Cecil

Sitting at home alone, you find yourself aimlessly searching the internet from the comfort of your bed. While scrolling through your Tumblr dashboard one of your followers post an interesting link. Looking anywhere for entertainment you blindly click it. Your web browser is whisked away to a plain white screen with nothing but a playful whale trying its heart out to eat your mouse cursor. Finally with some entertainment you find this whale to be a companion when you are alone. After several minutes of the whale trying to eat your cursor you grow bored from its repetitive movements. You feel sleepy and decide to just go to bed and hope your dreams will entertain you.

Upon opening your once tired eyes you become shocked to find you are now floating out in a massive ocean, Unaware of how you got there you are surprisingly unafraid and begin to calmly swim above a deep abyss, filled with the unknown. The icy chill of the water surrounds your tightened goose bumped skin.

As your muscles begin to fatigue your only conscious thought is now turned to staying afloat. As you start to panic and lash out at the deep nothingness of the ocean you hear a low rumble. The waves start to ripple and flow harder as the darkness below you starts to rise. Finally, your muscles can not continue to keep our head above the water, you roll over and lay on your back, arms stretched out, to float in a pitiful attempt at not drowning. The water below you now feels solid and hard. Your body is pushed out of the water and you are now standing on a huge black and white island.

Your companion has found you in the nothingness of the ocean. Relieved with the thought of a surface beneath your feet you stand up and say to the whale, “Thank you”. Quietly a soft voice intrudes into your thoughts and says, “Call me, Cecil”. Curiously you say aloud, “How are you speaking to me?”

“Avast Virus database has been updated!”

You awake to the loud alert from your computer; you must have forgotten to turn it off before bed. You check the time and see it is now 10:00am, you have already finished primary school and have no obligations to awake early, other than doing some daily chores around the house. It is the middle of July and you are excited that you have no plans today other than playing games on your computer.

You sit up in your bed and turn to the computer that just rudely awakened you. After taking the mouse in hand you try to move the cursor up to the address bar. Yet, nothing happens. You shake the mouse around and see no movement just the blank white page with the whale on it, remaining motionless. You press ctr+l to highlight the address bar and it turns blue. Your computer is running fine, but your mouse battery must have died.

You lift the mouse and see the familiar light beneath it, proving the battery is fine, yet you can not locate the mouse cursor. Your mom yells out, “Honey, can you take out the trash!” from the other room. You make a silent grumble and stand up, still in your pajamas to do as you were told. You leave the room and step into the hallway and walk to the kitchen; you grab the trash bag, tie it, and then walk it to the trash can sitting outside your home. You step back into the kitchen, wash your hands, and grab a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Afterwards you walk back to your room to eat it and attempt to fix your computer.

You hold the power button and do a force shutdown, and after counting to ten you power it back on. Your computer loads the Operating System quickly, just like always, but when you are brought to your login screen you are greeted by a familiar view. Your monitor shines bright white as the whale, Cecil is displayed unchanged, almost content.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”

A loud shriek tears through the house, you recognize your mothers yell and run out of the room to check on her.

“Mom, are you okay?”, you yell out; but you receive no response. Upon entering the room you see her at her laptop, wearing headphones. She turns to you and says, “Sorry, I was watching a horror movie. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Relieved you shake your head and go back to your room. While walking down the hallway you hear, “Virus detected” blast loudly out of your speakers. You enter the room and sit in front of the computer. The monitor is all black except for white floating blotches. Blotches that resemble the color pattern of a whale.

Annoyed by the sudden realization that the link was a computer virus, you power down your computer and do a safemode boot to remove the virus once you power the computer back on. “Fuck you, Cecil.” You say aloud.

“No, fuck you.”, your speakers respond.

Puzzled and aggravated you lose some rationality and begin talking to your computer. “I don’t know what this is, but you had better get the fu-”

“Ahhhhhhh!”, you are interrupted by your mother’s yell.

“Mom, would you stop yelling!” you shout across the house. But there is no response.

“Mom!”, you yell out again. Worried you leave your room to investigate. After reaching your mother’s door you feel a blanket of silence consume you. You push the door open and find her on her computer still. You walk to her side and look at the screen to find a white background with a whale centered. Your mother’s eyes intently fixed on the screen.

“Mom, are you okay?” You reach in to shake her. Her head flops lifelessly to her shoulder. Tears well up in your eyes as you old her and feel her still warm skin against your cheek. You grab the nearby phone and call an ambulance. Once the paramedics arrive they load her into the ambulance and start CPR to revive her on the way to the emergency room. You stay behind to call your father and let him know what happened.

Your father suppresses a whimper as he hangs up and heads to the hospital. You the lay in your bed a cry softly into the pillow. Your deep sobs make it hard to breath and you get tired. Feeling yourself drift off to sleep your cries grow quiet.

You feel a cold salty solution envelope your body and you legs begin to kick to keep your head above your tears. You open your eyes and look around your dark bedroom and see all the furniture is gone. You are floating near the ceiling and can taste the salty water in your mouth. You blink and see that the room is now gone and your are once again set adrift at sea. But this time, Cecil is already there.

Cecil grabs your foot in its large gaping mouth and starts to drag you under the water. You kick with your free leg to stay afloat but, Cecil effortlessly pulls you down under the water and swims to the deep abyss beneath. You hold your breath and feel your lungs take on massive pressure.

You chest rumbles with a near deafening, “pop”. Your lungs have collapsed. You open your mouth and try to yell in pain but you are quickly filled with water. Cecil continues to dive deep into the darkness and you can see a faint light. As you begin to lose consciousness your mind turns to your mother and hopes that she is okay.

Your father arrives at home and heads straight for your room. “Son, are you in there? Open up.” He looks down and sees the light is still on but hears nothing. He opens the unlocked door and walks over to your bed. Relieved to see you are asleep he only grabs the sheet and pulls it onto you. Something is off though. Your father looks down at the pillow, your face is pressed in and sees it is drenched in tears. He doesn’t see your chest rise for breath and roles you over to see your blue tear soaked face.

“Honey! Call an ambulance!” he yells out. Your mother quickly calls for a paramedic as your lifeless body lays in bed. Your father turns to your computer and sees a white screen with a whale on it and shuts down the computer.