HOME | DD

Description

Monday. It had been about three months since Lena's death. Mirian was shaken ... But at least she was happy to have forgiven her friend the day before, after all she didn't want a fight to be the last thing that reminded her of Lena.

In the schoolyard, at break time, Mirian, Coda and Orion were at a table. Mirian and Orion were the ones who were most sad about the situation, Coda was indifferent, since he never thinked that Lena has something special, but of course, he felt sorry for the girl's death.

Orion might not know her, but he knew that something was wrong since he'd seen her and had always tried to help her, though she'd never accept it. He felt a little guilty about it.

The trio talked about how it might have been if she hadn't died and also learned to be an open-minded person. In some parts they laughed, but Mirian couldn't really laugh, a sincere laugh..

“Sometimes... late at night.. I send messages to her, thinking that someday she will answer... “ - Mirian said, with a sad smile.

Coda hugged his girlfriend aside, she didn't deserve to suffer like that. He wanted to comfort her, but all he could do for her now was to stay by her side. Orion in turn tried to draw some things that could animated Mirian... nothing really worked. But his motto was that "it was always worth trying".

The bell rang. The trio got up. They would have some more classes before they finally went home. Coda went to the water cooler while Mirian waited for him in front of the classroom. After drinking the water, Coda lifted his head a little, tilting it to see something on the wall, right in the middle between the lockers. There in the background, between the locker and the wall, was a symbol. A circle with an X inside. He didn't even pay attention to the symbol, he wondered how anyone could have done anything in that little space between the wall and locker. Ninjas. He shrugged and went to Mirian, so they could come in and watch the class. As they both entered, Orion looked oddly at Coda, as if he were a little scared, though Coda himself was as relaxed as possible. He looked at his friend a little worried.

"What's up, Orion? Is there something in my tooth?" - He raised one eyebrow as he stayed on his place.

Orion just shook his head and in sign language asked his friend if he was okay, if he wasn't feeling bad.

"No, no. Relax, I'm fine." - He smiled and finally sat down in the chair next to Mirian.

The class would have been perfectly normal, if it weren't Orion staring at his friend every 10 seconds. Of course Coda had noticed.

At the end of class, the three of them went to the bus together and sat down, Coda said quickly.

"Orion, is something wrong? You didn't stop staring at me for a minute." - Coda asked, a little worried now.

"Indeed, Orion ... You look very weird." - Mirian agreed with her boyfriend, looking sympathetically at Orion.

"..." He just lowered his head.

Orion wasn't sure of things, even though he felt when something wasn't right, so he always preferred to be quiet and show nothing.

Orion leaned his head against the window of the bus. He was remembering some things, the person he saw at the veteran's party, on the night Lena died... That particular person didn't seem to be a "normal teenager" who was there to party. He should have warned her before that. If only he could talk, things would be easier.... He mentally despised himself the whole trip. The bus passed through a forested part of the city, and as it passed a rather large tree, Orion saw a hooded figure. But it was only seconds, after all, the bus was moving. Orion lifted his head, shaken, and knelt on the seat, turning back so he could look out the back window. He was trying to see, but he couldn't. Coda and Mirian were clearly startled by that sudden movement of Orion.

"Orion!! Sit down! You are crazy? The bus is moving!! You can get hurt!!" - Coda practically shouted at his friend, who sat down, but he was still restless.

"What's it? Did you see something??" Mirian asked worriedly.

Orion nodded, but began to tremble in the sign language, couldn't form a sentence to explain. He needed to stay calm.

The bus finally arrived at the house of one of them. It was Coda's house. He got off the bus and Orion almost came down, but Mirian sort of grabbed it, making it clear that it wasn't where he came down. It was obvious that Orion knew his house wasn't there, but he acted impulsively.

Anyway, he put himself in his place and the bus left.

Coda was surprised at the behavior of his friend, he wasn't like that. He entered the house to which he had been resigned by the exchange, going directly to the room where he slept.

A few hours have passed and Mirian sends you a message.

" I got home! Wow, the bus was late today. I thought it was going to break in the middle of nowhere."

" Heh, go rest, darling, you're physically and mentally tired. It's been a while since you've slept well."

" Yeah.. I can't... Sometimes I have nightmares about Lena.."

" Try to watch something to relax, you can. I'm with you always you need."

".. Hehe... I love you, you know?"

" I love you too, bae. Now go rest."

And Mirian didn't answer him anymore. He was worried about her, she was very exhausted. She needed some rest. She was too young to be worried like that. Coda sat in the chair in front of the computer and opened some study videos.

All those subjects he had already learned, so he wasn't worried about anything. He closed the videos and went to open some game to relax.

A new game appeared on his Steam, a game he hadn't bought, downloaded or even won as a gift. He imagined that Steam itself had left that game there. Name game: X.

The icon wasn't very cool. It was just a red X pixelated. But it was a game he'd never played in, so he'd try to see what it was like.

He opened the game.

It was a 3D first person game, that is, he just saw what the character on the screen saw. The character was in the middle of the forest. Since the game was called "X", he wanted to see what the "X" key did. It was the attack key. He pressed X on some trees, and all were marked with an "X", made by beautiful daggers. He kept doing this for some time, until he got tired and decided to explore more the place of the game.

In a moment, the character left the forest and went to a kind of road... Coda knew this road from somewhere. He kept advancing until he stopped at a house...

It was the house where Coda was living.

He was clearly startled... But maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe the game had been created from real life and the graphics had been made by satellite or something. He kept walking to that house and went to one of the windows, the window of his room. He thought maybe it was different inside, since satellites don't take what's inside the houses.... He thought that even couldn't see inside the windows, that the house was only of ornament... But he could.

And there was his room, just as it was now.

Coda was getting scared... When suddenly the door of the room - inside the game - opened... A character entered there and went to bed... It was Coda.. That's exactly what he did when he entered in his room before going to the computer.

Coda took the mouse to close the game, but as soon as he pressed the "X" to close it, the computer hung up.

The boy was breathing hard, that was certainly very strange.

Out of curiosity, or even a matter of security, he got up and went to the window... He opened the curtain and looked around...

The family that received Coda, lived in a place a little away from the city, had only a few more houses around and a lot of trees and bushes. He looked directly at a tree in front of his house across the street. Again he saw that symbol, that circle with an X in the middle. He frowned. Something was very wrong.

His computer began to make a strange noise and suddenly began to smoke. He turned away, after all the computer didn't belong him, but to the family that lived there.

Suddenly, silence... The smoke stopped... The computer turned on.

It seemed to be working properly. He was happy about it, after all, repeating, the computer didn't belong to him.

He went looking for the game on Steam again, but there was no more game. Actually, every game on his account was gone. He was obviously angry, very angry. Someone called him on Skype, it was Mirian.

He answered.

"Hi my love, I couldn't sleep, I'm very distressed and I don't know what to do... Could you talk for a while with me??" Mirian asked in a husky voice.

"Ah... All right, dear, no problem." - Coda replied, still a little nervous but tried not to show it.

They spent hours talking, until someone called on the phone.

"Wait a sec, darling." - Coda said, muting his voice.

"Okay..."

He answered. Surprisingly... it was Mirian.

"... Are you wanting to break up with me? It is? Why did you say these things? Did I do something wrong?" - Mirian cried on the phone, desperate.

"What? Of course not! What are you talking about? Why did you call me? You could start this crazy thing right there on Skype."

"What do you mean, Coda? You write me a lot of shit and you want to make a fool of yourself?? And I don't have patiance for Skype now. You told me to go rest, I'm not gonna turn on the computer now just to solve something you started." - She was crying and angry.

"I didn't start anything! I didn't even talk to you again after you went to sleep or rest, which apparently you didn't do because you've been online on Skype for hours." - Coda replied, confused and also angry, but he was still tense.

"No? And who sent all these messages to me? Wasn't the Cleverbot. And I already said that I didn't even turned on my computer. Stop wanting to invent something to defend yourself." - Mirian was furious.

Coda was gonna turn on the microphone on Skype to start talking a lot of things to Mirian... But the call with "her" was over.... And she was offline..

"... Mirian." - He said quietly.

" What?" - She snapped, still angry.

" I think someone hacked your Skype account." - He was clever enough to take a picture of the call that had ended and had lasted four hours and sent the picture to Mirian per message.

" ... What, but I had just changed my password. What a hate! Sorry to doubt you, bae..." - Mirian said a little ashamed to have said all that things. - " It's just that I panicked about your messages."

"But I didn't send you a message after I tell you to rest." - He said sympathetically.

"Yes you did, saying that Lena really deserved to die because she was an idiot, said I was supposed to stop being dramatic and idiot, said that I was being boring and that I should have left with her or at least have my mouth sewn up to stop talking so much..." - She started to cry.

"What?? I never said that!! Look, I didn't send those messages, don't be like this, I would never say that, I love you." - He tried to console her by voice.

Something wasn't right. They kept talking until Mirian fell asleep.

He got up and set the cell phone on the desk beside him. He took one last look at the computer. He realized the webcam light was on, but it hung up as soon as he looked at it. He frowned and went to the bathroom to do his personal hygiene. After that, he went to bed.

He woke up in the middle of the night with his cell phone sending a message. He went to see who it was... It was Lena....

"You should leave my friend alone. You're no good to her."

He quickly turned off his cell phone... What the hell was that... He knew it couldn't be Lena, she was dead... He turned to the opposite side of the desk where his cell phone was, when he felt a breeze hit him. He looked at the window. It was open... but he hadn't opened it. He went to the window and closed it, staring at the tree in which he had seen a symbol earlier... The symbol was no longer there...

Coda was starting to get scared, but he couldn't even go to his parents or brothers room, because he was too far from his real home and living with strangers now.

He slept covered up to the head that night.

The next day, he just woke up because of the cuckoo clock he had on the bedroom wall, because the electronic clocks didn't sound any alarm, as if they had been stopped. But he didn't realize that. He woke calmer, going straight to the bathroom, doing his needs and his personal hygiene so he could go to school.

As he left the bathroom, he went to the drawer where he had unpacked his suitcases. He took some clothes... at the bottom of the drawer was a notched X... He was desperate because the furniture didn't belong to him, if the residents saw that, they would think that he did the X and they would get angry. He completely ignored the fact that before didn't have an X there and "magically" appeared, he was only concerned about what the residents would think. Luckily, the X was inside the drawer, so they wouldn't find out so soon.

After getting ready and having breakfast, he went to the school bus, going to the bottom to sit with Mirian and Orion. Orion quickly hugged his friend, a tight embrace, as if it was the first time in many years that he saw Coda.

" Wow, what a good reception. What I miss?" - Coda said, returning the hug and then sitting down on his place.

" Haha, he was agitated all the way here, he wanted to see you as soon as possible." - Mirian said, stroking Orion's hair, which didn't detach from Coda.

" Oh, he must have had some nightmare with me. Where we lived, he always had nightmares about our people and always hugged them as if it was the last day of their lives, haha. Orion is such a loving boy." - Coda patted his friend's hair, demonstrating that everything was fine, and finally gave Mirian a kiss.

The whole trip was quiet, as if none of the madness of last night had happened. Upon arriving at the school, they went directly to the classroom to wait for the bell ring, as Orion didn't want to stay in the schoolyard that morning.

" How about you two coming to my house on Thursday? Orion is strange, you seemed strange yesterday, I'm not very well... and also, Thursday and Friday my parents will not be there, just my brother. We can say that it is for studies and then we can make a camp." - Mirian smiled excitedly, was in need of company and imagined that would be nice.

" It's okay for me. Orion?" - Coda look at his friend.

Orion nodded and smiled.

Great, they had plans for Thursday. At least one good thing in so many months.

After classes were over, they decided not to take the school bus because Mirian's parents were willing to take Coda and Orion to their homes later, so the trio went to have some icecream and relax a little.

At the icecream shop, while they waited for their orders, Coda looked at the security cameras from there... They seemed to look directly at him... He just took his concentration away, because he received a message, it was his brother's.

" Hey bro, how's it going in magnificent America?"

" Hey you little brat. Oh, it's all very well. It could be better with you all here, but I'm happy anyway."

" Aw, Mommy's baby are missing us already, huh?"

"And you're not missing me?"

" Pfff, naaah."

"And why did you send me a message?"

" Looooook!! I have a new game. See you later."

Coda laughed. His younger brother was a play.

After getting their icecream, they went to a bench in a square, sat down and relaxed. Everything was wonderful, they were laughing and talking, talking about happy and funny things. Telling jokes about teachers and students. They were being normal teenagers.

All until a message arrives for Mirian.

Mirian dropped her icecream and put her hand in front of her mouth, almost crying in despair. Coda quickly took the phone from her hand. It was a message from Lena...

"Your bad taste makes me sick even in hell."

Coda deleted the message and hugged Mirian, Orion hugged her too and they stayed there.

" Keep calm Mirian, it was just a bad joke... Someone must have stolen her cellphone or something..."

Coda tried to calm her down, also wanted to believe it was just a bad joke.. since he had also received a message from Lena last night.

Right there they called Mirian's parents who went to get them. They took Coda and Orion to their homes and left as well.

At his house, Coda wasn't in the mood for going to the computer. In fact he was still a bit afraid to end up breaking the computer that didn't belong to him. He just lay down on his bed and pulled his own notebook out of his suitcase, opening up his social networks. He stayed for hours there, until a series of glitches hungs up his notebook, but it turned on back seconds later.... All his notebook files were named "X".... He closed the notebook and threw it back into the suitcase... He was beginning to hate that letter.

He lay on his bed and took some pencils and paper, he would draw until sleep came.... The next day, he woke up in a cold breeze of wind entering his room with the sunlight, which was bothering him somewhat. Again open window without he has opened it...

His shoulder was hurting. He looked as he could. There was a small cut there, badly made. But if it were to give a shape to the cut, it would certainly have X shaped, even if a deformed X.

He imagined it was a coincidence, and that he had hurt himself with some pencil or something, because of the fact that he had slept on top of his material, maybe he had moved and scratched.

He dressed up and left for school. One more day with everything quiet. Orion was more nervous than anything. At least the next day they would go to Mirian's house, putting all their hopes of improving things that night.

Coda remembered one thing. When he arrived at school, he went to the water cooler where he had seen the symbol between the wall and the locker, he wanted to see if it was really the same symbol he had seen in the tree, because he wasn't remembered. He looked in that space, but there was no longer any symbol... Strange, of course. It would be as difficult to take the symbol from there as it should have been to put it. He walked into the classroom with Mirian and Orion.

Mirian just talked about how the next day was going to be cool and kept asking if they were really going, if they wouldn't let her, if they promised they would go. They had to make a pinky promise.

Computer classroom. They would learn about computer codes. Only Orion and Coda did this class, Mirian was in biology class, so they wouldn't see her until the bell ringing.

The teacher gave the precise coordinations so that they could open the codes.

Coda saw some binary codes, in which it hadn't appeared to any other student, but he didn't know, so he ignored.

"01000011 01101000 01100001 01110011 01100101 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101"

He thought it was some code that the teacher had gone through to decode, but he didn't know how to handle those things and wasn't interested at all. Soon after, his screen hung up and another sequence of binary codes appeared in red.

"01011000 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01110011 01100101 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101"

This time he was surprised and looked around, no other screen had turned off that way...

Orion, who was by his side, turned off Coda's computer as soon as he saw what had happened.

"Orion???" - Coda asked, confused.

" Orion! You can't do this, it's against the rules, your friend was using that computer. You go to the board." - The teacher said.

And poor Orion went to the board, looking back at Coda... Hours later the bell rang. Coda left the computer class and went directly to the board. Orion was sitting on the bench outside. He had taken a suspension.

After meeting Mirian, they went to the bus. Orion showed no emotion. He sat with his head against the bus window. Coda and Mirian were worried...

The bus stopped. Coda went down and went to his house. Arriving in his room, he began to pack some things, like clothes, toothbrush and things like that, he would sleep at Mirian's house the next day. The three of them wouldn't go to school because Mirian's parents wouldn't be home and they needed a break. The family Coda was resigned to didn't need to know, nor Orion's.

The next day, very early, they left for Mirian's house, they were going to camp in the garden, Mirian was already arranging things to be comfortable for her guests. Her older brother would keep an eye on her all the time, after all, he didn't trust strangers near his little sister.

They fixed their sleeping bags there and left everything tidy for the night. After everything was tidy, they went to enjoy nature.

They went into the middle of some trees and began playing hide and seek. Orion always won. It was being fun.

It was Orion's turn to seek.

Coda ran for the furthest in the forest... Until he arrived at a point he recognized... It seemed where his character was born in the game "X"... He was surprised... He went for a walk there.. His Breathing began to get heavy when he began to see that in some trees there was an "X" carved... The same trees he had scratched in the game. He ran off back to Mirian's house, past Mirian and Orion and went straight out of the trees, out in the open... He was panting... Mirian and Orion ran to see what had happened. Coda for the first time showed panicked, a terrible despair.

It was hard to calm him, but they succeeded a little...

Night fell. They were all around a campfire, but Coda was still nervous.. he kept his eyes on the forest entrance... Mirian and Orion tried to cheer him up with marshmallows and some treats, but he didn't even smile. He was afraid.

"I need to go to the bathroom. I'll be back soon." Mirian got up and went into her house.

"..." Orion asked in signal language to his friend. - "[What is going on? You saw something in the forest, didn't you?] "

"Not exactly... It's a long story... Look, I really need to check something out. Stay here, okay?"

Orion shook his head and clung to Coda, who wanted to get up.

"Orion, please. Stop." - He was trying to break free.

Orion didn't want to let him go, but Coda was determined. He managed to let go.

Coda was worried, because now it didn't just envelop him since he was inside the forest near Mirian's house. He was afraid something would happen to her.

He didn't plan to enter the forest, just got up and went around the house. Orion went behind, Coda got angry but ended up allowing.

Coda heard a movement in a bush and ran there. But there was nothing... besides a paper... He took the paper.

"In the middle of the forest he sees you. The giant with no eyes, he wants you."

Orion looked to the side. There was another paper near a tree. Orion ran up there, Coda was quickly behind, as he didn't want to leave his friend alone. After Orion took the paper, Coda pushed him away from the forest. So they could read the paper.

"What the man without face commands, the X has to do. He will find you and into the forest will bring you."

At that point, seeing the red "X" on the paper, Coda crumpled the paper, angry. He pulled Orion back to where the sleeping bags were. Coda was shaken. He didn't know what to do, but he felt that this was no longer a bad joke.

He heard whistles in the forest... He had to put an end to it... He looked at the entrance to the forest and then at Orion.

"Orion, stay here. I need to see something, it's going to be all right. Stay here and if something happens, don't go after me. Call the police or go inside and lock yourself up with Mirian." - Coda said, standing up.

Orion cringed in his sleeping bag and watched as Coda headed into the forest.

It was dark, so Coda wore the flashlight of his cellphone. He also had a pocketknife, if the clown who was making that bad joke tried something...

Coda pointed the lantern of his cell phone directly to a tree. There was a sheet there, written "Can't run"...

He called the police... He said someone was chasing after his friends, he sent Mirian's address, and before he hung up, someone caught him from behind... His cellphone crashed down. He tried to fight but his pocketknife fell on the first cut he had received in his hand, leaving him sensitized to force. The figure behind him tied his hands and threw him on his back in a tree, sitting on his legs so he wouldn't move. He couldn't see who it was in that darkness and his cellphone had fallen with the flashlight down... There was intense pain in his lips, and the more he moved his head, the more it hurt, as if his lips were torn, so he had to stop moving, or it would hurt even more. He felt the needle pierce his lips more and more, a wrong seam, badly made, for he felt the blood drain in a big quantity.. and it burned.. burned very much. Before long, his mouth was completely sewn. He was breathing hard through his nose, he didn't know what was happening, he couldn't see. He could only see a silhouette on top of him...

Orion was worried about his friend, he knew he should stay or go and call someone, but he felt he had no time, then he got up and ran into the forest, desperately searching for Coda. He couldn't shout at him, because he was mute... He heard a disgusting sound coming from a corner, like a sound of flesh ripping and being smashed, and a muffled cry that was soon losing its strength until it was silent... Orion hid behind a tree and saw the scene... The hooded figure over Coda, ripping his throat with their own hands after cutting it with a dagger... Orion felt a reflux when he saw the hooded figure stick their hand in the cut and smash the throat of his friend who was struggling in despair.. Orion cried, cried a lot, but he couldn't do anything, he was afraid.. He even wet himself... He saw tears of blood come out of Coda's eyes... Until everything was silent....

The hooded figure stood up and walked away from the corpse... They scratched the tree with the blood in their hands, leaving a red X there. They took the phone and a little light took over... Orion could see bright yellow eyes, which although they were bright, seemed to have no soul, not have that human brightness... It gave him a cold chill on the spine... He also could see a red X... The hooded figure wore a black bandana with a red X in the middle to cover their nose and mouth... The killer seemed to send a message... Orion's cellphone rang and he widened his eyes. The killer turned his gaze to him and Orion couldn't run, paralyzed... The hooded figure stood for long seconds staring at him before disappearing into the trees... Orion ran close to his friend, crying in silence and despair... He picked up the pocketknife next to his friend to try to cut the lines of his mouth, he didn't deserve to have his mouth sewed that way, to Orion, Coda just said beautiful words.

Police sirens... That was all it could heard. Mirian ran desperately into the forest, guiding the cops Coda had called earlier. The cops found the two boys, Orion with the pocketknife in his hand, trying to cut the lines of his friend's mouth.. He looked at the cops with his eyes swollen from crying... On seeing the scene, Mirian screamed and fell to her knees, crying desperately.... First her friend and now her boyfriend ...

The police officers blamed and arrested Orion, who had done nothing. Mirian knew it wasn't Orion, but her older brother insisted on giving reason to the cops, as he was afraid.

Orion was blamed for the death of Coda, Lena and three other young boys who had been killed in the same way in November 2015. He took the death penalty...

After losing her friends and boyfriend, Mirian went crazy and was found dead in her bathroom weeks later... She had committed suicide. At least that was what the family thought, but the police didn't seem to believe much because of the fact that the perfect cut in her throat seemed to have been made by someone else, leaving the scene as a very well done homicide that could be confused with a suicide. They didn't think it were the same killer of the other deaths, for besides Orion being arrested, her mouth wasn't sewn and the cut was perfectly done, not torn aggressively like the others.

While he waited for his death, Orion scrawled on the walls of the prison... He scrawled with his own fingers until they began to bleed and could really mark the walls... He scrawled phrases like "X chases" - "It's not my fault" - "Can't run"... But what else was on those walls, was a huge and red-XXxxxxxxXXxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XX

X

XXXXXXXx

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“01011000 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101”

Description

Monday. It had been about three months since Lena's death. Mirian was shaken ... But at least she was happy to have forgiven her friend the day before, after all she didn't want a fight to be the last thing that reminded her of Lena.

In the schoolyard, at break time, Mirian, Coda and Orion were at a table. Mirian and Orion were the ones who were most sad about the situation, Coda was indifferent, since he never thinked that Lena has something special, but of course, he felt sorry for the girl's death.

Orion might not know her, but he knew that something was wrong since he'd seen her and had always tried to help her, though she'd never accept it. He felt a little guilty about it.

The trio talked about how it might have been if she hadn't died and also learned to be an open-minded person. In some parts they laughed, but Mirian couldn't really laugh, a sincere laugh..

“Sometimes... late at night.. I send messages to her, thinking that someday she will answer... “ - Mirian said, with a sad smile.

Coda hugged his girlfriend aside, she didn't deserve to suffer like that. He wanted to comfort her, but all he could do for her now was to stay by her side. Orion in turn tried to draw some things that could animated Mirian... nothing really worked. But his motto was that "it was always worth trying".

The bell rang. The trio got up. They would have some more classes before they finally went home. Coda went to the water cooler while Mirian waited for him in front of the classroom. After drinking the water, Coda lifted his head a little, tilting it to see something on the wall, right in the middle between the lockers. There in the background, between the locker and the wall, was a symbol. A circle with an X inside. He didn't even pay attention to the symbol, he wondered how anyone could have done anything in that little space between the wall and locker. Ninjas. He shrugged and went to Mirian, so they could come in and watch the class. As they both entered, Orion looked oddly at Coda, as if he were a little scared, though Coda himself was as relaxed as possible. He looked at his friend a little worried.

"What's up, Orion? Is there something in my tooth?" - He raised one eyebrow as he stayed on his place.

Orion just shook his head and in sign language asked his friend if he was okay, if he wasn't feeling bad.

"No, no. Relax, I'm fine." - He smiled and finally sat down in the chair next to Mirian.

The class would have been perfectly normal, if it weren't Orion staring at his friend every 10 seconds. Of course Coda had noticed.

At the end of class, the three of them went to the bus together and sat down, Coda said quickly.

"Orion, is something wrong? You didn't stop staring at me for a minute." - Coda asked, a little worried now.

"Indeed, Orion ... You look very weird." - Mirian agreed with her boyfriend, looking sympathetically at Orion.

"..." He just lowered his head.

Orion wasn't sure of things, even though he felt when something wasn't right, so he always preferred to be quiet and show nothing.

Orion leaned his head against the window of the bus. He was remembering some things, the person he saw at the veteran's party, on the night Lena died... That particular person didn't seem to be a "normal teenager" who was there to party. He should have warned her before that. If only he could talk, things would be easier.... He mentally despised himself the whole trip. The bus passed through a forested part of the city, and as it passed a rather large tree, Orion saw a hooded figure. But it was only seconds, after all, the bus was moving. Orion lifted his head, shaken, and knelt on the seat, turning back so he could look out the back window. He was trying to see, but he couldn't. Coda and Mirian were clearly startled by that sudden movement of Orion.

"Orion!! Sit down! You are crazy? The bus is moving!! You can get hurt!!" - Coda practically shouted at his friend, who sat down, but he was still restless.

"What's it? Did you see something??" Mirian asked worriedly.

Orion nodded, but began to tremble in the sign language, couldn't form a sentence to explain. He needed to stay calm.

The bus finally arrived at the house of one of them. It was Coda's house. He got off the bus and Orion almost came down, but Mirian sort of grabbed it, making it clear that it wasn't where he came down. It was obvious that Orion knew his house wasn't there, but he acted impulsively.

Anyway, he put himself in his place and the bus left.

Coda was surprised at the behavior of his friend, he wasn't like that. He entered the house to which he had been resigned by the exchange, going directly to the room where he slept.

A few hours have passed and Mirian sends you a message.

" I got home! Wow, the bus was late today. I thought it was going to break in the middle of nowhere."

" Heh, go rest, darling, you're physically and mentally tired. It's been a while since you've slept well."

" Yeah.. I can't... Sometimes I have nightmares about Lena.."

" Try to watch something to relax, you can. I'm with you always you need."

".. Hehe... I love you, you know?"

" I love you too, bae. Now go rest."

And Mirian didn't answer him anymore. He was worried about her, she was very exhausted. She needed some rest. She was too young to be worried like that. Coda sat in the chair in front of the computer and opened some study videos.

All those subjects he had already learned, so he wasn't worried about anything. He closed the videos and went to open some game to relax.

A new game appeared on his Steam, a game he hadn't bought, downloaded or even won as a gift. He imagined that Steam itself had left that game there. Name game: X.

The icon wasn't very cool. It was just a red X pixelated. But it was a game he'd never played in, so he'd try to see what it was like.

He opened the game.

It was a 3D first person game, that is, he just saw what the character on the screen saw. The character was in the middle of the forest. Since the game was called "X", he wanted to see what the "X" key did. It was the attack key. He pressed X on some trees, and all were marked with an "X", made by beautiful daggers. He kept doing this for some time, until he got tired and decided to explore more the place of the game.

In a moment, the character left the forest and went to a kind of road... Coda knew this road from somewhere. He kept advancing until he stopped at a house...

It was the house where Coda was living.

He was clearly startled... But maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe the game had been created from real life and the graphics had been made by satellite or something. He kept walking to that house and went to one of the windows, the window of his room. He thought maybe it was different inside, since satellites don't take what's inside the houses.... He thought that even couldn't see inside the windows, that the house was only of ornament... But he could.

And there was his room, just as it was now.

Coda was getting scared... When suddenly the door of the room - inside the game - opened... A character entered there and went to bed... It was Coda.. That's exactly what he did when he entered in his room before going to the computer.

Coda took the mouse to close the game, but as soon as he pressed the "X" to close it, the computer hung up.

The boy was breathing hard, that was certainly very strange.

Out of curiosity, or even a matter of security, he got up and went to the window... He opened the curtain and looked around...

The family that received Coda, lived in a place a little away from the city, had only a few more houses around and a lot of trees and bushes. He looked directly at a tree in front of his house across the street. Again he saw that symbol, that circle with an X in the middle. He frowned. Something was very wrong.

His computer began to make a strange noise and suddenly began to smoke. He turned away, after all the computer didn't belong him, but to the family that lived there.

Suddenly, silence... The smoke stopped... The computer turned on.

It seemed to be working properly. He was happy about it, after all, repeating, the computer didn't belong to him.

He went looking for the game on Steam again, but there was no more game. Actually, every game on his account was gone. He was obviously angry, very angry. Someone called him on Skype, it was Mirian.

He answered.

"Hi my love, I couldn't sleep, I'm very distressed and I don't know what to do... Could you talk for a while with me??" Mirian asked in a husky voice.

"Ah... All right, dear, no problem." - Coda replied, still a little nervous but tried not to show it.

They spent hours talking, until someone called on the phone.

"Wait a sec, darling." - Coda said, muting his voice.

"Okay..."

He answered. Surprisingly... it was Mirian.

"... Are you wanting to break up with me? It is? Why did you say these things? Did I do something wrong?" - Mirian cried on the phone, desperate.

"What? Of course not! What are you talking about? Why did you call me? You could start this crazy thing right there on Skype."

"What do you mean, Coda? You write me a lot of shit and you want to make a fool of yourself?? And I don't have patiance for Skype now. You told me to go rest, I'm not gonna turn on the computer now just to solve something you started." - She was crying and angry.

"I didn't start anything! I didn't even talk to you again after you went to sleep or rest, which apparently you didn't do because you've been online on Skype for hours." - Coda replied, confused and also angry, but he was still tense.

"No? And who sent all these messages to me? Wasn't the Cleverbot. And I already said that I didn't even turned on my computer. Stop wanting to invent something to defend yourself." - Mirian was furious.

Coda was gonna turn on the microphone on Skype to start talking a lot of things to Mirian... But the call with "her" was over.... And she was offline..

"... Mirian." - He said quietly.

" What?" - She snapped, still angry.

" I think someone hacked your Skype account." - He was clever enough to take a picture of the call that had ended and had lasted four hours and sent the picture to Mirian per message.

" ... What, but I had just changed my password. What a hate! Sorry to doubt you, bae..." - Mirian said a little ashamed to have said all that things. - " It's just that I panicked about your messages."

"But I didn't send you a message after I tell you to rest." - He said sympathetically.

"Yes you did, saying that Lena really deserved to die because she was an idiot, said I was supposed to stop being dramatic and idiot, said that I was being boring and that I should have left with her or at least have my mouth sewn up to stop talking so much..." - She started to cry.

"What?? I never said that!! Look, I didn't send those messages, don't be like this, I would never say that, I love you." - He tried to console her by voice.

Something wasn't right. They kept talking until Mirian fell asleep.

He got up and set the cell phone on the desk beside him. He took one last look at the computer. He realized the webcam light was on, but it hung up as soon as he looked at it. He frowned and went to the bathroom to do his personal hygiene. After that, he went to bed.

He woke up in the middle of the night with his cell phone sending a message. He went to see who it was... It was Lena....

"You should leave my friend alone. You're no good to her."

He quickly turned off his cell phone... What the hell was that... He knew it couldn't be Lena, she was dead... He turned to the opposite side of the desk where his cell phone was, when he felt a breeze hit him. He looked at the window. It was open... but he hadn't opened it. He went to the window and closed it, staring at the tree in which he had seen a symbol earlier... The symbol was no longer there...

Coda was starting to get scared, but he couldn't even go to his parents or brothers room, because he was too far from his real home and living with strangers now.

He slept covered up to the head that night.

The next day, he just woke up because of the cuckoo clock he had on the bedroom wall, because the electronic clocks didn't sound any alarm, as if they had been stopped. But he didn't realize that. He woke calmer, going straight to the bathroom, doing his needs and his personal hygiene so he could go to school.

As he left the bathroom, he went to the drawer where he had unpacked his suitcases. He took some clothes... at the bottom of the drawer was a notched X... He was desperate because the furniture didn't belong to him, if the residents saw that, they would think that he did the X and they would get angry. He completely ignored the fact that before didn't have an X there and "magically" appeared, he was only concerned about what the residents would think. Luckily, the X was inside the drawer, so they wouldn't find out so soon.

After getting ready and having breakfast, he went to the school bus, going to the bottom to sit with Mirian and Orion. Orion quickly hugged his friend, a tight embrace, as if it was the first time in many years that he saw Coda.

" Wow, what a good reception. What I miss?" - Coda said, returning the hug and then sitting down on his place.

" Haha, he was agitated all the way here, he wanted to see you as soon as possible." - Mirian said, stroking Orion's hair, which didn't detach from Coda.

" Oh, he must have had some nightmare with me. Where we lived, he always had nightmares about our people and always hugged them as if it was the last day of their lives, haha. Orion is such a loving boy." - Coda patted his friend's hair, demonstrating that everything was fine, and finally gave Mirian a kiss.

The whole trip was quiet, as if none of the madness of last night had happened. Upon arriving at the school, they went directly to the classroom to wait for the bell ring, as Orion didn't want to stay in the schoolyard that morning.

" How about you two coming to my house on Thursday? Orion is strange, you seemed strange yesterday, I'm not very well... and also, Thursday and Friday my parents will not be there, just my brother. We can say that it is for studies and then we can make a camp." - Mirian smiled excitedly, was in need of company and imagined that would be nice.

" It's okay for me. Orion?" - Coda look at his friend.

Orion nodded and smiled.

Great, they had plans for Thursday. At least one good thing in so many months.

After classes were over, they decided not to take the school bus because Mirian's parents were willing to take Coda and Orion to their homes later, so the trio went to have some icecream and relax a little.

At the icecream shop, while they waited for their orders, Coda looked at the security cameras from there... They seemed to look directly at him... He just took his concentration away, because he received a message, it was his brother's.

" Hey bro, how's it going in magnificent America?"

" Hey you little brat. Oh, it's all very well. It could be better with you all here, but I'm happy anyway."

" Aw, Mommy's baby are missing us already, huh?"

"And you're not missing me?"

" Pfff, naaah."

"And why did you send me a message?"

" Looooook!! I have a new game. See you later."

Coda laughed. His younger brother was a play.

After getting their icecream, they went to a bench in a square, sat down and relaxed. Everything was wonderful, they were laughing and talking, talking about happy and funny things. Telling jokes about teachers and students. They were being normal teenagers.

All until a message arrives for Mirian.

Mirian dropped her icecream and put her hand in front of her mouth, almost crying in despair. Coda quickly took the phone from her hand. It was a message from Lena...

"Your bad taste makes me sick even in hell."

Coda deleted the message and hugged Mirian, Orion hugged her too and they stayed there.

" Keep calm Mirian, it was just a bad joke... Someone must have stolen her cellphone or something..."

Coda tried to calm her down, also wanted to believe it was just a bad joke.. since he had also received a message from Lena last night.

Right there they called Mirian's parents who went to get them. They took Coda and Orion to their homes and left as well.

At his house, Coda wasn't in the mood for going to the computer. In fact he was still a bit afraid to end up breaking the computer that didn't belong to him. He just lay down on his bed and pulled his own notebook out of his suitcase, opening up his social networks. He stayed for hours there, until a series of glitches hungs up his notebook, but it turned on back seconds later.... All his notebook files were named "X".... He closed the notebook and threw it back into the suitcase... He was beginning to hate that letter.

He lay on his bed and took some pencils and paper, he would draw until sleep came.... The next day, he woke up in a cold breeze of wind entering his room with the sunlight, which was bothering him somewhat. Again open window without he has opened it...

His shoulder was hurting. He looked as he could. There was a small cut there, badly made. But if it were to give a shape to the cut, it would certainly have X shaped, even if a deformed X.

He imagined it was a coincidence, and that he had hurt himself with some pencil or something, because of the fact that he had slept on top of his material, maybe he had moved and scratched.

He dressed up and left for school. One more day with everything quiet. Orion was more nervous than anything. At least the next day they would go to Mirian's house, putting all their hopes of improving things that night.

Coda remembered one thing. When he arrived at school, he went to the water cooler where he had seen the symbol between the wall and the locker, he wanted to see if it was really the same symbol he had seen in the tree, because he wasn't remembered. He looked in that space, but there was no longer any symbol... Strange, of course. It would be as difficult to take the symbol from there as it should have been to put it. He walked into the classroom with Mirian and Orion.

Mirian just talked about how the next day was going to be cool and kept asking if they were really going, if they wouldn't let her, if they promised they would go. They had to make a pinky promise.

Computer classroom. They would learn about computer codes. Only Orion and Coda did this class, Mirian was in biology class, so they wouldn't see her until the bell ringing.

The teacher gave the precise coordinations so that they could open the codes.

Coda saw some binary codes, in which it hadn't appeared to any other student, but he didn't know, so he ignored.

"01000011 01101000 01100001 01110011 01100101 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101"

He thought it was some code that the teacher had gone through to decode, but he didn't know how to handle those things and wasn't interested at all. Soon after, his screen hung up and another sequence of binary codes appeared in red.

"01011000 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01110011 01100101 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101"

This time he was surprised and looked around, no other screen had turned off that way...

Orion, who was by his side, turned off Coda's computer as soon as he saw what had happened.

"Orion???" - Coda asked, confused.

" Orion! You can't do this, it's against the rules, your friend was using that computer. You go to the board." - The teacher said.

And poor Orion went to the board, looking back at Coda... Hours later the bell rang. Coda left the computer class and went directly to the board. Orion was sitting on the bench outside. He had taken a suspension.

After meeting Mirian, they went to the bus. Orion showed no emotion. He sat with his head against the bus window. Coda and Mirian were worried...

The bus stopped. Coda went down and went to his house. Arriving in his room, he began to pack some things, like clothes, toothbrush and things like that, he would sleep at Mirian's house the next day. The three of them wouldn't go to school because Mirian's parents wouldn't be home and they needed a break. The family Coda was resigned to didn't need to know, nor Orion's.

The next day, very early, they left for Mirian's house, they were going to camp in the garden, Mirian was already arranging things to be comfortable for her guests. Her older brother would keep an eye on her all the time, after all, he didn't trust strangers near his little sister.

They fixed their sleeping bags there and left everything tidy for the night. After everything was tidy, they went to enjoy nature.

They went into the middle of some trees and began playing hide and seek. Orion always won. It was being fun.

It was Orion's turn to seek.

Coda ran for the furthest in the forest... Until he arrived at a point he recognized... It seemed where his character was born in the game "X"... He was surprised... He went for a walk there.. His Breathing began to get heavy when he began to see that in some trees there was an "X" carved... The same trees he had scratched in the game. He ran off back to Mirian's house, past Mirian and Orion and went straight out of the trees, out in the open... He was panting... Mirian and Orion ran to see what had happened. Coda for the first time showed panicked, a terrible despair.

It was hard to calm him, but they succeeded a little...

Night fell. They were all around a campfire, but Coda was still nervous.. he kept his eyes on the forest entrance... Mirian and Orion tried to cheer him up with marshmallows and some treats, but he didn't even smile. He was afraid.

"I need to go to the bathroom. I'll be back soon." Mirian got up and went into her house.

"..." Orion asked in signal language to his friend. - "[What is going on? You saw something in the forest, didn't you?] "

"Not exactly... It's a long story... Look, I really need to check something out. Stay here, okay?"

Orion shook his head and clung to Coda, who wanted to get up.

"Orion, please. Stop." - He was trying to break free.

Orion didn't want to let him go, but Coda was determined. He managed to let go.

Coda was worried, because now it didn't just envelop him since he was inside the forest near Mirian's house. He was afraid something would happen to her.

He didn't plan to enter the forest, just got up and went around the house. Orion went behind, Coda got angry but ended up allowing.

Coda heard a movement in a bush and ran there. But there was nothing... besides a paper... He took the paper.

"In the middle of the forest he sees you. The giant with no eyes, he wants you."

Orion looked to the side. There was another paper near a tree. Orion ran up there, Coda was quickly behind, as he didn't want to leave his friend alone. After Orion took the paper, Coda pushed him away from the forest. So they could read the paper.

"What the man without face commands, the X has to do. He will find you and into the forest will bring you."

At that point, seeing the red "X" on the paper, Coda crumpled the paper, angry. He pulled Orion back to where the sleeping bags were. Coda was shaken. He didn't know what to do, but he felt that this was no longer a bad joke.

He heard whistles in the forest... He had to put an end to it... He looked at the entrance to the forest and then at Orion.

"Orion, stay here. I need to see something, it's going to be all right. Stay here and if something happens, don't go after me. Call the police or go inside and lock yourself up with Mirian." - Coda said, standing up.

Orion cringed in his sleeping bag and watched as Coda headed into the forest.

It was dark, so Coda wore the flashlight of his cellphone. He also had a pocketknife, if the clown who was making that bad joke tried something...

Coda pointed the lantern of his cell phone directly to a tree. There was a sheet there, written "Can't run"...

He called the police... He said someone was chasing after his friends, he sent Mirian's address, and before he hung up, someone caught him from behind... His cellphone crashed down. He tried to fight but his pocketknife fell on the first cut he had received in his hand, leaving him sensitized to force. The figure behind him tied his hands and threw him on his back in a tree, sitting on his legs so he wouldn't move. He couldn't see who it was in that darkness and his cellphone had fallen with the flashlight down... There was intense pain in his lips, and the more he moved his head, the more it hurt, as if his lips were torn, so he had to stop moving, or it would hurt even more. He felt the needle pierce his lips more and more, a wrong seam, badly made, for he felt the blood drain in a big quantity.. and it burned.. burned very much. Before long, his mouth was completely sewn. He was breathing hard through his nose, he didn't know what was happening, he couldn't see. He could only see a silhouette on top of him...

Orion was worried about his friend, he knew he should stay or go and call someone, but he felt he had no time, then he got up and ran into the forest, desperately searching for Coda. He couldn't shout at him, because he was mute... He heard a disgusting sound coming from a corner, like a sound of flesh ripping and being smashed, and a muffled cry that was soon losing its strength until it was silent... Orion hid behind a tree and saw the scene... The hooded figure over Coda, ripping his throat with their own hands after cutting it with a dagger... Orion felt a reflux when he saw the hooded figure stick their hand in the cut and smash the throat of his friend who was struggling in despair.. Orion cried, cried a lot, but he couldn't do anything, he was afraid.. He even wet himself... He saw tears of blood come out of Coda's eyes... Until everything was silent....

The hooded figure stood up and walked away from the corpse... They scratched the tree with the blood in their hands, leaving a red X there. They took the phone and a little light took over... Orion could see bright yellow eyes, which although they were bright, seemed to have no soul, not have that human brightness... It gave him a cold chill on the spine... He also could see a red X... The hooded figure wore a black bandana with a red X in the middle to cover their nose and mouth... The killer seemed to send a message... Orion's cellphone rang and he widened his eyes. The killer turned his gaze to him and Orion couldn't run, paralyzed... The hooded figure stood for long seconds staring at him before disappearing into the trees... Orion ran close to his friend, crying in silence and despair... He picked up the pocketknife next to his friend to try to cut the lines of his mouth, he didn't deserve to have his mouth sewed that way, to Orion, Coda just said beautiful words.

Police sirens... That was all it could heard. Mirian ran desperately into the forest, guiding the cops Coda had called earlier. The cops found the two boys, Orion with the pocketknife in his hand, trying to cut the lines of his friend's mouth.. He looked at the cops with his eyes swollen from crying... On seeing the scene, Mirian screamed and fell to her knees, crying desperately.... First her friend and now her boyfriend ...

The police officers blamed and arrested Orion, who had done nothing. Mirian knew it wasn't Orion, but her older brother insisted on giving reason to the cops, as he was afraid.

Orion was blamed for the death of Coda, Lena and three other young boys who had been killed in the same way in November 2015. He took the death penalty...

After losing her friends and boyfriend, Mirian went crazy and was found dead in her bathroom weeks later... She had committed suicide. At least that was what the family thought, but the police didn't seem to believe much because of the fact that the perfect cut in her throat seemed to have been made by someone else, leaving the scene as a very well done homicide that could be confused with a suicide. They didn't think it were the same killer of the other deaths, for besides Orion being arrested, her mouth wasn't sewn and the cut was perfectly done, not torn aggressively like the others.

While he waited for his death, Orion scrawled on the walls of the prison... He scrawled with his own fingers until they began to bleed and could really mark the walls... He scrawled phrases like "X chases" - "It's not my fault" - "Can't run"... But what else was on those walls, was a huge and red-XXxxxxxxXXxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XX

X

XXXXXXXx

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“01011000 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101”