Illusory Truth

The woman in the picture smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. She stood suspended in a moment of clarity and joy, arm draped around her friend’s shoulders, posing in an almost desperate way that guided the attention to her figure. The pair stood outside a local bar, dressed like any other woman in her early 20s about to go to the same place they go every weekend. Their night was likely filled with the same dingy guys trying to buy them drinks, and a strong feeling of deja vu. 

As she stared at the woman in the photo, she saw herself. Quite literally, it was her. She had gone to that bar, worn that outfit, taken a couple pictures with her friend, and had a rather unmemorable night, but she had not taken this picture. The picture sat in her feed, coming from her own account, but she had no memory of this photo, and no memory of posting anything at all. 

Her first thought was the alcohol, but this picture had been posted today, while she was still asleep under her sheets. She could feel her mind pulling to find this memory, trying to convince her that the photo exists, but it just wasn’t convincing enough. 

Her first thought was to call her friend to confirm, but what was she even suggesting occurred? Someone hacked her account and posted a photo she didn’t remember taking even though she had 20 photos that looked almost the same? Whatever the case, it was getting more likes than usual, so she shrugged off the feeling and went on with her day.

She had forgotten about the entire ordeal until 2 weeks later, when it happened again. There she sat, cuddled up with her friends in a sweet embrace. They wore pajamas and held glasses of wine. It was captioned, “Movie night!”. She looked happy, but something looked off about her expression that she couldn’t place. An uncanny valley feel that this wasn’t her face at all. But it was her face, because this moment had happened last night. 

She had invited her friends over for a wine and movie night. She had worn that outfit, drank that drink, watched that movie, but she had not taken any photos. Not that she remembered. Opening her phone, she went straight to her camera roll, and there it was, surrounded by multiple others just like it. 

She watched her phone as her friends commented and liked the post, no one remarking on the fact that everyone in attendance was in the photo, so who took the picture?

Again, she stayed silent for fear she might sound insane. It didn’t make any sense, and there was no logical reason for it. They must have propped her phone up and pressed the timer, but when she tried to replicate the angle, she couldn’t. The angle was only one that could have come from a person standing. 

When the same thing happened 2 more times over the next month, she tried to casually mention it around coworkers and friends. She tried to open up this idea that photos were being posted that she didn’t remember taking, and everyone laughed, thinking she meant she had drank too much that night and didn’t remember. 

Her friends joked about how they were annoyed she didn’t ask them before posting because they thought they looked ugly in the picture, and when she asked if they even remembered taking the photo they said of course. The next photo posted a week later was accompanied with a text to her friend to make sure she liked the way she looked, something she didn’t even realize until the friend passive aggressively mentioned that she finally asked this time instead of just posting and asking for forgiveness after. She never sent that text, she never posted that photo. 

Her ears pricked one morning when a colleague mentioned posting something so embarrassing over the weekend because she was so drunk she didn’t remember doing it. When she looked at the post, she got the same icy feeling that the photo wasn’t real. She listened in again when she heard her friend say the same about her clubbing experience the weekend before. She saw the pattern, each time she drank, or someone else drank, a photo was posted under the cover of alcohol. 

The moment she spotted the pattern it was gone.

It started slow, but photos began popping up in broad daylight, some photos she had taken similar copies of, and some she had not remembered taking at all. She was on edge, waiting for the next picture to post, hoping it was all some mistake of the algorithm, and it would never happen again. But it didn’t stop.

A photo with her friends. A photo with her mom. A photo of a beautiful sunset. All spaced out enough between her real posts to seem plausible. She didn’t know why this was happening, but she knew she needed to stop it.

On her way to work one morning, she felt a tugging in her gut to pull over. She sat in the nearest parking lot, confused by the feeling. When she looked up, she realized she sat in the parking lot of a church. People were pulling off the street and parking, just like her, slow and steady until it was full and everyone was walking inside. With closer inspection, she realized it wasn’t a church at all. Where a cross normally sat, a triangle took its place. She had no idea why, but that triangle felt familiar, like she had seen it before. On each point, there was another, small triangle, creating a simple yet beautiful symbol. She looked around at those walking inside, and decided to join them. 

She was met with a room full of people, and a weird feeling of belonging. She sat in the back, hoping to be a wallflower in this religious ceremony. She just wanted to understand her mixed feelings. The music began, filling her soul with joy, as if she’d heard it before. Like it was a familiar song. A man stood in the middle of the floor, wearing the regular clothes of everyone in the room. No suit, no cloak, just a plain, casual outfit, like he was one of the people. He preached love and unity for an hour. And then she left, feeling none of her questions answered. 

She skipped work that day, reeling over her odd decisions. She never did spontaneous things like that. The church, or whatever it was called, seemed familiar. Like something that sat in the back of her mind that she always knew. Like she was going back to her roots. 

She didn’t go back to that building for fear of actually enjoying it. She had never been religious, and never planned on it. As the months went by, she realized the parking lot became more and more full. Then more buildings began popping up in the city, beckoning the people to look inside. She could feel it in her gut each time she passed one, as if it was baiting her inside like a fish. Each time her eyes passed over the triangles, she felt a feeling of familiarity and home shiver down her spine.

And then she saw it.

A picture sprung into her feed. A friend of hers out for brunch with her boyfriend. They looked happy but stiff. She had meant to just scroll past, but the background caught her eye. There, nestled into the buildings behind them was the triangle. It just sat there, almost ominous in the way it stared back through the screen. She felt the calmness wash over her again at the sight of it, but she shoved it down until the only thing left was fear.

She scrolled away to get it out of her face, but was barraged with another photo, the same triangle haunting the background. And another. And another. The moment she saw the first, it was like something had clicked in her brain. They were no longer invisible to her. She saw the symbol in each post like it was the real spotlight of the photo, not the people posed in it.

Frantically, she went back to her own feed. Staring at the pictures, she forgot how to breathe. In each and every picture, back to the first of her standing in front of the bar, was a triangle. It intricately wove its way into each photo, hypnotizing her. For minutes or hours, she didn’t know, she sat there, staring into space, heart beating, feeling the panic rise.

How had she not seen it before? How was she the only one who saw it? What was she going to do next?

Her first thought was to just describe this symbol to the internet. It did not take much effort at all to get a wealth of information on the religion. It had been growing rapidly over 2 years, the first records of its beginnings right around the time the first pictures began to populate her feed. It was growing faster than any religion she had ever seen, gaining followers by the week. Advocates online described their conversion as a feeling of familiarity and justness. They too had felt this inner tug to stop and listen when they first saw the building, and knew it was where they were meant to be. The locations of their buildings seemed to stay in cities, targeting higher population groups to get the most people to join. When she saw its name, her heart sank. The Hidden Sigil.

It couldn’t have been a coincidence. She felt as if the world around her was quickly buying into this illusory truth, and she was the only one in resistance. She was the only one that truly saw.

Over months, her friends and coworkers began slowly converting to the cult, as she had begun calling it. She began to feel judged. She felt like a minority among these suggestible people. Like the ball had begun rolling and it didn’t matter that she was the only one trying to hold it back. She wasn’t going to be strong enough on her own. 

She tried to show her friends the symbols in the photos, but it was like they were immune to seeing it. She felt ostracized and crazy, when even her parents suggested she talk to a therapist about what was going on with her. She hung up when they suggested she join the Hidden Sigil. Each day, she woke up with dread. She stopped going to work. She stopped seeing her friends. She stopped living.

And then it happened. It began as a normal day, almost 2 and a half years since the first picture. She knew exactly how long it had been since her life began to change. She woke up, checked her phone, and was flooded with news sources all reporting on the same thing. The world was going to end in 7 days.

This wasn’t some sort of scientific discovery of an asteroid ramming into Earth, no, it was the Hidden Sigil. They had come forward that morning in a ceremony, and told the masses that in 7 days time, the world was going to cease existence as we know it. The second coming of Christ was upon us, and there was only one solution. The world spun around her as she felt the words rest upon her. 

The solution was mass suicide. At that moment, she realized what this was all for. It wasn’t just some religious scheme to convert the people, it was a cult, exploiting their followers to believe it was the end of time.

The news sources covered the information like it was fact, not like it was coming from a biased society of cult leaders. They spoke of the preparations that needed to be made, how everyone should say goodbye, and the exact moment on that 7th day that everyone must fall to their deaths.

Her world descended into systematic chaos. All across the city, people were preparing for Christ. They created shrines, prayed, and said goodbye. For them, it wasn’t as scary as it all seemed. The act of killing themself wasn’t the end, it was their direct transportation to heaven. They were relieving Christ of his duties and going straight home to let him reset the Earth. Those that didn’t fall would die a horrible, painful death, and suffer in Hell for eternity. The choice was a no brainer to them.

On the morning of the 7th day, she held her breath, hoping that in the end, everyone would lose their nerve. She had been begging her parents for days, frantically screaming in their direction, but they didn’t listen. It was as if her protests were silent to those around her. She almost tore her hair out in frustration as her friends scoffed at her lack of faith. 

The moment of Fall was rushing upon the world, the seconds ticking by as she waited, and waited, and waited. Then she saw the first body drop. It fell through the sky without fear. No screaming in anticipation, no flailing limbs, just a cold intensity and resignation to what was ahead of them. This was just a small step in their sovereignty. And then the bodies fell like rain through the city, littering the streets in gore. Some didn’t die on impact, they just fluttered on the ground, gasping in tumultuous pain as life drained from their soul. 

She could no longer watch when she caught a glimpse of a tiny body falling through the sky. She knelt, head between her knees, holding onto her sanity in these final moments. When the noises stopped, she looked around at the desolation, and cried. A small part of her had hoped that maybe the world would end, and all of those deaths weren’t in vain. But the point of world collapse had come and gone, the silence of its wrongness haunting her being. 

She looked down at the world around her, and jumped.