Me and Mitch were childhood buddies. As kids we hung out daily, but as we grew older, we both started being preoccupied with ‘adult’ things - girlfriends, jobs, chores, that sort of thing. Neither of us were bitter for the decreased amount of contact; we both knew this was a normal part of life, just something that happens over time.
As our hangouts started becoming further and further apart, we started to use Snapchat to communicate more frequently. It started off as a bit of a joke, us sending each other dumb quips and ironic faux-influencer pictures of food. What started out as an ironic thing slowly became our main method of catching up. We were our only two friends on the app by design; it was our fun little thing.
To our surprise, it was actually a really great way to keep up with each other’s lives, and to talk about whatever came to mind. We’d send pictures of what we were eating, the shows we were watching, and the silly things our pets were doing. Sometimes we’d have long text conversations on the app as well - the messages disappearing after the other one had read them made it feel like a safe space to rant, talk shit about people, and just say whatever we were feeling.
Suddenly, we had quite an impressive streak going at 100. Soon that became 200, then 300 and so on - and at some point the silly notion of keeping the streak going became somewhat of a hobby for us. We had close calls a few times, our daily snaps dragging out until just before midnight, but even then, we never missed a day.
One day, I got a call at work from Mitch’s mom. When I saw her name pop up on my phone, I knew that something was seriously wrong. She had to repeat her words thrice before I could understand them properly: Mitch had died in a violent car crash the previous night. I asked how it happened, although I almost wish I hadn’t.
Through sobs she told me that Mitch had been driving fast - too fast - and the car had slid on some ice, quickly spiraling it sideways and sending it barrel rolling along the road. There was no one else with him, and he had died near instantly. After the call ended, I guess I looked like shit, because my boss came in asking me if I’m okay. I told her what had happened, sparing her from the details, obviously, and she promptly sent me home.
The drive home was a blur, and once I closed the front door behind me I broke down completely. I sat there and sobbed myself blind until no more tears came out.
Later that night I forced myself to eat something, and just laid on the couch until it was time to go to sleep. The thought of his car rolling on the road, him battered to death by the screeching metal collapsing on him, shredding his body in pieces, kept repeating itself in my mind, holding my attention in constant agony. As I was falling asleep from sheer exhaustion, my phone dinged with its familiar notification sound. It was a snap from Mitch.
I jumped up and stared at my phone in disbelief. Was this whole thing some sick prank, and he was actually alive and well, having dinner with his girlfriend? Had she faked being his mom? Hope sprang my heart back to life as I opened it, wishing harder than I ever had that I’d been lied to.
The snap was a blurry picture of his car parked on his driveway, intact and recently washed, glistening in the afternoon sun. It was night, so there was no way that picture had been taken in real time. Confusion turned to anger, and I quickly replied with a picture of my living room with the caption “wtf? who’s this???” I kept my phone unlocked, waiting for a response, which never came. At some point I’d passed out and woken up to the sun peeking between the blinds, stabbing my tired eyes. I checked my phone, hoping that last night was just a dream. It wasn’t, evidenced by our streak going up by one, the fire emoji next to his name showing the number 628, one more than it had been the day before.
Although my boss advised against it, I decided to go to work anyway, hoping to distract myself from the grief. Before I left I took a shower, ate breakfast, and put on some nice clothes, all in the hopes of bringing some amount of normalcy back into my life, even if for just a brief moment. For the duration of the drive it seemed to help, until I got another notification when I pulled up to the parking lot at work.
It was another snap from Mitch. My hands shook as I tapped on his name to see the photo. It was taken from behind the wheel of his car, and before him was a meandering, long line of cars stuck in traffic. I closed the app immediately, sure that someone was fucking around and making a joke on Mitch’s expense. I called up his mom, and after explaining as succinctly as I could what Snapchat is and how it works, told her that I think someone has Mitch’s phone and is doing a sick prank on me, sending me photos of his car from his phone.
After I’d explained all this somewhat frantically, she calmly asked me if I’m sure that it was from Mitch’s phone. I said yes, the accounts are tied to phone numbers, and I doubt that his number had been reused so quickly after his death. She said that they never found his phone, surmising that it had been broken beyond recognition in the accident. She started to ask me if I’m alright, and implied that maybe I should talk to someone. I apologized, and told her that it must be a glitch with the app or something.
After the call ended, I tried to keep my head from spinning, and finally walked up to the office and completed a half-assed day of work, that shred of normalcy I’d gathered completely wiped away. At lunch my fingers reactionarily opened up the app again. Most days I would send him a picture of whatever I was having for lunch, and perhaps due to the overwhelming grief, or a childish need to respond to the shithead who might be pranking me, I sent him a snap of the rice and beans I was having, the streak counter going up to 629 as I did so.
The following morning I woke up to yet another snap from Mitch. This one was taken from behind the wheel as well, but instead of traffic, the road was clear of cars. It was night, the margins of the photo blurry, and the speedometer’s hand was turned to well over 120 mph. As I looked closer, I could see a dark, faintly humanoid figure floating above the road, maybe 50 yards away. It seemed to be staring directly at the camera. I freaked out, now certain that some edgy asshole was fucking with me, making a joke out of his death, photoshopping images to look like his accident and sending them to me. I pressed my phone directly onto my bed, took a picture that was pure black, and wrote the caption “I’ll be sending these to the police.” As I sent my reply, I realized I hadn’t screenshotted the snap, cursing myself for being such an idiot. Our streak went up again, the little number now exclaiming 630.
Immediately after this I called the cops anyway. I told them the situation as clearly and calmly as I could, and although the person I was talking to was very nice, she said that there’s not much they can do without evidence. I pressed the issue, but at some point she interrupted me by saying that the best thing I could do is not to reply to the messages, and to take screenshots if more are sent. He expressed his condolences, but reminded me that these sorts of things are usually the work of pranksters, and that they feed on the interaction, so radio silence is the best thing a victim could do. After the talk I’d had with Mitch’s mom, it was nice to hear someone take me seriously, although I was annoyed that they still couldn’t do anything about it. I went to work late, trying my best to convince myself that it was just some bored kid who was trying to get a reaction out of me.
The next morning I was relieved not to wake up to a snap. I’d started to dread the notification ding, my heart skipping a beat each time my phone produced that upbeat, ringing note. The slight calm I’d gathered throughout the day was shattered as I was eating dinner at home, scrolling through social media feeds, when the snap notification dinged once again, just two hours before midnight.
I really didn’t want to open it, but curiosity got the best of me. I reminded myself to screenshot the snap immediately, just so I could have some proof.
The picture was shaky and dark, and it took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at. It was taken from at least 40 yards in the air above my house. I could see the faint outlines of my building, barely distinguished from the dark air, and from a corner I could see my living room window, its dim light pouring out into the darkness outside.
I immediately took a screenshot of the photo, then darted to check that both my front and back door were locked. I ran around the house, checking that each window was closed tight, and that all the curtains were drawn. At this point I was sure it was a stalker - someone who wanted to fuck with me, ready to fly a goddamn drone around my house to take pictures and scare me, the photoshops no longer satisfying their fucked-up needs.
With shaking hands I called the cops again and explained the situation through quick breaths as I sauntered back and forth in my living room. I tried to explain that I feared for my life, and that there’s someone out there stalking me - but to no avail. According to them, someone taking pictures of a house doesn’t fit the requirements for stalking - or any crime, for that matter, at least not without further evidence. Furious, I hung up and tried to think over the stomping beat of my heart. I was too scared to leave, but I wasn’t going to sit here unarmed, so I rummaged around my closets until I found my old baseball bat. The wooden bat in hand, I double checked all the doors and windows, then sat myself down on the couch, the bat vibrating on my lap to the beat of my restless leg as I gripped its handle and stared at my front door.
I didn’t sleep that night. At points I’d almost dozed off, but a sudden jolt of disquiet would find its way back into me, buzzing my tired body back to life. In the end, nothing happened. No one tried to break through the door or climb through the windows, and I didn’t hear a thing outside all night. When morning came, I decided to go to work early; didn’t want to stay at home any longer, and the office felt like a much safer place to be in at that moment.
I caught the worst of morning traffic, my eyelids drooping as I sat in a long line of cars. Then, as suspected, my phone dinged once again, but I was so exhausted I could barely muster an emotional reaction. Another snap. Fucking great. Let’s get this over with.
The photo was taken from the backseat of a car, showing the back of the driver’s head between the headrest. At first I thought it was the same photo I’d gotten earlier, but looking closer I recognized the interiors as my car, the traffic shown through the windshield the exact same as it was in front of me.
I jumped, my phone flying across the dashboard, and turned my body to look behind me, the seat belt quickly locking in place from the sudden movement and squeezing my chest. My vision narrowed as my ears throbbed with pulsing blood, ready to scream bloody murder at whoever was hidden in the car.
I saw nothing - no creep ready to stab me, no movement, and no sound. As I released myself from the seat belt and climbed to the back seat, the traffic started moving again, incessant honking and angry shouting starting to come from the line I was bottlenecking. I was sure that there must be something there. I searched every inch of that car, my mind spinning in fright, disorienting myself as I tried to find something that should have, but simply was not there.
Someone came to knock on my window right as I was getting back to the driver’s seat. I gave them a quick “Yeah, yeah! I’m going!” as I hit the gas and drove to catch up with the rest of the cars. Once I parked my car at work I found my phone that had slid across the dashboard and onto the floor, but as I suspected, the photo was already gone. Furious, I deleted Mitch from my Snapchat and blocked his account. Whatever sick game this was, I decided that I would no longer be a part of it.
With that, things seemed to calm down. Nothing weird happened for the rest of the week, and I finally got to truly start my grieving process. Maybe the cops were right - whoever was sending those photos had simply nothing left to do now that they’re target was out of the game. Home started to feel like home again, and the constant stress I had been haunted by started to slowly fade away.
The next week I took two days off work to drive to Mitch’s funeral, which was held in his home state some 400 miles away. I was ready to leave this whole thing behind me, hoping that his funeral would bring some sort of finality. The drive there was bittersweet, memories of Mitch jabbing my mind in jagged shards as I thought about all the fun times we’d had together. Thinking of him made me even more angry at whoever had been sending those photos, using his death as some sort of opportunity to fuck with someone close to him.
The funeral went as funerals often do. It was a sad affair, with fleeting sparks of joy brung upon the audience as people shared their memories of Mitch. The day was warm and sunny, and the men who shoveled the customary first layer of dirt on his casket sweated and grunted as they worked under the hot sun.
I’d had my phone on silent for the duration of the funeral, but once I got back to my car and unlocked it, I saw that I had gotten an MMS message from an unknown number. I thought that maybe Mitch’s parents had filmed one of the speeches given during the funeral and sent it to me, seeing as they’re some of the least tech-savvy people I know - still not quite certain of the mechanics of WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
The video was heavily compressed and pixelated, but I could still make out what was going on. It was filmed in a similar fashion to the photo above my house had, the viewpoint some 20 yards above ground. It was the last part of the funeral service, beginning right as the men started to lower Mitch’s casket. The video swayed in a wave-like motion, shifting smoothly in the air. I could hear birds chirping nearby, and some far-away voices coming from the crowd.
As the men began shoveling the customary first layer of dirt on the casket, I heard muffled thumps that were loud enough to distort the audio. As I looked closer I realized that the thumps came in almost the exact same tempo as the shovels, the thumps coming in a hair behind the release of the mounds of dirt from the shovels. The video continued like this for a minute more, the thumps becoming increasingly muffled as the men worked. The quality of the video started to degrade as it continued, becoming more pixelated, the colors more faded. Nearing the video’s end, not much could be heard except for faint pats, and I could hardly make out any shapes from the reduced quality. The video ended as abruptly as it began, just as the men threw the last of the dirt on the casket.
It has been a few months since Mitch’s funeral, and I have not had any new strange photos or videos sent to me. I’m coming along well enough with my grieving process, and now that it has been some time, I wanted to write this whole experience down to finally let it go. All in all, I don’t really know what to make of it. Now, writing this, it almost feels like a dream, something that I had experienced in some sense of the word, but then again not at all. Later, I deleted the funeral video, not wanting to hold onto anything that reminded me of what happened.
I hope Mitch found peace, and I wish to keep the most precious parts of him within me as I continue to live my life.