'Live on, my son. My most proud legacy.'
…How? Zaire thought, hands clutching his head hard enough to turn his knuckles white. How can I live on without you?!
It has been a week since the 'accident'. He has had some time to think. In that time, Zaire had been upstairs in his parents' mansion in a self-imposed isolation.
He hadn't bathed in a while. The food and pantry in the kitchen upstairs were running dry, and he couldn't bring himself to go to the kitchen downstairs to eat something while the unattended corpses of his parents hung on the walls.
Perhaps worse of all, on the internet, everything looked normal.
At first, Zaire thought that whatever was turning humans into smartphones was like a zombie virus. But, no such thing seemed to appear on the internet. He rationalized it, thinking that since the creatures have smartphones in their face, perhaps they can somehow influence the internet.
Two days of staring outside the window, and seeing regular, normal humans walking on the street, however, seemed to put a stop to that train of thought. So, to confirm, Zaire had ordered some fast food.
Everything proceeded normally. The deliverman was a man with a human face when Zaire saw him on the door camera. When he opened the door, that man's face morphed into a screen; shocked wouldn't even begin to describe the state he had been in then.
Slowly, after days of brewing, a gut-wrenching idea formed in Zaire's mind.
What if it's me? What if I am the reason people are turning into smartphones? By the time that idea became a thought, he found himself surprisingly accepting of it. And, with acceptance, came understanding. If… I am truly the cause of all this; then it is better that I die.
The only thing that had kept him from doing the deed himself was the poster that he had prepared for the notice boards. Somehow, that piece of paper kept him from proactively ending his life.
Not that it matters, I will die of starvation soon enough.
He thought, and five days have passed since then. Now, all the food upstairs had been consumed, and all he waited for was the Grim Reaper's visit.
"I am sorry, Dad. I wish I could honor your last words."
Holed up in his room, Zaire muttered to himself, hands clutching his head to stop himself from going downstairs, and eat something while facing his parents' remnants.
Ding-Dong! Ring-Rong!
The doorbell chimed suddenly, much to Zaire's confusion. He wasn't expecting anybody. Although his family did live in a community with a private security service, could it be one of their men?
Zaire opened his phone and connected it to the door camera.
It was a drop-dead gorgeous girl who looked around the same age as him.
She had a pair of dazzling, almost glowing blue eyes and long, waist-length, brown, wavy hair. Wearing tight-fitting black leather pants, wedges, and a thin, off-the-shoulder white blouse that made her black strapless bra visible, she looked hypnotic to Zaire.
He watched her standing at the door, looking ahead; however, soon she raised an eyebrow and lifted her chin to the left corner. Gaze pointed at the hidden door camera.
"How did she—"
"Hello," the girl said.
A bead of sweat formed on Zaire's cheek. He turned on the microphone and screamed, "Get out!"
"I am here on business. Let me in," the girl informed simply.
"So? That doesn't mean I have to talk to you. Leave."
Having heard that, the girl sighed in disappointment, shook her head, and walked away.
"Whew," Zaire sighed a breath of relief. The last thing he wanted was for such a model-esque girl's face to resemble a smartphone.
Knock-knock-knock-knock!
Suddenly, he heard knocking outside his room. "What!?" Zaire's heart almost jumped out of his body.
"Who is it?" He asked, more beads of sweat rolled down his forehead as he slowly walked towards a guitar he had in his room. Grabbing it by the neck, he raised the broad end high to attack any home invaders.
That was not necessary.
"I am knocking to let you know that when I open this door, I better not see a shlong around your palm or out of your pants."
Zaire's eyes shot up.
The familiar voice of the girl he had just talked with came from the other side. Then, with a heavy thud, the door was forced open.
"W-wait, no! Seriously, don't come here!" Zaire screamed and immediately dove towards his bed, covering himself with the comforter.
He didn't know for sure, but he strongly believed that eye contact or visual contact of some kind was important before people around him changed into horrific smartphone people.
"Oh, get up, you self-pitying idiot."
Zaire heard just as the comforter fly up high in the air. "...What?" He looked up, only to see the woman holding the sheet in one hand, and moving a lock of her hair with the other to… Directly meet his gaze.
"NO—huh?"
Five seconds passed.
Ten seconds passed.
An entire minute passed, but the girl in front of him didn't change.
"I honestly wasn't expecting you to be this cowardly, Zaire." She said, "But, I guess, it is a shock for you."
"Why aren't you…"
"Turning into this?" The girl pointed her smartphone at him, and it showed a video of a deliveryman—his third victim, right after his parents—running frantically around the street.
He was screaming and flailing madly until a police officer shot him in the chest.
Zaire's eyes shook at the visceral footage, "He… He is dead?"
"Um, yeah," The girl said, awkwardly scratching her cheek, completely unfazed at the death of another human being.
"Anyway," she pointed at the floor, no, she pointed downstairs. "For ten thousand dollars, I will take care of all the bureaucracy and the physical mess involving your late parents. May they rest in peace."
Zaire frowned at that. She could be a little more sincere with her condolences.
"What?" The girl said, waving one hand dismissively. "I know you're rich. This mansion is worth what? Ten? Twenty million? I am sure you can spare ten grands."
Zaire refrained from lashing out about how detached she was. Right now, his priority was to find out who she was and why she could resist his curse. "What's the point?" He said, "If I go outside, more will end up with a phone in their heads."
"I will get you in the loop later. For now, you should pay your respects to the dead… through me." The girl turned around and began to exit the room, "Or, you can refuse, in which case, I will leave you to your antics."
"W-wait?" Zaire extended his hand forward, and she promptly stopped. "How did you even get here?"
"If by that you mean, how I found you… well, the video explains plenty. Or, if you mean how I got here even though you clearly saw me leave a second ago, then let me tell you." She took a deep breath and leaned incredibly close to his face, whispering, "I have what you have, too."
Zaire gasped. "You can turn people into smartphones? Since when?"
"No, silly, I have superpowers, like you! And, unlike you, who is a first-generation, I am like a fifteenth generation, so I was born with them."
"Superpowers?"
"Uh-huh," the girl nodded. "Also, FYI, the reason your power isn't affecting me is because I am using the pressure of my soul to forcibly contain you, in a metaphysical sense, not physically."
"What?!" Zaire leaned ahead with an intent expression. "You can do that?"
The girl snapped her face back and chuckled, "Yeah."
Teach me.
Zaire almost spoke out loud before realizing how bad that sounded. He needed something that she wanted, something other than money, because something told him that her prices were way over his budget.
That left him with little to work with, though perhaps—No, I am overthinking this. Let's try asking her first, politely of course.
"Can you please teach me how I can, you know, not turn people into phones?" He said with a sheepish smile.
"Hmm," she tapped her chin with her index finger, pensively. "I don't mind necessarily, but what's in it for me?"
Zaire opened his mouth to speak, and finding nothing of use in his vocabulary, he said, "Fair point. How about I pay you first, you take care of my parents with all the respect they deserve, and then we will get back to it."
The girl gave him a bright business smile, "Great! Would you like their bodies restored for a proper funeral or as ashes? It's none of my business, but if I were you, I would want them in a post-cremated form simply because lying to their friends and family in a funeral… doesn't end well, usually."
Zaire took a deep breath, his eyes darting to a photo of himself with his parents in his room. It was taken during a medal ceremony, and he remembered what they had said to him right after the event.
His father had taken the medals off his neck and thrown them in a trash can. "Medals are worthless, Zaire, you can get countless of them, and they wouldn't be worth more than a penny. Don't let the medals motivate you to thrive; don't let them lose sight of what truly matters: merits. Thrive for the merits, not for the medals."
"That is quite enough, Zachery. I believe Zaire has received your message," his mother had said, her expression stern like her husband's. "Now then, Zaire, a reputed youth dance ensemble specializing in urban ballroom dances, is happening two months from now. I tell you this so you can begin exercising to build the stamina necessary to dance."
Zaire closed his eyes and let out a tired breath. He didn't like to think about it, but he truly didn't know his parents enough to act like them.
In the end, he could only ask one thing. What would you want, Dad? Mom?
His parents lived just as isolated as him.
Both of their parents have long died, and their relationship with their siblings or colleagues was nonexistent.
They were also the farthest thing from being religious. They were pragmatic and rational, and didn't particularly believe in things like weddings, funerals, or even going to church on weekends.
Would they have cared about what happens to them after their death?
The answer to that was an obvious no in Zaire's opinion.
"I would prefer if they were in ashes."
The girl donned a sober look as she said, "Understood." Before her previous, detached tone returned, "Let me do that, in the meantime," she scrunched her nose in disgust, "shower. You stink to high heavens."