I Know The Truth

## I Know the Truth by Vincent Vena Cava

(Momo © Keisuke Aiso)

I noticed that the Momo thing has been getting around the internet a lot this year (2018 as I'm writing this). If you don't know it by name you've probably seen a picture of it. It's a viral image of a strange-looking woman with big wide eyes, a large smile and stringy black hair. There's something about that image that bothers a lot of people. It crosses that uncanny valley. Momo looks almost human, and I think it's the "almost" part that unnerves people the most. Over the past few weeks, I've read up on all the urban legends around her.

Many of them are conflicting. Some of them are downright preposterous but there's a modicum of truth in some of the stories floating around the web. Of course, when anything strange and unexpected pops up on the internet armchair detectives make it their mission to get to the bottom of it. Already there are all kinds of debunk videos on YouTube and threads on reddit dedicated to getting to the truth behind the eerie picture. The prevailing theory is that it's just part of some art project.

Photos have been linked back to an Instagram account of some Japanese creature shop that posted a picture of two women working on a sculpture of what looks to be Momo. The image that went viral is a cropped photo of that Instagram post uploaded by a redditor. Case closed, right? *Wrong*. I hope that I'll be able to use this opportunity to clear up a few misconceptions. First and foremost, Momo isn't new on the Internet. It's been around for a while. The image of the sculpture is new but the real Momo picture (which is very similar) has existed for years. I'd wager a guess that the artist who sculpted the statue that went viral probably had seen the real Momo before and most likely even interacted with it.

It would make sense, once Momo takes interest in you can't seem to shake the thing from your mind. I would know. Momo took interest in me about one year ago which is why I need to tell my story. Before I get into it, I want to make another point in regards to the myth. You absolutely can contact this thing via WhatsApp however you most likely will not see the real number connected to the account listed anywhere. As of late the one you've probably seen since that meme went viral are fakes and maybe that's a good thing. Now I saw the real Momo picture posted on a thread on 4chan. You should have read the comments...or maybe not. You probably wouldn't have missed much, there was just a stew of the usual Internet garbage that you'd see whenever something that's supposed to be creepy is posted on a forum.

*nightmare fuel*

*too spoopy for me*

*cursed image*

*XD*

and of course...

*unzip*

It's always one, right? I was at my house by myself that night. The usual neighborhood buzz of my street had dulled to a silence. My mom was at my older brother's baseball game, my dad (that loser) was still in his shitty one-bedroom apartment all the way in Florida, *and* it was snowing. I was bored out of my mind, and I felt like I'd already browsed the entirety of the Internet. But everything changed when I stumbled on that Momo thread. There was just something about it that kept pulling me back. I'd wander off for a while, maybe play a game or watch a YouTube video, and before I knew it, I'd be back on that tab refreshing the page and reading more about that creepy girl.

The thread was pretty active and eventually it turned from a discussion about the bizarre photo to one about a phone number that had been posted by some anon. "Now this is Momo's number, you can contact her here." the user had said. There were lots of comments about that, most of which were people trying to figure out who the number really belonged to. A few people even posted that they had tried calling it and only received a busy signal. I also remember a couple of anons trying to troll the message board by giving out the contact information of family and friends and going "No, THIS is the real number! I called this one it actually works!". The thread went to shit after that. Buried in the comments I noticed one person claiming they made contact with the first number through WhatsApp.

Now the Momo/WhatsApp connection has come to light in the past few weeks but back then nobody knew about it. I already had the app on my phone and since I had nothing better to do, I figured I'd try contacting Momo. I wasn't expecting it to actually work. After all the number came from a thread on 4chan, a site notorious for shitposts. So, imagine my surprise when I looked it up and found that it was connected to a real WhatsApp account. Imagine the "holy shit" look on my face when I saw the accounts' profile pic was the same creepy girl from the 4chan thread that I had been lurking on. So, I sent her a message.

"is this momo"

I waited for a reply. As I watched the little dots wiggling up and down on my screen someone was typing back. I laughed. I wasn't expecting the answer to be in Spanish. Oh God this had to be the anon trolling me! I figured I'd poke back a little bit. My plan was to screenshot the conversation and upload it back to the original thread. Still even though I was having fun there was something eerie about seeing those big bug eyes staring back at me. I messaged her back.

"what's your deal anyway you like dead or something"

I glanced back to the screen, waiting to see those three dots wiggling up and down. They never came. I thought that maybe I had been too forward. They could tell that they knew it was a troll. Disappointed I put my phone down on my desk and began playing some games on Steam. Half an hour later I had totally forgotten about it. That is until a notification sounded on my phone. I looked over and I saw that I had a message from WhatsApp but when I opened the message my heart skipped a beat. A picture had been sent back to me. It was the decapitated body of a man lying-in a grass field. It was night so the image was a little dark and I couldn't make out too many details. The body wasn't wearing any clothes, the legs were spread open, and I could see the man's genitals appeared to have been maimed. I decided to screenshot the image, thinking at the time I would add it to the thread later.

But before I got the chance to screenshot anything I received another message. It read "Is this your daddy?" in Spanish. There was something about the tone of the message that upset me. It was just so flippant. My daddy? The sick fuck sent me a picture like this and then has the balls to talk to me like I'm some little kid. It irritated me more than I'd like to admit but after a few seconds I cooled off and shot whoever was behind the Momo account a message back.

"Hope so." I said. "The guy looks like a total prick.". Why not just laugh it off? I figured I might as well see if I could milk the Momo thing a little longer. Before I could think of something else to write back, I got another message. This time what I received was a picture of a woman. She too was nude but unlike the man her body had been maimed a lot worse. In fact, I could barely tell that I was looking at a woman at all save for a few body parts that gave it away. She was lying on the tiled floor of what looked like a public bathroom. There were stalls visible, but I couldn't see anything else, and it was impossible to tell where the photo was taken.

It looked like someone had bludgeoned in the woman's skull over and over again with something heavy until there was nothing but pulp and shattered bone fragments left. The tiles on the floor where her head should have been were cracked as if someone had dropped a bowling ball on it. This image upset me more than the previous one. There was something about it that made me feel very uneasy and now I didn't find the whole thing funny anymore. I was pretty sure that I was texting back and forth with someone who was severely disturbed.

And then came the next message.

"*SS death to mommy*"

I didn't reply. I didn't feel like uploading the conversation to the internet anymore. In fact, I didn't even feel like being online anymore. The picture *did* kind of look like my mother. There wasn't much left that would have let me identify the body and I wouldn't know what she looked like nude, but I couldn't help but feel like the woman in the photo looked like her. I blocked the account. I walked into the living room to turn on the TV and I figured I'd watch some television and try to forget about the whole thing while I waited for my mom and my brother to get home. An hour later it was beginning to get kind of late and my family still hadn't come back. I walked back to my room to grab my phone so I could call my mom. When I picked it up, I saw the notification light was blinking.

A sick feeling crept into my stomach when I realized the message was from WhatsApp. I don't know how. I blocked the Momo profile. Somehow it had messaged me back. You might not understand but I felt like I had to open the notification. I don't think I would have been able to breathe again until I saw what it said. There was another picture attached to this message. I nearly screamed when I saw him. Maybe I did I don't really remember much in that moment other than the picture. It was an image my brother or at least someone in my brother's basketball uniform. I couldn't really tell because the head had been decapitated. It looked like him though. Same build. Same skin color. Same black and blue kuri fours he wore every game that year. The body was lying on the floor of a basketball gym.

It was the one from our high school. The picture was dark, but I swear to God it looked just like him. I closed the app. I dialed my mom, but she didn't pick up. The sick bastard had killed my family, I was sure of it. I didn't know what to do. I was afraid to call the cops. I know it sounded irrational but in my panicked mind I reasoned that I had done something wrong. That I was responsible for their deaths because I messaged Momo. I tried dialing my mom again, but she didn't pick up. I sent my brother a text but still didn't get a response. Another message came in. Another picture and this time I felt my head began to spin. I was looking at a picture of me in my computer chair sitting in front of my desktop. I wasn't wearing a shirt and my stomach had burst open as if I'd swallowed a hand grenade. IN my hands I was holding my own intestines.

The room and the image were exactly as it was in real life. The same posters on the wall. The same clothes on the floor. It was as if someone had staged the photo while I was in the other room. I screamed and I threw my phone against the wall. It was done as the sound of hurried footsteps came from down the hall. Whoever had taken those photos was in my home. There was no time to go out the window and my room was on the second story anyway, so I ran and I barricaded myself against the door. I nearly died when I saw the handle begin to jostle. Someone was trying to force their way into the room. I leaned into it with all of my weight. The next thing I remember hearing was my mother's voice mid-sentence from the other side of the door.

"What's going on? Are you okay in there?"

I didn't believe it was really her. I thought it was Momo trying to convince me to open the door so it could gut me like it did in the picture. But when the door cracked open just a bit, I caught a glimpse and I saw that it actually was my mom. I let her in the room, threw my arms around her and began to sob. She asked me what was wrong, so I got my phone. When I went to show her the messages on WhatsApp, I noticed they were no longer visible. I pulled up the screenshot O took but to my surprise that was gone from my phone as well. I didn't tell her about what happened. Instead, I made something up about a nightmare. She apologized for missing my calls, told me my brother's game had gone into overtime which was why they were so late. I ran downstairs and saw my brother sitting at the kitchen table drinking a coke.

His head was still attached to his body. My family was fine, even my dad who texted me back when I messaged him. Hours later I was in bed having a hard time falling asleep. The idea kept turning over again and again in my brain. What had happened? How had the Momo message been deleted? How had the screen shot I took been deleted? Had I imagined the whole thing? That's when I heard a notification ring on my phone. Because I needed confirmation that I wasn't crazy I opened it. I wish I hadn't though. There was an image there. The moment still terrifies me even now one year later. It was a picture of me in bed looking at my phone, taken from across the room. Me in that very moment. In the shadows under my bed, plainly visible, was the face of Momo. The message beneath it read:

"SST is this me?"

Momo wrote other things to me that night, most of which I don't care to elaborate on. It told me things about myself that not even my family knows. It told me secrets about my friends and family that I wasn't aware of, horrible secrets. It told me that it needs me to do things for it or else these secrets will become public. Writing this story was one of the things. That artist in Japan? I bet making that sculpture was another one of them.

Momo also told me that the very last thing she will ask me to do is kill myself. I suppose at this point I'm alright with that. I would do it anyway if Momo told anyone else what it had told me...