What if the algorithm didn’t just predict your future—it created it?
Grab-Hold First Line:
Jill Paterson clicked play, expecting a jump scare—not a prophecy.
Flash Fiction Prompt:
The email came without a subject line. No sender. Just a single attachment titled “COMING SOON.” Curiosity—always her downfall—won. Jill leaned closer as the trailer began: static, rain, a lone figure running through an alley. Then her own face flickered across the screen, terrified, blood-smeared, pleading for help.
Her breath caught. It wasn’t old footage, not some deepfake joke. The setting was her street, her kitchen wallpaper, her blue nightshirt. Each frame was too exact, too intimate. The narrator’s voice—a distorted whisper—said, “She thought the message was fiction. She was wrong.”
Jill froze. The final scene showed a dark silhouette standing at her front door. The camera panned to the peephole, then to the glowing words that filled the screen: BYE BYE JILL.
Her laptop chimed. A new email arrived. No text—just a still image from her webcam. And she hadn’t turned it on.
If you received an email predicting your own death—AI generated or not—would you open it? Why or why not?
