CHAPTER 1. A Modern Devil Horror Web Novel: The Status You Didn’t Post and the Secrets Social Media Exposes

 

CHAPTER 1: The First Secret

 Mira Rahman woke to the low, insect-like buzz of her phone—the kind of sound that slithered into a dream and changed its shape.

6:21 a.m.
The campus was still quiet, hushed and pale, as though holding its breath before sunrise.
A notification glowed on her lock screen:
“Your post is blowing up! 1.7k reactions.”
Her first thought was annoyance—her classmates loved pranks, stupid ones.
Her second was dread.
She hadn’t posted anything.
Her fingers trembled as she unlocked the screen. The Facebook app opened on its own, as if eager to open.
At the top of her timeline sat a new status under her name:
“When I was nine, I drowned my cousin’s kitten and buried it behind the school wall.”
Mira’s breath thinned. Her throat felt scraped.
She hadn’t told that to a single living person.
She had spent her life believing the memory would dissolve if she never gave it shape again.
Comments poured in:
“Wtf?”
“Is this a joke?”
“Are you okay??”
She sat upright, the bedsheet twisting around her ankles like something holding on.
A sharp coldness settled behind her heart, the kind that comes when the past returns wearing new shoes.
Her roommate, Layla, stirred. “Your phone’s been buzzing nonstop,” she muttered.
Mira didn’t answer. She stepped into the hallway—empty, except for the flickering light outside the bathroom.
She deleted the post.
Five seconds later, it reappeared.
Word for word.
Same timestamp.
Same confession.
Same reactions multiplying like maggots.
Her phone buzzed again.
A message request.
From an account with no profile picture, no friends, no posts.
𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘍𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘴
Her thumb hovered.
The message opened on its own.
“Deletion is not repentance, Mira.”
Her spine locked.
The hallway light flickered violently, humming with a strange electricity.
Another message:
“You buried the kitten. But not the guilt.”
Her pulse throbbed, each beat too loud. “Who are you?” she whispered.
The reply came instantly.
“A name has no meaning to you.
I am the one who heard the kitten struggling under the dirt.”
The phone grew warm in her hand, like something breathing.
“And now I hear you.”
Mira stumbled back into her room. Her roommate, still half-asleep, murmured something about bad Wi-Fi.
Mira sat on her bed, her phone on her lap like a venomous creature waiting to strike.
Then—
A new status went up automatically.
She hadn’t typed a single letter.
“Mira Rahman stole exam papers last semester.”
She hadn’t.
But by the time she opened her mouth to curse, she wasn’t sure.
The morning sun crept across the floor, but the room grew darker nonetheless.
Outside, a dog barked in a strange, broken rhythm—like something imitating a dog.
Mira looked at her phone again.
A new message:
“Two secrets revealed.
Twelve remain.
By the thirteenth, you’ll remember what you did to me.”
And the lights in her room went out.

To Be Continued...