Are You A Robot?

It started with a flicker

Nicole sighed exasperatedly, staring at the Chromebook in front of her annoyed. This had been the 5th time today that the computer webpage had asked if she was a robot, and she was getting sick of it. She hovered her cursor over the check box that said  "I am not a robot" and pressed it. The screen flickered slightly, but Nicole didn't really notice as she had blinked at relatively the same time. The webpage did not accept the checkbox and decided to do other means of security measures. A box popping up with multiple tiles that you can press. It stated above it to "press the tiles that look like road signs". So Nicole began unsuspectingly clicking the pictures of roadsigns. But after a while the roadsigns that appeared in the place of the ones she had already clicked began to look familiar. "That looks like the sign to my town" she said to herself. "That's a funny coincidence" but her smile quickly faded as she clicked on the tile, only to be replaced with the road her neighborhood was on. A cold sweat creeped down her spine, "just a coincidence" she told herself, cautiously clicking her neighborhood. Her fingers tingled as the entrance to her neighborhood came into view, her hands beginning to tremble. She looked around her house, it was eerily silent. Her parents were both at work, and normally she would enjoy being home alone, but this was getting creepy. Her fingers slowly began to creep towards the computer as if moving by themselves, she couldn't help it, she had to see what would come next, because this was all just a "coincidence", right?

The click of the mousepad seemed almost to reverberate as Nicole's fingers pressed down. The screen flickered noticeably, code running down the sides of the screen, flashing white then black, lines running up and down the whole screen. Then it suddenly went to black. The webpage was gone, the tiles were gone. Everything seemed to go on a standstill. Nicole was now against the back wall of her room, the computer just sitting blankly on her desk. Her heartrate had leapt up to a dizzying speed, addrenaline coursing through her at a sickening rate. She began whispering paranoidly, "just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence" she almost seemed to laugh, trying to lighten the mood. But it was all in vain as the computer seemed to come back to life, a picture slowly coming into view. Nicole's breath hitched in her throat, her eyes widening. "I-it can't be" she gripped the wall as the tile came into complete view, no other tiles around it. It was her house, and she was the only one in it. A sudden violent knock on the front door shook her out of her thoughts. Followed by a searing pain in her head. Nicole cried out, clutching her head and sprawling forward on her hands and knees. A green hue began prickling in front of her, the glow reflecting off her face. She looked up, wincing at the intensity of the glowing green light. It was coming from her Chromebook, forein inscriptions sliding down the screen at an incredible rate. The more she stared at the screen the more her consciousness felt like it was being yanked free from her body. She tried to look away but was unable. As Nicole's world began fading to black, the last thing she heard was her own scream as it echoed through the new hollow spaces in her consciousness.