Janice.jpg

start of document*
Hi, my name is Mark Spielman. I'm writing this in order to keep any sanity I have left, in order to tell everyone about that girl... I dream about her all the time. I can't get her face out of my head, those eyes, that smile... who IS she?! Who is Janice?
I'm what you would call an indoors type of person. I never go outside much, just sit by my computer and look for fucked up shit on the Internet. I'm well versed on Internet memes, YouTube fads, and the best porn sites. I'm notwhat you would call a porn addict, but when I do watch it, I know where to go. 
I know the Internet inside and out, so when I found out the local police department was looking to hire people with extensive knowledge of the Internet, I jumped at the opportunity. I was one of many looking for the job, but as fate would have it, I was the lucky one. The police chief who hired me patted me on the back as I walked into my new office and said "Hope you're ready for this, Mark. There's a lot of crazy shit out there." I smiled at him and said, "Believe me, sir, I've seen it all."
My job began with basic stuff, mostly just finding various websites that upload child pornography and taking them down, along with grabbing the users who were stupid enough to not use a proxy, and for the first few weeks, it was very mundane work. But as time went on, things got more interesting. 
Some people were smart enough to hack into police databases and post different files of murdered victims, confidential cases hidden from the public, etc. By my third month of work I was dealing with everything from child pornography to extremely clever hackers. The pay could've been somewhat better, but I loved the work. My life was finally beginning to have some meaning, even if I was still sitting in front of a monitor 24/7. But one day, the life I was working so hard to build came crashing down...
I was browsing the Internet as usual, trying to find any sites with child pornography. I was getting really disturbed by how much of this sick shit was on the Internet. It was like battling a hydra, take down one site and two more take its place. I found a website with a URL called "Sweet15.com." I thought of what that might mean and clicked it. What I saw made my heart skip a beat. This was the biggest child porn site I had ever seen, and being the first one to find it and being able to take it down and find all the sick bastards behind this would make me a hero, not to mention the insane bonus I would be getting. 
I could see the dollar signs now. This would be a landmark case, hundreds would be sent to jail, and I would be at the head of it. I composed myself and started delving into the website's content. Just one picture or video depicting someone having sexual contact with a child would be enough to get a warrant to locate any users' IP address. The pictures and videos weren't embedded, so I had to click on their links to view their content. I went to a random page and clicked on a random picture, titled "Cathy.jpg."
I looked at the picture. It was a picture of a young girl with long hair and pale skin, about 15 or 16, standing in a dimly lit room with a smile on her face. Not a full, toothy smile, but just a slight grin. That was it. Nothing sexual whatsoever. In fact, the girl in the picture seemed rather modestly dressed. I was about to click away from the picture when I noticed the URL. The picture I was on, according to the URl, was not "Cathy.jpg." It was another picture file, entitled "Janice.jpg." I found that rather odd, and decided to go to another picture. "Susan.jpg." 
I clicked on the link. My happiness at finding this site was fading faster than it came. The picture I clicked on directed me to exactly the same picture as before. I looked at about 15 more and every one was the same. I gave up and decided to look at the videos. I clicked on any file, "PennyPrecious.wav." There was no video, just that picture file, Janice.jpg. I called a few people into my office and asked them to help me go over more files on this website. 
At the end of the day we had gone through over a thousand files, and had to concede that the website was a sick joke by some prankster who made a bunch of fake files directed to the same picture file. I packed my bags and left the office, feeling disappointed. But I also felt something that scared me as I was driving home. A rising sense of panic. As though if I didn't search that site more thoroughly, something terrible would happen.
I opened the door to my house and went straight to my computer. I turned it on and went to the site. I went deeper into the site, looked at the source code, trying to find anything that would lead me to something else, but every file on the site went to that damn picture file. Her face was burned into my skull, and I knew I couldn't sleep until I found out who she was. I went into the deepest logs in the site, and I felt like throwing my monitor out the window, when my jaw dropped. 
On the very last page of the picture file logs was a lone picture file called "TrueJanice.jpg. "I knew this one had to be different. With sweat trickling down my forehead, I brought my cursor to the link and clicked it. It was essentially the same picture as Janice.jpg, but it was black-and-white, and when I hovered my mouse over it, I realized that clicking on the picture would direct me to another link. I clicked on it.
My browser shut down immediately and my computer crashed, and all that was left on my monitor was the infamous blue screen that signaled certain doom to my hard drive. I cursed and tried to turn it back on. After a few attempts, I was able to get to my desktop. It was the most fucked-up virus I had ever encountered. 
All my programs were deleted and a pop-up box said that 1000 picture files were being copied to my hard drive. But the thing that made me nervous was my desktop picture. It was Janice.jpg, the black-and-white photo. Something about Janice's facial expression was different, though. In the regular photo, she appeared to have a slight smile on her face. In this picture, she was frowning. Not out of disappointment, though. I could see something in her eyes, a new expression. Fear.
After the pop-up box closed, I went to my pictures to see what had been copied. I started with the first picture. It was essentially exactly the same picture as the original Janice.jpg. I started clicking rapidly to the next few photos. They were basically the same, but I could see one thing that was changing. Her face, which in the first picture was smiling, had morphed into the frown I had seen on my desktop. As I kept clicking, more rapidly now, I could see her mouth start to contort into a scream. The pictures were getting darker and darker and the girl more horrified when around 100 pictures in, it faded to black. I clicked a few more times. Same black screen as before. 
After a few more clicks, however, there was another picture. A new one, this time. It was a picture of a bed, with what appeared to be a bundle with a blanket resting on top of it. The scene was in a dark room with a few candles burning to light it up. I noticed in horror that there were red splotches on the wall behind the bed, which were what I knew had to be blood. I clicked to the next few pictures. 
There appeared to be a man walking into the frame. He grabbed the bundle on the bed and yanked the blanket from on top of it. My stomach lurched in fear as I saw the girl, tied to the bed with her stomach ripped open. I couldn't stop clicking to the next picture. I was clicking so rapidly that the pictures seemed to be playing in fluidity, like a flipbook. The man who had entered the picture was hunched over the girl now. I couldn't see what was going on. The picture faded to black again.
I clicked a few more pictures in and the next thing I knew, I was staring at a picture of the man holding what appeared to be surgical tools, standing over the girl with a fluorescent light shining above them. I watched in utter horror as the man plunged the tools into the girls opened stomach and started performing surgery on her. She was screaming in pain, and as I kept clicking the man started yanking, tugging on the girls insides. I threw up on the ground after watching him rip out her guts, piece by piece. The scene was so bloody the man had to go off-screen and get a new frame for the camera.
The pictures were so vivid, so detailed. I started crying as the man got up and walked away. His work was done. A few more pictures in, it faded to black. I noticed how many pictures I had gone through. I was on picture 995 out of 1000. I clicked slowly now, in dread of what might be waiting for me on the last picture. On picture 998, I saw a grainy photo of a young girl staring at me. Her eyes were blank, expressionless. I couldn't see much, so I went on to picture 999. I could then see what the picture was. I was face-to-face with Janice. Her face was covered in blood, her eyes were wide open, but with an emptiness that I knew was death. I clicked on the last photo.
All that was there was a black background with a large question mark in the center of the frame. Below it, in large white letters, was a simple question. A question that would haunt me until this very day. "Who is Janice?"
*end of document*
*Official Police Report 19743126#*
Officers found this document on Detective Mark Spielmans' hard drive. We found this document stored on his computer along with what appears to be a note. All that the note said was "WHO IS JANICE?!" After going over the files on his computer, we found several documents pertaining as to who Janice may have been. From what we can gather, she was kidnapped from her family around 20 years ago. She was never found. Her parents vanished shortly after the kidnapping. Upon further investigation officers found computer code embedded in her picture. From what we could gather, it was a scrambled bit of code that, when deciphered, linked to a video file. However, upon viewing the file, the investigating officers deleted it and refused to divulge what they had seen. Mark Spielman was never found. The case has since been discontinued.
Category:Photography
Category:Computers and Internet
Category:Dismemberment