You've Been Tagged

3:15pm

This book is available for purchase at Lulu.com. Search for "You've Been Tagged". 

______________________________________________________________________

     3:15 pm, September 9th

             It was Friday and I was sitting at my computer, checking my email and sipping a glass of soda. I just got home from Prackersburg High School, my school. Feeling lazy, I minimized the browser tabs and leaned back in my office chair, closing my eyes. Yes, this 16 year old was looking forward to an uneventful weekend.

            I stood up and walked over to my dresser.

My room was my favorite place to be. It wasn’t too small, or too big, but a comfortable size. My bed was tucked in the back left corner, with my dresser a few feet to its right. My desk sat at the end of my bed, and across from that on the right side of my room was my small closet. The walls were a light blue, and posters of bands, athletes, and pictures of my friends and I littered the wall space.

            I passed my mirror that hung next to my closet, and saw my reflection out of my peripheral.

            My hair was messed up.

            I sighed and took a step back so that my whole body was visible in the glass.

            I didn’t look too bad actually. Almost 6 feet, with blue eyes that girls adored, curly red hair that could be a handful at times, and an over all lovely face. Well, at least that’s what the girls said.

            I didn’t bother to fix the strand of hair that refused to join the others, it would only come undone in a few hours anyway.

            I forgot why I was going to my dresser and sat back down at my desk. My laptop was open, and my phone was next to it.

            Nothing interesting was happening in the online world, so I started to shut the laptop’s lid. Before the screen went dark, an email notification from Google Chrome popped up.

            Feeling a little excited, I clicked on it, and an email from my Facebook account showed up. It read, "Dear Chase Mitchels, Unknown has tagged you in a post on Facebook." I re-read it. Unknown? How is their name Unknown? Who are they? How in the world am I friends with them? I didn’t remember accepting any friend requests in a while.

Curiosity and frustration got the best of me and I clicked on the link provided. A new window filled my screen and Unknown’s profile came into view. As expected, their profile picture was a blank face. Their wall was completely deserted except for the 'post' I'd been tagged in. I read the post, and then gasped.

It read, "In 24 hours, Chase Mitchels will be dead.”

This couldn’t be real. Facebook wouldn’t have allowed this. This had to be a mistake, or a joke, or a glitch or something.

            Right? I mean, this couldn’t be true.

I quickly clicked the chat bar to see if he was still online, but only my friends were. Trying to calm myself down, I clicked on their info. Empty. No photos, notes, comments, friends other than me, and they didn't even play Farmville! There was nothing on their site except for my death status.

I sat back. How did they become my friend if I didn't confirm them? My wall showed no signs of me ever accepting a friend request.

An idea entered in my mind. What if somebody that I confirmed as a friend a long time ago erased all their info and pictures and etc, and changed their name to 'Unknown', and decided to have a little fun, at my expense? It was plausible.

I searched through my friends list, and all my closest friends were still active. I couldn't remember all of my friends of course, but of the ones I knew who might try to prank me like this, all were still active.

I shook my head, and took a deep breath in. This was just a mistake. Some idiot somewhere was bored and decided to make themselves laugh so they made this status...but how did I become friends with him? That was the part that didn’t make sense. Who could’ve accepted it if I didn’t?

Oh, it was probably my little brother, Riley. He's a pain in the butt sometimes. He probably saw that I had left my account open once, and decided to make me mad by accepting a friend request and then not telling me. Stupid siblings.

But what if it was real? What if there was some killer that really existed and I really was going to be dead in 24 hours? What kind of person did this? What would cause a person to want to kill another person? And would I be killed sometime before 24 hours was up, or exactly in 24 hours?

I blinked. What am I saying, none of this was true.

I clicked on, "Send Unknown a message.". I typed, "Alright dude, I don't know who you are, and I don't really care. The jigs up, stop being a jerk and tell me who you are. And if I know you, trust me, I'm going to beat you so bad that you wished you never born." Wow, what am I, seven? That sounded way too cheesy. I wanted them to be scared, not amused.  I re-typed that last line. “If I know you, I’d better not run into you anytime soon. I don’t like people playing these types of jokes on me.”

Not much better, but they'll get the point. I hit send and closed Facebook.

One minute later, I received another email, from Facebook. Unknown had messaged me back. After I read it, I knew this was no joke.

            "Hello Chase. I'm looking forward to getting to know you. And don't worry who I am. Trust me, you don't want to know. In 23 hours and 50 minutes, you'll be dead anyway. My advice? Start running."