Haveubeenflashed · Ultra HD

I type back: “Define ‘flashed.’”

Three dots appear. Disappear. Reappear.

It started as a joke, a clumsy autocorrect from a friend’s late-night text: “HaveUbeenFlashed?” Meant to ask if I’d seen the new photo challenge going around. But the question landed differently at 2:17 a.m., glowing on my phone screen like a dare. HaveUbeenFlashed

I pull the curtains shut. But the flash is already inside me. It always was.

Last week, I’d been walking home through the underpass when a flicker—no, not a flicker, a strobe —painted the concrete walls in negative. A man in a reflective vest was adjusting a floor lamp on a tripod. “Streetlight maintenance,” he’d said without looking up. But streetlights don’t hum at 19,000 hertz. And maintenance men don’t vanish when you blink. I type back: “Define ‘flashed

Outside my window, the streetlight flickers once. Twice. A rhythm I’ve heard before—in a dream, in a warning, in the space between heartbeats.

I sat up in bed, heart thudding. Have I been flashed? Not by headlights or paparazzi. By the flash . The one they whisper about on obscure forums. The one that rewires Tuesday into a glitch. It started as a joke, a clumsy autocorrect

The phone buzzes again. Same friend: “Seriously. The app. It’s fun.”

Since then: déjà vu stacking like dishes in a sink. My reflection waves at me a half-second late. I know what people will say before they say it. Yesterday, I predicted a car crash three blocks before it happened—not by logic, by echo .

I don’t click it. I don’t have to. Because I just remembered something I never lived: standing in a white room, countdown from ten, a needle on my skin. A voice asking, “Have you been flashed?” And me replying, “Not yet.”

Then a video link. No preview. Just a black square and the words: “You already know the answer.”