Benjamin Percy expertly fuses social horror and supernatural dread in this edge-of-the-seat novella about the true cost of consuming today's online content.
Our first instinct these days is not to run into the burning house or stop the fistfight on the plane or check on the person who fell down the stairs—it's to pull out our phones. It's to record.
When a group of college students witnesses something terrible, they do the same. But upon reviewing the videos later, they discover something has glitched and bled through their phones. Something that looks real. But can't be. A vision of their own individual deaths—dark prophecies they may or may not be able to avoid.
The chain of horror begins. A contagion is spreading, bystander to bystander, phone to phone. And these students are now desperately searching for the very thing they weren’t willing to offer—help.
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BENJAMIN PERCY is the author of seven novels – most recently The Sky Vault (William Morrow, 2023) – as well as three story collections and a book of essays, Thrill Me, that is widely taught in creative writing classrooms. Since 2017, he has written Wolverine for Marvel – and he currently writes the comics Deadpool Wolverine, Red Hulk, Hellverine, and the "Predator vs" series. His novella – American Criminal (NeoText, 2023) – is presently in development with Amazon MGM Studios, with Gavin O'Connor attached to direct. His honors include a Whiting Award, an NEA Fellowship, a McKnight Fellowship, the Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, the iHeartRadio Award for Best Scripted Podcast, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories.
