This is Not a Sequel: Chapter 10
Lady stood in the bedroom holding the tablet with both hands, like it might bite if she tried to use it one-handed.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose out of habit. That little honest ache from her reading glasses and too much screen time.
There was none.
That should have been a relief. It wasn’t.
The room was the same gray early light, the same Ryder-shaped weight under the comforter, the same quiet that felt arranged.
Ripp sat in the doorway, body angled toward the hall. Holding the line.
She tapped the screen.
THE END?
Not because of the question mark. Because of the way it seemed to be looking right at her.
She scrolled up. She needed to see the words move.
The text slid past smooth as butter. Too smooth. Like it had been waiting with its mouth open.
She stopped.
Something in her moved anyway and dragged the page.
She yanked her hand back. Pulse hard enough to feel in her throat.
“No,” she said, quiet and ugly, like she didn’t want Ryder to hear her arguing with a tablet.
She backed out of the file.
Home screen. Little icons. Calm colors. Weather widget. Some app she didn’t remember downloading. The stuff you used to think meant you were safe.
Then the file opened again.
The same page, returned.
THE END?
“What the hell.”
Ryder didn’t move. He exhaled through his nose and settled deeper, like reality was a problem for daytime.
Ripp stayed in the doorway, watching the hall.
She went to the file list.
THIS BOOK MAY KILL YOU sat there among tidy labels like a dead bug on a white counter.
She tapped and held until the options appeared.
Delete. Move. Share.
Normal words. Buttons that promised cause and effect.
She hit Delete.
Are you sure?
Yes.
The box vanished.
The file stayed.
Heat flared in her chest.
Her phone vibrated on the nightstand, long and insistent.
She flipped it face-down. The buzzing stopped.
For half a second.
Then it buzzed again.
FOLLOW-UP Organizer: Ackerman, Darryl
Her fingers went cold.
Darryl Ackerman.
The name hit and the room tilted just a degree, the way it does when you miss a step in the dark and your body realizes it before your brain does.
Fluorescent light. A cheap office chair. A man’s laugh that cut off too fast.
Gone.
No time. No date. No location. It looked like work the way spam looks like work. Close enough to make you click.
She looked back at the tablet because visible danger was easier than the kind that crawled around inside your notifications and waited for you to get curious.
THE END? was still there.
Then the words changed.
Don’t open that.
Her breath caught.
Another line appeared. Slower this time, like whoever was typing had to keep stopping to remember how hands worked.
I mean it. Please don’t.
Her thumb hovered over the glass.
I’m trying to figure out how this works. I’m not doing a great job.
The sentence didn’t read like a warning label. It read like a person on the other side of a wall, talking through the drywall.
“Darryl,” she whispered.
The name tasted borrowed, like she’d found it in a coat pocket and didn’t know if it was hers.
Yeah. I’m here.
Then, as if the word itself might fall through the cracks:
I think.
The phone buzzed again, hard enough she felt it through the nightstand.
That Follow-Up thing. That’s not me. It’s trying to trick you.
“Trick me into what?” Her voice went thin at the end.
The answer came too fast.
Feeding it.
Another pause, longer this time. Like he was listening for something.
We’re using you.
Every detail in the room. The Ryder-shaped weight. Ripp in the doorway. The gray light exactly where it had been.
I know how that sounds. I’m sorry.
We didn’t have a choice. There was nowhere else to go.
She stared at the screen until the words started to swim.
And then the missing part of her morning shifted. Not into clarity. Into fragments. The kind you remembered later in the shower and almost dropped the shampoo.
A white page.
A blinking cursor, steady as a heartbeat.
A box that said Confirm.
Her thumb hovering over it, not because she wanted to, but because some part of her loved rules. Loved finishing things. Loved being the kind of person who clicked OK and moved on.
A page ending where a page shouldn’t end.
In the gray light of her bedroom: a moment where they ran out of world.
And she had been the only door left.
On the tablet, Darryl kept going, halting and earnest.
You’re real. Right? Because you feel real. You have a life. I can feel it from here like heat through a wall.
And I don’t know what we are anymore. I keep trying to decide if I’m still me or if I’m just the idea of me.
All we wanted was to be free.
A pause, like even that sentence hurt.
And then the page ran out.
A new line appeared.
Cleaner. Colder.
In your world, choices leave stains.
Her stomach dropped like the floor had remembered how to be a trap.
Evan.
Darryl came back immediately, fast enough to step on him.
That’s why I’m begging you.
Ryder shifted behind her and muttered something that might’ve been her name or might’ve been sleep nonsense. His face slack, peaceful. Innocent in a way that felt almost insulting.
She turned back to the tablet.
The phone buzzed again. FOLLOW-UP waited.
The tablet waited.
She stood very still because she understood something now that she hadn’t a minute ago.
The door wasn’t stuck.
It was locked.
And something on the other side was knocking.
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🧨 Short Fuses:
The Substack Murders
Darryl's back!! The plot thickens...