Writetober 2025, Coven of the Quill, Day 10: Predicts the Future

The new category was labeled "True Crime Future", and the launch was slick and generic. All black title cards, low, tense cello chords, and everything that signifies serious prestige. I clicked it on on a Tuesday night. I was twenty-seven, apartment small, job boring, life unremarkable. I expected generic, gossip-y speculative fiction, but instead I got: The Dystopia of Tomorrow's Murder.

What launched wasn't a trailer. It was a perfectly rendered documentary, titled in white sans-serif: "The Late Life and Final Moments of Scott M. Williams.”

My name.

The opening shot was a high-angle drone sweep over my exact block, then zoomed in on my building, my window, and then—impossibly—the inside of my own living room. The same cheap, faded blue sofa, the same messy stack of graphic novels I swore I’d organize. The narrator, a woman with a calm, BBC-ready voice, began: “Scott Williams, a digital project manager and casual fan of our platform, lived a life of quiet routine..."

I watched myself on the screen. The me of the documentary was older, slightly heavier, with a tired slump to his shoulders. The dates flashed: the next year, day by day, month by month. It chronicled my promotion at work, the awkward breakdown of a brief relationship in March, and the decision to finally switch to a better coffee machine in June. It was a perfect recall of my relatively ordinary life.

But then, the chilling part. The date jumped to exactly one year from this Tuesday night.

The scene was the kitchen. The light was bad, the countertops were messy—everything I’d expect from this pigsty I call home. The me on screen was coming home late from a work function. He—I—looked stressed.

The narration cut in,: "On October 10th of next year, at 11:47 PM, Scott will return from a mediocre work dinner. He will be tired, distracted, and preoccupied with an email he received moments earlier. This is the moment the timeline resolves."

The documentary showed the apartment door sliding open. A cloaked silhouette was waiting by the refrigerator. There was no sound, only the tense, awful score. The me on the screen dropped the keys.

The following twenty seconds were a blur of motion, a handheld, visceral depiction of absolute panic. It was not stylized or censored. Quite frankly, it was brutal. It ended with a static shot of the tiled floor, the camera hovering over the still, unnaturally twisted body. The lighting, the angle, the splatter of dark crimson on the off-white tiles, it was all devastatingly, unequivocally real.

I didn't turn it off. I couldn't.

The documentary cut to the aftermath: the police tape, the stunned neighbors, the brief, sad television report. It even showed a shot of my mother, a year older, staring blankly at a camera. The narrator concluded with a clinical summary of the murderer, a shadow figure who was "never identified."

The film ended, and the screen went black.

I sat there, throat dry, for a full five minutes, staring at the reflection of my own face on the glass. Then I did the only thing I could think of: I unplugged the streaming box, threw it into a kitchen drawer, and hid the remote.

I spent Wednesday numb, the gruesome image of the tile floor burned onto my retina.

On Thursday, I logged onto my laptop to check the weather. Before the weather app fully loaded, a small, black notification box popped up in the corner of my screen.

STREAM-TRUTH HAS NEW CONTENT.

I didn't click. I didn't have to.

The notification box swelled, forcing itself to full-screen. The same black title card. The same low cello thrum. The name: "The Late Life and Final Moments of Scott M. Williams.”

I watched the screen with bated breath. The date ticker flickered: it was no longer October 10th. It was October 11th, exactly one year from today. The documentary had already updated. The kitchen scene had changed. I would no longer be returning from work, I would be leaving to walk the neighbor's dog. Somehow, the position of the silhouette, the way the keys would drop, and the exact implement of my passing was now.. new, precise, and beautifully shot.

My life was no longer my own; it was just a draft, constantly being edited, perfected for the final, gruesome premiere. My only certainty was the absolute knowledge of the show's climax. I looked around my small apartment, realizing that every wall, every messy corner, was just part of a perpetually updating set design for my own finale. The curtain would fall in three hundred and sixty-five days, and the streaming service was already selling the merchandise.

written by Zoe