The Friend Request at 3:07 A.M.

I’m Lena, 24, still living in my mom’s attic in Dortmund, stacking supermarket shelves by day and binge-scrolling by night. My phone’s my pacifier; I even sleep with it under the pillow like it’s a teddy bear. So when the screen lit up at 3:07 A.M. with a new notification, I barely blinked.

"Marie L. sent you a friend request."

Marie L.? I only knew one Marie—Marie Feld, my primary-school buddy who moved away after her house burned down. We hadn’t spoken since we were, what, nine? The profile pic was weird: a grainy selfie, half her face in shadow, the other half overexposed like someone held a flashlight under the chin. Classic creepy, but curiosity beats common sense at three in the morning. I tapped ACCEPT.

Instantly my feed refreshed. Marie had posted a new photo—me, asleep, mouth open, drooling on the pillow. Same angle as if the phone hovered right above my bed. My heart did that elevator-drop thing. I live alone; Mom’s on night shift. I scrambled to turn every light on, phone clenched like a weapon. Nothing. Just the smell of old wood and my own panic sweat.

I messaged her: "lol how u do that?" The text bubble showed "seen" immediately, but no reply. Instead, she updated her status: "You shouldn’t have clicked." Great, ghost girl’s got attitude.

I tried to unfriend, but the button was grayed out. Report profile? Error 404. I even restarted the phone; the app reopened straight to her page. Okay, maybe malware. I’d deal after work. I shoved the phone in a drawer, swallowed two melatonin gummies, and counted sheep till sunrise.

Next evening, coworkers said I looked like reheated death. I felt it. Every time I blinked, I saw that ceiling-shot selfie. My manager, Klaus, caught me zoning out and joked, "Girl, you got a vampire in your DMs?" If only.

On the bus home I caved and checked. New post: a short video. Me, on that same bus, filmed from the seat behind. The caption: "Almost home." My skin prickled; the seat back there was empty in real life. I flung myself around—nothing but a tired grandma with groceries. The video looped, and in the third replay I noticed something chilling: in the window reflection, a girl sat behind me, face obscured by long wet hair. Marie?

I ran off at the next stop, rain pouring like someone upended a bucket. Inside my attic, I wrapped myself in every blanket I owned and googled "haunted friend request." Forums said stuff like "digital poltergeist," "attachment follows acceptance," blah blah. One dude claimed you gotta delete your entire account, burn the SIM, and bury the ashes at a crossroads. Extreme, but I was ready to try anything that didn’t involve holy water on a touchscreen.

I opened my laptop to nuke the profile from there. Marie chatted first: "Crossroads won’t help." She even sent a GIF of a shovel snapping in half. My scream came out like a squeaky toy. I slammed the laptop; the attic bulb flickered. Thunder? No, the storm had passed. The flicker spelled Morse—I swear it spelled H-E-R-E.

I bolted downstairs to Mom’s room, but her bed was empty; she’d left a note: "Working double, back at noon." I was solo with whatever Marie was. My phone buzzed again—same drawer, same volume I’d muted. How? I didn’t stick around to find out. I grabbed the phone, chucked it into a pot of water like it was a lobster, and set the stove to boil. Screen cracked, bubbles rose, and for a second I felt victorious. Then the pot hissed a word: "Hot." The water turned black, spelling letters with the foam: "NICE TRY."

I unplugged everything—router, microwave, even the smart fridge Mom loves. House went dark. Just me and the city glow through the rain. Silence. Real silence, not the ringy kind after loud music. I exhaled. Maybe that severed the link.

Wrong. A blue shimmer appeared on the wall—my old projector screen, unplugged. It displayed a chat window: "You can’t log out of guilt." Guilt? I racked my brain. Marie’s house fire… I’d been there that day. We were playing with matches, pretending to be witches. I dropped one onto a pile of papers, panicked, and ran. Fire trucks came; Marie moved away with burns, rumors said. I never confessed, never answered her letters. Childhood stupidity, buried under years of cat videos.

Tears blurred the room. "I’m sorry," I whispered. The shimmer brightened, forming a silhouette—Marie, older but scarred, wrists flickering like bad signal. She raised a hand. Instinctively I raised mine. Static crackled, smelling of burnt plastic and something sweeter—lavender, the scent of her old hair clips.

Words typed themselves: "Forgive yourself. Delete the secret." The projector shut off. My phone, still in the pot, gave a tiny ding—like a microwave finishing popcorn. I fished it out with tongs. Dead, obviously. But on the cracked screen, one last image: Marie smiling, scars faded, waving goodbye. Then darkness.

I slept fourteen hours straight. Mom came home, freaked about the scorched pot and my puffy eyes, but I just hugged her, muttering nonsense. Next day I bought a cheap flip phone—no apps, no ghosts. I also wrote a long letter to Marie Feld, c/o the last address I could find, confessing everything. Whether the house still stands, whether she’s alive, I don’t know. But the friend request never came back, and my selfies are mine again—crooked angles, bad lighting, human flaws and all.

Sometimes at 3:07 A.M. I still wake, heart racing, hand reaching for a phone that isn’t smart anymore. If I listen hard, I swear I hear modem screeches in the rain, reminding me the past is always online somewhere, waiting for one dumb click. But now I keep the attic window open, letting real air in, letting old signals out. And whenever I see a vague friend suggestion, I scroll past, ’cause some connections are better left broken.