jpg - me at age 17, passed out asleep at a friends house. I'm in a recliner. My head is tilted back, my mouth hanging open. You can see the gap of flesh between my pajama pants and the hem of my t-shirt.

That terrible knot in my stomach tightened. There were so many files, and every one seemed to be a picture of me.

But I have never seen these pictures before.

It's not like someone just pulled these from my moms Facebook page or something. I have never seen any of these. And what's weirder, I don't remember doing any of these things. None of the moments captured in the photographs bring up any memories for me at all.

DisneyMagic.jpg - a photo of me, age 8 or 9, hugging someone in a Pluto costume, Mickey off to the side. Big smiles.

I have never been to Disneyland.

OpticalIllusion.avi - this ones a video. It shows me, maybe 12 years old, doing a dance routine in what is definitely my mother's living room. I'm wearing a pink leotard. There's no sound, but I'm obviously following a choreographed routine, something I'd practiced.

I was never in a dance team. I don't remember this at all.

I thought: maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe it's not me. Just some other little girl who looks like me, who lived in places that looked like where I grew up.

JustNow.jpg - a photograph of me. It's recent. I'm an adult, wearing a shirt I still own. I'm sitting on the edge of my bed, painting my toenails.

It's me. It's definitely me. There is no question.

But I don't remember doing that, either. I don't paint my nails. I don't remember ever having painted them.

WhileYouWereSleeping.avi - another video. Me, in bed, sleeping on my side under my comforter. It's my current bedroom; I recognize the furniture, the location of the window. The angle seems to be filmed from the foot of the bed, but from slightly above, looking down. There's a man in my bed with me. His body is wrapped around mine; one hand is plunged between my legs and in the video I can see it moving slowly but rhythmically beneath the blankets.

I have never seen that man before in my life.

I shut down the browser, in a panic. I turned off the computer, then unplugged it. I ran to my room and started tearing it apart looking for a hidden camera.

Nothing. No sign.

I went out that night to the 24-hour WalMart and bought extra locks. I was up all night adding more locks and chains to my doors, reinforcing them. I didn't sleep. I couldn't. I covered all the windows in foil. I turned the house upside down searching for cameras.

It's been three days. I don't know what to do.

In my panic, when I shut down my computer, I didn't save the link. I have no idea how to find that site again or even how I got there in the first place.

But I need to know. I need to know if there are any new photographs. I need to know if someone is still videoing me, somehow, doing things that I don't remember.

Don't get on the Dark Web. It's not worth it. You don't want to see what's on there.

But if you do...if you find that site...please tell me. I need to see it just one more time.