"The recording slowed then finally stopped. Bryan stared into the eyes of Sensei, his teacher," mumbled Joe while clacking away at the keyboard. "'Wow,' he said. 'You were part of Ether Operations?' 'Only for a bit,' said Sensei. 'I was fired that night.'"

Joe's watch beeped telling him it was time to take a break. He let out a long yawn and stretch. Joe took an extra second to glance at what he'd written. I hope the idea of love and faith being an endless power source came across. Joe decided it'd be fine as is.

Joe left to exercise, followed by checking his email and social media feeds. About an hour later, he returned and yawned again. He'd been up since three that morning. Just before going to bed, he'd gotten word from his distributor that there was a problem with his latest book. It'd taken him a few hours to fix it and he was still waiting for the "all clear." Joe decided that instead of worrying, he'd continue working on his latest story. He opened the file and found where he'd left off.

"Welcome back all you Internet fiends," Joe read. He leaned back in his chair. "I don't remember writing this." Joe rubbed his eyes. "I must be more tired than I thought." He was about to delete the text when he noticed new words had appeared.

"I hope you enjoyed our 13 tails [tales] of terror." Joe watched as more words appeared on the screen. Someone was typing right now. Joe quickly turned the computer off to cut the connection to whoever was hacking his computer. He sighed.

The computer then turned itself back on.

"We've sadly come to the end of our spookefest," Joe read. "I've really enjoyed being your host on this hair-rising ride. I hope we can do this again next Halloween. That is if Joe can survive the year." Joe gulped.

"You think these tales were scary, you should try being any kind of content creator. The sleepless nights trying to come up with ideas to entertain the masses' endless thirst for satisfying content. Or the constant feeling of selling your soul as you beg for votes, comments, subscribes, and follows. And those times you wake up in a cold sweat as you realize your livelihood depends on the whims of human trends. All it takes is one viral cat video and you're done. That's true horror. So all you story spooks out there, don't forget to support you favorite fiendish creators and leave a vote and share their tales of things that go bump in their borderline bonker brains. You can start with poor Joe here as he realizes the most horrifying truth yet..."

Joe slowly turned towards the "camera."

"He hit 'restart' instead of 'shut down.' He's been the one writing all along."

Joe lifted his fingers from the keyboard as a sly smile crossed his face. He saluted the "camera."

"Happy Halloween everyone. Bone Digger out."

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Words: 499

My entry for the justwriteit Halloween Vault prompt.

https://my.w.tt/WlkGsSpsrR