Possession Chapter1
Part 1: Possession
Learning to read opened a new world for Ellie. The first grader snuck to her father´s computer and found settings for all the digital services their small family had. There was her Netflix profile, no longer Kids experience, and the app that controlled her phone. She had to search a while, but she got to a control page and checked all “allow” boxes she found. She had to give dad´s password and then she was done.
Before she got her own cell phone, she had been allowed to play with her father´s computer, and she still remembered the code. Her father had bought her the phone when she started school. It had tight parental controls, and she had been blocked from most of the content her friends talked about.
The two of them lived together. He was a loving father who seldom denied anything from her, but when it came to safety, he was strict. Divorce had been difficult, and he was still amazed that he got to keep his daughter. He was a little paranoid of authorities looking for an excuse to take her from him.
Back in her room, Ellie wondered if it really was that easy. She picked up her phone to do a test. What should she try? It had to be something that had been impossible before. After some hesitation, she opened the web browser and typed “porn”. First search result was something called Pornhub, so she tapped that. Her screen got filled with strange pictures of naked people. She had seen her dad´s willy, it was kind of a little tube made of skin, that hung from between his legs. These men had big poles sticking out instead. The women had large holes where she had just a slit. They were clearly grown-ups, but they did not have hair down there. In some of the pictures, the men would put the poles inside the women´s holes. Ellie tapped one picture, and a video started playing. There were some people talking, soon they were naked, and the woman took the man´s willy-rod into her mouth. It was so long that it went to the throat and the woman seemed about to puke. Now why would somebody want to do that?
Ellie had put her finger in her slit while watching the video. She tried to feel herself down there more thoroughly than she had done before. It felt funny, but there were no holes to be found. Of course, her pee came from somewhere there, so there must be one, but nothing that could fit anything that big. Ellie remembered that there was a hole after all, her bum hole. Maybe the video people put the things in the butt? She felt her own puckered opening with a finger and tried to push it in. It did not go easy, but when she got a fingernail in, she knew that it was possible. It felt weird, so she pulled the finger out. It smelled like poo, and she went to wash her hands.
Ellie tried to remember the YouTube channels her friends had talked about. She watched some of them, and they were mostly about people buying stuff and hanging with their friends, and same people playing video games. Maybe she could download some of those games? Lately the most popular had been a horror adventure with monsters in a theme park. She tried to find it in application store, but that was still connected to her father´s account. It seemed he would be notified, maybe charged, if she downloaded something. Ellie googled the game and found many sites about it. One had a download link to a special version of the game, and she got it. There was also a lot of discussion about strategies for the game, but this site was especially interested in the ways to get killed. There were little videos of different monsters killing the player, but also stuff that did not have anything to do with the game; lethal doses of different drugs, where to cut one´s arteries et cetera. That felt a little weird for Ellie. Like these people were strange, kind of like the sex people on the porn site. Ellie played the game, and when she got stuck somewhere, she looked for tips on the web site. That´s where she found the dare: log on to the game at 3 am.
When dad had told her good night and gone, she put on her earphones and started up her phone again. She binge-watched 4 episodes of Wednesday. It started funny but got scarier as it progressed. She knew she could impress her classmates tomorrow but was afraid she would have nightmares if she fell asleep now. Then she realized it was 3 am. Should she play the game? She was scared enough already, but on the other hand, maybe she could pass the time and get her mind off the tv show. Besides, her father had told her the Witching hour was at midnight – 3 am was some new craze on YouTube.
There was eerie music and images of a park by night, but that´s how the game had always started. She logged in with her initials – EB – and got a new prompt: “Are you sure you want to play, Ellie?” How did it know her name? There was no button to answer the question yes or no. Ellie tried to swipe the screen, but as soon as she touched it, the text changed to: “Ok, it´s your own soul”. Ellie decided this was too scary for her. She was curious, but if she planned to get any sleep tonight, she should stop. She pressed the home button of the phone. The screen lit up with a picture of one of those fleshy poles from the porn site, it was sticking right at the screen, moving a bit up and down. Music from the game was still playing.
Did she not leave the porn site earlier? Was there a virus in her phone? Ellie wondered, looking at the pulsing thing that seemed to aim straight at her. The tip of it was purple, and there was a little hole oozing some clear liquid. Everything else in the picture was dark. She decided all she could do was turn off the phone. She held the button, and to her relief it finally responded. The phone turned itself off. As Ellie put it on her bedside table, she realized that she could still hear the music. It was the familiar spooky soundtrack of the game. She tried blocking the phone´s speaker with her finger, but that did not change anything. She couldn´t feel any vibration, but she heard the music just as well. She could not make out where it came from. Now this was too creepy. Ellie left the room to go find her daddy.
As Ellie approached her father´s room, she saw cold lights flashing there. She stopped in the quiet darkness. She did not want to return to her room, so she continued. In the doorway she was relieved to see her dad playing a video game on his computer, headphones on. That´s where the light came from. The game seemed to be some kind of first-person zombie shooter, so maybe the music was somehow from there too. Ellie touched her father´s shoulder. He turned to look, paused the game and took the headphones off.
“What´s the matter, sweetie?”
“I don´t know, just got scared. Daddy, can I sleep here tonight?”
“Well of course. I must get in bed too, it´s way too late.”
Ellie climbed to her father´s wide bed. She was immediately calmed by his scent on the sheets and the sound of him brushing his teeth in the bathroom. When he came back dressed in pajamas, she was already half asleep.