“There’s an app for that!” It was a phrase so ubiquitous in the early
days of the smartphone craze that it’s hard to believe Apple actually has it trademarked. It was a testament to a simple and immutable
truth about the world these new touchscreen phones were creating: No matter how strange
and obscure the need, there would be an app to fulfill it. Perhaps you remember iBeer - The app that
allowed you to pretend you were drinking a tall glass of beer… For some reason. There was Carrr Matey, an app that reminded
you where you parked your car… In a pirate voice. And who could forget “I Am Bread”, a surreal
game about controlling a sentient slice of bread on a quest to become toast. But there’s one app out there somewhere
on the market that you probably didn’t download. And if you did, well, you have our sincerest
apologies, because even seeing this video pop out onto your feed probably sent a chill
down your spine - Well, if that chill ever even left. Take it from one gentleman whose life took
a very strange turn after downloading a certain app that the SCP Foundation calls SCP-1471. Because the sentiment “There’s an app
for that” doesn’t exclude experiencing mortal terror… Joe Lillis, an insurance salesman from Milwaukee,
had just gone through another atrocious date. After a mediocre meal and an uncomfortable
35 minutes of inane babble, sensing the whole time that she really wasn’t that interested,
his date excused herself to take a quick phone call outside. Sadly for Joe, she never returned, leaving
him to pick up the check. Of all the many words you could use to describe
poor Joe Lillis, the most pertinent would be “lonely.” Ever since Carol, his wife of ten years, had
passed away in a freak accident, he’d been trying to find some kind of way to fill the
void. They’d been high school sweethearts, intent
on spending the rest of their lives with one another. As fate would have it, only Carol would get
that tainted luxury. Joe would be forced to endure life after the
joy of living had run its course. He only hoped he might be lucky enough to
find love again. However, Joe was on the wrong side of forty,
and as so many others his age were already hitched, he could feel his options going out
one by one. Would he be destined to live out the rest
of his days alone? Joe didn’t feel like spending the back half
of his life catching reruns of Seinfeld and tending to his fish; he needed to get out
of there. And thankfully, like the rest of us, he lived
in the internet age - He had more apps, websites, online services, and hot russian singles in
his area than he knew what to do with. So, surely, one would have the right person
for him! He’d tried them all: Tinder, Hinge, Match.com,
Plenty of Fish, eHarmony, Bumble, Zoosk, OKCupid, Friend Finder, Deeply Lonely Singles with
Low Expectations.com, and so much more. However, all it seemed to achieve was setting
him up for more disappointment. None of the dates he’d managed to get ever
resulted in anything getting serious. Heck, it was a minor miracle if he managed
to get any of them on a second date. Was this it? Was this his life now? Had he only ever gotten one shot at love,
and the grasping claws of fate yanked it away from him without a second thought? Would life continue on the hamster wheel of
loneliness - sleeping, getting up, eating, working, and sleeping again, every day getting
somehow both faster and slower as life trudged on to a disappointing yet inevitable conclusion? What a terrible fate to find yourself trapped
in… Whenever Joe started feeling maudlin like
this, he knew it was time to get proactive again. Maybe the right woman was out there - there
were billions of them, after all, surely at least one of them would be the perfect person
for him. He just needed the perfect app… He’d burned through all the most reputable
apps already, and was now perusing some of the slightly seedier options - most of which
were likely data mining fronts from the Balkans. However, as generic app after generic app
passed, something different caught his eye. The icon was a smiling cartoon dog, and its
name was MalO Version. 1.0.0. This gave him a little chuckle. At the very least, it was very different branding
from the rest of the dating apps he’d seen. Maybe it’d just been sorted into the wrong
section of the app store? He decided he’d click it and take a look
at the app’s description. The description read: “Never settle for those awkward feelings
of being alone ever again. MalO is an exciting and interactive experience
that will keep you engaged and intrigued. The anxiety of social situations can be nerve-racking,
but after just a few hours of MalO you will soon forget all about those painful emotions
of disappointment. Be part of the new craze that is quickly becoming
the next social substitute. Remember, the more you participate, the more
MalO will engage you. Your experience is completely up to you. Absolutely NO ADS. Enjoy!” Well… It certainly provoked Joe’s curiosity, at
the very least. He did want to banish his feelings of loneliness,
and seeing as the app was free and apparently had no ads, he’d surely be foolish to not
at least give it a whirl. What’s the worst that could happen? He began the installation and only then noticed
that the app had no listed developer. It took up 9.8 MB of memory, which he wasn’t
tech savvy enough to see any issues with. More than anything, Joe was just enticed by
the prospect of finally having another chance at companionship with MalO. After all, it is the “next social substitute”,
whatever that means. However, Joe’s excitement was quickly quashed
when he hit the home screen button, and noticed that the icon for the app never actually materialized. Strange. He checked the app store portal again and
saw that, according to them, the app had completely downloaded. What gives? Was it a glitch, or was MalO actually just
malware? Either way, he was disheartened by the fact
that this immaterial app certainly wouldn’t be getting him any companionship. Or so he thought, anyway. Joe was used to disappointment by now, so
he didn’t take the hit too personally. He decided to just play out the rest of his
evening on autopilot: Making himself some soup, doing the laundry, watching more Seinfeld
reruns, taking a cold shower, and preparing to cry himself to sleep again. MalO was already becoming a distant memory,
just like all deceptive sources of hope. But one strange thing happened that disrupted
Joe’s finely-tuned evening routine. He received a text message. This was incredibly strange, because nobody
ever seemed to text him. The last text he got was from Carol, just
before her accident, so it was almost surreal to hear that alert sound now, after everything
that’d happened. He checked and saw that the text was an image
attachment sent from an unknown number. Perplexed yet curious, he decided to open
it. His curiosity soon gave way to a kind of melancholy
nostalgia when he saw that the photo was of his and Carol’s favorite cafe in town. They’d spent many a morning there, back
when she was alive. Treating themselves to a nice cup of coffee
and perhaps a croissant. Just seeing it again caused an involuntary
smile to spread across his face. It never even occurred to him, as it probably
would have to others, that this could be seen as a little creepy. He hadn’t frequented the bakery since Carol
died. How would anyone even know that the place
held any significance for him? Was it a stalker? A ghost? Or just a spooky coincidence? None of these thoughts even crossed Joe’s
mind. He was just grateful for the surprising reminder
of the happiness he’d once had. For the next couple hours, things seemed… Lighter. He went about his evening, checking the photo
every so often and smiling, until eventually he found himself in bed, still looking into
the glow of his phone. It was such a beautiful little cafe… Then, he froze. He noticed something in the picture. It’d been there the whole time, but only
now was he seeing rather than just looking. It was in the corner, staring through the
glass of the cafe’s door. So faint he almost wanted to dismiss it as
a trick of the light. It was a face - Well, not a face, more like
a skull. Not human, not anywhere near human. Long, slender, and canine, with protruding
fangs and vacant white eyes. The pure white of the skull was buried in
a nest of thick, black hair. It looked like it was crouching behind the
door, looking out, and grinning, whatever the hell it was. Just seeing it changed the entire tone of
the picture. It was no longer a simple reminder of bygone
joy. Now, all that was radiating out of that image
was a palpable sense of dread. Was someone playing some kind of awful prank
on him? Just then, he was jogged from his contemplation
by another alert. A new message from the same number as before. With great hesitation, he hovered his thumb
over the push notification and clicked. That’s when everything got a lot worse. It was a photo of a bus stop. Not just any bus stop, of course, it was Stop
C16 - The one that Joe always took to get to work. It looked like it was taken relatively early
in the morning, but nobody was there. Well… Not quite nobody. There was that figure again. It stood at full height, behind the partially
frosted glass that makes up the back of the bus stop. That same large, black humanoid shape, with
a white, grinning dog skull where the face should be. Something about it terrified him on such a
primal level, like the way our lizard brain reacts to some ancient apex predator. And whatever this thing was, it clearly knew
something about him. How else could it stage all these photos? Joe got out of bed and looked out the window,
down onto his dark front street. Empty, thankfully, but after this surprise
nightmare, he wasn’t going to take any chances. He grabbed a kitchen knife from downstairs
and placed it on his bedside cabinet, right next to his phone, with 911 on speed dial. Joe Lillis, a 43 year old man, slept with
the lights on that night for the first time in over thirty years. Sadly for him, the nightmare was just beginning. The next morning, Joe woke up unharmed, but
he wasn’t pleased to see that he’d gotten several more texts in his sleep. There was one taken outside of the local insurance
company office where he worked. The strange creature with the skull for a
face was looming around the corner, peering at the camera with its lipless grin. Like it was mocking him. Another photo was taken at the local supermarket
where Joe did most of his grocery shopping. The frame was centralized on the cereal aisle,
bordered on both sides by walls of garish mascots, endlessly repeated. Down at the far end of the aisle was a looming,
dark figure, with that cold, canine skull where a human face should be. There were a few more, but worst of all was
the last one. It was taken at the cemetery. In the foreground, a headstone, reading “Carol
Lillis - Beloved Wife and Daughter.” Joe was horrified to see that skull-faced
beast was rising up behind his wife’s grave, long, clawed fingers curling around the top
of the headstone. That was the moment that Joe decided to go
to the police about all this, before things got even more out of hand. He called an Uber to get down to the station
- He certainly didn’t feel like going anywhere near his regular bus stop after last night. He showed the photos he’d been sent so far
to an officer posted at the station, and they agreed that there was certainly something
strange about it. While the behavior undeniably bordered on
harassment, it hadn’t yet delved into criminal territory, so he would sadly be on his own
until then. The best they could do was stay in touch and
keep abreast of any new developments. The only sage advice they could give him was
not to delete the photos, as they could always be used as evidence in court later if things
escalated. This was literally the last result that Joe
wanted out of this. Considering how bizarre and threatening things
were getting already, he really didn’t want to find out what escalation looked like in
this case. But what else could he do but carry on, just
trying to exercise as much caution as he could in these strange new circumstances? He went to work and tried his best to stay
productive, despite the fact that every three or so hours, a new photo would arrive. Places that he liked to sit in the local parks,
stores he’d frequent, restaurants he liked to eat at. That nightmare skeleton dog thing would be
standing in all of them, just mugging for the camera. On one hand, every time he looked at one of
the photos, Joe felt like he was giving this freak exactly what they wanted. On the other hand, how could he possibly look
away? What if he missed something that could save
his life? It carried on much like that until later in
the evening. Joe may not have been a genius, but he was
no fool, either. He’d seen too many of those seedy True Crime
documentaries about kidnapping to take his normal route home. He took a real detour, frequently checking
over his shoulder the entire time. Much to his relief, he didn’t see anything
out of place. Good. When he got home, he locked every door and
bolted every window. Nothing would be getting the jump on him tonight. That’s when the next picture came in: A
photograph of Joe’s empty office cubicle, with the bony face of the creature looming
over the divider with a grin. He could feel his heart pounding away in his
chest just looking at it. How did this thing get around like this? How was it able to infiltrate everywhere in
his entire goddamn life? Suddenly, he felt a smile spreading across
his face. This freak had just messed up, big time. Before, all these creepy photos had been taken
in public places. But the one taken in his office? Oh, this crossed the line into trespassing. The police would have to do something about
it now. It’d given him an ace up his sleeve. That confidence faded a few hours later when
he received another photo: This time, it was the skull-faced monster just standing on the
sidewalk - The sidewalk that Joe remembered walking on his “covert” alternative route. He felt himself break into a cold sweat. It seemed, whoever this was, he really did
hold no secrets from them. Now more than ever, Joe didn’t feel safe
in his own home. So you can only imagine how he felt when,
a few hours later, he received a photo of the skull-faced stalker standing right outside
his own front door, staring into the camera. It sent him rushing to the window again to
check outside, but of course, nobody was there. The next day, when he called the police and
updated them on the situation, they told him that they were doing all they could. The best thing he could possibly do was to
remain calm, but vigilant. He needed to keep an eye on the photos being
sent to him, so he could notify them if ever he was in any immediate danger. This put poor Joe’s paranoia at a fever
pitch. Even when he went to work, surrounded by coworkers,
by witnesses, he could scarcely tear his eyes away from his phone. He was a slave to the photos, forever waiting
for the next one. Only to experience crushing regret when that
photo actually arrived. It looked like it was taken moments before
it was sent to him. Joe saw himself, looking at his own phone
in his office cubicle, with that huge, skull-faced figure looming behind him. He screamed out loud upon seeing it, and turned
to see if anything was behind him. But of course, there was nothing there. The police inspected the office, talked to
potential witnesses, and analyzed the photo. It showed no signs of any photographic manipulation,
but there were also no witnesses around the office who claimed to see anything strange
that day. There was also no security camera footage
in the last several days that showed this figure coming in or out. Joe Lillis started to feel like he was going
insane, and perhaps he was, but that didn’t change the tangible and ever-present feeling
that he was in great danger. He didn’t come into work the next day. He’d received more photos like that in the
night: Of himself, taken in real time, with that skull-faced freak looming. He didn’t want to leave the house. He didn’t want to go anywhere anymore. He just didn’t feel safe out there. How could he, with all this madness unfolding? There was a time when he could have said something
like, “At least it only seems confined to my phone”, he might’ve even suspected
that it had something to do with that strange MalO app he downloaded a few days prior that
hadn’t seemed to do anything. But the situation had evolved since then. He wasn’t just seeing the creature in photos
anymore. It was here. He kept seeing quick flashes of it on the
other side of windows. In reflections. In the corner of his eyes, always darting
away if ever he turned towards it. It was everywhere and nowhere. It was here for him. He just knew it. The police couldn’t help. Nobody could help. Joe just sat in the corner of his bedroom,
clutching his kitchen knife, afraid to close his eyes. It could be anywhere. It could be anywhere. It could be anywhere… We know one thing for sure: Joe Lillis never
felt truly alone ever again. He always had his new friend, waiting, just
out of sight. And if ever you’re feeling lonesome, and
decide to download Mal0 version 1.0.0 yourself, then you’ll never feel lonely again, either… Now go check out “SCP-1025 - Encyclopedia
of Common Diseases” and “Worst Ways to Die - SCP Edition” for more SCPs that’ll
creep into your mind and give you nightmares!
