[Part 1 — Lance]
He posted it without thinking. No hashtags. No emojis. Just the sentence:
“They died exactly when I said they would.”
At first, nobody paid attention. A few likes. A couple of “What the hell?” replies. A girl from his Statistics class messaged, Are you okay?
By morning, it had been screenshotted. Someone found the timestamp. Someone else dug up an older post from four weeks ago, one that said:
“March 18. 9:47 PM. They won’t wake up.”
That one had no engagement. No context. He had written it the night after the dream—half-dazed, half-scared, curled on the cold tile of their bathroom floor, unsure if he was losing his mind. It had felt like vomiting. Like if he didn’t write it down, it would rot somewhere in his brain.
He wasn’t trying to predict anything.
But his mother collapsed while brushing her hair. His father never woke up from his afternoon nap. No sign of struggle. No poison. Just… gone. Minutes apart.
March 18. 9:47 PM.
People began messaging. Some were kind. Most were not.
“Cap 🧢”
“bro you killed them?”
“this some wattpad ass confession”
Screenshots turned into TikToks. Podcasts speculated about trauma manifesting as foresight. Reddit threads built timelines. One of his dad’s old students found his profile photo and wrote a Medium piece about the uncanny resemblance between Lance’s expression and a boy from a Korean webtoon with psychic powers.
A TV show called. Twice.
His friends unfollowed him quietly. Not out of malice. Maybe fear. Maybe superstition.
So Lance stayed inside. Watched the numbers grow. Re-read old texts. Punched the air once—just to see if he could still feel something.
He hadn’t cried yet. Not really. He’d made a sound when he saw their bodies in the ER. A strangled thing. But he couldn’t find the tears.
He wondered if people thought he was enjoying the attention. That somewhere inside, he felt special.
He didn’t.
He felt like a file being downloaded over and over again, pixelated beyond recognition.
On the third night after the post went viral, he dreamed again.
Same black void. Same hush. He floated, or maybe stood, he couldn’t tell.
In front of him, a shape—flickering, indistinct. Not a person. Not a voice. Just a pull.
“There are others.”
He woke up gasping. The words weren’t spoken. But he heard them.
Later that day, someone tagged him in a comment. Just three words.
“You’re not alone.”
It came from a user with no profile photo. The account had one post: a photo of the sky at dusk, blurred, with a shooting star.
Lance clicked on it, heart racing.
The caption read: March 18, 9:47 PM.
