02 Apr Taskr

Part I

Michael and I had been best friends since the first week of high school. I met him in the lunch line, both of us shuffling forward with our plastic trays, silently weighing whether the nachos looked edible. He cracked a joke about the cheese having a pulse, and I laughed too hard, probably desperate for someone to talk to. We stuck together after that. Same classes, same cliques, same sense of humor. We didn’t just grow up together—we grew into who we were because of each other.

By the time we hit our twenties, we’d done what a lot of broke kids did when they were trying to figure out their lives. We moved in together. It wasn’t glamorous. We split a duplex on the east side of town, just far enough from the college campus that rent wasn’t obscene, but close enough that it felt like we were still part of something. Our half of the duplex was drafty, creaky, and always smelled faintly like the last tenant’s dog, but it was ours. The other half had been vacant for months by the time we moved in. Our landlord, Mr. Pellman, was the kind of guy who’d show up with a cigarette behind his ear and dried paint on his shoes. He told us the other unit had failed an inspection recently, some issue with the wiring or insulation, and wouldn’t be leased out again until it was fixed. In the meantime, he said, we’d have the place to ourselves. We didn’t mind. Honestly, it felt like a bonus.

I was working retail back then, bouncing between two different stores depending on who needed coverage. Michael, on the other hand, was trying to get a freelance design business off the ground. He’d been building websites, logos, and promotional materials for small businesses—mostly friends of friends who didn’t have the money to hire professionals. It wasn’t paying much yet, but he was good at it, and I could tell he was proud to be doing something that felt like his. He spent hours at his desk every day, bouncing between projects and tweaking fonts like it mattered more than food.

It was during one of those long, caffeinated work binges that Michael stumbled across the app.

I remember he came into the kitchen one night, phone in hand, looking genuinely excited. He told me he’d found this sleek new productivity tool that did everything—task management, habit tracking, calendar sync, cloud backup, all of it. It was called Taskr, spelled without the “e,” because apparently vowels were optional when you were trying to look trendy.

The app icon was minimalist: a bright yellow checkmark set against a plain white square. Very Silicon Valley. Very clean. The kind of thing that looked polished, professional, like it had millions in seed funding, even if it had just launched yesterday. He said it had no ads, no weird permissions, nothing sketchy. Just a clean, intuitive interface and a smart dashboard that suggested new tasks based on your habits.

He said the interface was smooth—almost too good for a free app—and it had this feature that auto-populated “suggested goals” based on his routine.

Back then, we didn’t have a word for it. Not really. “Artificial intelligence” was still mostly a science fiction term, and no one talked about “machine learning” in casual conversation. But looking back, that’s exactly what it felt like. The app seemed to notice his patterns, and then it started offering tasks that aligned with them—things like reminding him to stand up and stretch after long work sessions, or nudging him to finish part of a project he’d only mentioned once in a calendar note. It felt… aware.

At the time, we just thought it was clever programming.

I asked if it was safe. He rolled his eyes and said it only needed an email and password, nothing invasive. No contacts, no location access. “It’s not a Russian bot, dude,” he said, laughing. “It’s just a to-do list on steroids.”

He signed up that night. I watched him punch in his info while we sat on the couch, reruns playing in the background. His email, his usual go-to password, and that was it. No payment screen, no verification. The app loaded instantly and started populating his dashboard with suggested daily habits like “Drink more water” and “Stretch your back.” Seemed harmless enough. Helpful, even. And for the first week, that’s exactly what it was.

He kept telling me how much more productive he felt. Said it kept him focused. Helped him break down big tasks into smaller ones. “It’s like having a boss in my pocket, but without the emotional damage,” he joked. I was honestly glad to see him get a win. We didn’t have many back then.

If you’d told me that night that the thing would eventually kill him, I would’ve laughed you out of the room. It was a checklist app. Nothing more.

That’s what I thought, anyway.

* * * * * *

About two weeks after Michael installed Taskr, he called me into his room while I was halfway through reheating some leftover chili. He was staring at his phone with this sort of puzzled look—eyebrows scrunched, lips parted, like he was trying to figure out whether something was funny or broken.

“Hey,” he said. “Did you mess with my list?”

I walked over and looked at what he was pointing to. His screen showed his daily tasks for the next morning, all neatly bullet-pointed. Most of them were normal: finish banner design for Reggie’s Auto Shop, email Denise about mockups, drink more water.

But one stood out.

“Take the trash out before 10:03 AM.”

“You’re telling me you didn’t write that?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t even remember putting anything in for tomorrow yet. And that time—10:03 exactly? That’s too specific, man. I always take it out after lunch.”

I shrugged. “Maybe you did it half-asleep. Or the app suggested it. Doesn’t it auto-generate stuff sometimes?”

He looked uncertain. “Yeah, but it usually flags those with a little icon next to it. A sparkle or a lightning bolt. This one doesn’t have anything. It’s just there.”

The next morning, I came back from the early shift to find Michael holding the trash can outside, watching the end of the garbage truck disappear down the street.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” he said, still holding the bin like he wasn’t sure whether to drop it or clutch it tighter. “They came at 10:05.”

I blinked. “So?”

“I’ve lived in this neighborhood for two years. Trash pickup’s never earlier than noon. Ever. But today—ten-oh-five on the dot. If I hadn’t taken it out when I did…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Just shook his head and looked back down at his phone.

A couple of days later, he called me over again. This time, he was almost grinning. “Okay, now it’s just weird,” he said, tilting his phone toward me. One of the day’s entries read: Pick up the blue pen from the sidewalk.

“Where?” I asked, smirking. “Any sidewalk in particular?”

“It just says ‘sidewalk.’ No location tag, no timestamp. But look at this.”

He walked me down the street to where he usually parked, and there it was—lying next to the curb, exactly one step before the mailbox—a blue ballpoint pen. The kind you’d see in bulk packs at the drugstore. It looked ordinary, even a little chewed up.

Michael picked it up and turned it over in his hand like it might reveal something. Then he bent down and squinted at the grass near where it had been lying.

“No way,” he muttered.

Tucked between the blades, half-pressed into the soil, was a folded twenty-dollar bill. It was barely visible unless you were down at eye level—almost like someone had intentionally hidden it there.

“I wouldn’t have even seen it,” he said, pocketing the cash. “I only stopped because of the pen.”

It was strange, sure, but at the time, it felt more uncanny than ominous. Michael was starting to treat it like a magic 8-ball that actually worked—some benevolent digital assistant that threw him little boosts when he needed them most. He started checking the app compulsively, curious what surprises might show up next. And at first, it really did seem helpful.

He joked that maybe the app was secretly run by a team of NSA psychics. I laughed, called him paranoid, and said if the worst thing it did was help him find lunch money, then it was probably fine.

But something about it—and the way the list kept quietly inserting itself—didn’t sit right with me. It was subtle, not even something I could have explained at the time, but it made me uneasy all the same.

I didn’t know it yet, but that blue pen was the last thing it gave him.

After that, it only took.

Part II

If the early weeks felt like a novelty—some quirky little advantage in Michael’s otherwise repetitive schedule—what came next was something else entirely. The shift didn’t happen all at once, but it was clear enough that, by the time we noticed, it felt as though something had already taken root and started growing in the background.

The first entry that really made me uncomfortable came on a Wednesday morning. Michael and I were both home, sitting at the kitchen table, half-dressed and nursing cold cereal. He had his phone in one hand and a spoon in the other, eyes flicking back and forth between the screen and his breakfast. He paused mid-bite, squinting at something, then turned the phone toward me.

“Does this sound… normal to you?” he asked.

The top of the list read:
“Don’t answer the door.”

That was it. No time. No context. Just a single instruction.

I frowned. “Did someone knock?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds, and for a while nothing happened. Then, like it had been queued up for dramatic effect, a knock came. Three slow raps, spaced too far apart to sound casual. They came from the front door—one we never really used, except for packages.

Michael stiffened. His hand hovered just above the table, spoon forgotten. I stood and stepped toward the door, but he reached out and caught my sleeve.

“Wait.”

His voice was quieter than usual. Not panicked, but not casual either.

“Seriously?”

“I just… I want to see what happens if we don’t.”

We waited. I glanced out the peephole after a few moments, but there was no one there. Just the porch and the overgrown bush that we kept saying we’d trim. No car on the curb. No footsteps fading down the walk.

I opened the door slowly, against Michael’s protest, and stepped outside.

Nothing.

By the time I came back in, Michael had refreshed his list. The next entry was already waiting:
“Ignore the smell.”

We didn’t smell anything at first. It wasn’t until that afternoon that the scent started drifting in from the vents. It was faint, something acrid and sour that reminded me of old batteries and burnt hair. I checked the kitchen trash, the fridge, even the basement in case something had died under the stairs. Everything looked clean. No source.

I tried to tell him it was probably just mildew or some gunk in the air ducts. But he was already writing down the words, copying them into a separate notebook like he was preparing for an exam. He started tracking them, every single entry the app gave him, almost obsessively.

That weekend, another instruction popped up.
“Stay quiet during the knock.”

It came at 3:17 a.m. We were both awake, not even trying to sleep at that point. He hadn’t left his room in over an hour, but I heard the notification go off and knew he’d seen something. I was about to ask what it said when we heard it—this time, not a knock on the front door, but on the wall that divided our side of the duplex from the vacant unit next door.

Three taps.

Then a pause.

Then two more.

Michael didn’t say a word. He sat in the hallway, knees drawn to his chest, staring at the drywall like he expected it to ripple. I wanted to call the landlord, maybe report a break-in, but something about the look on Michael’s face stopped me. He wasn’t scared in the traditional sense—he was focused. Alert. Like prey that knew it was being studied.

After a minute or two, the tapping stopped. I stood there for a while, unsure what to say. Eventually I muttered something about checking the breaker and went back to my room. We didn’t talk much the next morning.

That was when he told me the app had changed.

“I can’t delete tasks anymore,” he said, pacing the living room. “I used to be able to swipe them away, or edit them, or mark them complete even if I didn’t do them. Now… I can’t. They’re just stuck there. If I try to delete one, the app locks up. If I restart it, the task comes back. Sometimes there are more.”

I asked if he’d tried uninstalling.

He showed me the settings screen. There was no uninstall option. Just “Force Stop,” which didn’t do anything, and a note that the app had “updated automatically.” The version number was now just a string of symbols. No support link. No contact info.

He had checked the App Store, too—said the listing was gone. Completely removed. Not even in his download history. Like it had erased its own footprint.

I still wasn’t ready to admit something was wrong. I told him it was probably malware or some buggy update that messed with the code. That maybe the developer pushed some kind of A/B test and screwed it up.

Then he showed me the most recent item on the list.

“Be aware: someone is watching you.”

I chuckled at first. Then Michael tilted the screen toward me again, more insistent.

“Look at the time it appeared.”

I glanced at the timestamp. It had been added three minutes earlier. That was exactly when I’d walked past his bedroom window on my way back from the corner store.

He hadn’t seen me.

But the app had.

* * * * * *

I woke up on a Monday to find Michael standing beside my bed, holding his phone like it was covered in blood.

I wasn’t fully awake at first, and I remember squinting up at him, ready to complain about being woken up so early. But something in his face stopped me—his eyes weren’t just tired. They were hollow. He looked like he hadn’t blinked in hours, like whatever sleep he’d managed was filled with nightmares that wouldn’t let go.

“I need you to see this,” he said, his voice dry and stretched thin.

He handed me the phone. At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. The screen was open to Taskr, the same clean white background and yellow checkboxes as always. But there was only one entry on today’s list, and it didn’t leave any room for interpretation.

[ ] Die

That was it. No context. No timeframe. Just one task for the day, and a neat little checkbox waiting to be filled in.

I sat up slowly, feeling like I was coming out of anesthesia. “Is this a joke?” I asked, even though I already knew it wasn’t.

Michael shook his head. “It was the only thing on the list when I woke up. It replaced everything else. There’s nothing for tomorrow. Nothing for next week. Just this.”

I stood and pulled on a hoodie, already thinking through explanations. Maybe someone hacked his account. Maybe it was a virus, or a sick Easter egg from some rogue developer. Maybe the app had glitched.

“We’ll report it,” I told him. “We’ll flag it, or leave a review. Hell, we’ll delete the damn thing if we have to.”

He nodded, but didn’t look hopeful.

That morning, we tried everything.

Michael pressed and held the task like he’d done before, trying to bring up the edit menu. Nothing happened. The app didn’t freeze—it just ignored him. We tried to delete the entire app through his phone settings, but the uninstall button still didn’t respond. We turned off the phone, restarted it, even booted it in safe mode. The app was always there when it came back on, waiting with that one unchecked box.

Eventually, Michael slammed the phone against the corner of the kitchen counter. It bounced once, landed on the tile, and cracked across the screen. The device itself went black, unresponsive even after we tried charging it.

For a moment, we just stood there, breathing hard. And then Michael spoke again, so softly I almost missed it.

“It’s on the tablet.”

I followed him into the living room where he kept his drawing tablet propped against the couch. It had powered itself on somehow. Taskr was already open. The same clean interface. The same date.

I watched him back out of the app and try to delete it from the tablet’s settings. There was no option. No uninstall, no force close. When he tried to clear the cache, the settings app itself crashed. When he reopened the home screen, Taskr had moved to the top row, like it was demanding attention.

The same thing happened on his PC. Taskr wasn’t something he’d installed there, but when he opened his browser, it had become the homepage. His bookmarks were gone, replaced with a single folder titled “Tasks,” which led to a local web client. The same task was waiting there.

I grabbed my own laptop and searched for Taskr online, thinking I might find an official support page. There was nothing. The app no longer showed up on any app store. There were no developer forums, no archived downloads, no reviews—nothing except a handful of broken links and placeholder sites that looked autogenerated. It was as if the app had been scrubbed from the internet entirely.

We did manage to find a contact form embedded in one of the placeholder pages. It had no branding, no logos—just a white field with black text and a blinking cursor.

I typed out a short message explaining what had happened. I included Michael’s account name, a timestamp, and the nature of the task that had appeared.

I hit “Submit.”

We waited.

About fifteen seconds later, the screen blinked white and displayed a single-line response in gray text:

“The task is noted. Fulfillment is pending.”

No signature. No reply address. Just that one sentence, followed by an empty cursor blinking in place.

Michael turned away and ran his hands through his hair. He looked like he was on the edge of unraveling. His voice cracked when he spoke.

“What happens if I don’t do it?”

I didn’t answer.

I didn’t know how.

Part III

After the message—”Fulfillment is pending”—Michael made a decision.

“I’m not going to die today,” he said, and there wasn’t any sarcasm in it. No laughter. It wasn’t bravado, either. It was something steadier. Like he had finally decided that whatever was happening didn’t have the final say, and if death was scheduled, it was going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than just showing up on a screen.

We spent the rest of the morning making preparations, if you could call them that. Michael went down to the basement and flipped every breaker in the panel except for the one that controlled the fridge. Everything else—lights, outlets, HVAC, the bathroom fan—went dark. He didn’t want electricity anywhere near us. Said it was too unpredictable.

He pulled his mattress into the center of the living room, away from ceiling fixtures, away from windows, away from anything that could fall. He filled a backpack with bottled water, granola bars, dried fruit, peanut butter, and a flashlight. He checked the batteries three times.

We lit candles in a few safe spots—wide glass jars positioned on ceramic saucers in the corners of the room. He insisted we use the flameless lighters, not matches. No sparks. No surprises.

Every time we took a new precaution, I saw something in his posture loosen, if only slightly. He wasn’t just waiting for the axe to fall anymore. He was actively resisting it.

He wouldn’t drive. Said the odds were too high. Even crossing the street felt like playing roulette, so we stayed indoors for most of the day. Around 2:00 p.m., though, he said he needed fresh air, just for a few minutes, so we walked around the block together.

That was when the car came.

We had just passed the neighbor’s mailbox when a silver sedan came screaming around the corner, tires squealing on asphalt. It veered up onto the sidewalk not fifteen feet ahead of us and clipped the edge of a fire hydrant, sending sparks and chunks of metal into the street. The driver didn’t stop. Just kept going, engine howling like it was trying to outrun the scene.

Michael and I froze. For a long moment, we didn’t speak. We just looked at the skid marks and the bent hydrant post and the chunk of pavement gouged out of the sidewalk. He glanced down at his list, still open on his cracked tablet.

There was no new entry. Just the same old task:
[ ] Die

We went back to the house after that. Neither of us had the energy to pretend it had been a coincidence. Michael sat on the living room floor with the windows cracked, staring out into the yard like he expected it to start moving. I offered to get us something to eat, but he shook his head.

“I’m not risking the fridge,” he said. “No appliances. No chance.”

We ate out of the emergency bag. He peeled open a pack of trail mix and I handed him a plastic spoon with some peanut butter. We didn’t talk much. I noticed he was chewing each bite slower than usual, like he was trying to detect something hidden in the food.

Around 4:00 p.m., one of the candles in the far corner cracked with a sharp ping. The glass container had split along its base, and the wax had started to pool onto the wood floor. The wick was still burning. Michael was on his feet in seconds, snuffing it out and scooping the jar into a ceramic bowl before anything could catch.

We stared at the burn mark left behind.

“That could’ve done it,” I said quietly.

He nodded.

“I’ve got more jars,” he said. “Thicker ones. Safer.”

By the evening, he started to settle into a strange kind of rhythm. He stayed in the living room mostly, scrolling through old photos on his computer and trying not to look at the browser tab where the task still waited, unchanged. He turned on music from his old phone—an offline playlist he hadn’t touched since college—and let it fill the room while the sun went down.

At some point, just before 9:00 p.m., he went into his bedroom to grab a book. I was still sitting on the floor, watching some dumb old DVD we’d found in a box of garage sale movies, when I heard a loud crash. I bolted down the hallway and found him standing just outside the door, eyes wide.

“The fan,” he said, pointing.

It had broken loose from the ceiling and landed in the center of the bed, blades splayed like broken limbs. One of them had pierced straight through the mattress. He had only been in the room for seconds before it happened, but he had already stepped back toward the doorway.

We both stared at it, and for the first time all day, Michael smiled.

“That would’ve done it.”

“Yeah,” I said, my throat dry. “It really would’ve.”

He looked down at his list again. Still no change.

By 11:00 p.m., we were starting to believe he might make it. He hadn’t eaten anything he hadn’t opened himself. He hadn’t used the car, or turned on any power tools, or walked under anything heavy. The house was practically wrapped in cotton, and the list still sat there, quietly ticking down the hours.

We played a board game—one we hadn’t touched since moving in—just to kill time. He beat me, barely, and we laughed in that awkward, adrenaline-fueled way that people do when they’ve convinced themselves the worst might be over.

By 11:30, he was leaning back against the couch, eyes flicking between the tablet screen and the clock on the wall.

“I think I’m gonna make it,” he said.

And for the first time all day, I believed him.

* * * * * *

At 11:55 p.m., we were sitting side by side on the couch, the tablet resting between us, screen dimmed but still lit. The list hadn’t changed. The single task remained there, unfulfilled, as it had all day. Michael checked the time for the hundredth time, then leaned back and rested his head against the wall behind him.

“I can’t believe I made it,” he said, his voice quiet but carrying a kind of exhausted relief that made me feel like we’d both crossed a finish line.

“You did,” I told him. “You played it smart. You didn’t give it an inch.”

He nodded and let out a breath. There was no bravado in it, no gloating. Just a quiet acknowledgment that he’d outlasted something that had wanted him gone. We didn’t say much else after that. There didn’t seem to be anything left to say. The clock on the wall read 11:58 when I got up to get us both water.

That was when I smelled the smoke.

At first, it was faint—barely more than a whiff of something acrid, like overheated plastic. I paused in the kitchen and sniffed again, thinking maybe a circuit had overloaded. Then I heard the faint crack of wood behind the wall, followed by a soft hiss, like the sound of paper catching fire.

“Michael,” I called out. “Do you smell that?”

He sat upright instantly, all the tension that had drained from his body snapping back into place. His eyes darted to the windows, then to the ceiling. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s coming from the other side.”

We both ran to the back of the house and opened the laundry room door that led to the shared utility space between the duplex units. The heat hit us immediately. Smoke billowed through the vent slats in the adjoining door, curling like fingers into our half of the building.

“No one’s supposed to be over there,” I said, coughing already. “That place is empty.”

Michael didn’t respond. He was already backing into the hallway, pulling his shirt up over his mouth. I followed him, slamming the laundry door shut behind us. The smoke was spreading fast now, leaking under the baseboards, curling through the air vents, making the whole house feel smaller by the second.

He turned toward the front door, but when he twisted the knob, it barely budged.

“It’s stuck,” he said, trying again. “It’s like it’s been locked from the outside.”

“Let me try,” I said, pushing him aside gently. I threw my weight against it, then again, but it didn’t move. I could hear the wood around the frame groaning, like it had swollen somehow. The windows weren’t much better. The living room pane wouldn’t slide open. It felt jammed, like the tracks had warped.

“The breaker’s off,” I said. “There’s nothing in our unit that could’ve caused this.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s not us.”

The lights began to flicker, and the smoke thickened, turning gray into brown. Michael pulled his shirt tighter across his face and looked toward the back of the house, but we both knew we wouldn’t make it out that way. The heat was already visible—waves of distortion rippling down the hallway from the laundry room door.

“Call 911,” I said, fumbling for my phone.

“I’m trying,” he said, tapping at the screen, but the smoke was already making it difficult to breathe, to think, to see what was in front of us.

A loud crack split the air. The drywall near the ceiling gave way, and a plume of smoke burst out, flooding the room in seconds. We dropped to our knees, crawling toward the nearest window. Michael veered toward the dining room, waving his arms for me to follow. I saw him grab a chair and hurl it at the glass. It bounced back with a dull thud.

The windows weren’t breaking.

Nothing made of glass should have resisted like that. I watched him pick up the chair and throw it again, harder this time. The result was the same. It didn’t even spiderweb.

He turned to me, coughing now, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes, and shouted something I couldn’t make out over the crackle building behind us. I tried the kitchen window, slamming the heel of my boot against it again and again until the smoke made it impossible to breathe. My vision blurred, and my throat closed tight.

“Michael!” I called out, stumbling toward the hallway. I could barely see him now, a silhouette moving through the haze. He reached his bedroom door, pulled it open, and stumbled inside.

I followed.

I reached the doorway just in time to see him step to the center of the room, where the floor had been cleared earlier in the day. His tablet was already in his hands. The screen lit up the smoke around him in a dull, flickering glow.

He looked up at me.

There was no fear left in his face. Just resignation.

“I almost made it,” he said.

The tablet buzzed once in his hand.

And then the checkbox marked itself.

A soft green check appeared beside the word.

[✓] Die

The next moment, the ceiling collapsed.

The last thing I remember was being thrown backward by the shockwave of heat. I landed in the hallway, half-conscious, the walls buckling around me. I remember crawling, choking, forcing my way through the only door that finally gave—the side entrance that had been painted shut since we’d moved in.

When the firefighters arrived, I was in the front yard, face streaked with soot and hands blistered. I was screaming for them to go in. Screaming his name.

But it was too late.

They pulled his body out two hours later, charred and curled near the center of the room, the tablet still resting beside his hand. The list was still open. The screen cracked but visible.

The single checkbox was green.

Part IV

It’s been twenty years since the fire, and I still wake up some nights smelling smoke that isn’t there.

I’ve moved twice since then. I got married. Had a daughter. Built a life that, on the surface, looks whole. Most people think I’ve moved on. They don’t ask about Michael anymore, and I don’t bring him up—not because I’ve forgotten, but because I remember too well. There are things people don’t want to hear. There are truths that don’t belong in polite conversation.

For a long time, I told myself it was over. That whatever came for him had been satisfied. That maybe, by surviving it, I’d earned the right to forget it ever happened.

But apps like that don’t go away.

They wait.

This morning, I was pouring coffee when my daughter walked into the kitchen with her phone in her hand. She’s thirteen. Loves organization. Obsessed with color-coded study guides and morning routine checklists. She looked pale. Distracted. The kind of quiet that only comes from fear.

“Dad,” she said, “can you look at this?”

I dried my hands and took the phone from her.

The app was already open—white background, clean font, yellow checkmark in the corner. The design was sleeker than I remembered, more modern and polished, but I recognized it instantly. I didn’t need to see the name. I didn’t need her to explain.

Taskr was back.

I scrolled through her entries. Most were harmless. Ordinary. “Finish essay.” “Feed the dog.” “Drink more water.”

But then I saw the others. The ones she didn’t write.

“Don’t answer the knock.”
“Stay inside after sunset.”
“Ignore the voice in the hallway.”

I looked up at her. “Where did you get this app?”

She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “It was at the top of the App Store,” she said. “Under productivity. It had, like, five stars and a ton of good reviews. No ads or anything. I thought it would help me with school.” Her voice softened. “It looked… normal.”

I nodded, trying to keep my composure.

“Did you type these?” I asked, scrolling again.

She shook her head. “No. I didn’t even know they were there until this morning.”

I could see her trying not to cry. Her voice cracked when she asked, “What does it mean?”

I didn’t answer. I kept scrolling.

And then I saw it.

Tomorrow: [ ] Watch Dad die

A chill passed through me so deep and sharp it felt like I was back in that house again, crawling through the smoke, screaming his name.

“Dad,” she whispered. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said, though it wasn’t the truth. Not really. I knew exactly what it meant. I just couldn’t say it out loud.

“I’m scared,” she said, and this time the tears were coming. “I don’t want you to die.”

I knelt down, met her eyes, and placed a hand gently on her shoulder.

“Hey,” I said softly, “It’s going to be okay. I just need to hold onto this for a little while, alright? Just while I figure some things out.”

She nodded, wiping at her face. I stood and took the phone with me, stepping into the hallway where she couldn’t see my hands shaking.

Tomorrow.

It didn’t even have the decency to give me a full day.

I checked the system clock. I had less than twenty-four hours.

That’s why I’m writing this now. Because I don’t know if there’s a way to stop it this time. I don’t know if cutting the power or sleeping in the middle of the room will be enough. I don’t know if Michael had it easier because he didn’t know what was coming, or if I have it worse because I do.

But I need someone else to know.

If you’re reading this, and you’ve downloaded an app called Taskr—even if it looks harmless, even if the suggestions seem helpful, even if it only shows you basic stuff like brushing your teeth or locking your door—you need to delete it. Right now. Before the real entries start appearing. Before it starts giving you instructions you didn’t ask for. Before it gives you a task you can’t ignore.

Because once your name’s in the list, it doesn’t matter how careful you are.

It doesn’t matter how many days you dodge the end.

Eventually, it checks the box.