“It’s TOTALLY safe, Sal. Trust me!”
That was my best friend Brad’s catchphrase. Those words were ringing in my ears when I got news of his death.
One sunny day, Brad was filming a video while he sped like a rocket down the highway. The gorgeous backdrop of the forest painted the perfect scene as it zipped by in the window. The thrill of speed. The freedom of life. His voice cheered. A radiant grin flashed at the audience. And with a sickening, reverberating CRASH, his car collided with a massive tree.
“At least… it was instant.” Brad’s mother choked through tears, as his casket was lowered into the ground. I could barely keep my eyes open from crying. My best friend since childhood was gone in a flash. All those memories: every birthday, every conversation, every movie we watched and every game we played–all cut short. I would never see Brad again. I couldn’t believe it was real.
“At least… he died doing what he loved.” His father said solemnly, bowing his head. It was true. Brad dedicated his life to making videos, especially TikToks and YouTube Shorts. Luckily, it paid off. Videos of his adventures doing stunts, ziplining through the forest, and bungee jumping down canyons gathered millions of views. Not only that, but his funny videos and pranks started a few trends. His bucket head prank took the internet by storm. Okay, some of the videos were a little mean. Sometimes he went too far with the stunts or pranks. But Brad never meant any harm, right?
“At least… I’ll always remember him.” I said, brushing the tear-soaked hair out of my eyes.
But I wish it wasn’t like this.
One morning, a week after the funeral, I made a bowl of cereal for myself and surfed YouTube. I couldn’t get over Brad’s death. Someone so constant in my life was just… gone. Forever. I tried to cheer myself up by watching funny videos. Some humor would get my mind off things. It started with videos of cute puppies and kittens, but then I went down the rabbit hole of swiping through YouTube shorts. And just then, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Brad had a new video.
He must have scheduled a video to be published later, I figured, as I tapped it on my screen. My face lit up with a smile. Seeing Brad here, captured in the moment, made me feel just for a second like he was still alive. It was one of his funny videos–loud and full of laughter. He was standing in front of his kitchen with an exaggerated raised eyebrow and playful smirk. The camera zoomed in on a banana peel in his hand, and then back to him.
“BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!” Brad exclaimed, tossing the banana peel on the floor. Comically, he slipped on the banana peel and fell onto the ground with a cartoonish sound effect. It was a classic banana peel slip joke all wrapped up into a six-second video, but Brad’s animated expressions made it hilarious. Even post-death, he always knew how to make me laugh. The video looped as I opened the comment section. Usually there were thousands of comments, and Brad always used to take the time to read as many as he could.
It was different this time. The only comment was,
“Sally? Is that you?”
It was from Brad’s account.
I gasped at first, but then I realized that it must be a hacker that was posing as him for a prank.
“That’s not funny,” I wrote back as a reply, “I know you’re not Brad. It’s sick to use a dead man’s account as a scam.”
“Sal… It’s really me. Sally, please! I’m stuck!”
The reply appeared underneath my comment almost immediately. I rolled my eyes as the video kept playing in a loop.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
“You’re really Brad? Ok, then prove it!” I typed angrily back, growing tired of the hacker’s games. There’s no way that this was Brad. He’s gone.
“Sally, remember when we were ten and we snuck into the woods with some candy? We saw that fox come up real close to us. You threw him some candy to feed him and he ran away. We couldn’t stop laughing. And only we were there to remember that.”
My jaw dropped. I could remember that day as clearly as a picture. But how could this hacker know that? Maybe the hacker was a childhood “friend” that remembered us telling the story to them? That had to be the most likely case. There was no way it could have been the real Brad. Right? I called the hacker out.
“It’s really me, Sal. Please, you’re the only one who can help me. I know it sounds crazy. But I’m stuck inside this video. I keep slipping and falling on that damn banana.”
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
“This prank is going too far. Look, you must be someone close to Brad. If this is how you’re coping with his death, please go seek some help and stop hacking his account.”
“You have to believe me. I need to get out of here, it’s starting to hurt.”
The video kept repeating itself, the cartoony noise that he added during his fall was getting annoying.
“Tell me something only Brad would know.”
“Our secret. The real reason that you broke up with Dave years ago was because he cheated on you, not because you just didn’t feel the connection anymore–like you told everyone. I drove you home that night. You cried on my shoulder and I promised that I’d get you some ice cream on the way back. You told me that if I weren’t dating Jessica, you would have dated me.”
I froze. Brad was the only person I had told that to. He promised. It was embarrassing–I mean, Brad was just my best friend, and I was caught up in emotions. But that meant… No way.
“You’re really him.” I gasped in horror, “I can’t believe it.”
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
“Sal. I don’t know what happened. One moment I was driving and filming, and the next I felt the car hit the tree. And now I’m here. Look. This video is live. Someone, something is controlling me. Causing me to slip and fall. Over and over. Sally, it hurts!!”
I closed the comments section and looked back at the video. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Dark purple bruises were forming on his skin underneath his tank-top. He kept slamming into the ground with more and more force. Once his expression was full of joy, but now beneath his grin I could tell he was clenching his jaw. He was being forced to smile. Whatever had control over him was moving him like a puppet.
“Brad, how can I help you? You’re still alive? That can’t be, I saw your body being lowered into the ground!”
“No, I think I’m really dead. And this must be Hell. I’m being tortured, Sally! HELP ME!”
I started panicking. I tried pausing the video. I pressed the off button on my phone. No luck. No matter what I did, the video kept going. Brad was being flung at the ground, all while the sound effects played mockingly over his pain. The deep bruises spread across his body, painting him black and blue.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
“BRAD!!! WHAT DO I DO!?!?”
“Call a priest! An exorcist! Someone! This is something supernatural, and Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii” The comment read, seeming as if he were being yanked from the button on the keyboard. What horrible things were happening to him? And why? Why Brad?
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
The video continued. A deep red pooled on his bruise-riddled body. His skin broke. Blood was streaming down onto the floor, soaking the banana peel. His face contorted in agony, still hard-wired into a cheeky smile despite the pain. Muscles and sinews in his body were stretched into position, compelled to keep performing. No matter how much his body broke, how much he bled out, he would keep going. Every time he tried to pull his head away, to try to regain control, some otherworldly force snapped his neck back into place. The show must go on.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
“BRAD!!! BRAD!!!”
I typed frantically, trying to reach him, wherever he was. No more comments came.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
CRUNCH, CRACK! I heard the unmistakable, revolting noise of bones breaking. He was being slammed onto the ground hard enough to snap bones.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
I started sobbing, wailing, not knowing what to do. It was a horrific sight. But I couldn’t look away. Looking away felt like giving up, and leaving Brad once again. Again and again he crashed into the floor. The banana peel was hardly noticeable in the lake of blood surrounding him.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
He was unrecognizable. His limbs curled, gaining new “joints” from all the broken bones. Flesh was exposed from where his skin split, fraying apart into shreds of meat. Teeth shattered and flew out from his still-smiling mouth. He no longer resembled Brad; he was more of a flayed, fragmented cadaver being instrumented by an unknown entity. All of this was to continue the infernal YouTube short, forever looping as he was beaten into pulp.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
I couldn’t take it anymore. I shoved the phone into my pocket; the audio was muffled as it buried in my jacket, but the phrase was burned into my brain. Grabbing my car keys, I booked it to the nearest church to beg a priest to save my friend. I had to do something. My best friend hadn’t just died—his soul was being tortured. The priest would know what to do.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
Screeeeech! My car pulled into the church’s parking lot. Practically running into the door, I swung it open and dashed to the nearest priest. Tears in my eyes, I pulled out my phone to discover… The video was normal. It was just a funny banana short. There was no blood. Brad looked the same as ever. A video uploaded posthumously. I looked at the comments, and it was the usual “OMG!” and “LMAO”. It had a hundred thousand views already, and hundreds of normal comments. The priest shrugged, and I embarrassedly walked back to my car.
I drove home. Had I imagined everything? I could only wonder, as the cacophony of the video went on and on. But then, I noticed it.
I swear I could see the beginning of a bruise forming on his arm.
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!
BANANA? MORE LIKE WHATEVA!