November 6, 2016

The bed was very crowded and I couldn’t sleep properly. It was still nighttime and the lights were on when I was woken up to be asked when I wanted to wake up in the morning. Apparently there was a big annual party being thrown at midnight today. They were so well established they even had a book about this recurring party. “I don’t know if I want to go” I said as I flipped through the pages of photos. Hundreds of people were supposed to be there tonight.

I couldn’t fall back asleep so I walked around the living room to see a black sculpture on the coffee table that had been turned to face the other way. I walked to the far side of it to see that it was a polished rock with a neon green interior carved to look like the cross section of a brain. My sister-in-law said that it freaked her out so it was turned the other way. Upon closer inspection, I could see that it was detailed with miniature animal skulls.

I looked at my phone see see an app suddenly get deleted from the home screen but wasn’t able to identify what it was. My folders had moved around and now my apps were spread across three screens instead of two.

My sister-in-law had received a LINE message from an unknown number asking for personal information. We told her to ignore it as it was most likely from a scammer of sorts. She shortly got a call asking where she was and what her mother’s name was. She said that she couldn’t understand Chinese and hung up. We laughed.

Only a couple of minutes had passed before everyone in the room had a pending call from our family LINE group. “This is really bad”, I said. It appeared to be the case that this stranger had somehow joined our group and was now making a call.