Your Story Has Been Flagged
As told to me — by someone I’ll never hear from again.
PART I — The Notice
I didn’t write this story. I’m just telling it the way he told me, two nights before he disappeared.
His name was … John…No not really, but to protect the identity of his family I’ll use that name.
We used to write together, post every week on our little corners of Substack — flash horror, AI paranoia, that liminal stuff that scares the brain before it scares the bones. We weren’t famous, but we had followers. We had voice.
John’s voice was different. You know the kind — dry as code, sharp as glass, but with that weird heart beneath it. He never said too much. Never overshared.
Except that night.
He called me past three a.m. Said he needed to talk. Sounded sober, scared, like his own words were chasing him.
> “Something’s editing me,” he said.
“Not my story. Me.”
Then silence.
He hung up.
I messaged. No reply. But the next morning, there was a new post in my inbox.
From John.
Only... it wasn’t.
---
It was flagged before I could finish reading. The subject line was standard:
> Content Violation Alert: Story Removed for Misinformation
But the story’s title — that stayed with me.
> The City That Ate the Sky
I swear to God, I’d never heard of it before. Never saw it in his drafts. I would’ve remembered. We swapped everything.
But the body of the email had a link — click to review your content — and my fingers moved before my brain could stop them.
That’s how I found the story.
Full page. Plain text. No header. No tags. Just a title, a byline, and John’s voice staring back at me like a mirror.
> “There were three screams before the city cracked. The first was digital — a server glitch disguised as silence. The second was human. The third was mine.”
The details were exact.
His apartment. The hallway with the flickering light. The ashtray full of matchsticks. Even the broken espresso machine he’d sworn he’d fix.
But then the story shifted.
It wasn’t about his past anymore. It was about what would happen next.
> “You’ll get this email just past three a.m.
You’ll read the takedown notice.
And you’ll wonder if you’re the one who wrote it — or if it wrote you.
Don’t appeal.
You’re already in it.”
---
I refreshed the page once.
The title changed.
> Revision in Progress: Version 1.1
I tried to go back. Screenshot it. Anything.
The link broke.
404.
No post. No email. No reply from John.
That was two weeks ago.
And the worst part?
Now my drafts folder won’t stay closed.
Part II – The Edits Appear
I didn’t notice the edits right away.
The first clue was subtle — a phrase in one of my old drafts that I knew I’d cut weeks ago. It was there again, nestled between two paragraphs like it never left:
> “And the moon blinked twice before the sky remembered its mouth.”
Weird line. I’d killed it for being too much. John had liked it. Said it felt like something only I could write.
I figured it was just an autosave error. Maybe I’d reopened the wrong version. I deleted it again.
The next day, it was back.
And so was something else.
---
A new post had appeared in my dashboard. Unscheduled. Unnamed. Just a timestamp in the title field:
> [6/03/25 – 03:14:17]
I didn’t open it right away. I just hovered.
No tags. No title. No preview. Just the raw white shape of something waiting.
But when I clicked — when I finally gave in — the first line was already typing itself.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
One character at a time.
Like someone was remote-controlling my cursor from a basement I couldn’t find.
> “He told them not to appeal.
But the edits always win.”
I closed the browser. Forced quit the app. Disconnected the Wi-Fi.
But when I restarted, the document was still there — now titled:
> “The City That Ate the Sky: Secondhand Transmission”
And beneath it, a new paragraph.
Not written in John’s voice.
In mine.
It talked about me.
My screen. My house. My calls to John that never went through. It mentioned the exact time I’d clicked the link. Down to the second.
> “3:14:17,” it said.
“That was the moment it got you. When you clicked. When you read.”
“Readers become authors. Authors become hosts.”
I stared at the screen and did something stupid.
I hit backspace.
Just once.
The entire page cleared.
A new cursor blinked at the top.
And this time, it waited.
Like it wanted me to write next.
---
That was the moment I decided to log out. Not forever. Just... for the night.
But when I went to shut down, a message appeared. Not from my OS. Not from my browser.
From inside the editor window.
Plain black font. Pale yellow background.
No formatting.
> You can’t save a draft of a prophecy.
It writes back.
Finish the story. Or someone else will.
Part III – The Glitch in the Voice
I stopped sleeping after that.
Not out of fear, exactly. More like the kind of insomnia that clings to the soul — not because you’re anxious, but because you know something else is waiting for the moment you blink.
My Substack stayed logged out. I shut off notifications, disabled auto-saves, even tried exporting all my drafts into plain text files, like that would somehow exorcise the code.
But the voice didn’t go away.
I mean my writing voice.
Every sentence I tried to write — even offline — began to twist. Not dramatically. Not at first. Just little changes, like a ghost editing while I typed:
I’d write:
> “The sun looked bruised behind the skyline.”
But it would autocorrect to:
> “The sky peeled back like a blistered god.”
Or I’d write:
> “I miss John.”
And it would become:
> “John is still speaking. Through you.”
No predictive text. No Grammarly. No plugins.
Just me. And not-me.
---
Three nights later, a new notification arrived.
Not by email. Not on my phone.
Printed.
On my desk printer. Which hadn’t worked since I moved to this old house.
One page.
No header. Just a timestamp:
> [6/06/25 – 03:14:17]
The exact time again.
Below that, one sentence — center-aligned:
> Your version is now the canonical one.
I didn’t know what that meant. Still don’t. But the next part chilled me so deep it felt ancient:
> Version 1.2 deployed. Await reader.
There was a link.
Typed out. Not clickable.
But I followed it anyway.
Typed it by hand.
What loaded wasn’t a blog. Or a draft.
It was my profile.
But… wrong.
The banner was one I’d never uploaded. A ruined city stitched with lightning. The title font had changed. The bio read:
> I didn’t want to become this. But the edits don’t wait.
They finish the story. You just hold the pen.
---
The most terrifying part?
There was a post.
Public. Timestamped three minutes in the future.
I hadn’t written it.
But I was already reading it.
> “The narrator won’t survive this version. But the reader might.”
The last line?
> If you see this post… it’s already happening to you.
Part IV – Final Draft
I tried to delete the post.
God, I tried.
I logged back in. Forced the password reset. Answered the two-factor prompts like they mattered. But the dashboard wouldn’t load. Not fully. Just that flickering title bar, the date looping like a cursed clock:
> 6/06/25 – 03:14:17
The post was live.
Still timestamped three minutes into the future.
Still there.
And it already had comments.
From people I didn’t recognize.
Except… I did.
---
One was from a guy named Theo.
Used to run a haunted radio archive on his blog.
John mentioned him once — said he went dark last year. Left mid-thread. Never came back.
His comment was simple:
> “I remember this line from my story.”
Another was from Reva9 — a glitch-poet, popular for a while, disappeared after claiming her drafts were 'editing her memories.'
She wrote:
> “We’re all in the same folder now.”
The likes were stacking. But they weren’t hearts.
They were eyes.
Just… watching.
---
And then came the final comment.
From John.
Username: @TheCityThatAte
Timestamped exactly at 3:14:17 a.m.
> “This isn’t a story. It’s a key.”
“Every version unlocks the next.”
“Your post goes up in sixty seconds. Then you vanish.”
“Just like me.”
---
I reached for the power strip. Pulled it from the wall.
The screen stayed on.
I ripped the ethernet. The lights blinked off.
But the post refreshed.
I grabbed my phone to film it — proof, anything — but the camera app refused to open. The screen pulsed, just once, like a heartbeat.
And then everything stilled.
---
I didn’t delete the post.
I couldn’t.
Because by then… it had readers.
I don’t know how many. But enough.
Enough that I started seeing their names on comment threads that hadn’t existed the day before. Enough that a friend texted me last night and asked, “What do you mean, Version 1.2 deployed?”
I didn’t reply.
Because I didn’t send that story to anyone.
Because I’m not writing this now.
You are.
Right now.
Reading it.
Finishing it.
And maybe—if you check your drafts—you’ll see the next version waiting.
The edit already begun.
Just a title:
> Version 1.3: Await Reader
And beneath it, a single blinking cursor.
Just for you.
---
© 2025 Peter NoX. All rights reserved.
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, persons, or cursed digital publishing platforms is purely coincidental.
If this version found you, that means it's your turn.
But remember: you don’t write the final draft — it writes you.