It was a long day. The boss was annoying, missed the bus, heating was busted. Felt like the day couldn't get any worse. So, I did something I always did when I was feeling rubbish - put my favourite movie on. I've seen it a hundred times but never got tired of it. Something about the actors, the music, the plot, all of it just felt like... childhood. Sitting down with a glass of mead, I hit play.

It was as enjoyable as always. The characters said the familiar jokes, the fight scenes were just as crisp as the first time I saw them. A favourite moment came up; the part where the protagonist walks into a trap and has to fight their way out. Jokingly, I yelled out at the TV.

"Don't go in there!" I chuckled.

And they didn't.

They stopped.

Instead, they looked around a bit, confused, and then peeked through the keyhole, spotting the thugs hired to ambush them. They proceeded to come through the back door and swiftly dispatch them.

But they weren't supposed to! That's not how the movie went! It... changed. Same actors, same score, it was all the same but the movie I was now watching was entirely different from what I've seen so many times before. I felt uneasy.

A prank - surely that was it. With deepfakes and AI-generated content, it seemed like just about anything was possible. Maybe a friend switched the DVD the last time they visited. And- and me yelling out 'Don't go there' was just a coincidence, since I often talked about that part of the movie. Still, it didn't quite put my mind at ease.

Company. I needed company. A friend to come over and watch the movie with me, help me analyze it and make some sense of it. I got up and walked towards my bedroom where I left my phone. It was dark and cold, but I was too anxious to pay attention to that - that is until I heard something. A voice that seemed to envelop me, coming from no particular direction. I stopped just at the edge of my bedroom as it yelled out a single sentence.

"Don't go in there."