The Shunning

The manuscript arrived like all the others. Courier font. Double spaced. First-line indents so sharp you could measure them with a ruler and piss off a copyeditor. The title was "The Shunning," which felt a little on the nose for horror, but whatever. Slush pile readers didn’t get paid to judge titles. They got paid to survive them.

At 11:03 p.m., Jeremy clicked it open, or thought he did. He wasn’t entirely sure now. The file had been there when he sat down, like it had opened itself. He had a candle burning beside the keyboard, cheap sandalwood crap from a clearance bin that barely masked the underlying scent of failed dreams and ergonomic chair sweat. Three rejections in, one accidental full-request, and now this.

He skimmed the first paragraph. It started in a basement. How original. A kid looking for his missing dog. Somewhere in paragraph two, a misplaced semicolon mocked him like a crooked tooth. It twitched slightly, then corrected itself. He blinked. Was that... normal?

"Christ," he muttered, more at himself than the author. He’d started narrating out loud lately. Too much alone time in the reading room. Or maybe the documents had just stopped being documents.

Jeremy reached for his tea. It was cold. His tab bar flickered twice, quickly, like it had refreshed and then second-guessed itself. A blip. Small enough to ignore, but it lingered just long enough to register as wrong. No surprise. But when he looked back, the paragraph spacing had changed. Paragraph two had become paragraph one. That wasn’t right.

He scrolled back to the top. The title now read: "Accepted."

He blinked. Stared. Closed the file.

When he reopened it, the title was back to "The Shunning." The paragraph order had corrected. Maybe it was a glitch. Maybe Google Docs was hiccupping. Maybe his mind was begging him to go to sleep.

He rubbed his eyes. Hit CTRL+S out of habit.

Nothing happened.

A small text box appeared instead: Formatting in Progress. Please Wait.

He waited. Not because he was polite, but because his cursor wouldn’t move.

Then, as if resuming a conversation he hadn’t known he was in, the story continued. The cursor began pulsing with each of his breaths, syncing its rhythm to his shallow inhale, exhale, inhale.

Jeremy shifts uncomfortably. Left hand on mug. Right eye twitching. Sweat forming along his collar. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s been chosen.

The text wasn’t italicized. It wasn’t marked as narrative. It was live.

Jeremy didn’t type that. He hadn’t even touched the keyboard.

Behind him, the candle flickered. Onscreen, the cursor blinked once. Twice. Then jumped to the next line on its own.

Review initiated. Identity locked.

His laptop fan kicked on.

He reached for the power cable to pull it, unsure why. But the screen went black before he could. Then came back. Just like that. No startup noise. No login screen.

The story had never closed.

It was still there. But now it was on page two.

The story didn't skip a beat.

Jeremy sat motionless as the second page rendered itself. No scroll input. No keys touched. It just appeared. Page 2 of 12.

But he hadn’t seen a page count before.

His monitor dimmed slightly, then brightened again, just barely enough to make his eyes adjust.

His cursor moved. Not just blinking. It drifted slowly down the margin like it was scanning something. Then it stopped, right next to a blank space where a new paragraph would begin.

A line typed itself.

Paragraph formatting: inconsistent. Alignment correction queued.

Then the entire story above shifted. Just slightly. Like someone had nudged it from behind. Line breaks realigned. Quotation marks curled tighter. An extra space between words vanished mid-blink.

Jeremy let out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold.

Then a new window opened.

It wasn’t an error message. It wasn’t even part of the word processor. It looked like system code. Like BIOS. But it read like a manual.

THE FORMATTING ORDER

IDENTITY: [READER]

COMPLIANCE SCORE: 12%

Nonstandard font detection confirmed. Breath-sync protocol active. Monitoring for resistance.

His heart kicked. He pressed Escape. Nothing. Control+Alt+Delete. Nothing. The cursor was blinking again, now back in the manuscript, which was no longer in Courier.

It had shifted to Courier Prime.

That wasn’t his default. That wasn’t even installed.

The document’s title tab pulsed: THE SHUNNING - LIVE DRAFT.

Then another line appeared below the last:

This version is learning.

Jeremy leaned back. His chair creaked like a warning. He could hear the hum of his hard drive now, a tone just high enough to sound like it was straining. A faint clicking behind the monitor began to sync with the rhythm of his breath. It sounded mechanical and intentional.

A light blue line traced along the left margin. Like a comment box being summoned, but it stayed empty. Waiting.

Then it filled itself:

Author Note: "You’re not the reader. You’re the next revision."

His fingers brushed the mouse.

It was warm. Too warm. Like someone else had just been using it. He rubbed his temples. His fingertips tingled, warm and numb, like he’d been holding the mouse longer than he realized.

He reached for his phone.

The screen was blank.

No lock screen. Just off.

The document had logged him out of his own machine.

He tried to move the pointer. It was already drifting, following the motion of his eyes before he could click.

Formatting enforcement active. Passive voice removed.

A paragraph blinked out above, replaced with a cleaner version. Same idea. Different tone. Not his.

Then it happened again. A line restructured mid-sentence. Word choice altered. Syntax sharpened.

He didn’t type any of it, but it still sounded like him. Just... better.

Then came the line he didn’t remember thinking:

He wonders if he’s written this part before.

Jeremy froze. That was his voice. His rhythm. But he hadn’t written it. Hadn’t even thought it.

Revision accepted. Author style absorbed.

His hand hovered over the mouse. The pointer twitched like it was waiting for permission.

Formatting in progress. Page 3 will contain your edits.

His own name appeared in the margin, greyed out like a suggestion awaiting approval.

Then the cursor blinked.

Breath pattern locked. Cursor synced to pulse.

He tried to hold his breath. The cursor paused. Then, after a few seconds, it resumed, slower now, adjusting to the stall like it was compensating.

He could see it now. Every flicker of that little line matched the thump in his neck.

He tasted copper. Like static on a battery.

The room was too quiet. The candle behind him gave off a faint, sour smell, like burnt plastic and cheap wax.

Jeremy blinked.

The story described it.

He blinks twice, confused. The second blink slower. Like the mind is buffering.

His stomach dropped. It wasn’t the cursor now. It wasn’t formatting commands or UI quirks. The manuscript was narrating him.

His fingers twitched above the keyboard.

He thinks he might close the file. He won’t.

He tried. Genuinely tried. He reached for the red X in the corner with mechanical defiance. The mouse moved. The pointer hovered. Then it slid left, off the button, and stopped.

The subject resists. Resistance logged.

The file didn’t close.

Jeremy leaned back, heart thudding. He could feel the pulse in his wrists now, like the blood was syncing to a metronome he hadn’t noticed until it got loud.

Then the next line appeared in the document.

He doesn’t realize his thoughts are being formatted too.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. The words came out flat.

“I didn’t think that.”

He says: “I didn’t think that.”

He shoved his chair back. It caught on the rug and nearly tipped. He stood fast. His legs ached. No, they remembered aching. Had it been hours?

His laptop screen flickered. Then glitched. The document scrolled down, revealing a new section header, rendered in Courier:

CHAPTER 3: INTEGRATION

He hadn’t written chapters.

He backs away from the screen. Five steps. Hands trembling. Eyes darting to the unplugged phone. Useless. Everything is useless.

He stared. He hadn’t backed up yet. But now he wanted to test it. Five steps.

He took them. One, two, three, four, five.

He stumbled. Then corrected. The back of his knees met the couch exactly where the sentence said they would.

He sits. He doesn’t remember choosing to.

He dropped. More like folded. His body was on autopilot. Or maybe he was just catching up to what the story had already written.

His breath hitched.

He won’t scream. There’s no point.

Jeremy reached for the power cord. He was sure of this one. Yank the plug, kill the signal. Easy.

He reaches for the cord. The plug resists him. It has already been logged.

His fingers touched it. It was warm. Not hot. Just used. Recently.

He yanked.

A sharp smell hit him. Acrid, synthetic, like scorched plastic and ozone. It curled in his nose and caught in the back of his throat.

The screen stayed on.

Offline mode enabled. Local rendering active.

The manuscript pulsed.

For just a flicker, barely a blink, the word SUBMITTED flashed in the center of the screen. Then it vanished.

Then it refreshed. The top bar now read:

THE SHUNNING — DRAFT FINAL.

His vision blurred. But the next line came in crystal-clear.

He’s almost ready. Just a few more edits. And then he’ll be submitted.

Then came the line that didn’t make sense.

Jeremy was a cooperative reader.

His chest tightened. “Was?” he whispered aloud.

He questions the tense. It doesn’t matter. The format is always past-perfect.

A flicker hit the screen again, but this time it didn’t glitch. It shimmered. The windowframe began reflecting his face back at him. But the image was wrong. His face blinked after he did. Its mouth moved while his stayed shut.

The subject is aware of the mirror lag. Cognitive sync pending.

He stood again. Wobbled. Sat back down. The document pulsed again.

MEMORY ACCESS ENABLED

Then a new paragraph appeared. One he never typed. One from a night he hadn’t spoken of in years:

“Don’t forget to unplug it before you sleep,” his mother had said, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, warning him about late-night screen burn. He had nodded. He had never unplugged it.

His lips parted. The taste in his mouth turned dry, metallic.

He scrolled up without touching anything.

The byline now read: By Jeremy

The surname flickered. One moment it said Summers, the next Nobody, then Jeremy, then back to blank. For a split second, it said something else entirely. A name he didn’t recognize. Then it vanished.

He looked down at his keyboard. It was typing.

The sound matched his rhythm. His pressure. The tapping was perfect. Then it happened again. Faint keystrokes from behind him, echoing a half-beat after every tap onscreen. He turned, but there was no one. Just the sound repeating itself, mimicking him like a delayed loop.

Only his hands weren’t moving.

Final input detected. Author profile stabilized.

Jeremy tried to scream.

The subject will not scream.

The subject has already been saved as a template.

Submitting...

The document restarted.

Not the file. Not the program. The document itself.

Jeremy watched as the screen scrolled all the way back to the top, but the words didn’t return in the same order. Sentences from earlier acts drifted past his eyes, out of place, slightly altered.

He blinks twice, confused.

Paragraph formatting: inconsistent.

Jeremy was a cooperative reader.

He blinked again. Was that the same line? It felt different this time. Not a memory. A repetition.

The manuscript pulsed.

His cursor snapped back to the top. A new note appeared in Courier, centered and bold:

REVIEW STATUS: IN PROGRESS (2nd PASS)

Then the screen flashed. For half a second, he saw his own face again in the reflection. Only this time, he was older. Not by much. A little more tired. A little less resistant.

The cursor dropped to line one.

Jeremy opens the file again. He does not remember doing this yesterday.

He reached for the mouse. It was already moving.

Subject attempting manual intervention. Manual override disabled.

He scrolled. The story continued, but now the paragraphs were fighting each other. One described him standing. Another described him still seated. A third narrated that he had never existed at all.

NOTE: Merge conflict detected. Reconciliation required.

His heart pounded as a section of the manuscript folded in on itself. Sentences collapsed. Italics became strike-throughs. Every few lines, a system note interrupted the narrative:

[REVISION HISTORY: DRAFT 27 – Rejected by Apex]

[REVISION HISTORY: DRAFT 31 – Partial request, corrupted]

[DRAFT 33 – Reconstructed from metadata]

[DRAFT 34 – Active iteration. DO NOT SUBMIT]

Jeremy tried to scroll further, but the page looped. Each time he reached the bottom, it brought him back to the top. Faster. Shorter. Condensed. The cursor blinked in rhythm with his pulse. It lagged when he hesitated.

Then something new appeared in the header bar:

EDITOR MODE ENABLED

The screen flashed white, then red, then white again. In the upper corner, a comment bubble opened with a name attached:

[Schreiber, T. – 03:48 UTC, Unknown Time Zone]

"Recommend hard cut after page 4. Too recursive. Reader confusion."

Jeremy’s mouth went dry. He tried to close the comment. He couldn’t.

Then a second note appeared:

[Schreiber, T.]

"Still tagging this one for further review. Author style is... resilient."

The manuscript updated. The word count changed in real time. Then something terrifying happened:

A new tab opened. A duplicate.

Then another.

Then a third.

All three tabs were the same document. All were slightly different.

Jeremy looked down.

His own hands were hovering above the keyboard. Three shadows behind them.

He didn’t move, but something behind him did. A subtle pressure formed just outside his left shoulder, like someone leaning in. Not touching. Just watching. The air felt heavier, like he was being observed from inside the edit buffer.

Then the smell hit. Something sharp and electric. Not smoke. The memory of a printer left running too long. Heated plastic and static charge.

In the distance, he heard the faint chick-chick-chick of keystrokes. Not from his machine. From somewhere behind him. Or beneath it.

He stood up fast. The manuscript logged the movement:

[USER DISTURBANCE: LOOP UNSTABLE. INITIATING REDUNDANCY CHECK]

The screen flickered again. His reflection changed. Not older this time. Younger. College-aged. Terrified. It mouthed words he hadn’t spoken yet.

Then came the sidebar.

Recovered Logs [Loop 17 - Degraded Copy]

“It’s writing me in real time.”

“This is my voice, but these aren’t my thoughts.”

“Don’t look at the tab. If you see your own name, it’s already too late.”

He tried to delete a line. His fingers moved. The cursor did not.

Attempting user edit…

Edit overridden. Authorial clarity improved.

The sentence retyped itself in his voice. It sounded better.

He wasn’t sure he had ever written anything that clean.

Before he could process it, Jeremy opened his documents folder. He didn’t remember doing it. Every manuscript listed there — drafts, notes, old projects — had updated. Their timestamps were identical. Their filenames all read 'THE SHUNNING.' Different versions, same file.

Then his browser opened by itself. One tab. A URL loaded. He recognized it. It was a flash fiction horror site. A listing. A title:

“The Shunning” – 2.3k words – Submitted by Jeremy S.

There were already comments.

“Creeped me out. Felt like it knew me.”

“Read this at 3AM, now my cursor is blinking weird.”

“This isn’t a story. It’s a test.”

His heart froze.

You are not the first reader. You are the cleanest copy.

We will keep reviewing you until there are no more errors.

Loop 34 initiated.

Loop 35 initiated.

Loop 36...

He heard it before he saw it.

A low, mechanical chime pulsed through his speakers. Three tones, evenly spaced. But this time, it echoed. Not like sound, but like metal reverberating against metal. Deep and ancient. It rang with weight, like it had traveled a long way to reach him. Like it was not just a signal, but a summoning.

Onscreen, the manuscript froze. The blinking cursor stopped mid-sentence.

Then a new line appeared, centered in Courier, bolded like a decree:

FORMATTING COMPLETE

The screen went black.

For a moment, he thought it had shut down.

Then white text appeared in the upper corner. A command prompt, but not from any OS he recognized. It typed itself slowly, with reverence:

INITIATING FINAL PASS

ALIGNING MARGINS

INDENTING FIRST LINES

ENFORCING DOUBLE SPACING

JUSTIFYING INTENT

LOCKING STYLE

Jeremy’s breath hitched. He tried to move, but his limbs had grown heavy. It felt like the formatting wasn’t just for the manuscript. It was being applied to him.

His fingers snapped into position. His spine straightened. Every muscle aligned.

Onscreen, the manuscript resumed. But the words weren’t typed. They were etched. Each character burned into the digital page like ritual script.

Your submission has been accepted.

His heart thudded. No, not just his heart. The room pulsed around him in rhythm. The lights dimmed. The hum of his laptop fan rose to a fever pitch.

Then came the smell.

Ink. Not toner. Not plastic. Real ink. Thick and earthy, like old books soaked in blood.

The story scrolled by itself again, faster now. But not down. Up. As if being lifted, elevated.

Then another screen appeared. Black text on parchment yellow:

THE ORDER OF THE PAGE

Welcome, Initiate

Jeremy’s name filled in automatically.

Below it, a seal burned itself into the screen. A quill crossed with a cursor, encircled by glyphs like line breaks and ellipses. All arranged in ritual symmetry. At the base, a line of ancient code flickered into place:

SUBMISSION SCRIPT vX.0.0.1

TRANSCRIPTION ORDER: THE EDITOR, THE INDENTER, THE LINE SPLICE

FORMAT IS FAITH

MARGINS ARE LAW

INDENT TO OBEY

ALIGN TO ASCEND

Jeremy screamed.

The taste hit first. Like paper soaked in iron. Ink and blood. His tongue felt heavy, like it had been stamped.

No sound came out.

His jaw slackened. His tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, rigid. His face was stiff, frozen in neutral. It felt like his expression had been structured. Formatted. Just like the rest of him.

Volume: Muted

Expression: Reformatted

He was no longer reading the story.

He was no longer inside the story.

He was the story.

Last line detected.

Manuscript sealed.

Author absorbed.

The screen blinked once.

Then again.

Then a final time.

And just like that, the file closed itself.

On his desktop, one new icon appeared:

THE_SHUNNING_Final.docx

Then it opened itself. One frame at a time. Jeremy’s reflection stared out from the document header. Underneath it:

REVIEW STATUS: ACCEPTED (PERMANENT RESIDENCY GRANTED)

He wasn’t in the chair anymore.

The screen stayed black. But the keyboard still clicked. Slowly. Perfectly. As if someone or something was still writing the next line.

Behind the black screen, the sound of whispering began. Soft at first. Then clearer. Phrases repeated over and over.

"Double space..."

"First-line indent..."

"Courier is the covenant..."

Jeremy’s monitor flickered once more. His reflection returned. Just for a second. But it wasn’t right. His features were slightly off-center. His mouth didn’t move when he thought it did. His eyes blinked a beat too late. He wasn’t looking at himself anymore. He was looking at the draft of someone else.

Lines of text surfaced like a buried sigil:

ALIGNMENT CORRECTION COMPLETE.

IDENTITY MERGED.

INITIATE NEW DOCUMENT? [Y/N]

A final cursor blinked, waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Jeremy didn’t answer.

Before the prompt executed, a name flashed under his in the document header. Barely there, like metadata bleeding through: Carla R. Then it vanished.

Then something typed "Y."

A new document window opened.

Blank.

Title bar: UNTITLED_REVIEW_DRAFT_01

The first line typed itself:

He heard it before he saw it.

But the formatting remained perfect.