It’s Monday morning, the last week of year eight, and Mum has dropped me off early before work. The time is 7:30am. There aren’t many kids around yet but as I cross the oval, I see Jack, hunched over his phone at the picnic table where we’ve sat since our first day. I call out to him. He lifts his head, smiles, and then flips me the middle finger. I pull a face and flip him the forks. A few more steps and I slide onto the bench beside him. He has a video pulled up on his phone. Before I ask, he turns his body towards me and props the phone up on his bag between us. The thumbnail is of a round, balding man sitting in front of a camera in his room. Jack presses play.
I quickly realise that the video is a screen recording of a Facebook live. It’s dated a few months back, and the camera quality is average. The man begins to speak. You can hear the fan going, and a smoke alarm beeping periodically; a sign to change the batteries. The man is astonishingly pale, so much so that he is glowing in the screen light.
“What’s this?” I ask Jack.
He waves the question off.
“Just watch.”
I turn back to the phone as Jack fiddles with the volume button; other kids are starting to arrive at school and it’s hard to hear over the noise. The man has finished speaking . He removes his thick, turtle shell glasses and places them off screen.
“That’s about it,” he says.
The man brings a shotgun to his mouth and fires, one shot, through the back of his head, killing him instantly. His skull opens in layers and releases its contents on the wall behind him. The skin swells and pops like a balloon as the bloom minces through him. Brain matter, bone shards, skin, hair, flesh and blood mangle with the bedsheets, the wall, the gun. Its barrel slinks from his shattered teeth and onto the floor. His head does not exist anymore. I don’t process what I’ve seen immediately: my brain fogs over. I continue to stare at the screen until the man’s dog jumps onto the bed and sniffs through the gore. It’s a light brown, long-haired dachshund. I finally look away when it begins to lick at the man’s remains.
I turn to Jack and he is laughing, hard, both at my reaction and at the video.
“Isn’t that fucked, cunt?” He says, struggling to get the words out between breaths.
“Cunt, that’s feral.”
I force a laugh with him. I’m almost surprised at my reaction. Though I was a nervous kid when I was younger, I’d long since grown out of my hemophobia. Horror was my favourite genre, and I’d seen gorier deaths portrayed on screen. This video felt different. There was no build up, no music, no consideration of camera angles. The starkest difference was the colour of his insides, the same undersaturated, dull red.
I excuse myself to the toilet and walk towards the blocks. On entry, I catch a glimpse of my image in the mirror. I don’t feel like myself. The being reflected is a husk. I enter a stall, leave the toilet lid down, and sit, letting my bag fall to the ground next to me. My hands are shaking. I feel ill and my breath is shallow. An unusual amount of sweat drips down my side and pools where my belt tightens. My insides are wrong. My palms are tingling: the sensation creeps through my limbs until my entire body is vibrating. I push my palms into my eye sockets and lower my head to my knees. The video is playing on repeat in my mind, and I can’t help but wish I’d never seen it. I want to shove my hands into my body and pull out the bad feeling. I’d pile my innards on the floor until I find the part of me that has been tainted and destroy it.
After five to ten minutes of panic, the feeling subsides, draining through the soles of my feet and onto the toilet floor. I stand, swaying a little, before exiting the stall. I wash my face in the sink. The cold water does nothing to cleanse me. I wash my hands and go to dry them before realising some dickhead has taken the dryer off the wall and put it in the bin, again. I wipe my hands on the back of my pants; the water darkens my navy shorts.
When I return to the table, more of the group has arrived. I slip back into my seat next to Jack and greet the others. Cohen and his girlfriend Mia sit across from us; Ethan is further down the bench and Caitlin is sitting on the other side of Jack.
“How was your shit?” Asks Cohen
Jack butts in before I can answer.
“Nah this pussy was crying in the stalls after I showed him the Facebook live video”
“Fuck off,” I retort
“Look, he’s even pissed himself.”
Jack points at the damp stop on my thigh I’d wiped my hands on.
“What video?” Mia asks.
“It’s pretty rank”, says Cohen “I didn’t know it was real until I looked it up after. In the full version, the poor cunts’ parents walk in”
Jack turns to me expecting a comment.
“Wasn’t even that bad”, I say, staring at the ground, “Seen worse in movies.”
Caitlin looks up from her phone to chime in.
”You’re sick jack. No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend.”
Everyone laughs at this and I punch Jack in the arm to rub it in a little.
The remainder of the day goes quickly, but the feeling in my stomach does not. I cannot shake the impending sense of doom. The image of the man’s eviscerated head is vivid in my mind. It dawns on me that this person no longer exists and another wave of existential dread washes over me. That day I am cited five times for zoning out in class.
This piece was featured in the 2026 summer edition of Glass Magazine
