Why I'll Never Use Powerpoint

I have never seen horror movies. I assume they contain an old lady with anger-management issues, lot of blood and a creepy haunted doll. Again, this is just my imagination. I watch till the movie title rolls and then walk away because the title looks scary. But I assure you, mine is nothing like that. No blood, no creepy grammas, and no Annabelle. Just me and a computer. I seriously need to get this event out of my mind. Maybe turning it into a story will help me believe it was all a dream.

So, classic horror set up- a dark night, the storm outside and a single guy (me) sitting all alone. What was I doing up at midnight? No, I wasn’t stealing cookies, I was trying to finish the stupid PPT I was doing on Rubik’s cube. I was running on pure fear on what miss will do if I didn’t complete it by today and on a cup of coffee I secretly made. Parents being out had its perks. The Rubik’s cube photo on slide 3 was being a pain. It couldn’t fit well. And that’s when it happened.

The screen glitched. Barely, but I saw it. A minor part of my cube turned into a black void and quickly reverted. “What the- “I said. And then it happened again. Much more visibly. OK, that was weird, I thought. I then did the repair technique that has been tested through the centuries-I gave it a tap. Bad move. My colorful cube suddenly turned red-blood red. I froze. I wiped my eyes and looked again, never mind the cube was as cheerful as it could be. Was I hallucinating? Wow, this coffee is not good. I kept my cup down and looked up again, to be greeted by a blank screen.

Then the screen glitches, back and forth between darkness and my presentation. Like a battle between the two. Finally, the presentation wins. My screen is now back to normal. VIRUS, the thought enters my mind. I quickly fire up Kaspersky and asks it to run a check. It returns that it has found nothing. Okay, it’s probably me freaking out over something trivial. I work on my PPT for another 20 minutes when the screen goes black again. But this time, words appear. Not just words, but music comes out of the speakers. Both the word and the music are the same- “Jack and Jill went up the hill”. The music is sung in a weird voice, a voice that seems cheerful and sinister at the same time. And broke his crown is sung more forcefully.

 I sit there, staring at my computer screen, watching this event unfold, glued to my chair. I broke into a sweat, it the cool room. Feeling like a puppet, being able to do absolutely nothing. After the song ends and the PPT returns I slowly stand up and move towards the phone when the speakers emit a laugh. Nothing sinister or evil, in fact, it sounded like a little girl. And then a single word – “HELLO” said the girl. I fainted on the spot.

I woke up in a hospital. My parents came home to see me laying on the floor unconscious. My stories made no sense. By my urging they had the computer tested. They found nothing.

I didn’t go near a computer for days, out of fear. This is the first time I am using a computer in half a year. I have deleted PowerPoint. I still wake up in the middle of the night, in a pool of sweat, one single word playing on my mind. “Hello”.