Connor Franks loved his uncle, and I get why. The guy was cool. He was his father's brother, and-like I said- he was really cool. Where Corey Franks followed the life of a staunchy business man, Callum went on to work for the Army. He had this sort of rotation where he worked three months on, one month off, travelling to Fort Stonewall to do God knew what.

  He was real hush-hush about things. We joked that the man worked at the fort, making super-soldiers and werewolves. They talked to aliens and co-ordinated nuclear munitions transfers. Callum would simple look at us and say, "Whatever you think is there, is."

  We thought that was cool as hell, but when we got older, we realized how dangerous it was for him to explain what he really did. Fort Stonewall was like a black site. It was a compound in the valley that no one went near it for fear of an impromptu cavity search by some grunts in uniform. He lived with a sniper's dot trained on his forehead like an Indian bride, just waiting for him to slip up.

  Everything we thought was there, is.

  All of that aside, Connor still looked up to Uncle Cal. He lived by a simple motto: Carpe Diem.

  Seize the day.

  Connor had adopted it himself, reciting it religiously as if it was the Lord's prayer. It was his prayer before he asked Sophia Parker to homecoming. It was his battle cry before he got in the schoolyard scrap with Johnny Sinclair. It would have been his last words when he rode his skateboard off the edge of the town's quarry, diving into the flooded resevoir below. If he was an inch off, he would have carpe'd his last diem. His parents grounded him for a month, but Uncle Cal simply grinned and said, "Not bad, kiddo. Not bad."

  It was this cool presence that put a pep in my buddy's step as we walked to Uncle Cal's house. He was coming back from his rotation, and Connor wanted to catch up. The family had an arrangement for Connor's folks to take in Ol' Blue while Uncle Cal was away. The ancient basset hound was the closest thing to a cousin Connor had, and seeing how well the old dog lived, you would believe they were really kin.

  With Cal's return, we were excited to take Blue back. Uncle Cal would tell us about his wilder years and play something from his sick vintage record collection. If we were lucky, he would pluck away at a long bass guitar, and slap a few strings to jam out.

  Armed with a pair of cream sodas and a big ass bag of Doritos, we walked across town to the old man's house. We talked about the usual stuff. Mr. Donners's class was boring as shit. Macy Green was wearing a new pair of shorts that made Connor drool. I bemoaned the book report I had yet to finish, but agreed that I could just copy-paste something off Wikipedia. Connor saw the chance to slip in one of his weird obsession. Had I heard of the "Mandela Effect"?

  Of course I hadn't. Connor liked his weird internet stuff, while I preferred my experiences to be more grounded in reality. This prompted him to educate me as he licked cheese dust from his fingers.

  People claimed that they remembered things differently from how they actually happened. It all started when people swore that they had seen the report of the African president dying years before he really had. There were people that swore that Curious George had a tail, or that Gandalf said, "Run, you fools!" and not "Fly, you fools!".

  I didn't care either way, but Connor seemed fascinated by this post he had found in one of his late night web surfing sessions. The community have been calling it the "Scooby-Doo Dead Body". I rolled my eyes and humored my chronically online buddy.

  A man in Albequerque had gone missing, one John David Samson. His family had reported him missing a month ago, but hadn't heard anything from the police. The man had just disappeared one day while watching his two-year old, without a word or a warning. No note. No calls. His wallet and keys were on the table, so he didn't take anything with him when he left. His wife would panic and plea to the public to help finding him.

  Cut to the next scene, where a sixteen-year old- going by "Cry1ng-J4n3y" online- was hired to watch the Samson's little girl while Mom was out looking. The kid had something wrong with them, so they would only calm down when they watched their favorite episode of Scooby-Doo on DVD. "The Hassle in the Castle" saw the titular gang solving the mystery of a ghost in an abandoned castle.

  The post alleged that, as the titular gang boated across the lake, they stumbled across something floating in the lake. The gang pulled out an oar to poke at it, thinking it was a rock and found that it was actually a dead body. They were startled and sped away, leaving the corpse to linger in the lake while they went about their investigation, solving the mystery and being cursed as meddling kids.

  Additionally, he post continued with a video, showing the scene in question. It was certainly a body the Scooby gang had stumbled across. Scooby howled in fear as the brave leader rolled it over onto its back. A scraggly beard covered its chin. The empty eyes were black and lifeless. His plaid shirt was a tattered and a set of ragged claw marks that told the gang that there were monsters in those waters. However, the monster was just a ghost in the halls of the castle. It wasn't until the police arrived at the end did the gang mention the body again, and the local sheriff promised to investigate, though it was never mentioned again.

  Upon closer inspection, the body in the water was almost a dead ringer (No pun intended) for the missing Samson. The wife was horrified. The daughter cried at the sight. The internet decided it was a hoax, played with animation and special effects. Another game played with people's perceptions as the pieces.

  That was my argument, but the conversation ended as Blue jumped at the sight of the his home. Uncle Cal's truck was in the driveway, and Blue howled at the idea of his master's return. With a puppy-like enthusiasm, he raced his human cousin up the stairs and barreled through the door.

  The house was musty. It hadn't been used in months. Despite the calls, Uncle Cal was nowhere to be seen. The only signs of his presence was a suitcase in the living room and static on the TV, casting a dim glow across the entry way. Blue bounded across the linoleum of the kitchen and sniffed at the air, only stopping when he corrected himself after tripping over his own ears. I checked the basement and the garage. Connor took the top floor.

  Nothing. Connor didn't worry, since Uncle Cal was a bit flighty. Maybe he walked down to the corner store to grab a few beers and a bag of jerky, he thought. We should just sit back and wait. He would be here eventually.

  An hour passed.

  Then two.

  Then Connor got the idea to call. I was plucking away at the bass Uncle Cal had strummed for us before, when I heard the squall of a tinny ringtone. The sound scared the bejesus out of us, and we scowered the house until we found the source. A cell phone nestled on a charger beside the microwave. It rested on a bed of leather that was Uncle Cal's wallet. Sure enough, it was his, with his ID, credit cards, and a few pictures of the Franks family.

  That was what made us make a few calls. I called the police. Connor called his mom. They hadn't heard a thing from Uncle Cal since he was set to return. Nothing. No word. It was as if he left his baggage and walked out into the blue.

  Panic set in at the Franks household. Corey Franks questioned everyone his brother would have been friendly with. Martha Franks called around to the neighbors, who hadn't heard a thing from the eccentric Uncle Cal. Connor scouted the streets, tracing every possible step his uncle could have taken. Even Blue took to sniffing frantically, looking for his master as best as his old nose would allow. After a while, he would just nestle under the TV, curled up with a sigh.

  It would be a few weeks before the search dried up. Nana Franks hadn't heard from her youngest. His bosses hadn't heard from him and they assured his colleagues hadn't either. Then again, the Army had a tendency to keep tight-lipped about things, classified or not.

  The family felt an obvious void where Uncle Cal used to be. Dinner was a lot quieter than usual. It was as if the idea of saying his name would make the phone call. He would be found, but no one wanted to hear the news that Callum Franks was a now a past-tense. I hate to say that Connor grew quieter too, as his joie de vive, carpe diem attitude seemed to dull in his uncle's absence.

  Of course, I did what I could to cheer him up, and that's when we got our first hint at what had happened.

  Movie night. A tradition that could lighten any spirit. Horror movies. Action movies. Once we stumbled on what we thought was a simple cop drama and the two of us became men as we saw Sharon Stone uncross her legs for the first time. If nothing else, Connor would have to worry alone.

  We sat down, popcorn ready and mind's open to the world we were about to see. Tonight's selection was a classic. One of the first movies Uncle Call let us watch, even though our parents thought it was too scary for us.

  And we loved every moment of it.

  Silence of the Lambs.

  We sat eyes wide as Clarice Starling walked through the rigid world of the FBI. We grinned as Hannibal Lecter hammed it up on screen, musing at her cheap perfume and yokel upbringing. We imitated his hissing as he praised fava beans and a nice Chianti, and the grotesque state of Buffalo Bill's victims.

  However, we both sat up at the scene when they fished a victim from the river. The disgusting sight of body, bloated and discolored by the water, was enough to make us recoil. However, we stopped and stared as a second was fished out along with it. Had that been in the scene before. It had been some time since we last watched the movie, but we could have sworn there was only the one. Regardless, Clarice Starling seemed confused, recognizing the twisted Buffalo Bill's handiwork on the poor fat girl, but not the man they had fished out of the river.

  Our eyes were glued to the screen, wondering if this was a special cut that Uncle Cal had gotten his hands on. We pushed the thought to the back of our minds until Jodie Foster stepped away from the dead girl, having noticed the iconic moth at the back of her throat. The scene went on, longer than it seemed necessary. Clarice walked through the morgue and asked an assistant about the man. Had he been one of Buffalo Bill's victims? It couldn't be possible, since the killer's victims were all big girls with enough skin to make a suit out of. Who was this man? The mortician shrugged and pulled back the sheet covering it, unsure of who this man was. They had taken prints. They were still trying to figure it out, but the body was being passed to the local boys.

  It took us a moment to understand, but froze as we realized what we were looking at. I paused the movie. Connor gasped. If it was a prop, it was horrifically real. The man's face had been beaten and savaged, as if by some animal. His body was lined with cuts and scratchs, and the only thing that could identify him was the tattoo on his shoulder.

  We looked closely at the figure. It was the outline of a woman, a pin-up dressed in a simple striped bathing suit. Beneath it was a banner. 'CHERRY', it read.

  She had been a girl from the next town over. A cheerful girl full of life that had taught Uncle Cal what love was, and just as soon as it was given, it was snuffed out. Callum Franks would never fully recover from the loss, as she went west to forge her future and never turned back. Her name was Cherry, and we had seen her every day when the weather was hot and Uncle Cal discarded his sleeves.

  Could it be? We grabbed a picture from the mantle and compared the image. The Franks men smiled from the frame, arms crooked in a playful flex. It was there, on full display, that Cherry smiled from Callum's arm. Connor and I looked at each other, eyes wide.

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  Why had the studio tattooed a prop body, if it was just a side note in the grand scheme of things? More importantly, why was it the same tattoo that filled Uncle Cal with pride and longing?

  The idea of it was ridiculous, we knew that sure enough, but that thought lingered in the back of our minds as we turned off the TV. I went home, and tried my best to ignore the questions that floated around in my mind. I didn't sleep that much that night, but when I got to school, it was obvious that neither had Connor.

  At lunch, he sprinted toward me with the sort of crazed look that told me that he had something on his mind that was eating at him. He asked me if I remembered the 'Mandela Effect'. I rolled my eyes, wondering if my friend had thrown himself down another rabbit hole. I grimaced as he pulled out a notebook.

  He had a theory.

  Did I remember the story of the Scooby Gang and the body of John David Samson? Sure, but I didn't care since it was just a story internet crackpots had put together to mess with people.

  Connor wasn't so sure, since it lined up with the exact situation we were in. He had gone back and watched the scene multiple times and found that it wouldn't change. No matter how many times he rewound the scene and tweaked the TV. There was always a body with the same 'CHERRY' tattoo. Curious, Connor set his eye to the internet. He posted his story to the forums and message boards. It was almost immediately that Connor was told it was a trick and was met with people sending him videos of the scene playing out in its entirety. It ended exactly where everyone agreed it was intended to, with the character walking off to the next scene. There was no male victim of the main villain, and there was no 'CHERRY' tattoo. Everyone agreed that the whole thing was a hoax, and a good one, at that.

  Connor had to watch the scene again the next morning to make sure he wasn't going crazy, but we both agreed that we had seen the body in the film. I humored Connor as he explained his later research.

  Despite his sleepless state, he had been surprisingly focused in his mapping of events. I had to wonder why he didn't give his homework this much focus, but we were both guilty of that.

  According to him, the Samson family was not the first to have such a situation. A fourteen-year old boy in Baltimore had gone missing a few years back. He was last seen going to bed the night of his disappearance. At some point in the night, he would sneak down to watch Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness. It wasn't until a later viewing of the movie that they watched a scene of Ash Williams cursing the medival people for their barbarity, slaying a young boy dressed in Pikachu pajamas, found lying in the dirt of the castle's courtyard. The masses would argue against such a thing, but Ash would silence them with his "boomstick" and would later go on to save them from the Deadite hoarde.

  Similarly, someone claimed to have seen the body of a missing San Diego grandmother derailing an episode of the Golden Girls, as Blanche opened the door to find the woman in tatters on their front porch.

  This seemed to continue for several years, creating what the internet was calling, "Wilkes Reels".

  The first reported case of this phenomenon took place in the back woods of Virginia. A homegrown American anarchist called Leon Wilkes went missing while playing with his children. His disappearance was chalked up to the government silencing the local kook with an NRA membership and a manifesto to publish. However, a neighbor was disgusted, as an episode of Spongebob focusing on fishing hooks had a piece of bait that looked like the man's head.

  Later, a mechanic from Detroit would go missing, only to appear in an episode of Big Brother. His body was seen floating in the pool of the house. Despite the episode continuing to air, the contestants and police that were called were adamant that such an event had never occured. This was despite the footage from their confessionals explaining how horrifying the whole thing was.

  A Texas musician inspired a whole new episode of a Law & Order. Though the detectives had no idea how to solve this murder and the episode ended with a collective shrug, NBC fervently denied the existence of the episode. The actors had no response.

  With each instance, the online masses countered by showing their own copies of the media,TV guides and episode listings. These movies, episodes, and clips did not exist, despite the videos posted on the forums.

  This had gone on for years, but I doubted Connor's research. I was impressed by his effort and told him he should write a book about the whole thing, but I felt my conviction waver when Blue ran away.

  The Bassett hound had been depressed in the months following his master's disappearance. I could blame the old dog. He had been Uncle Cal's best friend for years, and the hound clearly loved his human master. Things came to a head when Connor stepped away from Blue to grab a snack, leaving the dog in his usual spot beneath the TV. He hadn't even been gone a minute when he came back to find the dog had disappeared. Though he had chalked it up to Blue wanting a change of scenery, but when he hadn't been found for days after, the family began to worry.

  I helped them search the woods behind the house and even the now-vacant house of Uncle Cal. There was neither hide nor hair of Ol' Blue. With this outcome, I relented when Connor had the idea to review the movie he had been watching when Blue disappeared. He had become obsessed with these "Wilkes Reels", and I was happy to help him by showing him that Blue was not lying dead in a movie.

  I popped the movie into the player and watched as the menu popped up. We settled in to watch a classic.

  Pulp Fiction.

  We sat through the criminal discussion in the diner. We watched Jules and Vincent interrogate and murder a group of burn-outs in a rundown apartment. We watched the murder of Marvin and the dance with Vincent and Mia. This continued until the hitman duo found themselves desperate to get rid of the body in their trunk. They popped it open to show a dead Marvin, and something we- Jules, Vincent, Connor and I- gasped at.

  "The hell's a dog doing in here," asked Vincent.

  Our blood froze as the camera cut to the trunk, where a bloodied Marvin was cuddled up to a bassett hound, its belly open.

  Blue.

  We watched the scene cut back to Jules. Samuel L. Jackson's eyes stared intensely into the camera. They seemed to bug with malice.

  "I don't like dogs," said Jules. "Thought Marvin could use some company." He flashed his gappy smile, before being pulled back by Vincent's protests. They set to work, pulling the bodies from the trunk. Connor gasped for breath. My stomach churned before the hot dog from lunch came back up.

  We rewound and stared at the carnage. Same fur patterns. Same ears. Same drooping jowls. It was Blue. We went frame by frame, watching in slow-motion as the scene played out, until we saw Jules's face staring into the camera. It was wild, focused. It was almost like he was looking at us specifically. His eyes turned so subtly as we moved, trying to avoid his gaze.

  He was looking at us.

  Watching us.

  We turned the movie off and after a moment of cursing and panicking and collective pants-shitting, we looked for explanations. I struggled for reason. It had to be a demented cut of the movie, something Quentin Tarentino distributed to the weirder of his fanbase. To his credit, Connor was more level-headed than I expected. There had to be an explanation, and there was a chance that Uncle Cal would have an answer.

  It was a stretch, but we agreed to look. I chalked it up to nepotistic optimism, but as we pulled Uncle Cal's things from the box in the attic, we weren't prepared for what we saw.

  It was buried in a battered notebook, written in shorthand. Connor looked to me to decypher the scribbles. My sister had taken to learning it to keep me from reading her journals. I learned it to read said journals- though not out of nosiness, but out of a sense of satisfaction. I never thought it would lead me to reading aloud the thoughts of a family's eccentric black sheep.

  It read like a weird diary. A jumbled mess of weird thoughts and theories that made little to no sense. That is until we came to a page that made we wince.

  A Memetic Metafunctional Creature. Uncle Cal shortened it to a 'Mimic'. An entity that existed entirely in the collective unconscious and manifested in the media we consumed. My head hurt just thinking about whatever the hell that meant. After a moment to calm down, I gave it a bit of thought.

  An entity?

  A 'Mimic'?

  Something living in a TV?

  It was so stupid, I couldn't believe it, but something kept me reading. A memetic metafunctional creature capable of passing through the metaphorical fourth wall. An image capable of touching the observer. Uncle Cal had theorized that if it could step out into our space, it could bring things back with it.

  It seemed intelligent, as it could discern one thing from another, mainly knowing a banana was not a wristwatch and so on, but more importantly was what happened when it pulled something through the fourth wall. Whatever this thing was, it was a lot like a dog- or more specifically a wolf. All it needed was to be pointed in a direction and something to wrap its hands around, and it was as compliant as a trained attack dog.

  A video tape was cheaper than a cell in a black site, and all it needed was a place to put them. Connor and I looked at each other. The first Wilkes Reel had been an anarchist. Uncle Sam did have a habit of making people disappear if he didn't like them. Roswell. Bigfoot. Men in Black. If the government had a number of secrets, then what was to say this wasn't one of them.

  What really worried Uncle Cal was the prospect of this 'mimic' getting out. What would it look like if a predator that no one could see was out and about in a world that only knew less than half of what was really out there. The journal ended there, with Uncle Cal unsure of the restless nature the 'mimic' was developing.

  It was bad enough that it ruined good movies, he wrote, but now it was making demands?

  That sent a chill down my spine that I was not ready for.

  Demands? That meant it was smart.

  That meant it was looking at us.

  It was talking to us. It knew we were out here, beyond that fourth wall.

  I didn't sleep that night. We took Pulp Fiction out of the player and smashed it to pieces. If this thing-this mimic- was inside, then we didn't want any part of it. We destroyed Quentin Tarentino's work and sent the shards flying in different directions.

  We both sat up, shivering at the idea of what this thing could possibly do.

  Uncle Cal. Blue. The anarchist from Virginia. The people disappeared by this memetic metafunctional creature.

  We were eager to let it die-leave it alone and let it wither.

  I had hoped that this was just a spooky blip in the grand scheme of my life. I would grow old and never have to think about whatever the hell a 'mimic' was. If I did, it would just be the elaborate hoax of Callum Franks, the eccentric uncle of my best friend. I was ready to ignore it for the rest of my life.

  Until Connor disappeared.

  I got the news two days later. He had disappeared into the aether. Following his uncle, his mother said through tears. His father was all but catatonic. My heart sank. My blood went cold. I had to force myself to look through his room, looking for any clues of where he went. I checked his DVDs, and his books, hoping for any trace of where he could be. I gagged at the sight of the words on the page.

  Huck Finn.

  Mrs. Mallory's assigned reading.

  Huck and Jim had landed on a river boat. In his broken English, the escaped slave was disgusted by the dead man, but confused by the boy next to him, describing a colorful shirt that he knew was script, but couldn't understand per his illiteracy. He would ask Huck if white people wrote on their clothes, but it was dismissed as the alien musings of an uneducated slave.

  I gulped as I read.

  Books. It could occupy books too?

  Could the 'mimic' pull you into books too?

  I had a moment of horror as I came to a realization. There was only one option from here. It got Uncle Cal. It got Blue. It got a rebel from Virginia, and a grandmother from San Diego. It got a mechanic from Detroit, and Connor, and now- it knew that I knew it was out there. Even now, I have to wonder, could this thing see me everywhere I went?

  In the twenty-first century, it's impossible to avoid this weird fourth wall. Books were everywhere. Television was omnipresent. The internet was king. In this interconnected world, everyone is online.

  How do you run away from something like that.

  Maybe the people in Fort Stonewall can help me. '

  We'll see...