Just Monika

Saturday Night

I woke up to my phone ringing. The room was extremely dark, so it was either really late, or really early. I checked my phone and saw that it was 12:32 AM. Keith was calling me for some reason. I answered the phone.

"Hello?"

"Danny, what did you do to my computer?"

"I just changed the background. What's wrong? Did something happen?"

He seemed a little nervous. "Yeah something happened! I don't really know how to explain it. My screen was doing something weird, as if it was popping out or something."

"Wait, like the glass is coming off?

"No, like, it was like something was coming out of it."

I assumed he was talking about the lcd being cracked or something. Maybe it was slowly spreading, making it look like something was "coming out." I was just confused as to how it broke in the first place.

"Look, can you pick me up? I'll take a look at it and see what it is."

"Yeah, I'll be right there."

I quickly got dressed and brushed my teeth. I then grabbed my charger and carefully snuck out of my house. Keith came by a couple of minutes later. When I got into his truck, I noticed he looked a little uneasy for some reason. I guess I couldn't blame him, iMac's were pretty expensive.

"Woah bud, calm down. We'll fix the problem."

"I know you're good with computers Danny, but this was really weird."

Seeing him uneasy made me feel uneasy. I was usually the most nervous in the group.

"Well whatever it is, I'll do my best to fix it. Come on, let's get to your apartment."

He drove us to his apartment without saying anything else. He was driving pretty fast though, which made me feel a little nervous. I was thinking about asking him to slow down, but I felt like it'd be better to just let him do his own thing.

After about five minutes, we reached his apartment. He led me inside and to his room, where his computer was.

"Alright bud, let me see it," I said.

I approached the iMac and attempted to turn it on, but it didn't want to. I looked around and noticed it was unplugged. I looked at Keith, who was sitting on his couch without doing much else.

"Hey Keith, did you unplug the computer"

"Yeah. I freaked out and just shut it off. I didn't want to do anything until you got here."

I plugged the computer into the wall and turned it on.

"It's alright, I'll figure it out."

The password screen came on. It looked fine, and it was in pristine condition like it was earlier today.

"Keith, it looks fine," I said.

"I don't understand. It looked really messed up earlier."

After pressing enter, the computer loaded for a bit before we were greeted by the iMac's desktop. It was a little different though. The background was very similar, except one thing was missing.

Monika.

"Hey, did you edit Monika out of the picture," I asked.

I looked at him. He looked nervous and confused.

"No, I don't even know how to do that. Maybe it needs to load?"

That was odd. It couldn't have needed to load. It was a single image.